I’ve spent some time deciding if I was going to make this entry or not. Repentance is one of those words that has so many meanings to people. For some it’s a word that speaks of control and guilt. For others it’s a word that denotes humility in the face of ones conscience. And I wasn’t sure I really wanted to open this can of worms, but I’ve learned something recently that I wanted to share.

Thanks to the middle ages, most people think of going to confession when they need to ‘repent’. There are even some denominations who require you to tell your mistake in front of the entire congregation. This idea that you need to be humilated and made to feel guilty makes me see red. The idea of facing your mistakes is so warped, that there are people who actually convince themselves that they make no mistakes nor affect others in any negative way. This is just flatly impossible. We all hurt people through our lives. Whether it’s unintentional or on purpose, claiming your not responsible for your actions is immature to say the least. Those of us who recognize that our actions affect others try to learn from our mistakes and try not to make the same ones again.

This is the basics of repentance. Whether your apologizing to someone for a hurtful thing you did to them, or your on your knees to your deity asking forgiveness for a slight to your code of convenants and ethics, it’s all about fixing our mistakes when we make them, either finding forgiveness or giving it.

Now this road is not easy. I’m not in anyway perfect or even close to it. I’ve got many things I still have to fix, but this entry is about what I have been learning while I fix the problem I’m currantly working on.

I mentioned in a post a couple months ago, an incident where I was in church, and in an answer to a prayer was told during a persons talk in sacrament meeting to “not be afraid”. That advice rocked my spirit in a profound way. I put fear aside and went to my bishop. We had a couple of talks and it was decided that the situation of my pregnancy, and the covenant it broke and the number of people it affected, required that I talk with all three members of my bishopric in what could be called a ‘bishop’s court’. Now this is not a scary thing, it’s a way to have an involved discussion and perhaps get to the true heart of what’s going on and then decide on the best course for repentance.

Which is exactly what happened. Through discussing the situation with them, they asked questions and I answered and we talked about so much. We ended up talking about nearly my entire life. Looking at motivations and choices made and what led to what. It was tearful, all four of us cried alot, it was loving, friendly and supportive. It was freeing in so many ways.

I cannot express my thankfulness to my Heavenly Father for giving my bishop the insight to have this meeting. For the most part, when a person goes to their bishop with something major, it usually ends up staying just between the bishop and the person. And then for regular stuff you’d keep it between you and God. None of this public humiliation and guilt nonsense. Guilt doesn’t come from God. Remorse, yes…guilt, no.

And there has not been any guilt for me about this. Remorse I feel in droves and a desire to fix the damage I have done to the lives around me. But overall, I feel gratitude. Thanks to that meeting, and the personal pondering of what was said, I finally figured out what my deal is. What my motivating reasoning is. The one thing I was even willing to put my morality on the line for to discover if I could find it anywhere. Only to discover, as we all know intellectually, that you can’t find when your not true to yourself. And that one thing was a true friend and confindant. That I can tell anything to, and not worry that they are going to laugh at me, or hold me in contempt, or go tell their friends my intimate details. Something that I have never had in my life. And when I go back and look at my introspective journal entries, I see it there staring at me. A motivation that I hadn’t realized. If you guys figured it out..good for you. Me, I’m slow, I needed that indepth discussion for me to finally see it for myself.

I realized why I’ve been willing to hang on to dead marlowe even though he’s a turkey who I should just drop. Because he was that confindant. He’s not now of course, and now knowing why I was waiting, I can let go without looking back. I know now why my exhusbands backbiting to his friends and girlfriends hurt me more then the actual infidelity. I can now look back on my life and see where my deep desire to have an understanding friend, led me to accept even the illusion of that friendship.

I am so thankful that I now recognize what drives me. The one thing that decided my choices in personal relationships. There are more important things, such as my kids. And now I know what to watch out for, hopefully I can avoid putting myself into more positions like those I’ve talked about here on this blog.

I’m so thankful to my Heavenly Father. For helping me see that there was nothing to be afraid of and to be willing to face my own heart. I cannot express my gratitude for my bishopric or the gospel that gives me the knowledge of how special and cared for we all are. Even when we can’t feel it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 2nd, 2004 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Church, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.