Why marriage brings out the Shit in all of us... My views on the whole marriage ordeal

Last night I had an epiphany about marriage.

After mason and I hashed out (hashed out = fought out) our issues for an hour and a half (after marriage Therapy.. Lol), I was so confused, angry, lost, and wondering why the hell I ever thought marriage was a great idea.

Both of us have baggage that we've picked up as children, from our parents, and from society,  which are so heavy. I mean, I already am dealing with my own issues! Marriage means intimately dealing with another human's baggage and blind spots, which can be so infuriating and annoying! Especially when their issues affect you in such obvious ways (sex, finances, codependency, control freakness)

Sometimes it feels like the biggest joke to think that this is a good thing. Sometimes I tell myself, if I  didn't have kids with this man, or if it was there was an easy way out of this, I would be gone in 2 seconds.

Then my epiphany hit me, after fighting and discovering our beliefs and issues for an hour and a half... A little voice came into my head:

Maybe marriage is a safe place for all of our issues to be worked through and to manifest themselves.

You have codependency issues? You'll get a chance to work through those. You have intimacy issues? Great, marriage will bring that Shit out in you. You have issues with abundance? Sex? Responsibility? Control? Great! All of that Shit will hit the fan when you get married.

I used to be so frustrated because I thought an ideal marriage meant putting another person ahead of you all the time, selfless love and sacrifice, bliss and happiness at all times!  Having someone who completes me, having adorable kids who my husband and I would love and honor at all times... Blah blah blah.

That was a joke. While marriage can be blissful and happy at times, it is ALSO messy! It is infuriating! It is annoying! It is confrontational! It is discord! I thought I was failing as a wife if I felt hatred and anger towards my husband. I felt like a failure when I wanted to throw the towel in and tell Mason to rot in hell. Lol I was constantly beating myself up for feeling any emotion that wasn't happiness, bliss, peace, contentment, and love.

Now I see that maybe, marriage is here so all of those emotions and beliefs can come forward, be worked through, and released. Maybe marriage is like the refiners fire, allowing me to learn forgiveness, patience, charity, and love. Maybe it's okay to want to call it quits or feel fury and rage, because after you work through those emotions, out comes an outpouring of love and gratitude for another human who still wants to be with ME despite my craziness.

All in all, marriage is a place for our Shit to come out, and to experience every emotion on the emotional spectrum. Isn't that what life is all about to? To experience humanness? To experience pain and suffering, to experience love and joy? Marriage is just an accelerated course on life, one that today, I'm grateful to be in.

PS of you want a REALLY accelerated course on life and add even more emotions to that spectrum, throw kids into that mix and multiply everything I just said that you the number of additional kids you have. ;)

Why Carnality Is Amazing. Get ready to open your mind... this one is a DOOZY!!!

So I've had such an amazing breakthrough. Wowsers. I almost feel like typing it out isn't going to be enough. I wish I could just download everything I just remembered to everyone else instead of having to go through the extremely tedious process of me typing and you reading. But the funny thing is, that is exactly what this post is about.

I have been doing a lot of processing and a lot of work on integrating my body and spirit. Even as a small child, I have felt my body to be so confining! It's like.. GEEZE! I have so much to do and so much to share and so much to see! I just want to be there NOW! I want to be everywhere at once! I don't want to be contained in such an "inadequate" vessel.

Ok. So there is so much I want to share. I don't even know where to start. A lot of times, I get like this, and then I just get so frustrated that I don't even start because there's so much I want to share and express and words just aren't enough. I want others to feel what I'm feeling! I want others to feel how amazing I feel and to feel the passion and love that is seriously oozing from every piece of me! 'alskdjf a;df  Until we rediscover how to talk telepathically, I guess this is the best way to get everything out.


So A huge belief that I have been carrying that I just realized that I have been carrying, is that carnality is bad and That the body is evil. It's so contrary! We are taught to love and care for our bodies, yet, we are taught that carnality is evil and that Adam fell into sin, and that we need to be spiritual beings instead of carnal beings. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's a load of shit. Well, I'm actually here to tell you that I have taken this belief to an unbelievable extreme (which is something I excel greatly at.. haha) and that the way I have seen it, and the way that others might be seeing it, is not truth. SO when I say that's a load of shit, I mean to say, the way that I have personally been perceiving it has not been truth and has been causing a lot of pain and frustration for me. Again, I am taking responsibility for my perception, Not for yours on what you think I am saying.

So here is an outline of how I have been seeing the whole "Plan of Salvation" (an LDS belief if you are personally not aware of the LDS religion).

We chose to come to earth to experience life

Adam came first, and he and Eve made a horrible choice, and Sinned. This was the first ever sin and they became carnal, sinful, mortal beings.

Because Adam and Eve weren't good enough (or the entire human race) and because they were so sinful, God had to send down his perfect child to save us all from our disgusting state.

God's perfect child has saved us from our horribleness and only through his perfect child, can we have a relationship with him.

In order to get back to God, we have to NOT be human beings and deny ourselves of carnality and just be spiritual beings.

So in a nut shell, that Is how I saw all of this. IT'S PRETTY CRAZY RIGHT!?

So in order for me NOT to be imperfect, disgusting, and carnal, I decided to avoid all carnality, and to live in my brain. To analyze everything first, to not make any mistakes and not to experience emotions and human-ness because it is such a horrible, disgusting state of be-ing. SO horrible in fact, that God doesn't even want to be on the same planet as us! So horrible that he had to send a mediator and sent a perfect being to save us. So I denied my body. I decided to live in my head and not in my heart. I decided to cut off all emotions and connections to other humans.

Today, I realized that for me, this belief that carnality is horrible and that being human is such a sin, is no longer working for me.
Today, I realized that Christ is the PERFECT example of embracing carnality and loving and honoring this human experience!

So this is now how I see "The Plan of Salvation"

I was with God and I am God. I am a piece of Him, I am his Child. Therefore, I am God. I am a God. I am a spirit being. I am perfect. My soul is God. (Kinda deep, but bear with me. Remember that all of this stuff has been a lot of study and a lot of learning for me. It might be a lot to just hear for the first time. I know it was for me when I first remembered this..)

As a God, I gained a lot of awesome knowledge and intelligence, but it got to a point that knowledge just wasn't enough. Knowledge was awesome, but I wanted more. I wanted EXPERIENCE. And the only way to experience, was to put on a human body that could feel pain, and pleasure, and emotions!

So, As a God, I chose to lower my vibration and take on "imperfection". To take on a human body that could actually experience, rather than just have knowledge.

As a God, I chose what lessons I wanted to learn in life. I chose what experiences I wanted to go through in order to help me grow and progress. I chose what family lines I wanted to go into, I chose my parents, my siblings, and basically everything I am experiencing now, I chose. I chose what "Quarks" I wanted to take on. I chose to live in my brain, I chose to go through abuse, I chose to abuse, I chose all that was necessary for me to learn what I am "remembering" now. (I say remembering because I already know everything.. I just want to experience that now and that isn't possible without forgetting everything first.. but I will get to that/)

As a God, I chose to forget all that I had previously chosen. I chose to put on a "veil of forgetfulness" in order to actually be human, and EXPERIENCE. I chose to experience pain and sorrow, happiness and joy, and I chose to feel. You see, emotions are purely human. They are a carnal thing. It's so funny because what we have chosen to experience, we are actually denying. We chose to experience pain and emotions, but now that we are here, we are trying to deny all of that and avoid all of that! What if emotions were actually really, really amazing?! What if Pain just is an experience, no better or worse than pleasure?! And we have just forgotten all of this?

So, that brings me back to what carnality actually is. Carnality is to be "imperfect". Carnality is to feel and experience what is so uniquely human. Sex! Pleasure! Smelling the flowers! Falling down and scraping your knees! Walking across burning hot coals! Kissing your kids! Feeling the anger that wells up inside of you when your kids spill toilet water all over the bathroom floor! Feeling the sorrow of losing someone close to you! Feeling the rage of the person that cuts you off on the freeway! Feeling the caress of a sweet husband, showing his love to you through physical touch! Feeling the sadness of Messing up and yelling at someone you love! All of this, is carnality. All of this is soo soo wonderful. We wouldn't have chosen into it, if it wasn't so wonderful!

And that, is where Christ comes into this for me. Before, I saw Christ as someone who came here to save me from all that I was doing wrong. Now I am realizing that I am doing nothing wrong. I am living. I am experiencing! And that Is so perfect! Christ came here to show us that even taking on everyone's pain, is actually a great thing! He showed me that pain is just an experience. He lived in a body and chose to come and learn with us because it is actually super awesome. He felt every pain, but I wonder if that's all we focus on. Do you think that maybe he felt all of our pleasures, too? Do you think that he was Godly because he was able to feel connected to all of us at once, like God does? Do you think that he was showing us the way? That we too, can experience pain and pleasure and emotions and still live? And still remember that we are actually spirit beings, coming here for experience? Do you think he came to show us that we are not our bodies, and that we are so much more than our experiences?

Wow. That is so enlightening for me.

If you have taken offense to any of this, I am sorry you have chosen that. I challenge every person reading this, to actually question this! See what exactly bothers you so much, and why? Why does the belief that we are God's bother you? Why does the belief that sin is just experience, bother you? Being bothered is JUST information. Dig deeper.  Embrace it.  See if this idea works for you! See if Christ is so much more than we realized! See if your carnality is actually something to be embraced!

 Spirituality is awesome. I LOVE spirituality. But we ARE spirit beings. We are naturally spiritual because we ARE spirit. But we AREN'T our bodies. Our bodies are just an amazing tool to help us progress. We are NOT our experiences. We ARE children of God. We ARE Spirit beings. There is definitely a balance between spirituality and carnality. Embrace them both.

Love and Light to you all!!!!!

xoxox

Lauren

What is perfection?

I know, I am on a perfection kick.. but it is so awesome, all that I am learning! I just wanted to share.

A book that I have not wanted to put down lately, is Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neal Donald Walsch

Man that book has been life changing for me. All of this time, I've seen perfection as doing exactly as God wants me to do and being exactly as God wants me to be. I would read the scriptures and see Jesus Christ and all that he did, and want to be perfect just like Him. I was faithfully following in His footsteps. I was serving others constantly, I would submit myself to the pains that God sent me to feel and the trials He gave me without complaining, I would put all others before myself, I was selfless. Even as I look at the word selfless, it really makes me wonder why we use that word? Self-less. Putting my self-less and others first? From my experience, being self-less didn't serve me. I was striving SO hard to be self-less, that that's exactly  what I became. I had no sense of self.

I was so busy trying to be the perfect mom, and wife, and neighbor, and child, that I denied my self over and over and over. I perceived that that's what Christ did, and that is what would make God proud of me and love me. I believed that because I am a mom now, it's time for me to become truly selfless and sacrifice everything, every part of me, to my family. I denied myself an education, I denied myself nice clothes and things, I denied myself a job, I denied myself everything so I could stay at home and be self-less. After a while, I came to the pain-FULL realization that the more I denied myself, the less I was able to give to my family. Slowly but surely my sense of self was buried underneath  my perceptions of who I SHOULD be, rather than who I really am. Shoulds, shouldn'ts, have to's, and I need to's ruled my life. I wasn't living life as I truly wanted. I was living my life the way I thought God, my children, the church, my family, and society wanted. I was not happy. This "perfection" was not working for me any longer.

I felt like God's love was a catch 22 and so was my agency. I felt like when he said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" it was literal. I wanted to show Him that I could perfectly love him. Nope. That didn't work for me. I felt like when God told me that I had my agency, he was saying, "Yah! You can choose which path you want! But there's only one path the me, and the rest are wrong and you will live a life of agony if you don't choose what I really want you to choose. I felt God's love was conditional based on if I did what he wanted me to or not. Imagine my utter shock when I learned that God is not this way at all. In Conversations with God,God says:

NDW: When you say that a prayer is a statement of what is so, are you saying that God does nothing; that everything which happens after a prayer is a result of the prayer's action?

If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says "yes" to some, "no" to others, and "maybe, but not now" to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide?

If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken.

God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect.

It is not God's function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

In this sense, your will for you is God's will for you.

You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.

This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.

I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay.

Of course, you will always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.

You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. it is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy--not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result--that comes close to describing the dichotomy of God.

Yet God, in a sense, does not even care about the outcome. Not the ultimate outcome. This is because the ultimate outcome is assured.

And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.

It is this doubt about ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator-you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life.

If you doubt God's intentions-and God's ability to produce this ultimate result-then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace?

I'm not going to lie.. this is really difficult for me to write. Even though I am aware of my actions, it still can be tough to see that I was playing a martyr card and that despite ALL of my best efforts, they were just pointed in the wrong a direction I hadn't realized. (There is no such thing as a wrong direction in my eyes). It's still tough sometimes to admit that my life is my creation, and that all of the pain I experienced was actually brought on myself. The entire time, I had blamed God. "You told me to get married and have kids so early! You told me through countless conference talks and relief society lessons that this is what I was supposed to do!" Let's be honest. God didn't tell me to do ANYTHING. I had my agency and I CHOSE to perceive everything that way. It is amazing to me that I have friends who can go to the exact same relief society lesson and get something COMPLETELY different out of it! It all boils down to me. I am the master of my universe. I am the creator of my agony. I am the one who perceived things in the way I did.

It may seem extremely harsh, and some of you may be cringing at reading this because it is bringing up realizations that you too are the creator of your own life experience and the reason you feel shitty sometimes really boils down to the fact that you created that. Believe me. I was the NUMBER ONE advocate of this being the hokiest bunch of crap. I was in complete resistance to the idea that I was the only one who could make myself miserable.

But do you want to know the truth about it? The truth is, that this gift of creating is the greatest gift God has blessed his children with. He didn't stop me from creating a mess! He allowed me to create and learn. Let's be honest, I'm still a little bitter about it, but I'm working on it. ;) Once I saw that God really doesn't care what I do with my life, and that He gave me agency so I could create what I chose, it was so freaking empowering. The absolute best part about realizing that I am the master of my own life? I get to create whatever I want. I get to choose exactly how I feel, react, and think.

I am the literal offspring of God. GOD! The creator of all of the universe and everything therein and thereon! I too possess that same power. And you know what? I choose a different way than before. I choose accountability. I choose to not blame my husband, my kids, my parents, my religion, my God, my "circumstances" for the outcome of my life. I choose to love me. I choose to love myself exactly as I am. I choose to see my "flaws" (as I called them before) as my own personal creation that allow me to know and love myself more wholey.

As I look back, I am filled with gratitude. God, I love all that I have gone through. I am SO grateful for my agency and my creation. I am SO grateful for the freedom I feel from the captivity I held myself in. I love the contrast in my life from then and now. I love that God loves me so much that he let me create my own misery. That's why I chose to come to earth! I chose because I want to experience who I really am! It's not possible to do so without that opposition. How can I know hot without cold? Joy without pain? Comfort without uncomfortable? And you know the best thing that I am learning? Pain doesn't have to be a bad thing. Pain is a perception. How did Christ suffer on the cross and feel all that he did? Why was he so willing? Because he knew that pain is a perception. It is a sensation. The more I resist pain, the more it comes to me and the more I believe that pain is horrible the more horrible my life becomes. I choose to see this life as temporary. I choose to see this life as an opportunity for experience. I am an eternal being! This is just a small moment! Life is what I create! Wow. God is Amazing. I am amazing. I love all that I am learning and hopefully you too can take what works for you from my writing and let it enhance your life.

If you don't agree with everything I say, that is wonderful. Find out for yourself what is truth for you and what works for you. If some things that I say seem so stupid and blind and lost, that's totally fine. Take what speaks to you and disregard the rest. I am writing for my benefit and the benefit of others. Know that what I say is out of love. Nothing is out of judgement or pointing fingers. AT ALL. If you are a stay at home mom and  you do it for you, than that is completely wonderful and I honor that! I am not writing this out of blame or judgement. I am writing this because what I have experienced is so amazing, that I wanted to share.

Much love!!

Lauren
xoxo

Perfectionism

Throughout the years, (all 24 of them.. haha) my perspective of what "perfect" is, has really transformed. All of this time, I wanted to be PERFECT. I wanted to be the perfect daughter, the perfect mom, the perfect friend, the perfect wife, the perfect everything. The scriptures say, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." So I tried. Constantly. Consciously, subconsciously, I was going to be PERFECT.

As a mom, I was never going to let me kids go through some of the experiences I had. I understood that my parents did their best, but I was going to be better. I was going to be PERFECT. I would always have patience and understanding with my kids. I would never physically hurt them, I would never degrade them. I would always listen to what they had to say and be a just and perfect parent. They would have NO reason to ever feel sad, or angry or hate me, because of something I said or did. I would be perfect.

As a daughter, I was going to PLEASE my parents. I wanted them to see that they did a great job! I wanted them to see that I could be obedient in every request and that I would never disappoint. I wouldn't be like my rebellious siblings who seemed to have problems with authority.. lol My mom would always have a shoulder to cry on and my dad would always be proud of his straight A, hard working, over achieving daughter. I would be perfect.

As a wife, I was always please my husband. I was going to be a SEX GODDESS. I wasn't going to be like those other wives who complained about having sex or pleasing their man. I was never going to degrade or talk down to my husband. I wasn't going to be one of those wives that Brian Regan described, who mocked their husband's tiny little husband brain.. I was always going to be supportive in all that he did. Even if he did things differently than my dad. I would be perfect.

As a friend, I would always be there. Any phone call, I was going to answer. Any question with life, I was going to have a perfect, spiritual, uplifting response that would change lives forever. Any time a babysitter was needed or a meal brought over, that would be me. I was never going to talk poorly about someone else or gossip or compare.  I would be absolutely perfect.

As a member of the church, I was going to be perfect. I was never going to disappoint God or any of his leaders. I was going to take every calling and overachieve in everyone. I was going to be diligent in my visiting teaching, being a spiritual, perfect example for all to see. I was going to bring a meal to every sick person, every funeral, every new mom... I was going to answer all of the questions in relief society and volunteer for every missionary dinner. I would be perfect.

As a homemaker, I was going to have the PERFECT home. Every holiday, even the obscure ones that only the catholics celebrated, would have perfect handmade, beautiful, ornate decorations. My kids were going to be so lucky to have a mom that cared so much. I was going make every meal from scratch, (all organic, of course) the house was always going to be spotless. I was going to be the envy of everyone. I would be perfect.

This belief of "perfection" started as a child and continued to grow. I saw benefits to this wonderful trait. People really did look up to me! People really did respond in the ways that I had anticipated and it was awesome! Everyone looked up to Lauren. She was so strong and so wonderful. Church leaders always took me aside and told me what an amazing example I was.. My parents were so proud of their straight A student, their foreign exchange student, their child that was so strong and perfect in the gospel..

*As I write this, it occurs to me that it would be beneficial to remind you that this was my perspective. Perspective is everything. This is how I perceived things, And I had other motivating factors for making the choices I did. I went to Chile because I am adventurous and I follow my heart. I served others because I loved them. I went to church because I loved God.. The tricky part is that co-dependencies and false belief systems were interwoven between all of it. Humans are extremely multifaceted. No one is just "bad" or "good" we are a beautiful mixture of everything.

Shit really hit the fan when I went to Chile. The whole, perfection thing, really wasn't working for me any longer, but I didn't know what was going on! I thought it was because I wasn't trying hard enough, or  I wasn't good enough. Even more shit hit the fan when I left for college and I had to drop out because of my mental state. My being perfect didn't go well with a college drop out. Things just went downhill from there. I got married at 19, which wasn't "pleasing" to my parents, so pleasing them wasn't working like I thought it should. Then I had kids and really, being a perfect mom wasn't working like I thought that should either! Sex goddess was not happening, neither was the perfect house, neither was being the perfect church goer. Nothing was working the way I had expected!!

Despite nothing working the way I thought they "should", I still pressured myself for perfection. My life crumbled around me. (Just read some of my last blog posts from a few years ago...) My house looked like an episode of Hoarders, my sex life was non existent  I criticized and blamed Mason for everything went wrong, all of the things I thought my parents wanted from me wasn't happening any longer, I deep deep deep DEEP down (subconsciously) hated going to church and trying to be perfect in that aspect, the more and more I fought against what I didn't want to be... the more it became and the more I absolutely HATED myself. Hate. I literally hated myself. I could do nothing right in my eyes. I also projected this belief onto everyone I was in contact with. Because I was never good enough to myself, I was never good enough for God, for my kids, for my parents, for my spouse, for ANYONE.

My life was in total chaos. I was going to the dr.'s every other week to modify bipolar medications, my dishes hadn't been done in months, I couldn't even walk from room to room in my home, I pulled myself away from all of my friends and family, I sabotaged my body by eating shit and causing me to stay overweight from pregnancies, I sabotaged EVERYTHING subconsciously. I was not happy. I dreaded each and every day. I hated waking  up. Everything was everyone else's fault and I was a victim of life. I get chills just thinking about it. It was horrible. I was surrounded by darkness! I attracted darkness and that in turn, attracted more. I really was stuck and I was so miserable. I had no idea why things were like this. I just believed that it was because I was a failure. I wasn't as good as anyone else. Life was supposed to be hard. I didn't deserve happiness... (And insert ANY negative belief you can imagine here... )

That was SUCH a painful time for me. I wondered why I didn't have any friends? I wondered why I dreaded going to church (but I could never admit that because God is perfect and He knows what is best..) (When in reality, I only saw God as I saw myself. I didn't know God. I thought I did. I DID feel his love and I did feel his peace when I would allow it in.. but my perception of his was SO skewed and so malformed.) I wondered why I couldn't do what everyone else could. I wondered what was wrong with me!?

Then, in April 2012, I was introduced to Emotional Release Processing. I had been introduced once before, right after Eamonn was born by my really good friend Alexis Fullmer, but I seriously thought it was SO dumb and SO weird. I disregarded it as crazy. I wasn't ready for it and apparently I hadn't learned all that I wanted to yet.

Emotional Release Processing is basically a way for us to go back to where our limiting beliefs began. A limiting belief may be, "I'm not good enough", "Life is supposed to be hard", etc. I'll give you an example. When I was 17 months old, my brother was born. Babies believe that EVERYTHING revolves around them and happens because of them. When Cam was born, I decided that I must not have been good enough, because mom and dad just had another baby and I apparently wasn't cutting it. So from then on, I carried the belief, "I'm not good enough". A belief is almost like putting on glasses that focuses on everything that proves that "I am not good enough" and disregards everything that shows otherwise. It's kind of like those beautiful women who are just gorgeous and they DON"T SEE IT! EVERYONE ELSE sees how beautiful they are, but all they see is, "I'm fat", "I'm not as pretty as _____.". Everyone else can see the truth, but because of her "glasses" or belief that she isn't good enough, she doesn't see it.

The first couple of sessions, I thought were SO weird. Seriously. I was like, What the hell is this? Is this ok? It kind of seemed like stuff that the church would oppose, but I was so wrong. I prayed and prayed and prayed to see if this was something that God saw as good. I told God that I would continue going, and if I received inspiration that this wasn't something good, I would stop. So I continued to be processed by Beckie Larsen (an angel. She is seriously an angel) and I saw results! It was AMAZING! It's like, I would work on a belief in an hour and a half process, and later that week, things would just come together. Slowly, I started to WANT to be alive! I WANTED to be around my kids, I WANTED to go to church. It's kind of like, when you go back in time and change something, the future changes. Through processing, I would go back and work with my 5 year old me or my 2 year old me, and I would see change in my present life.

A process is really cool thing, and it changed my life so much, I decided to go to school and learn to be a faciliator. It has been SO amazing! I had no idea that I was so amazing!! Before, I didn't go to school or do anything like that because I believed that I couldn't. I thought, I'm a mom. Moms stay at home with their kids. Well, that is actually just a belief that I had and now I have learned, that If I am happy and I am taking care of myself, I am a KICK ASS mom!! :) If you are interested in what a process actually contains, here is my school's website: http://www.ihaofutah.com/ Every 3rd Thursday in the month, they do a preview where a process is actually done on a someone in front of everyone. I also am facilitating right now so I can process other people. This can be done over the phone too, so if you are interested, let me know! Pam, the owner of  our school wrote a book about what a process is and how she got started. You can buy it here: http://www.ihaofutah.com/store

So as I started to see who I REALLY am, and get rid of all of these beliefs that were weighing me down, my life started to change. I am learning about who God REALLY is, and not who I saw him as. I am learning that my kids really are going through a lot more than I really understood before, and most of all, I am learning that I am in control of my life. I am NOT a victim of life. Everything that happens to me, I attract to me. At first I thought, no way. My bipolar and all of these things are NOT because of me. It's just life. It has been SO empowering to know that if I have created life the way it was, I can create life the way I want it.

*My bipolar is different from anyone else's condition. For me, processing and oils and a few other things have worked through the underlying issues for me. I am almost completely off my meds! I will be be completely off of them by the next couple of months. They were such a huge and wonderful blessing for me. For me, they were like a rung on a latter. They were there when I needed them and they assisted me in lifting myself up to where I am now.

My definition of Perfection is slowly changing. Last night at Outlook Training (A 90 day goal setting workshop) we learned to speak to our inner Guru. Basically, we contain ALL of the answers that we seek. I asked myself, "Why am I SO afraid of cold calling!? I am totally freaking out about it" and after taking a deep breath, and letting my sacred self, my all knowing part of me speak, I gave myself some amazing advice! I told myself that I am perfect exactly as I am. Life is JOURNEY. There is no destination. Even after we die, we will always be progressing. Perfection isn't a destination. Perfection is being. I elected to come to earth to learn and that is exactly what I am doing. My "flaws" really aren't flaws. My flaws are opportunities to see the real me and opportunities to love myself more.

Holy shit. I am amazing. I am so insightful!! haha So today, I have been focusing on basking in my "imperfections". I have felt SO irritable today and instead of getting mad at myself and hating myself, I choose to love me. I choose to say, wow. Why am I so irritable  And figure out the cause rather than looking at the outcome and getting mad at myself. I choose to be perfect today. I am perfect. YOU are perfect. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing in life. I choose to embrace both the light side and the dark side of me. I choose to love every single thing about me, and see those "flaws" as even more ways to love myself.