Today the gray heavens have moved toward the earth and wet snow is falling through the dense winter air, covering the earth in a slushy mess that makes the warmth of my fireplace welcome.  Eternal perspectives swirl inside the place where thoughts are born as I comfortably sit in my recliner looking at the graveyard filled with headstones and people resting that once scurried between each daily activity in a hurried rush to get life lived.

This week has given my little sister a blow of a trial.  My parents called her the caboose when she was born because she trailed behind the rest of us and brought up the ending of their family.  She is seven years younger than I am and although she is an adult that has successfully emerged from the refiner's fire, she is still my younger sister and I feel a protectiveness about her that wishes to ease the pain wedged deeply in her heart.   Her baby, my niece quietly and peacefully returned to her Heavenly Father without ever tasting the bitter air of a mortal life.

I have felt hurt so intense that I was physically driven to my knees by the awesomeness of the weight. I have walked quiet, midnight hallways filled with a restless pain.  I have stared at the dark doorway of my house and known an evil was on the other side wanting in.  I have known the despair and helplessness that comes from being hunted by someone wishing me dead.  However, I have never felt the deep intensity of placing my child's lifeless body in the grave then walking away.  It is more than I could face.  The hollow home where she should have been sleeping in a warm bedroom surrounded by her family's love would be unbearable. We all have our personal fire and we all have our limits.  The choices we make to either emerge,stay in, or not even enter the fire define who and what we become.  Then what we becomes attracts others to us or repeals them from us.  No matter how hard we try we cannot hide what we are, it radiates from us and attracts those like us.  If we are looking to break free from a hurtful place and attract those that will lift us there, we must become one that also lifts.

It has been more than a year since I left my 17 year marriage that was so hurtful.  The year was my goal point.  I often repeated silently and to others that everything would be ok in a year.  I said that the awfulness that was my reality would ease in just a year's time.  It has been a year, a year since in his selfish, diminished mental ability he has touched me, since he has tried to force his will, since he has been a daily part of my life.  I am sitting in  my house, the one that is being paid for by my labor and I know that in a year I have come a long way.  But there is still a lingering sadness that wonders what parts of me were so broken that he could not love me, wondering why he could only see the beautiful children we created as having inherited broken parts from me that needed to be plucked from them like weeds overtaking a productive garden.  I have healed some, but there is still a deep fear of the brokenness that he told me about everyday.  It must be inside me, embedded so deep as to not be able to be dislodged.  It must be there, because he told me that it was and he was supposed to love me.  He was supposed to help me, so it must be there because he saw it and wanted it gone.

Saturday mornings are my favorite times to sit and ponder.  I love to study and read new ideas and expand upon old ones.  Today I read some profound words from Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Healing comes when we choose to walk away from darkness and move towards a brighter light".  My healing has been delayed by some of my choices.  I have put a halt in my healing and more importantly in my children's healing because I have stopped reaching for higher places.  I have been looking for comfort in the same places where I found pain.  Through common sense it stands to reason that I am only going to find more pain there.  Albert Einstein summed it up in once sentence, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them."   I can't become what I am meant to by allowing the pain to keep returning me to where I was.  Right now I am standing in the fire, but I should be looking for wings to emerge from the fire and by doing so I will emerge as the person that was meant to be created from the fire.

There is something that lingers from the experiences of our lives.  It is part of us and pulls people to us or pushes them away.  We are what we think, what we say and we radiate something that floats whispers of invitation to those beings that are like us.  While we attract like people, some have something unexplained thing that gives a driving power to better ourselves.  There are personality combinations that somehow cause the ability in each of the partners to reach higher, to become a more noble and intelligent person.  The well spoken conversations of two people in love and in respect is an art form of itself.  It is something that I really,really want in my next marriage.  It is a large expectation that might be impossible to fulfill, but for me it is a necessity.

I have been around people that drive me to a higher level of humanity.  I can say, without even the slightest doubt that my children provide that driving force.  They already possess an inner good that I wish I emanated.  I can only bask in their goodness and be thankful for the wonderful spirits that fill their mortal shells.  I want that kind of relationship in a companion.  I want the type of relationship where all things, thoughts, actions, and morals are pushed to a higher level and the potential that my Heavenly Father planned for me becomes closer and closer to fruition.

I have been with those that want only to possess me.  Like ownership is some sort of prize. I  have wondered if that is because the independence I so deeply desire ebbs out into the air around me, hinting at some sort of elusiveness that becomes desirable.  I wonder if I am just some sort of conquest for those that are deeply competitive.  I also wonder what will happen if I let them own me.

Introducing.....

Writing is my thing....really I guess one of my things.  There are quite a few things that live deep inside my soul, occupying that special place where sacredness grows from a natural love that was not forced.  It was just there, growing and becoming a part of me, like the brown eyes that stare back from the mirror, an extension of who I am.

My kids are the deepest rooted love inside me.  The two beings that were created and molded from my genes and my influence are always at the forefront of everything else that seems to draw my attention from them.  They are the reason that I was married for 17 years.  They are the reason that I am a yearling divorcee.  They are the reason that I am a teacher, a Christian, a runner, a horse rider, a writer, and above all a mother.  They are the fuel that drives every passion and the driving force behind my sincere desire to be better, to be the person that they need as the head of our single parent household.

The model of strength and steadfastness that my two teenage children need must emanate from me, because there is no one else to show them.  Sometimes this knowledge is exhausting, but in that I find strength in myself.  I am strong not because I have known no challenges or because I have easily beat them.  I am strong because many times I have fallen to my knees from despair, hopelessness, and a hurt that is as deep as the make up of me.  Then I have risen and I have carried on with a stalwart face turned toward the accomplishment of rising from the pain and desperation with a hope for the future and a knowledge that they are worth putting one foot in front of the other.  They are worth the simple act of moving forward, no matter how slow my steps are or how often I stumble.