Submitting & Coming to an Understanding -

Submitting does not come without its own set of trials and tests.  Submitting doesn't always make you feel better.  In fact, submitting in and of itself often causes internal conflict.  I am at that place again.  This decision I made last week tore up my little world and presented all of us with a set of feelings we didn't want to look at.  It brought tons of unanswerable questions and confusion.  


On one hand, I find myself lighter, the decision to believe and to act upon it was freeing.  For others, this is not the case.  I am torn.  I am in the middle.  


As I approach this age and stage of life, I would like to think that I am not still trying to learn so much about love and relationships. But, I just am. What I am coming to learn and understand is humbling me and very challenging. Over the past few years a particular trial has been placed before me. I have not born it well. In fact, I have had to repeat the lesson over and over. Until I am almost at the point of despair and turning away from the blessing that could come of it. Have you ever been in love? I have and I haven't done a very good job of it for a long while. In fact, I haven't really understood it at all. This gets ahead of my story and beginnings are always the best place to start.

I had a Cinderella story stored way back in my heart.  From the time that I was a little girl I fed details into my story.  As I grew I altered the details to fit me as I awaited the day they would all come true.  I believed that day would happen -- and never doubted -- though it was a long time off.   I didn't marry until my 30th year.  The man I chose to love brought incredible joy into my life and incredible pain.  (There is a story about opposition here, but I will save that for later.)  As our life together started it shattered the story I had woven over the years.  Pieces of the story broke irreparably.  I would never get back what was taken or what was undone.  I had only one choice but to press forward as best I could and hope the damaged pieces wouldn't cause a conflict I couldn't resolve.

Pressing forward (another phrase I could give hours to) is not as easy as one thinks.  When you have a story or a plan that you spent years detailing out it is difficult to not trip and fall over the unexpected change in plot.   The details etched in place over childhood and youth do not always adjust with grace.  A little girl's Cinderella story is full of emotion and feeling.  Feelings are not easy to change.  You would think love makes it easy to change.  It does not.  Love often can be one of the most difficult emotions to get around.  Its difficult to understand.  Its difficult to read coming from another.  The world has added a confusing dimension to love as well.  

Love, for me was complicated.  Years of complications, rough starts, mis-read signals, unrealized dreams, horrific trials all added to the state of confusion I was feeling inside me.  Until one day, when I felt the least amount of hope -- I was given a chance.  

I have a very solid faith-based set of principles I live by.  I was raised in the LDS faith, in a good LDS home. I was taught in my youth what was good and true.  I believe, as do most of my faith that God speaks to us each as individuals.  I believe in the principle of personal revelation, I felt I could find answers to all of my trials and get the necessary help.  I felt I knew just what the path was I should take and what was required to get where I was going.   If all of that is true -- why do I struggle so much to make sense of what I am going through?