Keep moving forward . . . Step 6: Change of Heart

Happy Easter everyone!  What better way to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, than by working on how to improve myself and take advantage of the opportunity He gave us to become better people through His atonement!

Step 6: Become entirely ready to have God remove all your character weaknesses.  This was harder than I thought it would be.  When I first read it I thought wasn't this what I did when I confessed to God?  Wasn't I sorrowful over the things I've done wrong, or haven't done right as the case may be, and therefore ready to have Him remove my character flaws.  But as time went on and my habits have not changed very much I saw that though I was sorry, and felt that burden of guilt lifted it didn't necessarily mean I was ready to completely give up my weaknesses to God.  I want to and I felt like it was impossible. Didn't this mean I would have to become perfect all at once, and such just is not the way things work.  I can't become perfect over night, therefore this step is impossible, and I can't move on to other steps till I am perfect.

Now I realize how wrong all this thinking was.  All I need to do for this step is be READY to give up my weaknesses.  That doesn't mean they are gone.  All it means is I have the desire and willingness to give them up.  It doesn't mean it has to happen over night, and it doesn't mean I can't move forward till I achieve perfection.  I'm ready.  I've reached the point that I want God's help to remove my flaws and weaknesses.

I've recently been able to think more clearly on things like this and I think I owe a great deal of that to my 17 month old son who is finally sleeping through the night in a separate room.  Thus I am finally getting the sleep I need to be sane and motivated during the day!  Go Figure!  Ahhh.  :)  Maybe now I can make the progress that had been put on hold because all I had the energy to do was get by and survive each passing day.

Personal Struggles . . . and Step 5: Confession

I missed a couple weeks of class and tried keeping up on my own, but was so busy I had a very hard time.  I wasn't able to blog because of how busy things got there for a while, and I've noticed that it has made it much harder for me to progress through the steps without writing about them and having that accountability to someone.  I stopped making goal lists, and I can't seem to move on to steps 6 and 7 where the class is now.  I really don't want to fall too far behind the class, but I fear that I might.  I've been having a lot of trouble with some personal things with my children which have been a big distraction from my addiction and this blog.  And likewise I have turned to my addiction to relieve the stress of dealing with my children.  I was on my Facebook app on my phone so much I decided to uninstall it.  Then I didn't even make it a day or two before downloading a Sudoku app to replace it.  Yesterday my husband asked me what was with me playing Sudoku all the time now.  I said, "I don't know. . .  Just something to distract me I guess." 
He said, "I think you are addicted to distractions."   To which I agreed.  Once I have the strength to admit something is a problem and give it up I just find something else (of equal or lesser value) to replace it with.

Ultimately I think I need more support.  I don't dare tell my husband that he just isn't enough support for me right now, because it isn't his fault, and the poor man is doing the best he can working his tail off at two jobs just so we can barely scrape by.  Our nearest family is an expensive 8 hour drive away, and I just get so lonely.  Last night I asked my husband for a blessing and the last thing he said was that Heavenly Father is proud of me.  My very first thought was, "I can't imagine why!"  I am trying to accept this thought.  That I AM working hard to care for and raise good children, and keep a good home.  I HAVE done things that are worth being proud of.  As young as they are I am doing my best to teach my children true principles and values.

So Step Five: Admit to yourself, to your Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, to proper priesthood authority, and to another person the exact nature of your wrongs.  Well ultimately I did this about the same time as I did Step 4.  After I confessed here on my blog by writing my searching and fearless moral inventory I proceeded to pray and confess to God.  I really poured out my soul to him, and as I did I felt my burden of guilt lifted.  I made an appointment to talk to my bishop.  After actually reading through Step 5 I felt that none of my sins really demanded confession to my bishop, and so I used it to talk to him about the many struggles I am facing right now and then I got a blessing from him.  Steps 4 and 5 really felt like one step.  I couldn't do Step 4 without naturally wanting to finish Step 5 as quickly as possible.  Now if only Step 6 could be done so easily!  But that's the topic for the next post.

Step 4: Truth

Before getting into step four I think I'll talk about the progress I've been making with the addiction itself.  Last week I was determined to have a good week.  I really want to be ready for this coming baby and I want to be organized and on top of things so that I can focus more on the transition from two kids to three rather than having to focus on my problems and addiction.  I want to overcome this at least for the most part before the baby gets here.  So anyway, I was determined to focus on my goals and have good days every day so I could have a good week I was proud of.  It started out great, and by the end of the week there were only a few goals that I had fallen short on by missing a day.  Unfortunately this week has not had the same great start and now I have to play catch up.  Our heater broke on Saturday, and I spent all Monday afraid to do different things I needed to do because I didn't want to be in the middle of it when the apartment maintenance men would show up.  Well, they didn't come till the afternoon so I wasted my whole morning when I should have just conducted life as usual and if they interrupt so what.  I had the wrong attitude about the whole thing and I have to make up for it now.  I was even thinking of postponing this blog post, but then that would be one more thing on my list of things I need to catch up on. **sigh**

So. . . Step four.  Make a searching and fearless written moral inventory of yourself.  I found myself thinking that because my addiction is not morally wrong in and of itself I don't really need to do this step.  But upon further reflection neglecting the physical and emotional needs of your children is wrong in very many ways. Now I want to clarify.  I never allowed my children to actually go hungry or be without any of their physical needs except on a short term basis while I checked something on Facebook and when I was done I saw that their needs were met.  But what does this send as a message to my children?  It says that Facebook is more important to me than they are.  Well if this is the case, then I need to change my heart because that is wrong.  If this is not the case then I need to change my actions to agree with what my values and my heart tell me.  The thing I know for certain is that this is not the message I want my children to receive.  I want them to know my priorities are God, then husband, then children, then chores.  But what I know my priorities SHOULD be, and what they actually HAVE BEEN leaves a huge disparity.  I want to fix this and ultimately that is why I joined the Addiction Recovery Class.  I just don't know how to fix it completely.  It seems when I have a week where I am great and successful in one aspect of my life I fall drastically short in another.  Then when I work to improve the other I lose the progress I made in the first.  I guess it's like the thought that they opened class with yesterday.  It was about the fact that we can't be perfect all at once.  No matter how much we might want to it is impossible.  We can just make today better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today until eventually either before or after the end of this life we achieve perfection.  Well, I think that's about as much of my inventory as it is appropriate to be public on this blog.

Next week my husband and I are planning a temple trip, and I may end up missing class.  I have many issues I will be thinking and praying about on the trip, and so I don't know for sure when I will complete step five I may try to do it on my own without the class Wednesday morning and still get the blog out.  We will just have to see what happens.