November 2020 YW Newsletter – Riverview Program

Good morning to all you River View Young Women,

I have enjoyed meeting in-person for activities and being able to talk with you face-to-face. Those of you busy Tuesday nights with work or activities, those are good things! I hope we can come and support you soon. Keep us posted on work hours and performance/game times so we can schedule some activities around those.

I want to be vulnerable with you this morning and share something that both hurts and embarrasses me. I share these thoughts with you in hopes that if you are experiencing anything similar you can have hope as well as remember that all feelings are part of this mortal experience and they are okay and an avenue for growth.

A family member came into my life over a decade ago. We will call her Sam. We seemed to hit it off at first but within a year I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Our lives were now very intertwined and we approached nearly everything from different perspectives. Instead of trying to find common ground or drawing boundaries, I let these frustrations fester and build. For years we would butt heads. Within the five years, I was to the point that I could admit, “I hate Sam!”

It was not a good feeling.

It was a consuming, disorienting, dark feeling. That hate planted guilt and that guilt fueled the hate in a downward, spiraling weight. It was a weight that pulled me down while trying to sleep, while doing dishes, while sitting in church. It was almost always there.

Scriptures, conference talks, prayers all told me to make amends but that felt impossible. The easiest path and the only path I could think of was avoidance. If I just stay away from her, I couldn’t say anything I’ll regret later. If I stay away from her, I won’t get offended. If I stay away from her, I can push any desire to fix the relationship down further…

Not a good idea and it didn’t work.

Avoidance did not fix anything. If anything it only fed the guilt. The encompassing weight grew. I tried to apologize twice over the years, trying to find peace. Both times, however, something would inevitably happen between us and I fell back down. It felt like all the progress I might have made was lost. What was going wrong? It took a long time for me to realize that I was only apologizing because I wanted to fix my situation and my feelings, which was selfish. I also realized it wasn’t just her apology or forgiveness I needed. It wasn’t as simple as that: there were many uncomfortable actions I would need to take to find the peace I was seeking. Some of these steps included the following:

Forgive myself

Seek forgiveness from God and my Savior

Recognize and admit my mistakes in the relationship

Do not require Sam to change

Those look simple. They were simple to type, but those are all difficult things to achieve. For me, the first step was to be honest. I spoke truths to a trusted family member admitting my frustrations and my shortcomings. It was uncomfortable, scary, and embarrassing. But admitting my guilt in the problems did wonders for my soul. I felt lighter. Forgiving myself and seeking divine forgiveness are both ongoing experiences. So is admitting my mistakes and consciously letting Sam be Sam.

Day by day, interaction by interaction, it started to get better. And then Sam’s world got turned upside down.

Three weeks after Sam lost her mother her father passed away. Her parents had divorced decades ago and her father was remarried. Her father and step-mother lived back east. When Sam’s father died, her step-mother excluded much of the family from the funeral planning and it hurt Sam deeply. While the funeral itself gave Sam closure, it was a stressful and painful couple of weeks back east. She told me later how she couldn’t sleep. She would run hypothetical conversations through her head of what she wished she had said. She was raw with hurt and anger. She felt consumed by these feelings. I was overcome with a compassion I had never felt towards Sam. I knew that weight. I had not ever felt that love for Sam before.

Recently Sam was asked to speak in church. Her topic was “mercy.” She shared her talk with me. She had one line italicized: Grace is a gift we don’t deserve, while mercy is not getting the punishment we deserve. Christ’s grace is the “enabling power and spiritual healing offered through [His] mercy and love” (Gospel Topics, “Grace”). Christ told his disciples (and thus us) to be merciful like Heavenly Father is with us (Luke 6:36). Her italicized sentence and these ideas of grace and mercy left an impression on me. It isn’t just that I need to forgive myself and let Sam be Sam. I need to allow Christ’s grace to work within me. I need to extend mercy to me and to Sam. These are eternal truths I am trying to learn. I am far from mastering mercy or grace. My relationship with Sam is not perfect, not even always comfortable. But I am trying and that gives me peace.

To all you young women, my message is this. God is an artist of mortal life. He can take tragedy and turn it into something beautiful–if you let Him. I understood not only Sam’s loss of a parent but also the heaviness of frustration and guilt. God prepared me to be able to feel understanding for Sam. I want you to know that these intense feelings are not bad, but a path to important lessons. Release yourself of guilt. Unburden yourself of hatred. Seek to purify yourself, not others. When you do this, you will feel God’s love for you and for your enemy. You will see how priceless and precious you are.

I love you all and wish you a cozy and happy November,

Sister Valentine