CynthiaTalksMarriage

Do you know your true beginning? When I talk about my journey to self discovery, growth, and healing I always start with October of 2019 when Seth and I attended our first event. But this week as I have been thinking about my journey, it really started earlier in the year around February 2019. In the beginning of 2019 I started my final semester of college, I had a 7 month old and a 17 month old, and we had been living in our new house for about year and I felt like I hadn’t made any friends yet in our area. The stress of feeling alone, as my husband was always gone either at school or working for his brother and I was alone being a full time mom, full time student, and full time house cleaner, was slowly crushing my spirit. Thoughts of suicide entered my mind.

I was sitting at my desk getting school work done, both kids were napping, and Seth was at school. Thoughts and beliefs that “no one would miss me”, “it would be so easy”, “what’s the point of trying” and many more flooded my mind. As I was spiraling out of control I began to fear for my life. I had never had thoughts this debilitating before. I am a naturally happy, upbeat person. I have always loved life but at that point in my life I no longer loved my life. To be completely vulnerable and open, I lost my life before these thoughts entered my head.

Obviously this story has a happy ending but not without a lot of hard choices. The first was calling my husband, admitting that I was hurting. My husband came home and we went to the ER where I was checked out and given a referral to see a therapist and a psychiatrist. I went to both and the plan of action was to put me on anti-depressants and meet with a therapist once a week. This was a big step for me and a very hard choice to make. Growing up, my perception was that mental illness was just an excuse and you pulled up your big girl pants and got to work. You didn’t take medication for having a bad day. So I kept this part of my journey a secret. I felt shame, embarrassment, and judgement for choosing to take medication to help with the depression. But I knew that I didn’t want to stay on medication for forever, so I worked with the therapist and I created a plan to wean off them while building tools and skills to help me in building my mindset.

My story is one of ease when it comes to battling depression. I was able to wean off of the medication within 6 months of starting them. I have not been on them since and haven’t needed too. I believe that my experience though has taught me to be more compassionate with my husband as he does have a need to be on them. But this is my true beginning, the time when I truly was at my lowest and knew that something had to change. I began the change and was ready for the invite to new things to continue in growing and progressing. When we are at our lowest we often think the change needs to be external but change more often than not needs to be internal. I stayed in the same house, I had the same kids, continued with the same degree, and stayed with the same man. But I changed internally allowing me to see a new perspective which changed my reality. Allowing me to start the journey to my dream marriage and life.

Upon finishing serving an LDS Mission, my mission president and his wife gave me advice on seeking my eternal companion. Their advice was to find someone who puts the Lord first, their spouse next and then their children. I have loved this advice and it has served me well in life. Not only with picking my spouse, but also becoming the spouse I wanted. As I have dived deep into healing, growth, and self-development, I have been able to find the wisdom to expand this advice and serve me better.

The first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your might, mind and strength. He should be number 1 in your life. We need to seek His will, understand His gospel, and cherish His gifts. The second greatest commandment is similar to the first, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Are you ready for a mind blowing download I had? I recently was introduced to a video where a lady talked about how the true name of Christ is the same sound as breathing. I will butcher it if I try to break it down and share what I learned. In short, she shares about how your breadth speaks God’s name. We are made in God’s image. As I have thought about it, I asked myself about how do I love myself but still put God first? I came to the acceptance that they are the same thing.

We are made in God’s image and his name courses through our body with every breath we take. So when Christ said to love him first, I truly believe that God wants us to love ourselves first because we are a part of Him.

To tie this revelation into the advice I was given, make sure that you prioritize yourself first. Look inside yourself and hear the name you breath, see the image engraved upon your countenance, embrace your creator, and love yourself first.

When you truly and fully love yourself first, you will have a greater capacity of loving others. You accept others because you have accepted yourself. When you are triggered, annoyed, or upset towards someone it is a reflection of something inside of you. Get curious about it, accept it, and honor it’s part in protecting and serving you. You are a Child of God, He lives in you and loves you for all that you are.

This week a friend asked me about my opinions on eternal marriages. As member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, when my husband and I got married instead of “till death do you part” we were told, “for time and all eternity” creating our eternal marriage. I believe and know that my marriage is eternal but I also believe that others of different faith also have eternal marriage because eternal marriage is more a mindset than words saying your marriage is eternal.

What does it mean to have an eternal marriage mindset?, it means that my perspective is shifted to one of eternity. When my husband and I disagree or fight, I seek to reflect on the topic and if this is an eternal problem or an earthly one. When you shift your focus to that you fight differently. We do not immediately see eye to eye but it stops being about seeking to win the fight but seeking to understand each other instead. We disagree but we do not think the other is wrong.

When you fight differently and stop looking at the other person as wrong, you start actually seeing results in coming to a solution for a disagreement or argument. You stop fighting about things that do not matter. You start creating standards for things that do matter. You tackle problems in solution mode and stop making excuses why it won’t work. Having an eternal perspective allows you to really focus on things and opinions that truly matter.

Now the question is, how do we have an eternal perspective? For me, it’s about developing self growth. It’s about focusing on yourself and not worrying about your spouse and what they are doing. You need to focus on becoming the one instead of creating the one. Developing Christlike attributes like faith, hope, humility, and many more.

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn, is to trust my husband’s intuition. I don’t see what he sees, I don’t have the same thought processing, and I have not had the same experiences. So trusting him when he wants to buy a 5 ton, or change his career is hard. But what is even harder, is trusting him with our kids.

As mothers, we are fiercely protective of our children, we believe that we know best and can do a better job. So we say we trust them, but will comment saying well ‘it’s better if you do it this way’ or ‘I wouldn’t have done it that way’ or ‘why did you do it that way’. Making them question their parenting and making it so they don’t want to help because they start doubting themselves and do not want to feel judged. We complain they are unhelpful but do we allow them to act on their intuition and trust their parenting style.

This is a hard lesson to learn, but if we know that they also love their children and also want them to be their best self, then we can know that they will parent the way they feel is best. Their parenting style may be totally opposite from you but as long as you are a united front and continue to support each other, you can still achieve your goals for raising children. So the next time you ask for help with the kids to put them to bed, or feed them, do not tell him how to do it and trust in his intuition that he has the same values and goals for his kids. He just might take a different path.

I have created a tool to help you create your perfect spouse. Before explain what it is and how it works I am just going to hop right into it. I want you to write your spouse a letter and tell them everything that they do that annoys and frustrates you. So stop reading and do this. Now that you have done that, I want the next paragraph to be about everything you wish they did. So stop and do that. Now be honest in this letter, and don’t worry about your spouse seeing it because this letter is not for them. Because where you wrote their name I want you to cross it out and write your name.

Often your perception or image of someone says more about your own reflection. Things that frustrate you about your spouse are more often than not, things that you struggle with yourself. A personal example, I get so annoyed when I see my husband playing games on his phone. After I did this exercise I realized I was annoyed with myself and how much time I was wasting and scrolling through social media on my own phone. It had nothing to do with my husband and what he did with his time, it was me. This exercise is to help you realize where you are falling short and where you want to be better. You cannot change your spouse, but you can change yourself to be the best spouse that you want to be. My dad always told me, “it’s not about finding the one, but being the one”. The best part of this exercise though is for you to accept yourself for your faults and stop focusing on your spouses. By doing so, you are able to create the perfect spouse from within. Because being the perfect spouse is not about having zero faults, its about accepting your faults, seeking to do better, and stop placing blame on your spouse.