Feelings

After reading in Ether this morning, my heart is heavy and sad. I don't know how you can read chapters 11-16 and not feel sad. Wait, I take that back, I do know how you can read those last chapters and not feel anything.

And that leads me into the discussion I'd like to have now.

When I was 27 years old I was a very sad woman and had been for 17 years. From the time I was ten year old, I constantly had this feeling in my heart that something wasn't right in my life. I would watch movies and not understand them. I would read and not understand what I was reading. I would watch the news and see stories where violent crimes had taken place, and I would FEEL nothing. Not that I wanted those horrible things to happen to those people, I just didn't have any feeling of horror when I knew I ought to. That disturbed me. A lot.

I would talk to my family members, friends, fellow church members, and ask anyone who I thought would have answers for me as to why I might be so unhappy and I was met with the same types of replies: they didn't know. My family members would get annoyed by my persistence in asking questions.

Several years later and I have found my answers as to why I was so unhappy and why I didn't feel horror when I should, neither did I feel love, nor loved, when I should.

The answer is in repentance. How is that? Because I had been searching for love and happiness in others' acceptance of me, in the malls, in saying the right things. I envied and coveted others' lives. I had a MAJOR 'poor me' outlook on life. I could never measure up to what I thought the world expected of me in order to be an acceptable person. The people around me didn't help me.

Now I feel love and loved. And oh do I feel loved. My joy is as exquisite as was my pain. I know this came from accepting Jesus as Lord and Ruler of my life. I live for Him. Words cannot describe the feelings I have for Him.

So, it wasn't so long ago that I didn't feel anything.

I am grateful today that I do.

I have a constant prayer in my heart that I will never, ever go back to who I was.