By small and simple things...

So I continued to pray to love him. It was made more difficult by my desire to emulate our Savior's love for him when I didn't feel it. Or did I? I was very confused. I wanted to love him for I was certain our marriage had not been preserved just to end at some later time. I pondered what might be causing me such difficulty in loving him. Was it the betrayal? The deceit? The excommunication? The unwillingness and lack of desire to be back in the Church? Perhaps it was that he never really said he was sorry and how grateful he was that I didn't give up on us. Maybe it was all of these.
When you are struggling to love someone it is very difficult to refrain from lashing out, from criticizing, from withholding love. I wanted to make him see, to correct him...but isn't that just the kind of behavior that had contributed to this whole ordeal. I had learned that each of us needs to choose to love, to forgive, to overlook the little things that just don't really matter, to chose happiness from within. I needed to learn to love him no matter how he acted. I could choose happiness from within. I wanted, at times, to inflict pain on him so he would see the pain he put me through. But I knew that was wasted energy. It never heals a relationship...only makes it more dysfunctional. No one can ever really feel what we feel.
I started to think that at least in heaven he would see and then he'd be sad for my pain. Until I realized that once I am There, I won't even care about such matters. I won't need him to be contrite and beg for my forgiveness. I will love more perfectly There and I will see things in their proper and eternal perspective. It just won't matter. All that will matter Then is what I learned from my experiences...And that I helped him home. I don't think our Savior will spend all eternity getting satisfaction from our realization of how wrong we were and how right He was. And how much He suffered. He is grateful to have served and saved us.
I would cling to this view of heaven for sometime to see me through the difficult days ahead.
I would choose love. I would act "as if" until I could "be" in love with him again.
"For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more." 1 Corinthians 9:19
It is a choice to love, to serve, to forgive.

Come Unto Him

A number of years ago I was taking a math class in preparation for teaching that subject the coming school year. We were studying vectors and I just could not grasp how they worked. I had studied and studied, worked problems over and over. I had obtained tutoring but still I did not understand. The night before the test I was becoming frustrated as I tried problem after problem to no avail. Suddenly it occurred to me that Heavenly Father and our Savior know everything. Even vectors! I realized that there could be no greater tutor than them. So I got on my knees and poured out my heart about how hard I had tried to understand. I had done all that I could think to do and I just wasn’t getting it. I told Heavenly Father that I knew He knew how vectors work and asked him to teach me. I finished my prayer and tried a few more problems, but still couldn’t do them. I decided to take a break so I went downstairs to do some laundry. I remember precisely the moment that my mind comprehended vectors…it was on the second to the last stair on my way back up! Suddenly I just knew how to do them. I ran to the table where I had been studying, anxious to try a problem. Sure enough I did it right. I worked problem after problem and they were all correct. I Thanked my Heavenly Father.

The next day when I opened the test I didn’t recognize a thing on it. I prayed again saying that I had studied and that I had the best possible tutor and would He please help my mind to recall what I knew. I started in the middle of the test with a problem I felt I could do and then proceeded to complete the test. When I was done I looked it over to see if I needed to rework any problems but they all looked right to me.

Before the professor handed back the graded tests he explained that he was going to have to greatly lower the grading scale since only 1 or 2 in the class had scored above the low 80’s and the majority in the 70’s or less. For a moment I panicked! However, when I got my test back I had received 100%.

You see, Heavenly Father does know everything…even vectors!

If he knows how to do vectors, He knows how to help us with all our needs and concerns.

Do you want to know how to cope with a devastating illness or overcome an addiction? Come unto Him

Do you want to know how to deal with struggling children or strengthen a faltering marriage? Come unto Him

Do you ache for relief from loneliness and long for peace and joy? Come unto Him

Do you want to know how to comfort a friend in need or repair a troubled relationship, to forgive someone who has betrayed or abused you? Come unto Him

Do you want to feel loved, to know that you measure up, that your offering is acceptable? Come unto Him

Do you yearn for forgiveness and mercy; for solace and healing? Come unto Him!!

Perhaps you feel over-scheduled, overwhelmed but don’t know what to change. Come unto him.

Is there someone in your life causing you grief and pain? Do you feel powerless? Come unto Him!

Whatever it is that you yearn for, come unto the fountain of all love, all knowledge, all joy, all peace, all hope. Come unto Him!

He knows what experiences of life we need. He knows what commandments and covenants will help us remember Him and bring us home. If we know that he is there, if we have developed a closeness to Him we will face all the events of our lives much better.

Right now you may be in a very comfortable, safe place but just as most devastating hurricanes, tornados, and tsunamis strike quickly, we may not see the storms of our lives coming. While they are likely to ravage us for a time they need not destroy us or take us off our course. If we are prepared to trust and access our Savior’s help we can weather them well.

You may already be in the midst of a devastating ordeal. We all have them and cannot be expected to be spared on our path of discipleship. But He can ease our burden and help us through.

What he requires is our heart and a willing mind.

Elder Neal Maxwell said of this “I testify that he is utterly incomparable in what he is, what he knows, what he has accomplished, and what he has experienced. Yet, movingly, he calls us his friends. (See John 15:15; D&C 84:77.)

“We can trust, worship, and even adore him without any reservation! He is the only perfect person to sojourn on this planet; there is, as Isaiah declared, none like him! (See Isa. 46:9.)

“In intelligence and performance, Christ far surpasses the individual and the composite capacities and achievements of all who have lived, live now, and will yet live!” (See Abr. 3:19.)

Yet again...With God NOTHING shall be impossible!

The next few years all seem to flow one into the next. It was challenging because of the difficulty I felt in loving him.
"The moment a partner fears that he or she may have fallen out of love with the other partner is the moment when the opportunity for genuine love begins. It is perhaps the moment when a readiness for a step up in spiritual maturation has arrived. it is the moment when we realize what great power we have to bless the person to whom we are married, and how much power we have to cause unnecessary pain. Shall we commit the ultimate selfish act and abandon spouse and children in the search fro another partner, shattering trust and breaking the hearts of many in the hopes of some greater fulfillment in love? This is a phantom desire, born of deception. What a tragedy such a decision is, since the only fulfillment one can ever have is that arising out of righteousness! The restless partner must look, then, at the ways in which he could restore and enrich the original love, nurture his spouse, and unlock the blessings of heaven on the marriage....My witness is that there are special blessings reserved for those who devote themselves to making marriage work, blessings that are realized in this life and in the life to come: hidden treasures of the Spirit, reserved for those who would be gods" (Spiritual Lightening, M. Catherine Thomas).
I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to become like my Father in Heaven and my Savior. I wanted to be filled with the love they have. I wanted to bless a life not destroy it. I knew that if I would continue to walk His path He would bless and strengthen me. I knew that it was more important for me to forgive and love than to punish. It was difficult not to react or blame or correct. There were ample opportunities to do so, but that is not who I wanted to be. I had come to know my Savior well enough to know that I wanted to become like Him however slow the process or how long it would take. I would "act as if" until I could become. So I acted like I loved him.
"Perhaps one of the most important views of life to embrace is that this life is a series of tutorials designed to give us experience, to develop the divine nature, and to send us to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Master Teacher and Keeper of Grace" (Spiritual Lightening, M. Catherine Thomas).

Forgiveness

"Is there someone in your life who perhaps needs forgiveness? Is there someone in your home, someone in your family, someone in your neighborhood who has done an unjust or an unkind or an unchristian thing? All of us are guilty of such transgressions, so there surely must be someone who yet needs your forgiveness.

"And please don’t ask if that’s fair—that the injured should have to bear the burden of forgiveness for the offender. Don’t ask if “justice” doesn’t demand that it be the other way around. No, whatever you do, don’t ask for justice. You and I know that what we plead for is mercy—and that is what we must be willing to give.

"Can we see the tragic and ultimate irony of not granting to others what we need so badly ourselves? Perhaps the highest and holiest and purest act of cleansing—inasmuch as we speak from first to last in the temple of cleansing and purification—would be to say in the face of unkindness and injustice that you do yet more truly “love your enemies and bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.” That is the demanding pathway of perfection.

"A marvelous Scottish minister once wrote:

'No man who will not forgive his neighbor, can believe that God is willing, yea wanting, to forgive him. … If God said, ‘I forgive you’ to a man who hated his brother, and if (as impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him, ‘You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation and are justified in your hate’?

'No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account: but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason … that the hater should [forgive, and] be delivered from the hell of his [anger].' (George MacDonald, An Anthology, ed. C. S. Lewis, New York: Macmillan, 1947, pp. 6–7.)" Jeffrey Holland I Stand All Amazed Ensign August 1986.

A new twist

 I noticed something happening that I never expected.  But then hadn't I learned to expect the unexpected?  I really thought once he stopped the relationship with her he would also come back to the church.  I thought if he ended the fantasy it would be because he loved me.  Neither were true.  Yes, we lived just fine together....most of the time.  He was easily angered when he returned from his trips.  The traveling was difficult on him and if I tried to have a conversation with him upon his return he just wasn't up to it.  It took me some time to figure out that I just couldn't talk to him until the next day.  It was hard and frustrating.  But even more troubling to me was that I was finding it difficult to love him.  I didn't want him to touch me.  I was troubled by this.  After all we had been through, after all the guidance and inspiration, after all the healing and strength I received, after coming to know my Savior, I didn't want to be with him.  I was certain of  all the revelation I had received about our relationship so why was this happening?  

One day as I was attending the temple the thought came to me that just as Satan had attempted to destroy Adam and Eve's eternal relationship by tempting Adam, he had tried to destroy our relationship by tempting my husband. Though it was different because Adam hadn't succumbed to the temptation and my husband had succumbed, still our marriage had not been destroyed as Satan desired. Just as Satan then tempted Eve he was now working on me to destroy the marriage.  I knew that I had been guided and taught from on high so I believed that I needed to make our marriage work. Why else would we have gone through all we had?  

I began to pray to love him.