full circle

wonderful thing for Thursday, 25 June, 2015:

Ten months.  We have been serving in this mission for ten months.  How on earth?  Don't trust Time, y'all!

Our official mission picture

I had an epiphany:  I think I have been buying into the philosophy that says it's okay to blame your parents.  Now that I see it in black and white, I see how absurd it is.  When I was an adolescent in Psych class in high school, we were all about how you're shaped by your environment (parents).  

There is no way I could ever convince myself that my parents did a number on me, anyone who knows them knows they are jewels.  However, they weren't perfect, neither were their parents, they couldn't give me what they didn't have, yada yada yada.

Fast forward to today in the shower; don't ask me why it was there - Blaine says that's where he does his best thinking.  This realization has been coming in increments for some time, but today added a new dimension.  When I blame them for my poor self esteem (which I suffer from time to time, much less than in the past - I'm learning not to give it power), I'm missing the screamingly obvious culprits:  my own poor decisions, and the whispering lies from the Adversary that accompanied and continue to accompany them.

"You really blew it this time."  "You messed up AGAIN."  "You did it all wrong, and it'll never come right."  Yada yada yada

Basically, there is a great and spacious building right inside my head (I Nephi 8:25-28).

Here's the crux:  it's not about poor self-esteem, it's not about blaming.  It's about turning away from the darkness and facing the light.  Again and again and again.  It's about trusting the Power that is the Light, and not giving power to the dark.

And the more I look to the Light, the more I see my parents' faces.

Sometimes serving a mission leads to epiphanies.

Fun thing:

Unless something else gets in the way, we'll be going to Montecatini Saturday evening to watch, of all things, students from BYU-Hawaii who are performers with the Polynesian Cultural Center.  How fun is that!