Christmas Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Every time I come home to Kansas I HAVE to play Legos with Melody and Richard. Tradition. this year we started out by building a maze.
The maze is much more daunting from the ground view! Watch out for a fan, false doors, and deadly ends! According to my Dad: Amazing!

Richard's house, it's a good start.

Melody's house, complete with a playground.


My Mom is a shopohlic, so today we went for about four hours. I bought a few Christmas presents for my sisters and a few for myself. Also, I played Monopoly with Richard for 2 1/2 hours...

Best Christmas movies ever:

"Nice coat. Merry Christmas to you. You're beautiful, will you marry me? I love you..." And yes, I am watching this movie right now. And everyone knows the best part is the paperboy.


I brought my laptop home with me for Christmas so I could update grades. Which meant during family convos in between naps I decided to learn how to use paint better. Any ideas on how to improve this? I was thinking of adding a dude rag to the snowman or something...

I have a 4 1/2 foot tall Christmas tree in my classroom on a TV cart in my library. I figure I'm there more often than anywhere else and more people can appreciate it. I would reward some of my kids for good behavior by having them put an ornament on the tree. I was reading a story to my class in the library when one kid started squirming around. He bumped tree and the tree fell over onto 5 of my girls. Fortunately no one was hurt so we were able to laugh it off. Hopefully no parents were mad at me for endangering their child.

I entertain my class during spelling tests and journal time with stories of things I do with friends and dates I go on. They love giving input. One day I was walking my class out after school and one of my girls came up to me and said "Miss Wooten, you need to stop going on so many dates and settle down and get married!" Mêlée's song comes to mind:
"Now I don't have to cut up my heart
Into pieces so small
And give them to those who don't care.
Now I don't have to search for one [boy]
In the depths of my soul
'Cause [he]'s gonna find me"

Update on my life: Just got home for Christmas. I'm getting evicted b/c the house is being forclosed on. Moving to a new place. Love my job, family, and friends.

Cornelius Timberlake

Fall

Taylor Howe and I have been really good friends since 2005, so I was way excited when he had to opportunity to open for Sherwood on November 14th. Sherwood is a pretty big band, and it was Taylor's first show that wasn't acoustic in a house. He did an incredible job though and the crowd loved him!


Being so close up that I was inches from the keyboard was pretty sweet! As was meeting the band after.



We went and saw a sneak peak of New Moon 5 hours before it came out. It was so funny! And we're pretty hardcore fans, as you can tell from Taylor's blog.


This is what Halloween was like at my job. Loved it!

Imogen Heap

is amazing. I loved her voice, piano skills, accent, and ramblings.


We had so much fun! yes she is playing a keytar with a huge wooden tree behind her with a gong and chimes hanging from it. She also had a clear piano with fur in it. If only this video could have really captured how amazing she sounded or how coolt he show looked.

Pick me up

A guyfriend who I don't talk to very often sent this Elder Holland talk to me today and I really needed it.

"As we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterday however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to me learned from but not lived in. we look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future-- faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events taht will yet be efficacious in our lives."

Phillipians 3:13-14 "but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"

Insanity

I don't want to complain, but what would you do if you had a roommate who:

-thinks it's okay to kidnap children (for good reasons, like if their parents yell at them)
-thinks she had throat cancer and that doctors are wrong
-refuses to do dishes and yells at you when you ask her to do them
-wants everyone to get space heaters so you don't need to use the heater
-is your Visiting Teaching Companion(makes up doctrine, and doesn't have a cell phone so you can't ever schedule
-puts up creepy Halloween decorations so that children will feel comfortable playing in the front yard
-thinks the government agents are tracking her to research humans
-quit her customer service job because they weren't really a customer service place, really they were researching her
-believes her UVU computer science professor is planting subliminal messages in videos they are required to watch, and is very offended by it, something about "loose string" and is proud of herself at being good at picking up on it
-thinks she's a good driver b/c she avoids all other cars on the road
-hates you, forcing Noelle to be the peacemaker in the house
-insists she's not crazy
-wants to have a meeting with our Bishop about one of us roommates throwing away her key (which she later found) and her stolen (aka missing) starving student card, and then sets traps to see if we will steal cash she leaves around
-eats your food, and gets mad at you b/c she really believed it was hers, and insists she will find her receipt to prove she bought your food.

You may think I'm kidding or exaggerating, but I am not. I've never had a roommate like this, and my only plan right now is avoidance. I heard she might move out in December, we think she doesn't normally live with people very long.

October

What I've been up to the past couple weeks:
-Birthday Fever (literally)
-Entertaining my class as the tooth fairy
-Haunted Forest with Emily
-Mae (5th time I've seen them! Holy crap that is ridiculous. Love them though)

this is a picture of when I first met Dave in Kansas, this time didn't get a picture with him. Instead I got a guitar pic. -And 1 Basketball game
-Cecilia's Baby Shower
-Official substitute in a friend's bowling league
-Catching up with friends I love: Lyn, Celia, Becca, Kyle, Taylor, Peter, Emily, Andrew, Ashley, Jordan, Wade, Caitlyn, CoreyAnn

When your mind is telling you to do something your heart is against, who do you listen to? And when you pray and feel like it's your choice, what do you do? Hopefully I did the right thing...

I like Music

Biggest understatement ever. I've become increasingly more social in my ward so sometimes when people ask me what my hobbies are I tell them "I like music". I am reading Tale of Despereaux to my kids and in the book Despereaux hears something that sounds like Honey... I can relate.

Where did this infatuation come from? I wasn't raised learning to play the piano or anything like that (I wish), so I think it came from my Dad. I learned that when you drive around you enjoy music. You don't just put it on as background filler, you think about it.

In high school my doubles partner introduced me to several of my favorite bands that feel like friends sometimes. If I could steal a skill from someone I wish I could write music. I wish I could connect with complete strangers and help them feel things and think things they might not otherwise have experienced.

For now I contemplate the tunes playing in my yoga class, rate all my Itunes library, and go to sweet concerts with friends. I saw The Almost open for the Used on Saturday with John. I was so impressed wtiht he Almost. They sounded way good. Towards the end I was impressed with the band members themselves. The lead singer (picture a skinny guy with long flowing golden hair) bore his testimony of how Jesus loves us. And how the beauty of it is we can believe it or not, we get to choose, but there still is someone out there who loves us. Then he sang a slow Christian song. I like music.

C.S. Lewis

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”
Mere Christianity

I read a good talk today by Elder Holland. I highly recommend it.

I love Ruth

Today was a day of breaking in things.

Went to Austin and Terrence's house and broke in my Mickey Mouse waffle maker. It actually worked! Made an amazing conference session a little more amazing...

Went on a bowling date with Peter between the 2nd General Conference session and Priesthood. We used Ruth the Tornado, she's a bowling ball I bought from a garage sale this summer. It was my first time trying her out, and she kicks trash. Now that I've used her I can't go back to other balls... Bowling is one of my favorite things to do, I bowled 125 and had so much fun! Peter's incredible at bowling, one time we went and he got 244, this time was his low average of 155 though.

I guess the other ways I could continue today's theme would be to quilt, scrapbook, or lounge in my wetsuit... It's possible

Moabulous

I went to Moab with some really good friends last weekend. LOVED it! This was the main group: Dain, Brian, Nate, Sarah, John, Noelle and I

We went Jeeping...



Hung out at the Lookout...



Went cliffjumping at Left Hand...

Which is seriously one of my favorite places

The main reason we went was for the wedding reception for these two. They are amazing! I'm glad I bonded with them last year in Boise, who would have thought! Bev flew from Oregon for the shooting/rafting trip. Brett had invited her, they had dated in the past. Bev and I bonded while sharing a room at Boyd's cabin. Brett and Bev realized it wasn't going anywhere, and on the drive back to Utah she and Paul hit it off, and he had the guts to move to Portland by Labor Day!

Bev's nephews were adorable. One of them had to get staples while we were there, and we bribed the other one with $2 to let his Dad pull out his tooth they were having trouble with.


This was definitely one of my summer highlights! Other things I have been up to include teaching, friends, and dating. Had an experience similar to this one two nights ago at 24 hour fitness.

After telling me I was beautiful, he asked if I had a boyfriend and I told him "kinda-sorta". He said, "Well then I'm the perfect guy for you!" I don't know what that means, and he was a good looking guy... but I like to know someone's name or something about them before agreeing to go out with them. Maybe too fresh off the mission and goal-oriented. Funny, though.

CUTE!!!!!!!!!!! CAN'T LOOK MUCH LONGER!!!!

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Tennis is my favorite sport

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New Developments

I'm 21, and by now a lot of my girlfriends are Moms. But it seems like they usually move away and have their babies elsewhere. Today Celia and Caitlyn had their babies here in Utah. I know Caitlyn through Celia so it's crazy they had their babies on the same day. In fact, I think Caitlyn went into labor when she was at the hospital for Celia's delivery.

On Thursday I ate cake with Becca, Kyle, Ashley, Katy, Celia, and their friend Biz. That night Celia's water broke, but the nurse messed up and told her she wasn't going to go into labor for 2 more weeks. So Celia went home and finally went back to the hospital on Saturday. Once she got there she quickly delivered the baby, so Eliza Eden Robbins was born around 12:40 am today. I was able to visit Celia and her sweet husband Nathan and sit around and adore the beautiful and healthy Eliza. I love her.

Today was really cool. I went to my new ward and really liked it. I'm making friends and everyone is very welcoming. I'm so glad I moved, it just felt like the right thing to do. Having my own room is sorta scary, I've never really liked it. But with how many things I own I decided it was time to upgrade from a shared room. Once I am unpacked and organized maybe it'll be more homey.

I have incredible friends! Whether I'm hanging out with my girls or my boys, they are sooo fun and make me so happy! My friend Mandy was baptized this weekend, I'm so glad she moved out here to Utah. She loves the gospel and has been though a lot, I love being with her.

I love having my sporadic sidejob of working at concerts. I get free tickets to shows and sign up people in line. Tomorrow I'll see Blink-182 on their reunion tour with Taking Back Sunday. Try to control your jealousy.

A few more thoughts

Alexander Graham Bell said "When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

GOD'S PROMISE

God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all of our lives through
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the laborer, light for the way;
Grace for the trial, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

-Annie Johnson Flint

LaRue Longden- Activity and attitude are the secrets of survival in times of trial

Elder Sam S. Bennion of the council of the Twelve- There are two roads one can take at a time of losing a loved one. One has a gate makes Despair; it swings open easily. The other gate is marked Peace, and one has to struggle with it to open it. The first road if taken leads to despondency and bitterness. The other, harder one is the way of peace, character, and happiness.

"Hope is an abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to you. It is manifest in confidence optimism, enthusiasm, and patient perseverance. It is believing and expecting that something will occur. When you have hope, you work through trials and difficulties with the confidence and assurance that all things will work together for your good. Hope helps you conquer discouragement."
-Preach My Gospel, p. 117

Grief and Therapy

I couldn't find this clip I wanted from 30 Rock:

Tracy: I'm just going through the classic stages of grief; fear, denial, horniness, wisdom, sleepiness and now, depression.
Kenneth: What about anger?
Tracy: NO! I DON'T WANNA DO ANGER AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!!

But I did find this one:


Because I'm no longer a student at BYU, I can't go to my favorite therapist there. So I've been reading in my scriptures, reading online, and reading different books to help myself, along with going over what I've learned from therapy in the past. I already knew I was going through the grieving process with Taylor, so I found Understanding Death (An LDS article compilation put together by Brent Barlow, one of my favorite BYU professors) helpful.

Over the past year and a half I've noticed most people don't know how to talk to me about my breakups. So I decided to share this selection:

Ensign » 1972 » October
Alone through Death

By Blaine R. Porter

"The desire to help someone who has lost a companion is common, but knowing how best to extend that help is not so widely understood. We sometimes wonder whether we should avoid the subject. If it is brought up by ourselves or someone else, many of us are not sure how we should deal with it. In most instances the best rule to follow is to let the bereaved person determine whether or not he wishes to talk about the matter. If he does wish to talk about it, then you can probably extend the most help by being a good listener. Too often, instead of listening, the “helpful friend” feels a compulsion to share his experiences or those of someone else he has known, which doesn’t really help the bereaved person.

"If the survivor can set the pace and can determine when and if the issue is to be discussed and for how long and in what context, then he probably will have the kind of experience he needs and is seeking. If he wants advice, counsel, or the benefit of your experience, let him ask for it. In such a case, respond briefly; and if he wants to know more, let him pursue it.

"It may be that what he needs and wants most is time to be alone to reflect, to relive pleasant memories, to work through in his own mind various alternatives that are available to him, and to select the one that seems most appropriate and desirable. It may be difficult for him to do this when he has the responsibility of entertaining a friend or relative. It may merely complicate his task if others are there sharing their experiences and giving advice and counsel.

"Without intending to, we may give the impression that if our help or advice is not accepted, we will be hurt or offended. In most instances it is best to extend an offer to help and then to give it when and if it is needed and wanted. At the time of death, friends and relatives are more available to share their attention, their time, and their sympathy; but generally they return quickly to their normal activities, and in two or three weeks the one who is experiencing bereavement is left alone. That is usually the time when he most needs and wants to talk to someone."

It seems like when people find out I'm divorced their response is to tell me about everyone they know who was divorced, and tell me their story. I think I found this helpful if they were telling me about their own divorce or the divorce of a close family member. This might have been because they didn't just tell me the facts, there was an uplifting point to the story. I feel like so many people have confided in me things that they shouldn't have and the point of the story was that sometimes it's one person's fault, sometimes it is another person's fault, but either way good people sometimes get divorced. Ok, I get it.

I think it was most helpful when people treat me like a normal person. They try to talk about normal things, even if I'm a wreck. They are able to listen but they don't pry. So many people feel like they can ask about my circumstances no matter how close we are. It is my choice if I will confide in you, so I've been at the point where if someone asks me what happened and I don't feel comfortable telling them I just tell them "I don't really like to talk about it." Hopefully that teaches them something. The biggest point is if someone suffers a death or serious breakup, offer to listen, but don't force them to talk about it.

What I'm up to when I'm single and homeless

1. I'm a workaholic. I'm at school usually 12-14 hours a day. It's a blessing that I'm able to commit that much time right now, in case I don't have time later one. I love my kids. They are all so adorable. Yesterday at the end of the day we were discussing what we learned this week. One of the kids raised his hand and said, "I learned that I have the nicest 3rd grade teacher ever!"

2. I bought a wet suit today. Make that two wet suits. I plan on using them when rafting or canyoneering or wakeboarding in cold water. I've wanted one for a while but didn't want to dish out $80, so I dished out $3 each. And they are nice, this lady sold them to me who wore them diving in Australia, and said they are way warm, and they only wore them a couple times. So I have one for me and one for my sisters or my future significant other.

3. I went to a garage sale today where they were giving everything away. It wasn't one of those free things where they are crafts that no one would want unless they are 80 year old cat ladies. It was a very wealthy couple who just wanted to get rid of stuff. I grabbed a ton of stuff for my classroom, really cute quilting squares, and future Halloween costumes. What I mean is this guy manufactured team uniforms for different sports. And these were the rejects. They were all really nice and expensive, many of them the fabric alone costs $40/yd. So I grabbed some baseball and basketball jerseys, and pants and shorts. Yay!

I move into my new place on the 1st, I'm so excited. It's a duplex over by 24 Fitness in Provo. Good ward, cheaper than where I am now, private room, nice apartment. Yay!

My Latest Love Interest: Demolition Derbies

Dain and I

Pat

My Rico



This kid had the sweetest inflatable guitar moves ever... what a pro

My camera died before I could really videotape the final round. So here is just a sample.

My friends are hilarious, half the people there hated us and the other half wanted to be us. We all were sucked into each event and cheered louder than anyone. I'll miss Jake Day, it was his last day here in Provo.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

I don't know why my life never works out how I want it to, but I know timing has a lot to do with it and everything will work out for the best.

My Advice for Myself

This is the only Ensign Article I've ever heard of about breaking up:

Breaking Up without Going to Pieces:
When Dating Doesn’t End in Marriage

By M. Gawain Wells


M. Gawain Wells, “Breaking Up without Going to Pieces: When Dating Doesn’t End in Marriage,” Ensign, Jun 1982, 58–61

It feels good to invest in a relationship. To care. To want to share. To want to give.

If your dating relationship feels joyous and healthy, if both of you feel the Lord’s approval of your decision to marry, then the relationship “works,” and you marry. If it doesn’t work, you don’t marry. There is no third alternative.

However, many people assume there is a third alternative and try to keep the relationship alive when all signs of vitality have ceased. Both in my church callings and in my profession as a clinical psychologist, I have worked with people who cannot accept breaking up as a healthy part of the selection process of courtship. Instead, they see it as a time to punish themselves, to feel hurt, or even to try to hurt others.

The Lord has given us some important guidelines for relationships—and they apply to all relationships, including dating. We’re counseled to treat all people charitably and kindly, to forgive, and to love not only God and others but also ourselves.

By developing and exercising compassion, a person can—without unpleasantness or emotional devastation—end a dating relationship that needs to end, and turn the experience into an important step toward developing another relationship that does result in marriage.

Sometimes it’s better for two people not to marry each other. They would both be happier married to other people—it’s that simple. Perhaps they’ve formed a relationship for the wrong reasons. But even when the motives are right, a relationship still might not have that “spark” that impels both toward marriage. In such cases, breaking up is often the kindest alternative.

Breaking up may sometimes be a difficult and grieving process, but it doesn’t have to be dreadful. People can break up a dating relationship without going to pieces.

The biggest factor in determining the outcome of a relationship is following the inspiration of the Lord. If your association seems to pull you away from God, away from righteousness, away from prayer and scriptures, you need to evaluate its influence. Sometimes, too, people will want so badly for a courtship to work that they can’t hear the Lord’s messages because of their own desires.

Also important for a relationship to develop into a healthy marriage are communication and genuine interest in each other. One young man tried hard to fall in love with a young woman who had served in his mission. They both loved their mission experiences and the people of the country, but there was no “magic” in their relationship. They could talk about the Church and their missions, but not deeply about themselves.

The fellow hated to give up what he thought was a storybook situation, but he finally realized that the relationship wasn’t sufficient for marriage. He broke up with her and later met a young woman in a college class. They found they could talk for hours and not lose interest in each other. She was the one he married.

Probably one of the most ominous indications of a troubled dating relationship is that you begin to feel obligated. Of course, even excellent relationships are not free of obligation. But feeling obligated, feeling bound, is more than making the adjustments needed for a relationship to work. Things you should freely want to do for the other person become tasks you do only because you are expected to do them. You begin to resent the other person, and you want to put distance between you. The relationship is no longer enjoyable and comfortable. It’s being Serious, with a capital letter. Conversations are “heavy,” with much frustration, anxious searching of your feelings, and perhaps a series of phone calls that start out, “I have to talk to you!”

And then you begin to test each other. A fellow might say to himself, “If she really likes me, she’ll be glad to go with me, even if I’m calling half an hour before the party.” Or, “If he loves me, he will do what I want.” So you start trying to manipulate each other; and in your insecurity, you try to control each other’s responses. “Do you enjoy being with me as much as I enjoy being with you?”

Another symptom of deep problems in a dating relationship is an inability to communicate on the same level. Sometimes you’ll feel you have a great deal to say but can’t talk because you feel the other person won’t understand, or will misunderstand. You become afraid to say what you honestly feel and think. Similarly, a couple’s physical attraction to one another may mask an inability to communicate. Some couples may know how to kiss but don’t know how to talk to each other. For them, the physical aspect of their relationship is something they fall back on to avoid developing caring and communication.

Some people also use physical affection as a measure of the progress of the relationship—and that’s a false and irrelevant measurement. A girl might think, “If he holds my hand, it means he likes me.” Or, “If he puts his arm around me, that means he likes me more.” But those gestures might mean nothing of the sort. In fact, a too-quick development of such gestures may lead to inappropriate expressions of affection and thus damage a healthy relationship. If a courtship is based largely on physical affection, you probably need to evaluate its stability.

Still another indication of a troubled relationship is a feeling of emotional starvation, of being emotionally drained. This could be because of a lack of appropriate affection in the relationship, or perhaps because one person is “using” another in an unhealthy way.

One person in a dating relationship might “use” another in the way fellows used an extremely attractive young woman who was in my campus ward when I was a bishop. On dates she felt more like a boutonniere than a person—she was someone men “wore” but not someone they wanted to understand and cherish. Another young woman in the ward found that after she was chosen as homecoming queen, the quality of her dates declined dramatically; men were no longer interested in her as a person but only as a status symbol. In both cases, these young women found it difficult to establish genuine, deep relationships.

Sometimes a person enters a relationship with the mistaken notion (I call it a “rescue complex”) that he or she can “save” the other. An extreme example of this was one woman who married a man because he threatened suicide if she didn’t marry him. That marriage ended in divorce.

A more common situation might be for a man to see a woman who’s been jilted and to say to himself, “She’s so sweet and wounded, and I’m going to heal her broken heart.” Or a woman with strong, warm mothering instincts may meet a misfit fellow who’s in the middle of an identity crisis and vow to save him from himself. In the process, she deliberately blinds herself to all of the differences in their values.

What’s wrong with relationships like these is that they put unfair responsibility and demands on one person to make the relationship work. They don’t allow for a healthy role-shifting in which both partners can look to each other for support and strength.

Another wrong reason for developing or perpetuating a relationship is to avoid causing problems in a family or social network. Sometimes a dating couple builds up such a comfortable social network that their relationship is the worst part of what otherwise is a very pleasant situation. In this case they need to recognize that even if their parents or friends hope they’ll marry, it’s the couple’s relationship that ultimately matters.

Some couples may argue that they received a spiritual confirmation of their relationship. Why, then, didn’t it work out? It’s possible, of course, that you wanted so badly for it to work out that you misinterpreted spiritual feelings and, in essence, put words in God’s mouth. But there’s another possibility: People change. Though the dating relationship was right at one time, it isn’t anymore. The spiritual confirmation could have been an assurance of the relationship’s capacity, its possibility, its potential. But it wasn’t a guarantee of ultimate fruit.

Once you’ve decided the relationship is not going to work out, how do you kindly let someone know you’re serious about ending the dating relationship?

The most important thing is to communicate, compassionately, clearly what you mean. Often one person will want the other to get the message without its being clearly stated, which may mean that the person who wants to break up isn’t facing his real feelings. When you’ve cared deeply enough to date seriously, of course you shouldn’t want to hurt the other person. But that’s no reason for giving an unclear or indefinite message. Otherwise, the other person may accept only a change in the relationship, still hoping for eventual marriage.

It isn’t compassionate to try to sever a relationship slowly if you’ve already made up your mind. The other person won’t gradually get the message by your disinterest. If you’re trying to break up slowly, it’s possible that you’re mistaking your desire to not hurt the person for an excuse to be dishonest about your own feelings.

Since relationships can’t change from romance to friendship in a day or a week, it may be unrealistic and even hurtful for the two of you to spend much time together once the decision has been made. The person who initiated the break-up may be thinking, “Isn’t it civilized and nice that we can be friends?” But the other will be secretly hoping for the friendship to develop back into a romance. And if the romance can never be revived, feelings will be hurt even more deeply.

Almost always, one of you will be hurt more than the other when the relationship breaks up. If you’ve been hurt in a relationship, you may think it’s understandable that you defend yourself by denigrating or criticizing the other person. Actually, it’s a way of running from reality, and it’s a childish and defensive gesture. Whatever has not worked out, the Lord requires that we forgive all people—and this commandment is as true in a dating relationship as in any other. Bitterness is never the right solution.

People can tell you plenty of superficial ways to get over a broken relationship. They might suggest taking up golf, getting yourself back into social circulation, or looking critically at the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. But the grief of an ended relationship can be as real and as intense as grief following the death of someone you’ve loved. So it’s important to let yourself work through the grief process.

You may have to be willing to mourn, to let yourself down into your feelings. Grieving can be a way of accepting the end, of letting the separation come. But you have to realize that those feelings will pass, and that no matter how much it hurts, you’re going to live through it. Racing out and involving yourself frenetically in other activities won’t block it out of your mind.

At the same time, you mustn’t perform an endless postmortem on the relationship. By continually asking yourself what you did wrong or what would have happened if you’d done things differently, you keep your wounded feelings alive. Similarly, indulging yourself in what I call a “pity party” is a cruel way of hurting yourself. It won’t help to deliberately humiliate yourself with a list of your failures, as though reliving your real or imagined failures can keep them from happening again.

One college student worked through the grief of a broken relationship by listening to music in the living room of his apartment after his roommates went to bed. He listened to the same album over and over, every night, and allowed himself to mourn.

Finally one day he looked in the mirror and said to himself, “It’s dead. It’s over. It’s never going to work. And I’m not going to try to make it work anymore. I’m not going to go on believing it’s going to work. It is done. I still have feelings for her, but I am going to go on living.”

For about three days he had to repeat that to himself. He’d be driving in his car and start to mourn again, and he’d look in his rear-view mirror and say, “It’s over.” And for him, it was over.

Remember, the Lord can give you solace in your pain. His peace can come through your family, your friends, service, prayer, fasting, scripture reading. You may find considerable relief and insight from writing in your personal journal about the relationship. And perhaps a loving Church leader can help you work through this difficult time.

It’s important that you not try to build happiness on the pretended misery of the person you have left behind. Some people carry this to a tragic extreme by not only dating but actually marrying someone else in an effort to make a former boyfriend or girlfriend miserable or jealous. They’re thinking, “I’ll show her,” or “I’ll show him,” without giving serious thought to the feelings of the person they’re actually marrying.

This was the case with a young private I knew in the Army. He had fallen in love with a girl, but her father wouldn’t let her marry him, and she wouldn’t run away with him to get married. So the fellow married another girl—one he didn’t love and wasn’t happy with. Joining the Army and seeking assignments where he couldn’t take a family with him were his ways of running away from the rebound marriage.

While you may learn valuable lessons from failed relationships, it’s not necessary to impute further meaning to the break-up. That is, I don’t believe the Lord intends you to be hurt again and again for the sake of “learning experiences.” I believe that He wants you to know the joy that comes from understanding, trusting, and loving someone in an honest, giving relationship. Hopefully, you can learn what is valuable from the experience without punishing yourself or seeing the experience as punishment.

While you might be able to look to past relationships for lessons about life, others, or yourself, don’t overlook the positive aspect of learning to better appreciate the depth and quality of a relationship you hope to make eternal. A man who thinks he wants a wife who plays the piano may find that while musical skills are important, what he really wants is a wife with whom he can share and enjoy life—someone he can talk to. Personal qualities are much more important than skills.

It helps not to look at dating as an end in itself. Some people become quite adept at dating skills, but have never considered and prepared themselves for the intimate and hopefully eternal commitments of marriage.

You may find that the best preparation you can make for marriage is to learn to love God and to love yourself. When you have a secure, spiritual knowledge of yourself as a child of God, you will find a sense of personal confidence and identity that makes a good relationship possible.

Like some people, you may find that you need to learn to be more honest and vulnerable in a relationship, and that you need to learn to believe in your own lovableness. As you develop those abilities, the love in your relationship can be sustained by a mutual conviction that you are loved by each other.

Then you can know the delight of being trusted with one another’s ideas and feelings. And you can know the joyous, awesome capacity to give that comes with loving.

Notes

Gawain Wells, a clinical psychologist and father of six children, teaches Sunday School in his Provo, Utah, ward.

Broken engagement to-do list

What to do if he calls it off:
-start drinking soda again
-kill the bamboo love fern

That's all I can think of for now, I'm sure there's other good things to do though. I'm open to suggestions.

MOAB

MMT 09 was of course ridiculously fun and full of wonderment. We went:

• Camping


• Hiking (ie Delicate Arch)




• To Sand Hill-Roll in it, race down it, jump into it, you guessed it











• To the waterfall at Ken’s Lake- gorgeous, and freezing, jump in if you dare




• BBQing- Austin is the best chef, the steak, chicken, corn on the cob, and bananas foster was to die for





• Slacklining (Kenny taught us for 5 minutes, someday we’ll be successful)


• Up Indian Ladders- by far my favorite event. We climbed without ropes or anything up this crevice using only rocks and logs. Super scary, super fun.




• Around making memories and making friends, pictures are the best way I can describe it.