ABCDs of Sin

I need to talk to the Missionaries again to get the literal letter/word meaning here.

The basic gist of it is this:

1. Acknowledge that you have done something wrong
2. Be sorry that you did whatever it was (truly!)
3. Find a way as best you can to make amends for what you have done wrong
4. Take steps to not do that action again (don't make the same sin twice!)

I've been working through a great many of my sins from before I found the Righteous path. I've also been working on the sins that had become habit. I think I've dealt with all but perhaps two of those.

I still find myself "embellishing" the truth from time to time. What that comes down to is plain and simple lying. However much I might like to candy coat it, the Truth is the Truth is the Truth. I know what the Truth is, and I need to honour it! This is a hard one for me - I have found that when I tell stories of things this is one of my most frequent times where I do this. I'll just throw in a little detail here or there to make the story sound better or more interesting. I think it started along the same lines as telling a joke - people tend to add things to jokes over time to make them sound funnier. I would do the same thing with simple stories - things I had seen people do that were funny, things I had done that made for a funny story. I always thought of them as "embellishments". Nothing harmful I thought. I'm all over this now. It is hard - it had become a real habit with me. But I am taming it, and it feels GOOD. I keep reminding myself I need to set an extremely high example for my children. It is ALWAYS better to teach them by example than merely by words!

And my children... Sometimes I think I set my bar too high. It is SOOOO easy to look around in society and see how "most" people treat their children. It is so difficult to teach them and take the time to do it "right" sometimes. What guides me most here is my memories from when I was a child. I remember what it was like to be yelled at. I remember what it was like to be spanked. I have learned from a great many sources just how "quickly" you can bring a kid into line by yelling or by spanking them. TALKING to them takes longer. But I know in my heart that this is the right way to teach my children, however trying it can be sometimes. I am INCREDIBLY blessed that my two year old daughter is smart enough that I can actually explain WHY I need her to do something, and she will not only understand, but she will comply. This is hardest for me when I am stressed or in a hurry. I wrote some time back about when I had to go buy a toilet plunger late at night when my kids should really have been in bed. I was feeling stressed and I was feeling the pinch of time. When the first store didn't have what I needed, I felt it even more. As I was buckling my kids into the car to go to the second store, my two year old daughter could TELL something was wrong, and she asked me about it. I was short with her, I told her I just needed to get her buckled in and that "Daddy just needed to get to another store". I really need to find the peace of mind to not be short with my kids - when they ask questions and want to know what is going on, when they want to know why Daddy is acting how he is, I need to TAKE that time, I need to talk to them. I have so little time with them these days compared to how it used to be - I need to make the most of it!

And I needed to talk to my ex wife. I had grudges against her. I had things that she had done to me that were really bad injustices. There were things she had done and said to our children that I don't know if I will ever be able to reconcile for myself. I had really been thinking of her as a horribly evil person through and through. I had lost sight of several Truths. She was and is a child of God just as I am. Since our divorce, I have seen her make some real efforts to change things, to change the course of her life. I have also had the clarity to see that she has good in her, that even while she had done things that I personally couldn't believe, that she had other good things she had done for the good of the family. And I saw that in my hatred of the way she had treated myself and the children that I had fueled a vision of her that wasn't accurate. I had let myself build her wrongdoings into something more than it truly was. I had let myself treat her worse because I thought it was "ok" given what she had done to me. I had let myself stop treating her as a human being - as a fellow child of God, but rather as a person I hated, as a person that I no longer sought out good things for. I had at times actually taken heart in bad things happening to her rather than realizing she was just a Spirit child trying to find her way in this world. I gave her a TRULY heartfelt apology. I let her know that I knew I had done things that I wished I had not. I let her know that it was my intent not to do that ever again. And I also let her know that even if I had had that revelation while we were still married that we just weren't meant for each other, that we weren't meant to be married. She agreed. Apologizing to her, thinking about doing that, bringing myself to actually do it, that was HARD. It had been so easy to think to myself "she did so many things to ME, so whatever I did to her was ok! It was NOTHING compared to...". But that wasn't Truth.

Some days back, I woke up in the middle of the night remembering some scripture:

"Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, THAT, you do unto me!" (my emphasis)

I am really striving to understand and act on that. I am trying to live my life by that.

I felt very emotional after I had apologized to my ex wife. She apologized to me as well. I also told her that I forgave her for everything.

In the end, I TRULY felt better for having done this. It healed some things inside me that I don't even know that I could put into words. I just know I am a far better person for having done this.