Stumbling

Having freed myself from the pressures of shame, I no longer felt trapped. I wasn’t trying endlessly to prove myself worthy of love. However, I wasn’t quite convinced that I had worth that didn’t rely on my actions. Essentially, I needed to test out the assumption that my self worth was not dependent on what I did.

To make a long story short, (and I WILL NOT tell it in its full length) I acted out with another man.

The long part of the story that I am willing to share is the aftermath. The next morning I felt awful about having cheated on my wife. So I told her what I had done. Watching her reaction is something I never want to experience again. To see her pain and anguish over the betrayal and feeling her pain to a small degree was almost more than I could bear. She did assure me that she loved me and still wanted to be with me. Sill, that afternoon and night were long and painful.

I realized something in that time, though. What I had experienced with the other guy simply wasn’t worth the misery it put me through. My wife and I have come up with an analogy that we feel fits the situation pretty well.

She compared my emotional self to my physical body. She said that emotionally I have grown up with out a leg. That leg is feeling the closeness and love of another male. I got to feel what it was like to have that leg for a few hours. But that brought me to a decision. The leg was whole and I knew what that felt like, and honestly, it was amazing. However, I found out in no uncertain terms that I could have the leg only at the expense of everything else important in my life: my relationship with my wife, my hope of a future family, my relationship with my parents, my horses, my relationship with God. I could have one or the rest, but not both.

I didn’t want to cut off the leg that I had waited so long to get, but I wanted to keep everything else. The decision was which did I want to keep more?

If the choice was between everything else and living without the leg, I wasn’t sure. I was almost ready to just give up and not have to make a decision. However, that would have been a decision in itself and an irreversible one at that. Then my wife pointed out that I could have a prosthetic. It couldn’t be put on the stub immediately. I had to give the process some time, but if I was patient, I could have appropriate relationships with other men. Would they ever be quite what the real leg was? Maybe not, but I could still get by pretty well.

With that hope, I made my decision and cut off the leg to save the body. I called my new bishop and started the process of repentance which included being disfellowshipped.

A number of blessings have come into my life since that weekend. One is that my motivation to keep the commandments has been recreated. This time it has nothing to do with shame. This time it is about knowing what will truly bring me happiness in this life and in the life to come. It is in knowing that the Savior has suffered for me and that He and my Heavenly Father still do love me. That love and my worth to them is not at all dependent on my actions. If I want to be truly happy there are some guidelines that they have outlined to bring additional happiness into my life and I can follow them. Following or not following the commandments, however, does not affect the way they love me. I can choose for myself what I want to do, and I choose the path that will bring me the most happiness.

The next blessing came piece by piece as I prayed for the guidance of the spirit and for knowledge of how to obtain forgiveness and happiness in this life.