Fate and Destiny

I went on a wonderful date this evening, but something that my date said struck me and has made me ponder. She started asking me about my family life, how it was when my dad remarried, how I dealt with it,* and if I had processed it. Have I processed it? Gotten over it? Fully healed and ready to move on?

That’s a good question, one of which I intend to study.

I had thought I had gotten over everything, but a recent experience told me I hadn’t. Certain things seem to trigger such a wallowing of sorrow and pain that threatens to completely destroy and overrun. I have wondered in the past whether or not I will ever fully get over “it.”

It’s more complicated than just myself, because the effects of my own history (not my cause, but what affected me) affects all of my family. I see the consequences often and sometimes it brings the pain of remembrance. I was talking with my sister the other day and she brought up something in the past I didn’t know about. I was very young at the time, and most my memories are blanked out during that time period. This might be good to not remember, but at the same time it’s frustrating because if I choose to forgive and to love and to try and heal, there are others who still suffer. I can work on a better relationship with the person, but others will not and might even be somewhat hurt that I’m working on healing and love.

C’est le vie.

I have wondered however, what I am, how my parent’s divorce, the troubles of my childhood, problems in the family, have affected me, how they now affect and how they will affect me.

I am a child of statistics. I have a higher probability of divorce, higher risk of a life of crime (I think I’m over that one :) ), etc. I am destined to fail. And I sometimes the lasting wounds…

Am I a child of fate, with no free will of myself?
I reject that! The law of attraction teaches me that if I believe that I am fated to some sort of statistical demise, that it will become a self fulfilled prophecy, and so no, I choose not to believe it.
I choose to believe that I can and will have an extraordinarily happy family life, that I will be able to rejoice with my spouse and hopefully with my children. I choose to prepare for that happiness now. I choose to go against the grain of the grinding probabilistic wheels and emerge victorious, unscathed except by the wounds that will remind me of my great victory, and the scars that are proof of my conquering.

Victory! Victory at all costs (I’m not really ranting but this is somewhat fun). I can and will have a happy family life, the life I’ve always dreamed of, the life I have longed for, pleaded for, fasted for, cried out for. I will obtain. I shall obtain. I have the promises of the Lord laid out before, it is only a matter of two questions: do I want it? YES! Am I willing to pay the price in faith and obedience? YES!

Let the heavens shout and the earth bound in joy I shall come off in victory. Victory at all costs! And the happiness and joy I shall feel will be sweet, exquisite, better than I have longed for.
Indeed I shall triumph over my foes, I shall triumph through Christ, the High Priest of good things to come. I love Him. His Atonement makes all this possible; it gives me the power to become, to overcome, to endure, to conquer, and it is sweet.
Have I processed it completely? Probably not. Will I ever? Yes; it’s only a matter of when. Why am I so sure? Because I choose where I am and where I will be. I choose to continue in the path of happiness and not to let the past rob me of my golden future. I choose to become a great husband, a loving father. I choose the choice I desire.

It still leaves me to wonder how to deal with the past. I was also asked if I would relive those days (she was talking about the nostalgia of childhood). How shall I deal with the past? I do not know, but I will study it. Perhaps, in the words of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland (an Apostle of the Lord), it is not good to go about digging up the wounds that the Son of God died to heal (I would apply this to my own wounds—why suffer my pains thrice?). Lots more I could write with this but I content myself.

I choose life over misery.

*my opinion is that we deal with it in different manners: for me I went with the Church, God, martial arts, video games, and learning to smile in painful instances—which creeps ppl out sometimes, like when I smile during a really sad scene in a movie, because it’s so perfectly sad! Of course it had to happen that way!