Well a lot has happened recently, but you were all there for it, so I'll just give thoughts this week instead of giving a time line.
With genealogy, I had a random thought. In baby blessings you often hear, "the name you will be known throughout your life and on the records of the church is....". Jon pointed out that baby blessings are not an ordinance, there is no exact phrasing required and that phrase is more tradition, like how we often say, "please bless the food, that it will make us healthy and strong" even if we're about to eat desserts and know God isn't going to magically make it healthy. But then with genealogy work, females use their maiden name. Even though jon and I have been married for three years and my legal name is Jamie Matthews, they still used Lang. If there is any doctrine on the matter, I don't think it matters but I wonder if my name is still Jamie Barbara Lang and the changing of the last name is just a tradition we hold to like exchanging rings to show others we belong together. Like I said, I don't think this really matters, but it was just a thought I had.
Then the actual sealing, I knew it would hit me when it happened, but I still thought (for some strange reason) that I wouldn't cry. But I did. A favorite moment: they brought George in to be sealed to us and he looked at me, binkie in his mouth, and gave me one of his good smiles.
I have also felt a lot of joy this week. I have an eternal family. Forming a new link, making a new generation, being sealed to jon and George reminded me of the eternal family I grew up in. I don't know how to explain what I felt or the full extent of what I felt on Saturday.
Being sealed also made me reflect on the past. I may have mentioned it before but Alma 38:12 (I think), says, "bridle all your passions that ye may be filled with love". There is also an opposite. When you do not bridle all your passions you end up on an emotional Rollercoaster (for any males reading this: I'm talking more than normal Pms and feminine mood swings). I knew I loved Jon but I had a hard time feeling that he loved me. I can also vouch for the fact that getting married does not solve the problem. I'm sure the following is true for any sin, big or small: stopping does not mean you've repented and it doesn't solve anything, there is still more to repentance. It took awhile for me to repent of my sins, even though I had stopped sinning, and it took even longer for me to learn how to apply the Atonement to myself based on someone else's sins. We know that Christ not only suffered for our sins but also our pains, sicknesses and sorrows, but learning to apply that was hard and I don't know if I've really learned it but I've felt it in my life and hopefully would be able to apply it easier next time, cause in this world full of imperfect people, I'm bound to get hurt at least once more.
And lastly I've thought a little about addiction. I didn't really understand it a few years ago. One thing I learned is, once an addict, always an addict. Now this may sound depressing, and it is a little, or it may sound hopeless but it's not. A recovering addict may never yield to temptation again- that's hopeful. But it's still different than an average person. Let's say the addiction is alcohol. Imagine you are somewhere and are not addicted to alcohol. There are triggers for every addict, let's say one is extreme sadness . You reach a point and a sign says you have reached extreme sadness. Now you are not an addict, but ahead you see a sign for alcohol. You have many choices, you can walk to that sign, you can walk backwards, away from sadness, walk in any other direction or even just stand still and stare at the sign that says alcohol. Now let's say you are addicted to alcohol- the scene changes slightly. Once you reach the sign that says extreme sadness, you are already on an escalator heading down to the sign that says alcohol. You can't go to the right or left and you can't merely stand there. You still have a choice but you have to actively walk back up that descending escalator and turn away from the alcohol sign. An addict who doesn't want to succumb again learns to avoid the triggers, they look ahead for the signs that will lead towards their addiction. Some of those triggers are inevitable though. When they're foreseen, the addict can prepare himself to be ready to walk away and resist the pull. But if the trigger is something like extreme sadness, and someone dies suddenly, they have to have a plan in place to help them resist.
I can say that it's hard. It requires major lifestyle adjustments, but there is hope. You learn to make plans to help cope with certain triggers and to avoid as many triggers as possible. Life isn't about pushing the limits. We should try to seek out the best movies, the best books, the best TV shows. Life isn't about who can see the worst movie ever, or how many bad movies one can see. Neither should it be about how many triggers we can reach and then resist temptation. We shouldn't seek temptation, but we should know our weaknesses and be prepared. Go about doing good and trying to get closer to the Savior instead of skirting the edges, full of temptations, triggers, cliffs and sorrow. Make boundaries for yourself to avoid temptation, not sin. And when you have a family make those boundaries for the weakest (see the beginning of D&C 89).