Ponderings and dreams

From little regrets to major changes, they all have one thing in common they require extra effort! Now I know regretting things doesn't seem to take effort at all much less extra effort but it does! I think it takes effort away from things that could use it. It takes energy away from you and makes it hard to put forth any effort at all toward something worthwhile and if that worthwhile something requires extra effort forget it. Not gonna happen! Plus I find that if I am regretting anything even just a little I do not feel that I will ever suceed so why bother? That is one of the great things about The Atonement - it helps us to rid ourselves of the regrets, little and big, that hold us back. So how to turn my extra efforts to make major changes instead of stalling in regretland? That is the question. How to place on the alter my regrets, worries, fears and whatever else holds me back and give it to Heavenly father? and also as important, how to leave it there on the alter and let Him keep it? I find myself picking things back up again and again like I am scared to move on. Actually no like about it!
I am scared. Scared of failing at something new. Scared of not completing yet another dream. Scared of being ridiculed for who I am or who I want to be. I hold on to the past and the regrets of the past because it protects the dreams and desires of the future. Once I take my true desires and dreams out what if someone doesn't get them or thinks they are silly or stupid, and mostly what if I fail at them? At least untried they are protected and remain dreams and intact, not broken and disappointments.
So What does all of this have to do with my journey, with the surgery? Simply put I am scared! One of my life's desires has always, and I do mean always, been to be the Mom of the house where all the neighborhood kids come to play, to be the "koolaid" Mom. Not quite the June Cleaver of yesteryears but the modern version of that. To be able to have a husband and family where home was safe, where home was special, where others saw that and flocked there to feel that specialness. In the years when those dreams would normally be realized I was not able to even start on those dreams. I thought of myself as unlovable not only because of my size, though it made a great wall to hide behind, but because I was just a no good, stupid , ugly person. Now part of me understood I was not this awful person and I knew my Heavenly Father loved me I just could not see why. Only now after over a year of therapy and many hours of hard work am I begining to see where someone else might love me I am begining to understand better the love my Heavenly Father has for me, and, prehaps most importantly, I am begining to love myself. It took almost a year of therapy to crack to overall depression that had been my life for over 25 years. When it cracked I wanted the changes to come quickly, more quickly than they are, it seems, at times coming. And yet I kept waiting for and looking for the heavy quilt to pick back up and cover myself again in depression. I kept trying to grab the depression back off the alter. Now since it doesn't fit me anymore I am looking for a new and improved depression to put on. Silly isn't it? I fight it for years and then when I win I want it back? Under the cloak of depression failure was a given with it gone I still can not begin to visualize sucess so I stand frozen waiting for what? I don't know some indication of how to move on. I guess some inkling of comfort that failure is ok as long as you are trying moving improving that sucess is in the trying moving and improving. I feel I must do something but I get bogged down in the what I do not know if I can handle failure or rejection. And when you go back to my dream I am forced at my age, 37, to wonder if my chance for the realization of that dream is gone with my youth, wasted in depression and fear. I know it may not be but if I am not doing all I can am I wasting what is left of my chance? And IF I spend all my time concentrating on that dream and it doesn't happen then I have wasted my middle years as I did my youth. So I need to be working on more than one dream at a time I need to work to be a complete person who is able to be happy and do things idependently and yet be humble, teachable and willing to do what The Lord asks. My problem has been I have been waiting for The Lord to tell me what to do instead of studying it out and listening to His response. Time to study! Wow this was longer than I thought it would be and much more serious!