Success.

I had this horrible mothering memory about myself. I have a few, really, but this one would awake in my mind and put my self-worth to sleep.

With Matt's encouragement I decided to face this memory with the Savior's gifts of repentance and forgiveness.

So I wrote down everything I remembered about when, why, what happened. I planned to highlight components that demanded my attentive repentance and pieces that begged my forgiveness. Before I got that far I decided to fact check my story the best I could through exploring the history in old journal entries and blog posts.

I learned that in eight years of remembering this event with shame I had been changing my story, depicting myself as an absolute villain.

Yes, I'd been angry and mean and prideful and wrong. But I'd punished myself for years by carrying the memory out of context. Like remembering and resenting one negative word said from a complicated and resolved conversation.

Carrying out my plan to repent and forgive I also decided to look for the motherly successes surrounding this scene. I saw myself learning many things and changing in many ways because of what I'd learned. Success. I also saw the burdens I was carrying then that I held with faith and fortitude. Again, success.

And the pain from that memory is dead. 

How is done?

Through Christ.

As an added joy in this search I found a buried treasure of old goodness. At a time when relationships are strained and joy in parenting tween boys is a little hard for me to find, I really appreciated the reminder that once they were thumb-sucking undie-heads.