I Fix Broken Things - A Story About Healing and Change
I Fix Broken Things
Name Withheld
I’ve always loved yoga. (My parents did yoga, which I always thought was weird and hippie-ish until I tried it and loved it—funny how that happens.) I had never done Kundalini Yoga and Meditation until I signed up for The Gift of Giving Life newsletter and saw that a Christ-centered Kundalini Yoga retreat was going to be held in a few weeks. The newsletter mentioned the need to heal to be prepared for birth (or something along those lines), and I thought it was perfect timing. I was about fourteen weeks along in pregnancy and was just finished with the being sick part of pregnancy. I was struggling with feeling prepared for another baby (my second), and my husband was trying to break a serious addiction at the time.
I thought the retreat would be a wonderful place of healing in preparation to bring a spirit to earth—but I wasn’t sure we could afford it. I was the sole breadwinner at the time, while my husband finished his studies. I prayed and tried the Prosperity Meditation. Two days later, I double-checked our account before registering for the retreat, and I saw my husband’s old employers had given my husband a bonus. The company told him it wanted to pay him during the summer even though he was no longer working for the company. We were expecting a few hundred dollars but were astounded to see their payment of fifteen hundred! I knew the retreat was where I needed to be.
Once there, I felt such amazing power in the room. The sound of so many (twenty or so) women tuning in together gave me goose bumps. For me, the entire weekend was spent removing fear and adding love in its place. I experienced the scripture “perfect love casteth out all fear” (1 John 4:18). I couldn’t make it through the tuning-out song without crying; it was all about love! I indeed felt lifted.
One of the most powerful experiences from the retreat (and there were so many powerful experiences!) was during the Adi Shakti meditation. Felice asked us to draw on the power of our righteous female ancestors before we began, so I decided to focus on my husband’s mom, who had passed away from breast cancer when he was a young child. I’ve always felt very close to her—I felt her presence in the temple when I was getting my endowment shortly before our wedding, and I know she was in attendance at my first daughter’s birth.
Even though she isn’t my blood relative, I thought she counted as a righteous female ancestor because I was sealed to her son. And because my husband and I were facing a rough road of addiction, I thought she might have some wise counsel for me in my relationship with her son, whom I know she loves dearly. During the meditation, I had a conversation with her. I know it was her. It wasn’t a spoken conversation; it was more that our spirits were communing. She expressed love—deep love for my husband and for me. She promised to do all she could on her side of the veil to help her son, and I agreed to do all I could on my side. It was powerful. I felt so much strength knowing that the woman who brought him into this world was “rallying the troops” on her side of things. I didn’t feel so powerless, so alone anymore.
During the retreat, we also had a workshop on journaling, and one task was to write a prayer for someone. I wrote my prayer for my husband. One part reads, “Please guide him to the tools to escape the grasp of this addiction and the influence of evil. Surround him with light and guard him with angels—Your fiercest sentinels. Help him feel the strength and power to overcome evil. Please surround him with the light of love. Let him be protected until his wounds are healed. Help me be a shield for him and not a weapon.” In the days and weeks after the retreat, I would often pray for angels to protect our home and shield my husband. I could almost see warrior angels, complete with armor and sword, guarding our home and protecting him from darkness. I know my prayers were answered. I began a consistent meditation practice and felt closer to my Heavenly Parents and my Savior. I received more inspiration for myself and my family. I was filled with greater love and forgiveness. My husband began doing the addiction meditation and had a hypnotherapy session with Felice to rewrite some subconscious scripts. In the nine months since, he has regained his temple recommend and experienced the peace only available from becoming reborn and renewed by the power of the Atonement. His desires are full of light. Our marriage is stronger now than ever. Three months ago, our new baby was born into a home filled with love and light. I did not fall again into the darkness of postpartum depression as I had with my first child. I can’t help but feel a consistent practice of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation has inspired and enabled me to remain close to the Source of All Light and Love.
A few months ago, before meditating, I asked Heavenly Father to tell me what He would want me to know specifically in that moment and for my life—what it was that I had been overlooking. Some things came to mind: forgiveness, loving “sinners,” and being reminded that Christ ate with sinners. But then the bull’s-eye answer came: “I fix broken things.” I often lose hope when something is “broken” in my mind—a person, a marriage, a heart—forgetting that Christ can heal all things. I was grateful for that gentle reminder to have faith in Him and His ability to heal, for I have seen and experienced it in my own life.
Beautiful.
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