Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, at least the woman I love, is a woman of honor, integrity, honesty, compassion, grace and beauty. Right now, her addictions have made Lauren Elizabeth Kelley forget who she truly is. I think that is why Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can not be happy right now.
Of course, integrity is something that is very important, especially if my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley wants to accomplish some of her dreams and goals—like attending law school and becoming a lawyer. But until Lauren Elizabeth Kelley can remember who she really is and that she is actually an honest and honorable woman of integrity, I doubt she will ever be able to be happy.
There’s a good post about integrity and how important it is to live with integrity if you want to be happy. From the article:
What Does It Mean To Have Integrity?
By Dr. Margaret Paul
February 13, 2008Are you living in integrity with your own soul, or are you operating from “bad faith”? Do you think that you can go against yourself and still find joy? Discover how this is not true.
When I was in school training to be a psychotherapist, one of my professors introduced me to a concept that I find very valuable: “bad faith.”
We are in bad faith with ourselves and others when we are out of alignment with what is true for “who we really are.”
Who we really are – who is this?
Let’s talk about who you really are in terms of your essential Self – the soul within that is a spark of the Divine.
All of us have an essence that is an individualized expression of the Divine. Our essence is love, kindness, peace, joy, and truth. We are in bad faith – not in integrity – whenever we go against our true Self, our essence.
The problem is that most people do not operate from their essence. In fact, they may not even know they HAVE an essence. Many people think they are their ego – their wounded self. However, the ego wounded self has no sense of integrity. This aspect of us is all about control. And controlling behavior is the opposite of behaving with integrity. When we want to have control over others and outcomes, we may behave in bad faith – against the love, kindness, and truth of our essence.
Being in integrity means that we do not behave in ways that go against our essence. This means that we behave with honesty, reliability, and caring – with ourselves and with others.
How do we know when we are out of integrity – when we are operating in bad faith? We know by paying attention to our feelings. Our feelings are our inner guidance system, letting us know when we are thinking and behaving in ways that are in alignment with our essence, and when we are not.
The reason that so many people can behave in ways that are not in integrity is that they have chosen to ignore their feelings, or numb out their feelings with various addictions. When we choose to avoid our inner guidance system, then we can operate from our wounded self, behaving in ways that may harm ourselves and harm others.
Your wounded self thinks that you can get away with trying to control rather than acting with integrity. The problem is that when you ignore your feelings – your inner guidance system – you are harming your own soul without knowing it. If you numbed your hand with Novocain and then cut into your finger while slicing bread, you would be harming yourself without knowing it. When you numb or ignore your feelings, you can do deep harm to your own soul without knowing it.
You might think that getting what you want, even if you are in bad faith, will make you happy. But there is no true joy when you are harming yourself and others to get what you want. You will experience joy only when you are behaving in alignment with the love, kindness, and truth of your soul essence.
I think the key essence of this article, at least as it applies to Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, is where Dr. Paul says:
The reason that so many people can behave in ways that are not in integrity is that they have chosen to ignore their feelings, or numb out their feelings with various addictions. When we choose to avoid our inner guidance system, then we can operate from our wounded self, behaving in ways that may harm ourselves and harm others.
Your wounded self thinks that you can get away with trying to control rather than acting with integrity. The problem is that when you ignore your feelings – your inner guidance system – you are harming your own soul without knowing it. If you numbed your hand with Novocain and then cut into your finger while slicing bread, you would be harming yourself without knowing it. When you numb or ignore your feelings, you can do deep harm to your own soul without knowing it.
You might think that getting what you want, even if you are in bad faith, will make you happy. But there is no true joy when you are harming yourself and others to get what you want. You will experience joy only when you are behaving in alignment with the love, kindness, and truth of your soul essence.
Lauren Elizabeth Kelley has been trying to find happiness and to heal the pain and hurt of the years of emotional abuse her father put her through and the wounds left by Ian’s betrayal of her. But all her drinking and drug use has done is prevent her from realizing the love that Lauren Elizabeth Kelley and I have shared for years. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s addictions have caused her to throw away two decades of love, caring, devotion, friendship, trust, loyalty and respect.
The drugs and alcohol that her addictions require can not heal her wounded heart—only love can do that. The fears and insecurities that are founded in Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s father’s emotional abuse of her and Ian’s betrayal of her can only be healed by someone who loves Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, cares about Lauren Elizabeth Kelley, and knows who Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is.
Much as Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s love for me has helped heal the scars left behind by Gee’s death and other events in my past—I think my love for Lauren Elizabeth Kelley—the joy, the laughter, and the happiness we have always had whenever we are together are the only things that will heal Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s wounded heart and soul.
I know who my beloved Lauren Elizabeth Kelley truly is. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is so much more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been pretending to be for the past eighteen months.
Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is strong, beautiful, intelligent, good, honest, devout, moral, gracious, compassionate, caring, loving, lovable, sweet, feisty, stubborn, capable and so much more. These are all integral traits of the woman that loves me and are all reasons I love and adore the feisty-spirited, often mischievous, stubborn and freckled redhead that is truly Lauren Elizabeth Kelley.
Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the most amazing and incredible woman I have ever met in my life and the woman I love most of all—Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with and have be the mother of our children. Lauren Elizabeth Kelley is the woman I want to wake up with every morning. I want to have Lauren Elizabeth Kelley be the last person I see every night when I go to sleep.
I want to kiss and count every freckle that I can find on my beautiful and lovable fierce Irish rose. I want to hold Lauren Elizabeth Kelley in my arms and rest my chin on her shoulder and hug her until she knows that she is loved beyond all measure and treasured for the precious gift that she has always been to me. I want to have those Asians with freckles that our children would be—born of Lauren Elizabeth Kelley’s freckled Irish heritage and my Korean ancestry.
God Bless you Lauren Elizabeth.
May God watch over you and protect you from all harm—even that you cause yourself.
I hope God gives you the strength to fight your addictions and the wisdom to see the truth about what the alcohol and drugs are doing to you.
I pray that God grants you the serenity and peace you will need to love yourself once again and to forgive yourself for the things your addictions have made you do.
I ask that God helps you find your way back to being the amazing, beautiful, intelligent, feisty, stubborn, strong, and devout woman He wants you to be.
Finally, may He grant you the ability to see yourself as I do and let you remember who we are to each other; let you remember the years of friendship, love and devotion we once shared; and give you the strength to make amends so we can start the future together we talked about last June.
All this in Jesus’s name I pray.
Amen.
I would add this quote and remind Lauren Elizabeth Kelley of some of the things she has tried to deny over the past eighteen months… things that she did not want to be responsible for and ask her why that would be?