Stress and Abuse

   Everyone knows when there are stressors on a family most of the time its because of birth, death, finances, education, medical reasons, and so many other things. People think stress is normal. The answer is yes stress is normal in small amounts and not everyday. Many think that stress is apparent in an everyday life. This is not true. There are times where you will feel stress the most but during times you are happy you should not be feeling stressed. I know one of the times I was the most stressed was getting ready for college. College is a stressful thing, leaving your parents, meeting your roommates, figuring out what major to go into, and tons and tons of other stressors. There are many ways that I handled this stress. I would read, talk to friends, watch movies, went to Montana. There are so many ways to release stress that avoid abusing anything such as alcohol, drugs, or even people.
   When we were talking about abuse in my class it really made me start to think and it was so sad. 1/3 of people who are abused when they are young will grow up and abuse just as they were taught. This is so scary to me. I have read a lot of articles and watched a lot of shows where people are abused and I have seen this in so many cases. In most cases the child was abused by a step-father or a brother or uncle who they trusted. Abusing is so serious in God's eyes that he talks about it multiple times in the scriptures and in many other resources. If you even harm any of your children in your life or a spouse and do not repent there is no way to make it to the celestial kingdom.
  I loved a story in class that my teacher told of a 14 year old boy who had molested his younger sister. He was then sent out to a institution to help him get better and to not be around his sister. I won't go into all the details but when my teacher brought the family together after 2 years and they all went around and got to say what happened and what they felt they started to lessen the boundaries that had been set and they started to see each other more lovingly. When the brother actually started to apologize he got down on his knees and bawled and said everything he felt horrible for doing and knew how much he had hurt his sister and mom and his other family members. This really made me think of the atonement and how he was able to repent and even though he wasn't of any faith I know that he was sincerely forgiven after taking all the steps of repenting. We are able to repent because we have a loving Savior, Jesus Christ who died for us so that we may live.