Finding my way

Hello old friend.  I need to chat.  Like a super honest, don't-hold-anything-back chat, and since we've been friends for 15 years, I know you're just the person to come to.

Life is beating me down right now.

I was thinking about how I used to pour out my heart here.  Janet was about the only person who ever read what I wrote.  She was truly one of the most nonjudgmental people I've ever known.  She was so good at listening to understand.  She was amazing at making you feel like your feelings were valid.  Her comment was always "hugs and smiles" no matter what I blogged about.  I miss her a lot.  I know Sam misses her more.

The last year has really changed how I see...  Almost everything, but to stay focussed, we're going to focus mostly on the "spiritual journey" I've been walking.   Some might call it a "faith crisis", but I don't really care what people think.

Let's go back to the beginning of COVID.  Life wasn't great but it was okay.  The not-great part was that Sam's job was unstable and we were worried about layoffs.  When the world shut down for COVID, Sam took a huge pay cut and moved to Oklahoma to try and keep his job.  Being a separated family while we all tried to deal with the uncertainly of a world-wide pandemic was hard.  Sam ended up finding a new job when he realized that he was going to get laid off, and took and even bigger pay cut.  The new job still required lots of travel, but at least he technically lived with us again.  At this point, he's traveling a couple days a week and I feel grateful that while things have been uncomfortable and scary, we haven't had to make any drastic lifestyle changes.

There have been some pretty heartbreaking situations in the lives of our siblings.  Several of them lost their jobs.  A sister attempted suicide.  A brother relapsed back to drugs and lost everything that he'd worked so hard for over the last two years.  Sam's dad is lonely and it's hard to know that there is nothing that we can do to help him not miss Janet.

I know.  All of these things are part of life and things everyone has to deal with.  The problem is... Is the way I've always been able to deal with "life", is with a solid hold on the church that I belong to.  My hold on the church is anything but solid right now.

Let me explain.

I don't doubt that there is a God.  As Sam told me last week, I don't doubt that God loves me, and has a plan for His children.  I don't doubt that He sent Jesus to be an example for us and atone for us.  I don't doubt that Christ lived and taught us how we should strive to live.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is not something I'm struggling with.  I'm struggling with whether or not the church I belong to is His church.  Sometimes I feel like His gospel is in many churches.  I feel like His people are all people that love Him and want to live like he did by showing love and kindness to everyone.

Over the last year, I've struggled with how much hypocrisy I see in the church.  I feel like the church has always taught me to stand up for what's right, even if people don't like it.  I do not feel like the church has been doing that themselves.  I feel like they are much more concerned about how they appear to the world than they do about defending our constitutional right to religious freedom.  It seems to me that they are more concerned about hurting someone's feelings than they are about doing what is right.

I've really struggled with knowing that there are a list of rules people have to follow in order to be welcome at church.  The main rule is that you must wear a mask.  If you don't, you aren't allowed to go.  That's a hard reality to accept when you've always felt like the church is part of who you are, and where you've always felt like you belonged.

I don't know how to explain how lonely I've felt over the last few months.  I just can't figure out where I fit.  I think that there is a group of members that struggle with the patriarch system in our church.  They struggle with the priesthood, and how women fit into that.  

I do not struggle with those things.

I feel like there are a group of people that struggle with racism, or how the church treats people with same-sex attraction and wonder about their place in the church.

I also do not struggle with those things so I don't fit into that group.

I feel like there are people in the church who struggle with the Joseph Smith "story".  They feel like they were told something, and not told other things, and over the last 10 years, we've discovered that the story isn't quite as it was portrayed.

I do not struggle with those things either.  Sam does.  More about that later.

Actually, I do struggle with church history a bit, but certainly not enough to change how I do things.  The way I see it, I wasn't around 200 years ago.  I don't understand the culture back then.  I never met Joseph Smith.  I don't know why he did the things he did.  I'm certainly not going to judge him for things that I don't know anything about.

My issue is...  The members of the church and the "church" itself.  Not the gospel.  In my opinion, the church and the gospel are two separate things.  The church has done, and is doing, so many things that just feel wrong to me.  The people...  The people profess to be followers of Christ, but...  Nope.  Now, before I go on, I want to clarify that I realize that people are just people.  We make mistakes.  We do the best we can. I get it.  As a friend told me recently, I might be expecting too much from people.  Maybe I am, but I'm expecting a lot because the church has set the bar high.  If our church, and the covenants we make by being a part of it, really are the ONLY way back to God, shouldn't we expect more from it's members?  I find the claim that members of our church are the only ones doing it right to be very arrogant.  I believe that there is a lot more to getting back to God than just being a member of a certain church.

Sam had a Elder's Quorum teacher that accepted a calling to teach once of month.  Every month he had an excuse.  The last time Sam asked him to teach was a couple of weeks ago.  He "couldn't".  He was too busy.  Sam ended up asking the missionaries to teach the lesson.  That same Sunday, Sam got released as EQ President and the "slacker teacher" got put in the new EQ presidency.  Of course, he jumped right up to pulpit and talked about how humble he was and how he was willing to do the best he could.  He also attended the lesson that he said he wasn't available for. 

I'm in the YW presidency and I've lost track of how many times the girl's parents have judged, or not supported how we've decided to do things.  It's an understatement to say it's been hard to try and figure out how to run a consistent YW program, where each girl feels loved and valued, with all the COVID restrictions over the last year.  Things were literally changing every week for about 6 months last year and I know that our YW president was doing the very best that she could.  It's been so frustrating for me to hear people criticize her when they can't see the whole puzzle.  In fact, all they see is the one tiny piece that they're daughter is on.  We even had one mom decide/threaten to just plan activities and lessons herself since she didn't feel like we were "doing our job".  News flash.  Callings in the church, aren't a job.  They're a donation of time, energy, and love.

I could go on and on about similar things I've seen over the last year.  But I'll stop.

A couple weeks ago, I had a friend push me for more information and clarification about why I feel the way I do.  I finally decided to share a few things with her.  She told me that my feelings "didn't make sense".  Then she told me that I was a hypocrite.  Now, she didn't say it exactly like that...  In fact, I know she was coming from a good place and was probably truly hoping to help me see a different perspective so that I could feel less frustrated.  I just felt misunderstood and like she was at the top of the pit, looking down at me, and telling me that the solution to all my issues was so obvious.  (see Brene Brown's Youtube video on empathy) Also...  the conversation made me wonder what's wrong with me.  If my feelings aren't logical, than I must be doing something wrong.

After that conversation, I told Sam about it.  I told him that I felt a little hurt, but I could see where she was coming from.  However, I realized that I'm not in a good place to open up to anyone about anything right now.  I told Sam that my new plan is to keep everyone as far away from me as I can.  I'm so over-sensitive right now, that it's not fair to my friends.  Pretty much anyone that says anything to me about anything I'm struggling with, runs the risk of me being defensive and angry at them.  Sam thinks my new plan is dumb.  He told me that the way I deal with things is talking about them and bottling it all up will eat me up inside.  He's right.  It doesn't feel normal to me to lock all personal details down tight, but I just can't share.  There's no tolerance for differing opinions these days, so the cost in sharing mine is just to high.

For some reason, I've been thinking back to when I was trying to decide whether or not to marry Sam.  I'd thought and prayed about it a lot, and I had several experiences where I felt very confident that marrying Sam was a good choice.  No one agreed with me.  I know that there were legitimate concerns.  I was young.  Sam was older than me.  He hadn't been active at church for awhile.  But I knew then, and know now, that NONE of these things would have been an issue if Sam would have been a returned missionary.  It was so confusing to feel like I was getting answers from from God, but then have every person that I respected and looked up to telling me that I was wrong.  That was 25 years ago and I think all of them were wrong.  I think I was right to listen and trust the promptings I got.

I feel like that is what I need to do now.  Whether you want to call it intuition, instinct, personal revelation, or promptings from God...  I think that I'm pretty good at feeling what is right for me.  I'm also good at second-guessing those feelings.  I need to trust myself to make the right decision for me even if it doesn't make sense to my friends.  That's hard to do.  I love my friends and family.  I know that if I feel like it's right to do (or not do) something that they don't agree with, that will be hard.  I want to believe that all the people in my life love me for who I am, and not just for how involved I am at church, but sadly, I know that isn't always how it works.

Sam has been struggling for a lot longer than I have.  REALLY struggling.  His struggles are mostly with church history.  He really truly believed a certain story, and when he realized that the picture that story painted wasn't reality, it shook him good.  I have so much empathy for him.  I can't imagine how confusing it would be to suddenly have your reality altered.  It's been a total paradigm shift for him and he's been trying to figure out where he fits into this new reality.  His biggest fear was that if he didn't keep pretending that he was still living in the old reality, he'd lose his closest friends and his family.  Last week he told me that a friend told him that their spouse was uncomfortable with him spending time with Sam because they heard Sam was "against the church".  That was a hard one for Sam and my heart broke for him.

Sam and I have similar feelings of frustration and uncertainty but the source of those feelings is very different.  I can't say that it's not a scary thought to know that we might end up coming to different conclusions about where the church fits into our life.  I've come to the realization that there are lots of ways to do the right thing.  We don't all have to take the same path to get to the same place.  For now, I'll practice being patient.  I'll practice trusting myself and the promptings I get, and then having the courage to follow whatever path they lead me to, even if all the people around me think I'm going the wrong way.