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Nibbler said: “Every ward is different, from what I gather RS has a discussion… and in PH we read straight from the manual until we run out the clock. On that front I support having the sexes separated, at least the women are getting something out of the 3rd hour.”
Just wanted to input that in my ward, it’s the opposite. My husband teaches PH 2nd and 3rd sundays and he’s an excellent teacher. He always has big discussions with the class on how to apply the lesson to ‘real life’. Of course, he doesn’t say that though
I always get jealous hearing him prepare his lessons and then sitting in my RS lesson with a teacher who only asks the class basic boring questions with primary answers, and nothing new to teach us. I always wish I could sit in his class and hear the comments people make. His class sounds so much more interesting than RS.
I like what Reuben said ^^ I also agree with Ann on how unfeminine they make me feel. For me, I started to resent my garments. I made myself keep wearing them for a while, but they were sooo uncomfortable and made me feel so ugly. I already struggle with self esteem and I also don’t like certain clothes (if I could, I would NEVER wear bras). I’ve even noticed with certain clothes that look nice but aren’t comfortable, put me in a bad mood eventually. Garments just drove me nuts and the more I made myself wear them, the more I hated them with a passion. Eventually I just realized that I didn’t even have a testimony of garments and so I may be wearing them for no reason. As part of my faith crisis I felt I can’t get accurate answers from God on what is and isn’t right. I also realized that if, in fact, these were actually sacred things (I really don’t think they are, but just in case) I realized it’d be better to not wear them, than to wear something possibly holy and constantly feeling hatred towards it and resenting it. I feel so much better about myself not wearing them. They don’t cause a red line where the waist band is anymore, they don’t push underneath my stomach so my stomach fat is more prominent than it actually is, I feel so much sexier taking off my clothes for my husband and not having ugly garments on, I don’t have to worry about whether to wear garments over or under my bra, or feel them bunching and slipping, or buy something that is modest only to have my garments show anyways. Anyways, I could go on and on about how mad they make me. I have heard of SPD as well, and I can totally empathize with why you would be so unhappy wearing them. I don’t have SPD but I’m what’s called a Highly Sensitive Person so certain textures and sounds really get at me and piss me off, but not to the same extent as you where it’s torturous. I am majorly impressed that you stuck it out for 10 years. I only stuck it out for about 3 years and then my faith crisis happened so I was done with them.
I have had a strong answer to a prayer in the temple that was wrong, in that I felt strongly that two specific things would happen by two specific dates, and they both didn’t happen. So just wanted to add that from my own experience, even strong prayer answers in the temple can be wrong. However, I know that since you experienced it, and you’ve had a lot of things go wrong too, that for you it is real that God hates you. And I am so sorry. I can’t even imagine what that is like. I hope someday you will be able to find some form of peace, but for now, we are all here for you and thinking of you. I have told my husband that I think I’d be able to actually get certain inactive people to church now if they: 1. Are the type of person who has a struggling testimony and feel alone in that.
2. Want to come back to church but don’t feel like they fit in.
I think my strategy wouldn’t be very church appropriate. But basically, I’d ask them why they had been inactive, if they were comfortable sharing with me. Then if it was because of a struggling testimony, I’d let them know about my struggles as well and empathize with how hard it is to go to church when you feel like the only one with large doubts. I’d let them know if they ever do feel like they want to come back, that they aren’t the only doubter and if they want someone to sit by, they can always sit by me.
Of course, if I did that, I don’t think I’d be able to do it if I had my VTing companion with me
I just found it ironic that I would be better (hypothetically) at helping specific inactive members come back to church than I was when I was TBM because now I understand the ones who aren’t active because of a struggling testimony. I’m definitely not in a place where I’d push anyone to come though, I think the church is only right for certain people so if people don’t want to go, they shouldn’t feel pressured to
Edit to add: I could be wrong about this actually working, but in my head it makes sense. Idk how I’d even attempt to put it into practice, though
One thought that comes to mind is why do you want to ‘lose’ yourself in the church and just be happy?’ Are you unhappy? Is a religion important to you? If it is, why do you think that is? And what is it that makes you think the church will be a quick fix for being happy? You don’t need to answer all of these on the forum, just thought they’d be good questions to think about for yourself. I don’t know if there’s a way to lose yourself in the church and blindly follow things once you’ve thought about everything that’s questionable about it. I know people can come back to the church but idk if it’s possible to ever be a blind follower again. I think most people at some point who are where we are, wish they could go back to the way things were before. At the same time, I feel like my life is richer now than it was when I didn’t know everything I know now. I like being able to think for myself, it’s been refreshing. I feel like I’m learning who I actually am now rather than basing who I am on the church. I remember when people would want me to tell them about myself, mormon was one of the few words I could come up with because it was a huge part of who I was, and I don’t want that anymore. I still enjoy church, but the religion isn’t who I am.
When it comes to being happy, I’ve been reading into secular buddhism lately and one of the buddhist ideas is that you don’t ‘need’ things to be happy, you can be happy just as you are. It theorizes a lot on the idea of focusing on the now and not worrying about the future because all you have is the moment you’re in. Also that happiness is a trap. That thinking someday you’ll reach happiness isn’t a good idea because you may not make it to ‘someday’ and may spend your life focusing on reaching happiness and may never reach it. And if you reach happiness, it never stays so then you’re back where you started. Anyway, I’ve really been soaking up the secular buddhism ideas because they fit well with agnosticism or atheism and it’s not really a religion, just ideas for how to view things and they make a lot of sense to me and they’re easy for me to believe in, while also still being active at church.
What caused my faith crisis may be somewhere close to there. Getting a clearly incorrect prayer answer that I couldn’t rationalize to make it correct, made me doubt any prayer answers. Prayers were the foundation of my testimony. I’ve never been very trusting of my own intuition so whenever I had to make a big decision I always went to God. Well, now I can’t trust those answers because apparently they can be confused with our own feelings. So I am having to learn how to trust my own intuition and myself, when I never have. Because those prayer answers I got were false, they must have been my own feelings, so in a way, I’m having to figure out how to trust my feelings/myself from scratch I know my parents almost voted for McMullin but then they heard that news (fake or real, idk. I think I heard it was fake) that said McMullin was only running to take votes away from Trump so Hillary could win. That turned them off to him quite quickly and they went for Trump. They are strong republican so I was surprised they even thought about voting third party. But they really didn’t like Trump, it was just that news that made them go back to him. Here’s one that comes to mind. This is one that would go with the feeling of having a huge part of your identity changed in an instant, the betrayal, and finding out about the negative parts about the church. I am not adopted so this may be inaccurate: The situation of parents keeping the secret that one of their children is adopted. We’re the adult child that finds out way too late in life that our parents have kept huge secrets from us for decades. While they thought they were doing what was best for us, I would imagine it would still hurt tremendously. It would be such a betrayal. Our past would feel like a lie. We had always felt like we knew who we were and this was our biological family. There may have been little things along the way that hinted at the truth, but we probably brushed those things off because we trusted our parents. We may have even brought up our questions before but our parents brushed off our worries, and we believed them because we had no reason not to. Maybe we even find out that our parents had agreed to an open adoption but had later completely cut off our biological parents. So not only have they lied to us, they have made some pretty awful choices in the past to keep us from the truth and keep us all to themselves. Trying to regain your trust for them would be difficult I would imagine.
That was an analogy that just came to mind. For me, it didn’t feel like a death, it felt like a huge betrayal of people I knew and trusted and also a huge blow to my identity as a person since I used to be so TBM. I felt like a huge part of my identity had been based on something that I suddenly realized had several untrue parts and realized my way of trusting wasn’t reliable and everything I had known to be true my entire life suddenly became questionable.
I was going for the thought of maybe it’s a legal thing. But since the Catholic church has apologized, that makes it difficult to see as a good reason. Unless after those apologies the Catholic church faced legal issues from them. Even then, the church seems to be very comfortable as ‘God’s favorite church’ that the work will go forward and no one can stop us. Kind of how they think there are angels guarding the entrance to the temples so no one unworthy can enter. I would think repenting would be more important than the risk of legal matters in the church. Then again, I am starting to see it as more of a business lately.
Someone mentioned something about not being responsible for our fathers mistakes like the second (?) article of faith states. That may be accurate. Maybe they feel like it is something those individuals involved in the MMM have to apologize for, not the entire church since it was the work of specific individuals. I’m not sure. It is an interesting topic.
I am so sorry that things have become so difficult. I don’t have any answers, but just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone. Right now the only reasons I’m still going to church are because it helps my marriage and I enjoy the social aspect. Other than that, I don’t know why I go anymore. Does every ceremony feel cold and impersonal? Maybe you could just do initiatories, baptisms for the dead or temple sealings with your husband? I know personally I have a hard time ever enjoying the endowment anymore, but I do love the initiatory, and it helps that it’s so short
Just want to clarify that you don’t want your family to have family prayer or let your daughter be baptized? Just checking to make sure that’s correct. I understand if she doesn’t want to be baptized, but if she does, why not let her? And why not let your family have prayer together? Hopefully I’m not jumping to conclusions. I am worried though with these things that if you’re not allowing your family to do religious stuff, it may drive a wedge between you and them. Similarly to how them forcing you to do religious stuff causes you a lot of inner turmoil. Jerseygirl wrote:I just wanted to thank everyone who gave me ideas and comments for my lesson. I was so stressed out about not saying the wrong thing, but everything fell into place. The lesson was positive and uplifting, especially to me. It make me remember why I make the effort to come to church. I had several sisters approach me afterward to tell me it is the best RS lesson they have heard in a long time and many others tell me they felt touched and uplifted.
I left church feeling happy for the first time in a really, really long time. I think because I realized I have more common ground with TBM’s than I thought I did. I think the key for me is being vulnerable and revealing (without going into my FC issues) that life is a struggle for me. When I am vulnerable in an appropriate way, people can connect and we can all support each other, instead of feeling like we are in a righteousness competition with each other. No one wins that competition– we are all losers there.
Thanks for all the help. This really is a great community.
So glad everything went so well! That’s great news!I was surprised recently when I read the word of wisdom for the first time that it says that ‘strong drinks are for the washing of your bodies’ (what?) and that ‘Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.’
