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slowlylosingit wrote:
The advice to slow down has been the best advice I have been given. Since this all started for me, I felt like I needed to make a decision so that I could stop feeling so awful!! Little did I know that the slowing down was where the peace was, not in making a decision. Thank you all for such great words of advice. I am happy to sit in the “space” for a while longer!! Perfect quote
That makes two of us
Old-Timer wrote:I don’t want to thread jack this post, but, since it was mentioned and I asked, I have learned a little bit more about the polygamy post author – just enough to make sad sense of the situation:
It looks like he is a student at BYU-Idaho.
Probably not much more needs to be said than that there is retrenchment, and then there is BYU-I.
did you post this in the right thread?I understand how you feel. Maybe an alternate way of looking at it: I’m partially offended by the church whitewashing so many details and not giving it to me straight. Not the traditional way the offended statements are made, but that’s my take on it. Your last sentence is what’s helped me the most. I’m 25, but keeping myself involved and active in the things I love doing keep me sane and help me remember the purposes I have in life- being happy. Religion didn’t consume me before- so when I began to doubt why did it consume me then? Just food for thought. I can relate to you both with the experiences- not as much as I can with you Dash because I feel like you’re much further down the road than I am. Those are some great experiences, and that gives me some hope of staying in the church. Your bishop sounds like a true ambassador of Christ. I wish there were more leaders in the church like him. My patriarchal blessing tells me I was blessed with a double portion of faith and really I think sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps me going. I mean, in reality the effect of the church in my life isn’t a bad thing and I recognize that. Not going to church isn’t going to dramatically alter my life either.
i’ve kind of felt, not in a voice or anything sort of way, that God kind of just wants me to explore and be on my own for a while and that’s disconcerting I think- especially with all the promises in the scriptures related to prayer and revelation. But, it’s always been a struggle for me. I thought that the whole process would take me a short amount of time but I am coming to realize how wrong I was on that.
DarkJedi- I was just up late on a bender watching the newest season of Walking Dead. I can’t put the shows down when I start sometimes 😯 . I think if a zombie apocalypse happened, not having to worry about faith and only surviving would be convenient in a sense, don’t you agree?😆 I think, if the restoration was true, it by definition HAS to be an ongoing process. If it’s not, then it’s not a restoration. So that’s true.
West, I know what you mean. I feel like a lot of us are cut from similar molds in terms of God letting us make our own decision and having the trust that we will do the right thing. Unfortunately as a result, I feel like our course corrections are often “harder”.
Mom, does it bother you you don’t get answers like that? I mean, do you think it’s ok that you don’t expect answers? I have a hard time being ok not getting anything back… by definition, prayer is a communion, a mutual conversation. I think when I prayed before my faith crisis when things were going well, hearing back was important, but I felt like I knew things that I don’t now. And now that I don’t know, I feel like I NEED to hear an answer back to help me keep going.
I met with some friends today who are married, and both of them have been through what I’ve been going through and it helped. One of them from a young age had separated the church and the gospel however. I wish I would have been told that when I was a youth and not as a young adult. Changing paradigms SUCKS.
Hey thanks Heber. I’m kind of enjoying just letting it go because if someone is gaining help or being helped through the tangents then I think it’s a good thing- we’re in this together. I have some of the same struggles as TTT- the whole black and white approach we’ve always been taught is.. partially true I think. But we can choose to live in a gray world. D&C 58:27, summarized, being an agent unto ourselves I think might have application with this. It’s a long process. Part of me sometimes just wants to throw it all away, but I haven’t investigated hard enough. I was on a run yesterday in the mountains, I stopped in the middle of my run and overlooking the valley poured out my heart and soul and didn’t feel anything in response. That hurt. I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t recognize things anymore, or if I’m supposed to be left to walk on my own for a while.
taletotell wrote:I need to build more of a tolerance. I don’t know why I care so much. Partly because I feel trapped, I think. My wife isn’t as far gone as I am and wants to continue living the culture.
Yeah, I can feel your frustration in your posts bud. I’m not sure what to tell you but disconnecting yourself and realizing the church isn’t the dictator of your happiness either way is what’s helped me the most, removed most of the guilt, and has been freeing to say the least. Everyone says it over and over here but it’s true… the gospel and the church are not the same thing. When the faith crisis first hit me I reached out to people to feel validated in my concerns. There is only 2-3 people I talk about it occasionally with now besides this forum. Maybe you should take your wife/kids/family on a little vacation or road trip this weekend if possible?
DarkJedi wrote:Thanks for the update Shawn. I really do appreciate your insights.
I’m not sure apostasy is the right word, but I do think the church is very Pharisaical. I agree with you about the “follow the prophet” mantra and that we spend too much time on them as opposed tot he words of our Savior. I think I am fortunate to live in a stake where the president emphasizes and encourages the teachings of Jesus, but he has little control over the curriculum itself because that’s correlated.
I agree with both of you on some levels. I wonder what happened to the revelations and the spiritual outpourings of the early church. You hear stories and Mormon myths, but when was the last time we had an experience such as that? The infallible leader viewpoint that the majority of people have is dangerous to us as information like we all know is a match waiting to ignite- I wish we could be more transparent and real about things.
There has been more emphasis on Christ with the mormon.org and etc., but people like me raised on the church have so much weight on the prophets and stuff imbedded in us, it’s hard to differentiate.
Old-Timer wrote:The Church doesn’t claim to have all truth.
There are legitimate issues to discuss, but that isn’t one of them. There are some members who believe it, but it is not a teaching of the Church or any top leaders. Seriously, not one top leader would make that claim.
yes, but we claim the most truth- and i was one of those people on the mission who felt bad through a maybe misguided sense of “we have the truth, they don’t, i feel bad they didn’t accept it” or “we tried, they will be judged accordingly”. oh boy how bad do i feel for EVER having thought that way. And that was a common thought process in the mission field.
I’m at a stalemate and I don’t really know what to do next- I’m not really searching for more information but I’m not really acting in either direction- just trying to take care of myself and the things I enjoy doing and need to take care of and I feel bad about that.
Hey bud, glad you found this forum. You’re not alone and I’m glad you saw my post- you’re at this much earlier than I was. Don’t go on the mission until you feel committed to do so. Regardless of what anyone else says. Know it’s something you want to do, or don’t want to do. I wonder sometimes about it, but I’m incredibly grateful for the amount of life experience I gained from my mission, the people I met, and the things I learned. One of the hardest things for me has been reconciling some of the spiritual experiences from my mission with the knowledge I’ve come across I suppose.
Right now you’re in the obsessive stage. Wait. Slow down. Do things you like doing. Don’t let it consume you. You don’t need to make a decision right now. You have until you’re 25 to go on a mission or not, if that’s what you end up wanting to do. You’re not going to get kicked out of BYU for not going. I have friends who just never went and never got married.
If you’d like to meet up, I’d be down to get lunch or something with you. I’m also curious on how your chat with the professor went, because that’s something I might be interested in as well.
