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Old-Timer wrote:
I think this is a great opportunity to talk with your daughter about not having to agree with apostles about everything while still accepting them in their positions – that the foundation for that talk was laid well by the other stuff she observed.It was a great chance to talk to her about this. She noticed that they contradicted themselves on the doubt question, but really liked some of the other things. And seeing them in a more natural way helped with this discussion. We don’t live where you see general authorities at the grocery store. If I could teach her this now I hope it will save her from some heartache in the future.
I guess you have to take the good with the bad like most of life. I need to learn to apply that to the church in general instead of clinging to the idea of “perfection” that is thrown around so much. It is going to take time and effort to do that as it is a huge paradigm change for me not ever hearing anything else.
Quote:Did you ever have any doubts about what you knew to be true. If so how did you get through it and what you did to erase the doubts?
I would be clear about what the definition of doubt is. If you look up the definition in the dictionary it means to mistrust to be suspicious to be cynical and to disbelieve. Now there are people who say the church doesn’t encourage people to ask questions, I don’t agree with that statement. There are things we seek to learn we have honest inquiry and we ask, seek, and knock. That’s not the same as moving to disbelieve, cynicism, and mistrust so are there lots of things I haven’t understood, needed to learn about so the answer is yes, but I didn’t become mistrusting, cynical, disbelieving.
This is what Pres. Bednar said. It is very much the black and white thinking that I have a hard time with. I am mistrusting and suspicious of certain things I feel as though I have reason to be. Though I can let go of the anger and work towards forgiving people and even the church. It would be fool hearty to forget about it and not be somewhat mistrusting, and suspicious. And as soon as someone starts to ask, seek, or knock about certain things all the people around you start to mistrust, be suspicious and cynical towards the asker. I wish we could find better solutions to this instead of labeling and shaming people.
[attachment=0]monet road.jpg[/attachment] I love this painting. It is the road to Chailly by Monet. It hangs in my house. Seeing great art and stunning natural beauty I feel draws me to God and the Spirit in very strong ways.
Jorsen wrote:
If only these types of talks and messages could be prefaced with the words “For me, etc etc” or “Your mileage may vary” etc etc.You are right, I need to remember that this was very important to the people pushing it. I am glad they found something that works for them. I am not a lemming and have other things I have found that work for me. If I couldn’t study the scriptures or pray in my pajamas it would never happen. Again we are back to everyone should be allowed to apply the gospel to their lives and personalities in different ways and we can both be right.
It is so great to hear lots of you have things like this in your ward too. I also feel less guilty about my irreverent thoughts on the subject. There is not much I can do to change some of the dumber things that are said, I have too much of a reputation for being a realist. Hearing your ways of poking fun at your situations has made me less frustrated about it. I just wish others could see how totally dumb and often damaging some of this stuff is. But I would rather laugh at it than cry about it. Quote:Or if you are more of an accountant, you could look at this and say my mission costs $9600 ($400 a month x 24 months) and if I am 13 and leave on my mission when I am 18, that is 780 hours (5 years from 13 to 18 x 52 weeks a year * 3 hours a week [ignoring “bonus” weeks like Gen Conf and stake conf]). That comes to about 12.30/hour. That isn’t all that bad of a wage.
😆 Perfectly reasonable
😆 Quote:If I’m in a fairly good mood and sitting next to someone who I know will appreciate it I will mark very quiet snarky remarks to my neighbor. Generally that doesn’t happen, and I just enjoy my own snarkiness.
Quote:I may need to find a snark buddy to sit with. Though DH sometimes thinks it is funny when I text comments to him during class. People have noticed the few times I have gotten up to leave.
Quote:It sometimes helps for me to imagine other instances of box checking and score keeping as jars of beans. This sometimes helps me to remember that others attemps to add beans to my jar or remove them based on their subjective view of my actions or how I dress matters very little.
I am accepted. I am loved. In the final analysis their opinions don’t add up …..(you guessed it)….. to a hill of beans!
I also do not like the bean jar. This has been used even with the adults to get us to do things, luckly I can just go get myself a treat if I want one. I had not linked with the incessant box checking, but I can see how it is the same thing.
We had a great combined priesthood & RS lesson on this talk a little while ago. The instructor spent some time discussing how it is ok to have doubts and questions, in fact we should question things in order to gain a better testimony of them. 😮 People were not taking it well until two different older people that have come back into activity in the last couple of years talked about being thrown out of the boat. They said not being able to ask real questions and get real answers pushed them away from the church. All they felt was judgment when they needed help. All I could think was ditto. I have actually seen a little bit of a change in the ward since then. It helped me to have a small glimmer of hope.
Outofstep wrote:Never, ever let other people bully you out of your place in the church. It is yours if you want it, and you deserve it.
Thanks for this. I have thought this way for a couple of years, and it is one of the things I used to help me be able to stay. But I may have been so wrapped up in what I was feeling that it took me longer than it should have to see how hard it was on the rest of my family.West – thank you for sharing this, I believe this is how my teenager feels too. It is hard to tell as she sometimes says what she think I want to hear instead of what she want. But I think that is just part of being her age.
🙄 SilentDawning – Thanks for this idea. I did make plans for the few weekends after conference for us to go out of town. The kids were excited when I suggested we go to church where we are going. It was good to know from them it is not the church as a whole that they are frustrated with, just the current situation. DH just needs some time, I don’t think he knows what he wants. I don’t know if I should say anything to anyone or not, the other 20 people in the room heard it too. This BP may be different, when I went to the last one with something that was going on with me a while ago he said the people were just jealous of me (I had a hard time seeing that) and there was nothing he could do. Callings changed and they moved on to someone else and things got better after a while. There are a bunch of great families and some that I was friends with that have moved or “moved” away in the last couple of years for suspect reasons. A few who have had to move away for more solid reasons have come back and been so sad that things were not the same in the new ward and they missed ours. I guess every ward has it’s own little sub culture that attracts or repels certain people. Luckily, even though we are not in the West this city has several wards that are not too far away.
SilentDawning wrote:
2. Elevate your conscience above the “conscience” imposed by the church. What do YOU really think about all the church imposes on you? Decide what you think and live it, without dismissing it. Liberate your thinking that way. I find that taking control of my will again helped me feel less resentment as I felt empowered to live my life as I see fit. It seems like a neutralizing force against the resentment. I can’t change the decisions I made “under the influence” (of the church).I like how you stated this SilentDawning. I had a non-member friend say to me a while ago that the church only had control over me because I let them have it. My first thought was that she just did not understand, but she was right.
Kipper I too struggle with the resentment, I so wish I could get past it. I feel like it is so hard to move forward dragging all this anger that I can’t seem to conquer. It is starting to get better, but it is very slow.
I have walked out of a few of the “Perfect Obedience” lessons because I knew it would just fuel my anger. I think I will continue to skip them for a while. I took a “break” from callings for a while that helped a lot. I find that even very small things that happen bring back the full force of my hurt. I try to avoid some of the situations where that is likely to happen, but unless I become a hermit I can’t avoid them all. I find if I look at something, like a talk in SM by itself and not in the context of all the other bigger things that I am angry about it is easier to deal with. It is really hard and I am not very successful. I need to put less in my pile of things that make mad not more. The big things I am most resentful and angry about are real and never should have happened, but I can’t allow some “sweet spirit” that doesn’t understand what they are saying destroy my peace.
:eh: I am not explaining this well.Thanks for this topic. I often feel like what I have to say is useless to people because I am not as eloquent as many of you, and I tend to focus on my experiences more that the broader view of the whole church. I talked to someone recently who related feelings that so closely matched my own and it was so nice to see that I was not alone. So I hope I don’t bug too many of you, but I will try to be less of a Chicken. nibbler wrote:
The ultra orthodox member is going to believe that all callings they are asked to do are coming directly from the lord. If that member experiences problems they don’t immediately assume that the calling is simply a bad fit they beat themselves up because they view themselves as the problem. The calling was divine, it’s what the lord wants me to do; that side of the equation is unassailable. If things don’t work out… what did I do wrong? I know the lord wants me to do this but this is killing me. What can I do better? It can be a vicious cycle for some people.I also see a different side to this in how other ward members react to the person who is struggling in a calling. People treat the person struggling as if there was something wrong with them, as if they are not righteous enough or working hard enough at what they are supposed to be doing. I have been in a calling where I was totally in over my head. I thought that I must need to learn how to do it, that is why the Lord put me in the calling (and later the BP said he heard me say I did not really like little kids so I should be the PP to learn to like them). Most of the people I went to for help did not want to offer any. Help usually was along the lines of just go pray about it, it is your calling so figure it out. I remember thinking once I am praying about it that is why I am asking you for advice on what to do. Eventually I went to the BP and said I just don’t think I can do this I need some help and I can’t find any. I got called to repentance for not having enough faith that God wanted me in this calling so I should be able to figure it out. It has really destroyed my self confidence, and I really no longer believe that BPs are inspired as often as we think they are.
I guess though I have a much different way of looking at other people that don’t seem to be excelling at their callings. I am frustrated with one of my kids primary teachers because it is making it so hard on my kid. But I do recognize that she is doing the best that she can, and me complaining to her or telling her she is doing a bad job is really not going to help anything. And as much as I don’t want to admit it my previous calling did teach me a lot about little kids, though I still don’t really like them (my kids being an exception). Maybe we need less pulpit pounding about serving and magnifying your calling and more real training on how to do them, or a mentor that can help us instead of guilt us.
Thanks for the support. I am going to give him some time to see if he still wants to not go back to our ward. I think trying a different ward would be nice. We have visited another ward as part of DH’s calling a few times recently and my kids have said they really liked it. The ward we visited was lots smaller and a much better income mix than the very well off ward we live in. I don’t think the leadership in my stake would be ok with us trying a new ward, but we are close enough to another stake to try one of their wards. I can still do my calling even if we do not attend our ward. This bishop was great talking with me about some of my struggles a little while ago, he very nicely suggested this small calling that does not require working with many people because I said I felt bad about not contributing. It is just frustrating I have spent so much time and work on making this work, both for my family and because I wanted to find a way to stay, and he decides one day he has had enough and gives up all together. Everything is not fixed, but I felt like some things were getting better. DH says we don’t fit the right mold and he is done dealing with it. Funny enough I have had to deal with a bunch of nastiness from people as pay back for things he did in a calling. I think this is the first time it has happened to him because of something I have done.
This is a situation that my family was faced with a few years ago, but I was the one putting pressure on DH. My children also wanted to move. I felt like it would solve so many things all at once. Financially it was not a good idea. We decided we could not fix most of the things we did not like about where we were, like the culture of the people and the way the ward works, but there were some things we could make better. We all picked something we could do to try and make life better where we were. I changed my job, my daughter joined some new activities to try and make different friends etc. It still is not perfect, but it is so much better. It seems unfair for your family to be so hard on you about it. I don’t know your family, but this was good for mine. If you just say no and in their minds give them no other way to change things they will just resent you even though you really are looking out for their best interests in staying. I hope things will get better !! Twolamps, Thank you for posting about your experience, and for having the courage to get out of your destructive marriage. Abusive and controlling marriages in my experience is something the church leadership likes to pretend never happens. It is so devastating when no one believes you, and then there is also no help for either of you. You sound like a really strong person!
alltruth wrote:The best thing about this statement for me? My beautiful wife read it (she’s actually the one who told me about it) and said something to the effect of, “After reading this I don’t think you’re an apostate…”. Hooray!
:clap: My DH said something similar to me. I am glad that they defined “apostate” better for me and the rest of the membership! I just hope this statment is not bruched under the rug with the rest of the things that make some members uncomfortable.
