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First of all, glad it was just a scare and not the real thing. I had a similarhealth scare years ago. In my case I was grateful “it” was not MS. I was sure worried and stressed with all the health tests going on at the time though! Forgive. Ray’s right – they are at a point where they are incapable of understanding where you are at and are “helping” you in the way they know. They are doing a lousy job at it though. Better to just learn that they are not the one to draw on for the support you were seeking.
Hi keepswimmin, welcome to the board! First of all, know that you are surrounded by people who can truly empathize with the position you find yourself in – we all know it’s a struggle trying to balance everything and reach a spot you feel comfortable with.
I agree with the advice DJ, Cadence, and others have given here, especially about playing it close to the vest. Some TBMs think you are totally going off the deep end by having the feelings you have expressed. Choose to come here instead.
You mentioned that you hadn’t studied much, so I will add how that actually helped me last year. I was teaching primary and wanted to do a good job, so I would look for information on the Internet to “enhance” my lessons. What I found was a bunch of truth the church deceptively hides from the membership. At first it really made me mad that they would do that while preaching the importance of honesty. But over time the effect has been for me to realize that church leaders are human and bring that with them in directing the institutional church, which to me at any given point may or may not be inspired. The result has been liberating since now I don’t buy into all they say – I need to get my own confirmation from the spirit on general conference talks, etc. Like others here, I pick and choose what to accept, but the irony is that I’m living a more Christlike life since I am doing things out of want and not fear.
I wish you well on the journey.
I’m glad you are able to reconcile this, Turinturambar — I can’t imagine the difficulty you have gone through to reach this point. Know that you will honestly find support here. I don’t understand why the institutional church focuses so much energy on the gay topic. It’s not an issue with the younger crowd. My daughter graduating high school this year definitely doesn’t get why it’s such a hot issue. I admire her for it and think things will change at some time. The church has already changed its views over the years and I expect that will continue.
Wow, SD, that’s unbelievable. All I can say is that I am sorry that you and your family are going through such treatment and that I hope things improve. Incredible! One of my former missionary companions was just called to the Seventy – I always knew he would be a general authority someday. Very good man. Ugh, that Anderson talk! Good thing I had to sand the spackling off the holes in the wall (we are getting ready to paint a room. The sanding worked as well as the mute button did for you, mackay11 Tim is a relative of mine who struggled coming out as gay because he was trying soooo hard to make the “right” choices during his teen years. He is a fine young man and a good speaker. Joanna Brooks wrote the book “Book of Mormon Girl” and has done interviews and such on mormonstories, not to mention a blog. The essays Jeff Burton has written in his book were also helpful to me. I think it would be pretty good. A big AMEN to what Ray and DJ posted. You do not want to be known as the ward “flake” – that reputation will be there perpetually to haunt you, whether you are seeking members’ help at some future time to find a job or what. It’s just never a good idea to burn those kinds of bridges. Give the notice and stick by it. If and when you are ready to serve again, just make sure it is a calling you can feel good about doing and do your best at it.
Finally as others have stated, be very selective who you tell your church concerns to and use the group here for that purpose – not to blow our horn, but people here are very civil and understanding. The TBM folks are clueless on what you have gone through and are conditioned to believe that you need a strong hand to bring you back. Not to knock them or anything – the church frequently conditions members to be that way and those who subscribe to that approach sincerely believe they are doing the right thing. That just spells more grief for you.
Welcome Hippo, Glad you took the plunge and joined the forum. I think you will find that this “ward” cares about you and is willing to reach out and support. There is a wonderful group of people who frequent this site.
My faith crisis came as a result of teaching church history in primary last year – I simply wanted to do a good job on the lessons. As I went through my transition, it was (and still is) the polygamy/polyandry that just turns my stomach. I can in no way see that God condoned that type of behavior. I have reached a point where I am okay just being completely to oblivious to what that whole thing was about. Was it Joseph Smith’s version of David seeing Bathsheba and pursuing her? Who knows? It’s just bizarre and I’m okay throwing it out.
As I have gotten on the other side of my faith transition, my focus now is simply to be more Christlike instead of more church-like. I ask myself “what would Jesus do?” and go with that instead of following the Mormon creed of “what would the church like me to do?”. This has helped a lot.
The other thing that has helped me is prayer and personal revelation. If I pray about something and feel that it’s just not right, I go with that confirmation. This makes it so that I may totally disagree with talks or teachings I hear from leaders, but that’s all right. Brigham Young himself said something about the danger the church would be in if the membership just followed the leaders without questioning.
As I read through your post, I get the feeling that you have some guilt about bailing on the callings and I really hope that you can get beyond this – it is perfectly fine to ask to be released. You and your husband know what is best for your family and “overserving” is frequently very damaging. Church and ward leadership is VERY idealistic on what people can accomplish and in my view it is simply not fair. You do what you can to help out, but you also need to put family and home first.
I still go to church faithfully and enjoy it much though I will admit to getting frustrated with some of what goes on there. Still, it’s a pretty good way for me personally as a reminder to try living a Christlike life and I am doing my best to pull what I can out of meetings and lessons to support that. I don’t want to be a catalyst for someone else to have a faith crisis so I’m pretty careful with what I say. People simply do not understand and they can easily think you are on the road to apostacy if you say too much. There are definitely good, caring people there. Besides, how can anyone argue when you make a comment in class about not judging and loving and accepting others for who they are?
Good luck and God bless in your journey.
As far as I can tell, the main purpose of my calling is to make sure we have lessons prepared each week, along with encouraging and monitoring home teaching, just as you say. I agree with you in that I really doubt they were calling on us to defend the church’s stance. The whole training segment was more from the angle of “to be a good leader, fall in line and share the church’s view of gay marriage, or you are not following the prophet.”. So, I guess it really had nothing to do with whether or not I could do a good job in the calling. After I came home and told my wife about it, she mentioned the possibility that the stake president was”nudged” into talking about it as firmly as he did. That may be somewhat believable, given the awesome talk he gave the next day centered on caring and loving all those around us, especially those who really need support and a friend. Interesting.
Thanks, you guys – I appreciate the help and perspective. I don’t know how this will evolve SilentDawning, and it may turn into a calling I feel I can’t do. For me, the nice thing about the whole faith crisis is my discovery that I genuinely want to help people. The “blessings” from service revolve around the good feelings I get by reaching a hand out to others. Curtis, I like the idea that they get me as is – very helpfel point of view to keep in mind.
Hang in there, Dark Jedi, I and many more here can empathize with you on the difficulties that come around. I believe life as like a tide — when it comes at you hard, there is no stopping it and it can be rough when you are caught there. Eventually, the moon changes position though, and it moves back out leaving you to forge ahead. Hope the tide receds from you this week.
Amateurparent, I’m really not so sure why you chose that name for this forum when it sounds like to me that you have put your entire soul into parenting. That type of love and support for your kids is really what it’s all about and from what you say, I wish there were more parents around like you. I can’t even begin to feel the pain and difficulty that you have experienced and my heart truly goes out to you. I applaud your drive to continue on through such adversity.
As far as advice to give, that is often cheap and unhelpful as you well know from the “comforting” statements of friends and ward members you listed. I only can tell you what worked for me in some of my own challenging times. Maybe some of this can help or at least give you some ideas that might work.
I really like mom3’s idea of writing. Twenty-five years ago this last January, my first wife, passed away from cystic fibrosis. As a young college student, I was devastated. Over the next week or so, I wrote and wrote about what happened to her and it truly helped me work through my issues and grief.
Fast forward to my marrying again and having three kids. I have twin daughters – one is completely normal but her twin has cerebral palsy and will be fully dependent on us for care – forever. It is painful to know that she was healthy all the way up to birth time, but a botched delivery caused her brain damage and disability. It was devastating and we could do little more than cry about it, but somehow we carried on.
At some point, we spoke in church and as part of her talk, my wife, in an effort to help others understand what it was like to have a child with a disability, read this:
http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html . I still feel emotional when I read it, but I don’t believe it necessarily applies to just being a parent of a child with a disability. I really think it applies more to any situation where you have hopes and dreams for your children that get shattered. You are left to pick up the pieces but hopefully find new beauty along the way. I can’t imagine what losing three children has been like – it is very sad to me but I am hopeful that you can find comfort and peace as you move forward with your family as it is now.Your 14 year old sounds awesome! That sure is a hard age to be in. My youngest, who will now graduate from high school this year really struggled with it. She did not feel like she belonged and she got very hurt by being somewhat dropped by a friend. She was painfully shy. She asked my wife if she could have counseling (thankfully, we took her to someone objective and outside the church).
We also had to help her find her niche where should could feel accepted. She ended up in karate on mutual nights. It was a much better confidence booster than attending the church activities would have been at that time. I’m sure some people must have said some things behind my back about my daughter not going to the youth activities, especially since I was a counselor in the bishopric. Whatever.
You don’t always have to “make” your kids go to the youth activities the church offers. I’m in favor or getting them involved in something that will help them make friends and feel accepted. Contrary to what many of the TBMs believe, that setting is not necessarily at church functions.
Please hang in there and know that there are plenty of people who say their piece without any knowledge or understanding of what you are going through. It is unfortunate that your bishop is doing that. My prayers are with you along with the people who will read your post on this forum.
Wow, we really mulled this cremation thing over! I’ve always thought it really doesn’t matter what you do and that it is a cultural thing, but cremation is definitely less expensive. I was always bothered by how much it simply costs to die and leave this earth — very big business and a shame to hit a grieving family with this massive expense. Getting back to the shark thing though — I gave that lesson and was very amused by the quote. I figured we all now knew one of President Smith’s deepest, darkest fears n
Glad your wife is so understanding, Baldzach. That truly is awesome! My wife also sees things a lot the same way I do and I can’t imagine how hard it would be if that were not so. I really feel for those in this forum who don’t have that blessing — it sounds extremely hard if one spouse is a firm TBM without much ability to see broader views.
