[RagDollSallyUT]

Thank you for your thoughts on this. I have understood since I was a teenager really the concept that agency cannot be removed from the bad people of the world. It only made perfect sense to me that if people were directly punished for their bad behavior and conversely rewarded for their good behavior it wouldn’t be long before humans figured out the pattern. Doesn’t take a genius—people would start to do the right thing not because it was right but because if they didn’t they would be punished and if they did it was an investment- in themselves, in their lives which would be purely selfish. In other words they would be forced to do the right thing. They would do it because they had to. And whose plan was that? God would cease to be God.

But I did believe that because I was given it in a blessing that God would find a way. Perhaps my husband would live but we would be divorced and he would move away, thereby preserving my husband’s agency while making good on God’s promise to protect my children. And if God never meant such a thing why would He say it? I guess I believed because He said it, that His will was supposed to be strong enough to win out. Like in the restoration of the church, there were many that would stop it but God found a way. I suppose I thought that when there are really good reasons there are exceptions to the rules. There were many examples of that in the scriptures after all; exceptions.

But of course questions breed more questions. As my blessings started failing me I started looking at the concept of blessings in general. How many people’s blessings come true? As I sat in church and listened to baby blessings they all became exact cookie cutter statements. I noticed they were not so much a statement of the future but statements of the parent’]s wishes for their children, which of course were all pretty much identical. “You will be healthy, you will be a joy to your family, you will serve missions, you will get married in the temple, you will support your family well, you will be a great church leader, you will help many people in your life.” Yet statistically this cannot be. Not every baby can grow up to fit this cookie cutter life. Mormon answer that it is predicated on their righteousness does not cut it. There will be many that just don’t find someone to marry; that are just not cut out to have financial success, etc. But what would they say? “You will grow up plain, Average Joe, no real success or significant talents, tendency for addiction and compatibility issues that prevent you from successful relationships?” Yet do most kids not just grow up to be average people?

I guess really I had too much faith in the church leaders when it comes down to it. For one, I had faith that they were inspired in the blessings. But then it occurred to me that perhaps the mormon tradition of personal blessing must in most cases just be our version of wishful fortune telling. It is what we hope and long for. It’s a reason to keep trying. It may be false hope but hope still. But if this were the case- why is it is a church standard? Baby blessings, father’s blessings, bishop’s blessings, patriarchal blessings. I believed that if the standard tradition of blessings was or had become inefficient that the first presidency would not endorse and even push it so.

I am coming to think that our mortality and our personal biases of our experiences prevents us from seeing the eternal world in much the way that looking through the convoluted frosted glass used as bathroom windows prevents us from seeing what is outside, even for prophets and church leaders for the most part. If we are really inspired, we can see light and some forms and shapes but it would still be a miracle if we can make out anything at all that actually makes sense. This is hard to swallow because it means the church we were raised with does not even have as many answers as we thought. That so many things could even be interpreted wrong. That we cannot have the answers to truth we seek. There is only so much that can come through and profits as people can even mess it up. But i suppose it is better than living a life confined to a room with only four walls and not ever even knowing that anything is outside of it.

Is it enough to think that everything will be fixed in the next life? I think that seems to be a lazy answer that breeds more questions. Really, if it doesn’t matter what happens while we are here… does it matter what we do here?

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