No Success Can Compensate

"...Whatever you do for the Lord, you do the very best that you know how." —H. Burke Peterson

A very good friend and I discussed recently what it meant that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Like me, she is a survivor, divorced, and a single mother, experiencing the intensely personal frustration that is the lot of single LDS parents.

She said that she suddenly realized this meant that no matter who you are in the Church: a bishop, stake president, or even one of the Apostles, it means nothing if you abuse or neglect the souls in your family. It doesn't matter what people in the Church think of you, it makes no difference what privileges in the priesthood you are awarded. If you do not repent and make amends for how you have treated spouse or children, your successes are ash to the Lord.

If It So Be That They Will Repent

Safety is something that many of us take for granted in a first-world country. Unlike our ancestors, even the poorest of us generally have access to food, water, and shelter. Most of us wake up in the morning, go to work, mow our lawns, go shopping, without ever once feeling unsafe. When something does happen to us, it's a shock.

A coworker of mine recently experienced a break-in. It was a kid who knew the family, and thought he could get away with ripping off a few cell phones. He confessed to his misdeeds, and the family now knows who it is and what led up to the break-in, but he still said that they couldn't sleep well at night, knowing how easily their safety could be shattered.

Beautiful Poison

I noticed this plant earlier this year, and as I usually do, let it grow until I could know what it was. Yesterday, when I was weeding in my garden, I started to pull out the vines which have beautiful, tiny purple and yellow flowers, and wide, heart-shaped leaves.

I stopped, thinking about how beautiful a vine it could be if I just let it grow on my fence. I decided to get an ID before ripping it all out. It turns out it is woody nightshade, a close relative of deadly nightshade or belladonna. While not as deadly as the more familiar belladonna, it is also toxic to humans and animals. When broken, it weeps a sticky, smelly sap. It has medicinal properties which have grown out of use.

As long as it is not eaten, it is safe. For a brief moment of insanity I considered leaving it, even knowing that it has the habit of overtaking gardens, simply because it is so pretty.

Seeing Through A Stone

To me, the Church's release of photographs of one of Joseph's seer stones falls under the category of only "mildly interesting." But thinking about that and hearing others' thoughts about it has coalesced some rather unrelated thoughts.

Faith Unto Joy

Not long after the events which eventually led to the final end of my marriage, I had the opportunity to receive a blessing from my father. It had been years since I received a blessing, because my husband was not comfortable with giving them, and I felt it would undermine him to ask for one elsewhere.

It was a very dark time in my life, when fear was nearly overwhelming. I had no idea how I could protect my children. I was nauseated from early pregnancy, and my stress level was so high that I would months later experience adrenaline withdrawal. I felt like my life would never be free from feeling in constant danger.

A Perspective of Joy

Twice I have stood on the ground of Dachau, closing my eyes as the horrors of history reached into the present to sanctify through suffering. I have spoken to survivors of Auschwitz, and read the stories of many others. My own grandfather was captured near Strasbourg, France, and survived a death march in World War II.

Two things I have gathered from those who have survived horrors: That all are given a choice between allowing the darkness to make you his own, or to fight to find joy in the midst of atrocity; and that there are some things too dark to talk about.

When another human being chooses to do everything in their power to hurt you, words fail. There is nothing that can be said about that particular use of agency which fully communicates the way it changes your perspective, tries its best to warp your faith and rob you of power.

While not all of us will face the unspeakable hell faced by the victims of the Nazi regime, we will all at some point be injured by the deliberate actions of another. We will all have the choice to face aggression with returned aggression, or meet it with candor and acceptance...which is far easier talked about from a distance than up close. How, when you are attacked by another human being, can you truly forgive?

How to Help Me Stay?

There are no comments here on my previous post, but I have observed some Facebook conversations about it which made me think I definitely need to clarify.

I didn't write "How I Stay" so that I could get pity or compassion. I didn't write it to guilt people who happen to have intact and more-or-less working families, nor to tell people in wards that they're doing something wrong. I wrote it mostly to people like me: people who struggle and need some tools to fight harder for what they really, deep-down, want. But this one is to people who aren't struggling, and want to know how to help. I'm going to try my best to give you some tools to try.

The fact is that me and people like me KNOW we are different. There is nothing you can do to make us feel not-different. All your efforts in the world can't erase the pain we've felt as collateral damage in someone else's attempts to "be true to themselves" or whatever other reasons lurk behind our lives.

It's like I told a friend recently: you can't be responsible for other people's feelings. But what you can be is compassionate. And I think that's what the questions and comments are really getting at: how can you show compassion and make space for difference?

I have a few thoughts on that, but first I want to point out that "divorced people," or "people who have lost children," or "people who struggle with the Word of Wisdom," or "people who struggle with pornography," or "feminists" or whatever other category leaves someone feeling on the fringes, are first and foremost PEOPLE. Every single individual has individual needs or hopes. Don't take my word for what will help them. Ask them.

Secondly, don't expect them to tell you right away. Most of us are well aware of our other-ness. We often feel like burdens, and abhor the thought of being more of a burden. Granted, some of us accept as much help as we can get. I'm not one of those, and based on observations, I think that those who gladly consume others' resources are a vocal minority.

So, first search your own soul. Do you REALLY want to know what we need? Because it's probably going to cost you something, even if that "something" is nothing more than your own paradigm. If you really want to know what we need, you're probably going to have to ask more than once. You're going to have to show that you really mean it, and you're not just offering to assuage your own guilt at being more blessed/differently blessed/luckier than we are.

So with those caveats to what I'm about to say, here goes my attempt to give you some concrete tools. I'm not trying to share specifics of what I personally need in my situation as a divorced single parent, but to share more general tools to help approach anyone who doesn't quite fit into the standard Mormon mold. Please take what I say and apply it to whatever circumstances surround you. It may be that it doesn't help, but I hope it does.

Objectivity, Subjectivity. Fear and a New Year.

Most of the time, I try to live as objectively as possible. Of course, actual objectivity is impossible, but I generally try. I want to be fair to others, and most of all I want to invite the Spirit, which testifies of truth.

But this isn't a post about what is objectively true, it's a post about feelings. Pure, unadulterated, vulnerable subjectivity. Sharing what I subjectively experience makes it very easy for me to be attacked, but I'm tired of holding myself back so that I won't be vulnerable.

A Ram in the Thicket: a Personal Interpretation of Abraham's Test

Once upon a time, there was a man who had been promised by God that his children would outnumber the sands of the sea and the stars in the sky. But he and his wife despaired as time and time again, his wife was unable to bear a child. They prayed and waited patiently, but still there was no hope. Eventually, his wife even gave her husband her handmaid as a concubine and surrogate, to perform what her body would not do.

Imagine the depths of her joy and self-recrimination when that handmaid succeeded in bearing a son almost immediately.

Imagine her pain when, long after once-beautiful Sarah was too old to have any more children, a perfect stranger wandered up to their home and told her husband she would bear a son.

Imagine her joy and consternation when it turned out he was right.

Her son, Isaac, was a miracle child. Not only was he born to a mother who had long since given up all hope of having a child, he was the fulfillment of prophecy. Through him, all the promises of the Lord were finally possible. He proved that God's promises would never be forgotten.

Female Power and Reaching for Perfection

Some argue that men and women are essentially the same, that only a happenstance of biology categorizes them as one or the other. But to me, that same happenstance of biology gives men and women a unique perspective on this mortal life.

Whether or not there is something deeper than mere genes that determines gender, I don't know. Indubitably, there is some gray area when it comes to our mortal bodies and how they express spiritual, eternal gender. That isn't a challenge I've had to struggle with in any significant physical sense. Though I was unashamedly a tomboy as a child, and certain aspects of my physiology make me distinctly unfeminine, I have never struggled with my identity as anything but ultimately female. Perhaps unorthodox, but definitely woman.

But it is not the liminalities of gender in this life across the eternities I want to discuss. Nor is what I write supposed to define how women SHOULD approach their gender relating to the Gospel. It is descriptive, not proscriptive. Perhaps I am self-centered, but this blog is to share my journey, and right now that is learning to explore and trust my perspective. Rarely do I feel prompted to tell others how to act.

Healing Through Repeat Trauma

When I first created and named this blog, I didn't know it would be so prophetic. Then, I only chose this name because it fit my screen name, and I loved the parable of the houses built upon sand and rock. Since then, my house has truly been buffeted by storms I did not imagine at the time. There have been times that I was sure that my foundations would crumble. I could feel some sands upon which my life had been built washing away from under me. There have been times I've clung desperately to the rock that was left, sobbing for help. Some of those times, there was someone to help. Many of them, there was no one.

After the night my ex-husband left for the final time, I had symptoms of post traumatic stress. For days, I got no sleep and for weeks I got very little. Someone would use a word, or I'd see an object that was involved that night, and the world would skip ahead. To others, I would cease to respond for a few seconds as my mind blanked out. Certain interactions, especially those involving any kind of conflict, no matter how mild, would leave me trembling for hours. I'd get flashbacks. And that is only a few of the things that had suddenly become a part of my life for months and years.

Pure Religion

I have been pondering the next step in my discipleship for some time. Now that my healing is as complete as I can expect it to be in this stage of my life, I feel a tender, growing urge to be for others what the Savior and others were for me when I needed it. In studying the scriptures, it is undeniable that the purpose of every disciple of Christ is to serve His children. But I have a problem. I'm a deeply selfish, self-centered person.

How the Internet is Ruining the World

And I'm not even going to talk about spelling and grammar.

More and more people are not only expressing their opinions, but doing so in a harsh, threatening, or violent way. People seem to think less and less of threatening a person's life because they are racist, or against gay marriage, or FOR gay marriage, or baptizing proxy for someone's deceased family members, or for participating in a group of people that also includes someone else with any of those qualities, or any number of opinions that are repugnant to them.

You see, anyone can have opinions nowadays, even about things that don't really affect them. Just the other day, I was solicited to sign a petition for something in an entirely other state. Which I refused because it's none of my business what another state decides to do with their law.

But that's just it, people think everything is everyone's business. Not only do we disrespect privacy, we actually castigate people who refuse ideological exhibitionism.

The Eighth Day: Power Through Service

"On the eighth day of Christmas,
my true love gave to me
eight maids a-milking."

I know I am in a transition time, a time when the price for what I want is still being paid. As hard as that is sometimes, it is also a beautiful and glorious place to be.

Watching my very young daughters learn to process very advanced life lessons has been humbling. They both have amazing capacity to determine truth and error, to see through illusions and lies, and value the good and true, even when their friends and others try to direct them otherwise. Of all the roles I carry right now, the one that matters more than all others is that of mother.

Oh, I know there are a great many people who see motherhood differently. It is quite popular right now to talk about how hard it is, how thankless. It seems that half the world despises it for those things and the other half wallows in it for them. But I see the difficulty itself as fun, paradigm-shifting and therefore painful, yes, but also wondrous fun.

Surviving Domestic Violence

I have had much opportunity over the past six months to face again various emotional wounds that I sustained in my marriage. It seems that every facet of my life is offering the chance to test the limits of my healing. I have been disappointed with my inability to easily shake off the frustration and the fear that these challenges bring. I'm perfectly fine 99% of the time, but then something comes up that triggers all the old muck, and I feel like I've made no progress at all.

But as I have prayed about this and discussed it with two friends patient enough to listen to me, the Lord has shown me that I AM over it. I AM healed. I'm just going through the physical therapy part of my recovery. When something happens to stir up the muck at the bottom of my clear and placid pool, I realize that the muck is less and less each time. It settles more quickly. The twinges of pain from my healing emotional bones are becoming less, and they fade much more swiftly.

That is something to celebrate!

Why 9/11 Isn't Such a Big Deal

I'll start with the disclaimers. 9/11 is a big deal. Roughly 3000 people died quickly while people watched on camera in a way that was shocking for most of the world. People's husbands, fathers, etc. died when they had every expectation of returning home that evening. That is heart rending, and I respect that.

But I can't help but notice that everyone else seems a great deal more affected by it than I was. So, I've been trying to analyze why my heart and mind is relatively unscathed by 9/11, outside of the obvious reason that no one I know personally was killed.

Facing the Mirror Gate

"There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

In my last post, Howard asked a good question that I cannot simply answer in a comment. Knowing that I had begun this post years ago and never quite finished it, I decided to bring it out of the "Drafts" cedar chest, shake off the dust, mend a few tears with things I have learned since, and use it as my answer.

I am a fairly introspective soul. Using others as mirrors to see myself, I try to gain a more accurate picture of who I am and who I should be. Unfortunately, this has led to the poor character trait of letting others define me, something I'm having a horrid time shaking.

Of course, we should ideally use God as our mirror. As He said to Moroni, "if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness," and then He will make those weaknesses strong.

In one of my interviews, my first mission president asked me a question that has weighed on my mind ever since. He asked if I knew how God feels about me. The thought terrified me. Still terrifies me. Not long after he asked it, I tried to open myself up to understanding how God sees me. I succeeded somewhat, but I have not yet been able to truly let go and feel it. Perhaps a part of me is like the weak knights, who "ran away screaming" when they saw who they really were. Yet I feel that this is part of my journey to understanding charity.

Now, as a mother, I believe I understand something of God's love for me because of how I feel about my daughters. But there is a part of me that cannot accept that a divine being could feel that way about me. There is a part of me that is convinced I am not worth that, and I am afraid of the expectations that come with it.

Although I know, intellectually, that love towards me could exist without expectations of behavior, I have never experienced it. I have no framework for it. Now that I have children, I have a little framework for it from the other direction, but it is still inconceivable to me that I could be the recipient of such a love, though I know it must be so.

I am coming to believe that this is a large part of why I don't really want to try to find an eternal relationship. I know that until I learn to accept God's love, I cannot accept mortal love. That is probably why I allowed myself to accept a cheap substitute for love in my failed marriage. That is probably why real friendships make me nervous. I'm always anticipating my failure of the hidden expectations on the part of my friends.

I don't think there is really any way to prepare to look into the Mirror Gate. I know I can't do it when my children are around, and I've succeeded in busying my life to the point where I really have very little time alone any more. So in a week or two, instead of planting or weeding, knitting or sewing, dating or playing, I plan to take my journey.

Wish me luck.

Something to Talk About

Bookslinger makes a great point, and one of the reasons I've always loved that passage of scripture in Ether 12, along with the Lord making it clear that HE is the one to make weaknesses strong, not US.

For me, I think the reasons for not being more free with talking about my faith aren't that I'm worried about looking stupid or "uncool" (if I was worried about that, I think I'd have self-destructed years ago), but there are two things that feed into each other.

First, I take my religion very seriously, and hold it very precious. I spent 19 months parading my "pearls" out before people, testifying of things that I found so precious, only to see them trampled on. I come online and see them trampled on every day. So it's become harder for me to share as the years pass, unless I have some indication that someone really wants to know.

Second, I have developed a definite level of social anxiety. It takes effort for me to even look someone in the eyes, let alone talk to them about anything serious. Strangely, I have no problem performing in front of people. Then, it's the performance that is the focus, not me. I can pretend to be social, make small talk until the cows come home. But that isn't me. When it comes to sharing things face-to-face that actually touch on who I am . . . . Well, I'll just say it is also becoming harder and harder.

I think I always had a touch of that, but in recent years it's become almost a full-blown phobia. I suppose at the root of it all is fear, and I've not yet developed the perfect love that will cast that out. At least, not in the sense of random encounters to hand out Books of Mormon. So I post online, where there is a buffer between me and other people. This is where I bear testimony, pour out my heart.

There has to be a balance where my love for the gospel feeds into my love for other people. Obviously, if I truly got the Gospel, it would come despite my social fear of being a nuisance to people.

I know that "perfect love" doesn't mean trusting someone who is untrustworthy. I've done that, and know for myself that it is not of God. What does "perfect love" even look like? Is it possible to love perfectly when I have children to protect? To take Christ's example, perfect love is allowing others to have their way with you, assuming it is God's will. But without a clear conduit between me and divinity, how am I to know what is God's will and what isn't? I thought it was God's will for a person to keep peace with their spouse, that it was God's way to allow people room to change and grow and make their own mistakes. But again, I can testify that that doesn't really work.

So how does one begin to develop that perfect love for all men, as well as for the Lord? How does one get galvanized to share the Gospel with people who probably don't want to hear it, especially when many of them are predators waiting to strike at the least sign of vulnerability?

Paralyzed by Fear

I fear not what man can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear.
Moroni 8:16

In a rather tearful conversation with my father recently, he said something that struck through my heart and lodged there. After quoting the above scripture, he said, "fear also casts out love."

That is when it struck me. I have been living in fear for far too long. Fear has become my shroud, my protection against the world. Even my faith is motivated by fear, fear that all my efforts will not be enough to utilize the Atonement and return me Home. I am afraid people in my life will be turned against me by a good lie and a happy mask. I am afraid that I am unmodifiable, that I am like clay with too many inclusions, that the Lord will someday give up in disgust and move on to work with purer material. I am afraid that no matter what I do, my daughters will grow to hate me and I'll be alone. I'm afraid that I'm not learning fast enough, that I'll never be good enough.

All these fears mean that I'm aimed to fail in my quest for charity before I even begin. No wonder I'm floundering, feeling lost. No wonder I'm failing to let that pure love of Christ root in my heart. The fear-crows are plucking out the seeds as soon as they sprout.

The problem is that I have no idea how to get rid of fear. Theoretically, perfect love will cast it out for me. But that leaves me in somewhat of a quandary.

Cast Not Away Your Confidence

I am still in the midst of a very difficult part of my life. Unlike most difficulties in my past, this is not short-lived, nor will it simply disappear in time. Part of what makes it difficult is that I am very prone to putting myself in another's place, and of feeling deeply another's pain. One might say this is no vice, but it means that others' opinions of me matter far more than my own, and that I constantly doubt myself and who I am before God. For the past year or so, I have come to realize that God is not susceptable to others' opinions of Him. Therefore, I see that the gift of empathy in me has become rather corrupted, modeling an attribute that is not of God and serves to give the Adversary a wedge to drive between me and my Maker.

Only last night, after I struggled to communicate what I am feeling without sabotaging another's opportunities, and feeling as if I failed miserably, I surrendered to painful self-reflection. I realized that I am separated from my God right now by a keen lack of confidence in myself before Him. Although I can logically look at my life, and see that I have done right in the sight of God, I have been emotionally damaged to the point where I have trouble believing it, and find myself seeking others' validation. I spent a sleepless night pondering my place in His eyes, and pleading with Him to help me understand whatever it is I am not understanding. I felt prompted to read my scriptures in the middle of the night, and was directed to Hebrews 10 and 11.

"Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise."

This was painful to me, because it is exactly what I fear: that I have not done the will of God despite all my attempts to do so, that somehow in the end all my efforts will not be enough.

I read on to chapter 11, which speaks of faith as the substance of things hoped for, etc. This is a very familiar passage to me, but this time I noticed several breaks in the usual narrative. The first was that "without faith it is impossible to please [God]: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."

The power of this verse struck me deeply. I may not be right, I may not have done everything the way I might wish to have done it, there is no way for me to know for sure. Yet one thing I know: that I have done my best to seek God and His will. It does not say that God rewards those who are perfect, it says that he rewards those who seek Him. The promises that He has made to me, which now seem like dust, are not dead as I fear. I am in His hands. My life is in His hands. My struggle to forgive as new wounds are inflicted is known to Him. He has seen me struggle to feed my children and make ends meet, He has seen me try my best to turn the other cheek and not revile again, He has seen my pain as those in authority are blinded by rationalization. He has seen how much work and effort I put in to make things in my life work the way they were supposed to work, and has guided me through learning that it is time to take another path.

The scripture says later that Sarah, Abraham's wife, had Isaac because she "judged him faithful who had promised." In other words, God had promised rich blessings, as He has to me, and I have worked hard to make myself the sort of person who can receive those blessings. It is in Him to make it happen. It speaks of Abraham's seed who "confess themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth," as I have often felt, because they seek "a better country . . . a heavenly [country]." Because Abraham believed the Lord, he went to sacrifice his only son, believing that God would raise him again because God had promised that in him Abraham would have his seed.

Chapter twelve begins with a final poignant thought for me, "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, (rather as I am,) let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us." In other words, set aside the worries and cares, and do not let yourself be separated from God. "And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith . . . . For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, let ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord . . . for whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth . . . ." And if you endure chastening, you belong to God.

It does not matter that, despite the truth of my claims, the evidence of which will likely never be reviewed by those who matter, and the infamy of the opposition, they seem to be believed. I know the truth. They know the truth. Most importantly, God knows the truth, and I can keep my confidence in Him who has promised.