I've been thinking a lot about the idea of "forced joy," or (much like Elder Uchtdorf's talk in fall 2017) the idea that we can be joyful in spite of circumstances.
It's something I'm really struggling with. I can pretend to be happy. It's not hard. I can spare everyone around me the struggles that I'm facing. But the more I try to pretend I'm not facing them, the more they weigh on me. The more "joyful" (read "of positive affect") I become, the more sorrowful I truly am.
When I accept that it's okay to have a hard time, that the things I'm going through really do suck, and really are hard, and really do hurt, the more I can separate them from me and find joy in spite of the hardships. But other people often don't see the joy I feel, especially since few of them are around me to see it.
This isn't exactly a review. I wasn't terribly impressed with the live-action Beauty and the Beast. It was okay. A little more backstory, sure, but nothing like the Cinderella remake.
Beauty and the Beast used to be my very favorite movie. A heroine who loved to read and had her own horse? I was hooked. I loved idea of learning to love, rather than falling in love.
But I saw Belle's and the Prince's relationship differently after I married. I realized that happily-ever-afters are really just in stories. That people who are abusive stay abusive, people don't really change. So I was hoping that the new movie would revitalize the story for me, and help me see the beauty again.
I didn't learn what I wanted to. As I was watching Emma Watson's Belle and the Beast develop their relationship, the sudden realization came to me that I identified much more with the Beast than with Belle.
At that point, the story completely changed for me. It was no longer about falling in love. It was about forgiving myself. Forgiving myself for never being enough. For always falling short. For being imperfect. For being ugly. For making huge, earth-shattering mistakes, the consequences of which are also bourne by innocent people.
My seven-year-old poignantly summed it up two nights ago. "Mommy, it's okay to make mistakes. That is why we are here. God wants us to make mistakes so we can grow and be better."
Beauty and the Beast wasn't about Belle overcoming all odds to fall in love. It was about the Beast learning to forgive himself. Sometimes beauty is not only found within, it is found in imperfection and ugliness. Our struggle to learn and become like God is ugly and messy, and not at all heroic. At least not the way we think of heroism.
In reality, repentance is much more about the Beast's story, than about Belle's. I doubt that was the message the writers intended. But it is the one I needed.
I have not written in some time, since I have been under considerable stress in my personal life. I don't write much when I'm in the middle of my own crises. I have no energy for it, nor do I feel I have anything to offer. But recently, a thought did occur to me which I felt I ought to share.
One of the many things which has troubled me lately was the cry of the non-prodigal son, the one who said, "these many years do I serve thee...yet thou never gavest me a kid." It is not that I feel I have never transgressed, because I know I have. Nor that I deserve blessings, because I know I don't. But it is hard to see how far off the tracks my life has gone. Tracks that I followed only because the Lord asked it of me, and not because I wanted those tracks at the time.
I am surrounded with people who have the life I was taught to accept (and even desire.) But it is a life I'm forever barred from, all because someone I trusted decided to exploit that trust to its fullest extent. I have fought, not only to become strong, but to keep that strength from making me hard. It is a daily battle, sometimes harder than others, but something I have to fight every day. And sometimes I lose.
I do not understand why I can't seem to catch a break. I just need a year or so of equilibrium, of rest, a time when I know that my kids are safe, that I am safe, and that I can heal a little.
But I was looking up a scriptural reference, and ran into something that I think applies.
Another single man I knew and liked just got engaged. He is responsible, attractive in both personality and looks. He takes the Church seriously, and truly cares about God. And he wasn’t interested in me, even a little. He is only the latest in a long line of engaged people I've seen marry over the years since I divorced. At this point, every LDS male I’ve ever dated or been interested in is married or engaged to be married. There are no more for me.
I’m sure you might ask yourself how I can be so sure. Things happen, right? Well, in order for things to happen, you have to be in a place for them to happen. And I don’t have time for that. Because, while I am a single LDS woman whose faith has been tempered in the furnaces of mortality and who wants to be a good wife, I am first and foremost a mother, with everything that symbolizes and everything that means. I don't have time for singles' activities. My calling in the ward I can actually belong to makes it impossible to even go to singles ward.
And I am a mother, which means I have a past. I am not the dewy-eyed girl that good men of the priesthood have been promised as their prize for a well-spent mission. I am not innocent. I have scars, and many of them still hurt. My wounds are too deep. I am too jaded. Too overweight, too tall, too much, or too little. And as long as I do what the Church spent eighteen years teaching me to do, marrying only a return missionary in the temple, I will be alone. I am quickly getting too old to be the stay-at-home mom He commanded me to be with the large family He commanded me to have.
In the words of Taylor Swift, I’m not a princess, and this ain’t a fairytale. Or, as the great wizard Schmendrick said, there are no happy endings, because nothing ends.
I did not post an Odyssey post last week because, even though I pondered the talks, I could not come up with anything to say. That just about happened this week, too. Writing on demand is not easy for me, nor is fitting into any group of people, which is why I decided to join in this writing effort. I thought, perhaps, it would stretch me outside of my comfort zone (as if I even have one any more) of personal development. And, it is a patently incredible idea which I would like to support.
The only talk from the October 1972 Friday Morning Session that had any real hope of squeezing through my cloudy brain this week was the one by the only name most people probably wouldn't recognize, titled "Becoming a Somebody".
Whether because I'm in that liminal area between young and middle-aged, or because I'm in the liminal area of being a single in a Church that emphasizes families, but with no real hope or intent to build an eternal family any more, or because I'm in the liminal area of being pushed so far past what I am capable of, I don't even know where I'm going any more, I have been fighting the growing feeling that I'm missing something.
This post addresses my thoughts regarding, not only the recent policy clarifications in Handbook 1, but the overall nature of the doctrine of Christ, our place within it, and what we can expect as disciples of the Sacrificed God.
It is not meant to be kind, or empathetic, or consoling. It is an exploration of Christ's doctrine as I understand it. I hope it can help someone, even though I expect it will be harsh in places.
In watching (mostly) the discussions going on about the policy changes, one thing is clear. So very, very few of us understand doctrine. I'm not claiming to any special understanding, but I have studied the scriptures long and hard, pondered them, and applied them to times in my life that nearly broke me. So I do know a few things about struggling to reconcile my life with God's word and the policies of the Church. I'm going to get a bit personal here, in the hopes that my experiences can inspire someone to seek understanding, rather than justice.
I wrote this testimony for a very close friend. I expected it to hit on several points of study and inspiration. But soon after the first three or four paragraphs, my words took an unexpected turn. I wrote it, asking myself, "When did I truly know?" The truth is that the answer is messy. There have been dozens, if not hundreds of times I "truly knew," where I felt God's presence unmistakably. My testimony is not one earth-shattering moment, it is many. It is a testimony of the Lord's patience as he has held the hand of a willful, rebellious, lonely child as she struggles through a life that has never been what she wanted it to be.
To me, testimony has not been a plant or a light as much as it has been a struggle to stand against the waves of the sea. My life has never been truly bad. I have been richly blessed, and kept safe by the hand of God. But to me, it has been difficult to stay true to what I have known to be true, and to learn that elusive charity for others...and for myself.
I have long acted on belief. I have not often been disappointed in the rewards for that trust in God. But I am learning that some rewards are long in coming, and some blessings look an awful lot like curses. Trust does not come easily for me, but I have learned to trust God and rely on Him for my salvation. I only hope that I can be an instrument for good in His hands.
I wrote a post that didn't quite fit into this blog, but I'd still appreciate any feedback or thoughts you have on it. Part of me really wants my developing paradigm to be blown out of the water, but I've not found evidence that I'm wrong yet. So:
I hate the word "trials." We talk about getting through our trials, enduring our trials, or suffering trials, as if they are something that stop. Our tolerance for helping other people "get through their trials" fades over time when those trials just don't go away. And for those of us whose "trials" are permanent, at some point we begin to wonder what we are doing wrong that we cannot find the peace and happiness promised in scripture if we follow the commandments.
When I was 17, I planned to focus on a career and eventually get married if the right man came along. I'd have few kids, no more than two, because I knew that my personality and temperament was not well-suited to child rearing. In my Patriarchal Blessing, I was told that the task the Lord set for me, among others, was to be a mother in Zion. The words of my Patriarchal Blessing rocked me to my knees, and I spent the next four years changing my paradigm. If the Lord wanted me to be a mother, I'd focus all my energy on learning to do it right.
I changed career plans, served a mission, and over the course of the next two or three years, became someone who not only submitted to the will of the Lord as spoken in my blessing, but actually craved it. Which is why, as I realized that I could not succeed in being a good wife to the man I had married, it cut so deeply. I sacrificed to be the kind of person who could be a good wife, and one simple decision—choosing a man who later decided to not choose God—meant that my sacrifices were pointless. It has done more than ended a marriage. It killed my confidence in myself, and broke my hope to become what the Lord wanted of me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t know if what I’m going to write represents more than just me. Maybe I’m alone in feeling this way, but it doesn’t matter. I need to write this for me. Maybe it will let me move past one more barrier of anger and pain. And maybe, if I’m not alone, it will make a difference for someone.
If you were to meet me in person, you would never guess that I have a deep hollow wellspring of pain. And when you read these words online, if you know my previous writings, you could probably chalk that pain up to my divorce. But you would be wrong. My ex-husband is just one data point on a vast continuum of experience. It isn’t my ex. It’s you, men of the Priesthood.
When I was a teenager and watched the boys around me turn into men, I noticed how they looked at girls. Because I was a bit of a tomboy, I also heard it. There may be women out there who don’t get it, but I think they are few. You think that looking at female bodies, those little “jokes” about “wanting some of that,” go unheard, but they don’t. We seem to ignore them, but they stick.
If you’re a good guy, you’re probably saying to yourself right now “at least I’m not one of those scummy guys who only value women for their looks.” But it’s not just the so-called scums. It’s our brothers, fathers, sons, priesthood leaders. Look at this bishop in the LDS church, teaching women that they exist to be beautiful. If it were only the scummy men, it wouldn’t hurt so much. But it’s our priesthood leaders, those who have made covenants to represent the Father.
"I know God loves me. He's finally given me everything I wanted!"
—Facebook post of a newly engaged woman
I am a perfectionist. Some people say that with a bit of pride, "I'm a perfectionist!" Glad to show they always try to do their best. But perfectionism . . . the real thing . . . is nothing to take pride in. I've been thinking about my perfectionism quite a bit lately. It is rooted in a deep-seated knowledge that I cannot be loved unless I am perfect. I've struggled with it from birth. Unfortunately, my experience has almost unilaterally provided evidence that it is true: being loved is dependent on being flawless. On conforming to expectation.
It was this perfectionism that drove me to work so hard on my mission I was fifteen pounds underweight by the end, and that led me into an abusive marriage. It causes me to push people away the moment I feel I've disappointed them. It gives me this haunting fear that I will never measure up, will always fail at anything that is truly important to me, and that I will always be unloved. It robs the Atonement of its power. I fight so hard against it, but it is always there.
I have a family member who seems to be in the process of leaving the Church (maybe already left.) And as most of you who read this blog know, I used to participate quite a bit in online intellectual discussions about the gospel and about the Church. I still comment here and there, but I don't participate the way I did. Mostly because I've heard, studied, and pondered most of the things discussed and come to form understanding or opinions about them already. Not being naturally inclined to nonproductive confrontation, I've lost interest in fighting about the things I believe with people. With that in mind, I use a very light hand with this person.
Increasingly, it just feels unwise to defend the Church much beyond bearing testimony. I have learned so much by the hardships of my life, and the emotional and spiritual struggles I have survived. It's like I have this deep, lasting fire inside my heart. I sometimes just want to shake people and say, "can't you see?!" "Can't you feel how much God loves you?" "Can't you open your heart to truth?!" But I don't, of course. And because the passion burns so bright and hot in me, I often hold my tongue. Not because I'm afraid of what will happen to me, but because I'm afraid that by opening my mouth, I'll do more harm to their search for truth than good. Though I so badly want to help.
A wonderfully caring and charitable comment by Glenn in my last post gave me reason to think, to evaluate the message I am sending with this blog. (Thank you for that, Glenn.) Sometimes my posts here seem very self-judgmental and harsh. But they only reveal a small part of who I am. I created this blog, very specifically, to illustrate the hardships of life in a doctrinal sense, to share my journey as a disciple in the hopes that it will bring hope and increase faith in others. These posts do not reveal the entirety of who I am, not even close, but they are the part that is meant for this blog. I have another, which I don't write in as often because many of my most beautiful and sacred moments are so personal, which focuses more on happiness in life and less on the sorrow and struggles. But in this blog, if I can look at my own weakness and failings and still find hope, maybe my example can lead others to hope, keep them from giving up. Sometimes the most beautiful song comes from those with broken wings.
I take my journey on this earth very seriously. I don't have many years here, and this opportunity to learn with an imperfect body and imperfect understanding is all too fleeting. Granted, I often examine my life far too critically. It's something I have always done, ever since I was three years old and my mom had to forbid me from writing my name for a week after finding me banging my head on the desk because I couldn't get one letter to look like hers. Perfectionism is a thorn I have always struggled with.
I have often heard people refer to their missions as their best two years. There is even a movie about it. And I've heard many people mock the idea of a mission being their best two years. Usually because missions are so hard and miserable. Who can honestly enjoy being rejected on an hourly basis, working so hard at something with so little personal reward? You've got to be insane, or brainwashed. Or brain dead.
To be honest, my mission is not the best two-year span anymore, though it was. That honor currently goes to my most recent two years. But directly after my mission, I would have said it was my best two years without any hesitation. Not because it was fun. It was actually pretty terrible. I would explain, but that would be a VERY long blog post. So I'll give a light sampling. Under my first mission president, incredible focus was placed on memorizing the discussions. We were even considered "greenies" (newbie missionaries) until we had memorized and passed off word-for-word the first discussion. (They still had the seven discussions, then.) Eventually, we were expected to memorize them all.
I don't memorize. Generally, I think memorization is a waste of time that undermines comprehension, especially with something like missionary discussions. Being who I used to be, I vociferously refused to do it. (My poor 19-21 year old district leaders really got a workout trying to be my Priesthood leader through the entire duration of my mission. Any of them who still wish to serve God in a priesthood capacity after experiencing mission-me really deserve some kudos.) I did eventually cave, but only because my mission president told me that while I didn't have to do it, it would really help my district leader if I just bent to the unnecessary rule.
The bulk of my mission under this president was an ongoing battle of wills between me, my district/zone leaders, and the mission numbers.
An hour and a half past bedtime, I rocked my weeping 6-year-old daughter. She was really too big to fit into my lap, but I cradled her, folding her in half so I could hold her without my arms giving out. The litany of "everybody hates me" and "Cami/Alexa/Ana/Mia were mean to me" and "I accidently touched someone when I was putting my coat on, so I had to sit in the office for recess" and "I laughed with my friends and my teacher punished me" garbled and mumbled through wild tears had been going on for a little over an hour.
At one point, I wept with her in the dark, silent tears running down my cheeks as I tried to sniff quietly enough she wouldn't notice. It only makes it worse for her when she senses I'm crying too. But by now, I was numb, whispering "there-there's" and "shhh, it'll get better" as if they were magic spells to ward off the pain she was feeling.
I was helpless. Her fears and anxieties were all too familiar.
