A decade ago, I was a divorced mother of three -- working, going to school, and far too busy keeping things together to search outside of my own sphere for the faith that had been lost in the midst of the formidable shunning I faced from my church "family" when the word "divorce" moved on the horizon. Even the neighbor who had shared a bedroom wall and had confessed to me in a hushed voice one afternoon in the early autumn as little ones ran raucously around us, "Sometimes, I lay awake at night wondering if I should call the police for you..." couldn't stand to be near me. Had I willingly taken on some viral disease in saying ENOUGH? Did others instinctively know that casualties of love and war are, most often, the innocent bystander?
In the end, I pumped by fist in the air, angry that I had lost the support of my church family in trying to protect my little ones and myself and gave way to every doubt and shadow that had never before formed a question, but now came at me with such force, I laid aside scriptures I had come to trust, the church that I knew, and moved out in to a secular world to find what was real.
The excommunication that began with eyes that would not meet mine and hands that refused mine already outstretched was completed one dark night in winter. At the time, I cried in gratitude for it like a slave who had purchased her own freedom. I had broken the last knot between myself and the man who had held me captive and refused to regret the method.
But, as time passed, my heart longed for home. I was tired of being angry with God. I was able to look back and see that the god I had called Father had been there with me when others had not. He had guided me through one situation after another so that it was not as terrible as it could have been and led me out into the light and the air. I was the one who had rejected it when the color of the sky was not what I expected it to be -- when the table set before me did not include the human embrace I had come to know.
It was not long before I was sent the gift of an angel missionary. She was a Jehovah's Witness and of Him, she was a witness in every word and deed. She came to my home on a weekly basis for several months. She opened her scriptures and shared with me a message of love and light that gently broke through my stubbornness and allowed me to see a truth I hadn't understood before; that our perfect God works through imperfect beings. How could I expect others to be more perfect than myself? How can I require other humans to overcome faulty perceptions, bad habits, and questionable character flaws when I was full of my own? Benjamin Franklin had his 13 Virtues to tackle and spent a lifetime tracking his progress in a small notebook. He often failed. I often fail. Why should expect anyone else to do any better than I do with the tools that we have?
This realization dawned pure and sweet in a way that allowed to forgive even my ex husband's shortcomings...though the residual fears lasted longer. I am free of those now as well.
There was something lacking in my missionary's lessons. There were things Valerie did not know that I remembered. There were scriptures she opened that I realized I had once twisted and she helped me to set them right, but there were others that were left wanting. Where I had once felt too busy to look outside my own sphere, I began searching to fill the deep hunger.
I returned to the church I had once loved. It was painful. I went in wary of "Sunday faces" and demonstrations of surface love -- false and convenient. I knelt in prayer and told God that I wanted to search the gospel on my own. I did not want fellowship. I did not want friendship. If I found faith again, I wanted it to be for me alone and not because of some sense of kinship, membership or family. Thankfully, the area I lived in was happily obliging. The assigned home teachers never came and the visiting teachers came, at times, with judgment, snide looks, and critical comments.
I still smile to think of it.
I needed those women, known as "saints," who looked down on me for being immoral and unchaste as much as I needed my Father's acceptance and the all-encompassing power of the atonement of my Savior, Jesus Christ. I needed to know that my beliefs were my own and that He reaches out to the most imperfect of us with the invitation to "Come, follow me..." be better today than you were yesterday...practice what it is to have flesh and bone, hunger and thirst...meditate on the beauty that walks in tandem with the wretched, the pain that rides on the same edge as pleasure, and the strength that is housed inside what we humans of a limited view call weakness.
Seven years ago, I reentered the waters of baptism. There had been three years of struggle. Three years of searching, reading book after book. Asking questions and not trusting the person I was asking, but taking it directly to God and waiting for His answer in my heart and in my head. Three years of raising daughters without a sense of certainty in anything but my devotion to their becoming whole.
I had married again. I was pregnant with my son. He was the second of two pregnancies that I could not feel from the beginning. I had always supposed my ability to feel and commune with the spirit of a growing child within my womb from the first week of their conception was a gift of my own. I had no idea that it was an extension of the gift of the Holy Ghost to me until the hands of the priesthood bestowed this gift on my head for the second time. I had walked with an ache of emptiness that I did not want to recognize. In my excommunication, I had lost my constant companion and comforter. In its return, the emptiness was filled and my son, my sixth and last, was felt before the flutters of his feet and hands could witness of his livelihood.
What joy!
This year, so many years later, I was finally ready to return to the temple. I had finally come to a place of peace with my own sin and an acceptance of the reality of the priesthood -- the authority of God to act in His name -- being given and administered by hands as imperfect as my own. With the restoration of all of these ordinances, the record of my excommunication has been removed. All of the dates have reverted to the originals and no one need ever know of my wandering. No one need know of the lost, the dark, the bitter portions of my journey. But, this morning, as I moved from dreams to waking, I felt pressed that I should write it down.
This growing process of ours can be a very painful and lonely thing. The moments of delight or gain or achievements do not always fill us the way we believe they will and our darkest hours of excruciating pain (especially those that are not a consequence of our own choices) can actually be the thing that forges the key to the next door of understanding bringing us closer to our truest self and to the Father who created us.
Recently, during a conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, one of the speakers asked "Who would join a church such as this?" and my heart sang. I had goose bumps from head to toe. Little did I know, that President Uchtdorf would openly witness to the world the things that my journey had already taught me about imperfection, about striving to be whole and loving each other through it all, having patience with our shortcomings and accepting our questions. God does not want a blind people.
Life has not stopped being painful. People have not stopped being human. I have not become perfect. I have my own book of virtues that I am keeping track of and often find myself missing the mark I strived for. But, I know God lives and that He loves me. I know that Jesus is the Christ. And that He wants us to be one as a family, bound together in love not just as a feeling but in how we treat each other. I know there is power and protection in the studying the scriptures -- all of them (though my personal favorite right now is the book of Moses found in the Pearl of Great Price). I know that He has not left us alone to wander here on this earth. I know that god, the Father, and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith as a 14 year old boy (was he the only one open to actually ask the question and willing to listen to the answer? I don't know. But fourteen year olds are amazing in their ability to question and desire to do what is right) and restored so much that had been lost. I know that He encourages me to gather truth from all sources and that it is MY responsibility to know for myself, to fill my own oil lamp -- just as it is yours. I know these things and knowing them guides my feet, my hands, and my heart through this journey we call Life.
In the end, I pumped by fist in the air, angry that I had lost the support of my church family in trying to protect my little ones and myself and gave way to every doubt and shadow that had never before formed a question, but now came at me with such force, I laid aside scriptures I had come to trust, the church that I knew, and moved out in to a secular world to find what was real.
The excommunication that began with eyes that would not meet mine and hands that refused mine already outstretched was completed one dark night in winter. At the time, I cried in gratitude for it like a slave who had purchased her own freedom. I had broken the last knot between myself and the man who had held me captive and refused to regret the method.
But, as time passed, my heart longed for home. I was tired of being angry with God. I was able to look back and see that the god I had called Father had been there with me when others had not. He had guided me through one situation after another so that it was not as terrible as it could have been and led me out into the light and the air. I was the one who had rejected it when the color of the sky was not what I expected it to be -- when the table set before me did not include the human embrace I had come to know.
It was not long before I was sent the gift of an angel missionary. She was a Jehovah's Witness and of Him, she was a witness in every word and deed. She came to my home on a weekly basis for several months. She opened her scriptures and shared with me a message of love and light that gently broke through my stubbornness and allowed me to see a truth I hadn't understood before; that our perfect God works through imperfect beings. How could I expect others to be more perfect than myself? How can I require other humans to overcome faulty perceptions, bad habits, and questionable character flaws when I was full of my own? Benjamin Franklin had his 13 Virtues to tackle and spent a lifetime tracking his progress in a small notebook. He often failed. I often fail. Why should expect anyone else to do any better than I do with the tools that we have?
This realization dawned pure and sweet in a way that allowed to forgive even my ex husband's shortcomings...though the residual fears lasted longer. I am free of those now as well.
There was something lacking in my missionary's lessons. There were things Valerie did not know that I remembered. There were scriptures she opened that I realized I had once twisted and she helped me to set them right, but there were others that were left wanting. Where I had once felt too busy to look outside my own sphere, I began searching to fill the deep hunger.
I returned to the church I had once loved. It was painful. I went in wary of "Sunday faces" and demonstrations of surface love -- false and convenient. I knelt in prayer and told God that I wanted to search the gospel on my own. I did not want fellowship. I did not want friendship. If I found faith again, I wanted it to be for me alone and not because of some sense of kinship, membership or family. Thankfully, the area I lived in was happily obliging. The assigned home teachers never came and the visiting teachers came, at times, with judgment, snide looks, and critical comments.
I still smile to think of it.
I needed those women, known as "saints," who looked down on me for being immoral and unchaste as much as I needed my Father's acceptance and the all-encompassing power of the atonement of my Savior, Jesus Christ. I needed to know that my beliefs were my own and that He reaches out to the most imperfect of us with the invitation to "Come, follow me..." be better today than you were yesterday...practice what it is to have flesh and bone, hunger and thirst...meditate on the beauty that walks in tandem with the wretched, the pain that rides on the same edge as pleasure, and the strength that is housed inside what we humans of a limited view call weakness.
Seven years ago, I reentered the waters of baptism. There had been three years of struggle. Three years of searching, reading book after book. Asking questions and not trusting the person I was asking, but taking it directly to God and waiting for His answer in my heart and in my head. Three years of raising daughters without a sense of certainty in anything but my devotion to their becoming whole.
I had married again. I was pregnant with my son. He was the second of two pregnancies that I could not feel from the beginning. I had always supposed my ability to feel and commune with the spirit of a growing child within my womb from the first week of their conception was a gift of my own. I had no idea that it was an extension of the gift of the Holy Ghost to me until the hands of the priesthood bestowed this gift on my head for the second time. I had walked with an ache of emptiness that I did not want to recognize. In my excommunication, I had lost my constant companion and comforter. In its return, the emptiness was filled and my son, my sixth and last, was felt before the flutters of his feet and hands could witness of his livelihood.
What joy!
This year, so many years later, I was finally ready to return to the temple. I had finally come to a place of peace with my own sin and an acceptance of the reality of the priesthood -- the authority of God to act in His name -- being given and administered by hands as imperfect as my own. With the restoration of all of these ordinances, the record of my excommunication has been removed. All of the dates have reverted to the originals and no one need ever know of my wandering. No one need know of the lost, the dark, the bitter portions of my journey. But, this morning, as I moved from dreams to waking, I felt pressed that I should write it down.
This growing process of ours can be a very painful and lonely thing. The moments of delight or gain or achievements do not always fill us the way we believe they will and our darkest hours of excruciating pain (especially those that are not a consequence of our own choices) can actually be the thing that forges the key to the next door of understanding bringing us closer to our truest self and to the Father who created us.
Recently, during a conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, one of the speakers asked "Who would join a church such as this?" and my heart sang. I had goose bumps from head to toe. Little did I know, that President Uchtdorf would openly witness to the world the things that my journey had already taught me about imperfection, about striving to be whole and loving each other through it all, having patience with our shortcomings and accepting our questions. God does not want a blind people.
Life has not stopped being painful. People have not stopped being human. I have not become perfect. I have my own book of virtues that I am keeping track of and often find myself missing the mark I strived for. But, I know God lives and that He loves me. I know that Jesus is the Christ. And that He wants us to be one as a family, bound together in love not just as a feeling but in how we treat each other. I know there is power and protection in the studying the scriptures -- all of them (though my personal favorite right now is the book of Moses found in the Pearl of Great Price). I know that He has not left us alone to wander here on this earth. I know that god, the Father, and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith as a 14 year old boy (was he the only one open to actually ask the question and willing to listen to the answer? I don't know. But fourteen year olds are amazing in their ability to question and desire to do what is right) and restored so much that had been lost. I know that He encourages me to gather truth from all sources and that it is MY responsibility to know for myself, to fill my own oil lamp -- just as it is yours. I know these things and knowing them guides my feet, my hands, and my heart through this journey we call Life.
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