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Well, I was feeling good about the church thing for a while. Went to some meetings, taught some lessons……and then I hit the wall again. I determined not to go for a few weeks and used my sudden flu and vacation the next weekend to explain my absense. Last week, I felt the emptiness but still didn’t feel I could go. Just wanted to stay outside the bubble. Didn’t want to get sucked back in. Don’t feel like I have friends there anyway…. And then yesterday happened. I had been working on the question all week in my prayers, but not really knowing it. Just sending all my concerns heavenward in habit like I usually do. I went to bed Sat. night thinking I wouldn’t go and woke Sunday feeling so free…..like I could go anywhere and be ok with me and where I was. I felt light inside and so I grabbed my skirt and went. It was testimony meeting so I got out my scriptures and made ready to distract myself when the testimonies got too lame. But they never did. It was a fabulous faith restoring testimony meeting. Each person said something meaningful and spirit filled and a selected few touched exactly on some of my current concerns. I got all teary and I felt grateful as I remembered a line from my PB telling me stuff like this would happen when I had a need. You ever feel like some things are custom fit for you? This Sunday felt like that for me. Even Sunday school addressed questions I had about the patriarchal order and the proclamation on the family. It was like the Spirit highlighted certain comments for me and guided them right to my center. Make sense?
I realized at the end of the night that I am running out of reasons to stay away. My concerns about Christ…..I don’t know how but they are somehow not as important to me anymore. I can’t even use the same language to describe my feelings. I look for the pain….can’t find it. But I am scared a bit though. What will happen if I do get completely committed again? If I don’t have my concerns to lean on? Or maybe I don’t need to be committed….. Well, I think I do. I feel like a hypocrite and I don’t like that. I don’t wanna go to the temple unless I am completely committed. Yet the spirit invites me to go anyway…… BLAH!! What am I so afraid of? What is my problem? I am a free agent! I am making each choice carefully and willingly. God has been with me every step of the way. Why can’t I trust that inside the bubble as I trust it now? I just don’t wanna lose what I have gained on my journey. I don’t wanna go back to sounding like a TBM….and I know I already do and that kinda makes me want to throw up.
Is there anyone here that feels like this?
I think I kind of feel similar in many ways, poppy. Times I wanted to stay away and the feeling of freedom and relief that gave me, yet something would pull me back…sometimes just my kids needing rides to church…and some of those times I felt incredibly uplifted. Those times remind me there is the spirit working in the church…despite my other troubles with the church, I can’t deny the Spirit is working there. And that keeps me connected. I realize now that I enjoy studying and learning more about church history and finding truth, and I don’t see things the same way many others do. And there are still times when I have an empty day of church…so I think there are just more mountains and valleys, ups and downs, with my experience. But as long as I continue to have the mountains…I’m ok with the valleys. Thanks for sharing your day…it helps remind me I’ve had those times at church recently too. Yesterday was not one of them, but I do remember there have been some recently.
I would not let yourself feel like a hypocrite to stay away from the temple. God knows your heart and your prayers are reaching Him, so if you are being prompted to attend the temple, I would go with hopes you come out even better than going in.
Wow Poppyseed, it is so strange but so often you write something that I can totally relate to. I went to church (all 3 meetings) which is a miracle in itself as I have only been going to RS lately. The 3 people who I usually can’t stand bearing their testimonies, gave the best testimonies ever yesterday. One, was a man who team teaches GD class and seems so full of himself, was so humble this time and said, “I am a convert and had to fight hard for my testimony, and I want to tell those of you who have doubts and struggle with your testimony; please hang in there! It will come and you will be glad you stayed.” The other two people ( a black man, married to a white woman) got about and shared how they came to the church. The black man said he did not know that blacks could not have the priesthood or go to the temple when he joined the church (missionaries somehow left that out). He was shocked to find this out and was going to leave the church when the Lord gave him powerful visions of his love for black people and to humble himself and stay in the church. His wife said that two years before she met her husband, she had been very interested in following the ideals of Martin Luther King. As she was writing in her journal at that time she had a strong feeling that she would marry a black man some day. She forgot about it until she met her present husband. She said her parents and so many friends and members told her not to marry him because the church and society did not approve of interracial marriages. But, she knew what God told her that day she wrote in her journal. Anyway, it was all so uplifting and spiritual yesterday. So, I know what you mean Poppyseed. It’s so scarry to get drawn in again and you do not want to loose perspective. I too struggle with the temple, yet feel drawn to try and go again. Yet, I am so scared that I will get disappointed again.
This is a marvellous post. I would add to it my Sunday School experience where for a number of logical reasons my class of 12 teenagers ended up being just 1 teenage girl. In such situations a totally prepared lesson is just so stilted so in essence we started with the scriptures I was going to use in class, all from Isaiah on “the desert blosoming like the rose” and then we just wandered off in discussion and questions and sharing of what we were interested in around those scriptures. It was a very spiritual time for me and much appreciated. I think some of your fears can be seen and probably should be seen as at least the beginning of transistion into Fowler’s stage 5 . You’ve taken responsibility for your situation and your doubts and now are moving to the “conjunctive” stage where you can juggle the paradoxes without getting all messed up. Keep it up, live each moment, take a look at Ray’s latest point on “expectations” and realize that it is OK to worry but that you will be able to balance it. I realized this to a certain extent at sacrament meeting when the predictable “I know the Church is TRUE” didn’t grate on my nerves quite so much, I can sort of sense where they are coming from and don’t feel irritated.
Hey, poppy. I don’t know if this is relevant to your current mind-set/situation but something someone once said popped into my head when I was reading your post:
“Perfectionism hasn’t served me. I think I am done with it.”
Love ya!
😳 You are a good friend to have Swim. Thanks for using my words against me! 
I know I have that perfectionistic tendancy in my thinking. I hope I am not as bad as I used to be. I think more than that I am trying to establish spiritual health right along with my emotional health. You know what I mean? I want to find a balance……one that is based in as much truth as possible. I know I can’t understand everything. I clearly don’t. I just want to make sure I don’t get sucked back into the vortex or get lost because I can’t demonstrate some form of valiance in my testimony. I also want to be on good terms with God. I also don’t want to triffle with spiritual things or turn against where He is leading me. I was chastized by the Lord once concerning the temple and I certainly don’t want to have that experience again! And I know I am a little bit of a flimsy fish right now. I think I might be in that yucky luke warm place. I am not satisfied staying out….I am not sure how to fit myself in. All this redefining of oneself…..its a lot of work. you know?
Quote:I am not satisfied staying out….I am not sure how to fit myself in.
Don’t worry about how to fit in. Just be yourself, and if there are ways you don’t fit, that’s OK. The only right reasons to be there are your own reasons, so whether you fit or not doesn’t really matter.
I really identified with your comments – sometimes I go to church and I look around and I just think – these are some really great people. I just like being associated with so many of them. They are committed to their families and to living a good life. They are just good people.
Thanks for sharing that stream of consciousness post from your recent experience. I enjoy seeing things like that through other people’s eyes. I learn a lot, often things I never noticed. It’s nice to hear people having good experiences with reconciliation. Poppyseed wrote:I was chastized by the Lord once concerning the temple and I certainly don’t want to have that experience again!
Can you tell me about this? I am struggling about the temple alot right now.
Poppyseed wrote:I also want to be on good terms with God. I also don’t want to triffle with spiritual things or turn against where He is leading me. I think I might be in that yucky luke warm place. I am not satisfied staying out….I am not sure how to fit myself in. All this redefining of oneself…..its a lot of work. you know?
I do know poppy. I’ve been detouring into some blah periods of my journey too.
There was something that really helped me reconcile my emotional health with my spiritual health: looking inward to find God rather than upward. We tend to send our prayers up, we look into the starry night sky and tell Him what we’re thinking. I’ve adjusted that. I know God is in me. He made me for heaven’s sake, of course He’s in me. That light, that goodness you can feel in your chest where you know your heart is (even though we’ve never seen our heart, like we’ve never seen God but we know He’s in there).
It may feel too radical but I have felt the potential of perfect harmony between my emotional health and my spiritual health by changing my eternal perspective from the idea of a galaxy far, far away in the distant future to a vision of the quiet recesses of my heart where God and my soul can lean back on a park bench and discuss what a beautiful day it is today. And, how good it is to be alive.
Heber13 wrote:I would not let yourself feel like a hypocrite to stay away from the temple. God knows your heart and your prayers are reaching Him, so if you are being prompted to attend the temple, I would go with hopes you come out even better than going in.
I think you are right. I think I need to go to the temple. I somehow feel like I don’t belong there…but I don’t have any worthiness issue other than the fact that I don’t go to church sometimes and that I haven’t been to the temple! But I really really need to feel close to God right now in my life. I feel empty and alone and weak. I am not feeling the spirit so much lately and I hate that feeling more than anything. And I have my little list of struggles that seem to beset me way to easily. They are embarrassing and amazingly hard for me and I just need help! I wanna get away from the world and feel strengthened by deity in a way that man can’t offer. Sometimes I just look at myself and know sadly that I can’t do it alone anymore. I can’t live on the internet. I can’t isolate myself anymore. There was a time when that was theraputic, but I feel now that it no longer works for me. I find myself hesitating because I know I am not living the way I feel I should to spiritually prepare myself to enter the temple. I am not studying the scriptures as I usually do. I have gotten rather lazy in my worship. There is only one temple recommend question I still struggle to answer fully and I do struggle with attending church, but I think my reasons on that are more social than anything. If I felt more friendship and inclusion, I think I would attend without worrying much like Hawkgirl suggests. I am so close to that place, Hawk, I can almost taste it! Maybe if God could help me with the social stuff…..with these last fragments of my pain….then I could participate and be ok with myself in the process.
I think I need to use my own words against me too… my own signature quote. I think I am standing still. I gotta stop that!
Ok. I am praying about this and I am going to ask my H to go with me to the temple. I will tell you how it goes. OMStars. Here I go…….
bridget_night wrote:Poppyseed wrote:I was chastized by the Lord once concerning the temple and I certainly don’t want to have that experience again!
Can you tell me about this? I am struggling about the temple alot right now.
You know…..it was a really personal experience and I am not sure I feel comfortable sharing it online. But I will share that I was taught a little about how important it is to be worthy before one enters into the presence of the Lord. Those truths were made absolutely clear to me in a message that was filled with so much love and so much justice that I really don’t have the words to adequately explain. It was one of those experiences that was rather unpleasant in some ways and incredibly enlightening and that actually confirms the truth of the LDS faith in ways I can’t deny.
Does that help?
Pops, Awesome, thanks for sharing that.
My Ggrandfather had a visitation of Christ. He said that he felt incredible heat, and simultaneously (ok, some editorializing on my part) he ‘paid the price’ for all his past, unrepented sins— right there on the spot. It was a necessary price to pay for the privilege of embracing the Savior.
He was shown his life, past and future. There was much he did not say about the experience.
Afterward, he said he was still filled with the Glory of God and felt as though the flesh would melt from his bones. He literally went down to the Virgin River (southern Utah) and washed there to cool off. For months afterward, he would remember the experience and the Spirit would return to him full force. That effect eventually went away, over time.
Thank God he kept a journal.
HiJolly
Thanks Poppyseed and Jolly…..that did help.
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