Recommend Saga Continues

Especially now that the recommends are good for two years, it’s really easy to lose track of when they expire. Most members who have a temple recommend appreciate the reminder – and it’s critical to remember that. Notifying them a little in advance of or just after expiration can save them the embarrassment of showing up at the temple with an expired recommend or the stress of rushing around at the last minute trying to make special arrangements to renew it. What happened to you is a GREAT thing for most members; it just wasn’t for you. Again, it’s important to be able to see, understand and accept that.

As to your own situation, I’m glad it turned out the way it did – except perhaps for the sharing with the Bishop. However, if the Counselor understands your concerns and felt good about signing your recommend – and if that counselor can share your concerns in the context of his own struggles – and if that can help the Bishop recognize and understand better those who struggle – and it that new understanding helps him be more understanding of and charitable toward members who are struggling – it might be a wonderful thing. Of course, it might not be, but I would try to not let the worry over something that might not happen rob you of the peace that can be there knowing you might have been or be part of helping someone learn and grow.

At the very least, you found someone else who seems to understand of whom you weren’t aware. That’s never a bad thing.

Hi Canadiangirl! I take that all as good news — congrats!

Yes, Ray is exactly right. A few years ago we were visiting family out of state – went to the temple for an important event, and my wife’s recommend had expired! She said “they always call me when it’s time!” She had no idea it had expired and was crushed at (almost) missing the event. Luckily the temple president was able to get our bishop on the phone and issue her a temporary.

If you do get called in I have a couple suggestions. I was also called in when I was “fresh” in my crisis. The bishop was a great guy, said he was comfortable in discussing any question/topic. I appreciated much of what he said, things like “we are supposed to ask questions – you have done nothing wrong.” But I declined to bring up any of the things that were really bothering me. I did not want to get into a discussion that would show how emotional I was on certain topics. I think our emotions on some of these things can be a very bad thing to display. When he asked me what issue troubled me the most I could have easily said something like “Why did Joseph marry Orson Hyde’s wife while Orson was away on his mission to the holy land?” but I knew there are no good answers — at least none that would have satisfied me. I did say “I am unsure about how literally to take some of the stories in the scriptures.” To which he responded “Jesus did teach in parables, didn’t he.” I also said I didn’t want to express something today that I might feel differently about in the future — I was just searching a lot of things out, I was not certain in much of anything. I think that was a great relief to the bishop. I think the greatest fears of a leader for this situation is having someone “flip” and adopt a new certainty that the church is completely false and evil. I didn’t express anything like that and the conversation was a good experience.

He did ask some pointed questions: He asked how I felt about Jesus and the atonement. He asked what I thought about the recent baptism of my child (that I did perform when nobody knew of my questions). I simply tried to answer as positively as I could. I told him I saw those things as “good” and luckily the bishop being a great guy built upon any positive statement that I made and used it to effectively say “look at how much you DO believe!” I do feel very fortunate to have charitable leaders.

Glad it went well Candiangirl. We used to run off temple recommend-expiry reports regularly and for a while my HPGL secretary was in charge of calling people to remind them to get an interview. He was supposed to set up appointments with members of the Bishopric for people in the call, acting almost like an Exec Secretary to the counsellors. However, our HPGL secretary finally told me all he was willing to do was remind people, and not try to set up an appointment. Then he stopped the reminder phone calls altogether.

I wonder how people at StayLDS would feel about getting a call from a secretary in the HPGL inviting them to set an appointment with a Bishop’s counselor for a TR interview?

For now I’ll just try my best to take care of myself, set up some good boundaries and stick to them.

Well, I’m glad things went okay. I think this comment you made is a good approach to it all. I don’t like other people telling me that I need to meet with them or the bishop, so I understand the frustration it must have been. I’m also glad that you could pass the questions, and I’m jealous that you have a NOM in the bishopric. We need more of them.