I Want the Church to Make Me Happy

Ptree wrote: “Which leads me to main questions I’ve been having lately. What in the church makes you happy? How did you come to find that they brought you happiness? How do you let those things that bring you happiness not get “tainted” by the things in the church that don’t make you happy? I am in need of some other perspectives.”

I have read your posting a couple times without leaving a comment. I couldn’t get past the title, “I want the church to make me happy”

Unfortunately, I cannot think of any organization in the world that can give happiness to an individual. Happiness is an internal emotion and ofttime, it is a choice we make. It cannot be given to anyone. Church structure is set up to organize a tight community of support, to promote healthy family dynamics, and individual study/prayer. When we find a community that we feel part of, a family that we feel embraced by, and a positive spiritual relationship with God, we feel a sense of belonging and a certain contentment comes with that. It is a joy.

I have known other people who had major losses while on their missions. Their grief was often delayed. Grief was put on hold until they returned home. Suddenly, going home, the loss was real. Grief set in. The problem with that situation is that everyone else in their lives has already being working on the grief process for quite a while. Your grief feels brand new. Even after a few years, your grief path can still be very different from those whose grief was not delayed.

After our oldest daughter died, someone gave us good advice. Another berieved parent told us, “Today you are losing your daughter. Too often, when you lose someone, you become so focused on the loss that you end up losing much more. You are in jeopardy of losing your job, your marriage, your faith, your other children, your friends. Everything. You need to decide early. How much are you willing to lose?”

We decided that we had lost enough. We have tried very hard to hold on tightly to other important relationships in our lives.

Right now you are angry. Be angry. Feel it. But don’t get so caught up in the anger that you lose more than your mom. You are setting yourself up to lose your father too. Too often, then sibling relationships suffer, your entire family becomes estranged from you.

Sit down and seriously ask yourself “I have lost my mom, how much more am I willing to lose?” I hope the answer is “I don’t want to lose anything else”. Hold onto everything else. Both hands. Hold on. Embrace the people in your life. Feel the pain, and embrace them anyway because you have lost enough.

Polygamy isn’t my favorite topic. And yet, there is a fairly good chance that if your mom and step-mom knew each other in life, they could’ve been really had a wonderful relationship as friends. Allow that.

Lastly, big long hug coming from this mom to you. A plate of cookies too.

I didn’t read the opening post title as someone wanting to sit back and let the church. For me, it was more like ‘I want to be happy with my church experience’. Good questions at end…

What makes me happy about church? How the youth standards bring me peace. My daughter has embraced them and I never worry about drinking, pregnancy. She likes being a Mormon and it makes her happy. I look at it as vicarious happiness.

I prevent it from making me unhappy by putting my own reasoning above church reasoning…after I consider what the church says. Much better. I don’t feel pushed into doing things anymore.

U do not have to worry about plural marriage right now. It may not even happen in the eternities. Also reflect on your father’s happiness as a result of being remarried. Ultimately all that matters is what is happening right now. I know we plan for the future, but if plural marriage is a reality, u cannot do anything about it, and its not an issue right now in our mortal life. Maddening when u think of the implications for women and how it may have been justification for JS philandering. But as far as your mother and step mother are concerned , it is not anything you have to deal with right now.

I don’t claim to be good at that kind of thinking…here and now. But i read The Power of Now and and found that worrying about today really helps, and putting the future u can’t control out of your mind can bring peace. It gets easier the more adversity one experiences and gets fatigued with all the angst and worry.

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Which leads me to main questions I’ve been having lately. What in the church makes you happy? How did you come to find that they brought you happiness? How do you let those things that bring you happiness not get “tainted” by the things in the church that don’t make you happy? I am in need of some other perspectives.

I really agree with Ann when she says

to disconnect what I also consider mistaken mortal LDS polygamy from your situation

, and as you may have read on this website or others, a good perspective is to view things differently than you did before so you can separate out the things that really bother you (polygamy) with things that are wonderful (love and service in the church).

Just because you can find love and service and kindness in other places in the world besides the church doesn’t mean the church doesn’t have it too. Is it the only place? Nope. Maybe that is something the Lord wants us to learn to be more compassionate and empathetic…how much real goodness there is outside of mormonism that we can look for, find, embrace, and bring back to our LDS experiences.

To do that is a process, because not all the things that bug you are things that bug me (even if we both detest polygamy), so I can’t tell you to follow my path. In fact, no one can. But there are some general things that are helpful.

1. Separate out things that are gospel related from non-gospel. Some things are just life and the way you’ve grown up seeing things…not really the gospel but over time we assume it is. Peel things back one at at time and study out what really is the gospel, and what you may just believe was, and what you hear others say on Sunday…which are not all the same. Conservative political views, while talked about in church, are not gospel.

2. Begin to embrace paradox, where some thing can be true, but also not true. Many times that is because there are many facets to something…not just black and white. For example, the temple may be a peaceful, holy place AND it may promote treating women poorly by making them veil their faces. Those two things may be happening at the same time. I don’t like one AND I like the other. It is imperfect. It may change some day. They may impact different people in various ways because of it. Sealing families is beautiful AND polygamy is ugly. These things are tricky. But i choose to cling to the good while working through or even disbelieving the bad.

3. Stay balanced. Look for the good. If you only start to look for the bad in the church, you will find it. If you cannot find any good at all…that is telling you something about your state of mind, because there is goodness in the church. I know some people are too hurt to stay, and I understand that, and I accept that as a real option for many. But, I find lots of good, enough to make it worth my while to stay, and benefit from it…despite how I hate the polygamy background, and lots of quirky historical stuff I reject. I learn to put that in it’s place. I learn to be cafeteria because it requires me to be so. If I focus on what I do need to believe in, than many tenets become less important to my testimony. What worked for me was to keep reading the Book of Mormon and reading conference talks while also reading things that were from outside church sources. I wanted both views so I could feel what I want to believe.

4. Finally, take a deep breath. You can survive this. There is an OK outcome…if you follow your heart and seek peace in life. There are hard decisions to make, but there is a peaceful outcome available in time.

This is a safe place to come and post your thoughts. I hope to learn more from you as you share your story.

I’ve been doing some research lately on polygamy and it’s been really good. I’ve found the best place to look is at the source – pioneer journals. It seems most people who faced having to live with polygamy felt the same way you do – even more so. They told Joseph he was a fallen prophet, that they thought he was insane and that they would never live it. One brother of a potential wife told Joseph that if he found out Joseph was doing this for nefarious reasons, he would kill him himself. In all the cases I read, Joseph calmly told them to get a testimony of it themselves directly from God. So they did and every one had some kind of spiritual manifestation or vision where they saw the true reality of the principle and then they were fine with it – usually the next morning. That was comforting to me to know that it’s ok not to be ok with the principle until God shows you more than you know now. I wanted my own testimony of it and have interacted with God a few times on the matter. He told me to keep studying and reading original accounts, so I did. Finally He gave me the answer that I had studied enough but that this was not the time to receive a full testimony of it but that I would get a testimony of it when it was most prudent. I’m ok with that. It’s not like I’m being asked to live it and if I were asked to, I wouldn’t until God changed me and showed me the truth of it. FairMormon is a good place to learn more about it. That’s where I did.

What in the church makes you happy? How did you come to find that they brought you happiness? How do you let those things that bring you happiness not get “tainted” by the things in the church that don’t make you happy? I am in need of some other perspectives.

For me, the gospel isn’t about being happy right now, but being happy eternally. It’s kind of like asking “What in the dentist’s office makes you happy?” Well, not a whole lot because we’re drilling out cavities and fixing stuff there so I can have a happy mouth afterward. Certainly I have happiness in the gospel when I see progress in myself because of trials and when I see my kids progress through tough times and sometimes when I can nail an answer in Elder’s Quorum that really helps all of us rethink things. But the more I dive into the gospel, the more it seems to be about becoming free – and going from slavery to freedom isn’t a happy trip always – it’s hard most of the time with happiness sprinkled here and there.

I have received knowledge that God hears every word of every prayer I say, that Christ knows exactly how I feel, that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God. Each one of those has a long story that goes with it. I have found that when I’m keeping my testimonies of these things strong (by reading, praying, serving, following, repenting, etc.) the things that bother me fade away. I’ve learned that it’s pretty arrogant to assert deep knowledge of anything that hasn’t been handed directly to my spirit by the Holy Spirit and therefore everything takes faith and so if my faith in the main things is strong, doubts in other things is diminished and they become non-issues. If I stop feeding my main testimonies, the doubts in the other things becomes stronger and my faith leans away from the truth and I start assuming bad things instead of good things where I have no information. I’ve rarely (never?) heard of someone with doubts having received those doubts from the Holy Ghost. It’s usually opinion mingled with doubt after neglecting the main testimonies. I hope all this rambling made some sense.

That’s all great, rcronk, as long as you are willing to recognize that God’s interactions with you are not like God’s interactions with anyone else. That is, your experiences are not the same as anyone else’s experiences. And, of course, we need to take into account the plague of confirmation bias (an individual wants it to be true, so it is). A classic example of the latter happened to a young lady (RM) who grew up in our ward. She was dating a guy at BYU who, after two months, prayed about it testified to her that God had revealed to him that she was “the one.” Thing is, she had prayed about it too – and got a completely different answer.

And I would have to say that not all that were aware with polygamy were able to receive such a confirmation, such as William Law. Read “The Polygamous Wives Writing Club: From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women” and not all of them are faith affirming. The biggest take away I get is if someone believes that God wants them to make an Abrahamic sacrifice to show God how much they love him, then they are more likely to go along with Polygamy since it is so painful. Even some of the most ardent women supporters have journals filled with, “oh how this hurts, but I am showing God I am worthy of his trust”. If you are not so much feeling that God wants that kind of sacrifice, it is much more likely that you would not be so gung ho.

That’s all great, rcronk, as long as you are willing to recognize that God’s interactions with you are not like God’s interactions with anyone else. That is, your experiences are not the same as anyone else’s experiences. And, of course, we need to take into account the plague of confirmation bias (an individual wants it to be true, so it is). A classic example of the latter happened to a young lady (RM) who grew up in our ward. She was dating a guy at BYU who, after two months, prayed about it testified to her that God had revealed to him that she was “the one.” Thing is, she had prayed about it too – and got a completely different answer.

I was a hedonistic atheist for 6 years, so my confirmation bias is broken. I also got a different marriage answer than my ex girlfriend did. Mine was a big stupor of thought, her’s wasn’t. I believe that God condescends to our lives uniquely and so we all get unique treatment in whatever way we need it, but I also believe that God is principle-based and so is reliable in those ways too.

[Admin Note]: This thread will not turn into another polygamy discussion. We have enough of them already, and they can be bumped up for further discussion, if desired.

This post won’t be closed, since it is a very personal post; any more comments about polygamy will be deleted, instead.