Change…

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

In the process, I developed certain expectations.

They include:

– God would protect me & my family physically & spiritually.

– If God didn’t protect us, He would answer our prayers.

– If He didn’t answer our prayers, He would give us peace or understanding why it occurred.

– If He didn’t give me peace or understanding, He would provide the Leadership of my Ward or Stake to give me understanding.

In those four expectations you have encapsulated my faith crisis. The main trigger for my crisis is one of the things on your list of what I might call major life traumas. Based on church teachings one might expect the things on your list to be absolutely correct. Except in my case none of them happened and nearly 20 years later still haven’t. There’s no question I changed, however – and I have none of those expectations any more. My bar of expectations for God is very low, perhaps non-existent – and that seems to work for both of us for the past few years. From a certain point of view, if I expect so little from God, God should expect very little of me.

[Anonymous]

Changes that have had the most profound influence on my life

a) Joining the Church. This caused upheaval in my non-member family, absorbed a good chunk of my twenties in getting the money together and serving, and then determined who I married to some extent. All life-changing experiences. My current job is because a well-meaning church member helped me pursue a Master’s degree in Business, which led to my current profession of 25 years.

b) Scaling back the church. After a number of faith-detracting experiences, my leaving the “comfort” and “discomfort” of being a traditional believer really changed my life. I ended up with a lot more time to pursue service opportunities I loved and increased the overall happiness in my life.

c) EMDR Therapy and Mood medicine. After a lifetime of struggling to be happy, I went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed Symbiaz and Zanax. Massive changes in my personality and improvement in my relationships resulted, as well as some pretty good emotional stability. The directive from my doctor that my lack of happiness over the years was due to a chemical imbalance was also liberating. I thought it was my personality, but it was my imbalance of happy juices in my brain that caused it. Life is SO MUCH BETTER when you have emotional stability!!!

The EMDR therapy helped me also deal with disconcerting church experiences. One in particular, a nasty note written by a YW Counselor and sent to the entire Ward leaders (full of personal attacks), I learned to actually appreciate and gain peace over. I learned that doing what she did, this woman pushed me to look at the church differently, saving me thousands of dollars and a lot of time invested in what I now believe were questionable service efforts. I had a lot of other “revelations” (of the non-religious kind) through EMDR therapy that have helped me deal with past abuses from other people…

[Anonymous]

SD, I’ve never heard of EMDR Therapy. Then again, there a lot of things I’ve never heard about. It sounds like it’s

working for you. That’s the important thing.

My wife & I are in our mid 70’s. When we entered retirement, we thought we could do a number of things we put off over

the years. For example, travel, etc. As time went rolling along, we developed physical, mental & emotional problems that

put everything on hold. Today, I woke to find a burner on the stove was turned on high. My DW doesn’t remember doing it.

She accuses me of really strange things like having 13 wives who I bring to the house when she’s asleep. These are just a few

of the examples of the changes our lives are going through.

Nothing in the gospel prepares you for issues like this. There are very few solutions or remedies in the world at large.

And there are few people to talk to about it. I’m not looking for sympathy or solutions from this forum. I’m just venting

a little & warning you, this maybe in your future too. Try to prepare for the change if you can.

[Anonymous]

Thank you MM.

With the birth of each of my three children I thought that I had prepared. Each time it was so different from what had come before that I was caught off guard.

I think there is a lesson in this. Prepare for what you can and stay humble enough to realize that life will still send you surprises despite your best efforts to map out your destiny.

[Author]

Posts