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I am trying to make a long story short, let’s see if my poor writing skills can keep up. My DH finally seemed to see some of the things at church that have been making life hard for me there for several years. He refused to go to church this week and has no intention, he says of going for a while. I feel so bad for him. I have been dealing with this for a while, but it is new and devastating to him. I guess the last few judgmental and outright mean things that have happened to me and my children and last week to him were just to in his face to ignore anymore. Part of it is that I opened my mouth and disagreed with the wrong person in RS about a month ago. I said I did not feel like my “place” was in the home and that I and other women had more talents and abilities than JUST being a mother, and we should develop and use them. FYI I am not part of OW and I thought I made that clear in my statement. It was quite a to-do with the teacher yelling ALL we were are mothers and other women saying people that thought this way needed to be more simple minded and obedient.
I talked to the teacher outside of church and said I was sorry I had derailed her lesson and I thought we were ok. But the last week she went to the GP class DH teaches and was horrible to him during the class saying he was out of line and inappropriate in his teaching. He had no idea what was going on he did not see anything wrong with what he was saying, no one else has ever had a problem with his lessons. I was in primary with my youngest who refuses to go because the whole year she has never been reverent enough to pick from the prize box that one child in the class gets to pick from. Talking to the leaders there didn’t do anything so when I sat in with her for the whole time they let her pick.
My other child who is rather shy comes home from church and YW most every time in tears because she doesn’t fit in and the girls make fun of her. We have been inviting some of them over one at a time so she can make better friends, but when the group is together it is hard for them to hang out with her. YW this week was hard for her as she was going to recite a poem for a talent show. She did great, but then a leader asked if she wrote the poem. She did not write it. The leader expressed disappointment and said that she guessed it was ok she did not write it but it would have been so much better if she had. DD was less upset than I was about it, she said people say dumb stuff all the time so whatever, it was not like the girls who performed music wrote that either. I was so proud of her attitude.
I am frustrated that all of the sudden DH has decided he is done. These sorts of things are the norm for me and the kids, he just never seemed to believe anything was really wrong it was just my bad attitude. I have been working and praying and trying so hard to make this work for a long time. I just agreed to have a calling again and the bishop was going to sustain me this week. Now DH is mad and so we are all done? I suggested we try to go to another ward for a while. He said he would think about it. Maybe I should just use this opportunity to take our family away from the church for a while. Ok, rant over
:silent: Yikes. Sounds like the RS sister was out to exact some revenge on your DH. Hopefully that’s out of her system? I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me but I’m sorry for the negative experiences you and your family are going through.
I’m sorry you and your family have experienced this. A couple thoughts as I read through your post: You and your husband are not necessarily connected as far a church attendance goes. Just because he doesn’t want to go any more or for a while doesn’t mean you have to stay home, too. You could still accept your calling, but please don’t if you have no intention of fulfilling at least the minimal requirements.
Going to a different ward might not be a bad thing. I don’t know where you live, but here in the northeast local leaders seem to be quite a bit more lax about the idea than they apparently are in Utah. If you are actually going to church to be uplifted, this would seem to be a viable option.
Lastly, have you talked to your bishop? Is he aware of these things? Not that he can fix everything, but sometimes bishops can help.
I am very sorry for your difficulty. Quite a few of us have had bad experiences in church – from ostracism to outright bullying and worse. I do wonder if visiting another ward might bring you some relief. I hope you and your husband find a measure of peace for your family in whatever course you decide to take together.
Thanks for the support. I am going to give him some time to see if he still wants to not go back to our ward. I think trying a different ward would be nice. We have visited another ward as part of DH’s calling a few times recently and my kids have said they really liked it. The ward we visited was lots smaller and a much better income mix than the very well off ward we live in. I don’t think the leadership in my stake would be ok with us trying a new ward, but we are close enough to another stake to try one of their wards. I can still do my calling even if we do not attend our ward. This bishop was great talking with me about some of my struggles a little while ago, he very nicely suggested this small calling that does not require working with many people because I said I felt bad about not contributing. It is just frustrating I have spent so much time and work on making this work, both for my family and because I wanted to find a way to stay, and he decides one day he has had enough and gives up all together. Everything is not fixed, but I felt like some things were getting better. DH says we don’t fit the right mold and he is done dealing with it. Funny enough I have had to deal with a bunch of nastiness from people as pay back for things he did in a calling. I think this is the first time it has happened to him because of something I have done.
I am sorry you are going through this. It is very hard to want to attend church when bad feelings exist. We should be going to church to uplift ourselves and others, and if that is not happening what is the point? But please DO NOT stop going because of other people. If this church brings you happiness, and you believe in the teachings don’t let other people stand in your way. Your salvation, happiness and desire to worship belong to you and never let anyone take that away from you. If you want to attend a different ward then do so. Leadership can pressure you to return to your own ward, but they cannot make you. If you attend a ward outside of your boundaries, you cannot hold a calling, you are assigned HT and VT within your home ward, and you pay tithing through your home BP. Depending on how cool your adopted ward leadership is, you can substitute in a calling….every week if they need you. Let’s see….volunteer to sub primary whenever they need one, let the RS know you would be willing to take dinner to someone, show up at service projects, sign up to clean the building, let the sisters know that you would be willing to tag along on VT if their companions can’t make it. I think you would be plenty involved if you want to be.
Never, ever let other people bully you out of your place in the church. It is yours if you want it, and you deserve it.
When I was younger, I never got along with the girls or even the guys in my Primary and YW. I very rarely went to mutual and only went to the big summer activities because I liked going on adventures, and for the most part, the leaders were very nice to me. The ward was also generally very well-off, and all the YW were athletes and cheerleaders and student body officers, and I was a liberal arts freak. Several times, I went to my friends’ wards and mutual activities instead, and I absolutely loved it there. I wished many times that somehow I would get transferred to their wards instead. I think going to a new ward would be great for your family. In fact, I really encourage it. Your mental health is more important than trying to force people to behave like good people.
I would allow you husband time to work through his feelings. continue in the little calling you’ve been given, and support your children in going. Don’t’ force him to do anything. Consider sharing the impact of the volley of criticism he received from that sister from RS with a a member of the Bishopric if you want. It might raise awareness of the impact stupid comments have on members who are active. Don;t rule out a bit of time away — for the sake of not setting a bad precedent, instead of sitting at home on Sunday, consider going away for the weekend so you have an apparently valid reason to be away. I wouldn’t rule out attending a different Ward. My ward is full of crazies and that is what I have done. it’s worked out OK, I guess, but you don’t get fully accepted until your records are in that Ward.
Outofstep wrote:Never, ever let other people bully you out of your place in the church. It is yours if you want it, and you deserve it.
Thanks for this. I have thought this way for a couple of years, and it is one of the things I used to help me be able to stay. But I may have been so wrapped up in what I was feeling that it took me longer than it should have to see how hard it was on the rest of my family.West – thank you for sharing this, I believe this is how my teenager feels too. It is hard to tell as she sometimes says what she think I want to hear instead of what she want. But I think that is just part of being her age.
🙄 SilentDawning – Thanks for this idea. I did make plans for the few weekends after conference for us to go out of town. The kids were excited when I suggested we go to church where we are going. It was good to know from them it is not the church as a whole that they are frustrated with, just the current situation. DH just needs some time, I don’t think he knows what he wants. I don’t know if I should say anything to anyone or not, the other 20 people in the room heard it too. This BP may be different, when I went to the last one with something that was going on with me a while ago he said the people were just jealous of me (I had a hard time seeing that) and there was nothing he could do. Callings changed and they moved on to someone else and things got better after a while. There are a bunch of great families and some that I was friends with that have moved or “moved” away in the last couple of years for suspect reasons. A few who have had to move away for more solid reasons have come back and been so sad that things were not the same in the new ward and they missed ours. I guess every ward has it’s own little sub culture that attracts or repels certain people. Luckily, even though we are not in the West this city has several wards that are not too far away.
Quote:West – thank you for sharing this, I believe this is how my teenager feels too. It is hard to tell as she sometimes says what she think I want to hear instead of what she want. But I think that is just part of being her age.
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Very likely.
About a decade ago I was having similar trouble at church. This weekend my children now in their 20’s came home for a visit and they are such accomplished, pleasant, interesting and amusing people. They exceed all expectations even though many in the ward thought that by this time they would be on drugs, in jail, etc. You have a bright future. A Jewish friend told me a proverb I can’t recall exactly but something like- when suffering, count your blessings, it could be worse. My children were kicked out of church dozens of times, physically abused at church (slapped, shaken and hair pulled by adults). At times they would not attend meetings or were very disruptive. A good friend in the ward came to me seeking forgiveness for his part in ward counsel when they talked about my family, saying horrible untrue things about us and made specific plans to try and save our children from us by doubling down on them at church since we parents were beyond redemption.
Very early in the game (age 1 of the oldest) my wife and I realized we were incompetent parents and we sought professional help. We learned a child rearing approach called positive discipline from the field of cognitive therapy which requires more effort but works better in the end. Most traditional approaches rely heavily on negative disciple, threats, raised voices, appeals to authority instead of reason, and are associated with various problems such as meanness in the children. Our children were not trained to respond to negative discipline; when people at church used it, they didn’t react as expected. If you hit one of my children hard enough to hurt them, they will not cower but immediately recognize this as inappropriate; they will fight back like wildcats, get more sassy, and tattle to parents whom they trust are on their side even when wrong. If you appeal only to authority (because I say so and I am in charge) they will immediately challenge you to give them a sensible reason, etc. If a teacher is positive and respectful to them and their thoughts and needs they respond in kind.
Your problems might be partially due to raising your children in a different way in comparison to the others in your ward, (I might hazard a guess- probably a better more Christ-like way). Many affluent people are high-octane driven types and not the best parents. Regardless, we can all benefit from additional help, just like a top athlete still benefits from a good coach.
As for your husband’s challenge with what appears to be a Nazi Mormon witch, realize that not only are angels silent notes taking, but so are many good but quiet people. When a person verbally massacres a teacher at church, many notice and might be more sympathetic than you think. I would have said in his situation, Well, J. Golden Kimball taught: there are those who preach to put you to sleep and those who preach to wake you up. Appears, by hell, I at least woke someone up. Smile and agree with thine enemy. But in the end stick to your own integrity and convictions. This would make me want to return to the battle field eventually, armed with the sword of truth and the shield of faith, or whatever the analogy says.
Children are different. Adults can give; children by necessity take. I would apply the same reasonable standard to church activities as anything else they do. What would you do if your child was a good soccer player and joined a team and came home crying? Would you not have a conversation with the coach? How many times would you keep going before leaving a team with a toxic social environment that left a child crying most of the time? The same applies at LDS church activities. This is a question our rowdy boy scout troop has discussed. How many times can a boy be hazed and be expected to return? For many, once is enough to push them out. More than a couple of negative episodes and almost all will leave. If more than a few leave they can sink the reputation of the troop in the rest of the community and it can die. This drives the policy of zero tolerance. We know this from sad experience.
Joining another ward might be the best solution if you live where the church is strong and dense. But you are never going to be fully accepted and will be vulnerable to new leadership. If that is your choice, then do not let a bishop or anyone else say you cannot do it. You do not need their permission to attend the church of your choice. Ask him if he has guards at the door of the church armed with machine guns. If not, say: then we will be there. If you have to drive long distances to another ward it will not be worth it, just saying from experience.
I would not rule out attending a few of the activities of another church for a season. People in Protestant churches move from one to the other easily and causally for trivial reasons. Their programs are therefore subjected to strong market forces and have to be good to survive. They are not usually out to convert you initially. Their youth activities might be viewed as more of a community service /outreach than a direct way to preach their gospel. And like us they will roll out the red carpet for visitors.
This might be even more daring, but consider helping your youth take an LDS friend with her for a visit to an activity at another church. One who is being tormented in a similar way. Don’t let them perpetrate the lie that you are the only one crying and everyone else is happy. Not true if you look hard enough. Even the meanest girl in a snotty clique is probably lonely or will be eventually. They exploit and feed on each other. Taking a LDS friend will help maintain both of their LDS identities.
I have found the effect of taking other ward members to another church on the ward leadership to be immense, nothing short of a crisis. They might be willing to allow the pushing of a rare outspoken person out one at a time on their own terms, but when someone starts taking others out with them on their terms, this raises the issue to a new and threatening level. It forces them to at least think about the problem from whatever perspective they take. The decent among them will be eager to make major concessions at that point and rein in the zealotry and the snobbery to a degree. If they further retrench it will only create even more resentment and increase the probability of additional people wanting something better. The existence of many good churches out there puts you in a position of power in your ward when you don’t even realize it.
Then after you have been accepted as a friend in another church community, it will be quite easy to bring many of your non-LDS friends with you back to the LDS activities. They will visit causally a few times because they do not have the same expectation or hope (or fear) of this leading to conversion that many of us harbor. My daughter took as many as 30 non-LDS kids to a stake dance once. Nothing makes misbehaving Mormons shape up faster than having non-Mormon visitors around. My daughter took non-LDS friends to church with her to almost every activity for a few of those worst years and she called it “protection. “ You can judge the difference between good Mormons and bad ones by how much they have to alter their behavior when non-Mormon visitors come around. This is not hypothetical, it describes what we did and how my daughter eventually owned the ward youth.
I would not rely on the church to provide for any more than a few of your youth activities. Fully invest your children in other worthy activities. For my daughter it was playing classical violin and she has so many more friends and such a richer life than if she had remained in fortress Mormon with those narrow judgmental prudes exclusively, ever fearful of any of those outside influences. Her concerts came before church attendance although usually we could do both and she often played at church. It also landed her a scholarship to an ivy league college with the $60k per year tuition we could have never afforded otherwise. (Like anything at BYU could compete with that.) And her ideal job. She is currently pretty thick with a really good non-LDS guy and those at church do not approve. But he adores her and appreciates her and treats her better than any RM ever has. At this point he respects and likes Mormons and I have to believe she could convert him if they ever find themselves in a half decent ward.
For my son it was boy scouts at a non-LDS church and he did everything that a strong, active and edgy troop could provide. The things I did with my son in real scouting collectively are, I would guess, 20 times more valuable and formative and memorable than the entire experience we shared together at the LDS church (including their lame scouting program). These were the best times of my life. He might not be on board with all of Mormon doctrine (although he can be pretty zealous in a quiet way). But he lives the principles of the scout oath and scout law to such a degree that he is a better man and a far better leader than almost all Mormons I know and certainly far ahead of his father. Those are not shallow slogans to him but bedrock principles by which he lives.
One mistake I made was inaction in the name of patience. It seems like a long time when you are raising children, but they are only young and impressionable for a moment. Then it is gone. I would not waste even one week hoping for things to get better without taking some action or moving in some direction, even if it is measured.
Another opposite mistake I made is that at times I let my temper get the best of me. I told the bishop once (right after his first counselor had slapped my daughter across the face hard enough to leave a mark) that if another person laid hands on my children I was going to exercise the gift of the laying on of hands on them; as understood by one of my ancestors who was an avenging angel and who hunted down a couple dozen of the men in the mob that murdered Joseph Smith and slit their throats. (This is all family folklore and probably not even historically accurate). I told him I held this forgotten hereditary Priesthood gift, to avenge the blood of the innocent, currently inactive but easily restored when needed. I was about 2 inches from his nose with fire in my eyes.
On another occasion, I tangled with the HPGL and HC monitor and former bishop. They claimed the SP had cancelled an activity I as the EQP felt strongly inspired to do and he had not. (In fact when queried the SP thought it was a good idea). In ward counsel I trapped them and exposed their deceit. I called them “a bastardly pair of sniveling liars” and told them in a loud voice that “you could go to hell as fast for lying in church as for adultery in a whore house and it didn’t matter whether you opened it with prayer or not.” Not one of my wiser moments. Might have worked in the days of J. Golden. But most of these modern leaders were not raised on the brisk mountain air and cayenne pepper of pioneer Mormonism and won’t take to being called to repentance like this. Of course they will (and did) take it out on the kids. Avoid the temptation to do anything like this.
It is a difficult needle to thread between weak inaction and overbearing over-reaction. I still struggle with it. God bless you.
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