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That’s what you do. You tell your stories and experiences as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Sometimes your stories make people laugh. Sometimes they bring them to tears. Sometimes they will help people to continue in patience, resilience, and courage to face another hour, another day and come a little closer to God.
Share your experiences in person, on social media, in groups, everywhere.
I am starting a new blog / resource / maybe YouTube for people who are in the StayLDS space. One of the things that gives me pause is sharing my story, which involves being outside of the church and my feelings about it. Some of my story is not within the orthodox space, involves experiences outside of the church and maybe light disagreements. None of it is awful or overly apostate.
Going back to Dieter Uchtdorf, he says to share but what if it isn’t a perfect expression of the church? Is that even welcome anywhere? I am not in the mood for the authorities to get over excited over my story. I want to tell it and I think it is helpful, but want everyone to be respectful.
Heavy_Laden wrote:
Going back to Dieter Uchtdorf, he says to share but what if it isn’t a perfect expression of the church? Is that even welcome anywhere? I am not in the mood for the authorities to get over excited over my story. I want to tell it and I think it is helpful, but want everyone to be respectful.
I think that is a noble thing to do, and I think a sincere and contrite story has the opportunity to do that…others can connect with a sincere testimony or story.
But once you put it out there, you can’t control how respectful it will be used or not. It is out there to be reacted to.
I think the best thing you do is to try to know your audience, frame things in the kindest way that speaks to others, and be honest and sincere…and then trust that everything else will be ok.
Others may feel it threatens their beliefs and attack. That is unfortunate, but that is about them. You have to let go, trust it is ok no matter what others do, and follow your heart to choose to share, or choose not to share.
There is something positive about connecting with others by opening up and sharing. There are just no guarantees it will always be positive. That is ok. Overall, sharing with love is probably going to be the best choice.
It’s ok for you to be you, share your views. No one can argue with your testimony. It is yours. And it usually helps others who are in a similar place, and long to hear someone else express the same feelings.
I kept a blog with daily posts for years. It eventually ended up including quotes from church leaders, as well as comments from this site that I edited slightly for a broader audience, including orthodox members. If you are interested in how I approached it – and how it evolved over time, here is the link:
I think having a story and sharing it can be validating and powerful. Other people’s reaction to your story will differ greatly depending on where they stand and what they need. Most people want your story to validate their own story. Therefore if your story is faith affirming and bolters other’s beliefs that the LDS church is true – it will be very popular in LDS circles. If your story was about being disillusioned with the church then it might speak to an audience that has left the church. I do believe that there is an audience for those that are somewhere in the middle and there are a number of blogs and websites that hold this space.
I believe that posting on StayLDS can help some of us to fulfill this function. I share my journey and what has worked for me – without claiming that it will work for anyone else or trying to draw others to or away from the LDS church.
Roy wrote:
I think having a story and sharing it can be validating and powerful.Other people’s reaction to your story will differ greatly depending on where they stand and what they need. Most people want your story to validate their own story. Therefore if your story is faith affirming and bolters other’s beliefs that the LDS church is true – it will be very popular in LDS circles. If your story was about being disillusioned with the church then it might speak to an audience that has left the church. I do believe that there is an audience for those that are somewhere in the middle and there are a number of blogs and websites that hold this space.
I believe that posting on StayLDS can help some of us to fulfill this function. I share my journey and what has worked for me – without claiming that it will work for anyone else or trying to draw others to or away from the LDS church.
This.
My husband made an off-handed comment yesterday about how the best way to parent is to model what we want our children to learn. I know that he intended it as a “our children will learn faith from us” type comment.
What I wanted to tell him is this:
I know that our children will learn faith from us. I want to teach our children what I am qualified by my experiences to teach.
- I want my daughter to learn that faith is built personal experience by personal experience, stone by stone and revamped regularly – it’s not an impartial legacy passed down through the generations.
- I want my daughter to learn how to find calm/peace in the midst of faith-transition turmoil – which may or may not include interacting with Team God at times.
- I want my daughter to learn that Charity is important – if you can’t have Faith, start with Charity. If you aren’t up for additional Charity exercises, be as Graceful (non-physical activity), Kind, Deliberate, and Thoughtful as possible. Charity includes being Charitable towards yourself – it means saying “No” and taking stock of your personal resources, personal callings/passions.
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