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My temple recommend will need to be renewed at the end of march. i would love to go to the temple–I especially think at this time of frustration and disillusionment with my local leaders, that maybe i could remember what we are really here for and gain some perspective—but I won’t be given a recommend if I can’t say i support my local leaders–and at this time, I am feeling very disappointed with my bishop and the second counselor. I wish i could just let it go and remember they are just humans that make mistakes—but it makes me sad and angry every sunday when my husband leaves church as quick as he can as soon as sacrament meeting is over. My bishop thinks I am making a bigger deal of this than it really is—but he has no idea what it feels like to be on this side of things—I still have 4 children at home who see their father no longer wanting much of anything to do with the church—-how can that NOT be a big deal. i am wondering what ever happened to leaving the 99 and going after the 1—especially after they drove the 1 away because they misjudged him.
I need to know how to get over this.
Your worthiness is between you and the lord. If you feel worthy, answer as you need to in order to get the paperwork out of the way. Sustain doesn’t have to mean agree with everything – or even like all that much at the moment. Even in the temple, the only time you are required to not have unkind feelings toward specific people is if you participate in the prayer circle. Nothing, and I mean nothing, requires you to be perfectly at peace with everything and everyone to attend.
If you want to go to the temple, keep the answers short and sweet – and go.
If it is important to you that you go to the temple just tell them what they want to hear. You have as much right to go given your past history with the church as anyone. Leaders only tell you you have to meet their criteria. In reality you do not. Old-Timer wrote:Sustain doesn’t have to mean agree with everything – or even like all that much at the moment.
Even in the temple, the only time you are required to not have unkind feelings toward specific people is if you participate in the prayer circle. Nothing, and I mean nothing, requires you to be perfectly at peace with everything and everyone to attend.
If you want to go to the temple, keep the answers short and sweet – and go.
my thoughts exactly. loving the church and sustaining its leaders does not have to mean silent compliance, but rather, if we care the most, sustaining means appropriately and lovingly giving feedback so that we humans can get better. i wrote about this in arecent blog entryand of course, please use the advice we all contributed to in our
TR question surveySustaining LDS LeadershipI would like to build on these last comments and say that, to me, sustaining means you aren’t undermining them by trying to persuade others to think/talk bad about them. And that you are not trying to actively work against their sincere efforts. I think the church is just looking to avoid uprisings at the local level.
Quote:I think the church is just looking to avoid uprisings at the local level.
This.
but does it make me wrong when i have talked to people about my frustrations in what i think they did that was wrong—-I’m not trying to say that they are bad people, because I actually like both leaders involved, but i feel like the way they handled things was done very poorly and I want the people that I talk to to understand why I am feeling the way i do. I don’t want others to talk bad about them because of what i say, or to think bad about them because of what i say—-but I think that maybe when i talk about it I am looking for some sort of verification that I am not just getting upset over something that would not bother someone else.—I would rather they not repeat to someone else what I have told them—but because i am a talker, maybe I have talked to too many people—-not all of them in my ward. I’m not trying to work against their sincere efforts–I’m trying to get them to put some sincere effort into working with my husband. I felt like the bishop excused what the counselor had done instead of just saying that , yes, it should have been handled differently. I looked it up in the handbook and discovered that i was not wrong in my thinking of how things should have been handled. We are given the handbook as a guide from the first presidency so that we can do things according to the way they would like them done, and, I believe, to keep the church working in a way so that you won’t feel like you are going to a different religion if you go to church somewhere else than your local ward.
momto11… being openly critical about leaders to other people is a problem in any organization.
Consider this: let’s say you have, with the best of intentions, somehow harmed another person. let’s say that te person you inadvertently harmed decided to tell others — all your friends — about how bad you were to him or her. how would you feel about this? wouldn’t you prefer to have worked this out one-on-one with the other person?
so, in a sense, a double wrong has happened between you and the local leaders. this happens all the time. it isn’t even really a major sin…but any time we harm another, we ought to straighten it out. if i were your local leader, i am pretty sure that i would make a lot of mistakes. if one of my ward members came to me to say that s/he had judged me harshly to others because of what i had done, but that s/he was sorry for it, i can assure two things: 1) i wouldn’t have had a clue that i harmed him or her, and 2) i would deeply appreciate the apology.
to me, there is a wonderful opportunity whenever we can come to one another and share our weaknesses and forgiveness in love. the intimate experience of working these things out in love is the very best humanity has to offer…it is when we become gods to each other.
there is a chance that the local leader will not see anything wrong in what they did. this doesn’t matter. if you have expressed the truth and offered an apology, you are done: you have supported and sustained the leadership. that they chose to disregard your gesture is irrelevant. you have done the right thing.
i know my opinion here may seem hard to take. I do not mean anything critical of you — i am sure you are completely justified in how you are feeling. i am only saying what works for me.
good luck!
wayfarer—you do not seem harsh—I had a talk with my husband–actually a bit of an arguement–I think we both need to understand each other a little better–but I was thinking right along the line of what you have told me—i need to correct my part in all of this. When we first moved in this stake 5 1/2 yearws ago, I had been upset at our stake president because they would not let my son take seminary—to make a long story short, i met with him and told him i owed him an apology–he didn’t know what i was talking about–i said I had been upset with him and had spoken to people —and he still had no idea what i was talking about–he said someone else had done the same thing recently–and he didn’t remember anything they had done.
Especially since I know my adrenal insufficiency makes me not handle stress very well, I need to be very careful before I speak.
Any good scriptures on forgiveness you can suggest—i need to accept responsibility here.
thanks
called my bishop this morning and told him i felt I owed him an apology–he said he didn’t think I did–but I felt like I did—told him I don’t like to have bad feelings and would like to continue to meet with him periodically to discuss things I am still trying to work out—he has been pretty good about meeting with me this last winter. He really is a nice, soft spoken man and seems to be very kind. i can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be a bishop–come in to a position with little to no experience and have so many people expecting so much from you. momto11 wrote:called my bishop this morning and told him i felt I owed him an apology–he said he didn’t think I did–but I felt like I did—told him I don’t like to have bad feelings and would like to continue to meet with him periodically to discuss things I am still trying to work out—he has been pretty good about meeting with me this last winter. He really is a nice, soft spoken man and seems to be very kind. i can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be a bishop–come in to a position with little to no experience and have so many people expecting so much from you.
excellent! good luck!momto11 wrote:called my bishop this morning and told him i felt I owed him an apology–he said he didn’t think I did–but I felt like I did—told him I don’t like to have bad feelings and would like to continue to meet with him periodically to discuss things I am still trying to work out—he has been pretty good about meeting with me this last winter. He really is a nice, soft spoken man and seems to be very kind. i can’t imagine how difficult it must be to be a bishop–come in to a position with little to no experience and have so many people expecting so much from you.
For this, among many other reasons, you have my deep respect.
Forgiving is not about ‘losing’ or being the weaker person. Forgiving others, even when they were in the wrong, is a gift we give ourselves far more than we give to others.
It’s my opinion that there are few things as emotionally debilitating as withholding forgiveness. So good for you
Old-Timer wrote:Sustain doesn’t have to mean agree with everything – or even like all that much at the moment.
I agree. In a talk I heard recently in my ward, the speaker said that to “sustain” simply means to do whatever you can to help the person you are sustaining to be successful in his or her calling. I sure hope it doesn’t mean agreeing with everything they do!
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