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I want to ask a general question about your lives. Has your life turned out as you expected it would? For example, did you always believe, or at least, have an inkling that perhaps you wouldn’t be fully on the party line of the LDS textbook your whole life?
Amidst your life circumstances now, has your life turned out to be basically as you hoped and expected? Would you say you are happy in your circumstances, or do you find your circumstances are largely dictated to you and are hard to change?
To answer the question from my own perspective….I don’t think I’d ever anticipated that I would be on the “unorthodox” list in the church. That I would be without a TR by choice, or would have my life the way it is now on certain fronts, such as marriage, and some of the health issues in my family. My life has turned out pretty much as expected from a career perspective; even better than I believed it would. Generally, as someone in the last quartile of my life, I am generally happy with my life, although I do find there are about 3 chronic, persistent problems that I can’t control that I wish I could change. But I have learned to accept them.
I think StayLDS and its therapeutic, interactive journal writing has played a big part in keeping the happiness trajectory going upward since my crisis about 6 years ago.
How about you?
Interesting deep question. My biggest disappointment has been in my marriage. I ALWAYS thought that I knew what was going to take and it is hard to admit being a failure at the one thing you really wanted and thought you knew how to do.
I didn’t realize how fulfilling raising kids would be. It is easier for me to say now that most of them are out of the house
Even though I always had some questions on various levels, I never expected to be where I am at in relation to the church – both how much in the ranks of leadership I have gone and now how I feel about the church and not believing the church is what it proclaims to be. Even 5 years ago I wouldn’t have believed you if you would have told me.
I too am very grateful for the site. It has been VERY helpful for me. I thank all of you that contribute.
I was brought up with an expectation of the LDS party line. In fact, any aspiration of more was strongly discouraged. My family and my husband’s family are both so healthy that good health and long lives are something that we both took for granted. No matter what my personal strengths were, my expectations were to be married to a professional, I would be a SAHM with 5-6 kids, and deeply involved in the ward socially. I expected to be a grandma by 40-42 and expected to have a healthy family that would all live very long lives.
I didn’t expect my oldest daughter to die. She was such a strong mouthy stubborn child. Nor another. Nor to repeat that a third time. I didn’t expect to have more bicycles in the garage than children to ride them. Going back to school, grad school, having a successful career. I didn’t expect to go from always in the thick of things in a ward to feeling socially disconnected and isolated in this ward. I didn’t expect to leave the church completely this year. I didn’t expect to have an Aspergers kiddo.
I was expecting more social connection at this point in my life and less personal financial success. For some reason, I expected my life to be easier.
When I look at the things that we have overcome and accomplished and done, I am pleased. When I think of the people that we have helped along the way, I am even more pleased. Yet, I still shake my head at the path that my life has taken. It is the path that God has chosen for me. He wants me on this path and He guides my steps .. But it is certainly not the path I started out on.
My marriage is better than I even knew was possible. Lotto winner here.
My family moved a lot. My DH comes from a military family. We wanted to settle down and grow roots. We lived in one community for 14 years. We had deep roots there. We moved after the kids died. We realized that our living daughter was treated so differently and so kindly that none of normal rules of life applied to her. It wasn’t a healthy dynamic. We needed to go someplace where she could be “just another kid”. We moved to make that happen. We have been in our current community 17 years .. One house for 10 years and another for 7. This last 7 years has left us without roots in the ward, and we have lost many roots in the community. That status makes me feel like I have failed at life. We were so planted. Twice. We have lost that sense of feeling planted and connected. I miss that feeling immensely.
In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. I am still to all outward appearances an active fully committed member of the Church. I attend, participate, interact with others in the very traditional Mormon ways. I served a mission (check!), married in the temple (check!), had children (check!) etc. I live in the same community I grew up in. I work at a good job that I like (not love but you can’t have everything!). Superficially, a perfectly boring ordinary life (that’s not a complaint!) I did not anticipate having a powerhouse wife with a master’s degree. I did not anticipate having children with some of the problems that my children have (academic, emotional, some combination of the two). I have never felt wholly comfortable in the Mormon mode…even as a child I felt like I was just slightly different in how I thought about things. I still feel I look at and consider things differently than some of my peers even though I keep most of my thoughts to myself. StayLDS has been the only place (besides a private journal) where I express these things.
I am going on five years since I joined this board and though I don’t post a great deal, I appreciate what I read from others. It let’s me know that I’m not that odd of a duck.
🙂 quack quack 😆 SilentDawning wrote:I want to ask a general question about your lives. Has your life turned out as you expected it would?
Better!
SilentDawning wrote:For example, did you always believe, or at least, have an inkling that perhaps you wouldn’t be fully on the party line of the LDS textbook your whole life?
Never. I thought things were straight forward and linear. My prior view was too simplistic.
Quote:Would you say you are happy in your circumstances, or do you find your circumstances are largely dictated to you and are hard to change?
Happier than I was before.
With opposition in all things, I have found myself having to fight more for happiness, and it not going as I thought it would…but as a result, I am better off because of it.
I think this varies by person.
In some ways, it is like our careers. When younger, we may declare a major in school or set off in a certain direction with our hopes for careers…but it unfolds differently than we think and we find things work out as we work towards things a step at a time. For some people, it is just as they wanted to (a doctor, nurse, artist, teacher)…but for some people…what I’m doing now in my career had little to do with what I started my career with. I just made the most of opportunities as they came up and find my way.
And still have more to go…for sure more changes await. With each choice comes opportunities. My life becomes the sum of my choices or non-choices.
My life is definitely different than I ever expected when it comes to my faith. Ever since I was young I’ve easily had faith in the church and the things I was taught. I never had one big conversion, but I had a few very spiritual experiences that strengthened my testimony and convinced me I was on the right track. I felt like I’d never leave the church or even doubt things because I had such a strong testimony and prayer was my strongest part of my testimony. I had many prayers answered by God and never doubted. I was a super TBM Mormon girl and even got called goody two shoes and molly Mormon from time to time. Well then I had a prayer answer that was wrong and that changed everything. Suddenly I didn’t know if I could trust my answers to prayers and I used to thrive on being able to ask God what was and wasn’t good. But then my trust in prayer was very shaken. I don’t trust my reception of prayer answers anymore and idk how to gain it back.
So, spiritually, I would have never guessed I was here. I haven’t been to the temple in about a year and have stopped wearing my garments. And I’m struggling with lots of other aspects of the church, and not being able to trust prayers makes it even harder for me to know what to believe anymore
For some of us — Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans — John Lennon. My expectations have shifted over the years. When I was much younger I never expected to live to be the age I am now.
It seems like the question is a two parter. Church expectations and life expectations. I’ll tackle church first.
I hadn’t even heard the word Mormon until I was 18. Joining the church taught me answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask. I ended up living in a foreign country and learning a new language, I certainly didn’t expect that. There are several things about finding the church that I’d classify as pleasant surprises.
I never thought I’d be anything less than completely orthodox. A faith crisis was a surprise in that regard, a surprise that I can look back on and find pleasant surprises and unpleasant surprises but mostly pleasant in retrospect.
Life in general is a different matter. I guess I can always go back to the 8 year old me and marvel and be grateful that I’m even here but life isn’t exactly what I expected it would be. What child knows the trials that keep adults up at night?
Maybe this one belongs with expectations of faith but as an orthodox believer I believed in the just-world hypothesis. I’ve experienced enough of life to prove that wrong.
In some ways it’s better than I expected and in some ways not what I hoped. On the whole I’m probably better than I thought I would be. Wife – Mostly better. I have a wonderful, loving, beautiful wife who knows the full extent of my faith and lack thereof. She seems to love me unconditionally. However about 15 years qgo, after we had been married for several years, she told me she was lying about something pretty big. I’ve forgiven her but our relationship changed after that.
Family – Better. I love my kids more than I could have imagined. Sometimes they make me crazy but I’m glad they are part of my life.
Profession – Worse. While I’m not unsuccessful I wanted to be in a much different place. 9/11 changed my direction like it did for many people. I hate my boss and it takes a lot of mental effort to not let work negatively effect me.
Church – Worse. I’m making the best of it but if I could change the past I would not have an LDS life.
Health – Better. I’m more healthy than I’ve ever been.
Friends – Better. I have some great people around me who I’m grateful for. If I’m honest, most of them are because of the church.
If someone had asked me this question 15 years ago (around age 40) I would have said that my life was nearly perfect and I would not change a thing. Now there are lots of things I’d do differently had I them to do over – including joining the church. I didn’t think I would ever be anything but a fully believing orthodox member with a great career and a stay-at-home-wife. Quote:Amidst your life circumstances now, has your life turned out to be basically as you hoped and expected? Would you say you are happy in your circumstances, or do you find your circumstances are largely dictated to you and are hard to change?
My life has not turned out at all as I expected, I am not particularly happy with the way it has turned out , and my circumstances have been largely beyond my control. That’s not to say some things like my marriage aren’t good, my wife is indeed a saint. Likewise, I love my children dearly and take great pride in their accomplishments. Nevertheless, I do harbor a certain amount of bitterness and am sometimes depressed about my life circumstances, but my faith now plays only a minor role in that because I believe my faith is in many ways much stronger than it once was (but is sometimes complicated by the church). I never actually pictured myself being able to say this, or at least not at my age, but were I to be crushed by the log truck today I am ready to meet my maker because I think I have done my best.
Yes and no. I married my high school sweetheart, and we have been together for almost 30 years, with six kids. That, generally, has been expected.
I am fully active in the Church, which was expected, but my views have evolved significantly over time. I always have been heterodox, but I didn’t anticipate the extent to which some of my views would change.
I have one currently inactive child – the one I thought was the least likely to become inactive. Some of his best friends are gay, and the children of gay parents policy pushed him away for now. There is no animosity; just strong, deep disagreement.
My professional career has been 100% different than I anticipated. We have lived all over the United States, and I have been unemployed four times (for varying lengths of time, including at this moment). I seem to have a knack for finding and picking difficult, dysfunctional companies – but I also can look back at every location where we have lived across the country and see reasons why we simply had to be there at that time. Those reasons aren’t trivial; in most cases, at least one was life-changing and positive for at least one of my kids.
I never anticipated being an administrator of a group discussion site that involves people from all over the world. Never imagined that.
nibbler wrote:as an orthodox believer I believed in the just-world hypothesis. I’ve experienced enough of life to prove that wrong.
At church on Sunday the teacher asked if anyone had examples of false doctrines that they wanted to share. I wanted to say the “prosperity gospel” but I thought better of it because I felt that it would be too controversial.
I really did believe that if I paid my tithing and honored my priesthood that my family would be insulated from major setbacks. When our third child was stillborn, my world turned upside down. What about all those promised blessings? Does God not keep his word? or had I somehow failed at my part to “bind” the Lord? In time, I came to realize that “blessings” are often very, very, subjective and that I was not “owed” anything specific. This was a huge change of perspective on how active God may be in intervening in events.
This undercut the authority of the church because the LDS church, for me, was built upon an active God – a God of revelations and miracles. [as an aside, I love the concept of “the God who weeps”]
So yeah, big surprise there. DW and I as newly weds had discussed 4 to 6 kids. We now have two. DW would be considered high risk for any future pregnancies and we just do not feel that we could take the prospect of losing another.
Otherwise life is pretty good. I have been at the right place at the right time with the right skills for my profession and that has worked well in my favor. DW and I continue to work together in faith, hope, and love. We are both flawed but we are 100% committed to each other. My kids are growing and showing us more and more of their little personalities. I wish I could protect them from heartache and tragedy. I try to prepare them the best that I can and I hope to be around to comfort them if and when they need it.
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