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I’ve been in a bad mood & don’t know why. I think I’ve found the answer. The answer has to do with finding my way back into the church after my FC & redefining my role in the gospel.
I joined the church my senior year of college. When I joined, I jumped in with both feet.
– Full tithe payer, absolutely.
– Church every Sunday, yes.
– 100% home teaching, goes without saying.
– Accept every calling that comes, yes & may I please have another.
In the process of doing all this activity, I thought I would have special access to the spiritual blessings that you need when
the hard times come. At the height of my FC I found out that activity in the church didn’t prepare me for what my
family was facing. In my disappointment, the world seemed to be black & without a spiritual purpose. I now realize that is a
very naïve way to view & live the gospel. As a result I’m now trying to redefine what a spiritual live is while becoming active.
Most of the items I listed above are long gone. Instead I’ve tried to focus on Jesus Christ & provide service to others where I feel
comfortable doing it. There are moments when I still feel on the outside looking in. It seems like I’m trying to recapture my
virginity. Maybe I’m overly sensitive. No matter what I do, always feel like I will always be labeled “Inactive”.
Any suggestions?
Except for the inactive label I could have written this (I joined the church at 21 while in the army and I think I’m a few years younger than you). I can’t say I’m in a bad mood, but the Hulk came to mind when I read this. (He said the way he controls himself is by always staying angry.)
I don’t know that I have advice. I’m pretty comfortable most of the time in my own skin these days. I’m OK being on the outside looking in – I purposely put myself in that mode sometimes just because it can be very amusing (like watching an ant farm). But I’m not always, or even usually, the wallflower. Our ward is still meeting in two groups because of gathering limits (not by the state, by the church). So we have two testimony meetings every month, first and second Sundays. This past Sunday was our turn to go and the bishop bore this fervent testimony about worthiness, obedience and judgement. There were a couple regulars that got up immediately after him but I then got up and pretty much word-for-word said this: “Something the bishop said prompted me to get up. I do believe it is part of our nature and culture to question our worthiness before God but that is unwarranted. Our Heavenly Parents’ love is perfect and is not based on what we do or don’t do. Likewise, the at-one-ment (said as 3 words) of our Healer Jesus Christ is perfect and is not based on what we do or don’t do. Of this I testify….” The missionaries called all three of our phones last night (mine, my wife’s and the home phone) and we ghosted them. I don’t have anything for them, I’m not going to refer my friends (as if I had any that aren’t members), and I don’t want to hear any “spiritual message” or like the Facebook page (that’s been the push of late, and I don’t have Facebook anyway). I guess what it boils down to is that I don’t care if others think I’m inactive or a heretic – that’s their problem, not mine. To quote Popeye, “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”
I could have written a lot of that too. I also joined the church during college and went all in. Also, reaching a point where the world seems black and without a spiritual purpose probably led a lot of us here.
I don’t want to take away from what you’re saying but this thought did occur to me…
On an individual level hard times are hard times because it’s a challenge that we weren’t prepared for. Maybe we were prepared for other challenges in life that other people would consider hard times but they didn’t register as hard times to us because we were prepared for that particular type of challenge. We only recognize hard times as hard times specifically because we weren’t prepared for them.
That’s certainly not a hard and fast rule, I think we can be prepared and still go through hard times.
This post will be scatterbrained, what else is new, right?
Hard times are inevitable; they will come and they will come to everyone. I think one issue is that a lot of the church experience focuses on doing things we believe will help us avoid the hard times, so much so that when the hard times come we expend a lot of energy wondering what we did wrong to allow the hard times to happen.
I also feel like dealing with hard times is the only thing that can prepare us for dealing with hard times.
Quote:President Heber J. Grant often quoted the following statement, which is sometimes attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do—not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased.”
The church isn’t good at preparing people for a faith crisis and I think the environment can even be counterproductive in helping people through a faith crisis. We’re still in that mode that has us believing that we’ll avoid the problem entirely if we just follow the script and we’re still in a place that has us believing we were deficient if we experience a faith crisis.
Minyan Man wrote:
Maybe I’m overly sensitive. No matter what I do, always feel like I will always be labeled “Inactive”.
I know I’m overly sensitive.
I know I haven’t been in a great spiritual place lately. Our state is opening up COVID vaccines to the parents/caregivers of additional needs children (my daughter is one of those children) – which is great. But if my husband and I get vaccinated, then we have to make a decision on what part of church involvement we want to restart.
- My “active” husband hasn’t been to church or had a church lesson in over a year (and gives lip service periodically to missing it).
- I have been teaching a monthly Relief Society lesson virtually for about 4 months now and I co-teach the Achievement Day girls monthly meeting – which is good. I don’t want to go back to church because I don’t want to spend the energy dealing with managing my faith transition in the community, sitting on my children during church meetings (and dealing with the whining of the oldest to get her there). I don’t want to deal with feeling that I am “less then” because I don’t push spiritual habits at home.
I feel that I am facing a hard decision on participation level – I will have to go back to church in person eventually (taking my children and dealing with the transition back to church meetings) or give up community membership (such as it is) and face pushback from my husband.
It has been 50 yrs since I joined the church. 49 yrs out of the 50, we have been in the same ward & stake. We were inactive approx 10 yrs of that time. We were never hostile to the church, its teachings or doctrine. When members came over for HT or VT, we were always friendly & welcoming. No one
ever asked us: what happened? why aren’t you coming to church? or we miss you or come to the social. This isn’t meant to be “sour grapes” or
poor us. It is a general observation only. Back in the day, we knew all of the Stake & Ward leadership plus their family members. When we went inactive, they didn’t seem to want to talk to us.
Since we have come back, the leadership is outwardly friendly. They don’t “linger” around for very long & seem nervous when they talk to us.
They seem to be nervous that inactivity is catching. We usually sit in the back & we try to be friendly with others that are in a similar situation.
Or, we talk to the investigators brought by the missionaries. These are members of our “tribe” now.
We have found a few members that we’ve been able to get close to. We help them as much as they help us. Life in the church is interesting.
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