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The short version of what brings me here— (yes it’s very long but it really is the short version!) I married my first husband in the temple. We were very young. He soon decided he missed being a kid and started hanging out with his friends at all hours and there were hints to suggest that he was either having an affair or actively seeking one. He was a mean guy and really didn’t care about me or the kids at all. But he was incapable of taking care of himself and the only alternative he had to not being with me would be to run back to his parents and that wasn’t an option. I struggled very very hard. I had my first two kids very close together. I worked so very hard to take care of our little family but I cried every day. Every day. My only sunshine through his abuse and neglect and inability to provide for us (extreme poverty) were my two little boys, They were my hope and my dreams and my only reason for going on another day. Life was very hard.
Being raised strictly LDS I truly believed there were only two reasons that justify divorce. One being physical abuse and the other unrepentant adultery. He didn’t physically beat me, and there was no actual “proof” he was cheating so I did not feel I had justification to leave no matter how much I was suffering. And he was a bear. I dreaded spending time with him. The emotional abuse was terrible. At one point I was on the edge of breaking inside. I got a priesthood blessing that said that “if he will not live righteously he will be replaced so that your children will grow up with a righteous example.” It went on to say that one boy would be a great church leader and the other a great world leader and so great were their callings that God would remove my husband rather than allow him to damage those precious boys. In my mind, that meant either 1-He would be taken from the earth by death if he didn’t straighten up OR 2-God would give me the undeniable proof of my husband’s unrepentant affairs that I needed to in good faith leave my husband. I then went into a deep search of fasting and praying. I told God that I could not go on with my life like that and I asked “his permission” to leave my marriage. After a few days I heard a very clear voice say “give him one more chance.” I gathered my strength. I said “OK but just one. He will fail again and when he does, I am so outta here!” Within a few weeks life mixed things up and we made a sudden out of state move from where we were in Colorado to my hometown in Arizona. His contacts with his friends were immediately severed and he seemed to “get better.” The emotional abuse and complacent attitude in caring for me and the kids and everything outside of himself stayed the same but there seemed to be no hint of cheating. So I stayed.
I was doing everything I knew how to do right. I got the babies ready for church and went every week even if he didn’t come. I paid tithing on our next to zero income. I read scriptures with the kids every single day and had family home evening with them every week. I accepted all the church callings I was called to and served 200% doing every extra thing I could imagine. I believed the blessings I had received without doubt. I knew without a doubt God was going to replace my husband if and when he felt it best in time to save my children. But days turned into weeks and weeks to months and months to years. He was just bad enough to make my life hell and just good enough God wouldn’t take him. Or so I thought. Every few years I would “heed the spirit” and have another baby. I thought if it wasn’t right God would take him as he promised. But he never did. In the meantime I went to school and eventually started building a business from scratch that ended up wildly successful- despite my husband never lifting a finger to do a thing.
Fast forward approx 13 years. We moved to Alpine Utah. A few months later, I finally found undeniable evidence. Not only had he been looking for affairs but he had ALWAYS been looking for affairs, starting from when we were dating all the way through our temple marriage. As it turns out, he never got better- he just got better at hiding it. Not only that, but he had been abusing my oldest son in particular every time I left the house (physically but not in such a way to leave marks) but had threatened him and his brother who witnessed most of it that he would kill him if he ever told me or anyone. I tried to throw him out but he became to desperate because he could not live alone he ran to the bishop and begged him to not let me leave him. And the bishop cracked his whip and told me to stay. He played on my fears. He told me that if I left my husband that my kids would be scarred forever and it would be on my head and they would benefit much more from my “forgiveness.” I buckled down and tried to do the right thing again. After all bishops know so much more than us right? Maybe be saw something I didn’t. I stuck around just long enough for my husband to drain every penny from my business, crashing it overnight, sending me and the kids spiraling into poverty. And he registered for another online dating site to look for another affair.
The kids begged me to please please make him leave because they could not stand another minute. Thanksgiving 2006 I was finally freed from that nightmare. Just to start a new one. Unable to save the business I had slaved over with my own hands, I started working two jobs. It was too little too late. I couldn’t keep paying the rent. I got into public housing, which was a miracle as it was in record time, but I had to be out of my home in beautiful Apline in the wonderful neighborhood and the great schools 6 weeks before I could move into the public housing (slums.) I had to split up my kids between different friends and relatives and go stay with different friends here and there. I was homeless for 6 weeks. It felt like 6 years. Finally, we were into housing. I was so grateful for a home and to have all my kids back. But it was a terrible area in West Valley in terrible schools and so many ways- another hell. Teenagers now, the boys became so angry. So very angry at their father. Angry at the church for not helping. Angry at life for being so unfair. The anger led to angry friends which led to alcohol and then to drugs. They have since completely apostatized. They will not hear of anything of the church. The drugs led to drug induced psychosis and other types of brain damage. They will never be normal. They don’t live with me anymore and never will- my life and their lifestyle can never mesh again. They are now 20 and 21. They run off any church members who even step foot at their door.
These two kids are lost. The blessing did not come true. My husband was never replaced, not as a husband, not as a father, not as a father figure. No one stepped in and my children are gone. This kills me every day. I know the Mormon answer is that I didn’t live righteously enough. But I did the best I could- I know that and my conscious is clean. I wasn’t perfect by a long shot- but if we have to be perfect to receive our blessings then why have blessings as we can never attain them in this life? You cannot reason that “it was their agency” because the blessing said very specifically “so that they will GROW UP with a righteous example.” That means this should have happened when they were children and it DIDN’T. God didn’t keep his promise. If I had known that God would NOT replace my husband I would have gotten out YEARS before that and not subjected them to that which destroyed them. He didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it because I believed he would and now my babies are “dead” in so many ways and there is no more saving them.
But that isn’t the worst of it. I remarried. Some things have happened that because of legal and other issues i cannot go into here. I will just say that my life has taken on an entirely new hell. I cannot explain here how bad things have gotten. Just imagine the worst soap opera you can with t’he craziest unreal twists and turns. It is worse than that. I have tried to many times to fix things. Each and every time it is as if a giant hand picks me up and throws me back into the fire with less and less resources to escape again. I have no where left to go- no one to turn to, and even God is no longer listening to me. If he would just change a thing or two I could do something- build my life again. But he won’t. I have been to the bishop for help and it only made things infinitely worse. I wish I could explain but there is no way. Just forget everything you know about black and white and easy answers. I cannot bear to listen to another “well why don’t you just….” No such thing in my situation.
Now my oldest daughter is going anti-mormon. It’s just another in the string of spiritual deaths that will follow. Yet God will not give me the resources to do anything for them. I am powerless. I sit and watch as my kids one by one spiritually die. Where is the righteous example I was promised? There were other blessings- many- along the way that did not come true. My patriarchal blessing states that obstacles will be removed from my path so that I may achieve my righteous goals. It is absolutely not true. No obstacle has been removed. In fact I have been shackled with more and more and more to the point where I can no longer move. For reasons I cannot go into, I cannot even take my children to church anymore and for at least many years to come I will not be allowed to walk the halls of the temple. If the worth of souls is so great in the sight of the Lord why doesn’t he want my children? Why doesn’t he want me?
I have other younger kids now. Where is the righteous example for them to grow up with? The two it was promised for are gone. the blessing could not have meant simply a “home teacher” or such. People don’t grow up with home teachers. God worded it “replacement’ and the only thing that can replace a father is a father. Step father maybe but father nonetheless. Where is he? He never showed up. You can’t even say it meant if he were removed I would become that righteous example. I am not even a replacement for a father. Besides, I was righteous and it wasn’t enough. I am sick of mormon answers like “well maybe he meant….” Is not the word of God supposed to be plain and simple truths? He should say what he means and mean what he says. Is that really too far a stretch?? Yet he expects that of us.
This is my root- the thing that started the questions. I now have many more ponderings. I realize as hard as my life is it is so much easier and better than so many others. But this is not a comforting thought. It only makes it worse. I in no way esteem myself above another. Yet though he sends so many people on such a path of destruction they have no hope of finding him again. So many are born into lives and so abused they never had a chance. The world forced them to become monsters to survive. It’s like if I take my 7 year old son and drop him off in the next town with no resources- no shoes, no warm clothes, in the cold and tell him “come find me.” There are bad people and cars and weather and so many dangers that he will likely die and the odds of him finding me again with no map and no resources are minuscule. There will be bad people coming to get him and maybe a few good people who try to help, but he must have a sense of which to go with and which to run from. The cost of failure is death. Yet if he doesn’t make it I say “Well if you really wanted it you could have. Sorry you died but you should have been more in tune with the 6th sense that would take you home.”
The more I try to reconcile my doubts the more questions I have. The numbers don’t make sense, I am disenchanted by Mormon culture, some of the mormon teachings I think are actually tradition or culture and not doctrine at all and I am seeing as even silly. I still believe in God. I still believe in the Gospel, and most of the principles. But I am now doubting he cares about me. And millions and millions of people who were sent here with little or no chance. I want to find a way to keep the parts of the faith that I know to be true and reconcile things I don’t understand and chuck the things of the church that don’t work for me- without the church chucking me.
I really enjoyed the essay on How to Stay and think cafeteria mormonism is the only way I can survive this. I am grateful to the authors who took such time and energy to share it. I would love to have some actual friends who can accept me as is. If there is anyone local to Utah who would like to get together I would love to do so. I can’t talk to a soul here in Bountiful.
Wow RagDollSally, I am very sorry for the difficult experiences you have had and even sorrier that they seem to be continuing unabated.
I feel that any comparison between my own experience and yours would be inadequate. When I look at the experience that broke my worldview, I still had much support and resources to help me process and recover.
One similarity though was that I felt that as a righteous Priesthood holder “it” wasn’t supposed to happen to me. If everything could have worked out swimmingly if only God had altered a few tiny details, then why didn’t He? Does He intervene at all? What was the point of all the covenantal blessings if the small print says that they may never materialize (in this life)?
Through prayer, soul searching, and much discussion – I have come to a capacity to reconcile my experiences with a loving God. My current views are not any more “true” than the Standard Mormon Answers were; but they fit my experiences better and are therefore more useful to me.
I suppose I believe in the “Weeping God of Mormonism”
https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Dialogue_V35N01_75.pdf This is not an all powerful God but what he loses in power I feel that he gains in love and compassion. He tells Enoch, “Wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these…suffer?” Moses 7:37
In context God is talking about the suffering of sinners and God is constrained because he cannot violate their agency – this is all very familiar Mormon stuff. But if God is restrained by agency perhaps he is restrained by other eternal principles such as the messiness of this mortal world. And if God has such compassion for the suffering of sinning children, how much more compassion might he have for the plight of his children that have tried dutifully to walk uprightly – yet suffer anyway?
So this understanding allows me to say with genuine sincerity and caring: God wants you. God wants your children. He knows every twist in the road and every sorrow of your heart. As it says in Psalms 56:8, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”
When I imagine meeting my God, I do not picture me kneeling at His throne to be told “well done.” Not anymore. I picture Him running to meet me like the father in the parable of the prodigal son and holding me as we weep together (hopefully the “well done” stuff will come later). I believe that our final judgments will be filled with more understanding, compassion, mercy, and grace than we can conceptualize.
I dislike the term “overcoming adversity.” I prefer “coping with adversity.” What I have shared with you are some insights into ways that help me cope with adversity. They may not fit for you just as SMA’s may no longer fit for you.
My hope is that here at StayLDS you can explore ways of thinking and framing different problems in ways that do fit you and help you cope with difficult situations in this messy and unpredictable world.
This is a safe place where you can “figure things out” in a supportive environment.
Unfortunately, I’m not in Utah but you are always welcome to come and share your thoughts here on this board.
You are unique, but you are not alone.
Hey RagDollSallyUT, Welcome to the community. Sorry to hear everything you have gone through
RagDollSallyUT wrote:I know the Mormon answer is that I didn’t live righteously enough.
Here’s my very Mormon response to this answer: Bullshit!
Sorry if I offended, but that kind of response to what you and your children have been through warrants a very blunt answer. It amounts to a large pile of bovine excrement.
I know people say that to people who are suffering. It’s probably the single worst answer anyone in our church has ever come up with to resolve the problem of evil in the world. That kind of blame-the-victim perspective goes against everything the Savior taught. It is anti-Gospel. There is NOTHING you did, or didn’t do good enough, to deserve that kind of treatment. There is nothing that justifies it. It isn’t a test of your faith to put up with abuse. It’s a crappy situation. It is what it is. There’s no amount of sugar you can put on that turd to make it sweet.
RagDollSallyUT wrote:That means this should have happened when they were children and it DIDN’T. God didn’t keep his promise. If I had known that God would NOT replace my husband I would have gotten out YEARS before that and not subjected them to that which destroyed them. He didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it because I believed he would and now my babies are “dead” in so many ways and there is no more saving them.
You could see this as God not keeping his promise. You could also see it as … your Bishop and leaders were WRONG and gave you very bad advice! It certainly didn’t pan out the way they promised. You could look at it many different ways.
The one thing you should focus on is trying to see life as it is, and not waiting for God to fix things. If life is a mess and your children need love and guidance, love them and give them guidance. Do the best you can, and that is good enough. It is good enough. Say that a thousand times: “I am doing my best, and it is good enough!”
I am not in ANY way saying this was all your fault, or that you didn’t do what you were taught growing up … or any of that. I know you did what you thought was right. But please don’t wait for God to deliver on a magical promise to fix things any more. He has a lousy track record.
Anyone who tells you to put up with bad people is wrong. God isn’t speaking through them. You have permission to tell them that now, from your own experience. Don’t wait for God to make it better.
Youmake it better. Do whatever you can to make things better for yourself and your children, NO MATTER where they are in life or faith, love them and help make things better, even if all you can do is make it a little better. That has to be good enough. Tell God he can piss off, unless he wants to get off his throne and do something about it. Until then, you’re gonna fix it yourself!
RagDollSallyUT wrote:It’s just another in the string of spiritual deaths that will follow. Yet God will not give me the resources to do anything for them. I am powerless. I sit and watch as my kids one by one spiritually die. Where is the righteous example I was promised? There were other blessings- many- along the way that did not come true. My patriarchal blessing states that obstacles will be removed from my path so that I may achieve my righteous goals. It is absolutely not true. No obstacle has been removed.
Your children are not dead. Living = you win! for another day. You beat the odds one more day. Every day is a new opportunity for adventure.
Again, stop waiting for magical powers from the heavens to remove obstacles, loosen shackles and
giveyou a blessing. If God won’t give you blessings, TAKE THEM from him! Break into his treasure room and steal them. Start kicking ass and taking names. Punch the angels in the nose if they get in your way. Get pissed off! Obstacles? Break out the dynamite and blast through. Stop listening to people who don’t know what they are talking about. I don’t care what title they have. RagDollSallyUT wrote:Bountiful.
Your life experience is kind of ironic living in a place named “Bountiful.”I hope things get better for you. They will. You sound like a very capable woman. You started one successful business and raised several kids all by yourself, in spite of lousy husbands and fathers. You
canwork your way out of whatever mess you are in now. You have already proven that many times over. Dig in and start fighting!
RDS- Welcome. I really admire you for having gone through so much pain, heartache, and confusion, yet here you are doing what you can to make sense of it all — and very articulately, I might add. You haven’t given up. You deserve our admiration.
I can barely imagine what you have endured … it makes my own difficulties, past and present, pale in comparison. Yet here we all are on this earth, doing what we can with what we’ve been given to work with. I’m sure you know (I think you even said so yourself) that there are others “worse” off than you, though I know that is little comfort when we’re suffering.
I would echo what Brian said, if I knew how. I’m sure he’s right. You’ve got to make the best of a difficult situation, and you can’t afford to let anyone hold you down any longer, especially when you know better from experience. A good friend said to me the other day that peace comes not from receiving some long-awaited blessing (or whatever), but from each day and each moment choosing to do the right thing in our present circumstances … and if and when we screw up, to keep trying. It sounds trite and simple now that I write it out, but I think there is some deep wisdom there.
Hang in there! And go kick some ass for your own sake and for that of your kids.
Hi RDS, I feel for you. It seems you have gone through some of what I experienced but as a child growing up. I had no one who I could trust even inside the church. With my own family falling apart I put my own very real problems on hold and focused to keep and get the family together that we’re scattered in all directions. In the end it worked but not soon after I lost it and took it out on myself. My sisters rebelled majorly after the person we knew was abusing his kids became bishop. To my sisters this hot to close to home and ment to them the church wasn’t true. I still believed and believe in the gospel. But I had to seperate myself from a very unhealthy setting. I agree with brain. It’s what I had to do to work very hard to keep and get my family back together. It took much later then that to actually do that for myself. I hope you work towards making it work for you. Don’t wait for a long time for a train that will probably never come. Work it ourself and do what you know is right. Many like validation from people with “righteous authority”. The problem is that none of them live through your paticual situation, you experienced it first hand. They have only small pieces. You have a much bigger picture about your paticual situation then anyone on else. You don’t need others to make a decision for you. As brain said, it’s all about doing your best, then letting the rest fall in gods hands. it’s day by day, for the most part I have felt with things and moved on. But there are certain lessons or certain things taught and members say that spark a very vivid and painful memory for me. I guess it might never fully go away, I hope it does for you. But in a way I’m glad it doesn’t. So I remember not to teach my future children, how not to act or believe in some things because of the very real personal experince and use that for the benifit of my future wife and children. I believe it can be turned into a strength, that we both can use to be wiser people and even to help others who are undoubtedly going through similar things. So that they don’t wait for the right thing to happen, it’s your life, take charge of it. Help yourself and remember to breath. There is no ideal society even in church, we just do the best we can without waiting for permission from others to do so. I wish I learned that a lot earlier. It’s never to late to take charge of your life and do what’s right for you. Thank you for your thoughts on this. I have understood since I was a teenager really the concept that agency cannot be removed from the bad people of the world. It only made perfect sense to me that if people were directly punished for their bad behavior and conversely rewarded for their good behavior it wouldn’t be long before humans figured out the pattern. Doesn’t take a genius—people would start to do the right thing not because it was right but because if they didn’t they would be punished and if they did it was an investment- in themselves, in their lives which would be purely selfish. In other words they would be forced to do the right thing. They would do it because they had to. And whose plan was that? God would cease to be God. But I did believe that because I was given it in a blessing that God would find a way. Perhaps my husband would live but we would be divorced and he would move away, thereby preserving my husband’s agency while making good on God’s promise to protect my children. And if God never meant such a thing why would He say it? I guess I believed because He said it, that His will was supposed to be strong enough to win out. Like in the restoration of the church, there were many that would stop it but God found a way. I suppose I thought that when there are really good reasons there are exceptions to the rules. There were many examples of that in the scriptures after all; exceptions.
But of course questions breed more questions. As my blessings started failing me I started looking at the concept of blessings in general. How many people’s blessings come true? As I sat in church and listened to baby blessings they all became exact cookie cutter statements. I noticed they were not so much a statement of the future but statements of the parent’]s wishes for their children, which of course were all pretty much identical. “You will be healthy, you will be a joy to your family, you will serve missions, you will get married in the temple, you will support your family well, you will be a great church leader, you will help many people in your life.” Yet statistically this cannot be. Not every baby can grow up to fit this cookie cutter life. Mormon answer that it is predicated on their righteousness does not cut it. There will be many that just don’t find someone to marry; that are just not cut out to have financial success, etc. But what would they say? “You will grow up plain, Average Joe, no real success or significant talents, tendency for addiction and compatibility issues that prevent you from successful relationships?” Yet do most kids not just grow up to be average people?
I guess really I had too much faith in the church leaders when it comes down to it. For one, I had faith that they were inspired in the blessings. But then it occurred to me that perhaps the mormon tradition of personal blessing must in most cases just be our version of wishful fortune telling. It is what we hope and long for. It’s a reason to keep trying. It may be false hope but hope still. But if this were the case- why is it is a church standard? Baby blessings, father’s blessings, bishop’s blessings, patriarchal blessings. I believed that if the standard tradition of blessings was or had become inefficient that the first presidency would not endorse and even push it so.
I am coming to think that our mortality and our personal biases of our experiences prevents us from seeing the eternal world in much the way that looking through the convoluted frosted glass used as bathroom windows prevents us from seeing what is outside, even for prophets and church leaders for the most part. If we are really inspired, we can see light and some forms and shapes but it would still be a miracle if we can make out anything at all that actually makes sense. This is hard to swallow because it means the church we were raised with does not even have as many answers as we thought. That so many things could even be interpreted wrong. That we cannot have the answers to truth we seek. There is only so much that can come through and profits as people can even mess it up. But i suppose it is better than living a life confined to a room with only four walls and not ever even knowing that anything is outside of it.
Is it enough to think that everything will be fixed in the next life? I think that seems to be a lazy answer that breeds more questions. Really, if it doesn’t matter what happens while we are here… does it matter what we do here?
RagDollSallyUT wrote:Part of me is still desperately wishing and hoping that part of that blessing can still be true. That even if my first children are collateral damage of the free agency of others that I can still have some form of this for my younger ones. I cannot lose them all. I cannot bare it. But there is no end at this point, and with open eyes I watch in silence as each one receives the stabbing thrusts of the knife that will scar. And I have no idea how to fix it on my own. Yet at the same time I am seeing too much reality. I see the 1+1 truths that contradict that this hope is not reality. It tears at my soul. Should I let go of all hope? If so, how? How does one let go of that which they hope for and need to survive?
Quit “watching in silence as each one receives the stabbing thrusts of the knife…” Quit sitting there watching it happen and waiting for God or angels to come rescue them. You are the angel God sent to rescue them.
Please stop talking about your older children as lost causes — the ones that grew up partly in a rough neighborhood after one of your downturns. BTW, just as many privileged kids in rich neighborhoods get into drugs and trouble. There’s no shortage of it among any socio-economic class. Affluent neighborhoods are just better at hiding it while pasting on a smiley face.
Maybe I am reading you wrong and reacting the wrong way, but this strikes very close to life experience that someone close to me has. Her mother constantly refers to her as the proof of being a bad mother and a failure. Her mother mutters on and on about not knowing where she went wrong to have such lost children who don’t believe enough. The lady was so over-the-top zealous raising her kids, that almost none of them now want anything to do with the church. It’s a permanent wedge between them. They desperately want a connection with their mother, but she is so lost in self-pity it’s like she no longer exists in the same reality. And the worst part? These kids of hers are grown adults, have their own beautiful families, with good marriages and take good care of her grandchildren. But they are lost! And they will be sorry some day when they realize the Truth of the Gospel, and the truth of the choices they made … blah blah blah.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — there’s a revelation from God my friend can depend on. She is lost. Her mother believes it. It came true. Thanks to her mother’s “great” faith.
RagDollSallyUT wrote:Is it enough to think that everything will be fixed in the next life? I think that seems to be a lazy answer that breeds more questions. Really, if it doesn’t matter what happens while we are here… does it matter what we do here?
Yes. The “everything will be worked out in the next life” is almost always a lazy answer that helps people avoid doing something about suffering here and now.
RagDollSallyUT wrote:And I have no idea how to fix it on my own.
Yes. You do know how to fix things or make them better. You can figure it out. Don’t be the obstacle.Hey RDS, It seems like there are two main thrusts to healing.
1) Is to find balance and peace internally.
2) Is to move forward in action to be a force for good. i.e. “be the change you want to see”
Brian seems to have hit # 2 on the head quite well. Unfortunately, life doesn’t hold still while you do one or the other. Try to balance these two the best that you can.
RagDollSallyUT wrote:But I did believe that because I was given it in a blessing that God would find a way. Perhaps my husband would live but we would be divorced and he would move away, thereby preserving my husband’s agency while making good on God’s promise to protect my children. And if God never meant such a thing why would He say it? I guess I believed because He said it, that His will was supposed to be strong enough to win out. Like in the restoration of the church, there were many that would stop it but God found a way. I suppose I thought that when there are really good reasons there are exceptions to the rules. There were many examples of that in the scriptures after all; exceptions.
For a baby step towards # 1 your experience reminds me of a very personal moment that M&G shared. I hope that it will bring value to you:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2155&p=31133&hilit=pregnant+miscarrige#p31133 Yeah, the connection between what is said in blessings and God’s divine will seems to be indefinite. That doesn’t make blessings worthless. I personally relish the bond that I feel comes with the annual father’s blessing with my kids. But it does change how I look at priesthood blessings – certainly not as God’s sure word that must come to pass.
RagDollSallyUT wrote:Yet do most kids not just grow up to be average people?
My favorite twist on this is that we believe in eternal progression. This might mean that old people who have been members of the church their entire life should possess noticeably greater levels of the big virtues…and yet, for the most part they seem like regular average people – just older. Some are even cantankerous and crotchety. Were they not dedicated enough to refine their Christ-like attributes – IOW not righteous enough? Or is there something wrong with my expectation? Could it be that people – even older, wiser, experienced, and even enlightened people – are still just people?
You need someone to talk to? Here we are! Jump right in with comments on threads or even start new threads. Getting everyone’s input from a variety of perspectives is great to get a better feel for what you personally believe. This is a safe place to express yourself. The issues that you have presented have no panacea – no magic pill. But ultimately I hope that you can find balance and peace internally and move forward to be a force for good. We are here to help. Stay with it.
Brian Johnston wrote:RagDollSallyUT wrote:Is it enough to think that everything will be fixed in the next life? I think that seems to be a lazy answer that breeds more questions. Really, if it doesn’t matter what happens while we are here… does it matter what we do here?
Yes. The “everything will be worked out in the next life” is almost always a lazy answer that helps people avoid doing something about suffering here and now.
This.
:clap: When a close friend of mine knew some of the situation I was in he was empathetic but what he told me really struck me….hard “you just can’t do anything about it, it’s out of your Hands.” I sat there and thought and said to myself “O yes I can.” we need to do things and stop waiting for the second coming to “come” and do everyting that we can in the here and now. As I realized with my own situation, of you don’t take charge, no one else will. We need to work to “Zion” right now, not wait on train for the second coming to end suffering. It all starts with you, because that’s all you have control over. I mean this on a nice way. I grew up seeing so many people capable of doing things in a situation but didn’t because they didn’t want to “rock the boat” and “besides Christ is coming soon anyway, he’ll deal with it”. Ummm… We can choose to nip it in the bud early when we see suffering. We can choose to help with what we have. Established tradition or customs isn’t a excuse to let something happen because we don’t want to “Rock the boat”. Because of my history I decided to no more sit ideally by while others choose not to rock the boat while someone suffers. IHope you can empower yourself, with others including children, the best we can do is be an example without judgeing them. Something I learned watching other parents grow up and watching thier children slip even further away as a result. My sisters came back eventually after years of being unpressured. But now they too have swung the pendulum all the way back to the other extreme they hated so much after getting back into the church. It’s heart breaking for me to watch because I am the one that encouraged them to go back gently for years. Now here I stand, in the middle trying not to let either side push the pendulum when both sides want to push it as far as they can their way. It’s my
Choice to try my best to be balanced. Your choice is up to you. There is a lot of wonderful and helpful
People here that have given amazing insight into many possibilities and many positive ones. I can’t think of another site that meshes people with so many experiences in our faith so well. I wish you the best in thinking positively about using what you have learned to positively help yourself and others.
RDS, I agree with Brian when he said: Quote:Please stop talking about your older children as lost causes —
Just before my Mother died, we had a conversation where she said:Quote:I never had any trouble with any of you children as you were growing up
Like the dutiful son that Iam, I had to remind her that one of us is an alcoholic & spent nine months in reform school. She looked at me & tried to
remember what I was talking about. She then realized what I was talking about & said:
Quote:oh, that was nothing.
In that moment, she told me that she had not only forgiven me but forgot about it altogether.What a wonder gift she gave me. I will remember that moment until the day I die.
All of us deserve a Mother like that. If not a Mother, than a father, brother, sister, wife, etc.
I hope that God will be that generous with me.
Welcome to the group.
We want to hear more from you.
Mike from Milton.
Quote:Quit “watching in silence as each one receives the stabbing thrusts of the knife…” Quit sitting there watching it happen and waiting for God or angels to come rescue them. You are the angel God sent to rescue them.
Remember when I said there were no easy answers and even if I wanted to I couldn’t explain what was no going on now? This is not having to do with my previous marriage– rather my current circumstance that I did not go into. Yes, in an ideal world if I had all the tools I needed, I would just stand up and grab my kids by the hand and walk out of this place and never look back. But I am in a place that I do not know how to extricate myself from. Every time I try to escape I only make things worse and more resources to escape are removed from me. This is one of those moments that so many people have a “Why don’t you just…” as if it were that simple. If it were that simple, don’t you think I would have just done it already? I really appreciate your input, and I do appreciate a candid “quit whining and get to work” – I am contemplating that- but I am in a place where I really don’t know how to do that with the tools I have at the moment. I think there comes times in everyone’s life when we all experience a bit of this– the realization that we were never meant to be islands and we really do sometimes need help. I just don’t know where to get it right now. Even if I could tell you in this open forum where I am and what is happening, you probably won’t believe me.
Please stop talking about your older children as lost causes — the ones that grew up partly in a rough neighborhood after one of your downturns. BTW, just as many privileged kids in rich neighborhoods get into drugs and trouble. There’s no shortage of it among any socio-economic class. Affluent neighborhoods are just better at hiding it while pasting on a smiley face.
Yes, I know this. I lived in some very rich neighborhoods ad saw the cover ups first hand. I see it here is Bountiful all the time. But the situation I am in now has exposed my kids to such carnage on a regular basis that no one should have to see, and developing minds and growing spirits do not generally process well. It goes far beyond any simple lack of affluence. I am referring to a much deeper insidious problem that is eating at the core of our family. It is one I cannot address here. There is a chance for survival yes, like sea turtles. Some might make it. Maybe one. Maybe none. Maybe I will get lucky and the rest will. But I wouldn’t be a good mother if I didn’t want to maximize their chances and try to fight off as many predators as possible.
Quote:Maybe I am reading you wrong and reacting the wrong way, but this strikes very close to life experience that someone close to me has. Her mother constantly refers to her as the proof of being a bad mother and a failure. Her mother mutters on and on about not knowing where she went wrong to have such lost children who don’t believe enough. The lady was so over-the-top zealous raising her kids, that almost none of them now want anything to do with the church. It’s a permanent wedge between them. They desperately want a connection with their mother, but she is so lost in self-pity it’s like she no longer exists in the same reality. And the worst part? These kids of hers are grown adults, have their own beautiful families, with good marriages and take good care of her grandchildren. But they are lost! And they will be sorry some day when they realize the Truth of the Gospel, and the truth of the choices they made … blah blah blah.
Oh believe me, if my two sons would just be decent tax paying citizens who have families and love them. I would be thrilled with that.
Quote:
Yes. You do know how to fix things or make them better. You can figure it out. Don’t be the obstacle.Do I? Wish I did. I am trying to set the best example I can, but my experience taught me that this is not enough. I try to counsel them the best I can with my albeit unprofessional but hopefully somewhat insightful experiences and beliefs. I try to minimize blows whenever I can, shield what I can, heal where I can. But reality is we are in a very unhealthy situation that is not good for them, nor me. I have tried to escape many times only to come back injured with my tail between my legs and as I said, even less resources than before. I feel I have no other option but to wait until another door opens, and hopefully that will be the right one that leads to freedom. But i run in circles plunging myself further into desperation as no door appears, and the struggling with the confusion that I thought that it was God’s job to open the doors after we have done everything else we can do. I am doing everything I know how to do right now at this moment. But these moments are starting to stretch into years and nothing seems to be changing. It really is not as simple as it seems. If it was I would have fixed it already.
Fwiw, our 2nd Article of Faith says that nobody will be punished for things they didn’t choose intentionally and consciously – for things that happened simply as a result of being born. It’s one of the grandest aspects of Mormon theology to me (“pure Mormonism”), and SO few members really understand the implications of the simple principle it articulates. I don’t know if it will help, but please read the following post I wrote almost five years ago:
“Embracing Grace” (
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2007/11/embracing-grace.html First, welcome to the forum. Your story is a tough one. But you are among friends here. Feel free to question or share anything, as long as you are sincerely interested in trying to find ways to work through your faith issues and learn. That’s all we are trying to do here, and support each other as we do. One of the first steps to healing is to stop yourself from the “could’ve” “would’ve” “should’ve” thoughts that make us think of the past or future and wish it different. Things are what they are. We can learn from the past, and hope for a future, but we must live in the now. We must make choices and see things as they really are to be set free from expectations (many times false expectations) of the now being different than it is.
Your road is a rough one. But we are meant to find happiness in this life. The Church can provide steps to that sometimes, and sometimes problems and issues are so complex, that volunteer leaders in the Church are ill-equipped to deal with them, and you need to see there is more to things than just what is inside the chapels. Believe it or not…venturing outside the chapels is where so much growth and learning can occur. Perhaps you’re ready for a journey…your own journey…to begin.
We can be here to support you, as you find things about your life that are positive, and help changing the views on faith and church, choosing cafeteria style, what you want to keep, and what you wish to pass up on. You can start to develop your own faith, and begin to frame your life in correct principles so you can move forward as a healthy, happy person. You need to fight for your happiness. You deserve it.
God is there. He loves you and your children. I’m sorry you have suffered so long. But we’re glad you’re here with us!
RDS, I keep coming back to your Introduction. You talked about getting a Priesthood blessing:
Quote:I got a priesthood blessing that said that “if he will not live righteously he will be replaced so that your children will grow up with a righteous example.” It went on to say that one boy would be a great church leader and the other a great world leader and so great were their callings that God would remove my husband rather than allow him to damage those precious boys.
I don’t remember either giving a blessing or getting a blessing with such strong feelings or emotion.
At this stage of my life, it would be a
bigRed FlagI think there are times, as PH holders, when we want soooo badly to make a positive difference in people’s lives that we say the words without really asking God what He wants. Or, something is lost in translation.
We want to stand like Moses & part the Red sea. The reality is we are human beings trying to do our best with what we have.
I was going to give you advise about what you should do with this experience. I’m not going to do that.
You will find a way to get through this. I’m convinced that you can come through this experience a better person.
Mike from Milton.
I hope I didn’t push too hard RagDollSallyUT. I don’t know the full situation, and life can get very complicated. So I do realize it can be tough get things moving. I really do wish you the best, and hope you can find solutions. Keep up hope! I hope you can find us a supportive community to bounce ideas around. If it helps at all, near the end of my more traditional belief, I put a lot of faith into priesthood blessings. It was a learning experience for me. I read and studied the scriptures about priesthood and faith. I felt very strongly about giving bold blessings, rebuking illness, all that stuff like we read about in our history. There were two people within the space of a year that I blessed would be healed within a specific time period in a specific way. The blessings did not pan out as I had felt “prompted” to declare. It was a learning experience for me.
I am still willing to give blessings and have faith in their purpose, but I see them differently now.
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