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My older kids (ages 11 and 12) wanted to stay for all three hours, today. After about three years of inactivity, a few months ago we began to sporadically attend Sacrament Meeting. By “we” I mean myself, my 12-year-old, and sometimes my 11-year-old. My husband does not want to come, and we have a baby who needs to nap (our ward starts at 11am) so you could say it works out okay. The Young Women came over last Tuesday (unannounced) to chat with my Beehive-age daughter. They brought cookies and “heart attacked” the house. They were very sweet and friendly. My husband, despite his lack of interest in church, expressed that it would probably be a good thing, socially, for her to go to YW activities and get to know these girls. Good, socially, he means. I agree.
He is concerned that she will be brainwashed into believing that traditional gender roles are universally morally superior to alternative arrangements (like mom having a full-time career and dad staying home, etc.). I think that is a legitimate concern, but I think we can “unbrainwash” her at home. I am concerned that all the sugar (treats at Mutual, treats during YW on Sunday, treats during firesides, etc.) will be ruin our hard work at home to keep the kids healthy. (We have a rule that we eat sugary junk only one day per week, because when we used to eat it more often the kids were chronically ill.) But we think we can manage that, also.
So today, she wanted to stay for all three hours of church. My son decided to come and try Primary, too. (That’s very brave for him. A really big deal. He has hearing loss, a tic disorder, and anxiety issues.) Of course, this means I would need to stay, too. Right now it’s third hour. After Gospel Doctrine I couldn’t sit anymore and needed some space away from people and lessons. I’m sitting in the closed-off overflow right now. As part of the illness that helped to amplify my faith crisis I accrued brainstem and spinal cord damage that makes it hard for me to sit for very long. And I also have some social anxiety in this ward where I know only a few people.
I’m worried about my boy in Primary right now. He was having me help him look up scriptures this morning, because he remembers that that’s what we do during lessons on Sundays, and it confuses him. He has forgotten most everything else, though. He thought it was extremely rude that nobody claps after the musical number in Sac Mtg! During the closing hymn he leaned over and whispered, “I don’t know any of these songs.” Three years is a lot longer for him than it has been for the rest of us.
I don’t know why I type all this. It’s overwhelming being here, even though people have been so friendly. I’ve been mostly blowing them off because of the overwhelm. I don’t know what my son is going to say during SS and Primary, and if he will upset people, since many days he identifies as an atheist and I don’t contradict him because I don’t feel licensed to. I wish there was a way to know if this will work long term; coming, being active, with the world’s weakest testimony. We will just take things one day, one week at a time.
Thanks for being there.
There are always listening ears here, in a manner of speaking of course. Understand that some of us only listen and don’t necessarily respond because the biggest thing most of us need is someone to listen and not argue. Not that we argue here, we certainly don’t – it’s just that no response is sometimes better than a response that might be taken negatively. That said, it is hard to go back for a variety of reasons. I thought about and struggled with going back for months before i actually did it. It gets better, especially in a ward like yours where it appears there are friendly people.
Your kids will be fine. You are their primary teacher, not the church. There’s no need to tear down the church, just counter with “we believe” or “Dad and I think….” They’re old enough to understand and practice discretion.
And, paraphrasing Pres. Uchtdorf, “your testimony doesn’t need to be this tall to enter.” Don’t worry about that.
I tend to say things to my kids like “many people do believe that. There are also good people that believe differently.” I have taught my kids explicitly and regularly that people simply see things differently, and that’s okay. You are a good parent. Your kids will be fine. Whomever they become, it will be their authentic selves.
Three cheers for all of you today. That takes courage. Hug yourselves, high fives all around. Whether this is permanent or not, this was a great step. My goal is not to make you stay only to honor what you did. Take it one week, one meeting, one day at a time.
And vent anytime, we’ve all done it. We will have plenty of chances to do it again – Just drop by around General Conference time, we all turn out to share our feelings then.
Your a good mom. You care about your kids. That will always over ride anything else. They will remember what they feel with you more than anyone else.
Roy wrote:
I tend to say things to my kids like “many people do believe that. There are also good people that believe differently.”
I should say that I do this with most things and not just things the kids hear at church. For example, I said this most recently to my 11 yr old DD when she asked me about reincarnation.
Thank you for so much kindness. You guys are the best. Everything went SO well. I didn’t need to worry about my son. During our walk home, he said, “I wouldn’t mind if we did this again! Second hour was GREAT, and third hour was totally tolerable.” He had a big smile on his face. I was so relieved. Later that week, he told me the Sunday School lesson had been about having the proper authority to perform ordinances like baptism, and he wasn’t sure whether he agreed with that, because it seemed weird to him that only men are allowed to baptize people, and because to him it seems like the authority to baptize should belong to whomever really wants to follow Jesus and wants to help others who also are trying to follow Jesus. We talked more about different levels of Priesthood authority, and about how women fit into things.
My daughter emerged from YW with a chocolate brownie! Haha. She said she wanted to politely decline but it was part of an object lesson about accepting grace, and it would’ve been awkward for her not to accept it. But there was a KIt-Kat bar that was offered at another point that she declined. So much sugar. Twice more this week she’s gone to church activities (Mutual on Tues, movie night on Thurs at someone’s house) and there has been lots of sugar at both, and she has declined it all. We sent her with a big plate of fruit to the movie night, and it got eaten up quickly! But she’s doing a great job of not eating all the junk food.
Roy wrote:
I tend to say things to my kids like “many people do believe that. There are also good people that believe differently.”[…]
I should say that I do this with most things and not just things the kids hear at church. For example, I said this most recently to my 11 yr old DD when she asked me about reincarnation.
That’s a good way to explain it! Reincarnation reminds me of a funny moment. When I was a Beehive myself, a group of us girls were in the car of one of our leaders on the way to some activity, and I mentioned in the course of conversation that I thought I might sort of believe in reincarnation, and my Beehive leader turned around from the front seat and said, “Oh, NO YOU DON’T!” It was a very different approach than even my own then-TBM parents would’ve taken: telling a kid what she believes. That incident had so little effect on me that I forgot all about it and only remembered vaguely, years later, when someone else who was also in the car retold the anecdote. It didn’t occur to me at age 12 that reincarnation might be incompatible with LDS theology!
squarepeg wrote:
It didn’t occur to me at age 12 that reincarnation might be incompatible with LDS theology!
It is only incompatible because we say it is. We already believe in eternal progression. Perhaps multiple mortal probations are necessary for some to learn what is needed.
squarepeg wrote:
My older kids (ages 11 and 12) wanted to stay for all three hours, today.
That
doessound like a strange Sunday. 
Re: reincarnation.
I converted later in life, I was the only member of my family to convert. My grandmother was a Southern Baptist and… well she didn’t like the idea of me joining the church. She’d also put me on the spot by asking random questions like, “What does selah mean in Psalms?” I had to have the answer because I was meant to convert them to the restored gospel.
🙂 I felt the pressure.One time my grandmother asks, “Do Mormons believe in reincarnation?” and I’m thinking, “Sweet, finally an opportunity to build on common beliefs, just like Ammon and the whole Great Spirit thing!” So I answer, “No, we don’t believe in reincarnation, we believe in resurrection.” Thinking that I’d score some “Mormons are okay” points with my grandmother.
Then my grandmother, a Southern Baptist, says, “Well I believe in reincarnation.”
:eh: The walls we put up. I guess on that day my grandmother taught me more than I taught her.
Roy wrote:
squarepeg wrote:
It didn’t occur to me at age 12 that reincarnation might be incompatible with LDS theology!
It is only incompatible because we say it is. We already believe in eternal progression. Perhaps multiple mortal probations are necessary for some to learn what is needed.
Good point, Roy. Nothing in LDS doctrine/theology comes immediately to mind when I try to think of something that contradicts reincarnation.
nibbler wrote:
squarepeg wrote:
My older kids (ages 11 and 12) wanted to stay for all three hours, today.
That
doessound like a strange Sunday. Right?! It took me years of parenting to figure out that the kids will choose to do all kinds of surprising things without being compelled, if no one is “making” them.
nibbler wrote:One time my grandmother asks, “Do Mormons believe in reincarnation?” and I’m thinking, “Sweet, finally an opportunity to build on common beliefs, just like Ammon and the whole Great Spirit thing!” So I answer, “No, we don’t believe in reincarnation, we believe in resurrection.” Thinking that I’d score some “Mormons are okay” points with my grandmother.
Then my grandmother, a Southern Baptist, says, “Well I believe in reincarnation.”
😆 With grandmas, sometimes you just can’t win!squarepeg wrote:Good point, Roy. Nothing in LDS doctrine/theology comes immediately to mind when I try to think of something that contradicts reincarnation.
The only things that come to mind are:
1) The idea that our gender is an
eternalcharacteristic of who we are doesn’t mesh well with reincarnation, with the understanding (and stories) of people’s gender possibly changing from life to life. 2) The church (and Joseph Smith) officially teaches/taught that reincarnation is false doctrine, for whatever that’s worth.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1989/08/i-have-a-question?lang=eng ydeve wrote:
squarepeg wrote:Good point, Roy. Nothing in LDS doctrine/theology comes immediately to mind when I try to think of something that contradicts reincarnation.
The only things that come to mind are:
1) The idea that our gender is an
eternalcharacteristic of who we are doesn’t mesh well with reincarnation, with the understanding (and stories) of people’s gender possibly changing from life to life. 2) The church (and Joseph Smith) officially teaches/taught that reincarnation is false doctrine, for whatever that’s worth.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1989/08/i-have-a-question?lang=eng
Not to be argumentative and I do recognize the
Ensignis the “official” stance of the church which some people believe to be scripture, but this article could simply be Spencer Palmer’s opinion. Likewise, it could have also been Joseph Smith’s opinion that reincarnation is a false doctrine. We know Joseph wasn’t right about everything, nor are his successors. Just saying. ydeve wrote:The only things that come to mind are:
1) The idea that our gender is an
eternalcharacteristic of who we are doesn’t mesh well with reincarnation, with the understanding (and stories) of people’s gender possibly changing from life to life. 2) The church (and Joseph Smith) officially teaches/taught that reincarnation is false doctrine, for whatever that’s worth.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1989/08/i-have-a-question?lang=eng
Maybe we can believe in reincarnation if we believe we’re always reincarnated as the same gender each time.
Regarding the five points in the link from your point #2:
1. Paul said a lotta things. Mormons have always played pick-n-choose with Paul. One verse in Hebrews? Ehh, whatevs.
2. Maybe we get to pick our favorite human body during the resurrection. Whichever one we like best can be the one we keep for eternity.
3. We can get around this one if we only subscribe to
humanreincarnation. 4. Reincarnation isn’t the only concept that implies that we can work out our salvation in future lives. We do baptisms for the dead, even for people who may have been introduced to the Gospel during their mortal lives, in order to give them a chance in their next life to still accept the Gospel. So why couldn’t some people be given another earthly life to work some stuff out?
5. Reincarnation doesn’t downgrade Christ’s earthly mission and Atonement. For all we know, Jesus only had one earthly life, or perhaps his earthly life of which we have record was his last one.
(For the record, I don’t actually personally care whether reincarnation exists or not. I just think it’s fun/interesting to think about.)
squarepeg wrote:
Maybe we can believe in reincarnation if we believe we’re always reincarnated as the same gender each time.
That’s one way to look at it. If Mormon theology serves as a boundary on some fronts maybe being reincarnated as a different gender is god’s way of making sure everyone experiences the joys of childbirth and the pains of attending elders quorum. Reincarnation as different genders would give a soul a more perfect (complete) experience, no?
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