Looking back on the past few months of faith transition, I can see some vast changes in my heart and soul. I am still finding my way in this new world, but I wanted to document some of what I see right now. There are more of some things, and less of others things than there were a year ago. Some thoughts:
More
Love
- Love before was very tied to worthiness. I needed to be worthy in order receive God’s love, blessings and help. And in turn, that changed the definition of love in all of its uses. It also made me believe that love was also something to be earned from other people. I believed that my worth was variable depending on my “worthiness”. It colored not only how I saw myself, but put boundaries on the worth I saw in other humans, and limited my ability to freely love others in ways that I wasn’t even fully aware of.
Peace
- I spent a lot of my emotional energy doing mental gymnastics, trying to resolve conflicting doctrine, and, more importantly, things that conflicted with my own sense of good and right and wrong. Taking back my moral authority has been an amazingly peaceful change in my life.
- I have also found myself less afraid. I am not constantly worrying about the devil trying to get me. I am not afraid of trying and failing, because I am not afraid that I am making a mistake and not following some prompting the right way, or being deceived. And I get to be wrong, and learn and try again, and change my mind, and see things new ways, without being afraid that I am being deceived constantly.
- I do not feel like I have to control everything as much. I mean, I still do, because I am me, and also it is a hard habit to break. But I can make space for other people to learn and grow and be wrong or right. I don’t feel like if I had more faith, or prayed harder or tried harder, problems could have gone away. Things that are not mine to control are not mine to control. It is such a relief.
Happy Time with my Family
- The time that the church took away from families was always something I struggled with. It is a church of volunteers, so leaders who were working at least part time, and often full time, for the church also had to find other ways to support their family. Family time has always been a priority for my husband, for which I am very grateful. But it wasn’t always a source of peace for me because of the pull from the what the church taught we should be doing instead.
- I don’t feel the need to force my kids to do activities that are not a good fit for them and do not make them happy. No guilt about no scouts. No stress about not wanting to go to a ward party we would all just be miserable at. Fewer stupid and unimportant things to argue about and bring tension to our relationships and our home.
Sense of self
- There are a lot of rules to being a Mormon. Some of them are good and helpful, and some of them are not necessarily. It has been soul expanding to discover what I really think about things, instead of letting the church do the thinking for me. I feel like when I was young I had a much better sense of myself that I lost along the way as I tried to be “perfect” according to a never ending check list of things to do a certain way. I have been finding my voice again. Sometimes it is scary or hard. But I suppose everything worthwhile is.
Less
The less I guess is mostly covered in the details of the more. Less fear, and worry and less cognitive dissonance.
There are definitely good things there are less of as well. Less sense of community being the biggest, for sure. One thing the church does really well, when it works right, is providing a community and a place to belong. Although, I have to say, that it has not always worked for my family the way I expected it to or believed it should. But that is another story for another day.
Overall, at this point, I am grateful for a wider view of the world, and the journey we are on. It was a scary leap to take, but it has been really good for all of us.
