So...I have only been recently realizing and actually believing that I'm worth loving. Wow, that was a difficult sentence to write down. Because once I hit the "Publish" button, I can't hide that thought anymore. Until the past few months, I haven't been kind to myself very often. But now I'm finding that being kind to myself and really, truly loving myself has opened up a whole new belief that I'm actually worth loving.
So, wait. Don't feel sorry for me that I've felt this way. We all have our "junk" in life that we have to deal with, overcome, and triumph over. This is one of my big ones. And the light bulb has finally turned on, and it's going to stay on.
So before I delve into some negative past stuff, I want to share this song that popped into my head as soon as I sat down at the computer tonight. I've heard this song a million times and thought, "Well, that's a nice song." But it didn't mean anything to me really. Until just a few minutes ago. The title is "I Can See Clearly Now" sung by Johnny Nash. So here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FscIgtDJFXg
So why would someone like me not feel like she's worth loving? Why not love myself? Why (in the past) do things to punish myself with negative self-talk and dwelling on things that weren't helpful? I wouldn't treat anyone else that way, so why treat myself like that? It has taken a lot of thought and soul-searching and being honest about it. The answers aren't pretty ones, but hopefully the answers will be helpful to someone else who is reading this and has struggled with feeling self-love and with feeling like they are not worth loving.
In spite of my shortcomings and faults, I truly have always felt like I was a good person. I've made some awful mistakes and haven't always acted like a good person, but deep inside, I've always known and believed that I was a good person. So, having said that, why the problem with loving myself and feeling like I was worth loving? Oh, those hard questions!
Going back in time, a lot of it was the environment in which I grew up. I've mentioned in a previous blog post about my dad and his emotional and sometimes physical abuse. I truly have healed from that, but I still need to acknowledge that it was a big part of my problem. Even after he passed away in 1989 and I had a good relationship with him at that time, it's difficult to think of yourself in a positive way when most of what you were exposed to was negative. So enough of that for now. My dad's negative influence has (thankfully) left me, and I choose to learn from it and focus on the good influence that he had as well.
So then what else was there? Let me name the elephant in the room - it was some doctrine and culture in my religion. But before I go further, I want to acknowledge that my immediate religious teachers and leaders were / are amazing people, and I don't fault them for any of this. It's the messages that were preached from the church headquarters in Salt Lake City and continue to be preached now. It was the continual focus on never doing enough, never being enough, and you just have to pray more, read scripture more, and have more faith. Honestly, I don't think that there are many people that had more faith than I did. (I do still have faith, but it's not in the things that I used to have faith in.)
When I was about 12 years old, that's when our bishop (ecclesiastical leader) had private interviews to determine our "worthiness" to attend the temple in Idaho Falls and perform baptisms for the dead by proxy. I was a good kid. I was a naive kid. So when the bishop asked me in the interview if I had ever "touched myself" (and he was crying when he asked that question), I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. In my mind, I was thinking well of course I touch myself - my hand touches my arm when I have to scratch it - my hands touch my head when I wash my hair. It didn't occur to me until many years later that he was actually asking me, a 12-year-old girl, behind closed doors, if I had ever masturbated. Every year after that when it was time for the "worthiness" interview, I was asked that question. And every year, I didn't realize what he was asking me, and every year, I came away from the interview feeling shame and guilt for something that I wasn't even doing or what I didn't even understand. Looking back from my older, wiser self, grown men have absolutely no business asking a young girl about this type of stuff, especially in a one-on-one situation behind closed doors. It's spiritual abuse, in my opinion.
If it was only that, then the story could stop here. But there's more. The continual lessons on chastity that our local leaders were required to teach us. The comparisons between a girl that had lost her "virtue" was just as bad as a chewed up piece of gum, or a wilted rose, or any other horrendous analogy that seemed appropriate to the grown man that was teaching to young girls in his congregation. I don't recall that there was ever a corresponding lesson on loving yourself in spite of your mistakes. Perhaps there was a lesson about that, but the lessons that a young teen-aged girl remembers is the one in which she is compared to an unwrapped piece of gum that no one wants. At that time, I hadn't had any experience with any of that stuff, yet I felt shamed. I can't imagine what other girls must have felt, you know, the ones that had experienced that type of stuff.
So now I'll share with you some quotes from the higher-up leaders of the Mormon church, the men that we revered as prophets, seers, and revelators. The men who spoke with God and Jesus and told us what the will of God and Jesus was. These are quotes and doctrines that I grew up with.
"The Miracle of Forgiveness" by Spencer W. Kimball:
Chapter Five - The Sin Next to Murder (when speaking of fornication)—These things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins
save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost.
—Alma 39:5
President David O. McKay has pleaded:
... Your virtue is worth more than your life. Please, young folk, preserve your virtue even if you lose
your lives.
President Heber J. Grant said:
There is no true Latter-day Saint who would not rather bury a son or a daughter than to have him or her lose his or her chastity-realizing that chastity is of more value than anything else in all the world.
And there's more. I thought that the church had stopped comparing fornication (a sin that I was guilty of after graduating high school), but no - the church was still teaching this doctrine last year! Here's the quote from the lesson manual:
"In the category of crimes, only murder and denying the Holy Ghost come ahead of illicit sexual relations, which we call fornication when it involves an unmarried person, or the graver sin of adultery when it involves one who is married."
And as someone who had repented, lived my life as a "good Mormon woman," being celibate for 30 years, they're still bringing this up and teaching it. It hurts, and it's false. So that's the lesson that made me sob last year when I read it online while I was on sabbatical from church to try and figure things out. Below the headline is an email that I sent to a friend who was concerned that I wasn't attending church. So here you can read in my raw emotion because at that time, I still allowed the church to have power over me, and I still believed that the church had authority over me. I was just beginning to take my life back from the church and some of its damaging messages. (For the record, I love this friend, and we are still friends.)
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson, (2014), 217–28 - Chapter 17: Keeping the Law of Chastity
My raw email from August 2015:
I don't want to think about it for the rest of the day since it has taken me a few hours to recover from reading the "Chastity" lesson from the ETB manual this morning. I'll just say that the messages coming out of SLC and the curriculum are doing too much damage to my soul, and I cannot keep going back for more. It's not healthy for me to have a relationship with the church. My friends, yes. The Savior, yes. The church, no.
Just a synopsis, because I don't want to get worked up again. :-) It's bad enough that some of this stuff was being taught during my years growing up and caused me to question my own worth (my sin was second only to murder?!?) and whether I was even worthy of God's love. But now it's being regurgitated as part of the official curriculum. Even if the teacher approaches it in a careful way, all of those terrible quotes are in the manual and were meant to be shared as part of the lesson. This comes down to repeated emotional abuse by the church, and I'm not going to allow it into my life anymore. I can find a thousand more uplifting things to spend my time and energy on. But I'm pretty much done with all of it now. Thanks for reaching out. I'm going to go and enjoy the rest of this beautiful day! I hope you do the same! Please don't worry about me or feel sad for me. I know that this is what I need.
And here's a followup email to the same friend with more details. Very raw. August 2015.
I apologize in advance for my lengthy response. My emotions and frustration are not geared toward you in any way. And none of this is geared toward our dear local members.
The problem with some of these lessons is the actual doctrine. It's not the teacher's fault if he/she is asked to teach hurtful (and in my opinion, incorrect) doctrine. I sincerely thought that the church had stopped teaching that fornication was second only to murder. Kimball's book "Miracle of Forgiveness" has finally been allowed to go out of print, thank goodness. That's the book that tells young women that it's better to die than to lose our "virtue," which apparently is lost even in the case of rape. This is the stuff that I grew up on, and obviously it did NOTHING to prevent me from having sex before marriage. :-)
I don't feel judged by people at church for the most part. Most of them don't know my story, and once they do know it, there's really no response other than love and admiration. So, I really don't have a problem with the general membership. It was more difficult for me when I was younger because it wasn't as common to have a baby out of wedlock. There was judgment from members back then, but I really can't fault them.
When this type of doctrine is preached, how is the general membership supposed to react? If they are truly following the prophet, then they are going to agree that fornication is second in seriousness only to murder. How long does a person have to repent and reform before the CHURCH stops opening old wounds? Even though I know in my own heart and soul that the Lord remembers our sins no more after we sincerely repent, the church does not forget. The church won't let us forget.
Another quote from the lesson: "Unchastity is the most damning of all evils, while moral purity is one of the greatest bulwarks of successful homemaking. Happy and successful homes cannot be built on immorality." Is it fair or even necessary to have to sit and listen to this? Or even read it?
And when someone does an immoral act, "he removes himself from contact with the Spirit of God." Well, that depends on the immoral act, I suppose. I felt the Lord's strength sustain me during my hours/weeks/months/years of need. The Lord desired to lift me up. The church desires to condemn...continually.
Another quote that really has no place in the lesson: "There is an old saying that states: It is better to prepare and prevent than it is to repair and repent." Statements like this leave absolutely no room for us to make our own mistakes, to go on our own journeys, to learn what we need to learn as individuals, and to help others who find themselves in similar situations. What a judgmental statement to include in a lesson manual! I can totally see someone making a meme with this statement and sharing it all over social media.
Lastly, here's a final quote from the lesson that is so hurtful and so unnecessary: "Children must be inspired by precept and example in preparation for marriage, to guard against unchastity as against a loathsome disease." So when doctrine (words of a prophet) like this is being taught in church, I really see no benefit. Stuff like this sends me (and likely many others) down a spiral that we must dig ourselves out of every time that we hear it in church.
There must be better ways to teach about chastity and fidelity than the garbage that is included in this year's manual. I'm sorry if that seems harsh, but it's what I think.
When we have these types of lessons, and then we consider Elder Perry's April talk that mentioned "counterfeit lifestyles," and recent Ensign articles that flat out state that we are not true disciples of Christ if we don't fight for traditional families, I just can't handle these divisive messages.
I believe that we can celebrate traditional families without disparaging those of us who don't have one. These types of messages coming from leadership are creating divisions among the members that don't need to be there. The types of messages from leadership should be messages of love, of unity, of how we can serve others and emulate the Savior the best way that we know how.
It is ironic, and even sickening to me, that we sing "Praise to the Man" to celebrate a man who coerced young girls into marrying him, who lied to his wife about his polygamous relationships, who married other men's wives. The church and most of the membership revere such a man and hold him up as the ideal. But then, shame on us if we have sex before marriage. Our sins are second only to murder, and the church will not let us forget that message. The disparity is beyond my comprehension.
There are other things, but it would take me days to explain, and I've burdened you too much already. But I hope this further explains why I cannot and will not subject my spirit to these types of messages week after week by attending church. It is damaging and unnecessary, whether it comes from a prophet or not.
I do want to give our local leaders some credit, though. The bishop is one of the most compassionate and understanding people that I know. Our stake president also studies these things. Our local women are absolutely amazing. I don't know why some of us stay in the church and some of us don't. I suppose that we all need to do things our own way and try to do and be what God would have us do.
Whether the Book of Mormon is true or not (I no longer know for sure, but there are some things in there that ring true to me), this message is key: "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."
And of course charity, the true and pure love of Christ. If we can master that one (it's really a hard one!), then I think that He will say, "Well done. You're good to go." And really, that's all I care about in addition to being with my loved ones, whether they are family members or not.
Thanks for reading this very, very long response! And for the record, I feel completely at peace, and I'm happy and doing very well. :-) Take care, my friend.
A Year Makes a Big Difference
So now it's August 2016, a year later after I wrote those emotional but authentic emails to my dear friend who was reaching out to me. It dawned on me tonight as I was re-reading my words from last year, that stepping away from the church permanently was the first big step in loving myself and feeling like I'm worth loving.I know that tonight's blog post is kind of scattered, but I hope that it can give you some insight into why people like me, who seem to be otherwise successful in career, friendships, awesome family, can still have such huge roadblocks. Like I said, we all have our "junk," and I'm glad to be hauling mine out to the dumpster where it belongs. :-)
I was talking to a friend earlier this week about guilt and shame, and I could honestly say that I don't feel guilt and shame anymore. It feels so damn good to be free from that. It feels good to love myself and to shed that old skin that had been damaged by so many negative and false messages. It feels good, even at my age (maybe especially at my age), to begin anew and to feel like I'm finally worth loving. And now that I feel like that, I feel like I can really start living. Last year was the difficult transformation. This year is the hopeful transformation.
If you're reading this and are struggling, please reach out, whether it's to me or to anyone else. Life is too beautiful to be paralyzed by unnecessary guilt, shame, and the inability to love yourself.
References
Elizabeth Smart: http://fox13now.com/2013/05/06/elizabeth-smart-i-felt-like-a-chewed-up-piece-of-gum/Admittedly, there is good stuff mingled with the damaging content in these references below. But for a believer, you take all of it and use all of it. Many of my believing friends and family don't see a problem with any of the content, and that's okay. But I do. And that's okay, too.
https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church-ezra-taft-benson/chapter-17-keeping-the-law-of-chastity?lang=eng
https://archive.org/stream/MiracleOfForgiveness/MoF_djvu.txt
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/08/disciples-and-the-defense-of-marriage?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/why-marriage-and-family-matter-everywhere-in-the-world
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