This is the follow up post to last week’s post, I Am Not an Enemy to God. Last week, I pushed back against the teaching that I’m an enemy to God and I have to fundamentally change my nature in order to be acceptable to God.
In this post, I’m going to talk about the way I had to fundamentally change my nature by relying on the atonement of Christ in order to find peace and deepen my relationship with God.
“By proving contraries, the truth is made manifest” [Joseph Smith, History of the Church 6:428, quoted by Ulisses Soares]. Stick with me, and I’ll try to synthesize these two opposing ideas.
The thing is, there was a problem buried deep in my personality and approach to life that was causing me pain and anguish. I handled the pain by alternating between withdrawing to protect myself, lashing out in frustration, and trying to fix everyone but myself. I’ve posted about it before. In this post, I’m going to develop the healing process a bit more and explain how I used prayer and the atonement. This took me at least four years of unraveling a complex problem — it isn’t something I can entirely cover in one blog post and there are many facets to it, so you might hear about it again.
I was in multiple unhealthy relationships in which I was suffering more than the other person. I took on the weight of someone else’s decisions, and did all the emotional labor of being forgiving and understanding while they disregarded my humanity, and then I yelled at myself for being a selfish, sinful loser because I was so unhappy while I was losing myself in service to others.
I did not have a healthy understanding of personal boundaries. I’d let people impose on me. I even invited impositions. Then I got angry about being taken advantage of. There were problems all over my life and I couldn’t fix any of it.
Two people who I had been trying to help crushed me on the same day. I hadn’t succeeded in helping them; I had disappointed them instead and there were HUGE consequences to my failure. The turmoil was so bad that I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep; the emotional pain morphed into physical pain and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.
After a sleepless night, I started praying a prayer that always resulted in a revelation or comfort. When I prayed this prayer, I could always expect some sort of spiritual experience [fn 1]. Here’s the scriptural basis for it:
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. Isaiah 61:3
I got on my knees in the pre-dawn grayness and started praising God for the double whammy of having two people blaming me for not helping them enough. “God, I praise you that Annie tried to commit suicide because I wasn’t able to meet her needs. God, I praise you for the terrible things that Rick said about me to other loved ones. God, I praise you for the exhaustion I feel right now and the day before me full of toddlers and babies and no chance to rest.” I set a timer when I pray like this. I praise God for at least ten minutes. I eventually get to things like, “God, I praise you for the broken sprinkler.” Every single thing causing me pain, or even just inconvenience, gets offered up to God in praise.
It’s a way of turning the problems over to God. It brings a feeling of peace — it gets me far enough away from the anguish of the problem to let God sneak in some promptings or comfort. I can’t honestly pray that I’m grateful for any of these things, and you can’t pray a lie. But praise isn’t gratitude — it’s an acknowledgment that God is still God.
After my ten minutes of gratitude, I sent heavenward a silent plea for some sort of connection with God. He got to pick what it was — comfort, revelation, teaching, a warm fuzzy feeling of peace. I’d take anything.
This time, God wrapped me up in the warmest feeling of unconditional unacceptance and then, with infinite gentleness, brought to my mind what I had done to bring this on myself. There was no blame or accusation or “you deserve this” about it at all. It was the kindest way possible to say, “here’s a weakness of yours that is causing you pain, and if you want, I will help you overcome it.”
I wanted to overcome it.
What I had done was to respond to someone else’s needs with no consideration of whether or not I could handle their needs. I was a doormat. I was inviting people to impose on me. I had a skewed view of what helping someone really looked like and I was taking on impossible tasks.
By relying on the atonement, I learned to let go of other peoples’ problems and set healthy boundaries. I had to reconstruct my entire self-image. I also had to extricate myself from many relationships. Setting healthy boundaries destroyed more than one relationship, and that hurt too, but not as much as staying in the relationship. I didn’t have health insurance, or the time and money to work with a therapist. What I had was a support group, books and the scriptures.
I got a prompting about how to pray to overcome this weakness of mine. Because the prayer, “God, just fix it all,” didn’t work. The prayers have to be specific. I had to know exactly what I was asking, and the changes had to come slowly enough that I could cope with them. The prompting came from Jacob 4:11.
Wherefore, beloved brethren, be reconciled unto him through the atonement of Christ, his Only Begotten Son.
“You see?” said the spirit. “If you have to be ‘reconciled unto him [God]’ then that means that you’re rejecting God’s will.” I was mystified. How could I possibly be rejecting God’s will by trying to help people? My idea about overcoming my weakness in helping other people was that God needed to make me strong enough to do some good. I was praying for that, begging for that. How could helping people NOT be God’s will?
Nevertheless, it was a pretty clear prompting, so I started praying to be reconciled to God’s will. I prayed my ten minutes of praise prayer, and then I asked God what his will was regarding Annie so that I could pray for it. See how Christlike I was? I wanted to help Annie. Instead, God directed my prayer towards my own helplessness. I ended up praying something like, “God, reconcile me through the power of the atonement to the fact that I can’t help Annie. She has other people in her support system. Give me the strength to let go of my need to help Annie. I will no longer try to help Annie. I ask you to put people in her path who can help her, but it isn’t me. Reconcile me to your will, which is that I don’t try to help Annie anymore.”
Weird, right? God’s will was to pry Annie’s problems out of my clutching fingers and stop trying to help her. She was still furious with me and I was still overwhelmed at what had happened, so I basically ghosted her. It brought me so much peace.
I had the same strange thing happen when I prayed to be reconciled through the atonement to God’s will for my relationship with Rick. God did not want me to try and live up to Rick’s expectations and standards. God’s will about my relationship with Rick was to stand up for myself and then leave. I haven’t spoken to Rick in years. It brought me so much peace.
The peace is what got me. It was divine, blanketing peace that could only come from God. Whenever I felt that turmoil, I journaled about what was going on and then started praying to be reconciled to God’s will, and I prayed until I felt peace about what I should do. In nearly every situation, it was to stand up for myself and set healthy boundaries. It was to say ‘no’ when I didn’t want to do something, even when I was capable of doing it. It was to make decisions based on the truth that my feelings mattered as much as anyone else’s.
Not every relationship ended. Some of them got healthier. Sometimes I just had to change my approach, or offer an apology and respect someone else’s boundaries. Sometimes I had to have a clear and awkward conversation about what I expected from someone else and refuse to accept an excuse. It was really hard and it took me years. I made progress and I made missteps.
But that prayer of praise and prayer of reconciliation remained my guide.
The “enemy to God” described in Mosiah 3:19 needs to use the atonement to become “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” However, when I used the atonement, I grew up. I quit being patient with people who were expecting too much of me. I stopped being submissive; I learned to say no. I learned to prioritize my own needs. I quit loving people who couldn’t love me back in a healthy way.
The way to reconcile this post with last week’s post is to redefine what it means to be an enemy to God. First off, I reject the word “enemy” in its entirety. There are too many negative connotations to that word. Also, I didn’t need to become MORE submissive, meek and humble. I needed to become LESS submissive, meek and humble. I had to grow up and stand up for myself, not become like a child and accept anything the Lord wanted to inflict on me. I had the Church confused with the Lord, and was trying to be meek and humble about everything the Church tried to inflict on me. Everything from accepting callings that I didn’t want, to my low status as an unmarried woman, to accepting the teachings about how forgiveness heals relationships without mentioning the repentance counterpart in healing a relationship.
It turns out that a real relationship with God is not the manipulative mess that I identified last week. God is not interested in having me feel like I’m broken, he’s my only hope, and my basic nature is an enemy to him. God, the way I experience him, doesn’t want me to help people who won’t help me. He doesn’t want me in unbalanced relationships.
God and the atonement set me free from relationships that dragged me down and caused me turmoil. I repented from the idea that I was in charge of helping and healing people who did not respect me. With those burdens and expectations removed, I found out who I actually was. I found out who I naturally was. My personality finally emerged in full, rather than just peeking out around the edges where I was being smothered by bad relationships and Church expectations. God loves “the natural Janey.”
It was a pretty wild experience. Every so often, I was prompted to give up a burden and I would panic. I had carried that burden for so long that I didn’t know who I would be if I set it down (“bear one another’s burdens”). God would wait until I was ready, then I would hand him the burden. Then I would find out who I could be if I set it down and I was wonderful. I learned to love and accept myself, and distance myself from places where I was not loved and accepted (including Church).
It was a very self-centered process. For years, I’d been beating myself up with Hinckley’s anecdote about struggling on his mission, and then having his father tell him, “forget yourself and go to work.” For me, the instructions were, “pay attention to yourself and go to work.”
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[fn 1] I learned this prayer from Catherine Marshall, a Protestant Christian author. I felt like I’d read everything that LDS authors had to say about turning to God in suffering and I started reading Protestant authors. Catherine Marshall became my spiritual mentor, though she died when I was only a few years old. I bought all her books and read them repeatedly. She explained the prayer of praise, which she put into practice while coping with the devastation of her granddaughter’s death. Marshall, Catherine, The Inspirational Writings of Catherine Marshall: Something More & A Closer Walk, pp. 1-44 (Inspirational Press 1991). Something More was originally published in 1974.
Questions:
- Do your weaknesses match up to things that the Church considers to be weaknesses?
- Do you believe the Church encourages certain weaknesses that benefit the Church?
- Have you had good or bad experiences with turning down opportunities to serve? With deciding not to help or get involved in some situations?
Wheat & Tares 
Oh Janey, thank you for this beautiful, real, vulnerable, spiritual gem.
“It was to make decisions based on the truth that my feelings mattered as much as anyone else’s.”
What a beautiful central truth. To me this truth is central to the gospel of Christ when we say “I am a child of God” and we give ourselves the basic dignity and knowledge of a personal, guiding connection with God. Our autonomy from other people and their separation from us, the boundaries between each person rather than being enmeshed in others, is a true path to peace.
I really enjoy Mosiah 4:16 through 27. These verses give us a clear explication of boundaries in offering help and support. We are told not to judge the begger, we don’t know anything about his situation or his needs except that he has asked for our help. The measuring stick for deciding if we help has nothing to do with him, it has to do with us, with what we actually know, ourselves. Do we have what he has asked for, and is it extra, or do we need it for our own situation? We have to clearly judge that boundary before we give. If we see it isn’t right for us to give we don’t blame him or ourselves, we just say from verse 24 “I give not because I have not, but if I had, I would give.”
It goes on to verse 27 where we are encouraged not to run faster than we have strength.
I cannot answer your question because I see “the church” in a broad way. Yes, sometimes members and leaders get things wrong and teach things in a harmful way. Often they mean well, and even succeed in teaching good boundaries and respect for others through the gospel context.
There’s the old tradition to never turn down a calling. This can be a harmful tradition that isn’t based on anybody’s reality. Any bishopric ought to be thrilled to have members tell the truth about their own situation and obligation and turn down callings that really aren’t going to work out for them or the church. We place difficult burdens when we expect bishops to know things we haven’t told them about our schedule and capacity to serve and we talk like they infallibly speak for God and know everything in offering a call. Nope. God isn’t going to send down an angel to tell them our schedules when they could just ask us.
I love the way my old bishop approached it. He offered me a calling, I explained some of my other obligations, and he said “I feel inspired to withdraw this calling”.
Last week my primary presidency checked in with me about my continuing availability to run activity days. I explained my education is requiring my attendance periodically on some of the nights we had planned on, but there is some flexibility. She said she didn’t want me to get over worked and promised to find another leader as soon as possible.
Each leader and member can choose to make “the church” into something with good boundaries or poor boundaries.
I am so sorry the teachings in your early life and in the church taught poor boundaries. I am so glad you came to see a greater more peaceful truth. In my community I continue to teach good boundaries, sometimes in talks, but mostly just by my own actions and example in working with others. Thank you for sharing what you have learned. It’s going to help someone, without fail.
My weaknesses were opposite of what the church considers weaknesses, sort of like your were. So, yes to your first question.
And yes the church encourages weaknesses that benefit the church. The church like people who act like abused children , instead of the humble submissive to God, but knowing God loves them children. There is a huge difference in the fear and shame of the submission of an abused child compared to the submission of a loved child. The loved child trusts God to never hurt them, so they submit in trust. The abused child blames themselves for the fact that parents or church hurt them. The church like it’s members to blame themselves when they feel the church is hurting them. “Oh, you feel uncomfortable with the temple because it make you feel unloved as a woman? That’s all your own lack of faith.” See, how the church throws it back on the person who is hurting rather than accept that the endowment ceremony is so sexist that it causes women to feel hated by God.
I had to realize that my problem with the church was exactly the same as my problem with my parents. I was accepting the church abusing me and blaming myself for it all. And the church was blaming all the abuse on God. It was really God who was racist with denying the priesthood and temple to blacks. It was really God who treated the boys different than the girls with the scouting program compared to our lack of anything but lessons, back in the 60’s. The boys got to have fun going camping and on adventures, while we girls stayed home and got lectured on chastity and modesty. But that was all how God wanted it and if you didn’t like it, then YOU were unrighteousness. Have a calling you hate? That is all your fault for being unrighteous. Can’t get an answer that the BoM is magically true? That is all you lack of faith. Any problem at all was all my fault because the church was perfect. The church was perfect while telling blacks they can’t have priesthood and it is perfect when it changes that doctrine. It is always perfect and I am always wrong.
That was how my narcissistic father was. Any problem was *never* his fault, but always the fault of somebody else.
And my church was exactly the same way. And the church taught me that God loves me exactly like my father loved me. Oh dear, I hope not.
So, anyway, yes the church likes its members to be able to accept any emotional abuse it dishes out. And that is actually a weakness and will keep people from trusting God. Because the church claims to represent God, then it tells you that your pain is all your fault as it smacks you. This will keep you submissive to the church and afraid of and distrusting God.
“Do you believe the Church encourages certain weaknesses that benefit the Church?”
Yep. The more one praises local leaders, the higher likelihood that one moves up the hierarchy. Schmoozing, kowtowing and leadership worship are definitely a part of LDS culture. I think it has intensified over the last 30 years or so, having migrated in from the business world. In my stake, you’ll see men walking up onto the stand after meetings to make sure they touch base with the Bishopric, high councilor or Stake Presidency. Some frequently mention the leaders in their testimonies, or express gratitude for them in public prayers.
Anna – thanks for your kind words. I grew up hearing Elder Boyd K Packer repeatedly teaching that callings come from the Lord and we shouldn’t turn down the Lord. Once he died, no one else really picked up that drum to beat, and the attitude through the Church now seems to be more willing to acknowledge circumstances and not be quite so harsh about insisting people take callings. It’s a welcome change and I’m glad people no longer get the guilt trip about callings (or at least not as much).
My family taught me unhealthy boundaries, but nothing I heard at Church counteracted any of that. Once in a while, someone would “don’t run faster than you have strength” but I’d hear entire talks and lessons about the joys of service, and how Christlike it is to put everyone else’s needs above your own. I didn’t realize how unhealthy family boundaries were until I was an adult, and it took me more years after that to apply boundaries to the Church as well. People with healthy family boundaries handled Church expectations much better than I did.
Anna – agreed. On an individual basis, people will say they’re fine with someone asserting strong boundaries, but a lot of the Church’s functionality depends on the masses saying yes whether they want to or not. It’s like the general rule is to be submissive and say yes to everyone, but once in a while, I can insist on getting an exception to the general rule. Those aren’t encouraged. They’re happening more and more — I expect that’s a reason the Church is having difficulty staffing callings.
All those hours I spent learning, prepared in my Sunday best, drinking in the Steps To Pray, on repeat for half a lifetime; drenched with the correlated collective wisdom of CES-trained committees of theologians about connecting — with God! — and how one might Know, and Get Guidance and Direction Through The Fog (from God!) and after the tepid, shallow (my own fault, I know) and ultimately abandoned efforts, I come here, to this heretic, apostate place, not even seeking the Unknowable anymore, and I find a beautiful polished little gift of scripture (Isaiah! Haha!) applied to the problem, as if experimenting on a planted seed, and yielding reproducible results of a path to take. If only one has the courage to take it.
Thank you, Janey. Sorry bout the threadjack.
Janey, I’m so thrilled to discover another person who loves Catherine Marshall’s books as much as I do! She was the person who started me on my spiritual journey at age 13. I had just read her first novel “Christy” and the way that having a relationship with Deity was portrayed in that book just grabbed my spirit and wouldn’t let go. I saved all of my babysitting money that I’d earned and bought “Something More” and all of her books that I could find. Here was spiritual food indeed for a teenaged girl seriously starving for lack of any real nourishment even though I attended church faithfully and my family held FHE every week!
The God and Savior that Marshall introduced me to were very different than the ones that I had been taught to believe in. They expected me to make mistakes, to have doubts and to ask hard questions of them, my parents, church teachers and leaders without fear of censure or punishment. They wanted my absolute honesty in our relationship and not pious posturing. I didn’t have to be perfect before they might possibly consider loving me nor did I have to constantly propitiate them in order to be on their good side. I could relax into their love and allow them to become my beloved spiritual family and to lovingly teach me. If I hadn’t discovered Marshall and her wonderful books about developing a close relationship to Deity as a teen, which changed the whole trajectory of my spiritual life, I hate to think about who I might have become. Because I’m a lifelong learner and very stubborn I still wouldn’t be a TBM, but my the direction of my spiritual life would probably be different than it’s been, and I would’ve missed out on so much light, love and knowledge.
Poor Wayfaring Stranger – I read “Christie” and “Julie” as a teen but didn’t start reading her nonfiction writing until I was in my late 20s. Catherine Marshall had such a practical approach to faith; I loved how she connected faith to actual life, rather than an ideal life. She taught me so much. I’m so happy to find another fan too!
MDearest – thank you for your kind words. 🙂