This post is part of my series about spiritual experiences and mental illness. The experiences I’m going to share are ones that I thought of as too sacred and personal to share. They are still deeply meaningful to me. But I have a point to make and these experiences help to illustrate my point.
God’s Love
About 15 years ago, I had the purest experience with God’s love that I’ve ever felt. My life was at a difficult point (understatement). I was a single mother with three small children and their father had checked out (he later checked back in). I was also deep in a mental health crisis that I would recognize only in hindsight. I didn’t have health insurance, so I couldn’t have gotten help even if I’d known what was going on.
The problem that I identified was that I didn’t love my children enough. I was emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed and I saw my children as obstacles — obstacles to rest, obstacles to peace, obstacles to having time to grieve. I yelled a lot, cried a lot; I needed a break and couldn’t get one; I even got physical – like yanking them around, or smacking them on the leg.
My solution was to pray for charity for my children. I needed to feel God’s love for them to make up for the lack of love that I felt. Of course, I could never admit to anyone else that I was such a terrible mother that I had to pray to love my own children, but it’s been enough years and I have a different perspective now, so I can admit what I did. I prayed for help to love my little children.
God answered. With two of my children, the answer was what I expected. I felt an overflowing love for them, their cute little faces and bitty bodies. It helped a lot to dissolve the resentment that I was building up towards motherhood.
With the other child, the answer was … more. This was my most challenging child at the time because he needed me the most. He had to be in the same room with me at all times. He wouldn’t go to Primary without me, which ruined the only time I got to spend with adults every week. He was the most fractious, the most demanding, the most difficult one. I honestly just wanted him to leave me alone.
I took him to his preschool swim lesson one day; a perfectly ordinary activity we’d done many times. Parents had to stay in the pool area during lessons, but at least he got more than ten feet away from me. As he was walking away from me, towards the pool, I was suddenly overwhelmed with joy and anticipation, like a little kid on Christmas morning. That little boy — he was going to grow up! And I would get to watch him! He was going to discover who he was and it was going to be the most exciting thing that ever happened on the entire planet! He would make mistakes; he would accomplish his goals; he would overcome difficult times; he would fall in love; he would cry; he would be happy; he would be himself! And I would be part of it! I felt like I was floating with excitement.
Then he got into the swimming pool. You know how little kids love the water? He was in the swimming pool, the most exciting location of his young life! And you know what he did!? He turned around and waved and I saw his mouth form the words, “Hi, Mom!” I nearly cried with joy. He loves the water so much and there, right there in his happiest place, he thought to turn around and wave at me! He was so happy and he thought of me! What an incredible thing for him to do! I’m his mom! Yes! That’s my son right there! The one who just turned around and waved! Did you see him? He’s mine! I’m his! We belong to each other! I am so incredibly happy that he’s my son!
And God dropped the thought into my head, “This is how I feel about you.” I was stunned. These years were so difficult that, while I knew God loved me, I rather thought it was an obligation for him. I was tiresome and needy, but he had all that longsuffering charity and so he loved me. That was the moment I found out that God didn’t love me out of duty. He loved me with all the excitement that I felt for my son in that moment. He was so excited for me to grow into myself, and to walk with me through good times and bad times. God loved me AND he was happy about it!
It would be months before I would realize that I was so excited to watch my son grow into himself that I had not a single thought about my own expectations for him; head empty, no motherly goals for him at all; no assurance that he would make me proud or do what I wanted him to do; none. That lack of prophecy has been fulfilled. This son has grown up to be perfectly, exquisitely, ordinary.
God’s Anger
In this same time period, I was working through some terrible things in my past. I was using the Church’s Twelve-Step program for the wives of porn addicts as ad hoc group therapy. It’s fine; lots of us were working through a lot of trauma and issues while everyone else’s husbands (my husband refused to attend) were in the next room working the Twelve Steps to overcome their porn addictions.
The Twelve Steps for wives hoped to rebuild marital relationships damaged by porn use. I was using the Twelve Steps to heal from childhood abuse instead. I firmly believed that I could rebuild the relationship with my father even though he wasn’t going to repent or apologize to me, or even acknowledge what he’d done. One of the prayer exercises in our workbook was to pray every day for two weeks to see our husbands as God sees them. The purpose was to feel charity for our sinful husbands. But I would pray to have charity for my father. I still believed that if I just forgave my father enough, I could fix things between us and have a good relationship. This prayer exercise would change me so that I could be in the same room with him without … without whatever kept me from being in the same room with him. (I was barely getting reacquainted with my emotions and didn’t know how to describe my feelings.)
I prayed for charity for my father. I was used to a constant feeling of connection with God and I knew what it felt like to pray and get an answer. But nothing happened. My prayers bounced off the ceiling. I redoubled my efforts. I scoured my heart for any iota of a grudge or unforgiveness and tried to pray it away. I needed charity for my father; I needed it. After all, look what happened when I prayed to have charity for my children!
After about a week of daily prayers, I could tell praying for charity wasn’t going to work. I thought up some alternative wording. I would pray and ask God to help me see my father as he (God) sees him. God loves all sinners; after all, he loved me unconditionally. I just needed to access that feeling for my father. So that’s the prayer I prayed: let me see my father as God sees him.
Readers, it was horrifying. The wrath of God is nothing like you can imagine [fn 1]. I don’t remember anything about it; just the aftermath. It disturbed me so much that I didn’t pray for the next three days. When I knelt down again, my question was why my father had all those big callings and profound spiritual experiences if God was so angry with him. I wasn’t expecting a real answer; I was expecting one of those “just trust me” and “it will make sense in the afterlife” sort of answers. But instead I felt like I should open my scriptures and I opened right to D&C 76:31-37. I’ve never done that before — I’ve never prayed to have the scriptures fall open to the verse that would answer my question. God told me to open the scriptures and he showed me the verses about my father. Here they are:
31 Thus saith the Lord concerning all those who know my power, and have been made partakers thereof, and suffered themselves through the power of the devil to be overcome, and to deny the truth and defy my power—
32 They are they who are the sons of perdition, of whom I say that it had been better for them never to have been born;
33 For they are vessels of wrath, doomed to suffer the wrath of God, with the devil and his angels in eternity;
34 Concerning whom I have said there is no forgiveness in this world nor in the world to come—
35 Having denied the Holy Spirit after having received it, and having denied the Only Begotten Son of the Father, having crucified him unto themselves and put him to an open shame.
36 These are they who shall go away into the lake of fire and brimstone, with the devil and his angels—
37 And the only ones on whom the second death shall have any power;
Then I was given an understanding about the sons of perdition. I had always thought a son of perdition denied the Holy Spirit and Christ’s Atonement in a grand, public declaration of disbelief. But it isn’t. If the Holy Ghost whispers to a man that he has sinned against his daughter and must repent, and he silently refuses to do so, he has denied the Holy Ghost and denied his own need for the Atonement. Even while my father was holding a high and responsible Church calling, he had become a son of perdition.
Shocked, awed, scared, and deeply troubled, I never prayed to love my father again.
The Postscript
As the years passed without any contact with my father, I began to heal. It was a slow process with some backsliding and despair, but also achievements and good days. One day, probably six or seven years after God told me my father was a son of perdition, I was reading a memoir and the author talked about his experience with positive affirmations. Yeah, it was probably something inspired by The Secret, but my mind snagged on it. It was a prompting. I needed to start positive affirmations.
Sadly, I couldn’t think of any. Mind totally blank. I prayed and asked Heavenly Father what affirmation I should recite to make a positive difference in my life. The sentence appeared in my mind (I don’t hear voices) and I wrote it down in my journal: “I, Janey, will receive a sincere apology from a male authority figure.”
The next line in my journal is “I don’t know if I even dare say that out loud.” That idea was simply unthinkable. It definitely didn’t come from my subconscious. I’d had a bad experience at Church a few months prior to this and thought maybe the bishop would apologize to me. As I kept saying that sentence out loud, my confidence increased. I deserved a sincere apology! I was worth an apology! No man had ever apologized to me in my entire life and I should get an apology!
Three days later, my father showed up at my office. Unexpected, unwanted, and unannounced, he’d tracked me down — we hadn’t spoken in years so he had to do some sleuthing to find me. (Why idiots in other offices suggested more locations for him to check boggles my mind. If a man shows up and doesn’t know where his daughter works … maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe you shouldn’t help him find his daughter? Just a thought.) The front office called. I took a minute to gather my thoughts and repeat those affirmations to myself. Wow. This was why I got that prompting. The Spirit was preparing me for this visit.
He did not apologize. BUT. Here’s the important part: I told him he owed me an apology. For the first time in my life, I stood up to my father in person and told him he owed me an apology. I’d hinted at it before in a text message and once in an email. My father has a very strong personality and my spine dissolves when I’m in his presence. Because of those three days of affirmations, I had enough confidence to hold the line in that awkward meeting.
When he said he did not owe me an apology, I told him I never wanted to see him again and I walked away without looking back. I have never seen him again. I was SO PROUD of myself! You have no idea! I was in my mid-40s and I had FINALLY stood up to my father.
The next morning, the affirmations sounded useless and I never said them again. I’d obeyed the prompting and they’d served their purpose.
Revelation
These are some of the (many) experiences that I can’t explain away as products of my own subconscious. These revelations completely changed my attitude about something I thought I knew. They were constructive. I stopped wasting emotional energy on believing that I had to fix the relationship with my father. I started believing I was worth an apology. I started to believe that God actually liked me, he didn’t just love me out of duty. This gave me more confidence in friendships. It also changed my perspective on my children — I gradually gave up my motherly goals for them and just relaxed into letting them be who they are.
While I stopped praying to love my father, I still had to pray to forgive him. I’ve already posted about that experience in my previous posts What Really Goes On In Hell and The Purpose of Hell.
[fn 1] D&C 76:44-47 says: 44 Wherefore, he saves all except them—they shall go away into everlasting punishment, which is endless punishment, which is eternal punishment, to reign with the devil and his angels in eternity, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, which is their torment— 45 And the end thereof, neither the place thereof, nor their torment, no man knows; 46 Neither was it revealed, neither is, neither will be revealed unto man, except to them who are made partakers thereof; 47 Nevertheless, I, the Lord, show it by vision unto many, but straightway shut it up again;
My experience matched verse 47.
Questions
- If I told either of these experiences over the pulpit at fast and testimony meeting, would you be impressed? Would it make a difference if the person telling the story was the Stake President instead of a divorced and eccentric woman?
- You know when people say they’ve had experiences that are too special and private to share? Yeah, this. Should I just keep these things to myself? Should other people? What do we lose or gain by saying too much about deeply personal experiences?
- Have you ever had a spiritual experience completely change your mind about something?
Janey, I, for one, am very grateful that you’ve shared these experiences. I can’t say that I personally have experienced very much that’s anything like this. But reading about your experiences has buoyed me up today.
I will say, I don’t like the idea of an angry God. I am not sure what to make of your vision/experience. I believe you. But I don’t know if I want much to do with a God capable of those depths of rage. That may be a limit of my own moral imagination and experience. From what you’ve shared before about your father, perhaps something in the universe needs to feel that level of wrath and revulsion. Maybe this is why we’re counseled against trying to make gods in our own image.
This was such beautiful, fantastic writing. Thank you too for writing about the wretchedness of raising small humans. We don’t talk about this, and we should. I loved my littles. I had a supportive partner. The experience repeatedly broke me all the same. Not all the time. And the highs matched the lows. But wow.
And to answer some of your questions, if you or my stake president or anybody shared these kinds of experiences in fast and testimony meeting, and I didn’t know about them what I know about you (that I respect you, on many levels), I’d definitely be skeptical. That’s a Margie problem, I think.
Thank you so much for this. ❤