God speaks my love language

A couple weeks ago the question crossed my mind, "is there such a thing as spiritual love languages?"  An hour of Googling revealed a handful of posts on the topic in addition to a mention of Gary Chapman's book "The Love Languages of God."  I was intrigued.

I have taken the love language test multiple times and Words of Affirmation always comes up #1 for me.  This is no surprise.  I have hoarded "words of affirmation" since I was young - report cards with nice comments from my teachers, thank you notes with compliments from people I admired, letters of recommendation from high school teachers, emails/instant messages/texts that make me feel loved and special, important letters from friends, yearbook messages, birthday cards with nice messages hand-written inside... you name it, if it has writing on it and it makes me feel loved, I've probably kept it.  (Thankfully I'm not quite such a hoarder these days.  Mostly I keep cards and digital things.)

However - I had never thought to attribute my feeling unloved by God due to a lack of "words of affirmation" from Him.  I realized that I do have some - my patriarchal blessing as well as notes from and transcripts of blessings I've received - and that I reread them often because they help me feel loved!  This was a huge realization for me!  The three ways I was looking to experience love from God were:

1. literal words (a Words of Affirmation expression)
2. feeling His presence (a Physical Touch expression - which is my tertiary love language)
3. a literal feeling of love (possibly also counts as Physical Touch?)

Since I wasn't having those experiences, I felt unloved.  The light bulb came on.

I made this realization at an opportune time - earlier this month I finally started having dialogs during prayer.  I've written down and typed up those answers, and when I reread them, I see a lot of words of affirmation!  The thoughts in my head as I receive them have no emotion associated with them, but the more I read them, the more they elicit a feeling of love anyway - they are God's words telling me I am His daughter, He loves me, He could never reject me, and He's always been there in my darkest hours, even if I couldn't feel Him.  I cherish those words, and can't wait for my dialogs to resume so I can receive even more!

A few nights ago, I put together a playlist I call "Love Songs From God" that has a number of my favorite songs that are either completely sung from His perspective or have a chorus sung from His perspective.  I had noticed in the past that some of those songs affected me emotionally - now I know why.

I am so grateful to have finally made these connections.  This part of my life has confused and upset me for so long, but now things are finally making sense and are improving!

True Confessions: Core Beliefs

Something I learned about recently is core beliefs.  These are beliefs that shape the way you see yourself, others and the world.  They usually develop from childhood on.  Your brain tends to ignore information that contradicts the belief and focus on information that supports the belief, which makes this belief seem completely true to you.  However, unless you've taken the time to discover your core beliefs, you probably don't know what they are.

The good/positive core beliefs you have aren't the problem.  You want to find the negative ones that are holding you down.  You can learn what your core beliefs are by listing a number of situations from your life that provoked a strong emotional reaction in you.  Then ask questions like

• "Why?"
• "What does that say about me/others/the world/my life?"
• "Why is that bad?"
• "Why am I upset about this situation?"
• "Why do I think that?"

until you come to a statement that is an absolute.

I did this exercise with as many recent experiences I could think of and was pretty horrified with the results. Here were the three absolute statements that came up the most.

God won’t comfort me.
    Why? Because I’ve asked for comfort and haven’t received it.
    Why is that bad? Because it shows He doesn’t care about me.
    What does that say about Him? God doesn’t love me.

There’s no point asking God questions because I won’t get answers.
    Why? Because I’ve asked questions and haven’t gotten a response.
    What does that say about me? I’m spiritually deficient.

I can't recognize the Spirit or promptings.
    Why is that bad? Because my salvation depends on it.
    What does that say about me? My spiritual progression is stuck.
    What does that say about me?  I’m damned.

I'm kind of incredulous that I got this far spiritually with beliefs like that obscuring my perspective.

The thing is, I know that at least two of these are false.  I've felt God's love for me before, so why do I still not believe He does?  I am continuing to progress spiritually; so why on earth do I think I'm damned?  (Spiritually deficient - well, we'll see about that one.  That's a bit harder to disprove.)  This seems to be another "mind knows it but heart doesn't" situation.

The next step is to replace those core beliefs with new ones.  Not exactly an easy exercise.  My new ones are:

God loves me.

I am spiritual enough. (Yeah, that's kind of lame, but I couldn't think of a better antonym for deficient.)

I am making spiritual progress.

Now my task is to change these beliefs.  So far I have three ideas on how to do this.

1. Over the next few months, write down all of the evidence I can think of from my life that supports these new core beliefs.
2. Every time I get upset about something or have a negative thought, analyze what core belief is behind it, and state forcefully an opposite positive belief.
3. Use an affirmation app¹ to remind myself over the course of the day what my new core beliefs are.

I'm sure I will be hitting up Google for more ideas in the future, but I figure that's a good start.

¹As usual, no kickbacks.

True Confessions: The ARP meeting

Another example of how I'm no spiritual giant:

I volunteer with a nonprofit in my community.  The nonprofit holds an LDS Addiction Recovery Program meeting each week for the addicts in their program, which I love to go to.  The atmosphere is wonderful and I learn so much about the others in the room and their testimonies - and they have a chance to learn more about me.

One night in January I showed up at the meeting location and found out that the schedule for the night had changed at the last minute.  The group was supposed to do a different activity that night, but they weren't prepared for that activity.  Someone talked to one of the guys in charge of the nonprofit and he said the volunteers at the meeting should all share what God means to them and what the Church has done for them.  This was probably the last thing I wanted to share with the group.

The male ARP facilitator shared his testimony first.  I was planning to go after him because I figured I would look less bad if others ended on a high note, but his wife beat me to it.  Then the only other volunteer left besides me followed her.  As she spoke I knew it was not going to go well for me.  She talked about how she feels close to God when she prays, and she feels His love when she prays, and stuff like that.  Oh, awkward.  I wanted to die.

So then it was my turn.  I said I grew up in the church, there were probably 30 Mormon kids [in my grade] in my school but most of them weren’t “good.”  The church kept me out of trouble but probably also made me a bit self-righteous.  I know the Atonement is real and that Jesus lives.  I know God is there.  But I don’t have a relationship with Him.  I’ve felt His love once but have never felt close to Him.  I said I’d completely rearranged my priorities 10 months ago and started engaging in long sincere prayer and meditation and real scripture study.  I said I’d removed all worldly distractions from my life so I’m really boring; I don't watch TV like everyone else.  (That got some laughs.)  I said I figured there had to be something higher than the spiritual rut I was in, and I was going to do all I could to find it.  I was totally crying as I talked.  Thankfully, that room was a safe space for me to share, even though I didn't want to and still felt completely humiliated.

I won't give up.  I'll continue to ask.  Someday I will have that testimony!

True Confessions: The Visiting Teaching Message: God's Love

Another example showing that I'm no spiritual success story:

The February 2017 visiting teaching message was titled, "Christ's Atonement is Evidence of God's Love."  My visiting teaching companion generally was too busy to come with me, which meant I would be teaching by default.  This was another message I dreaded teaching.  I've spent a lot of time in my life intellectually knowing God loves me, but my heart feeling like He doesn't.  I have only felt God's love for me once in my life, despite praying off and on to feel it ever since I was a teenager.  I am incredibly grateful for that one experience, but I haven't felt it since.  I'm also grateful for that experience so I could at least share a little testimony at the end of my lesson!

When I taught this time, it was super awkward because I had asked someone to come with me that I didn't know very well, and I didn't know the woman I taught very well and wasn't clicking with her at all.  Not a safe spot for my confession.  But I did it anyway.  I don't think either of them knew how to respond.  I think my substitute companion asked my visiting teachee when she feels God's love, and she responded that she feels God's love and feels close to Him when she prays.  I was kind of dumbfounded.  I have never had that experience.

I won't give up.  I'll continue to ask.  Someday I will have that testimony, and will know in my heart what I know in my head!

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My lesson, for the curious...

This month’s visiting teaching message is titled, “Christ’s atonement is evidence of God’s love.”

President Benson said, "No mortal being had the power or capability to redeem all other mortals from their lost and fallen condition, nor could any other voluntarily forfeit his life and thereby bring to pass a universal resurrection for all other mortals.

"Only Jesus Christ was able and willing to accomplish such a redeeming act of love.

"We may never understand nor comprehend in mortality how He accomplished what He did, but we must not fail to understand why He did what He did.

"Everything He did was prompted by His unselfish, infinite love for us."

Unlike the rest of us, Christ wasn’t motivated by duty, glory, honor, or any other worldly reward.  He was motivated by His love for you.

In C.S. Lewis’s book “Mere Christianity,” he said, “[God] has infinite attention to spare for each one of us.  He does not have to deal with us in the mass.  You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created.  When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only [woman] in the world.”

It amazes me to think that Christ would have atoned just for me.  I can imagine Him having enough love to atone for billions and billions of people, but it’s harder to imagine Him loving just me enough to die for.

Several years ago, I went reluctantly to a Relief Society fireside.  The woman who spoke had experienced a horrible event as a child, and she testified how she felt God’s love during the event and throughout her life afterwards.  At the end of the fireside, I escaped the chapel quickly so nobody could see me crying.  As I left, I felt God’s love for me very strongly.  I don’t know why that was when God chose to answer my latest round of “do You love me?” prayers, but I was very glad I had chosen to attend that fireside and have that experience, since it is my one experience of feeling God’s love for me.