Never alone

I have spent almost all of my life feeling cut off from my Heavenly Family.  Despite my months and years of pleading, I have yet to feel any type of connection.  My failure to feel some indication that Someone is listening to my prayers has led to my belief that I’ve been abandoned by God, that I’m supposed to go through this earth life all alone, that life is a test and Them giving me any indication that They're there would be cheating.

It's hard for me to believe that I can have any type of relationship with Them when I don't feel anything coming from Them.  Logically, I know I had a relationship with Jesus and my Heavenly Parents in the premortal life, that most likely we were very close. My brain knows it, but my heart doesn't.

In an attempt to get my heart in line with my brain, I've started to imagine and write down what my interactions could have been like with my Heavenly Family, usually but not always in the premortal life.  My goal is to get my heart to feel so I can believe.

When my family went through a horrific trial, I prayed for comfort and to feel peace and felt nothing. I felt abandoned and alone. I wondered where God was during this difficult time in my life. Recently I felt like exploring what Jesus had actually been doing during those days I had been begging for comfort. This is what I came up with.

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Jesus and I were walking side by side on a path that wound through a lush green park.

“Where were You after <horrific event>?” I asked Him, staring at the ground.  “I felt like You’d abandoned our family.”

“Abandon you? Never!” He responded.

He stopped walking, put His hands on my shoulders and forced me to look at Him.  “I have never abandoned you.  You just couldn’t tell I was there.”

“Were you there at the temple the day after <horrific event>?” I asked, pulling away and starting to walk down the path again.

“Of course,” He said, falling into step with me.  “I sat next to you as you waited for your turn to do initiatories.  You were crying.  You felt like your heart was breaking.  You were embarrassed about crying so much.  I wanted to hug you and console you but you couldn’t perceive it.

“When it was your turn, you cried through the entire ordinance.  I followed you from booth to booth.  I couldn’t leave you alone through this.  You just couldn’t tell I was there.

“After your second name was finished, you left and asked the woman at the desk if you could go to the celestial room.  I walked next to you up the stairs and into the celestial room.  You sat under the big stained glass window on the couch.  I sat next to you.  I put my arm around you but you couldn’t sense it.  You cried and cried and wondered why your family was having to go through this.  You felt abandoned.  But you weren’t.  I cried with you the whole time on that couch in the celestial room.  I wanted to comfort you but you couldn’t feel it.  I wanted you to know I was there but you couldn’t sense it.

“You kept thinking that We had abandoned you.  That was the furthest thing from the truth.  I was there with you, crying with you.  I felt every feeling you felt.  I know you thought I’d abandoned you.”

He stopped walking and paused for a second.

“It hurt to know that you didn’t trust that I would always be there with you.”

His eyes were teary as He spoke those words.  That made me feel awful.  I looked away, my own eyes starting to water.

“I could never abandon you, <my name here>,” He told me.  “Not for a single second.

“I tried to talk to you, to tell you everything would be okay, to tell you I was with you, but you couldn’t hear it. You weren’t spiritually sensitive enough to pick up on any of that.”

Shame and guilt welled up in me.  I stared at the ground.

“But now you are,” He told me.  He lifted my chin to make me look at Him.  “And even when you can’t feel Me near, I’m always there.”

The shame and guilt were swept away and replaced by love and gratitude.  All I could do was throw my arms around Him and sob into His chest.

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust You.”

He hugged me back and whispered, “You do now, and that’s all that matters to Me.”

---

Writing it was really cathartic.  It seems hard to believe, but I actually don’t feel alone when I think about that experience anymore. I’m starting to believe that I hadn’t been abandoned at that point in my life; I just wasn’t spiritually sensitive enough to feel any heavenly help.

I don’t believe any of my stories are real or that I’m picking up on things from the other side of the veil.  But they’re helpful to me because they help me feel and believe I had a connection with Them, and that I can have a connection with Them again in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future.

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 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.

True Confessions: The Visiting Teaching Message: Daughter of God

Again, I tell you that I'm nobody important or special in the world.  I'm average.  In some ways, maybe below-average.  Here is a story that proves that point:

The April 2016 visiting teaching message was about how we are daughters of Heavenly Father.  Unfortunately, it was my turn to teach the lesson that month.  As soon as I saw what the topic was, I dreaded it.  I don't really have a testimony that I'm a daughter of God.  I logically know it.  I've been taught it since I was a child, and I said it every Sunday as a Young Woman.  I recently received a blessing where I was told I'm a daughter of Heavenly Parents and I absolutely believe it - at least mentally.  But my heart doesn't feel it.

I prayed and prayed the first two weeks of April, "Please, help me know that I'm Your daughter.  I need to teach this lesson and I don't have a real testimony of it!  Please!"  The answer never came. 

After teaching my lesson, instead of bearing my testimony of the doctrine, I admitted, "This is something I don't have a testimony of yet.  This is something I've been praying off and on about since I was a teenager.  But the answer has never come."  It was horrible to admit, but my companion and the women I visit taught at that time were three of my best friends in the ward, so it was a safe space to make that confession.

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:

The Family proclamation says, “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.”

Sister Sheri L. Dew gave a great talk in Women’s Conference about our divine identity.  She said, “Our spirits long for us to remember the truth about who we are, because the way we see ourselves, our sense of identity, affects everything we do. It affects the way we behave, the way we respond to uncertainty, the way we see others, the way we feel about ourselves, and the way we make choices. It affects the very way we live our lives.”

I searched for General Conference talks that explain how knowing that we are daughters of God influences our lives and came up with three ways.

#1 - Knowing we are daughters of God gives us self confidence.
James E. Faust said in the 1999 General Conference, “Being a daughter of God means that if you seek it, you can find your true identity. You will know who you are. This will make you free—not free from restraints, but free from doubts, anxieties, or peer pressure. You will not need to worry, “Do I look all right?” “Do I sound OK?” “What do people think of me?” A conviction that you are a daughter of God gives you a feeling of comfort in your self-worth. It means that you can find strength in the balm of Christ. It will help you meet the heartaches and challenges with faith and serenity.”

Sister Dew said: “As we come to understand [our divine nature], we will feel a greater sense of mission and more confidence living as a woman of God in a world that doesn't necessarily celebrate women of God. We will cheer each other on rather than compete with each other, because we'll feel secure in our standing before the Lord. And we'll be eager to stand for truth, even when we must stand alone-for every consecrated woman will have times when she must stand alone.”

I think in today’s world it’s very easy not to feel much self-confidence.  We are bombarded from all sides with the world’s ideals of what we should look like, dress like, and act like.  If we know we are daughters of God, it’s easier not to buy into those ideals.

#2 - Knowing that we are daughters of God helps us resist temptation.
Elaine S. Dalton shared a story in the April 2010 GC talk that really illustrated this point.  She said, “I have always loved the story of the son of King Louis XVI of France because he had an unshakable knowledge of his identity. As a young man, he was kidnapped by evil men who had dethroned his father, the king. These men knew that if they could destroy him morally, he would not be heir to the throne. For six months they subjected him to every vile thing life had to offer, and yet he never yielded under pressure. This puzzled his captors, and after doing everything they could think of, they asked him why he had such great moral strength. His reply was simple. He said, “I cannot do what you ask, for I was born to be a king.”

“Like the king’s son, each of you has inherited a royal birthright. Each of you has a divine heritage. “You are literally the royal daughters of our Father in Heaven.” Each of you was born to be a queen.”

#3 - Knowing that we are daughters of God helps us treat others with love and kindness.
When we know we are daughters of God, we have to acknowledge others are children of God as well, and need to treat them with love, kindness, and respect.

C. S. Lewis said something that I always found rather sobering: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. … There are no ordinary people. … Your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses” (“The Weight of Glory,” in Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces [1974], 109–10).

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