Okay, okay, I know. I've been terrible at blogging. I haven't posted about weekly wednesday weigh-ins, or ANYthing really, and there are reasons for it, but if I keep trying to find the time to post about 100 things, I'm
not going to find the time. So instead I'll post about one thing particularly on my mind right now, and hope to find time for the rest tomorrow.
I'll try to keep this brief, but it wouldn't make sense without backstory, so bear with me.
When I was in highschool my friends and I all went to this one evangelical church. My friend, A, had been raised in the church, and it was one of those singing and dancing kind of churches where people wave their hands in the air, and are always being asked to come to the front to make various (public) commitments to Jesus. Yes, I talk about it in a bit of a cynical way, but that's mostly because of how it made me feel.
There were a TON of youth there, but it was always so clique-y. I really only kept with the friends I came with, because even though A was friends with all those people, it felt like I wasn't cool enough to penetrate their inner circle.
In addition to that, I never felt the spirit. I felt so empty inside, spiritually, when I was there, and I was left wondering if people who were crying tears of joy were faking it, or really feeling it. In hindsight, I think it was a bit of both. When you add in things like invitations for anyone who is feeling in their heart that they want to give their lives over to Jesus tonight, and if that someone is you, then come on up to the front and be embraced by his love...well, I was tempted often to go up, just because I thought people might like me more. Only once did I actually feel the spirit, and feel excitement, and like I could get up, and so I did. It was a big deal, A got all excited and happy, and I was happy in my own way too. The spirit nudging me along left SO quickly, but I told myself that I was happy because I had felt it anyway. I grasped at it desperately and tried to get it to come back, but started to feel like a fake because the feeling wasn't with me, but the public commitment had already been made. Then, afterwards, this youth leader who I really looked up to and admired took me aside and said something to the effect of, "Did you really mean it? Because if you didn't mean it, then it's a big commitment and you shouldn't lie about it..." and instantly any little feelings of happiness left me. I wanted to cry. I felt like she was accusing me, and I felt even worse because I HAD meant it, and I was confused because the good feelings I'd had before were gone. Then, that following summer at a bible camp with A I broke down. I cried because I wanted the attention, I'll admit, but I was frustrated and angry more than anything. WHY could everyone else feel the spirit and be so happy when all I felt was emptiness? Was there something fundamentally wrong with me? That ONE time was all I had, and it was gone. I cried because I wanted someone to notice my suffering, and I didn't know how to get people to take me seriously without opening the flood gates. A year later, I confessed to a good friend, L, that religion wasn't for me. I never felt anything, and I just couldn't believe in a "jealous God" as the scriptures talked about.
So, that was my youthful searching for the truth, or the long and short of it.
Then one time at a highschool weekend debate I somehow wound up in a McDonalds, flirting with this guy I'd known a bit from previous debates, but had never really gotten to know further than in passing. I tried to impress him with my conviction that organized religion was a farce, that it had never done me any good. He politely objected, and asked on what grounds I disliked and condemned religion. I told him my frustration over heaven and hell, and that it couldn't possibly be so black and white as that. He agreed (!!!) and proceeded to tell me about the three degrees of glory (see
here.) It began a long conversation about the gospel, and for the first time ever, I felt the spirit in full. Not this fleeting goodness that inspired me to get up and publicly commit myself. Not this vague feeling of peace that was gone as quickly as it came.
No, this feeling was strong. It pulled at my heartstrings. It made me tear up for joy. It filled my chest with this feeling of excitement and peace. And the best part of all? It never went away. I floated back to my hotel room that night. I faked sleep on the way home the next day so I could think it all through. It inspired me to give up favourite bad habits of mine that I only assumed at that point were not in harmony with the feeling I'd had, and the gospel that my friend taught.
I've honestly never ever looked back since that day. My testimony is a simple one. My friend A asked, a couple years after-the-fact, what made me stop going to her church and want to become a Mormon. That experience is where the answer lies.
I had gone for years feeling starved of the spirit. I wanted to feel it, and yet never did. In its place I felt confusion, frustration, anger and shame. It hurt so bad, and yet I think I had those experiences so that I would recognize the spirit when it did come along, so that I could recognize the truth when I was faced with it.
I know the Gospel is true. I know it because of the feeling I get inside when I talk about it, when I listen to the talks given in church, when I read the lessons. It inspires me every day to be better than I am, to strive to become like my Savior.
There are still times I do not feel the spirit. I don't usually feel it in the overabundance that makes me cry for joy, but I do feel its quiet reassurance and guidance day to day. With the exception, of course, of when
I am the one to distance myself from the Holy Ghost. When I go places or do and say things that offend the spirit. I am so thankful I can recognize those times though, and that I know what to do to gain the spirit's companionship once more.
And that is my backstory for today's experience.
I still see A, L, and our friend J from time to time. In fact, we're getting together at A's next week for lunch. I love seeing them, and it's fun and strange at the same time, reminiscing about our highschool days and the fun we had.
However, mostly I've moved on. Many aspects of my friendships with people in highschool were rather toxic, and when I got baptized and changed my life around I found that I had little in common with my friends anymore. I made new friends, and feel more comfortable around them, like I can be myself.
To be honest, I find it difficult to be around people who knew me well before I was introduced to the church. I feel like I'm expected to be a certain way around them, like they are judging my ever action, every word. Also, I feel that in many instances they feel they still know me, and are often wrong when they claim to know what I like and don't like, how I'd react in a situation, and what my aspirations are. It's tiring to me, and I'm honestly okay with the distance. I suspect it's why I have a hard time being around my mom, because she is THE WORST for thinking she knows me when she doesn't. It's the main reason I don't want my blog to be public, because it makes me uncomfortable to have my mom read it. She would read my posts before, and then start quoting them to me later, and would say really awkward and socially unacceptable things like, "I just love reading your blog. I feel like I'm getting to know this whole side of you I've never seen before, and that I'm able to see who you are..." Okay, maybe that doesn't sound awkward to you, but to me it felt like my mom had just fessed up to reading my diary and loving it. She still thinks the things I go through are cute and funny and I'm her little girl. It's infuriating, and THEN she feels like she needs to comment on everything and comfort me when I'm sad! Oh boy. Now I've turned this into a rant. Suffice it to say, my mom and I have never been close, and her thinking we're closer than we are because she reads my blog upsets me. Rant over. (Yeah, and if you ever thought Mormons had to be perfect...don't look to me for an example. And yet! They haven't kicked me out, so it must not be true. We're allowed to have faults. ;) )
Where was I? Oh yeah, finding it awkward around people from my pre-conversion days.
Well, to be honest, it makes me feel like my worlds are colliding. That I'm a different me than before, but that I'm taking this new me and stepping back into the old me's situation. When I stayed overnight at my mom's the night before Elijah's baby shower, I layed in bed in the room that was mine when I was 4 years old and cried. I felt SO depressed. I felt...I felt like I couldn't remember who I was. I had to do a mental inventory. To tell myself that I had a home in such and such a city. I had a dog and a cat there. I had a husband who I loved very much. I had a bed and clothes and THINGS and that my entire life did not revolve around the house I grew up in and the people there. That I EXISTED outside of that old reality. It was awful, but it felt like my grip on reality was slipping away from me. And then Elijah started kicking, and I cried harder, for sheer gratitude. He was there. He was with me. He was real, and he was proof that I was not that teenage girl, going to bed in a big and drafty house, alone with her depressing thoughts. He was all that kept me from calling Matt in the middle of the night, asking him to come pick me up like a 5-year old who wants to come home from their first sleepover ever.
Suffice it to say, I have a hard time when my worlds collide. I just want to go on being the new me. I like this me. It's easy to be me. My friends who are members, who have only known me a certain way, even the ones who are not kindred spirits, even the ones who I barely even LIKE, I am more comfortable around than my own family and my old friends. It doesn't mean I don't see either my family or my old friends (hence our lunch/play date scheduled for next week) but I feel like they at least know me. I can relax and just be
big, bad, old me around them.
So anyway, today my two different worlds collided.
My good girlfriend, Julia, who I visited in Calgary in May, wanted to go to an Early Years Centre this morning for some program. I had to pick some things up and drop some things off for her, and I thought, "Elijah loves EYC's! Why not just stay and play?" And then it turns out that the EYC she goes to is in the gym of this church I used to go to with A. I knew where it was, I knew how to get there, I knew where to park, and I even knew the layout of the building, have spent countless hours of my youth there. It was like a blast from the past. And then! Guess who does their mom group/playdate every week there on Tuesday mornings? Yep, A and J, and umpteen other girls I remember from youth, who probably don't remember me. The ones I wanted to be friends with but wasn't good enough (or so I felt...) Maybe they never felt that way, but still. I'm so insecure, even at 27 years old, and it was weird. Not only was I there after years and years of not being there, not only am I a different me now, but I LEFT their church to become a Mormon, which was a big no-no. Like, my mom consulted lawyers, pastors, and tried to get people from A's church to talk me out of it (good story, I'll have to tell it sometime...) And then here I am with my kids.
I am SO thankful for Elijah and Abigail. Kids provide so much common ground that, on an awkwardness scale of 1-10, it was probably only a 6, maybe a 7 for me, whereas it'd otherwise have been an 8 or 9.
In short, though, my worlds collided. In a big way. And I didn't like it. I felt more detached from Julia, because I was trying to bridge these two worlds, and just didn't know how to do it. It's not an occurrence I intend to repeat any time soon. Also, part of me feels when I go there (like for when Anne got baptized or when she was married) that they're like, "Oh good, Holly came! There's hope for her damned soul yet!" Which is funny, because if it was the other way around, I'd be thinking the same thing. Which is probably why I'm so sure they're thinking it too, because I'd be thinking it.
Anyway, it's getting late, and I have revealed a ridiculous amount of sensitive things about myself. Way too much for one post. I'm going to have to make tomorrow's post a flippant and non-committal thing, something about how I like the flavour of bananas but don't like the texture, because they're just...you know? In all likelihood, I'll write about this time last year, because tomorrow is a pretty special anniversary for me. Either way, though. Nothing so deep as this, don't worry. This kind of mush takes time to stew over, and I won't have another brain mush post until AT LEAST Thursday. ;)
