MustardSeed

I’m just here to share my experience, that gratitude journaling is very powerful and can change the brain. It changed mine.

Mission President: no. missionary: buys ticket gets uber goes home. Also gets dressed himself but that’s obvious. i’ve actually heard of people asking to be released from their callings, and the bishop tells them no. And I’m like, wat?

I can understand how the Lord would expect his people to represent him well and want his believers to bring unbeliever into his presence. God wants us to be happy and knows that we are happier when we are hand-in-hand with him. I understand that the church would take that and create a program to facilitate that. I also think it’s gets convoluted with the need to grow the church. That gets confusing, doesn’t it? When the church pressures its people to become full-time Missionaries, there are natural outcomes that are both positive and negative. How should parents react, feel, etc. when their children do not serve missions? Should a young woman consider a young man who did not go on a mission less worthy of her as a spouse? It’s a choice to go on a mission as a senior. In actuality, are there social or godly consequences if one doesn’t? Are my friends who have been on six senior missions, more faithful than I who have not been on one? Are they favored of God? Does the social pressure cloud my own understanding of what is actually best for me personally?

Was riffing off of this:

Speaking of which, but if they just had everybody serve the same amount of time? what if they were clear that women are now obligated? Or (better, imo) if they took obligation away and let people make their own decisions? Should a church obligate people? Should the church obligate seniors? Why is there an obligation?

IMO the church is simply trying to even the playing fields where there isnt reasonable necessity to remain otherwise. With significant imbalances, it’s pleasant to see these gestures. This one feels pretty “no duh” to me, I never understood the discrepancy to begin with.

My recurring nightmare was moving back in to my apartment at glenwood in Provo. Finally I’d had enough when we flew to Utah and I put a hex on the door where I lived for three years.. it worked. Meet me in Provo and we will hit the MTC.

My husband was the only one who decided to stay on his mission for the full two years, while the rest left at the 18 month mark when they made that change back in the 1990ish. He said it’s one of his biggest regrets. Hardest six months of his life.

Good. It never made sense to me. Generally I find 18-year-old girls much more mature than 18-year-old boys so it didn’t make sense except for the theory that they wanted women to have that extra year in case they could get married. Which makes me vomit in my mouth, honestly.

Patterns, beliefs, traditions, behaviors, all of which tend to permeate but of course find exception.

I readily admit that I am quite judgmental.

Could be. But frankly sometimes even I dislike us.

Is there room to acknowledge that we have been taught the wrong way “from the pulpit” for many years?

People don’t hate winners. They don’t mock Mormons for winning. They hate us because we come across in an unlikable way.

I teach GD and it was the toughest week for me to show up. But this particular part of the discussion was great. We listed on the board all of the natural consequences of obedience to God. Things like, humility, connection to God, peace of mind (knowing we are pleasing God), emotional growth, etc- as opposed to the proverbial check in the mail. I shared the story of having gone to the mental hospital during my college years as a volunteer and meeting a woman who had had a breakdown of sorts because her husband had had an affair. She explained it to me that she had done everything “right” and it was too confusing for her to have experienced such a betrayal. To think of the gospel in terms of vending machine rewards can be absolutely devastating when life actually happens. But that we can expect natural consequences such as we listed on the board. This seemed to be a satisfying reasoning, in our particular class.

Also, sometimes people “want” things because … pressure. (that fits for both arranged and chosen marriages) There’s a lot of things that I want that if the circumstances are different, I suspect I would not want them. there are so many factors that go into whether or not a marriage is successful that cannot be measured in terms of the divorce rate.

The number of divorces doesn’t account for the social pressure to remain in a bad marriage. In other words, staying together does not indicate marital success IMO .

Problem being that we so often turn to scripture as the final word . Section 132 comes off as manipulative on the part of Joseph to me. It puts in to question the validity of scripture for me. Also, all the various interpretations of this lesson is annoying to me. It was what it was.

Calm my guess is you will not get your question answered by Teddy. Cognitive dissonance is a real bear.

A purity religion doesn’t come without its challenges. I work with plenty of couples who suffer as a result of one or both intrinsically experience shame around their own sexuality.

Wat

Do you mean to come off as hurtful?

So interesting. I have always been aware that we focus on the garden as being the place of true suffering and atonementwhile everyone else focuses on cross, and I had always believed that this is why we don’t typically wear the cross or have the cross up in our church as others do.

It’s not about product it’s about scarcity