Beliefs influencing major life decisions

[whatififly]

Lately I've been thinking about the direction my life would have gone had I not been raised LDS. I can't bring myself to regret much except the unnecessary guilt and shame, because everything I have done has helped shape who I am today. That being said, I can't help but contemplate how much my path has been affected by what I was taught. I feel the church's teachings put me into lose-lose situations and have been feeling the need to rant about it. I'm sure this will be long but I just need to get it out there.

Like so many LDS women, I married really young and had children quickly. I'm only 26 and have three young kids. I love my kids and don't regret having them, but I'm angry that I was raised to believe that it should be my only goal in life. I was never encouraged to pursue higher education. As a result of my blind trust in the plan others had for me, I'm now struggling through college while raising my babies. It's been rough- a lot of sleep deprivation and emotional exhaustion. Fortunately, it has given me a perspective on motherhood, poverty, and education that I wouldn't trade for anything. For this reason I don't regret my journey through this.

DH and I followed what prophets taught to the letter. I really believed that if I followed that counsel that we would be blessed. I stayed home with the kids and DH worked to support us and went to school. I read so many inspirational talks about how it was all possible with God's help. It wasn't sustainable. I was lonely and overwhelmed and left without enough help and DH was overworked and exhausted and didn't see enough of me for our marriage to be healthy and loving. Everywhere I turned LDS friends and leaders encouraged this setup. We were supposed to be able to manage it. I was supposed to take care of everything at home so he could "provide and preside."

I felt like a failure in every way when this didn't work. Our marriage was strained to the breaking point. DH and I were both experiencing exhaustion and depression. We still paid our tithing and dragged our kids to church no matter how much we hated it and couldn't cope. A couple years ago DH had a breakdown, lost his job, and I found out I was pregnant with our third baby days later. Ultimately we ended up on EBT (food stamps), medicaid, and needing to ask the bishop for help with our mortgage for a couple months. We were so damn broke. All our money had been going into paying for school (avoid debt, right?) and basic living expenses. We all know how the church feels about the importance of self reliance. I was overcome with shame and embarrassment. We were doing everything we were told would bring us happiness and success and it just wasn't working.

The timing was pretty crazy because it seemed like every week at church I'd get another dose of shame. One week the lesson in Relief Society was on self reliance and the entire meeting seemed just emphasized the idea that people on welfare just need to learn how to work and that they have brought it all on themselves by not being smart and planning ahead. It was a shame fest. I was astounded by how un-christlike the lesson and comments were. It was insane. Not once did anyone say anything about helping the poor. The same church that encouraged me to pay my tithing before my bills and not delay having kids was condemning me for needing help. Another week I was in the mother's room and the other women in there were trashing parents who use EBT to feed their kids. I was on EBT at the time.

We've made it through all this and are in a much better place now. No thanks to "the church." In many ways I am grateful for all of these experiences because it has made me a much more compassionate person. Still, it blows my mind that my willingness to follow counsel ultimately led us to those situations. If DH hadn't been struggling to work so many hours while in school, our marriage and mental health would have been better. We followed the counsel to have kids and the expenses associated with it were eating us alive- and we were super frugal! Sitting in Relief Society hearing that I wasn't a good or worthy person because I couldn't afford to pay for my own prenatal care was degrading. I wish I could say that I stopped attending then, but I didn't.

How anyone else encountered these sort of effects from their own willingness to unfailingly listen to counsel? The church is so quick to tell people how to live their lives and what decisions to make, and so eager to condemn them when the consequences are not positive. I wondered if it was my own fault that we were suffering financially. I felt that maybe I really was just worse than others for not being able to manage everything on my own or that my faith wasn't great enough to provide for us when we were in need.

This is way longer than I meant for it to be! Apologizes for the novel.

[Kalikala]

This is absolutely heartbreaking. I’m so sorry you went through that in a place that’s supposed to be loving and accepting.

I started thinking about it, and I know the church has effected my life, but I’m kind of a rebellious person at heart, so I went against the grain a lot.

Like when I got married at 17 against the council of my parents and bishop. But that’s it own story.

I know I have relied on the spirit a lot through my life, but the more I learn I I discovering that my relationship with my Father in Heaven is unique and separate from the church.

I’ll have to think about this some more.

[Cadahangel]

Sorry that happens to you. There are plenty of people who judge too much within Mormonism. I was in the EQP if you only knew how they talked about people who they had to pay fast offerings for stuff for it would shock you. Trust me there are real Christians in the world and we love you!

[Reuben]

Lately I've been thinking about the direction my life would have gone had I not been raised LDS. I can't bring myself to regret much except the unnecessary guilt and shame, because everything I have done has helped shape who I am today.

While writing an account of my beliefs over time this month, I came to exactly the same conclusion. However it went, it's my life and my experience. In a completely secular sense, it's sacred to me. The only thing I would change about it is how my beliefs made me feel about myself.

[Culper Jr.]

I feel the church's teachings put me into lose-lose situations

Yup, I've really been thinking about this a lot lately. It seems like most of the church leaders that are successful didn't live their lives strictly the way the church says to. A lot of the women leaders in the church have had careers. No one in the first presidency went on a mission. Many apostles have only a couple of kids. Just a couple of examples, and these are not bad things, but the leaders preach the opposite. If you really dissect the lives of the "noble and great ones" in church leadership that teach this stuff, you'll often find that they don't live what they teach.

When apostles travel, do they use professional services (hotel, meals) on the sabbath? I'm pretty sure they do. But what do we constantly hear? Sabbath day! Keep it holy! I look at my own family and the ones who have the most problems are the ones who follow the gospel the closest. My TBM DW makes herself crazy trying to follow every little piece of counsel given. I did for a long time until I saw the hypocrisy. Much happier now.

[crossmyheart]

We all get it. Rant on.

[Mormorrisey]

How anyone else encountered these sort of effects from their own willingness to unfailingly listen to counsel? The church is so quick to tell people how to live their lives and what decisions to make, and so eager to condemn them when the consequences are not positive. I wondered if it was my own fault that we were suffering financially. I felt that maybe I really was just worse than others for not being able to manage everything on my own or that my faith wasn't great enough to provide for us when we were in need.

That's a sad rant, and I hope you feel better after posting it. But for me, here's the key:

When you start to realize that according to the church EVERYTHING is your fault, from not feeling the spirit, to being left out of the prosperity gospel, to bad things happening to you, etc. etc., you can really pull yourself out of this, as you seem to have done quite well. You bought in, it didn't work, and instead of questioning your own role you're now turning it towards the church. And for you, according to what you wrote here, it's water under the bridge, and you can move on.

I was in the same boat your family was; I went to school for a lengthy period to get a fairly useless PhD, worked a bunch of odd jobs while doing so, worked periodically and sporadically in my field, never made much money and Sis M. stayed at home. Luckily, both of us aren't "keeping up with the Joneses" types, so the fact that we don't have a lot of money doesn't seem to bother us unduly. We can't take dream vacations, we live in a small house, but you know what? I wouldn't trade my life for anything and the lessons I've learned. And like you, it's made me more compassionate and caring towards those who struggle with the same things, and I am HIGHLY content with my lot in life.

As to those who've "done well" and seem to be living the prosperity gospel dream? Like Culper Jr. says, often those who are doing well have family connections, have family money, the wives work, have managed by sheer luck to be successful, and for the rare occasion, "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" and actually worked hard into success - the formula is extremely uneven. I'm sure there are many on this board who can commiserate with you on this!

[deacon blues]

Whatififly, this rings so true! The church often emphasizes the ideal without recognizing how our circumstances differ, and that maybe we aren't all supposed to marry young, have lots of kids, be successful, and advance from calling to calling until we become a bishop, relief society president, or stake president.

I think God created us each to be unique and different, but organizations see us as tools, and sadly the church does this as much or more than any company I've ever seen or worked for. Hang in there, you've got great thinking/writing/communication skills and It sounds like you are a blessing to your family.

[NOMinally Mormon]

That was such a hard thing to go through, whatififly, and I think it's terrible that the church ruins lives this way. I too made bad decisions in an attempt to follow church counsel. I actually did what I wanted as a young adult but then decided to get with the program when I got a little older. My first bad decision was marrying a guy because he was an active church member, instead of a nonmember who was a much better guy. Then I didn't delay childbirth for financial reasons, and I decided to stay home with them instead of going to grad school. As a result, we were living at half the poverty level, getting food orders from the ward. My husband didn't handle the pressure well and became physically abusive. So I divorced him. With three preschoolers. My life actually got a lot better after leaving him, over 20 years ago. But I'm still playing catchup in terms of career and retirement plans. I try to look at it philosophically, and recognize that there are lots of nonmormon ways people screw up their lives, drug addiction, alcoholism, having kids at 15, just being flaky about work and money. Oh well.

[Red Ryder]

My god, you're 26!

You have your whole life ahead of you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go concur the world kids and all. Will it be harder? Sure but that's life. Life is hard. That just means you have to work because sky daddy isn't going to give you intangible religious benefits for completing a checklist.

I think the people that are successful in church aren't successful because they are doing gods will but are successful because they learn to work hard, learn to manage people, and learn to be successful.

[glass shelf]

I've felt lots and lots of this. I got married at 20. I didn't have my first kid until I was 26, though. Did I use that time for awesome things? Nope. I graduated from college and worked an okay job that was unrelated to my interests while biding my time for my husband to finish school and us to be able to finally have a kid.

So many things I would do differently. We did okay for a while, but when my husband got laid off from the military (yep, this happens) our life took a hard turn that we're finally starting to recover from. This time next year, I hope to finish my master's and have my first, real professional related-to-my-actual-interests-and-education job. It's been a long road and none of it was made better by not starting it until I was I was 37.

I often wonder what it would have been like if I'd looked around at other possible options when I was in my early 20s instead of being so focused on the "righteous" one. The good news is that we can all make changes, even when it's really hard, and you're younger than many when you realized the problems with the system.

[alas]

My story sounds worse than most here. Married at 19, three kids by 25, Primary pres, RSP, all before 25. That was when burn out hit and I just couldn't have both DH and I both in major church callings with three kids under the age of five. Oh, and this was all while moving from hell to breakfast with the military.

But looking back, I am only sorry about accepting the church callings. By 26, I was miscarrying pregnancy after pregnancy, and so, if I had not had my kiddos early, I wouldn't have them at all.

When my youngest the two, I went back to college. That was hard trying to be active in our Utah ward. We moved into a neighborhood where most of the others had purchased beyond their means, so they were working two or three jobs to pay the mortgage. We purchased something we could afford on DH's pay, so the other women in my ward criticized me because I was choosing to go to school, while they *had* to work. I thought they made the choice to buy a home they couldn't afford, so I wasn't into feeling like they had no choice, but I was unrighteous because I was out of the home my 4 or 5 hours a day, while they were gone for 8. That was when I decided that I don't like Mormon women, and I have been unable to fit into the Mormon social mold ever since.

[Raylan Givens]

There is an episode on Infants on Thrones called "remarkably remarkable Liz." It might make you feel better.

I am watching your story unfold for my brother and his family. All you can do is just hope you can look back and make the best decisions you can for yourself/family and starting now.

All the best.

[Thoughtful]

The big thing for me in hindsight, is that instead of me working and putting my education on hold and spouseman going through graduate school, whilst being pregnant and miserable, is we could have gone together. I would be 10 years farther in my career, and the career path I really wanted would have been possible. We would have probably double or triple our income. Our kids would have been a little later on, and I would not have kept trying through so many miscarriages and still births.

Im happy with where I am now, but I had to process the realization at what I gave up without knowing there was a choice.

[MerrieMiss]

Like a lot of other women who posted here, I feel like a lot of choices were made for me, without any real consideration because I was raised Mormon. I wanted to get an education, but I never really knew what I would do with it. I wanted to get married, but I was ambivalent about children. I wanted to be a stay at home mom, but it made me unhappy. I love my kids. I love my husband. I don't necessarily regret even the bad things, because they were formative. I guess maybe the turning point for me in having a faith crisis at all was realizing I followed the counsel, I was doing "what was right" and I was miserable and things were not working out. After the ordinances, the marriage, the kids, I was supposed to endure to the end, and I wondered, endure to the end of what? I hate this, and if this is what the next life is, I don't want it. I allowed myself to question at that point.

Sometimes I feel a lot of regret over life decisions. I think what if? I wonder about the non-LDS men I dated and wonder how life would have been different had I let the relationships continue. But the truth is, even without the church, I would have still made a lot of decisions that leave me with regret. I would have felt that I was pressured into certain life choices simply by tradition, my culture, socio-economic class and upbringing. When I think of the way I approached marriage and relationships and what it means to be a woman, my own parents, specifically my mother, were far more influential than the church. If anything my parents used the church as the means to promote their own beliefs and I think that it really common.

In the end, there will be regret and remorse, sadness and depression over choices made. The stages of grief are applicable. They aren't linear, and one moves through them several at a time, and they often get revisited. But in the end, some kind of acceptance is key to moving on. Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned, or goal I have, is not to stay on the hamster wheel of exmo anger for too long. The best thing to do is grieve, and then move on. Moments of grief will probably come back throughout the rest of my life, but I can't permit them to control me, or in the end, I'm continuing to let the church influence me. It seems likes you're in a pretty good place. I'm not doing too bad, but if I could stop going to church I'd be a lot better.

[Raylan Givens]

Luckily you have a lot time ahead of you. All the best.

This podcast made me think of your story:

Infants on Thrones episode, episode 444: remarkable unremarkable me...

[whatififly]

Sorry that happens to you. There are plenty of people who judge too much within Mormonism. I was in the EQP if you only knew how they talked about people who they had to pay fast offerings for stuff for it would shock you. Trust me there are real Christians in the world and we love you!

It's infuriating to me to know that our very personal issues were able to become fodder for gossip. Since broadening my friendships to include more non-Mormons, I have found that outside the Mormon bubble people can be very kind and loving. I so appreciate the acceptance I get here.

[whatififly]

Like a lot of other women who posted here, I feel like a lot of choices were made for me, without any real consideration because I was raised Mormon. I wanted to get an education, but I never really knew what I would do with it. I wanted to get married, but I was ambivalent about children. I wanted to be a stay at home mom, but it made me unhappy. I love my kids. I love my husband. I don't necessarily regret even the bad things, because they were formative. I guess maybe the turning point for me in having a faith crisis at all was realizing I followed the counsel, I was doing "what was right" and I was miserable and things were not working out. After the ordinances, the marriage, the kids, I was supposed to endure to the end, and I wondered, endure to the end of what? I hate this, and if this is what the next life is, I don't want it. I allowed myself to question at that point.

Sometimes I feel a lot of regret over life decisions. I think what if? I wonder about the non-LDS men I dated and wonder how life would have been different had I let the relationships continue. But the truth is, even without the church, I would have still made a lot of decisions that leave me with regret. I would have felt that I was pressured into certain life choices simply by tradition, my culture, socio-economic class and upbringing. When I think of the way I approached marriage and relationships and what it means to be a woman, my own parents, specifically my mother, were far more influential than the church. If anything my parents used the church as the means to promote their own beliefs and I think that it really common.

In the end, there will be regret and remorse, sadness and depression over choices made. The stages of grief are applicable. They aren't linear, and one moves through them several at a time, and they often get revisited. But in the end, some kind of acceptance is key to moving on. Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned, or goal I have, is not to stay on the hamster wheel of exmo anger for too long. The best thing to do is grieve, and then move on. Moments of grief will probably come back throughout the rest of my life, but I can't permit them to control me, or in the end, I'm continuing to let the church influence me. It seems likes you're in a pretty good place. I'm not doing too bad, but if I could stop going to church I'd be a lot better.

Your story resonates with me. Like you, I've been learning to process my thoughts and emotions and am realizing that it is inevitable that much of my life has been a product of what I was raised in. I was just trying to do the things that I was taught would make me happy. I also wanted to be a stay at home mom, then I was hit with postpartum depression and reality set in. It has been eye opening to me and taught me that there is no definite recipe for happiness, contrary to what LDS teachings say. We are all on our own journey, discovering who we are and what we want from our existence. I sometimes feel regret over life decisions too.

I don't regret having my kids, but I do regret not going back to school sooner and I definitely regret letting Mormon teachings define how successful or "worthy" I am. Most of the time I'm happy with where I am now, but I get hit with those moments of grief as well. I never really lived for myself. I lived for a patriarchal institution that used fear and shame tactics to influence my decisions. I've still got anger bubbling up over that. At least I'm young and have time to change the course of my life.

[whatififly]

The big thing for me in hindsight, is that instead of me working and putting my education on hold and spouseman going through graduate school, whilst being pregnant and miserable, is we could have gone together. I would be 10 years farther in my career, and the career path I really wanted would have been possible. We would have probably double or triple our income. Our kids would have been a little later on, and I would not have kept trying through so many miscarriages and still births.

Im happy with where I am now, but I had to process the realization at what I gave up without knowing there was a choice.

I'm sorry that you've experienced miscarriages and stillbirths. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for you.

I put my education on hold for my husband too. I was told that it was my job to support him in his schooling by staying at home and watching the babies. It was misery and was awful for our marriage. Eventually we did start going together- I was pregnant with baby #3 and had a four year old and an almost-two year old. It was an adventure to finally feel like a person again, learning and enjoying time with my husband. I wish so much that we had done that from the beginning, but I wanted acceptance. My MIL was not supportive of my decision to go back to school. She gave up her education to help her husband through school and be a SAHM. In some pathetic way I wanted her approval. Now I make decisions for me and my family and no one else.