The past several months have been such life changing experience. I feel like I'm a new man. I have made, in my opinion and from what Connie has observed, huge changes in who I am. I feel like I am a more loving and supportive husband and father, an all around better person. Like I am really making progress with who I am and what I want to be, which is happy.
Going to therapy with Connie I have learned many things about how I have slacked in the husband department. Over the past 16 years I have not shown Connie the love and affection she, or any woman, deserves to have. I'm not claiming to be perfect, but that I have made tremendous progress...that only took me 16 years of marriage to evev start to understand. What I've learned is a small sliver I'm sure. As we both learn and grow, I hope to be a good example to the boys and others around us, and that we can inspire them to find love and happiness in their relationships.
I also feel like I've been on a self/soul searching journey. I feel like I've almost always struggled with spiritualness and religion. I was born into the LDS church and raised with those beliefs as my primary spirituality. I recall as a young child that I liked going to church and it was something we did every Sunday.
The only thing I really can say that I truly remember of my baptism are a few material things. Being nervous about the bishop interview and then being in the interview and not being able to answer the questions. The day of, I remember a few of my friends from school were there also getting baptized, standing in the hall with my dad getting my picture taken, sitting in the chapel waiting for my turn, thinking it was taking forever. I don't remember any of the talks that were given, or feeling anything spiritually special about the baptism or confirmation. I was nervous about having to do it more that once, because I had recently been to a cousins and she had to redo it several times.
I had several times that I thought to myself after, that I had the Holy Ghost with me now, and that it would help and guide me. There were several times in my life, based on the church teachings, that I felt the "spirit" guide me. Today, I would lean towards intuition not a spirit that is supposed to be everywhere all at once.
By the time I was getting 11-12 years old I was starting to not want to go to church. I didn't really have my own testimony, I was just borrowing or living off my parents. Another factor was that I didn't really have any friends in the church. I got along with all the boys, there were no girls, in my age group, but we were not friends. I protected Ben Gibson from the others because they picked on him and his family because they were labeled as the "weird family" in the ward. I wasn't a goody-goody either so I got along with the rebels too. I played sports so I had a few of the others boys not in either of those groups on my team, so therfore we had commonality.
I remember having a serious talk about how I was feeling with my mom. I think it scared her and who could blame her? What parent wants to here that their child doesn't belive what they have been trying to teach them their whole life? I don't remember what was said, but I was told that I still had to go and participate. I felt like my feelings were ignored. I went and tried to do the the things I was supposed to do, kind of in an automaton state of mind. I served as the deacons quorum president for a while.
I just pretended to be a "good church boy" for fear of punishment from then on. I probably wasn't "worthy" by church standards to advance to any of the priesthood offices. Some time around 12 years old I got into smoking, shoplifting and many other unwise endeavors that got worse as I got older. I continued to live this way until Connie got pregnant and we decided to get married. Because I was still going to church regularly I was still being instructed as to the gospel principles. Having matured, just a little, and going off the faith and testimony of others, Connie and I decided that we would repent and start living the gospel standards so that we could be married in the temple.
Connie and I started to make an honest effort to live the and follow the gospel teachings and commandments. We attended church regularly, met with the bishop as part of the repentance/getting ready to attend the temple, read the scriptures and prayed. The next 6 years I actively and honestly lived the gospel. I did what I was supposed to do. Attend the temple, went to church, lived by the standard of the gospel and did the things that good church members do.
As I grew in the church and started to gain my own testimony I was having questions about different issues, especially as a teacher preparing lessons. Sometimes things wouldn't feel right or make since to me from a gospel stand point. I just blew it off as "I just don't have that level of understand yet," or some excuse to that extent. I never went to the bishop or brought it up with Connie out of fear. I don't deny that I had feelings that touched me and made me feel good as I studied or heard testimony from someone that touched on a higher level. I have also had those same feelings and experiences with things that had nothing to do with church.
I started to feel very lost. Why was I feeling this way when I was living to the best of my ability the gospel? Finally, after a few years of living this way I couldn't take it any more and admitted to Connie about how I was feeling. It was one of the hardest things I have done in my life. I was sharing something with her that could/would cause a huge amount of pain and suffering in our lives. It would bring her life crashing down, based on the churches teaching. I was scared that she'd decide that she couldn't stay with me any longer because of how I felt.
At that point I was probably borderline atheist. I went and talked to the bishop at the time bishop Moss. I expressed my feelings and he couldn't really give me guidance other than sometimes you have to "fake it till you make it." So that's what I started doing. At first I was just going thru the motions, not really getting anything out of it. I tried again several times over the next 9 years to get that comforting feeling, never fully obtaining it.
As Connie and I started realizing that if we didn't fix something in our marriage, we were not going to stay together. In the thick of it, I interpreted my feelings to be that we were missing something spiritual (I've realized now that the lack spiritualness I thought was there was, to me, was just a lack of connection). So I really started to make an effort to earnestly go on my spiritual journey and make my testimony concrete.
While working on this and working thru therapy, we were challenged to "fill our boxes." One of those boxes is a spiritual box. My resolve and comment to figure mine out was intensified greatly. I started to really soul search and decided to start by finding out about topics that, 1 I have questions about and 2 that I have people ask me about when they find out in Mormon. A few examples include: general belief, polygamy, word of Wisdom and the priesthood.
As I dove into the work head first. I really started soul searching as I studied and learned. I came to realize that I'm tired of trying to "fake it, til I make it." I wanted to be honest with myself and my feelings. That meant that I had to let go of what I'd been taught all my life as truth and right. It was now the hardest decision I've made. I didn't take it lightly. It kept me awake at night and consumed my thoughts during the day. It was something that would have an lasting effect on everyone around me, especially my family, who are the most important thing to me in this life.
It has been like a huge weight has been lifted off me. I know my journey is not done, but now, I'm doing it happily being true to myself. I can't even describe the elation I feel because of it.
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