By some odd coincidence, since we do not have a particularly dense Mormon population, our next door neighbors are Mormon. We don't know them that well, though we have had a handful of friendly conversations in the two years they lived next to us.

Anyway, Sunday morning the wife next door (WND, or "Wendy") texted DW to ask whether DW could bring some things to church for her since Wendy had been in the hospital for almost a week (the first we heard of it) and would miss church herself. DW, being the genuinely good person she is, said "of course" and immediately made plans to prepare dinners for Wendy's husband and daughter.

DW didn't call the RS, nor did she leave it to RS to make arrangements for Wendy; she just jumped in to help our neighbor without any hesitation whatsoever.

Fastforward to getting home from SM (it was F&T) and DW's primary class. While DW was preparing dinner for Wendy's family (enough for two or three days, depending on how much they eat), DW is tearfully telling me that she's not as worthy as so many of the members in her ward.

She doesn't read the scriptures and pray as much as she used to, and definitely not as much as the women who bore their testimonies at F&T. Her attendance has been spotty recently. Besides being sick for most the winter, she missed a couple Sundays to sit with her mother in the hospital, and another to make a surprise birthday visit to her granddaughter a couple states away.

She is always the first to help, to comfort, to encourage, to enliven, and to simply care; and she is so concerned that she is "not worthy" because she doesn't read her scriptures and pray as much as she "should", that it brings her to tears.

She sounds like a saint. I wonder why I never devised a friendship test while I was in. I just assumed these nice people were my friends. Humble folks without temptation.

Is that a quote from a song? It's tickling a memory from my mission.

It might be from somewhere else too, but my brain said "Ample parking day or night, people smiling "Howdy neighbor." ...if that is indeed the reference, your mission was more fun than mine, m'kay?

Ask your wife if she would feel this way if it was only Jesus evaluating her worthiness and not other Mormons. There is an LDS book titled "Believing Christ" by Stephen Robinson that addresses these feelings with LDS women. LDS, Inc. wasn't nuts about S.R. writing the book but it is a big seller so Deseret Books sells it. Steve's wife almost went nuts trying to measure up so he wrote it for her.

Your not alone with this frustration.

Thank you very much for the book recommendation!

I've run out of ways to tell her that she is more than worthy by just being who she is, and not by what others tell her she should be.

Baldy,

If it were only your DW being picked on by aggressors ... but no, that's unnecessary because she's been trained to do it to herself! Does she even recognize this behavior? Maybe it's time you helped her get back into her scriptures beginning with Acts 9:36-39 which in the NIV reads as follows:

"In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas), who was always doing good and helping the poor. About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, 'Please come at once!' Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them."

Discussion question: what was Dorcas known for?

Bonus question: how much did Dorcas read scriptures and pray that we know of?

JAR

justarelative Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Baldy,
>
> If it were only your DW being picked on by
> aggressors ... but no, that's unnecessary because
> she's been trained to do it to herself! Does she
> even recognize this behavior?

I was thinking the same thing myself about the speakers during F&T. (DW is normally right up their with the others, but since she had forgotten to fast the night before, she "couldn't" bear her testimony on Sunday.)

During each of the adult testimonies, interspersed among the kids mouthing that they "know the BoM is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, etc.", I had the repeated thought that the purpose of these testimonies is a self-inflicted enforcement of "conform-and-obey, conform-and-obey."

Every good thing that happened to them was because they read their scriptures and prayed. Every bad thing was because they didn't read enough or pray enough. In each case, it struck me as confirmation bias because they are conditioned to look at everything through that prism.

I did point this behavior out to her a couple times early in our marriage (we've been married a little over three years), but each time she acted as though I was asking her to jump out of a plane without a parachute. "But DW, the plane is still on the ground. It doesn't even have any wings...it never did."

She genuinely believes that, without the guidance of TSCC, her life would fall apart and she would turn to darkness. She would then list off all of the covenants, and their related blessings, and say that they are the only path a good and happy life.

Me: "DW, do you believe that I have surrendered to darkness? That my life is a shambles?"

DW: "No, of course not! You are a good man! The best I know."

Me: "And yet I keep none of your covenants and tell anybody who asks that nothing about TSCC is true. How is that?"

DW: "But you've always made good decisions and I believe you are prompted by the Holy Ghost, regardless of whether you believe it. I can't believe that God would punish you for being a good man."

Me: "So, DW, why do you believe God will punish you for being a good person even if you don't read the scriptures and pray every day?"

DW: "Because, now I know the truth and I will be punished and lose my blessing if I deny it!"

Me: "What if I could convince you that what you've been told is the truth is actually a lie?"

DW: "I can't take the chance that I will lose my way and become what I was before I converted."

Me: "I believe you were always good and that TSCC just happened to be the closest lifeline to you. You never needed the lifeline; you just didn't believe that you were already a strong swimmer."

You get the gist.

Reading fiction doesn't make you a good person. Living a good and wholesome life that is filled with love and compassion for others DOES make you a good person. You really need to ax that flawed thinking of your wife's.

Ask your wife this question;
If she (or someone she really loved) needed a life saving operation, would she pick a surgeon that read medical books everyday but rarely performed surgery and when he did, he wasn't very successful. Or would she chose a surgeon that operated everyday, had a phenomenal track record, but hardly ever read medical journals? Many mormons believe that, if they go through the motions of reading scriptures and attending monotonous meetings, but still act like assholes, they're somehow better than people that are decent human beings but don't follow the mormon playbook to a tee.

Your wife sounds like a decent friend and neighbor.

What about the scripture about "In so much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me?" Reading the scriptures doesn't make you a good person.

Jesus himself hated the pharisees, who were always splitting hairs about observing the rules, trying to show how righteous they were, but ignoring those in need. The church is SO much like the pharisees.

I'm sorry your wife is going through that. I went through quite a bit guilt and inadequacy as a member. I'd get busy, usually taking care of my house, and family and serving in the ward, and I wouldn't have time for scripture study, or anything ELSE for myself. Sometimes I'd fall asleep without saying my prayers, and I'd wake up to a baby crying and go to them. Mothers (also fathers), often don't have the time or energy to sit and read and pray.

My husband could see how hard I was on myself (he was secretly apostate), and he started teasing me about my excessive guilt. ("Yeah, you are such a horrible person, I don't know how you can live with yourself" type of stuff.) He was hoping he could get ME to laugh at it, and not take it so seriously. I'm not sure if that took away the guilt, but it did make me more aware of when I was doing it. He also questioned visit teaching/home teaching, and other make-work things that NOBODY wanted to do, and NOBODY wanted done for them.

Some things finally made me question my faith--primarily that I never got a witness of the B of M--and I eventually left the church with him. But I had always blamed my lack of testimony on the fact that I didn't read or pray enough, and I blamed myself excessively for that. Never mind that I probably read the B of M 18 times, and I actually prayed constantly throughout the day. I just had a hard time remembering to kneel down at the assigned times.

Here's an idea: why don't you talk to her about the silly rules that tell people how and when they are supposed to conduct their personal worship? Who decided that people are supposed to pray morning and night? Who said that you have to read the scriptures every day? (The church). WHEN did they say that? I remember when one of the prophets said it was 20 minutes per day of the B of M. I think that was in the 80s or 90s. What about all the people of the church before he said that? They didn't have to. And now, is that still a rule? And later on, they added family scripture study, etc. I wonder if it might help to talk about Muslims, and their requirement to pray 5 times a day, and what she thinks about that. Are they more spiritual? More worthy?

The church is just making up more and more requirements. But each person should be able to decide when they want to talk to their God. It shouldn't be an item on their 'TO DO', aka guilt list. It shouldn't be a 'vain repetition' like the pharisees did. Maybe people shouldn't be wasting God's time.

Here's another idea: suggest that she makes a tick mark on a piece of paper every time she says a prayer in her heart (if she does that). She might realize how much she's actually praying. I was shocked when I stopped believing in God to notice that it was a reflex to pray about everything, all the time. I had to stop myself to break the habit.

I've gone on and on. But I'm concerned when I hear about good people who think poorly of themselves because a false religion convinces them that they'll never be good enough, or sets worship requirements that just don't fit their time constraints or their attention span. Self-blame and lack of that sense of 'worthiness' can be make a person miserable, and it's a very hard habit to break.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2016 10:45AM by imaworkinonit.

Mormons have sucked any real meaning right out of that word, and misuse it terribly. Often they inadvertently insult people with it. They give their non-Mormon neighbor a wedding invitation and say, "I'm sorry, but you can't come to the actual wedding because you're not worthy," and have no sense of insult when they say it. Personally, I don't find very many Mormons worthy of much, not even of my time.

Your wife's reaction after F&T meeting reminds me of my behavior. As a young mom in the church, I beat myself up constantly for not being worthy enough. I didn't read enough, I didn't pray enough. I wasn't actively doing my visiting teaching. I must have been a horrible person! I would have breakdowns and cry heavily every few weeks. Then I would work harder, then slack off again, then feel not worthy again, and the cycle repeated.

After I left the church, months passed before I realized that I had not had emotional breakdowns on the scale of the previous ones. Sure, I still have frustrations. My children stress me out completely and cause me to feel overwhelmed. However, I know that I am just a person moving along doing my day to day things the best that I can, or sometimes not even my best. And that is OK! I love not having the self-loathing over church worthiness anymore.

I hope your wife can one day look back at herself and realize that she is perfectly kind and is worthy of loving herself.

I feel so sad for those who are still caught in that cycle of not feeling "worthy." If you ask my TBM sister, though, she will tell you that the gospel is the only way to happiness. I'd rather not share her definition of happiness.

Thanks, and I completely forgot about visiting teaching as one of DW's triggers for feeling guilty; particularly at the end of the month when she's supposed to report in. It's not even that she doesn't try to set up a time with whomever she's visiting, but plans fall apart and people don't return missed calls. Regardless, DW feels responsible and guilty for the failed results.

DW's VT is one of the women that she looks up to as a exemplary woman of the ward. I asked DW this weekend about the last time her VT visited. After thinking about it a bit, DW said it was at least three months. I suggested that it seems her paragon of worthiness isn't any more worthy than she is. DW then listed off a number of excuses for her VT that I said apply to DW, as well.

VTing is a great example of something worthless that people feel guilty about. Almost nobody REALLY cares if their VTs come. And nobody really wants to go. But they all feel obligated to have that phony friendship.

And it's perfect for guilting everybody involved: every month, there are only a couple of guilt-free weeks before it gets 'late' in the month. And then the guilt starts all over again within a couple of weeks.

I often felt guilty for DOING my visiting teaching, because I knew when people were just LETTING us come so we could check off OUR list. But I also felt guilty if I DIDN'T do it, because then I was shirking my duty.

There is no "worthy." there will always be some other thing to make you feel guilty in that church---if you weren't a sickly cretin, how could they make you dependent on repentance?
If you need a TBM response, though, I'd say "you are not qualified to say who is worthy. That which I have cleansed call though not unclean."
Nobody should have to feel like this, dammit.