So we went. And I didn't understand it and I didn't like it. And I didn't like not understanding it.
A few months after we moved here, I was asked to serve as Sunday School teacher to the 14-18 year olds in my ward. During my setting apart (a blessing given by a member of the congregation's leadership specific to the role you're taking on), the bishopric counselor said that I should not be troubled by my doubts, but that doubt was a part of the journey of faith.
This took me by surprise -- partly because this bishopric member had no way of knowing I was struggling with doubts, but mostly because it was such a new concept to me. I had always thought of doubt as being such a negative thing, a feeling to avoid experiencing at all costs, a tool of Satan. Doubt was the opposite of faith. How could it be a part of the journey?
However, even though it was a new concept and even though I didn't completely understand what was being conveyed, I knew it was true. I let it sit and settle in my mind, and I've thought about it often over the years. I've brought it up to friends and family from time to time and have collected pieces of insight to help illuminate the meaning.
Since the end of last year, I have been struggling with greater doubts than I have ever experienced before. I have had so many questions arise for which I did not have answers. My whole life I have heard and read negative things about the church, its leaders (past and present) and its members, but besides inducing feelings of sorrow such things never had a negative impact on me. Until last year. Suddenly, things that had never bothered me before were bothering me. I felt an agitation I couldn't shake. I started experiencing bad feelings towards some of my fellow members, something I had always been able to avoid in the past. I began to have questions to which I could not find satisfactory answers. My chest often felt tight. My mind was confused. Worst was feeling that I was losing all sense of self. My certainty was such a huge part of my identity. To not be sure, to have questions, to have doubt to this degree caused me to hate myself more than I had ever hated myself before. And believe me, I've known a fair amount of self-hatred over the years.
I was scared. Scared that I was losing my faith, the thing on which I had built my life, the understanding that informed all my most important decisions.
In the midst of all this, I could have given up. I saw how easy it would be to stop going to church, to stop paying tithing, to give in to worldly values and ideals. I could see how much less effort that path would require, how there would be fewer demands on me to improve or strive.
And yet, I couldn't give up. The reservoir of past experiences bubbled up constantly, pushing me to get up and go to church, to teach my Relief Society lessons, to do my visiting teaching, to hold Family Home Evening and say family prayers, to pray to my Heavenly Father as soon as I revived to consciousness each morning. I kept doing all I had been doing, trying to convince myself that the answers were to be found in pressing on, instead of giving up. So even though my heart was often not in it, I continued to make efforts to live the gospel.
My efforts were rewarded by morsels of enlightenment and small shots of strength, but I continued to wrestle with doubts and fears. There were good days, but there were also many that were bad. I was not drowning, but I often felt I was adrift in a stormy sea with nothing but those little arm floaties keeping me from going under.
I can't recall all that I have experienced, heard, read or felt in the past few months that have helped me to swim back to the peaceful shore and begin pulling myself out of the turbulent waters, but there are a couple that stand out.
Elder Holland spoke in conference and it was one of the few talks I actually had the opportunity to concentrate on and hear every word. And it was for me. I know there were millions of others who it was for, but it truly was for me. I cannot begin to count the number of times over the past several years that I have uttered in prayer the phrase, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." This part of the talk has especially stayed with me:
"In moments of fear or doubt or troubling times, hold the ground you have already won, even if that ground is limited. In the growth we all have to experience in mortality, the spiritual equivalent of this boy's affliction or this parent's desperation is going to come to all of us. When those moments come and issues surface, the resolution of which is not immediately forthcoming, hold fast to what you already know and stand strong until additional knowledge comes."
I also was blessed to be able to travel to see my mother and sisters. Being in their presence, acting like a crazy person and having them put up with it and not be upset by it, talking, laughing and crying with them, being enveloped by their love and friendship and pure awesomeness -- it renewed my spirit, it filled my cup.
At the beginning of the month, I bore my testimony in Sacrament Meeting. I confessed the struggles I'd been having, admitting my weaknesses and letting go of my hurt pride. After Sacrament Meeting, I wanted to run home and hide in bed. I was so embarrassed. But I stayed for the next two hours, in a further attempt to be humble and not be so absorbed in my own self-consciousness.
In the end, however, I think the things that helped the most were 1) to just keep going and 2) to make a choice to see all the good things in life as witnesses that God exists, He loves me and that the gospel is true.
As I travel further into the light, I am beginning to understand the blessings of having had this experience. I cannot yet articulate them. But some of them became clearer to me today (and some answers to the questions I've had were also found) when I read this: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/letter-to-a-doubter/.
At last, I have found the answer to why doubt is a part of the journey of faith. Doubt and faith may be opposites, but there must be opposition in all things (2 Nephi 2). Without doubt, there is no faith. If I never experienced doubts, how could I exercise my faith? Exercise implies effort. Where there is no doubt -- where there is not even a shadow of it -- no exertion of faith is needed. As we learn in Alma 32, once we have a perfect knowledge, our faith becomes dormant, knowledge having replaced it.
In the past when I experienced doubt, I considered this to be a sign that I lacked faith. I now see that doubt simply provides me with a choice -- to exercise my faith in continuing along the path of the gospel or to allow my doubts to become weeds that choke the seeds of faith I've planted. I pray that I will always choose to continue my journey on the path of faith, a path that provides life-sustaining resting stops of refuge and nourishment on our way to eternal glory and peace.
