Thrown Out With the Trash

Thown out with the trash

This was a miserable time for me.  It was bad enough that my rock, my hubby, was struggling with his faith.  He was angry and hurt by things that he did not fully describe to me.  He did tell me things and I can’t believe they happened although, I am sure they did.  That made it hard for me.  He had always been so full of integrity.  He was a doer.  If he said he would do something, he would not stop until he delivered.  I had never known him to lie.  I trusted him and now he was telling me things that just could not have happened.  My own testimony was shaken.  However, I had to remain true to what I had learned in my life.  I believed the church was true and that there were reasons for things to happen.  It was a confusing time and my loyalties were divided.  I knew my husband to be a man of integrity and I also knew that God was telling me to stay with him inspite of his impending apostasy.  I was trying to trust God, not  understanding what was in store, trying to be a supportive wife…if I was supposed to stay married, I would have  to learn how to be supportive of things I did not want to support, and none of it made sense to me.  

At the same time, I was a counselor in the Young Women organization.  I always put everything into my callings.  I prayed for direction to do my best and be an instrument in the Lord’s hands.  Our organization was not running well.  The other 2 presidency members were very relaxed in their approach.  They even had an activity (my age group and I were not invited but I had a daughter this age who told me what happened) where they went to a fast food restaurant and ordered food.  Even the girls seemed to know better because they only ordered an ice cream cone each while the leaders ordered full meals and kept trying to get the girls to order more.  They turned in their receipts for this activity for reimbursement.  I just could not figure out what lesson the girls were supposed to learn from this activity.  This is only one example.  None of the activities they planned had any gospel significance.  That is the point of having activities on a weeknight where you take children out of their homes, away from their families.  That is not a good thing to do but letting kids of this age group get together with other kids of their faith and do things that will build their testimonies and faith in God is supposed to counteract the ill-effect of taking them out of their homes and spending time with their family.  If you do provide something of value in return, then I felt it was not a bad thing.  So, I started praying fervently for answers or inspiration.  I was looking for a way that I could be an example to turn things around or if the problem was too big, that God would step in and make sure these girls would have better opportunities to strengthen their faith.  The answer came.

I got word that I was going to be released from this Young Women calling.  I had started my prayer campaign to solve our YW organization problem about 6 weeks earlier and now the Bishop was telling me that I was needed as the enrichment leader…, a calling I had done about 12 times in my married life in some form or other.  He was not releasing any other leader in the presidency, just me.   I could not come to any other conclusion that God had told me that I was the only problem the YW organization was having.   I was devastated.

At this point, I felt as though God had thrown me away.  My biggest problem with hubby’s actions was that I feared that I would no longer have an eternal marriage.  I had asked God, “what happens to me now.”  I never got any answers but the question kept coming up.  What happens to me if, through no fault of my own, I no longer have my eternal companion.  I believed that being exalted, something you can ONLY do if you are MARRIED in the temple and you both are righteous enough to go on into eternity to continue on with your family was the greatest blessing God has to offer us.  I was confused that now, here I am, I did nothing, but my hubby gave up, so now can I still be exalted???  How does that work???  How does God bless me for a righteous life dedicated to Him, without my husband.  If I lived a parallel life to some other righteous woman,  the greatest blessing God could give her would be to exalt her with her husband, yet, inspite of my parallel life to hers but where is the greatest blessing for me? 

When I was young, our ward did the usual Daddy-Daughter Date.   We planned it for several weeks and my leaders asked me if my father would come.   I asked and he said no, so my leaders asked if I wanted a surrogate father for the activity.  Absolutely not!  At that age, it is weird enough that you have to spend a night doing weird activities with your father let alone some strange man.   I got to the activity and found that they had asked a man to come and be my father anyway.  I was horrified and suffered the night in an extremely uncomfortable situation.  I never went to a daddy-daughter activity again. 

So now, here I am, a grown woman, with some grown children, facing the possibility that when I get to heaven, assuming I make it to heaven, and God says, “here you go, Brother So-and-So will be your surrogate husband.”  It sounded horrifying to me.  I said that I would rather go to hell because that sounded like hell to me given my previous experience.  I just could not, can not figure out how that is the greatest reward.  When I felt thrown away, I decided that by asking God that question, I had stumped Him.  I had actually come up with a point that was too valid and had no answer of solution so the only recourse God had was to throw me away.