Wive of Addicts, The Church and Faith

***WoPA Warning: I'm going to take this opportunity to put some of my personal thoughts on my personal cyber journal regarding an issue that is present in our community. These are my beliefs.  They are not meant to offend, rather to help me process what I see, hear and feel.   I'm not judging anyone's path.  I love you all, my sisters. Read warned!  

I'm seeing what I am going to call a "concern".  It could be an issue.  It might be a huge problem even,  in years to come, depending on what the future holds for this issue and these women. I'm not criticizing this, in anyway.  I am concerned because I love these women. They are my people. I also love the Church and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The truth is,  I hate to see pain, especially when it is coupled with a questioning of testimony, principle, church, or _______ (pick an appropriate place to crisis).

But this is getting ahead of my story.

I have been blessed with a very special set of friends. Some of us have never met, yet we speak the same language. The language of a spouse in addiction. This connects us in a way no other association or friendship of my life has connected me -- even (and especially) within my local church affiliations. There is something of having shared a similar horrific pain that makes this connection unique and special. That is how it is for me and I believe many others of us in this world of wives of porn/sex addicts feel the same way.

Lately, in this circle the topic of faith crisis is being discussed.

What is a crisis:

cri·sis

ˈkrīsis/

noun

1. a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.

   "the current economic crisis"

   synonyms:

   emergency, disaster, catastrophe, calamity; More

   • a time when a difficult or important decision must be made.

     "a crisis point of history"

     synonyms:

     critical point, turning point, crossroads, watershed, head, moment of truth, zero hour, point of no return, Rubicon, doomsday; More

   • the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death.

To be sure the life of a wife of a porn/sex addict is an intensely difficult time. Often there is danger.  Often these times bring the wife to a point of difficult decision.

Synonyms

boiling point, breaking point, clutch, conjuncture,emergency, crossroad(s), crunch, crunch time,Dunkirk, exigency, extremity, flash point, head,juncture, tinderbox, zero hour

Oh yeah! I've been there. All of these emotions and pain lead me to a place I thought I could trust, to a church leader, to my bishop. Except that often those pleas for help were met with even more pain.  The hope I was looking for was elusive at best.  

I know many of my sisters have felt the same.

Is this what has initiated the faith crisis?
    (Remember these are just my thoughts, my musings, ponderings.  This is me trying to work this out so I can feel as settled as I can about this issue.  Please don't shoot me or dog my blog.)

If not, what exactly is the nature and genesis of the crisis of faith?
   Is in in God, in the Savior, or his atonement or is it in the church?
   Is it because people in the church have caused hurt by things they have said or done?
   Is it men (priesthood leadership) in the church doing the hurting mostly?

With the crisis acknowledged - out loud -- among trusted friends -- now what?
  Church attendance is stopped, or limited, or worse (in my opinion) abandoned altogether.


Dale Carnegie wrote a book entitled: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in which he was actually asking a question (is) "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" (?)  Carnegie doesn't own this phrase, but his book brought it into a more common adage.

This phrase sits heavy on my heart right now, blocking me from reaching out to this issue, to these women I call sisters. Will they hear me -- or will a sister convinced against her will be of the same opinion still?

Is it even possible that we could have an open, honest heart to heart discussion about the gospel, the church, testimonies, facts verses hurts? Would it help them or drive them deeper into their cause?

Is there a want or need to blame all the hurt and pain on someone?

Is the hurt suffered by insensitive bishops and stake presidents going to be the last straw that takes them down the path of faulty beliefs and away from the source of truth and peace?

Please do not think these questions come from a life of ease. I have not been immune to pain and to insensitive people -- ever.

Beginning as a child: I was/am blind as a bat. Back in my day eye wear was NOT cool and was ugly as can be.  I was lucky enough, in fourth grade, to own the ugliest pair of glasses ever sold! Period!  I got some horrible comments about me and my eye wear. Comments I still remember and still feel the sting of.

As a young woman: I was getting ready to go to the wedding of one of my friends, actually, besides me, she was the last one that wasn't married. My dad said to me; "Looks like you are going to be the old maid here." Yay! Thanks Dad. To this day I still hate that term. I didn't need that reminder. I needed his love and support.  It was a huge loss to me to have this friend marry. I suddenly was friendless and had no one loving me at that time.  (This is only one story of me and my dad.  I left out the worst one that I let almost ruin me.)

As a mom: I had just pulled my second mis-carried child out of the toilet. I knew he was going to be a boy.  I just knew it. There he was a miniature version of what his whole self could have been had it been his mission to live here on this earth. A woman, I thought was a friend, had the nerve to tell me while we sat in my home with my curtains drawn and my children in darkness more than a week by that point; "there isn't a doctrine of body/spirit assignment....likely this miscarried child would not ever be mine to raise." That was only one of the remarks I got from her and from countless other insensitive people who were trying to 'comfort' me in my pain.

As a wife: Oh don't let me even go there. That last one was enough of a memory. Most of the bishops who dealt with my issues of an unfaithful husband (prior to acknowledging addiction) just never could say the right thing. You know I was blamed for not being 'enough' in the bedroom.  I always wondered how in the world that bishop knew how I was in the bedroom anyway?  Don't blame my husband's problem on me. Read this (post) if you have more questions on what this life is like.


In each of these scenarios and in countless others that I haven't the time or space to mention I can and could even still let all this fester until it has eaten away at me pain by pain. I can blame God. Blame the church for not teaching people how to be real or true to their commandments not to judge.

Blaming takes the stewardship off of me. It gives me a place to put my pain and the injustices of mortality so that I don't have to deal with them or work through them or allow things to just be a part of this messy earthly probation.

It is easy to be mad too. To be angry with people who won't give you what you hope for in a desperate hour of need.







Let's talk about my acid analogy.

Acid has to be handled in a very specific way (http://www.ncnr.nist.gov/safety/acid.html). Only certain types of containers can hold acid without it eating away at what is supposed to be containing it.

Bitterness, hurt and anger are like that in people. If not managed it will eat away at the soul, cankering it. Ulcerating it. From the inside out.

As I sit here writing this post I currently have two horrible cankers in my mouth. I feel how angry they are. It is difficult to treat these. The location of the canker, the moisture in my mouth causes healing to be slow and troublesome for me. The pain from the cankers is causing my head to hurt a lot more than usual.  I suffer from migraines and chronic headaches, add in a couple mouth ulcers and I'm having a rough day today.  I hurt -- a lot.

In a life filled with pain it would be easy for me to feel like God has been an absent Heavenly Father.  His lack of care for what I've gone through could equate to even the Church not being true.

Don't guffaw at me here.

This is not an unusual conclusion to draw.  People I know and love with all my heart have walked me down their story path that begins with choices they made, pains they've felt, then led them to -- God doesn't love them and to the Church isn't true anymore.

Yikes!

Now would be a good time to insert my favorite quote.  I've had this in my signature line in my email for years.  This is quoted in the Healing Through Christ manual in step 1.  It is the teaching of Orson F. Whitney:

"“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we came here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.” (As quoted by Spencer W. Kimball, in Faith Precedes the Miracle, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972, p. 98.)

I believe this to be true and cling to the promise that all that I've been through, and all I will go through here on earth will make me more like my Father and Mother in heaven.

If you are in a faith crisis and struggling it is difficult to turn your thoughts towards these principles.  I don't think the Adversary wants you to anyway. He's likely helped feed the thoughts that prove to you the church is a mess and couldn't be true, nor the feelings you had when you were baptized or receive that special witness.

Here are a couple of good articles to read on these points I'm making:

1.  In Your Time of Crisis
2.  Converted to His Gospel...

(A special thank you to a WoPA sister for pointing that second one out to me.  I was in search of that very talk myself in my own personal study on this issue.)


If I can make one plea to anyone who struggles with what they believe or used to believe or their religion, wait for a clear day to come to any resolution.  Dark days lead to even darker decisions and action courses.  The light of the gospel and the Church will always be a battle ground for the Adversary. He wants nothing more than to take us all down to his level of nothingness. It is easy to find controversial or 'anti' LDS articles on the internet these days. It's easy to be swayed by it, to question it and it is even more difficult to prove wrong. It's easy to see the elderly men who 'run' the church as problematic too.  It's easy to see what is wrong in our individual wards and call the Church wrong or bad or misguided. The Adversary loves it when we do this. He grabs hold of these thoughts we have and runs them as fast as he can away from the light and truth we once knew, felt and believed.

As a missionary I was taught to never banter or argue with people about the gospel. I learned early on the wisdom in this. Pondering upon the Saviors last days, and the day he stood before Pilate (video)  and the crowd of believers and accusers, I see the example he set.  He could have tried to convince the crowd, yet he stood silent. Some things just do not require proof. They stand on their own merit.  You choose to believe or not.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf:
What we sow, we reap.

God’s harvest is unimaginably glorious. To those who honor Him, His
bountiful blessings come in “good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and running over. … For with the same measure that ye mete withal
it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:38).

Just as earthly seeds require effort and patience, so do many of the
blessings of heaven. We cannot put our religion on a shelf and expect to
harvest spiritual blessings. But if we plant and nurture gospel standards
in the daily life of our family, there is a high probability that our
children will grow up to produce spiritual fruit of great value to them and
to future generations.

("God&# 39;s Harvest," Ensign, Aug. 2014)

There is so much about the Church and the Lord's plan that we cannot see. Not having that vision clear and living with the pain from the choices of an unfaithful spouse does put us in a place of questioning.  Hold on to those witnesses you had before your soul and your faith was tested to the breaking point. One day, all this will become clear and one day you will look back on all of this and see the wisdom of the plan.

Before I hit publish, I want one more time, to tell each of my WoPA sisters how much I dearly love you, how often I pray for you, and how very, very sorry I am that you have to live with the hurt your husbands cause. One day this will all make sense. Today it just sucks.

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