LDS – Black Mormon Female

I’ll Be Home for Christmas

December 25, 2013March 23, 2016Posted in Mormon, UncategorizedTagged Christmas, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS, Marriage, relationships, UtahLeave a comment

Its Christmas in New York. My mother is visiting, which has driven me up the wall, but holidays – arent they about being annoyed? Ive had the urge occasionally to write something in the past few months, but things have been busy as Ive started work and tried to figure out my new life. Its been interesting. I adopted a dog in July when I moved here. Hes really made a big difference in my ability to handle the stresses of building a new world. He just likes to hang out and then walk in the park, and so do I. Its nice to feel like a living thing is part of your life when you are alone so much of the time.

Religiously, Ive been taken a break from everything. I went to church once in the middle east this summer, which was good in that I felt what church does do for me. That feeling of peace and connection is the most important part of what I continue to believe and wont be changed by any cultural difficulties I continue to have. However, I knew that I needed space if I was ever going to feel comfortable claiming to be LDS in the future. I was bitter and angry and unable to find a way to reconcile what I know with how I felt I was being asked to live. Marriage continues to be a sticking point for me – not because I dont want to get married (I very much do) but because I am someone outside of my ability to get a guy into heaven and pop out some kids for our eternal progeny.

But its been an interesting few weeks. Emotional for a variety of reasons and I think I got my heart beaten into enough submission, that two days ago in the shower I had an epiphany. And with that epiphany came that same peace and love and confidence I havent felt in months, maybe longer. I stopped everything before because I felt I couldnt live up to the promises I felt and exercise the faith necessary to overcome all my doubts and unnatural anxiety to live a life beyond what I could imagine. I suppose thats what is asked of all of us. To believe in the unbelievable. But Im back to trying. I felt Him reach out to me and ask me to trust him. He gave me the time to ease my pains, while never going so far away I didnt know He was still looking out for me. But when He calls, He knew I would answer. I still believe. So this week, Im trying to go to the temple, I read Matthew 1 early early this morning (its Christmas after all!), and Im blogging again. You can only forget who you are for so long.

The point is, Im back. And the world continues to change, so theres still plenty to say about the topics I started with. Maybe even more now. Polygamy or some version of it legalized in Utah (one marriage certificate but all the living together you want!), I think gay marriage was legalized as well (not exactly sure whats happening there), Duck Dynasty First Amendment nonsense. The world of religion and well the rest of it continue to collide in increasingly more snug ways. Everything around women and race is still sticky. So Ill do my best to keep up with my thoughts on the matter, and continue to talk about my ever evolving commitment to this odd religion that means so much to me. So thanks for listening if you still are. And the newbies, I hope I can say something of value to you so it doesnt feel like you are so alone in the world. I know what that feels like.

Every Day It’s as if I Play a Part

May 21, 2013Posted in Black, Female, MormonTagged Christianity, church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, God, Latter Day Saints, LDS, Religion and Spirituality1 Comment

Cover of "Mulan (Special Edition)" — Cover of Mulan (Special Edition)

Ok I think Im back. I took a mental vacation from the stress of the last school years of my life, and discovered a whole new well of stress based on having nothing to do and no idea what to do next. Oh well.

Song today: Christina Aguilera on the Mulan Soundtrack. I actually used this song to audition for a lead in choir back in good old high school. I was a bit too earnest and a bit too croaky, but I still love the movie and the song.

Ive been struggling a bit now with what I want the purpose of this blog to be. At first, I thought it should be a forum, soapbox, for me to help educate people on the different kinds of people in the LDS church, as well as maybe let people inside the same church understand how the culture we are propagating is hurting those who are making good faith efforts to stay active. Like this blog here. So I did that and then kind of ran out of things to say, plus I noticed that it didnt seem to resonate as well with people (you :)) as the posts that were just me explaining what my life was like everyday, less obviously weaving around the descriptors of my blog title. Ive also continued to read the stuff on the internet that attracts me, and wandered back to thinking I should take a more obvious stance. I read this post today and while some parts were not resonate with my reporting style – I thought is this more of what I should be doing from my position? Should I be advocating a particular stance as a minority?

The other problem is what if Im not speaking to an audience that wants to listen and rather gain evidence for the negative aspects of the church? I have major issues with the LDS organization and Im trying my best to deal with them without making any fatal errors. My core beliefs have not changed, but I have not yet figured out how they interact with the day-to-day life of being an active mormon. I would love to have a forum to express my disenchantment and disappointment, but I do think the church does more good than harm, just I think it could do more if we were willing as a membership. I still rely on my relationship with God to get through this mortal toil, but I dont want it to come across as overly embittered and prevent someone searching from finding the good I do have.

I want to share the gifts I have, but I dont think I should be THE authority on being a minority or a woman or anything else, as I do believe in a plethora of experiences. Its the major reason why Im writing my blog – because I think my experience is one that is less readily available to the imaginations. Im hoping that, even without a soapbox, I can do myself, the God I love, and those interested a service. So Im back. And Ive been thinking a ton while Im out here in the Middle East being exposed to new ideas, new challenges, and contemplating my new future. So look forward to it.

LDS leaders discuss pros, cons of social media use (fox13now.com)

We Say, “Sisters are Doin’ it For Themselves”

April 6, 2013April 6, 2013Posted in Female, MormonTagged Brigham Young, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Eliza R. Snow, Emma Smith, equality, female, Gender, Joseph Smith, LDS, missionary training center, priesthood authority, Relief Society, religion1 Comment

Aretha Franklin & Annie Lenox. Doin’ it for themselves.

So one of my friends went to a fireside on a few Sundays ago with the Director of Operations at the MTC (LDS Missionary Training Center). He said that sister missionaries will now be 50% of the population, so the whole dynamics of how missions run will change. There will be sisters-only districts, and they will have to restructure leadership. And here is the proof of that.

This is a rather interesting and perhaps the first unexpected step of a new thought order within Mormondom. Women have been a larger proportion of the active LDS population for many years. Just like they are in other parts of society (larger college attendance numbers, every grad school but business) women have pushed up their participation. Now its the mission field for LDS people. Interestingly, sisters in leadership positions reporting directly to the head of the organization with an active wife of the head is not a new phenomenon. In the early days of the LDS church, when Joseph Smith was prophet, he organized the Relief Society (RS) on March 17, 1842. The purpose was to be an organization for the female members of the new church:

—that the Society of Sisters might provoke the brethren to good works in looking to the wants of the poor—searching after objects of charity, and in administering to their wants—to assist; by correcting the morals and strengthening the virtues of the female community, and save the Elders the trouble of rebuking; that they may give their time to other duties, &[et]c., in their public teaching…

The organization of the Church [is] not complete until the sisters [are] organized.

The interesting thing about this organization was that it was completely self-contained. In the current LDS structure, RS presidents report into a priesthood authority at every level. The ward level into the bishop, stake level into the stake president, so on and so forth. However, in the early church the RS structure did not report into the priesthood until the prophet. It was its own organization with reporting directly into the woman above until you hit the prophet, although now that I think about it, it wasnt that big of an organization or that widespread so it makes sense that Emma Smith, the new president of the organization, would have reported directly to the current prophet, her husband, as there was not anyone below her (2 counselors and a secretary were all that was chosen). That changed after Joseph Smith’s death. One version of the story is that Emma Smith, Joseph’s first wife (yes he was a polygamist), and Brigham Young did not get along. This was further fractured when she decided not to go with the rest of the Saints in leaving Nauvoo for the West. Obviously the LDS church was in flux after their exodus from Illinois in 1844, but I have never heard an official reason for the lack of the relief society for the 20 years. And the interruption is rarely brought to public attention unless you do some history reading, so remains invisible unless you look at the dates of the service of the presidents.

Eliza R. Snow, the secretary of the original RS, did travel west, and in 1854, about 10 years after arriving in Utah, helped establish the Indian Relief Society, which was designed to provide services to the Native American population living in Utah. It was not until 1866 that Brigham Young called for formal reorganization of the Relief Society as part of the ward structure again, Eliza R. Snow was called as General President of the RS, but this time the RS reported into the local priesthood at each level. This may be the first formal structuring of the organization as it was large enough to need it as it was sustained throughout the rest of the history of the LDS church until present-day, where our latest General RS President and counselors were called a year ago, April 2012.

I dont know where we are headed as a church in regards to the norms surrounding females. There was the recent Wear Pants to Church Day movement that brought out the ugly on both sides (there were death threats against the female founders by males and women who verbally attacked the orchestrators for their lack of understanding, etc) that in my opinion mostly illustrates that women in the LDS church are feeling the burden of inequality in roles and organizational structure. Many feel the lowering of the missionary age in the first place (from 21-19 for females, 19-18 for males) was designed to help with that inequality, but Ive also heard its to encourage more marriages as we dont have this “lost generation” of eligible women when males return from missions and women start to go on them. There’s also a group of women who are pushing to ordain women to the priesthood, as they see that as the major perpetuator of inequality in the LDS church. I have not paid much attention to it, but I know the power issues have affected my own life when how I wished to run my calling in the LDS church was mediated by a distant priesthood authority, who often shut down my ideas or made me feel I needed permission for something (nothing heretical people, just my inspirational awesome ideas to improve what I was responsible for). Maybe they did have final authority? No idea. Of course, today on LDS General Conference Saturday we can see the lastest manifestation of the debate. For the first time, women may give the prayers in conference sessions. So we will see about that.

So, who knows? Im not even sure what changes I would want to see, but I know that as women we have something to offer and Im not sure that we are doing it yet. I have seen many examples of excellent women, excelling in school, in motherhood, in their lives, but Im not sure organizationally we get it yet. Anyway, just the lastest from the ranks.

LDS Church announces new leadership roles for sister missionaries (ksl.com)

When You Lose Something You Can’t Replace

February 20, 2013February 20, 2013Posted in MormonTagged church, convert, Extended family, Family, father, Felicity, God, Latter Day Saints, LDS, Mormon, religion2 Comments

Family Portrait - Montreal 1963 — Family Portrait – Montreal 1963 (Photo credit: Mikey G Ottawa)

I dont often talk about my father in depth, mostly because its one of the more complicated conversations I can have. But as it gets nearer to the anniversary of his death, I occasionally think more about him.

My father was my best friend. I loved him more than anything. My love of computers comes from watching him work on the PC we had in our home from age 5 until he died when I was almost 10. We didnt get another one until I was 13. My father played ping pong with us in the garage. He spanked us with a belt and told us he would give us something to cry about. He let me shift gears on the old blue Toyota, when his old wrist injury was acting up. And he was smart. Never graduated from high school, but he did all the checking of our math homework counting, and other times swearing, in Spanish.

My father was also Mormon. He converted when he met my mother and held the first level of the priesthood in our church, but was never active during my memory. He never prevented my mother from taking us to church, played with the missionaries (19-year old boys who are always up for games) when they came over for food, and attended our youth talks in sacrament.

My father was also abusive. He drank without my family knowing it. He cheated. And he basically stopped working when I was 7. When he suffered a massive stroke, it was a blessing for my family that he died instead of lingering on severely handicapped, the financial and social responsibilities of which, would probably have limited what my family has managed to accomplish since then.

I still love my father. I love the man who took me on adventures with him when I was small. I love the man who I only remember teaching us Spanish at one dinner table session, pointing out leche. I love the man who was so charismatic and larger than life that everyone wanted to be around him. But I also hate him. I hate the man that made my mother sad and never want to remarry. I hate the man that hurt me. I hate the man who was so lost he could not find a way out for himself, and in my opinion, God took him so he could have a better chance in the Mormon version of purgatory, instead of continuing to make grievous mistakes here on Earth.

I think whats been hardest for me is how to answer questions about my family. We arent a typical family unit. I love my family and talk to them online or by phone multiple times a day. We exchange pictures of clothes and my sister’s cute dog and Ive helped my mom find the home she is now living in. But I dont live near my family, have no strong desire to (we are all extremely independent, controlling and prickly), so I am amazed whenever someone says it would be difficult to live far away from their’s, much less outside of the same state. I cant imagine needing to live anywhere closer than 45 mins to the nearest international airport to get to them. I spent 3 weeks with my mother last summer and was starkly reminded of why I will do all in my power to never live at home again (its because dusting is not important to me and likely never will be; This is a fundamental point of contention).

I dont really have an extended family – I mean Im related to a lot of people, but I have no relationship with them for a variety of reasons. Im still struck by all of the family pictures of cousins and second cousins twice removed on walls at my friends’ grandmother’s homes. I hate taking pictures and Im pretty sure we have no immediate family pictures that Im not age 6 in.

Im learning not to feel so alone anymore. Ive learned Im not the only one with crazy parents and strained family time. Ive learned lots of people dont have a billion cousins, like all the perfect Mormon families. Ive become comfortable with the family I am creating for myself. So, my family now consists of a few lovely dogs, some excellent friends, an alumni network, a broadway play or two, dear TV characters (Im looking at you, Felicity!), a worldwide LDS membership and some John Mayer songs, in addition to my nuclear peoples. Its full of things that provide comfort and the ability to keep trucking everyday. And at the end of it all, there is a God who promised himself as a perfect Father, in place of the one He took away. I love my Father in Heaven and because of Him I am capable of having more family than I ever dreamed possible. Everywhere I go on this Earth, I find someone who fits in to my little world. My best friend, Team Awesome, a new friend at work. It makes it far less scary when I do leave my Utah-imposed exile to know the world is just family waiting to be discovered. I can spend a summer in China and remember for the rest of my life the video store people who set aside DVDs they thought I would like (this mostly consisted of Fast and the Furious, which I love). Against all odds, I can keep in contact with a few friends from the summer I started college. And I can remember fondly the elementary school classmates at my father’s funeral.

Perhaps its not the normal way to make a family, but since Im not getting married anytime soon, who’s to say what we children can’t do? It beats the hell out of staying lonely, just because I dont share blood. So even though I cant replace my dad, or make my grandparents come back to life, I can connect with my half-brothers teenage children, or build better relationships with my mom and sisters. I dont have to stay lost forever.

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