Fearless decision making

Decisions… I used to be really good at making them. Since leaving the church I find decisions to be problematic. Indecisive people bug me, and I am a bit annoyed to find myself in the indecisive club from time to time. My problem is usually not the small day to day decisions, but rather the big course altering, life altering ones.

Growing up in the church I came to rely on the church decision making model.

1. You “study” it out in your mind (weigh the pros and cons, look at all your options)

2. You make your decision

3. You pray about the decision. 

4. The spirit guides you to a “yes” feeling if you have made the right choice and confusion or a “stupor of thought” if you need to go back to step one and study it all out again.

Really the process is a pretty good one even as an atheist. Steps one and two are fine as they are, and the third step really just needs to be reframed as you revaluating your feels/gut instinct. For an atheist the only thing the process is missing is the belief that God is blessing your decision.

This confirmation from heaven, this blessing on your decision from God is really vital. After all God is perfect. He knows everything. He loves us and would never lead us astray. A blessing with his seal of approval on it really feels like a done deal...

When I made decisions I operated as though after approval from on high all that was required really was for me to put the work into making the decision reality and the desired outcome was guaranteed or at least I was on the right path. There is something powerful about making a decision and fearlessly moving forward with it. There is something powerful with setting your mind to something and deciding to make it reality.

 On some level I know that the decision making process is still sound. The decisions that I made in the past, though made under this belief that God was backing them, were my own. I put in the time to plan it out. I put in the work to bring about the vision… I moved fearlessly forward. God was not responsible for my good decisions. I was.   

If I can grasp the idea that I should still fearlessly move forward with plans I make sans God I think it would be a life changing thing.

I finally submitted my application to LSU today. I had completed it and sat on it for awhile, but it is time to move forward. Even if I end up transferring to another university at some point at least I will be on the path I want to be on. 

New Orleans photos

I went over to Leigh’s one day this week and found that she had a print made of a picture from our New Orleans trip and had it on her desk. I smiled when I saw the photo. 

She then presented me with a framed print of the first photo taken of us together. I got a little bit emotional. 

I don’t normally post many photos but we are pretty damn adorable I must say.

I need a really good photo of her now… I think I may have to take my camera over this weekend.  

Me with the roses Leigh brought me

Leigh and I at Mother's in NOLA (she is so hot)

The church and sex

I’m not honestly sure I am ready to write this post, but in honor of trying to over-think things less I’m going to move forward with it. I would love it if this post became a meme or an open thread for discussion… That being said…

Sex is one of the few topics related to the church and to my faith crisis that as of yet has not been explored on this blog. Yet I suspect it is probably something that many of us in the ranks of the apostate and disaffected end up deal with, have questions about, and probably end up a little angry with the church over…

Sex by far is one aspect of human life that the church and its teachings has a strangle hold on. In my opinion it is also one of the things that becomes MOST distorted and vilified by church teachings.

The distortion really comes from what sex is compared to by the church… Sex is only permissible within the bonds of marriage. Marriage is the golden key that morphs sex from evil, vile and sinful into something suddenly good… Any sex outside of the bonds of marriage is a sin next to murder… Let me say that again – MURDER. No wonder we equate sex with dark and evil things… Murder is awful… Therefore guilty by association, sex must be really bad…

When you grow up thinking that… It takes some time to reprogram yourself. I have pretty much embraced sex at this point… The guilt is gone but it took me a long time to get past it. In fact I would say that sex has been one of my final “Mormon hurdles” to jump. That guilt even sans belief in the church was pretty engrained and I have spent a good part of the last year getting over it.

I will spare you the details of my personal life in this post and just say that I was a damn good little Mormon girl for the most part… I felt completely guilt-ridden for any sexual thought at all. Fast-forwarded through any sort of sexy-time in any movie. Changed the channel if something popped up on TV and usually quit reading any book that proved to be explicit. Yep my Celine Dion CD ended up being escorted to the trash can by the garage when I started to feel bad about the lyrics, “When you touch me like this, when you hold me like that...” Trash can… After all touching can lead to sins next to murder therefore better not to think about touching at all…  

In the Alison Bechdal book I mentioned in my last post she talks about sex. She says: 

“Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

I agree with that statement completely but am having a hard time formulating the reasons why I agree. I think a big part of sexual shame = death has to do with the parts of yourself that you label as evil, bad or inappropriate when there is shame attached to sex. In a sense you are not a whole person when you mark such parts of yourself as being “bad”.

I want to write a post or two about this idea over the next week or two but I would love input. I would love others to comment on why they agree or disagree with the idea that “sexual shame is in itself a kind of death”. (If you write a post please let me know. Send me a link or leave a comment here. ) 

This is an idea worth exploring. As you have let go of guilt and shame regarding sex how has your life changed?

Communication

I read the book “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdal this week. (I actually finished it three days ago, but it takes me time to process and react to things.) As I have sat down to review the book I find that per usual this post is not really a review of the book at all, but more my reaction to it. As I sit here writing the post I’m a bit emotional relating to this book. Actually on the verge of tears which for me just doesn’t happen…  I’m not a cryer… ARRGHH…  

Just a quick summary: It is a personal narrative/graphic narrative about Ms. Bechdal’s growing up years. She focuses on two major issues and how they intertwine. It is about growing up butch and coming to terms with her own gender and sexuality as well as her father’s death (possibly suicide) and his issues with his sexuality. He was hit by a truck but she talks about why it may have been suicide related to his struggles with being gay and closeted his whole life. At one point in the book she recounts her father telling her that, “I’m bad. Not good like you.” (It was such a familiar line.)

It was interesting how she talked about and illustrated her relationship with her father. The relationship she describes in the book is one that feels “distant”. They did not touch or hug each other. They did not talk about feelings or express affection. It seemed like they did not actually connect personally on really any level. In fact the whole family is like that. Early on in the book she spoke about how they all retreated to their own rooms and perfected their own arts in isolation.

While we did hug, and did say the words “I love you” our actions did not always show that. Like the Bechdal family we all retreated into our own worlds even when we were sitting in the same room with each other. There was usually an almost complete lack of openness…  

I don’t talk about my family very much on this blog anymore. (It has caused drama in the past though I have always been fairly positive or at the least discreet when I do mention them…) Reading this book this week has kind of forced me to think about my relationships with them. I love my family, but we have reached a point where we fail to connect… We have reached a point where things just feel awkward and strained most of the time…

Part of the awkwardness now has to do with me coming out, leaving the church, living really far away, etc… BUT a major part of it is that we have never had the scaffolding and framework to connect with each other very well. We would sit in the same room with each other, TV on, but all of us doing our own things. Me reading or writing. My dad doing math problems with a notebook in his lap. My mom crocheting or doing puzzles… In our own little worlds yet breathing the same air. That does not mean that there is not love there on some level, but how to connect? On some level taking the time to connect equals love.

In fact I have started to realize that spending time is one of my main ways of showing love for others…

One of my biggest fears is carrying this sort of bad communication into other relationships. I am starting to see though that the way that I was raised impacts my ability to open up with other people.  I have started to realize that I want to get past that. I want to get past it so that my relationships with other people in my life can be more open.

Leigh makes me feel really comfortable and safe. I have been a professional wall-builder my entire life and upon starting to write this blog post this morning I realize that I still might be building walls even though I didn’t realize I was. I don’t always talk to her about many of my feelings… I think part of it is because the perfectionist in me does not want to say things that have not been fully thought out, categorized and over-thought… Part of it is my upbringing…

The good news is that I think honest, open, and meaningful communication is a learned skill. It is something that I can overcome… 

The clerical worker/ninja behind the desk did not arrest me...

I had to leave work early today… Why? Well. ARGGHHH… There was a warrant out for my arrest apparently.

I had a speeding ticket a year ago that I had mailed a check in for. I never followed up on my account to be sure that the check arrived at its destination. I never verified that it got cashed… Turns out it never got cashed. It either never arrived at the lovely Speeding Ticket Office or it got misplaced upon arrival…  So yesterday in the mail I get this notice that my privilege to drive had been suspended…

I take off work early today make the 30 mile trek into the city, pay $5 to park my car (lame), and go into the courthouse to find out what was going on. The interior of the courthouse looks like something you might expect to see in the Ministry of Love in 1984, though everyone was really nice… I wander around for ten minutes trying to get to the traffic office and upon arriving the lady at the desk very calmly, as though she were discussing the lovely weather we are having today (its pouring, gray, and dark) says to me with a smile on her face, “There is a bench warrant out for you.” Then writes down the room number of another office I have to go to.

As soon as she says the word “warrant” I almost expected a swarm of uniformed policemen to appear out of nowhere and haul me off in handcuffs… I even sort of backed away from her desk facing her so that she could not pull some serious ninja moves, jump the desk, and pin me to the ground with her knee on my neck. She did not follow me...

I eventually found the other office, the one that had my warrant, and discovered that the room was full of other losers like me with long overdue, unpaid speeding tickets. I felt a little better seeing that none of them were in handcuffs though I did start considering who I might be able to outrun... When it was my turn to talk to ninja/clerical worker number 2 she was nice enough. I turned on the charm. I smiled, made small talk, lamented at her stacks of paperwork (caused by losers like me), and complimented her on her jacket. (Gain the favor of your potential captors.) Turns out they did not want to arrest me... They just wanted me to hand over some cash.

I left the Ministry-O-Love and honestly did not feel better until just now sitting in my familiar old armchair at Barnes and Noble sipping on my coffee.

I wish that I had an insightful moral to this story… I guess check your bank records more carefully… Don’t speed in construction zones… ½ day Fridays are not always a good thing… IDK. 

Lent project drawings

I have not forsaken my Lent project... I am behind. I've been reading a book called Fun House: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (go buy it now). She basically writes a graphic book of her childhood growing up with her closeted gay father, her family and her own issues with growing up gay. All of her awesome drawings of her family inspired me a little bit tonight. Click on the pictures for a better view... Here are some of the things I've been working on:

My parents were really good looking... I look a lot like a blonde haired, blue eyed version of my mom... Even the picture I drew of myself below looks like this one of my mom...

Drawn as a reaction/illustration of my post on my roommates telling me I am not actually an introvert. The more that I dwell on that idea the more that I think they might be right... I may be an extrovert after all. I am weighing the evidence still.

Cartoon me. Below is a close-up of my "to-do list".

Other random drawings of friends done in connection with this project.

Not in connection to my Lent project, but promised long ago... Here is the picture I drew of Leigh for Valentines Day but never posted (the colors did not come through very well):

My big bad Mormon sins

I was chatting with Leigh over the weekend. I don’t remember exactly how the conversation arrive at the topic but I was trying to put into words what I had been like before leaving the church. I struggled to describe my thinking. I struggled to even put myself back into that mentality long enough to explain what the world had looked like the first 26 years of my life.

Having time to dwell on it a bit over the last few days I feel like I have recaptured it. My conclusion... The world inside of Mormonism was shallow and small... Ill-fitting like a sweater that had shrunk too much and chokes you at the neck every time you twist or turn in a funny way... Yep Mormonism was a choky sweater... Scratchy too.

In my church days I was a very binary thinker. I was completely consumed by and fixated on ideas of “right”, “worthy” and “perfect”. The church slogan “choose the right” was really all that I needed… Salvation, happiness, and immortality all came from choosing the right. It was so simple. The “right” way was to do what the church taught me to do. The “wrong” way was to stray from what the church taught.

This sort of world view meant that there was no room for error, patience, growth, or mistakes. Mistakes and errors induced so much guilt that growing from them and learning lessons from them was nearly impossible. The guilt was debilitating. Not to mention that my idea of “mistakes” or “errors” was very flawed too.

I had narrowed my biggest problems down to four. Four major sins that kept me from happiness, healing and perfection.

1. I drank caffeinated soda fairly regularly.

2. I occasionally liked to say “hell”, “damn” and “shit”. (“Fuck” was too scary… That would certainly send me to hell…)

3. I loved movies and would occasionally watch one that was rated R.

4. Of course girls don’t do this… There was masturbation.

I cringe a little bit when I remember the guilt I used to feel from these four things. The hours wasted pondering and planning on ways to do better. The sore knees from praying that I be able to withstand these temptations… Such a bad person… Clearly unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven…

Its not really these four “sins” that are sad. It was the perfection based mentality that was truly crippling. It is only when I look back at my old ways of thinking that the word “cult” comes to my mind. Strange that beliefs and teachings of the church could induce such thinking and exert such mind control. I really felt like a bad person…

Things have changed so much… Where my existence was so shallow before I now find that I have fully embraced life. The guilt I used to feel is foreign now and I am confused by why it was there in the first place.  I wake up each morning amazed by what I see around me and excited to interact with people. I revel in growth like I never did before and don’t waste my time on thoughts of “worthy”. I am glad that it took serious effort to remember my old thoughts and mentality. I am glad that it is further behind me than I realized…I am happy for the space to be me.

I burned that fucking sweater...