When I was just a child, my dad and mom would gather us together every Sunday and we would go to church. In those days we had Sunday School in the morning following Priesthood which was a separate meeting and then again at night, we would go to Sacrament Meeting. There were no questions or excuses, it was the normal thing to do and so we did it. We just didn't have lots of options and so between meetings, we would do family activities or go visit family members or friends. I loved it because it was my established way of life. It was my family way and it became "my" way as well.
As I grew older, I started to question why I was going to church. Was I going just to please my parents? Was I going because of social pressure? There is plenty of pressure in the Utah LDS/Mormon community to stay socially acceptable. Was I going because I "needed a crutch"? I came to the realization that I needed to know for myself. My whole life had revolved around the church community. I even went to BYU. Was I going there for the right reasons? I came to the realization that I needed to know for myself.
I had always accepted church doctrine without question. Should I question? I needed to have my own testimony and the only way to get that testimony for myself was to question! Joseph Smith started the church because he had questions and the Lord answered them. Was that true or did I just choose to believe because it was the easy way? I had always been a "good" girl. I had always believed but now I needed the Lord to "help thou my unbelief". I needed an answer.
For me, the answer came at the Hill Cumorah Pageant between my freshman and sophomore years in college. I went with 150 or so other girls on a 3 week trip with BYU to be in the pageant at the hill. It was a trip that would change my understanding of the gospel and myself in ways I never had dreamed. I was soon to find how little I knew and how much I wanted to know even more for myself.
I left on the trip as a scared to death teenager and come home as a convert to the gospel of Jesus Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We traveled to the pageant in 4 big buses each accompanied by a few priesthood leaders who were needed to stage the pageant. We traveled day and night part of the time. We slept on chapel floors and in non-member houses in Palmyra, New York.
Even though the pageant had been staged there for many years, Palmyra was still not what you would call a Mormon friendly town. There were still a lot of angry people there. We were warned not to hang around town so we spent most of our time at Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove. We had classes and study time at the Hill. We ate lunch there and sometimes dinner. We practiced and helped with costumes and whatever else was required. The time soon came that we were to perform and proselyte among the crowds there. I just knew I couldn't do it!
A missionary drew me aside one day after I had expressed my doubts to a group and told me that I needed to ask the Lord for exactly what I wanted even to the exactness of saying how many Books of Mormon I wanted to place. I thought he was crazy but taking his challenge to heart, I dropped to my knees on the side of the Hill Cumorah and told the Lord I wanted to place 5 Books of Mormon. I did exactly that that evening and could place no more. The last was to a deaf couple (shades of the future). Interesting how God knows what is in our lives in the future. A missionary who I knew personally later found that couple and called to tell me they had my Book of Mormon.
One day, after a long testimony meeting at the Grove, I went with my cousin Clint, a missionary at the Hill and his companion into the grove to kneel in prayer. I got my witness in the same grove of trees where Joseph received his witness. It was not an amazing vision. No! It was a feeling of warmth and understanding that I had always known the answers to my questions. I just needed to know for myself that the answers had always been true! I knew! I really knew! There was no doubt in my mind.
I came home and started to go to church just as usual but suddenly there was an understanding I did not have before. I went to church not because I needed the social feed, not because my parents said to, not because I needed to crutch but because it fed me. It is the same reason I have gone to church for 66 + years. It feeds me. Through thick and thin, in the best of times and the worst of times, I find knowledge and understanding and peace and solace that I find nowhere else.
When I leave church, I am prepared to face another week fortified with the knowledge that I am a child of God and that he loves me. I know that he has given me the tools, the love and the guidance to know what to ask, where to go and how to deal. Even if things don't work out as I had hoped, I know that Christ will help me find the strength to face what needs facing and that I will make it through the cracks and the holes okay.
I go to church because this knowledge is so deeply imbedded in me now that I cannot separate myself from it. I hope I never can or will.
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