Testimony

I've been thinking a lot about religion and how it influences my life. I've been thinking a lot about my testimony and how I got it and how I keep it and why. I am an active LDS woman because I chose to be such. Little and big choices all along the way.

I was raised LDS. My parents struggled all through their lives. They didn't always pay tithing. We rarely had family home evening. We lived paycheck to paycheck, so we didn't have food storage and we sometimes went to the bishop for help. We were active in the church, but I think my parents were tired. They both worked for most of my growing up years, and I was alone most of the time. I remember being about nine or ten years old and literally spending the whole day roaming the town on my bike. My mother had no idea where I was, poor thing, and she was working so there was nothing she could do about it. I was a snot. I was selfish and self-centered. I lived in a world of my own. My siblings were all significantly older than I was, and they were coming and going, involved in their "grown-up" activities and their "grown-up" problems. I was too young to understand any of it and too young to feel differently about any of them because of what they did or didn't do.

I was a punk teenager, too. I dated before I was sixteen even though it made my parents nervous. I thought he was a good guy, but he ended up trying to control me, and I wasn't mature enough to see it at the time. After him, I dated a string of guys who weren't good for me, didn't care about me, lied, used, and hurt me. By the time I was a senior, I began to see the pattern and I dated someone who "lifted me out of the gutter." He did this through reminding me of who I was and what I wanted. He reminded me of the things my parents had tried to teach me all along. I was a daughter of God. I was more than I was allowing myself to be.

I sent that boy on his mission and went to college, determined to live a different life than the life I had lived before. I met Jason. He had just come home from his mission and he was full of the fire of the gospel. He was certain. He bore a testimony like none I'd ever heard before, especially about President Benson. (He was the Prophet at the time.) He lit a fire in me, and I married him.

Our marriage wasn't easy, even at the beginning. We were broke. We had kids right away, and soon after I got pregnant with Russ, we found out Jessica was autistic. I had a nervous breakdown. We moved in with my parents. Jason and I grew apart for a long time. I felt like everything in my life was going through the motions. Doing what I was expected to do. But there were moments when I prayed and read the scriptures, and the clouds parted and I knew there was more to my experience. A purpose. A grand design. Not a design in the sense that I didn't have any choice, but a design in the sense that God would turn my negative experiences into something beautiful some day, if I would let him.

Our 18th anniversary is coming up. I can look back on my life and see many instances in which I handled things poorly--I should have zigged instead of zagged; I should have kept my mouth shut or I should have opened my mouth and spoke my mind. I have tried to live my life with gentleness and with love. I have tried to look past the moment, when I could, toward eternity--toward something grand and beautiful and bigger than me.

As I look back, I see that my religion kept me out of so many pitfalls. My testimony grew in little steps because I knew the Church was a good thing, and I wanted my testimony to grow. I made choices to help it grow. In this modern, carnal world, religion is something silly. A waste of time. An excuse for prudes to gather and judge everyone else. I know the world's arguments. I've heard them all.

I like lists. Here's my list of why I'm a religious person:
1. If I weren't religious, I'd be more likely to abandon my morals when the circumstances and my mood dictated. I'd probably be a slut. I'd be even less healthy than I am because I'd be a heavy wine and coffee drinker. I'd have lost my family years ago, if I ever would have had a family at all.
2. If I weren't religious, I'd be on medication for depression because I would allow myself to sink into that spiral that starts it all. In short, I wouldn't have any hope. In fact, i might even be dead because I've had suicidal thoughts before, and my religion--among other things--kept me from acting out on those thoughts.
3. I'm religious because I believe people need help and a reason to change their lives, and religion offers that help and that reason.
4. I'm religious because I know I'm not the center of the universe, contrary to my way of thinking when I was a teenager.
5. I'm religious because I know there is more. I feel it all around me. I feel like a stranger here on earth sometimes. I don't understand why people do what they do, why they destroy each other and themselves constantly. I don't want to be like them. I want to be more.
6. I'm religious because of the countless moments where I have felt connected to God. Where I have been able to speak to Him effectively. Where He has been able to speak to me effectively and I've been smart enough to obey, and the results have been miraculous.
7. I believe in miracles.
8. I believe in angels.
9. I believe in scriptures and Prophets and the Holy Ghost and the temple.
10. I believe that Jesus Christ, somehow, made repentance possible. I've felt Him comfort me when no one else could. I know He is real. I know He loves me. I know He will take care of me if I do my best to do what is right.

It's a simplistic testimony, maybe, but it's true. And it's mine. And it's real.
And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.