Molly Mormon and Two Stumbling Blocks Walk Into a Bar

A note from the editor:

Those who may feel part of the "Mormon norm" still struggle. We all face stumbling blocks, obstacles, and straight-up walls as we progress as humans. I like how Brené Brown puts it: “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” We are all worthy of love and belonging. At all times. So take a read and treat yourself and others with the kindness that comes with love and belonging.

Story 3 of many.

I dislike the terms “Molly Mormon” and “ideal,” but if I’m honest with myself, I’ve had a pretty picturesque Mormon life and identify with the pure spirit represented by the “Molly Mormon” stereotype.

I was raised LDS in Arizona (or as we called it, “the other Utah”).

I never experienced a crisis of faith that made me seriously contemplate leaving the Church.

I was surrounded by friends with strong testimonies.

My family even did the impossible daily task of reading scriptures and saying prayers together.

Despite these facts of life, I believe that there is actually no ideal or perfect Mormon. We all encounter different “stumbling blocks” that make life both challenging and interesting.

My blessings haven’t excluded me from experiences that have shaped my faith and helped me examine my life and beliefs more closely. I don’t think that anyone’s life as a Mormon is easy, (or maybe anyone’s life as a human). When I think about my life up to right now, I see two major stumbling blocks that stick out.

Block # 1: Me vs. Decisions

When I was younger, I had HUGE anxiety about decision-making, even for the smallest choices. I remember shopping for shoes for a dance when I was 16 and having a major, ugly-sob panic attack/meltdown over what shoes to buy.

Rinse and repeat this experience for picking a foreign language to learn in high school.

I had trouble deciding on EVERYTHING and even though therapy has helped, I’m pretty sure that the anxiety levels in my body outnumber those of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

So if shoes and high school classes were bad, you can imagine how high my anxiety was regarding if I should go on a mission or not.

All of my female friends left on missions around the same time and it put a huge amount of pressure on me to go. Not the kind of pressure that told me “You’re a bad person if you don’t go,” but the pressure that jeered “You’re missing out on what people talk fondly about as one of the best and most important experiences of their lives. Something is wrong with you if you don’t want to go.”

It took a lot of prayer and tears -- sometimes it seemed like it was mostly tears -- to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t actually want to go on a mission.

And to realize that I’m still important even if I didn’t go on a mission.

And that missionary work comes in many different forms and I don’t have to wear a black badge to tell me I have a testimony and to share my beliefs.

Choosing to go to BYU for college was also a struggle but deciding what I wanted to study was even WORSE. I’ve always loved music and art, but I worried that studying something I loved would make that thing a chore, so I was uncertain of how to proceed. I eventually decided to study art and it turned out that I liked art, but not as much as I had expected. I switched to music education and kept with it (praying, crying, panicking, and visiting a therapist all along the way). Heavenly Father helped me figure out what was important to me.

I thought I was a strong, faithful Mormon, but I struggled getting answers as quickly as I wanted to from the Spirit (no Instant Pot Results for me). Every spiritual person should have immediate access to the spirit, right? I’ve had to struggle for years to figure out how closely I was living God’s commandments, how God speaks to me, and how close I am to his Spirit.

Biggest lesson from Block #1? God gives us weaknesses so that we will be humble and reach out to him.

This was especially true for when I met Steven, who is now my husband. I definitely went through anxiety about not knowing if I should marry him while we were dating, but after praying and “studying it out in my mind,” the faint idea came to my mind: “Hey, it would be good if you married him.”

And that was just what I needed.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t just throw an explosion of answers in our face, sometimes it just speaks through the simple thought, “This would be good.”

Now for Block # 2: Feelings of Unworthiness.

This is a big topic. Everyone has had to deal with feelings unworthiness and guilt since we all do things we regret. No matter how close we may feel to God, we will still mess up and wonder how we can possibly be worthy after the things we do.

We aren’t perfect, but Heavenly Father is merciful in providing us with grace, with the opportunity to become worthy through Christ’s atonement.

When I was a teenager, I struggled with a part of the Law of Chastity. I felt extreme loneliness and unworthiness because I felt like I couldn’t make myself do the right thing. I felt like Heavenly Father was tired of me talking to him and of me apologizing to him again for not being perfect. Naturally, I’d spiral down into a self-loathing dark hole that was difficult to escape.

This spiral system still exists in my life. I’ve turned Block #1 into a strength and am fairly confident in my decision-making skills now, but I continue to struggle with feelings of unworthiness. As humans, some of us struggle with self-worth our whole lives, which is good in that it keeps us humble and reliant on Christ, but also hard on the anxious soul that just wants to be good and clean.

I have begged on my knees for help in knowing how to get back on track, to know how to be worthy of feeling love again, of going to church, of feeling the Spirit; I just want to feel good about myself.

Repentance is not about becoming perfect in order to show off a result to Heavenly Father and get a “Good Job!” sticker from him. It’s not completing a checklist or getting an A on a task.

Repentance is about becoming BFFS with Jesus Christ. It’s about getting to know him, leaning on Him, and letting him fill you with his love. It’s not about what you can accomplish but what he can help you accomplish.

It’s not about walking towards him but letting him take your hand and walk beside you.

Our standards for chastity are difficult. We as Mormons sometimes condemn others a little too quickly when they aren’t meeting all of those expectations. Sometimes we don’t realize that we are all in this together and everyone has struggled with feeling unworthy at some point, so we should help each other rise up and recognize our worth as children of God.

When someone talks about mistakes they’ve made, our first reaction should be: “I love you. God loves you. You are needed and wanted and valuable. You can get better with Christ.”

Not “You are broken and not worthy of love.”

We should respond to people who “struggle” with so much love and compassion.

Our first priority should be helping people heal and improve not only their behavior but their perception of themselves and of God and of Heaven.

There needs to be a whole paradigm shift about those who struggle.

I read that first-borns tend to view God as a policeman, “whistle-blower,” or someone who writes you a ticket.

Turns out God is not a policeman.

He is our loving Father. He will sit down and talk with us about how we can improve and remind us of his love.

That’s what God is like.

I believe that God has helped me with my stumbling blocks, that I can make decisions more easily now because of his help and that it’s okay to feel unworthy as long as I recognize that Christ’s Atonement can help me become worthy. God loves me and maybe that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned as I’ve entered adulthood, even in my moments when I’m not living my “ideal” life. He’s making me my own ideal.