Faith Update

I've posted a little bit about my crisis of faith over the past few months. I've had struggles with the LDS church for a long time, as long as I can remember. But as I contemplate the options ahead, I am just not content with the agnostic/atheist option. If I was to stop attending the LDS Church, I don't see myself ever believing in any other religion. If I left the church, it would be because I don't believe in God at all, and I just don't see that happening. Well, sometimes when I'm discouraged, I can easily see it happening, but generally I can't.

I don't know if I've mentioned gifts of the spirit here before. The scriptures say that some are given the gift of believing and to some it is given to believe on their words. I think I naturally fall into the second category. And the thing is, I DO believe what others testify of. I believe that often we manifest the answers and feelings that we want to feel, but not always. There are just too many amazing things that I feel cannot be explained away.

It is really weird, because I am hesitant to post this because I don't want to lose any of my friends who don't believe or aren't religious. Of course I don't think they would immediately dump me as a friend, but they'd likely feel that this is an area where we don't connect, and that would cause a small loss to the friendship. But I need to quit worrying about what others are doing and quit choosing the choices others have made. I need to do it my own way.

I've tried to convince myself that I've done the necessary work to receive the gift of believing, but looking at it objectively, I don't think I have. I don't know. I go back and forth. So many doubts, but such desire to believe. It's almost impossible to make sense of this, so as usual, I'll just randomly chop the post off in the middle of a thought.

I didn't copy!

I just went over to The Pioneer Woman site, which I haven't done in ages. One of her posts is called "What I Love". I SWEAR I didn't copy when I was titling my post the other day!