What I Know

It's 5am and I can't sleep. I just put Teddy down after a middle of the night feeding, but my mind is swimming with thoughts. During late night feedings I read, and tonight I read a sincere and well-meaning blog post written by a friend. A friend with questions and possibly doubts. And although she may never read this, this is for that friend, or any friend who has questions and doubts. This is what I believe.

I've been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints my entire life. I was taught it from the beginning. I sang its songs as a child. I attended mutual each week as a teenager. In college, I served for 18 months to teach its message to others. It gave me wonderful role models as my leaders taught and guided me. At home my parents were amazing examples of living its principles in their marriage, lives, and in the way they raised us. It has brought me happiness. I has always been everything I needed.

But I'll never forget the Sunday that, for the first time ever, I wanted to walk out the doors of the church and never return. My husband had recently been repeatedly and heavily criticized in a calling in which he was trying his very best. I had been asked the previous week to prepare "better and more entertaining" lessons because I was "boring" the children I was teaching. It was just before sacrament meeting and I learned of a dear friend who had been severely criticized and, for lack of a better phrase, tongue lashed because she had called during dinnertime to ask a member of the ward a simple question.

The opening hymn started, but I was already out the door. Tears streamed from my eyes. I was angry. Angry because, if there was claim that this was the church of Christ, why wasn't it full of the most Christian people on the earth?

My husband quietly followed me. He was silent as I paced the sidewalk outside the church building. Finally I cried, almost yelling, "Why are we even here?!"

His calm reply was just what I needed to hear. "We're here for Jesus Christ".

He was right. I wasn't there for them. I was there for Him.

Recently we've had close friends and family decide to leave the church. Each time I hear of it, my heart is heavy. And sometimes for a brief moment I have the thought, what if I leave?

Then my mind is immediately taken to the scripture in John 6 when Christ is with his disciples and he teaches them "hard sayings" or things that were difficult for them to hear. And then it says:

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.  Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?  Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.  And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.

I can't ever leave. To where would I go?

People in the church may have failed me, but God has never failed me. Jesus Christ has never failed me. And to me, it is His church. They are tied together. To believe in one is to believe in the other. I have asked and I know. I know that He restored all the truths necessary for our salvation through the prophet Joseph Smith. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God. I know that the Book of Mormon, just like the Bible, is holy scripture.

It's not just what I believe. It's what I know.