This is where you belong...

This post is something hard thing to write, even to the few people who read my little blog, all of whom love me. Still, I feel like I should, so I am. For the past few years, I have been away from church. I have been attending, well mostly attending, but my heart has been removed from it. I became one of those people going through the motions instead of being really invested. In other words, I have been a hypocrite.

There a lot of reasons for this absence and most of them actually sound pretty reasonable. Reasons like it was hard to go to church after my dad died because everything felt like too much. Very true. Reasons like I don't feel like there is a place for young single sisters. Not true, but it felt true. Reasons like it is easier to stay home and sleep or knit or read. Also true. Reasons like I can be spiritual by myself, so I don't need church. True, you can be close to God all by yourself, but it is harder. A lot harder. Reasons like it doesn't matter if I am there or not. Also not true, but it felt true. See, lots of reasons, but logical reasoning is a slippery slope friends, and even though the reasons were true, or least felt true, they kept me from the real truth, which was that I was slipping.

Last week, I decided to try the whole attend all your meetings counsel. I went to church and stayed for the whole thing. More than that, I let myself be present in the meetings and really tried to feel if it was the right place for me to be. Not surprisingly, I felt like it was. I didn't have any visions or revelations. I didn't have a powerful spiritual experience. The lessons didn't have a message specifically for me and I didn't get anything specific from the sacrament talks. Still, I knew being there was where I belonged. I felt a quiet feeling, a peaceful sigh, a resolve to come inspite of the reasons that kept me absent. It was a good feeling and a familiar one.

Today, I had to work and made it only for the last hour, but sitting in that last meeting, I had the same feeling--this is where you belong--and I felt for a moment, without going anywhere, that I was closer to home than I had been in a long time. I don't think this the end of my troubles or that going to church will be any easier. All my reasons are still there, all of them still feel true, but I feel something else now too.

O that ye would awake: awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.

But behold, the Lord hath redeeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.