Faith is really complicated. And God is not a vending machine.

I taught sharing time in Primary today. And it's brought up a storm of complicated feelings. I wish sometimes that I could just decide to focus on whatever positive emotion arises in a situation and then be able to control my brain enough to actually do it. But I'm apparently incapable of that.

Anyway, the theme this month is "we are blessed when we choose the right." All month we talked about examples from the scriptures of people who were obedient to God's commands and were blessed as a result. I guess I should preface this with a declarative statement that it's true. God blesses his children when they obey him. But I'm also still very mortal, still susceptible to doubt. Still struggling.

So, here's what happened today. We reviewed the scripture stories from the previous lessons (wherein the kids totally impressed me with their recall. Smart bubs, they are). Then I invited a really cool couple from our ward to come in and tell them about a time in their lives where they were blessed for choosing the right. The sister talked about her baptism, which lead to her experiences as a youth serving as proxy for baptisms in the temple, and eventually to her temple marriage and eternal family. Her husband talked about his time singing in the tabernacle choir, performing on his mission, and using his talents to share his testimony. They were great.

Then I talked to the kids about my mission. I had been thinking about it all month. I was adamantly opposed to serving a mission, for several reasons. As I told the kids, until I was 20 years old, I was scared to death of dogs. I was also scared to death of people I didn't know. And I hated calling people on the phone. In high school, I wouldn't even pick up the phone to order a pizza. Pathetic, I know. I knew these were fears that would confront me on a mission.

Something happened a few months after I turned 20, though. In October conference that year, I found myself bawling my eyes out over a story about sister missionaries teaching a family in South America. And I couldn't get the idea of a mission out of my mind. The Holy Ghost was working on me, hard core. I gave in. I spent a year working and saving so I could afford it, and six months after my 21st birthday, I found myself in Detroit, Michigan, freezing my hindquarters off and knocking on doors.

I realized today as I was telling that part of the story to the kids how tender my feelings about my mission still are, fifteen years later. (Has it really been that long? That crumbling sound you hear? That's the sound of my cells degenerating, my joints moaning, my brain losing agility. Yep, I'm getting old.) I try very hard not to get emotional and teary in Primary because it confuses the 4 year-olds, but I couldn't quite keep from crying today.

I talked to them about how I had been blessed by choosing the right and serving a mission. I told them about overcoming my fear of dogs. That was the hand of God, because honestly, I went from being paralyzed with fear at the thought of dogs I know to being fine with any dog that was not being aggressive. It was kind of an overnight thing.

The fear of people, though, that took some work. But I worked at it, and I steadily improved. I'm still not a big fan of talking on the phone, but I call strangers all the time, and I don't have a breakdown as a result. On my mission I learned to play the "fake it 'til you make it game", wherein you pretend you are confident and capable, go out and do stuff, and eventually actually become confident and capable doing said stuff. That has been hugely providential in my life. It pretty much explains everything from my bachelor's degree to my mortgage to every job I've ever had in adulthood.

Other blessings from my mission: learning to teach the gospel to diverse people, but especially kids and teenagers, figuring out how to get along with folks who were very different from me, learning how to navigate on complicated freeways (including how to get unlost), an intensified appreciation for the sheer beauty of the natural world, a deepened, broadened testimony of my Savior and His gospel, a soul-saving relationship with a mission president and mom who continue to bless my life in miraculous ways. Nearly every blessing I recognize in my life today can be traced in some way to those 18 months. I am grateful.

Here's where it get's complicated. The most important blessing of my mission is this: I gained a desire to trust God. I love the verse in 2 Nephi 22 where Nephi quotes Isaiah saying "God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid." I want to feel that so badly. I have it written in my bathroom mirror, so I'll see it every day before I leave the house. I want it; I don't have it yet. I want to trust God, but I don't. Those blessings of my mission?--those memories are mixed up with sorrow, with serious feelings of failure and inadequacy, with hurt and heartbreak, some of my own making and some circumstantial. Someone once described a mission to me as an odd mixture of heaven and hell, and I can think of no better explanation of what I experienced. I trusted God when I accepted His call to serve a mission. And it hurt. Badly.

So here I am fifteen years later, and my life is still an odd mixture of heaven and hell. I have such a good life. I have health, a home, a stable job, access to education, good friends, a great family. I also don't get much sleep, I spend a good deal of my time confused, I doubt that I will ever have the opportunity to retire, and I'm lonely. The one thing I've ever wanted to do in this life is rapidly slipping away, and every time I have a tiny glimmer of hope that it's not entirely impossible, I get kicked hard in the jaw for my trouble. In the wise words of Foy Vance--hope deals the hardest blows.

If I could make myself think right, I'd just focus on the health, the home, the job, the friends, the family. I'd trust the Lord and let that be enough. But it's not enough for me. Every time I meet someone new and interesting and it becomes immediately clear that he's not interested in me, it hurts. Every year the "Good Date Challenge" goes unanswered again, it hurts. Every conversation I hear about love, or marriage, or dating, or parenthood, I feel like I can't have an opinion because I don't have any experience, and it hurts. Every time I wake up and think, "Marilee, you are never going to be a mother", it hurts like hell. And everything I have ever tried to reverse this trend has failed miserably.

I want to trust God, but I can't reconcile trusting Him and always hurting. I can't reconcile a God that loves me with the one who won't relieve this pain. I know, it's silly and shallow and not even reasonable, really. If I believe He is God, then I am obligated to believe that He knows what is best for me. But I can't conceive of a future life wherein this challenge is shaping my soul for happiness and love and family. The loneliness, the lack I feel, seems to be shaping me for nothing more than sadness, regret, and more struggle. I can't reconcile trusting Him, but living without even an explanation of why my life has to be this way.

I think I may have lost the point somewhere in all this whining. Oh, yeah, it's this. God is big and complicated and although He is approachable, He is yet unknowable. There is love and compassion and joy in approaching Him, but he's not a vending machine. I don't get to put enough righteousness and obedience in the slot, push B4 for eternal companion and D8 for kids and expect those blessings to roll out of their spiral and into my life. Of course, I didn't express that in sharing time today. This is the last thing I told the Primary kids (who I'm not sure were really listening, which is probably good): I chose the right when I chose to serve a mission and I have been blessed every day since. It hasn't turned out the way I wanted or expected, but I was blessed because I learned to put my trust in God, even when it hurts.

That's it for tonight. I have one more totally off-topic thing to write though. Someday, I'm going to really write again, which means I will start revising. The saddest thing about all the writing I do anymore, including this blog, is this: Everything is a first draft. Goodnight, y'all.

The digital conversation that I currently like the least

So, this week the Utah Mormon modesty conversation broke out of the Wasatch front and made the Yahoo newsfeed when a really silly boy at BYU slipped a "love note" to a young woman wearing a floral dress, long sleeved sweater, leggings and boots at the library. He apparently felt she was a threat to the moral fiber of the university in her immodest apparel. The young woman was so mortified that she took a picture of the note and her outfit and posted it to Twitter, which people then reposted on any number of social media sites until it made it to professional curated sites (slow news day, seriously?). I could, like many of the comment boards on said sites, argue about the length of her skirt, the appropriateness of leggings, the real danger of making women responsible for the sexual impulses of men, or the plain old peculiarity of BYU--and I'm not talking about the good kind of peculiarity--but I won't.

What bothers me about this whole conversation is its dangerously narrow perspective. The way we have reduced the concept of modesty to how much of a woman's body is covered by fabric is short-sighted and dangerous considering how we must learn to navigate an increasingly immodest digital culture.

To me, modesty has to do with the ways and the intent with which we draw attention to ourselves. Could Andy Warhol have predicted the 21st century digital culture where truly anyone can be famous for 15 seconds at least? Within a circle of Facebook friends or Twitter followers, you can feel famous every time you post anything from a witty but somewhat mean comment about the president to the tiresome details of your dental hygiene. We live for outside approval, be it a like or comment on Facebook or a troll war in the local online paper. Like publicity, any attention is good attention these days.

Don't misunderstand me. You can actually dress immodestly. I don't doubt that. But there is little difference between a girl with cleavage or a too-short skirt and a boy with one of those t-shirts that's emblazoned with a slogan meant to offend anyone who has the misfortune of reading it. If you think that the best way to draw attention to yourself is to display your flesh or your misanthropy, something's wrong in the modesty department.

But dress is certainly not the only road to immodesty. Likewise, if you think the best approach to calming lustful thoughts about the cute girl in the library is to pass her a note telling her she's responsible for those lustful thoughts, something's wrong in the modesty department. I imagine that young man justified his behavior with thoughts of what a good deed he was doing. Obviously, she should be grateful that someone had the superior moral courage and enlightened conscience to point her back to the straight and narrow, right? Uh-huh. Right.

Still, perhaps if you think the best way to relieve the indignation of receiving such an ill-conceived note is to solicit the approval of your Twits and shame the anonymous writer in a public forum, well, maybe something needs to be adjusted in the modesty department there, too.

I'm currently in a long-term gospel study on this. So far, I haven't found much that made it clearer to me, but I found a verse in the New Testament that resonates. In 1 Peter chapter 3, there is an admonition to wives. In verses 3 and 4 it reads

3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

There are many reasons I'm not super fond of this chapter, including that, like many of the epistles, it seems to give men a pass on certain things. But for both men and women, I think verse 4 teaches us about the kinds of attention we should seek. Our greatest adornment is a quiet and meek spirit, the quality of our character. A modest life is one of moderation, one of integrity, one that needs no one's approval or attention other than God.

Is attention bad? No, of course not. When I sincerely seek the quality of life that God intends for me, I have found that He guides me to true friends, and I feel less and less tempted to strain for other kinds of attention. I guess I just hope that as my sweet little nieces and nephews develop into their own adult lives, they are not caught up in the clamor of immoderate behavior--that they are confident enough in their divine origins and eternal potential to refrain from needlessly entering the fray.

By the way, once again, the irony of this post doesn't escape me. Here I am, advocating that we moderate our behavior while drawing attention to my own philosophy (which, I freely admit, could be completely off-base). I'm not perfect yet. Forgive me. What I hope this post might effect is a broader discussion of what it means to be modest and why we should continue to care. So, to all three of you who read this blog, what do you think? What does it mean to live modestly, and how would you change the conversation about it if you could?

Okay, so maybe I have something going on the side, too

There are just too many amazing musicians in the world. Here's another one that I'm digging right now. His name is James Vincent McMorrow. His album is Early in the Morning. He's Irish.



He reminds me a little of Bon Iver, back when I was really digging For Emma, Forever Ago. Here's another song, Follow me down to the Red Oak--



He's awesome. Check it out.

I'm in love...

I am deep in the throes of a mad, passionate music crush. I discovered Chris Bathgate's Tiny Desk concert on NPR a few months ago and had to download Salt Year immediately. I held off on A Cork Tale Wake until this week. Now I can't stop listening. Salt Year is spare and plaintive, the kind of music that resonates in your bones.



Kind of perfect for the exquisite bleakness of a Utah winter--it's music born of suffering. Strangely, that's what I like listening to when I'm content.

I also just really admire his skills as a musician and a writer. He's smart, in a way that I have no hope of ever being. I love watching him loop this song, Borders.



It cuts out there at the end, but dang. I could think for a thousand years and never come up with something that beautiful.

So, I'm evangelizing for him around here. Partially because I think everyone's life would be a little better if accompanied by his work. But mostly because I want him to come to Utah the next time he swings by the west coast. Good luck, I know. I really want to hear him play live, and I'm not going to make it back to Michigan anytime soon. So go to chrisbathgate.org and download away. Worth every penny.

Here's the Tiny Desk performance, too. Enjoy...