Church as an Obstacle

When I get too frustrated I try to turn it into something positive--usually cleaning. And when I'm frustrated like I am today, my godson could lick most any surface in my house without causing me one iota of worry. Truly. You could eat off the floors under my radiators. Now that is CLEAN.

It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I miss my ward in DC very much. Not the social aspect, oddly, but the lessons, the reverence and the Spirit. When I attend a family ward, as I did today, it is sometimes frustrating beyond my ability to process. Children are running everywhere, their parents unworried. The general din of noise is nearly impenetrable by the speaker at points. And the content--good heavens.

Please don't misunderstand. I've attended to multiple children during meetings and I understand the difficulty of controlling them. I understand that children are a joy and I like the little tykes. Most of the time I even find their antics more amusing than annoying. As a rule, however, I deeply respect parents that instill in their children reverence so that they don't detract from the personal, spiritual moments of others. There was a family when we lived in Southern California who had AMAZING children. Truly. They would sit still without treats or quiet books. They remained on the benches. And two of them were boys under the age of four. I think they did it because their Mother expected it of them and wouldn't accept anything less. And the consequences for misbehavior were ones they didn't want to pay. Even at 14-years-old I appreciated that family and I very much hope to model mine after them. I talk about this only because today I needed to work on tweaking my attitude at church, which I will get to later, and I had a horrible time because, literally, it was difficult to hear the speaker (let alone the Spirit) over the children.

At one point today a speaker said, "As we all know, when you get to the end of your life you'll spend most of your time considering how your children turned out." I wanted to stand and scream, "UNLESS YOU DON'T HAVE CHILDREN!" So, clearly things weren't off to a good start. The second speaker spoke in awe about grasping a concept that I've understood clearly (as have most sentient beings) since Primary. It was here that I decided my attitude needed adjustment.

I understand that eventually I'm going to have to become comfortable with family wards. I'm going to have to swallow the unintentional comments of others because I am not the only one that can take offense to things--and I don't typically. I just can't help but feeling like Church is an obstacle to my testimony right now. I miss reverence. I miss being challenged by lessons and learning from my peers. As I was cleaning, however, an interesting thought solidified in my mind.

When I started on the floors I thought angrily to myself, "I hate being spoon fed the damn basics of the Gospel." Then the little voice in my mind said, "Consider it this way--when you were in Langley, you *were* being spoon fed. All you had to do was lean forward a tiny bit and there was nourishment. Now you've gotta work for it." Then, as the main portion of my mind was reacting, I heard the little self-righteous laugh of that voice as it knew it had a very good point.

Church may well be my obstacle but I'll be damned if I'll let it stand between God and me.