A Mormon Adrift

This is hard for me to write, because I feel like I have a great deal to say but no idea how to do it.  I feel spiritually adrift and confused.

I suppose I will start with the last time I remember feeling spiritually whole.  It was during my freshman year at BYU.  There was a distinct lesson in Sunday school that I recall in which we talked about the Plan of Salvation.  I felt so assured and so confident that I knew my place on earth.  I knew where I had come from, and where I was going, and why I was here.  

A year later I left for my mission unrefined, but faithful and confident that I was doing the Lord's work.  I was determined to be exact, to be faithful, to do things right and let God guide. A few amazing moments occurred.  But then, very slowly, small and niggling questions began to present themselves.  First, questions about the seer stone, about polygamy, and blacks in the priesthood.  I pushed these out of my mind as best I could, and focused on the spiritual high points that a mission yields, and cherished the interactions with the wonderful people of Guatemala.  But still, hairline cracks were starting to line my testimony.  

In the years since my mission there have been times that I've felt myself begin to descend into a spiritual struggle that was at times emotional and devastating.  I've tried to pace myself, to reign in my desire to fully delve into the details of the historicity of the church and put the more unsettling aspects of church doctrine under a magnifying glass. 

I believe that the leadership of the church are flawed individuals but deeply earnest and devoted to the cause.  Consistently I've privileged leadership current and past, and given them the benefit of the doubt in issues that I can't quite align with my own personal feelings of morality.

There are aspects of the gospel that have real power and move me as I read them and talk about them.  The individuals that I've met in my various wards are good people trying their best to do what is right.  In many ways the community has anchored my faith.  I'm deeply appreciative of the spiritual highs that the church has afforded me but also bruised by the lows and conflicted now more than I ever have been.    

But as time has passed my desire to understand has grown.  The church essays that have been published over the last few years have added fuel to my desire to know and understand truth plainly.  It's been ten years since my mission and only over the last three have I given myself over to uncertainty.  I am trying to give a frank, earnest, and sincere look at the church, it's history, and it's doctrine.  My approach has been at times clinical and other times emotional.  I've found it difficult to do this in a way that both captures the beauty of Christ's teachings, and yet allows me to be detached from my innate biases.

As I've focused on knowledge and truth, my appetite for it has grown exponentially, and the results of endless nights of researching and following sources has been seismic.  This is my heritage and it hurts to admit that I no longer hold spiritual certitudes.  My faith is shaken.  And still I'm left with an endless desire to delve into deeper inquiry.  

As of now, I find myself in an impossible position. On one hand, there are truths that I can no longer avoid even if I wanted to. On the other, there are pressing questions that I cannot explain away or pretend have been answered.  I feel that following the path that will bring me peace is in conflict with being obedient to the administration of the church as a whole.  I find myself going through the motions of everything related to the church and unable, but yearning, to fill a spiritual void. 

The week-to-week reality of being a member and attending church has become frustrating and dull in a way I never anticipated.  I find that the lessons feel shallow, and no longer satiate me.  Worse than this, I understand the mechanics of faith and prayer but cannot see a guiding hand in my life.  

This last week in church there was a talk on the Plan of Salvation, and it reminded me of that lesson I had as a student just starting college.  I can't go back to my previous state, to that certainty that I thought I had as a BYU freshman living in Heleman Halls.  This journey has lead me to recognize just how little I know.  I feel like I'm just scratching the surface, trying to get a glimpse of the truth, even if that truth is painful.  

It's not so much a question of whether the church is true for me anymore, it's now a question of which aspects are true and which are not. I always thought that it had to be all or nothing, until... it wasn't.