This is a post in a series of guest posts about unexpected spiritual experiences. Here’s a link to the guest post invitation. Here’s a link to the archive for this series.
It had been a miserable five years.
I’d returned home from my mission in July 2004. My mission was a furnace: white-hot anxiety and hungry, red zeal drew me into a desperate blaze of obedience and fervor. Like all zeal, mine was born of fear–fear that what I believed wasn’t true, that I was on the wrong track, that the tremendous efforts I’d made my entire life to control my actions and monitor my thoughts were in vain.
I couldn’t face the possibilty.
So I thrust in my sickle with my might. I hoped that if I could just use that phrase enough — “I know” — I would finally convince myself that I did.
I obeyed every rule. Knocked thousands of doors. Taught hundreds of discussions. Memorized dozens of scriptures. And day after day, contact after contact, the words fell out of my mouth in a downpour of piety: I know, I know, I know.
“I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God.”
“I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.”
“I know that if you stop drinking coffee, you will be happier and healthier than you are today.”
It almost worked. I returned home, almost sure. The nagging doubts that had driven me into the mission field now hummed quietly below the surface, unacknowledged, neglected — strange thoughts I could not explain but vowed never again to entertain seriously. It was Satan’s influence, I reasoned, one of the devil’s dirty tricks. It was an odd thing to take comfort in, but I did: the devil is inside my mind.
I must never let him out.
But keeping Satan at bay was easier on the mission than it was in real life. On the mission, you had one focus: teach the gospel. You locked your life to anything else. You opened your mouth and it was filled with reassuring platitudes, safely scripted replies, even the ocassional flash of insight that felt as if it couldn’t possibly have come from you.
At home you were surrounded by distractions. Books, school, friends, boyfriends — then eventually husband, work, mortgage, child. The safety died.
Five years had passed since my mission, and slowy but surely, Satan had weaseled his way back to the forefront of my mind. Doubt swirled around me like a country twister, snippets of questions hurtling past too quickly to see or grasp. I could make out just one question in the storm, over and over, in a million different varieties: What if? What if? What if what if what if what if what if…
Until tonight, the night I found myself in the kitchen, alone–again–long after the family had gone to bed. The refrigerator hummed meancingly, and I kicked it in a vain attempt to silence it. Then I opened it, searching for comfort, and snapped it closed, unfulfilled.
Exhausted, I sank to my knees by the sink.
“Dear God,” I prayed, “I don’t know what more you want from me, but I’m SO DAMNED SICK of this.”
The ice maker gurgled.
“What else am I supposed to do, God? I’ve done everything–everything–you wanted! I’ve fasted. I’ve prayed. I served a mission. I married in the temple. And still I doubt! Either take these doubts away from me, or I’m done. Do you hear me, God? I’M DONE!”
Silence descended. As if in deference to my agony, the refrigerator stopped its incessant hum. It was just enough time for me to whisper the words I had never dared admit to anyone, especially myself, “I don’t know if any of this is real. Including You.”
As soon as the confession left my lips, warmth radiated through my body. Just like I’d promised every investigator on my mission. Just like I’d asked for a million times in desperate, tear-filled prayers.
“I doubt, God! I doubt! I don’t know a damn thing!”
Now I was laughing, giddy with freedom. “I don’t know if You’re there! I don’t know what any of this means!” The more I said it, the more it filled me, that burning in the bosom, that unbridled peace.
It had been a miserable five years. There was more misery to come. You don’t tear apart your worldview without consequence. But looking back on it, I say that was the day I really met God, a God of love, a loyal God, a God who is more interested in my truth–not the truth I expected to learn.
–Katie Langston (see all of Katie’s guest posts here)
[Last post in this series; You Don’t Have To; See all the posts in this series here]
I LOVE this Katie. It’s amazing what real honesty looks and feels like. What liberation!
It reminds me of (another) Byron Katie quote: “Don’t be spiritual. Be honest instead.”
Thanks, Laurie. It was one of the most healing experiences of my life. And, what’s more, being truthful allowed me to begin to develop real faith.
The Byron Katie quote is fantastic. Because in my opinion, there is no difference between truthfulness and spirituality.
Love the Byron Katie quote and this lovely post. It reminds me of the Tao Te Ching — “Stop being holy, forget being prudent, It’ll be a hundred times better for everyone. Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous, people will remember what family feeling is.”
I am convinced that honesty and compassion are at the heart of all spirituality, but we can’t open to true free-flowing compassion when we are so busy building up defenses against questions and sin.
Powerful imagery. Thanks for this.
Honesty and humility are extremely powerful. Often we find neither by asserting that we know something when we don’t. Admitting that we don’t know and that THAT is OK, puts us in a humble position that opens our hearts and minds to the truth of what we are supposed to learn here. Beautifully put, dear Guest poster. Thank you for sharing your experience. :)
This is great. True spirituality like this is inclusive, takes chances and is authentic in its expression. As Rilke once said it, to believe you have lost God might actually be an admission that you haven’t found God. I’m open to finding God in ways I’d never believed possible before and I’m open to the idea that my idea of what God is has been so superficial that it is the equivalent of thinking a menu is food (as someone said recently).
What a wonderful Rilke quote! My brother-in-law recently lost his faith and became agnostic. My sister, who attends an emerging Christian congregation, said that her pastor told him that agnosticism might just be a step forward spiritually.
Until we’re willing to strip down to what is actually, authentically true for us, we can’t come to know God. As C.S. Lewis said: “How can the gods meet us face-to-face until we have faces?”
I connected to this article with all my heart. I appreciate your beautiful,descriptive honesty. For the past year I was feeling this pain and anxiety and I came to the same moment you did – a moment when I had to just let it all go and it wasn’t till that moment that I found peace. I realized that even though I had been professing my knowledge and love of God my whole life, I didn’t know Him on my own terms – I only knew Him within in the context of Church and that wasn’t enough to sustain me. I needed to really know and discover God for myself. I don’t know if anything that I’ve believed and lived by is true anymore. As you so eloquently stated: “You don’t tear apart your worldview without consequence.”
Right now, I am in the process of discovering what I believe. I ask this question multiple times throughout the day: “Are you there God?” I sit quietly and think about what I believe, what I used to believe, and what I hope for. In that doubt, I am finding peace.
Lovely, Katie. Really lovely. I too have experienced the liberation that comes with accepting ones self and your inner voice. That moment (it was a moment for me as well) is still one that I don’t have adequate words to describe and perhaps the most real, memorable experience of my life.
There are a few prayers I say when I’m in that place. “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief” and “Jesus, thou son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
I suspect God was right there, loving you and saying, with a huge sigh of relief, “I’ve been trying to get you to relax for years.”