A Current Pet Peeve

I was a devout Mormon for 6 years.  In the last year, I have come to believe that the Church is not what it claims to be, and thus do not align myself with the Church or its teachings.

The following are NOT the reasons that I left the Church:

1.  I wasn’t committed enough.  I was 100% committed to the Church.  I read my scriptures every day, I prayed every day, I went to Church every Sunday, I had a relationship with God, I served faithfully in my calling, I attended every session of General Conference, I went to the temple as often as I could, and followed the commandments to the best of my ability.  My reason for leaving the Church had nothing to do with me not being committed.

2.  I was entrenched in sin.  I was eligible for a temple recommend, commandment wise, until at least 6 months after I stopped believing the Church was true.  And even then, I only drank coffee because I was told that I could in a clear answer to prayer.

3.  I was too caught up in the world and in worldly things.  As a devoted member of the Church, I actually became somewhat out of touch with worldly things, as I rarely encountered them.  In retrospect, I was getting caught up in pride within the Church, and thus was growing further away from Jesus Christ.

4.  I am lying to myself about the answers to prayers.  Some of the clearest answers to prayers that I have received have felt incredibly similar.  One of these was the answer to prayer about whether I should get baptized by the missionaries.  I should have, I did, and all was good.  Another was the answer to prayer about whether I should continue going to the LDS Church.  I shouldn’t have, I don’t, and I can honestly say that I am a better Christian for it.

I know a lot of people who believe that the Church is true.  I don’t.  The more I learn about the history of the Church, and the practices of the Church, the less I want to align myself with such an organization.  I can deal with the paradox.  God tells some people that the LDS Church is true.  God didn’t tell me that.  God works in mysterious ways, and I’m cool with that.  I won’t even pretend that I can or could understand God. 

Once Bitten…

I’ve nursed Oliver for 17 months now.  All has gone pretty well (aside from the first six months, which were mostly just a horrible nightmare I pretend didn’t happen due to the atrocities from the hospital and a long story that deserves its own post), and Oliver has always been a nursing champ.

Until today.  This afternoon he bit me.  Three times.  He laughed, and I cried.  Now I understand why people say how much that sucks.  It’s because it really really does.

I think it might have just been a curiosity about what happens… but if he does it again, I think I’m going to have to cut his afternoon nursing session.  While I adore breastfeeding, I’d like to be able to do it with the next baby…   Luckily, Oliver’s been kind of self-weaning in the afternoons anyway–he’s much less interested in nursing at that time of day.  And he didn’t bite me this evening.

So, finally the thing that everyone’s been predicting would happen since Oliver got his first tooth (and for the record, he has 10 teeth and two more coming through right now) has happened.

We’ve Been Robbed!

One of the neat things about the apartment complex we live in is that we can get a garden plot to grow stuff.  We’ve had a fairly unsuccessful crop, because at a critical period in our garden’s life I had to go away for a week for work, and I took the family.  The garden was neglected and the weeds suffocated all that we had.

Undeterred, we got new seeds and laid out a second crop.  Almost none of the new plants grew, but we got a sturdy group of broccoli plants–about 7 or so–that were growing nicely.  (We also have a watermelon growing in the back, but don’t tell anyone!)

We went out today, and all of the good broccoli are gone.  There is one broken plant left, and one that is pretty wimpy.  The others aren’t all of a sudden dead, but completely vanished, without a trace they were even in the garden.

I’m so disappointed.  And angry at the jerks who’ll steal the only good looking plant from a garden–I mean, seriously–the rest of our plot looks pretty pathetic.

Baby Dreams

I don’t remember if this was the case the first time around, but ever since I got pregnant I’ve been having really vivid dreams.

Some recurring themes:

1.  (The most horrible)  I went through a spell for a few weeks where I’d dream every night that Oliver died.  Every night it was different, but ended the same.  One night I dreamed that Oliver choked on something, and by the time I started doing the Heimlich, he’d gone limp in my arms, and I was calling 911 and trying to do CPR, but he was gone.  Another time he drowned in the swimming pool.  Every night he’d die in a new, creative way, and he’d die while I was holding him, futilely trying to save him.

2.  Bugs.  This has been on and off.  I keep dreaming that I see a bug–a ginormous spider floating down from the ceiling, something huge and gross on my pillow… it’s never clear because I am 100% certain that I’m awake at the time, and it’s dark in our room.  So every time, I wake up Conner and make him look for the bug, while he tells me it was just a dream and I threaten to make HIM just a dream if he keeps making light of the huge bug that’s clearly going to menace me.

Tonight I actually saw a bug on the floor, so I’m sure I’ll have a bug dream tonight…. hopefully it will just be a dream and not the actual bug up in my bed.