Like A Weight Lifted

I have experienced an unexpected side effect since talking with my bishop last week.  The lifting of guilt.  I didn't even realize how much guilt I carried until I set it down last week and walked away.  Guilt over having a cup of coffee sometimes, guilt over not wearing my g's, guilt over feeling like a hypocrite.

For the last while, probably for 2 or 3 years, I've been wrestling with the Church's place in my life.  While I struggled and questioned and wondered, I put on a happy face at church, taught lessons, held callings, and no one would have guessed that I had any issues at all simmering just beneath the surface.  The cognitive dissonance was painful and overwhelming at times.  My brain hurt trying to reconcile each new fact I learned about Church history, or how I felt as a woman in the Church, or how much I hated the Church's political opposition to gay marriage.

Last week, I admitted out loud that I just don't believe in Joseph Smith and the Restoration to someone besides my husband and my former Mormon friends, and I finally felt like I was being authentic.  Granted, no one else in the ward knows, but I don't really feel the need to proclaim my beliefs (or lack thereof) to everyone.  I can continue to serve and be friendly with people and it doesn't matter what goes on inside my head.  What does matter is that I don't feel that pressure anymore to conform to some rules that I don't think are necessary.

I feel like I'm giving someone the perfect ammunition for saying, See! She just wanted to sin!  But that's not it.  It's not that I wanted to break the rules, it's that the rules didn't make sense for me anymore when they were made up by someone or something that I don't believe has any real authority over my life.

I was just reading in one of the Mormon feminist Facebook groups as someone railed against another asinine Church policy that won't allow adult men and women to be alone together, and I realized how I suddenly don't feel as invested in the fight.  Yeah, I will comment about how stupid it is, and roll my eyes, but it's not causing me pain anymore.  I don't have to cringe and wonder how to place this stupid thing on my shelf and make excuses in my head for why it makes sense because these rules come from the highest level of the Church so there must be a reason.  Instead, I observe and I move on, because I don't feel like I have to defend the Church anymore.