Postcards from a Pear

Shortly after I began to question the truth claims of the church, I realized that almost everything I knew about God or Jesus was via the teachings of Joseph Smith. This posed a problem for me since I felt I could no longer trust the source. What followed was that, suddenly, I had to confront all of these things I thought I knew and had taken for granted about the nature of God. Did he have a physical body? Was he the father of my spirit? Was he even a he? Was god even there? How did he/she/it interact with me, if at all? Did prayer still have a purpose? In the early stages of my faith transition--deep in "crisis" mode, as it were--before I had even considered any of the bullet points above, I continued to pray as I had always done. "Dear Heavenly Father... thank you, and please bless... ." I needed that familiar, ritualistic comfort. I needed to feel like something was unchangeable amidst the cracking crust of my shifting ideology. But I almost immediatel...

On Sunday, a friend of mine and her twin daughters were killed in a brutal car accident on their way home from church. I did not know this friend very  well, but we had spoken on multiple occasions, spent some time together in the mother's lounge at church when we both had nursing babies, and walked the halls together with fussy toddlers. I made a meal for them when their twins were newborn. We had more or less been in the same ward for several years, but I would not say we were extremely close. And yet, I have been wretchedly, achingly sad for the past several days. Sad, yes, for the three lives that were snuffed out so senselessly and suddenly. But mixed into my grief is also an inexplicably heavy dose of survivor's guilt. Guilt that I was somehow not there for this friend in the weeks before she died. Guilt for not remaining a participating member of my religious community. Guilt for the fact that while she was on her way home from church, I was on my way to the swim...