God Can Be Found In The Gray Areas

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I am reading the book Silent Souls Weeping by Jane Clayson Johnson, and I recommend it.  Today I was reading about someone named Kara who struggles with perfectionism and depression.  She said:

"Perfectionists, we deal in the black and white.  There's no gray area.  It's all or nothing.  And that's Satan's plan.  Heavenly Father wants us to live in the gray areas where there's mercy and love, compassion, charity."

Those of us who struggle with perfectionism can feel like we should be able to be perfect right now, but Heavenly Father always knew that we would need a lot of practice.  Growth takes time.  Learning takes time.  I've often had the feeling that surely, if I just think hard enough, I will be able to figure out how to never mess up.  I want to be like the child prodigy who can play the piano perfectly without the hours and hours of practice usually required, except I want to be like that for all of life, and I sometimes have felt like a failure when I couldn't do it.  In these moments, I am forgetting that Heavenly Father did not mean for life to be that way.  It is through our imperfections that we learn and find that God provides help, strength, knowledge, capacity, forgiveness, mercy, and all good things.

The quote above reminded me of a discussion I had years ago with someone who was struggling with his faith.  He said he had always thought things were black and white but that he felt things were more like Billy Joel's song that says, "Shades of gray wherever I go, the more I find out the less that I know."

There are many, many people who struggle with questions, who feel stuck in this gray area where they can't quite see what is right, and what to do or think.  They feel alone, and might even feel ashamed for struggling and having questions.  But it is in that very struggle and working through all of those hard questions with faith that we gain strength, and can eventually find, and come to know God.  In all of life it is in those gray areas, in those daily struggles of life, and in the real challenges we have, that we can best find the God of mercy, love, compassion, and charity.

***Used by permission from churchofjesuschrist.org

Extreme Rule Following

Photo by Dawid Małecki on Unsplash

I have been an extreme rule follower for a lot of my life.  On the surface this may not sound so bad because it's good to follow rules right?  But an extreme rule follower like I have been not only follows the rules, but makes up lots of extra rules to follow, and has a tendency to think someone else is doing it (whatever it is) wrong because they aren't following my, obviously correct rules!  It's all very exhausting and is, I think, a form of perfectionism.

I remember once, long, long ago when I was still in high school -- there was a girl I knew who belonged to another church who was fasting.  She did this regularly, and for whatever reason her fast days seemed to fall on school days.  I had been taught that fasting was going without food and drink for 24 hours.  This girl was drinking juice!  Naturally, I needed to point out that she was fasting wrong.  What she was doing really wasn't fasting at all.  I still cringe over that.  She was not exactly following the rules that I knew, but she was fasting according to the rules she knew!  That is impressive!  It was probably really hard to do that at school, especially with people like me giving her a hard time!

I have been learning over the years that there really is a Spirit of the Law.  A reason a rule was made that is more important than the rule itself.  Nowadays if I tried to do a "real" fast I would end up feeling sick, with a headache, and it would take a couple of days to recover.  It would also make it so taking my medicine would be a bad idea, and not taking it is also a bad idea!  Everyone and anyone could tell me I am fasting wrong -- and according to what I was taught (which is NOT the only way to fast) they would be right!

So now I have to be creative in how I fast.  I try to follow the spirit of the law, and give up a bad habit, or something that I crave, or at least eat differently -- anything to remind me to pray for something specific, or to try to come closer to Christ -- and just like the girl in high school, what I do really does count as fasting.  So here's to watching out for extreme rule following and NOT deciding someone else is doing it wrong.  We are not in charge of the rules everyone else follows, and it would be good to focus on the reason behind the rules we follow rather than the rule itself.