If you follow my social media, you know I take great pleasure in the outdoors and often head to the mountains with my giant Great Dane, Freja, to wander the trails and breathe in the fresh air that only flora and altitude can offer. I have enjoyed hiking since I was young, and frequently as a wild teen my friends and I would “bushwhack” our way up into the hills, blazing trails that we made for ourselves, laughing at the scratches and cuts our legs received as we battled the uncharted territory. I am bushwhacking at this very moment, in fact, spiritually; the cuts and scrapes I receive are treasured memories that stay in my soul from the terrain I navigate on this unique journey.
Just like my earlier years when I laughed at the scrapes on my legs, seeing them as worthwhile battle scars from my adventures, I find myself reflecting on the cuts and scrapes on my soul, examining each one and remembering the progress made as I venture into new places and gain new insights into my soul---expanding, refining, and defining it.
For those who find themselves in the LDS/Mormon tradition, another season of General Conference is upon us. While I have physically and spiritually distanced myself from “the church,” I still find myself watching conference in the attentive and ritualistic way I was raised to do---perhaps I do it out of curiosity, perhaps I do it out of habit, perhaps I do it because a very real piece of me is and forever will be part of this complex, sometimes painful, and yet occasionally stunningly beautiful tradition that I was born into, and that both sides of my ancestry claim pioneer heritage with its historically romanticized trek across the plains to Zion, accompanied with traumatic genetic memories of religiously mandated polygamous marriages resulting in large families who settled the valleys of the Wasatch Front that I now call home.
I admittedly will be watching conference, but for the first time in my 36 years of existence, I do it from what I term a “liberated” perspective---taking in words that resonate and simply moving past any that trigger pain or contradict the lived truths residing deep in my heart and mind. I remember as a teenager and young adult hearing the phrase “You own your life and you choose your path. Live your truth!” ---and yet a very real part of me never believed it. I loved the ideal that maybe, just maybe, these things might be possible; but deep down I knew that wasn’t my truth. This might be true for some people, but not for me, because I was different. I was part of the “chosen generation” who had a very specific purpose on this earth, and while I might be giving up certain liberalities that mortality has to offer, all that and more would be made up eternally when I received my reward in heaven. I firmly believed this, and this belief shaped my life’s trajectory.
My truth had been chosen for me, and for the longest time I tried to abandon pieces of me that didn’t conform to the religiously trained perception of who I eventually would become. I squeezed the expanding parts of my being into a specific box, shoving my naturally non-conformist shape into very specific parameters and extinguishing any intellectual inquiry that wouldn’t conceivably fit with my eventual destiny of “wife and mother,” married worthily in the temple. I would watch from a distance those women who I saw living the kind of life I imagined I might live if I hadn’t been “pre-selected” to live a higher calling. I read their autobiographies, devoured their books, watched the documentaries they produced and followed up on the international impact of their diplomacy.
Now please understand, I don’t feel sorry for myself. Perhaps I did at one time, but I have since matured and recognized the incredible joys and blessings that are abundant in my life, as well as the precious self-knowledge that has come through spiritual pain and growth. All of life’s opportunities come at the exclusion of other opportunities---this is a universal truth. When once I thought I had “missed my chance,” I no longer see life in that lens. I truly believe that whatever lessons I need to learn, whatever talents I need to develop, will be afforded to me through the generosity and omniscience of creation, through the universal and centralized power of the Creator.
I sometimes laugh at the irony that I have arrived at this conclusion; once I secretly scoffed at those who held such a view, thinking it was the “easy way out,” and now I see that perhaps I envied the reality that they had come to that conclusion, while I simply could not.
I digress. As I reflect on the dozens of General Conference sessions I have participated in, many have left spiritual scrapes and scars on my soul---for good and for bad. Just days from another weekend of the most highlighted semi-annual time of the year for Mormons worldwide, I find myself examining those marks, each with its own memories, its own lessons. As a woman of 36 who has claimed her spiritual independence from patriarchy and theological gymnastics, switching them instead for abundant grace, theological humility, and a good pair of spiritual hiking shoes, I find that Jesus (in a worn pair of leather sandals rather than hiking boots) is my companion as I trek into the unknown. The mountain is the same, but the trail I am blazing is one anew with fresh perspectives, paradigms, insights and discovery. Happy General Conference weekend my fellow travelers, and happy spiritual bushwhacking! Don't be afraid to get a little scraped up as you make your path.
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