If you've had a DTR (Utah or determine the relationship) with the Lord lately, then you might have heard the phrase, "Faith Crisis".
I want you to know that there is no such thing. Not that you haven't wrestled with a question or a belief, because we all do. Just that there is no such thing because a faith crisis is a thought and not a fact.
I want to offer to you that the way we think about this experience is all wrong, and not how the lord intended us to react to these questions and struggles.
I want you to know that you are in the company of great men and woman whom without these questions, would have never created such beautiful and important outcomes.
Listen in and find peace and next steps for you or loved ones Faith Journey!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
If you've had a DTR (Utah or determine the relationship) with the Lord lately, then you might have heard the phrase, "Faith Crisis".
I want you to know that there is no such thing. Not that you haven't wrestled with a question or a belief, because we all do. Just that there is no such thing because a faith crisis is a thought and not a fact.
I want to offer to you that the way we think about this experience is all wrong, and not how the lord intended us to react to these questions and struggles.
I want you to know that you are in the company of great men and woman whom without these questions, would have never created such beautiful and important outcomes.
Listen in and find peace and next steps for you or loved ones Faith Journey!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female podcast. You are listening to episode 117, three mistakes we make during a faith crisis. Woman, welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started. Hello ladies, and welcome to the Limitless Female podcast. If you are a gentleman, welcome to. I'm so happy to have you here. I am so excited to talk with you guys today.
Speaker 1:I had so many ideas bouncing around in my head but then I was like Emily, just pick one. If you had one of these amazing people on the phone with you, you know you could chat their ear off about one of these topics. Just do it. I felt like that lady from Legally Blonde was like just get it done. I don't know if I did her voice good, but you know the one who her ex has installed her dog. You know what I'm talking about. Don't ask. You guys love Legally Blonde, all right, by the way, I just finished encouraging my kids to chug their water till they threw up. I was like chug chug chug when they came in the door from school, because my kids do not drink water. I don't know about your kids, but my kids do not drink water throughout the day. I'll look at their water bottle after, like soccer or the whole day of school, and there's like a ton left. So if you need to make it fun and encourage them, who can throw up first? And you pound the table and you're like chug chug chug, that's what you have to do. You know what I mean. We got it as parents. We got to get creative. I know that that's my best creativity at work. Right there, all right, you guys, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk today about three mistakes we make in a faith crisis, and I'm talking about for you, for somebody you love, right? Not just in your life, right? Somebody you love, somebody. You know about three mistakes that we make when somebody is going through a faith crisis. So if this is you, this is going to be the perfect podcast for you. If this is somebody you love struggling, this is going to be the perfect podcast for you, right. You don't need to send it to them. It's still about you during their faith crisis. And if you know somebody who's going through a faith crisis that you want to send it to, you can do that too. Maybe they've been feeling really shameful or really stressed about it, or really overwhelmed, or it's in a very hard time of their life. You can send this to them. It's really going to help, I promise. And wait till the end, because you're going to realize that they're not going to be like what why is she up in my business? Because, no, that's not what we do here. You'll see All right. So the three mistakes we make during a faith crisis Okay, the first mistake that we make during a faith crisis is that we call it a faith crisis.
Speaker 1:Okay, we call it a faith crisis. It's not a crisis. I want you guys to know. There's no such thing, in fact, as a faith crisis. If you guys are familiar with the model that I use to coach all my clients, it was developed by Brooke Castillo. Oftentimes I'll call it the happiness hack.
Speaker 1:If you're familiar with this, then I want you to know that a faith crisis will not go in the circumstance line. It is not a fact. Do you guys know what I'm going with here? Do you guys hear me? Faith crisis is a thought? Right, it's a belief. I believe I'm going through a faith crisis. We know it's not a fact because there's no test we could do to figure out if somebody's having a crisis of faith. Right, if I'm struggling with something but you don't believe it's a problem, you might not think I'm going through a faith crisis. Right, it would have to be something. I told you. I think I'm going through a faith crisis. I'm struggling with my beliefs. I'm having a DTR with Heavenly Father. If you guys don't know what that stands for, that's Utah jargon for determine the relationship. Right, I'm battling my spirituality versus my religion. This is a huge thing that almost all of us will go through at some point. But it's not a fact. There's no test for it. It is not a circumstance, and this is the best news.
Speaker 1:I love when things aren't circumstances, because circumstances are often immovable. They're often out of our control. They are the weight you see as you stand on the scale. You can't change it, right, that moment. Right, you'd have to do a lot of work and wait a long time. Circumstances are a person in your life that has a lot of thoughts and feelings about you and they tell you we can't change them Right. So I don't like when things are solid circumstances. I love it when I find out that something that's challenging my life is actually a thought, an optional thought.
Speaker 1:So I want to challenge you to think differently about this DTR with Heavenly Father, this faith crisis we call it, and I want to encourage you to think about it as a faith journey. Okay, and I'm going to tell you guys, why. Okay, we get to think whatever we want about where we are at. We could put in our circumstance line so a fact might be I don't read my scriptures anymore. That could be a fact but we get to decide what we make that mean in our thought line. I could absolutely choose to make it mean that I am not close to Heavenly Father anymore. I could choose to make that mean that, if I want to, I could choose to make it mean that it wasn't a time in season. I was very overwhelmed. Maybe I was pregnant or had postpartum depression or was going through something really challenging, but Heavenly Father was always there anyways, I could choose to think that there are so many options of thoughts when it's not a fact. We get to choose. Thoughts are not facts, they are movable, they are optional. We get to choose them.
Speaker 1:And so if we're figuring out what we believe which you guys, by the way, is a constant thing we don't ever just land somewhere and we're set. Even if you think that you've done that, I promise you tiny shifts have been happening in your beliefs all the time and in your strength. In specific beliefs you might have a stronger testimony of a specific thing in your life. You might believe something more than another thing, and you can see that because if you guys look at your actions, your actions will change based on the strength of your belief, your thoughts. So if I have a very strong belief that the scriptures will bring me joy, I'm going to see myself in my action line reading my scriptures more. If I have a really strong belief that I'm supposed to read my scriptures, but not that scriptures bring me joy, you will see in my action line that I do not read my scriptures very much. I should read my scriptures does not drive an action. It often has us not doing that action. None of us want to do something we're just supposed to do. We want to do things we want to do. We show up and we do things we want to do. So our belief in things will change and your behavior will change, and it's always doing this. We ebb and flow. We never pick up one new belief and thought or strength in our life and then hang on to it for the rest of our life.
Speaker 1:I remember when my dad he had an accident, probably 11 or 12 years ago, and he broke his neck on the beach. It was pretty traumatic, especially for him, obviously, and for our family. We all went through a different experience. But I do remember having this thought that how come he can't just learn all this stuff that he's learned through his accident? Right, he had all these beautiful epiphanies, he had all this understanding, all these people in his life showed at the hospital, just forgetting every grudge, every frustration, business partners and just being there to love him. And I remember thinking why can't they just stay like this? They've all learned this, right, they've all learned how important they are to each other. Why can't they just stay like this? Why? Because I knew. I knew they were going to forget it. I knew my dad was going to forget some of those things. I knew he wasn't just going to hold on to all of this knowledge and maintain this perspective for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1:Well, it's because our faith is a journey. It is not a landing place. Right, we continue to pick up and drop things, because the point is not to get to a specific destination. In our belief system, the point is to always be choosing something and learning something with our agency. Right, it's to learn and grow. Now, with that in mind, I want to offer to you that obedience, as well, is a process. Obedience is not a series of behaviors, but an identity. That just means that it's something that you choose daily. We choose it also about each different circumstance, or about ourselves. Right, we could put you your spirit, who you are, in the circumstance line. Right, that's a fact that's not gonna change. You are you, but then you get to decide who you are. I love that.
Speaker 1:Our identity is an optional thought. It means I get to keep choosing it every single day, and a lot of things are gonna inform our identity, right, a lot of things are gonna inform our identity our parents, the people around us. But I hope that your identity is informed the most by number one your relationship with Heavenly Father, because that's gonna be the most correct identity. But number two, that you inform your identity, that it does not matter how you behave two minutes ago. You still get to choose who you are. You get to choose. Am I obedient? You get to choose. Am I good, am I enough, am I on the right track? Those are all identity words, right, but you always get to choose your identity.
Speaker 1:I always tell people I am a kind person but I'm not always kind. If I always let my behavior inform my identity, it would change all the time, right, and I feel shame, like, oh, I'm not kind today, I'm not a kind person, I'm a bad person. So shame says who we are. Guilt says what we did. So, yeah, I might feel some guilt sometimes. I might say I don't wanna be yelling like that at my kids. That's some guilt, right? I'm okay with thinking that sometimes. I'm not okay with thinking that I am a yeller or I am a bad mom, because now I've let my actions inform my identity and I just don't think that's true. I don't think my identity changes right. So, based on the way I've felt and what I believe to be true, I think identity is set.
Speaker 1:You come to earth with identity, of being a child of God. And if anything, somebody said the best quote church the other day. She said that her mom and kudos to this beautiful mother. I wish that I had thought of it. She said that her mom said to growing up if anything tells you that your identity is anything other than a child of God, anything less you ignore that and you move on and you get away from it. I thought that was so beautiful, because we do that the most right.
Speaker 1:We choose thoughts about ourselves that are in contradiction to this belief that we all a lot of us have, that we're a child of God all the time. Right, if I don't think that you would put the both of them together, like yeah, I'm a child of God but I also suck right, like no, I don't think you would say that. Are you sure? Are you sure you can be a child of God and also be horrible? No, I believe you're a child of God and you can make a lot of different choices and you can feel a lot of different feelings in this life, but I don't believe that you can be a child of God and also be the worst. Right? You're an heir to Heavenly Father, how can you be an heir to God and also be the worst? You just can't.
Speaker 1:Also, you guys, these are just my thoughts I'm offering to you. You can take or leave anything I say to you. All of these are just social constructs, right there, thoughts I'm offering to you and they have served me, but they might not all serve you, okay? So I'm offering to you some of my thoughts, and they are also based on my belief, right, that I'm a child of God. So if that is not something you choose to believe, choose a different belief that serves you when you think about your identity, but stop letting your behavior inform your identity.
Speaker 1:So if this is true, if this is true, that our behavior has nothing to do with who we are at our core, then it's also true that the time it takes for us to change behavior also does not change our identity, or the sea, the circumstance. So if I am trying to learn something, if I am trying to obey something, how about this word? If I am trying to submit my will to Heavenly Father, does it change my identity? If it takes two years, and is that different than if it takes two minutes? What do you guys think. Do you think it matters how long it takes me to learn obedience about a specific circumstance, a specific choice, a specific behavior that I want Heavenly Father has asked me to do, or that I think is right or that I feel is right I think is right or that I feel in my gut or in my intuition I should do? If it takes me two years to become that person or to make that change, then has it changed my identity, and I think a lot of us act like it does that.
Speaker 1:The longer it takes, then we can call it a faith crisis or that if we completely change, we completely change our beliefs this whole life. We completely change our beliefs and we believe something else. That it was a faith crisis? No, it's a faith journey because you still have new beliefs. Even if you guys have left the LDS church or the Catholic church or you've completely changed your beliefs, they're different than your family you are still on a faith journey because you will always be re-deciding your thoughts, your beliefs, what you believe to be right. You will always be informed by something new and then having to say how does this play into what I already know and how I'm showing up in the world.
Speaker 1:A lot of you had to take in all these new ideas. When Black Lives Matters became this movement that was in your face. It wasn't something you could ignore anymore and, as a Caucasian woman, it made me question lots of things and think, well, how am I showing up correctly, how am I not showing up correctly? What could I do better? What falls in line with my identity, that I'm a child of God, and am I doing that? So we constantly are questioning our own beliefs because we learn something new and we have to say, okay, what do we think about this? And our thoughts change based on new things that inform us, new beliefs, new thoughts that are in interest to us.
Speaker 1:So, even if you have left a church, you are still on a faith journey. So there's no reason to believe that you're in this crisis and you're waiting to get out of it. Okay, and maybe you've decided to call it a faith crisis because of what other people have said around you. Maybe people are treating you like something terrible has gone wrong, and I want you to know that has nothing to do with you. That has to do with them and their thoughts about you, and that's okay. Right, they're also on a faith journey. They're also on a faith journey. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that in a minute, about our judgment and of others and others' faith journey.
Speaker 1:But I wanna offer to you guys a few examples that maybe you never considered to be a faith crisis like we call it sometimes, but like when we think about Enoch wrestling with the Lord in prayer I mean this is the word wrestle it sounds very intense and antagonistic. When I think of the word wrestle, he wasn't submitting easily. He said he was wrestling with the Lord, he was pushing back, he had questions, he didn't agree, he was concerned, he was scared. There was fear there. It was not. I give you all my will. I am so happy, whatever you want me to do. It was challenging. He was struggling with something. So I wanna read this scripture to you If you're not familiar with Enos.
Speaker 1:He is a prophet in the Book of Mormon and in Enos, chapter one, verse four, he describes this prayer and he says so yes, enoch is praying for he says the supplication of his soul. Now, if he had a 100%, firm understanding and testimony of the Atonement, he wouldn't spend I don't know all day praying for this. Maybe he was praying for remission of his sins. If he had a perfect understanding and a perfect obedience, he would not have sins in the first place, right? But if he had a perfect understanding, he also wouldn't need to wrestle with it, right? He would just know that he has a remission of his sins because the Savior came to this earth. And yet he prays all day to feel that remission of his sins. We know that the Atonement has already conquered these things sin and death, the carnal mind. We know, right, we know that it's already won the fight.
Speaker 1:And yet Enos is praying all day, struggling to feel that remission from his soul and to really want to know that he could be made clean, says. His soul hungered for it. He wanted to feel that and let's say it took him a day. Like I said, time is irrelevant when it comes to our beliefs. They change and they hang out for a long time, and sometimes they hang out for an hour, right? But I imagine before he kneeled, he struggled before that to feel a remission of his sins, right? He struggled to understand certain things of the gospel, like we all do, or understand certain things that he has been told or he wants to believe or he doesn't want to believe. So I would argue that Enos was in a faith or sorry, enok was in a faith crisis. Okay, when he's on his knees and he's struggling, he's on a faith crisis and this could have been the end of it. He could have been thinking about this and struggling with it for days or weeks or months, and then he comes and he kneels in front of Heavenly Father. So faith crises can look different on everybody. That's why we call it a faith journey.
Speaker 1:Now, consider the Savior, consider Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, feeling the weight of all of our sins, feeling the pressure of all of the emotion and depression, the challenging conversations you'd have with your spouse, the challenging things your teenagers will go through. That feel insurmountable, those moments when you don't know the how, how are things going to work out. Consider all of that and the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane feeling all of that. And I want you guys to consider that the Savior was in the middle of a faith crisis, your faith crisis. He was experiencing your faith journey and for him it took all night long. For you, it's going to take your entire life. You're going to be on a faith journey your entire time here on Earth, hearing new beliefs and then figuring out how they fit into who you are and what you want to do and who you want to become and what result it creates for you.
Speaker 1:But Christ was in the middle of your faith journey when he was in Gethsemane and then, I believe, when he was on the cross, it was his faith journey when he asked the Lord to take it from him. But thy will not, mine be done and I could be wrong. You guys, this could be the Garden of Gethsemane. But Jesus Christ asked that. Right, he said take it from me. Right, so he might have had a perfect understanding of what he wanted to do, but he did not have a perfect desire, right, a perfect strength. Yes, he could handle it. A perfect understanding, yes, he knew it was right. But I wonder if he did not have a perfect desire because for a moment, just a moment, he said take this cup from me and I would offer to you that. That is a faith crisis. That is a moment when he had to decide on a belief. He had to decide. Do I want to keep believing this? Because it's really hard? So it can be a brief moment, it can be all night long, it can be four years, and it's all a faith journey.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about the second mistake that people make when responding to a faith crisis, and that's judging others. So first, oftentimes we judge those who we perceive to be going through something like a faith crisis. And remember, we're always all on a faith journey and yet we believe we can see somebody in a faith crisis. Maybe they've called it that, maybe they say they're in a faith crisis, or maybe you just see them making different choices than you and you label it a faith crisis. And I think we do this for two reasons. I think we judge people because you guys that is judging. When we decide we know what somebody is going through and we give them a label like a faith crisis, we are deciding that we know what it is that they're experiencing and most likely, many of us consider a faith crisis with a negative connotation. So I would say there's some judgment there from us, right that what they're going through, maybe we love them through it, but we still think what they're going through, maybe they don't have to be going through it's so challenging and hard and why don't they just make the right choice? We might think that, and I think that we judge people either because we feel like it maintains our own line of truth, like if we see them and we just believe that they are right on track that we're blurring the lines of truth. I also think that we do that because we think it's helping them that when we can call out what someone's doing and we can tell them, like you know the choices you're making, they're not good, right, when we label it a faith crisis and we tell them the choices you're making are not right, we believe it helps them. So I think that there's these are fear-based reasons when we do this, I think being afraid that our own line of truth will shift.
Speaker 1:If we love people through what they're going through and also not judge them, it's different. Y'all. I hear people sometimes say like love the sinner, not the sin. But you guys, that is still judgment. I hate that phrase. Love the sinner, not the sin, because how do we know who the sinner is? It is literally not our job and also we don't have the power. We do not have the information or the insight into people's lives and brains and feelings and experiences. We are literally commanded not to judge because we just can't. We can't do it well, and so if you guys decide you know who the sinner is and what the sin is, but you're going to love him anyway, I'm telling you you still have not reached a higher level of love that will feel better for you.
Speaker 1:Instead, I want you to consider that you couldn't possibly know what they're supposed to be doing. You couldn't possibly know what they're supposed to be doing. And if you're thinking right now wait, what if it's my child? What if it's my child? I have stewardship over my children, right, there are some people in our lives that we are over right, like the bishop is over wards and parents are over children, right, and we're here to help them. But I want to ask you this thought they're doing something wrong. How do you feel when you think that wrong, that thought, when you believe something has gone wrong for them? What emotions that create for you? Because when I think that something has gone wrong, I feel fear, right, I feel fear, and fear is not my best motivator to help that person. So I do not think it is the most useful thought.
Speaker 1:And when we believe something has gone wrong, we're deciding that we know what their faith journey is supposed to look like how come our faith journey is full of choices to make and then learn from you guys? You're either winning or you're learning. You're either making a choice that creates a really great outcome for you and result, or you're learning. This is why, when we look back at past choices or like I see exactly why I made that choice though, because I never would have learned this if I didn't make that choice Can you guys think of an example where you made a choice and, looking back, you're like it wasn't the best choice and yet I'm pretty sure I was supposed to make it? Can you guys see this in your life, can you apply that to other people, that it's possible that what you might judge as a sin or a mistake or a wrong choice might be the exact right choice for them?
Speaker 1:I had a friend recently say I was a little worried about my teenagers Actually, a lot worried, let's be honest here and I was just talking all about all these different things I need to do to keep them on the right path and help them make good choices and also make sure that they know I love them throughout it all and all just feels very challenging and complicated. And she said but you know, emily, I would not have the testimony I have today and be the woman I am today and make the choices that I feel are good today if I had not made the choices I made as a teenager, choices that maybe somebody would have deemed as incorrect. I'm sure some people in her life thought they were wrong. Maybe she thought they were wrong at the time. But now, looking back, she sees that they were necessary. But I feel like we're also afraid when we see somebody making a choice that's different than us. We feel like it's very necessary to decide it's the wrong choice. But when we look back we're like that was the exact right choice because it made them who they are. What if we could think that ahead of time? What if you could choose? What if I told you that everything with that person works out, it all turns out beautifully? What might you choose to think about their behavior now? You might choose to believe that they're right on track and that everything's going to be just fine and that they need to go through this. It's going to be a little challenging, but it's going to be a lot less challenging if you stop believing something has gone wrong, at least for you, and then you can show up and be there for them.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to read this quick scripture, romans 14-13, which is the one that precedes 14-14, obviously and it reads Let us not, therefore, judge one another any more, but judge this, rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. So we've been asked not to judge each other and not to try to trip up each other. You know what I think of you guys Every time I read this. I have to tell you it says that no man put a stumbling block in his brother's way. I totally think of Big Daddy. Is it called Big Daddy when he throws the stick in front of the rollerbladers in New York Central Park? They're coming down through this tunnel and he chucks a stick in front of them to watch them trip and go into the lake, and then he teaches his little new adopted son how to do it.
Speaker 1:I think of this every time, like, let us not throw a stick in front of the rollerbladers, let us not try to trip people up by applying the commandments of Heavenly Father, that we are trying to apply our own life to other people's lives. It is not your job and you don't know enough to do that. You don't have the experience or the ominous view to know what somebody's supposed to be doing. So I want you to focus on your thoughts about people in your life who are making different choices than you, and maybe try choosing a thought like I have no idea what they're supposed to be doing, a thought that you think will be easy to think when you see them come through it and everything's fine. And you see them 20 years later and everything's great. What might you think then? And I want you guys to choose that thought now that this is exactly what they need to go through.
Speaker 1:And you guys, if we choose a thought that creates fear, it will usually create what we're trying to avoid. So if you think believing they're making the wrong choice is going to help you maintain your line of truth, your faith, it doesn't. Fear is not a very good motivator or fuel to put in the tank for you to keep taking actions to maintain your beliefs or to show up as a person you want to be. Love is right. So find a thought about others who are going through a faith journey different than yours that makes you feel love for them and for you. And this brings me to the idea of discernment.
Speaker 1:Discernment, you guys, is what I want you to access. When it comes to our children, we need to discern. We don't need to judge. Judging is not useful. They should not be doing this. This is not correct. This shouldn't be happening. I know it feels like it's your job, but I want you guys to know it's not. You know what is your job Discernment.
Speaker 1:Discernment is about what you will do. Rather than deciding what your kids are doing is wrong or right, you get to decide. Do you want them to be doing it Right? Maybe they needed to learn that lesson, but do you want them to continue doing that? Do you want? And then, what are you going to do to make a change? Or if your kids are trying to decide to go to a movie with friends, rather than them judging their friends and saying, oh, you guys are bad, I can't believe you guys all want to go to an R rated movie, right, we're only 10. What are you guys doing? Instead, they can decide. I love them. They don't have the same beliefs as me, but I'm going to choose not to. That's about them, not their friends, and I want you to do that as parents, don't make your kids decision mean something about who they are. Instead, decide what you want your kids to do and then teach them that. But remember, nowhere in the proclamation does it say to make your kids do something. It says to teach your kids. And there actually is a podcast probably 10, back. That's about the proclamation to the family, so you might want to look that one up. That one's really helpful.
Speaker 1:All right, and the third mistake that we do when we are going to do is when we are going through a faith crisis is we judge ourselves, and I kind of touched on this at the beginning. But a faith journey, like I said, has no time limit and it does not change your identity. Your beliefs and your thoughts are the agency part of this life. So when we think about obedience, I want you guys to remember that the plan was not for us to come down to earth and then obey. I think sometimes we hear the word obey with exactness and we think just do as you're told. And the truth is obedience. Obedience has to be driven by the correct motive right, love, not fear, not like confusion, like well, I don't know what's going on, but I'm just going to do it, but it needs to be driven by trust, and trust comes from experience and it comes from knowledge.
Speaker 1:So I heard this beautiful example from Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, who's an amazing relationship and intimacy therapist and coach, and she said it's like going to the doctor and the doctor you find out you have cancer and the doctor comes up with a whole treatment plan for you. And he has talked with you, he knows you, he asks you lots of questions and he also has explained to you why he chose this treatment plan. Okay, so you understand why and at this point you trust him. You know where he went to college. You see that he has a degree, he has lots of good reviews online. So, based on experience right reviews and the knowledge right, knowing that he has a good degree and that he knows you and that he's asked you questions, and even the fact that he explained a little bit to you, you're going to go, okay, do the treatment, but you don't understand the treatment. Okay, you don't know how it works, so you don't know all of it, and yet you submit your will to the doctor, right, because you can't you're not the one doing it and you also can't possibly understand every step and how the medication works along the way. But you totally should research it and you should pick the correct doctor and you should get a second opinion. You should think it through right.
Speaker 1:I don't think Heavenly Father desired that we have blind faith, but faith Faith is submitting your will to God. But you can definitely have experiences with Heavenly Father. You can ask for help from your family, friends and understand their experiences. You can look for examples in the scriptures. You can pray for personal revelation to see if you think things happened or didn't happen and you can ask even Heavenly Father to confirm to you why or how or if. But he can't give you everything right. He can't explain the entire plan because I don't think we would understand it. It'd be like a doctor trying to explain to a layperson how the whole cancer treatment works in detail. Right, we might not understand it all and we'd have to go to med school to understand it at the level that the doctor does. Right. And I think that's what obedience is like If we were supposed to come down to earth and just not worry our pretty little heads about things and just do as we're told in any faith setting or in a marriage or even when we have parents telling us what to do, then we would have chosen Satan's plan right, which was to just come to earth and make the right choice and be made to make the right choice. But instead we chose Christ's plan, which was the right plan, which was to come to earth and have agency, which Heavenly Father wants us to exercise. Okay, he wants us to grow. Where is the growth if we just do exactly as we're told, without deciding? And I love that.
Speaker 1:They said the difference between you know submitting submission when it's a virtue or not a virtue, is that when submission is a virtue, when submitting your will to somebody or submitting yourself to somebody is a virtue, it is an active choice of courage. It is not forfeiting your will. Right, our will is the only thing we give to Heavenly Father, and so we give it over to Him. Maybe you're a spouse too. Maybe it's the only thing you can give to your spouse. I mean, a lot of us can do acts of service and things like that, but maybe that's the thing you wanna give to your spouse sometimes, right, maybe they have something that they want you to do with them or something they want you to believe with them. It is not blind obedience. It is not giving over our will. It's instead using our will to choose, to submit.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I'm not talking about submitting to something where you don't think the outcome will be good and I don't love the word submission, but I think that when we're talking about submit as a virtue, we're talking about thoughtfully and prayerfully submitting our choice and choosing something else because we know it will be for the greater good. But it's challenging and it needs courage. Rather than I'm gonna submit because I'm afraid, or I'm gonna submit because I'm supposed to, I'm obligated to, that is not the submission that Heavenly Father's looking for. That is not agency. Okay. So if you think that you're making a good choice by submitting to your husband in any choice he wants and it's not for the greater good and it takes fear, if you feel fear about it, not love and courage, then it is not going to serve you and it's not a virtue and you don't need to do it. I just have to say that real quick. So the main thing that I help people with is not to create additional suffering in their life, and we do it a lot, and we especially do it around our beliefs and our faith, and this is not the way I believe God intended religion or spirituality to be.
Speaker 1:And the last scripture I'm gonna leave you with is Matthew 22, 36 through 40. And it says master, which is the great commandment in the law. And Jesus said unto him thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang the law and the prophets. Now, why did I choose this scripture when talking about not judging yourself through a faith journey? Well, notice, in there it says the second is like unto it love thy neighbor as thyself.
Speaker 1:And sometimes we read that as love your neighbor and then yourself, or we just leave out the self part altogether, but in fact it actually says love your neighbor like you already love yourself. You guys have to create yourself so that you have somebody to give to someone else, so that you know who you are. You have to love yourself so that you know how to feel love, and then you can go show love to other people and show up in that way, and when you're going through your own faith journey, which is this entire life. I want you guys to start thinking about that instead of thinking about it in tiny little sections of trials. I want you to think about this whole life as a faith journey. And let's this last part. It says on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Speaker 1:So every single choice you make or you don't make, every single belief you have in this life that you struggle with or you change, all of those are in support of the first two great commandments, which is to love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. So if you are not loving yourself, forget all the choices that you make. If you feel shame and you tell yourself you're horrible and you're the worst, I want you to focus on that first. If you are judging all those around you for their choices and how their faith journey looks different than yours, I want you to consider that you're following these lesser commandments when the one you really should be paying attention to is loving them, which means use discernment instead of judgment.
Speaker 1:Right Boundaries for yourself and your choices, without presuming to know what other people's faith journey is supposed to look like, and finally use that tool where you think when everything works out, when they're older or when we all meet in heaven one day, and everything is fine because we have the atonement, the savior. We know it all works out. What will you think then about what's going on now? What will you wish you would have thought? What thought will come to mind? And now I want you to think that, ahead of time, don't wait. Don't wait till you see them come out, the other side of whatever they're going through or whatever you're going through, to love yourself and to decide that everything is right on track. Choose that today and I promise you it will help you. It will help you make choices, to continue to learn, instead of wasting time making choices and suffering. Let's learn instead of suffer.
Speaker 1:All right, you guys, if you have been having a crazy couple of weeks, if you feel stressed going into fall with the kids in school and having a schedule again, and yet you felt stressed coming out of spring and having the kids all home and having no schedule, this might be the class for you In September our class in the mood membership for mama's shift. We are talking about breaking up with busy Instead of being busy, let's be productive Instead of being overwhelmed. Let's feel fulfilled. And I'm gonna teach you guys how to do that and how to throw away your to-do list for good and become very effective, very efficient mama's, without feeling like every minute of your day is scheduled and immovable, because we all know that schedules are never consistent with kiddos, especially if we're putting them first. Things come up right. So I'm gonna help you guys learn how to do that.
Speaker 1:So if you're interested in becoming part of that class, reach out to me. I will make you a part of shift the membership and you will be able to have access to the live filming of that class, as well as get access to July and August class, which are the body belief overhaul and how to stop buffering. So you'll have access to both those, as well as live access to the new class breaking up with busy. All right, you guys talk to you next time, bye-bye. If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want to help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom. Forward slash work with me, or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it.