Belonging: some personal thoughts
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
What if almost everyone feels like others belong and they are alone outside the circle? If most people in a group think they don’t belong, perhaps they all belong more than they think. Here’s what I mean, as explained to my kids in a letter on July 27, 1997.
For some time, my kids spent every other Sunday with their dad who attended a different ward, meaning the kids felt like they belonged in neither place. Here’s what I wrote (names may be changed):
I know it’s tough for you kids to be shuffled between wards. Remember the Miller family? Well, the kids are here for the summer with their dad. At least they have syncopated continuity, but you had nothing but chaos week to week.
I say this in church a lot: I think very few people think they fit in at church. For example,
* I don’t because I live outside the ward boundaries, so that I don’t have to face my ex-husband and ex-in-laws every week.
* Single people often don’t because it’s a family church.
* Judy doesn’t because she’s a raging feminist in a patriarchal church. [Apparently those are the tongue-in-cheek terms I used in 1997.]
* Some Waltham members don’t because they’re blue-collar folks in white-collar Belmont Ward. Who could possibly raise their hands and contribute anything in a classroom of world-class achievers? They don't mean to be intimidating, but it's hard not to feel intimidated.
* Some folks whose spouses are not members don’t because they think everyone else has family prayer and scripture study, and they have to sneak out to even come to church and can’t bring the kids, and sometimes the loneliness is unbearable.
* Some gays and lesbians don’t because there’s no way they can answer “Why don’t you find a nice girl/guy and get married and have kids” one more time and keep living a lie, and there’s no way they can tell the truth right now.
* Some incest survivors don’t feel like they belong because they can’t buy this "Heavenly Father Loves Me” business when their earthly fathers used “love” to mean something gut-wrenchingly horrible.
* People of color sometimes struggle to find their place in a predominantly white church, facing racism within the Church that never has a place in God’s kingdom.
I think maybe as many as 90% of the people at church feel like misfits with one important difference: many keep coming. They just need to be treated with kindness and respect in their Father’s house as the Church tries to expand to include everyone (living into 2 Nephi 26:33).
It’s tough enough for adults, but children who feel like misfits seldom have the maturity to know it isn’t them.
* Incest survivors often feel wrong and bad and blame themselves, and don’t know what to do with the terror they feel at the same time as they sing “I’m So Glad When Daddy Comes Home.”
* The blue collar children may feel not-good-enough because they don’t have the right clothes and the white collar children exclude them in Primary without meaning to because they don’t know any better.
* The kids in single-parent families can’t figure out Father’s Day when they may not even know who their father is, and Mom got really upset the one time they screwed up enough courage to ask.
* The kids in part-member families may feel terrible when they’re taught smoking is breaking the commandments and Mommy smokes and they don’t know what to do with that. (BTW, see my thoughts at “But how can it be so bad if Aunt Susie does it?”)
The letter from 1997 went on, but you get the idea.
Where do we go from here? I think we can be God’s hands in welcoming ALL God’s children. Whether we feel like we belong or don’t, we can try to look around and make someone else feel at home. Maybe when we do, we’ll feel a little more like we belong ourselves.
And if church is just too painful, it’s OK to take care of yourself and do whatever you feel called to do (see Richard Ostler, “Ministering to those with Church-generated pain or trauma,” Listen, Learn & Love: Building the Good Ship Zion, 47-110).
No matter where else you belong, you always belong in the human family. There are folks who love you, and folks who need your love.
-Marci
See also “Don’t Feel Like You Fit In? Relief Society Is for You, Sister Eubank Says”
“For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile” (2 Nephi 26:33).