SLIPPERY SLOPES OF APOSTASY or JUST BROKEN...

Last night, in hopes of rekindling something, we decided to attend the temple and worship together. It has been a few months, to be honest with you, that we've gone together as a couple, trying to be the happy, stereotypical eternal mates of the stereotypical culture. But I didn't feel very stereotypical.

I caught myself in the session looking around for any "hot guys", realizing right then and there that my spirit and attitude weren't in the right place or frame of mind, and (not having found anyone to stare at and drool over) thus I settled into a state of self-absorbed depression, brooding on the fact that I'm so screwed up and that my wife really would have been "better off" not having "wasted the best years of her life" on such damaged material as myself.

Instead of paying attention to the spirit trying to help me along, I just started concentrating on everything that is beginning to feel so foreign to me within the Church, even the allegiance to the Brethren and this whole same-sex marriage thing that is getting me down and confused and muddied. (I mean, this idea that we should always agree with everything they say for they speak for God... I've never ever questioned that before in my life, ever, until now... and that questioning makes me question everything else and I hate it and hate me for feeling this way!)

By the time I got to the Celestial Room, my wife was waiting on the couch (she got through much sooner than I). It was Friday evening, so the place was crowded with other stereotypically happy couples enjoying their happy times of celestialhood. It wasn't an environment very conducive to meditation (we shouldn't have come on Friday). We embraced and cuddled together, though immediately she sensed something NEW was bothering me. She knew we haven't been "right" together with each other for a week now, but this was something "new". I told her "it's okay" and went into a prayer of contemplation mode trying to feel some kind of spirit - a good spirit - in the Lord's House. But the internal voices of insecurity and self-doubt, of lack of a solid and firm marriage, of lack of brotherhood and lack of devotion all tumbled over and over in my brain like tennis shoes in the dryer, making so much noise, the still small voice couldn't register even a faint blip on the radar screen...(I'm sure I wasn't in tune to the signal enough anyway) so I finally got up and we left.

I truly know the workings of the still small voice. Sometimes, most often, it takes me going to a quiet place, my mountain, to be alone and at peace. I haven't been there for some time. The voices of life, the static of the world with pressures of living in this world, often clutter that sense of peace. And when I'm not at peace with my sexuality and NOW even my spirituality, I just feel like I'm slipping... slipping...

* * * *

This morning I guess I didn't "encourage" her enough during our cuddle time (though I truly wanted her to touch me and to be intimate with me - but I wanted it to be spontaneous and that she wanted it, too, and I guess because I have "burned her" so many times in the past, and she's been "hurt" so many times from my physical "rejections", it's as if she's gone into a defense mechanism that if I don't put her hand in the place where I want it to have her KNOW that I want her there with me, then she's not going to lift a finger toward our relationship - and when you don't get it there - everything else goes downhill from there in the daily struggles of normal life), that she pulled away from me again and we aren't in sync with each other at all. It's like we're just putting in the time, awaiting a transfer or something...

I don't know. I hate it.

All I know is I'm feeling it slipping away as well. We have big major plans this summer for a once-in-a-lifetime family adventure, and other stuff that is HUGE for our family dynamic (to be announced or commented on later)... and it scares me that we're going down a road arm-in-arm and soon we may be just hand-in-hand, and then finger-tip-to-finger-tip, until finally we let go...

* * * *

Maybe -L- is right, maybe I'm just allowing these things to happen to me - allowing myself to slip away from life, from family, from Church, from God - as I do NOTHING about these things! Maybe I'm searching for it to get "bad enough" that I will have no alternative but to seek outside help to get me back "in tune".

IN TUNE... now that's an interesting topic:

"I suggest a simple solution for selecting the channel to which we attune ourselves: listen to and follow the voice of the Spirit. This is an ancient solution, even eternal,and may not be popular in a society that is always looking for something new. It requires patience in a world that demands instant gratification. This solution is quiet, peaceful, and subtle in a world enamored of that which is loud, incessant, fast paced, garish, and crude. This solution requires you to be contemplative while your peers seek physical titillation. This solution is one unified, consistent, age-old message in a world that quickly becomes bored in the absence of intensity, variety, and novelty. This solution requires us to walk by faith in a world governed by sight. With the eye of faith we are to see eternal, unseen, spiritual verities, while the masses of mankind depend solely on temporal things which can be known only through the physical senses... We need to learn how to ponder the things of the Spirit and to respond to its promptings - to filter out the static generated by Satan. As we become attuned to the Spirit, we shall hear a word behind us saying, This is the way, walk ye in it. Hearkening to the "voice of the living God" will give us peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come. These are the greatest of all the gifts of God." -- James E. Faust, Ensign June 2006.

I know what it feels like to be "in tune" and "on the path" and yet the "filtering mechanism that filters out the static generated by Satan" on my personal radio is currently broken. It's not only broken, the antennae are missing and the tuning dial has fallen off. It may be broken beyond the ability to be repaired. (Yes, I know the analogy for the Atonement comes in here somewhere and that none of us are BEYOND HOPE and all that good stuff that I do believe)...

But,

I feel so broken...

P.S. Sorry for all the lame analogies in this pathetic entry.