Some days

Some days I still feel angry. If I'm really honest, it's actually pretty easy for me to access that part of my feelings towards the church. I can do it at a moment's notice.

Some days I feel a lot of sympathy and love. I remember that a church is a group of imperfect people like me who are ostensibly trying to be better.

Some days I feel lonely. I miss the community, the constant buzzing of busy-ness. I miss the feeling of knowing my place.

Some days I feel just fine. I forget to think about it. I go about my day, I make my children do their homework, I fix dinner. I admire a sunset. I go to bed, and it's all mundane and wonderful.

Some days are harder. Some days are easier. Some days the nostalgia you feel for the church is a lot like the way you wish you could experience going to Disneyland again as a child--that sense that magic actually lived someplace and was tangible--and yet when you go back as an adult, it's just not the same. Some days you are so glad your daughter isn't learning that her body is something to be sacredly ashamed of. Some days you wish your daughter had more friends that lived good old-fashioned values like you are still trying to instill in her.

I have to take each day as it comes. Some days I have to take it moment by moment. My mormon relatives who used to love everything I ever posted on social media are often silent now. My friends in real life have thinned and some have deepened. I drink it all in, the intentional barbs and deafening silences. The flowers from those that are still there. I trudge forward either way, certain and uncertain all at once. I drink it down, the sweet and bitter, sometimes not knowing which is which.

Some days are what make up a life. And really, what are these days that we live but a million little choices that we make? Leo Tolstoy said, "True life is lived when tiny choices are made. Tiny choices mean tiny changes. But it is only with infinitesimal change, changes so small no one else even realizes you're making them, that you have any hope for transformation."

If you are out there, and it feels like every day is a different set of feelings, despairs, triumphs, and joys--you are not alone, my friend. You are finding your own new way. One tiny choice at a time. You are transforming, and like me--well we don't know what we are becoming, do we? We have no guarantees.

I trust that these days will mean something. I feel it's true. And I believe in your journey too. Be of good courage.