Preside Over

 So... 

I have been working like a crazy woman on, well, my crazy.

I got diagnosed as having ADHD a few years back, and it also became apparent that I have a crap-ton of PTSD and CPTSD. I have been seeing a psychiatrist about once a month, and a therapist for CBT, EMDR, and IFS modalities once to twice a week for a couple of years. Trauma Massage therapy from the most amazing woman ever- about once every two months.

Not a single mental health care provider has said anything about OCD or Religious Scrupulosity (a form of OCD) in all that time. And I have discussed that I have OCD in my close genetics with them, plus the Phychiatrist is literally treating one of my kids for OCD.

Last week in Marriage counseling the therapist casually mentioned the OCD/Religious Scrupulosity that it looks like I have. In the moment I clocked it and it set off alarm bells. I couldn't call it out in the moment because I couldn't even keep up with what was happening, but it made me feel dismissed and diminished. Like my questions aren't real. They just be more mental illness.

That night I emailed my therapist to ask if the marriage counselor was even qualified to diagnose OCD (she is) and if my therapist thought it was accurate. It isn't. and also maybe it isn't appropriate to casually toss that crap in during marriage counseling. It could be weaponized against me by my husband. Most assuredly it feels like a weapon in the hands of the marriage counselor. Like, it gives me a sense of how she hears me and my concerns as a pathology.

Not a fan of that.

I saw a reel this morning about how undiagnosed neurodivergent kids who are raised in strict religions often pick up a good dose of religious trauma. Uhhhh... yeah. That Venn diagram is pretty much a circle. I left the church around age 15-16 and came back after an "Alma the Younger" experience at 27. Served a mish, got married in the Temple and had four kids in quick succession after that. 

Caught right now between spiritual experiences I cannot (also don't WANT to) deny, and my brain which insists on deconstructing the heck out of everything it encounters.

Started with going to see an LDS therapist once I realized what I was experiencing were panic attacks. During the work I did with that therapist it became clear that, while triggered by ice, snowy or muddy roads, it had it's roots in the disaster of a first marriage in my 20's. Also, I NEEDED to start talking about some of the problems I was beginning to experience going to the temple, and my inability to square some of the things I was experiencing with what I believed about my eternal worth. Like, where is Heavenly Mother and am I actually a 2nd class child of God? Was She a second class God? What's going on? LDS therapist pretty much fired me on the spot. Kindly. By saying well, I guess you're all healed now! Good luck!

Turns out that my faith in God is inextricably wound together with healing my trauma, both the PTSD and CPTSD kind.

So the question of Mother is something that MUST be addressed. Misogyny in the church, baked into the DOCTRINE cannot just sit there. How much and how literally can I take the "doctrine" that is offered? Like, make D&C 132 make any kind of sense when placed next to the Book of Mormon? 

What about the assertions of the Proclamation on the Family? Polygamy just in general? The fact that every woman could leave the church and it would still roll on JUST FINE for at least a generation.

During the sacrament on Sunday I was pondering these things. It came to me, that in the same way that it was not Adams place to make the decision to partake of the Fruit in the Garden, it is not any of his son's place to restore the knowledge of Mother. Adam was in perfect balance in the Garden, or at least it seemed like he was. He had his job of naming animals that he'd been given and he was busy doing so. Eve, however, who had never been commanded by God to not partake, was unable to keep the commandment to "multiply and replenish the earth" that both she and Adam had been given. She was NOT in balance. And frankly, neither was Adam, he just wasn't feeling it yet. After all, he was also given that commandment that he couldn't keep while dwelling in the Terrestrial World of the Garden. Same as Eve.

Here we are, and the church of Jesus Christ has been fully restored and the men are perfectly balanced and happy. They aren't looking. They have everything they need. Except Mother. They don't have Mother OR a fully restored Priestess-hood. But they aren't feeling the lack yet. 

But.

It isn't their job to restore Her any more than it was within Adam's job description to partake of the fruit and initiate the Fall. It was Eve's.

I am worried that Her restoration, at the hands of a Prophetess would destroy this church that I love. Everything has literally been set up in such a way that our theology it cannot allow for any sort of authority from women. Not actual authority. 

Mother, as half of Elohim along with Father has Authority... even Authority over men. The ONLY authority that a female has over a man that cannot be overridden by a higher male. 

Only wait. Father could override even Her decisions, I guess.

Maybe this fits right in. 

Depressingly, maybe there will be room because even with all Her Godhood, she can be reigned in by Heavenly Father, according to our Doctrine.

Crap.