cw: temple

this.

more and more, i feel an overwhelming desire to do only one of two things:

1 - completely walk away from the church. probably look for a different religion that focuses on kindness, acceptance, and love without exception, but probably not another church.

2 - fast, pray, search, and cry unto the God i believe in for answers and for the spirit, and for further revelation and guidance for the church. for every major decision in my life, i have felt a calm, peaceful, lack of answer from heaven. i have found this liberating, and seen it as a sign that i should choose for myself and all would be well, no matter what i selected. it was a great sign of autonomy for me. now, though, i find it terrifying and destroying. what if i pray, fast, search, and cry to God for an answer and there is none? do i truly believe i could receive an answer? if i don't, because i haven't ever received a grand, sweeping answer before, is that--my disbelief--what's preventing me from getting an answer? is it possible that God would let sexism, discrimination, suffering, and essentially a giant, engulfing, dark cloud of misunderstanding not only permeate but define the gospel? do i have faith to keep going? sometimes i feel that i would submit everything to Him, that i would suffer it all and rely on faith in pain. but what if it's not true, and i spent my life dedicated to a church that ended up not being true, that i suspected wasn't true? spent my time doing what others told me was good when i saw it was not good? or am i more afraid that it is all true, and that women are, truly, in the most demeaning sense of the word, appendages? vessels for bearing children and nothing more?