For the Clingers

 We haven't had a Julie TMI post in awhile, so how about it.

Yesterday we got on a topic in Sunday School that then carried through Relief Society and is still clunking around in my brain, so I thought I would attempt to dump it. We were talking about Lehi's dream. If you are not familiar with it, there is a tree which represents the love of God and a multitude of people are making their way toward the tree holding to an iron rod to help them on their way. Some let go, some hold fast, some leave the path for the "great and spacious building" where they then point at mock those who are on the path. And then there are some that cling.

We talked about the difference between holding fast and clinging. The ones who were clinging still made it to the tree but then fell away when the mocking and pointing made them ashamed. People started to raise their hands and speculate about how the clingers must not have had "real testimonies" or how they must be "self-absorbed" and not serving others. And I wanted to raise my hand, but the instructor had an exciting idea she wanted to share and told us the Holy Ghost wouldn't wait any longer and so I sat there quietly, but my heart was crying out in defense of the clingers.

I am not, by nature, a faithful person. Faith is a fight for me. I often think of how my dad talked at my mission farewell about his surprise at learning that I was going on a mission, because I was always the skeptic as a child. I didn't want Santa, or dragons, or fairy-tales. I have an incredible amount of difficulty with faith because it requires me to suspend disbelief. I am definitely a realist, as I am learning over and over again in my Romanticism class this semester. Faith is a constant battle for me. I have had to dig, and claw and scratch my way to a testimony and then immerse myself in the gospel because I knew that was the only way it would stick. I have done the whole "holding fast" thing, but my true nature always surges up and I am revealed yet again, as a clinger. I have spent most of my life hanging on by the skin of my teeth and fighting to stay on the path. And it is not the standards and lifestyle that accompany Mormonism that are hard for me. It is the believing.

I am a clinger. For those who have dogs, this might conjure up a disgusting image of a "clinger" that comes in with the dog after he has been to the outhouse. While this analogy is distasteful and possibly irreverent, this is not far off from where I stand sometimes. One swift drag of the butt across the carpet and I might not make it. And yet I cling on with all that I have. 

So I thought about this idea that I must not have a "real testimony", but I don't know many people who have fought for it the way that I fight for it. When everything in me cries out that I should give up, I hang on to what I do know, even in times when what I do know has eroded down to nothing more than a hope that God loves me. I joke sometimes that I am secretly on a show called Last Mormon Standing, but it is no joke. I keep watching people I love leave this church and I have wondered (daily) if they are right and I am deluded. I have wondered (hourly) if God is trying to tell me that this is not where I belong, and then I cling on and ask Him to remind me of all the ways that the gospel has changed my life and I look for answers and I refuse to give up.

I have huge questions and monumental doubts, but I still cling. The "devil" in CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters tells his nephew "Our cause is never in more danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys." According to CS Lewis, clingers thwart the plans of Satan. If, even in the midst of the troughs that we go through, we can still force ourselves to reach out and hold on by our fingernails then deep down we must be solidly anchored to something "real".

As far as the idea that the clingers are self-absorbed....yeah, not buying that either. I have thrown myself head first into the church and served in callings that I did not have time for, spiritual strength for, and that took me away from my own family. I have emptied my well to fill the well of others, because I felt like my talents could help someone else come to know God. If anything, my testimony has suffered from not being self-absorbed enough and not from being too self-absorbed.

And so this is a shout out to the clingers. Maybe I won't make it, and maybe clinging is not enough, but it is something. For me, right now, it is everything. So please, don't tell me it's hopeless. Instead, maybe hold my hand as I cling, until I can hold fast.