A friend on Facebook posted this. Spoiler: The woman who had to go through a "grueling" repentance process, who felt unbearably uncomfortable and unworthy in church and therefore left ended up being diagnosed with a severe panic disorder, anxiety, and a hormone imbalance. But instead of focusing on that--how the problem wasn't her spirituality and how she wasn't doing anything wrong--instead she makes the moral that she needed to rely on god and not think that she could do it all herself. She flippantly glosses over the psychiatric help she got.
I know I shouldn't expect more from a site called LDS Living, and I probably should have just scrolled past the post and not read it, but this aggravated me. Mainly this was because my own psychiatric issues are what made church unbearable and miserable for me and to hear someone who had similar issues not make the connection that they, not her "sin," were what was making church hard and that it was completely understandable to stop going to church because of it is so ridiculous to me. I feel for her so much, and I wish that church teachings didn't have the habit of influencing members to always blame themselves when they are not happy at church. She had health issues. They take the sacrament to people who can't come to church because of health issues--there is some understanding that sometimes it's not possible to get to church. But apparently if the problems are not obvious/invisible/mental, they don't count?
Also, I found the initial dramatic buildup to the confession that she had been inactive for the past year so sad. Why does it have to have so much stigma? Why does it have to be so scary to confess that? Why aren't members less judgmental and more sympathetic?
