When the People Aren't Perfect

            At first, I wasn’t sure if I could write a post like this. I’ve never been deeply offended in the church. I’ve never had bad leaders. But I have been frustrated… frustrated to the point of wanting to use italics and exclamation points and all caps to express it (I apologize in advance for that). You might read this post and think “well your complaints just make you seem pretty petty and prideful.” And you’d be right. I don’t like admitting that, but I think it’s instructive to break down what was really going on when I was offended at church. 

            So once upon a time I had a Bishop. My calling was such that I was very involved in visiting teaching. Our home teaching and visiting teaching numbers were… not where they should have been. At a meeting I did not attend, the Bishop gave some direction. The direction that was given and later passed on to me was twofold:

1.      We’re probably not going to be able to visit everyone every month. Focus on the people who need it.

2.      Don’t just focus on visits. What I want is for everyone to feel loved and cared for, so if there isn’t an actual visit, but the home or visiting teachers are reaching out and having contact in other ways, count that.

            Some people understood the Bishop’s direction to mean the following:

1.      We no longer have to visit everyone. Don’t worry about assigning home or visiting teachers to strong, active members.

2.      Dropping off cookies counts as a visit.

Now, you need a little background on my previous experience in that ward. In fairness, I had some great home teachers and visiting teachers. For example, one visiting teacher arrived late to a scheduled appointment and quickly apologized. She explained that she left her house to discover that someone had parked behind her car and she couldn’t get out. We lived at opposite ends of the ward, so she walked to the church building where her family ward was in session, found her mother and asked for her keys, and borrowed her mother’s car to still come visit me. I felt so loved in that moment. It wasn’t about anything she said in the visit. It was just that I was worth that much effort to keep an appointment with. 

Not all of my visiting teachers were like that. Sometimes I felt like they dropped off a Pinterest quote so they could check me off their list. Often, I wasn’t visited at all. I went one year without even knowing who my home teacher was. It hadn’t really bothered me. I didn’t need home and visiting teachers. I was doing just fine. 

Then I had a hard year. I felt like I was doing a lot to serve in the ward. I knew the ward quite well. I knew a lot of people who were struggling. I tried to reach out. I often felt like I was doing it alone, and it bothered me. On top that, I was going through some stuff myself. I was trying to take care of everyone while desperately wanting someone to take care of me. I struggled with burn out. I felt like I was taken for granted. I started thinking things like:

·         Don’t I deserve the same level of effort as I’m giving?

·         If I just stopped showing up to church, I wonder how long it would take someone to come find out what’s wrong.

At one point, I asked a visiting teacher directly to come visit me. The response I got was basically that she didn’t have time. I was angry. It’s important to say that several people in my ward truly cared about me. Whenever I hit a point where I really needed somebody, they were there. It wasn’t necessarily my home teachers, but somebody was always there for me.

And it wasn’t just me they were there for. There are people I will be forever grateful to because they took care of people I loved in ways that I could not. There were times when people came to church or institute and I wanted to go kiss the person who brought them.

But I had been angry, frustrated, and self-righteously indignant many times over the last year. So when I heard the new direction, and some of the interpretation of it, I was angry all over again. I took it to mean that the Bishop was validating the approach to home-and-visiting-teaching that had left me feeling overlooked and frustrated. And that wasn’t OK. So after some uncharitable grumbling to myself, I asked for clarification on what the Bishop had actually said, not the interpretation that some people had added into it. And then, focusing on his actual direction, I prayed about following it.

Bishop said to count the caring, not the visits. I thought about my own experience as a visiting teacher. Here’s a list of some of the things I have received revelation to do as a visiting teacher:

·         Stop by someone’s place of work and buy something so you can talk to her in line.

·         Write her a letter.

·         Drop off cookies at her house.

·         Have a conversation on Facebook chat.

·         Give her rides to work.

·         Invite her over to play games and eat brownies.

Not only have I done all of those as a visiting teacher, but there have been times when I did them in place of a traditional visit. Usually, it was because the sister did not want a traditional visit, so God told me what I could do instead. Bishop wasn’t saying “you can get away with doing less.” He was saying to serve in the way that was needed, and to focus on service rather than numbers. That’s a principle that I fully believe. It’s a principle that actually requires more effort to apply effectively than just visiting once a month.

Bishop also said to focus on the people who need it. It was a philosophy that I had often followed. When I had been in a position to give counsel on visiting teaching assignments, I regularly suggested assigning the strongest visiting teachers to sisters who I knew were struggling. If I had been told to choose between getting consistent, inspired home-and-visiting-teaching for myself or someone else, I would have given the Bishop a list of several people to take care of before me. Because, gripe and whine as I might, I never did stop showing up to church. I wouldn’t have. I needed it too much.

So why post this? I remember, on my mission, sitting with a family that had once been strong and active and asking them why they left. They described almost exactly the negative feelings that I expressed at places above. But those same frustrations, instead of driving me out of the church, have driven me to Christ. 

Go read this talk by Elder Holland. Or better yet, listen to it. And then pity my pettiness. Christ never gave up. He never stopped serving. During that difficult year, after a particularly hard week, I texted a friend in the ward to say I was feeling better that day. He responded by asking “Why is that? Is it because you know what I know?” I asked him what he knew. He said, “That you have a Savior who loves you.” And I started crying, because that was exactly what had made the difference.