My Story Continued

As I mentioned in my last post, things started to unravel once I moved to a new ward. This was actually my new wife's old ward, so I knew some of the people already and some of them were my wife's friends. But it wasn't the same. I didn't get a calling until I was in the ward over a year which kind of bothered me. I was finally called as an assistant clerk. The calling was OK but I always felt like I wasn't doing enough. I didn't understand some of the things I was supposed to do and the ward clerk was no help as he counted on me to take care of the financial clerk stuff. So the stake clerk would always bail me out and help me with problems that came up. I found that I was missing Priesthood class so that I could catch up on some of the administrative chores. It was actually encouraged that I miss class to do some of this stuff. I thought that was wrong, but if your leaders are telling you this then it must be OK, right? It was this lack of connection to my quorum and the ward in general that led to my going inactive in 2004. I was only going to church to fulfill my calling, I didn't go to Priesthood class or if I did, I felt like an outsider. In January 2004 I stopped going to church. My wife had stopped going months before so there was no conflict there. I was inactive for almost 3 years. I started drinking coffee and would have the occasional beer. But I felt something was missing. I actually missed church. But no one contacted us for a couple of years. Finally, a new elders quorum president was called and he didn't know me as his family had just moved into the ward. He became our home teacher and dropped hints about my coming back to church and eventually in October 2006 I did returned to activity. It was hard. All the "welcome backs" and "we missed you" (yeah right!)kind of got to me after a while. My wife returned as well but she didn't really want to be there. I got a calling about 6 months after I returned, Elder's Quorum Instructor. The EQ president thought I needed the study time for the lessons to get me back into the gospel. I thought it was an inspired calling and I accepted. It went along well for a while, but I wasn't progressing very fast. and I still felt disconnected to the ward. I tried and tried over the years to feel connected, but those old feelings were coming back. I felt like if I wasn't here would anyone miss me? The ward was doing fine without me there. My son turned 8 in 2010 and we felt the spirit strongly, and he decided to get baptized. He was baptized in March 2010. I baptized and confirmed him. We were happy. 5 months later my wife and I got our temple recommends back and we were on top of the world. We started wearing the garments again and things were going great. That lasted for about 6 months. We struggled with tithing (I always have), and we felt guilty about that and didn't go to the temple very much. We tried family scripture study and Family Home Evening, but it didn't last long and we felt guilty about that (there's a lot of guilt involved in everything associated with the church). That's when things started to go downhill again. More about that in my next post. Take care, J.T.