Messages from Church

When Mormon missionaries come to your door, they often offer to share a message from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They tell you about the gospel of Jesus Christ and that it's been restored, since everything kind of fell apart after Jesus kicked the bucket. Gave up the ghost? Kicking the bucket sounds more . . . I don't know, intentional? And when God dies, it's intentional.

Anyway, my parents got that whole speech when I was about five years old. Since then, we've been living it up Mormon style. But not Utah style. I went to BYU and got married in the temple, but I don't listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir unless I really have to.

And once you get past that first missionary lesson and start praying and studying on your own and going to church meetings, you get messages from God yourself. He's a pretty subtle guy, so they mostly come as feelings, but when I was at church yesterday, I got a pretty clear message. It went something like this:

Dear Amy,

Stop whining. Keep moving. Don't forget to read your scriptures.

Love,
God

And if you're a Bible reader, you know that almost every woman who gets more than a few lines in the Bible was infertile. Maybe some of them had PCOS like me. They didn't have all the nice things we have now to help the problems, and they were mostly totally awesome, faithful women. And even when they prayed and had faith, it still took a really long time for them to have babies. A really long time.

The funny thing is, these were the women destined to be awesome mothers and matriarchs of huge families. The infertility in the Bible isn't some lesson about how the Lord curses bad people with no babies. Being barren, biblically, is not a punishment. What God's saying to any infertile woman is between Him and her, but it's not a slap in the face.

It is easy to think that God is cruel, especially when I can't get pregnant but some airheaded teen named "Bristol" can have a baby, graduate from high school, and get featured in People and who knows what else. But the truth is that life is cruel. It just is. Evil comes from people and from Satan, but not all of the bad in our lives really has a sentient source.

So some of the bad in our lives is just a condition of living. Here on Earth, things are sometimes bad. And God put us here. He's pretty smart, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that for the purposes He's put us here on Earth, a little suffering is necessary.

To recap:

• God isn't cruel
• Life is cruel
• Life has a purpose
• God has a purpose

So all in all, it evens out a bit. And if all else fails, you've got to remember, Jesus suffered everything, then got nailed to a board and hung up on a cross. That sucks more than infertility. And it's not like I can expect that somehow Jesus should suffer through all of that for my soul, but I shouldn't have to go through any of that.

And where Christ's suffering saves souls, our suffering changes them. So life is cruel, and life changes us. And maybe God gave us life because we needed to change. Not to punish us or to be cruel, but so we could grow up a bit.

So here am I with my growing pains, feeling the strain of change caused by suffering. It's not the fun kind of change, but it's the kind I've got. What should I do? I guess I should stop whining, keep moving, and don't forget to read my scriptures. And wait for more messages.