The "Blessing"

I would like to confess something. The day that I decided that the LDS Church could no longer be the true church on earth, I threw away some paper-based handouts I got from church meetings. I had tons of handouts and packets on different doctrines. I didn't pause much when I threw these away.

However, something very important made me pause. I wondered if I should keep my patriarchal blessing. To an LDS person, the patriarchal blessing is a very sacred thing. You are not supposed to tell others what is in your blessing. Generally, you get your blessing as a teenager or young adult. And you have to have one before you serve an LDS mission.


Basically, you go to the stake patriarch so that he can put his hands on your head and give you a large blessing that is supposed to guide you through your individual life. You are given advice to do certain things, keep the commandments, and avoid your personal weaknesses.

I decided that I would get a blessing when I was about 20 years old. I got the blessing one Sunday with my family standing and listening. I loved the experience. It made me feel special.

A tape recorder was on while the blessing was being given. After we left the patriarch's home, the patriarchs wife, acting in a secretarial position, typed up the blessing on official LDS Church paper and had it delivered to my home.

When I got the blessing, I was excited. This was just for me!

There were a few catches, however. I didn't understand my blessing. Some aspects of it made little sense. It seemed like gibberish at first. What did it have to do with my life? There was even a sentence in it that made no sense to me whatsoever. It basically told me that there was nothing in the next life for me but to learn of my Savior Jesus Christ. This sentence made no sense since I believed that there would be many things for me to do in the Afterlife. Sure, I would rest. And I would also have a purpose after death. What I had to do didn't matter. It was the idea that there was more to do than what my blessing suggested. I kept reading the sentence over and over again, wondering if there was a hidden meaning. One member had said that a sentence appeared on her blessing one day that hadn't been there before. It made everything make sense to her. I figured that this might happen to me someday. But in all of the experiences that tried my faith, whenever I looked at my copy of my blessing, I saw nothing but the original sentence. I decided to ignore it. Maybe it was a typo! Maybe it didn't matter! There was good advice in the rest of my blessing. It would be okay.

Well, the blessing also told me that marriage was my most important accomplishment. And it told me to enter into all of the ordinances of the gospel and keep all of the commandments. So, basically it told me that I couldn't go the easy way of just keeping those commandments I had the strength and knowledge to keep. It told me I had to keep all of them. While this seemed like a nice ideal, it was too stressful. I don't think I ever accomplished it. And for an LDS person, getting all of the "ordinances of the gospel" included going to the temple endowment ceremonies. I could never feel right in my heart about the temple endowment ceremonies.

And then there was the marriage part. Nobody ever asked them to marry me. And I had had no good long-term relationships with any male member of the LDS Church. Only a member can marry a member in the temple. And I became increasingly unattracted to the men who were going so far as to get their temple endowments. I had only really fallen in love with a young man who was kind of rebellious. He seemed more sexy than the "faithful" LDS men.

I think I know what was going on now. It was impossible for me to follow what even the stake patriarch said was best for me. I couldn't even follow my own blessing. And as time went on, it failed me in other ways.

At one point, I began to suffer from a nervous breakdown. I believed that I had to pray to know what God wanted me to do everyday of my life. I would pray to God for each little task. I got this idea from the General Authorities of the LDS Church. They said that we were to turn our lives over to God. I even prayed about whether or not I was supposed to put a belt on my pants. Sometimes, I think I really did get answers. But often, I thought God was telling me to not do something that I really wanted to do. Or I thought God told me not to put a belt on, even though my pants were baggy. I thought I was getting direction from God, but I was getting more stress than direction. I was often exhausted, wondering why God had taken my more relaxing and pleasant activities away.

At one point, I thought I was getting revelation whenever I read my scriptures. I thought that God had a message for me in every scriptural chapter. I would ask God to point me to the verses that were for me. I got more and more religiously bent. I thought God told me to do more things that were hard for me, like attending church and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. I just couldn't win.

My patriarchal blessing did not help. It told me that God would tell me, as I read the scriptures, what my purpose in life was. Currently, I find that idea very fishy. Wasn't my patriarchal blessing supposed to tell me that? Wasn't I already told that marriage and helping others and getting all the ordinances was what I was supposed to do? There was more? And then there was nothing that the patriarch saw in the eternities but to learn of Jesus Christ? But how much was there actually to learn about Jesus Christ? Why was I being denied? And my blessing told me to pray to God. It didn't advise me about prayers that got strange answers. It just told me to pray.

Why, when I began to get more mentally well, did I drop the habit of asking God which scriptural verse was written just for me? It seemed that my patriarchal blessing made me go further down an irrational path. It seemed that I was being told to be even more overzealous and even make a fool of myself and waste my money. Everything was going downhill. I didn't have anything left.

I really actually did not have much left. My life felt like one big restriction. Everything was withheld from me. I was "told" to do things that even began to ruin my family relationships. And I happen to be close to my family members. And it would destroy me if I was estranged from all of them. And yet, even that was being taken away from me.

After a hospitalization and medication, I began to discard the habit of praying for absolutely everything. Besides, whenever I back slid and started back in that ridiculous habit, I would again get bizarre results.

I think that when I had the habit of praying about every little thing, I actually answered myself. And I don't want to know what evil force may have answered my prayers. It was that bizarre and miserable.

Well, my blessing told me to do all I could to "serve." That often means, in the LDS Church, that you faithfully serve the church. I thought it meant I was supposed to help people. But, after a while, I found myself tied up in the idiocy of some of the LDS Church's service projects. Some of them seemed like busy work. A lot of it seemed to actually help people. But if I got too far into the service, I hit pressure to be more religiously zealous. I won't mention people or organizations, but some of the people most involved in the LDS Church would actively test the success and faith of those working by their sides. It wasn't enough to help someone. You had to prove you were righteous. I started to get a lot of trouble with this. At times it caused me great rage. It didn't seem to be enough to be kind to your friends or make sure someone you were worried about was okay. I liked to help my friends. And I am afraid, that through some twist of logic, other members thought this was insignificant. You had to change the whole world and make everyone think like you. But I found more satisfaction and comfort in helping my friends.

And then there is the part of the blessing that said I was of the house of Ephraim. I actually do not believe this. I do not look like other members of the LDS Church who think they are. I believe that the Houses of Israel really are found among certain people on Earth. However, Joseph Smith seemed to be obsessed with the Houses of Israel. He believed that if you are not of any of the Houses of Israel you must be adopted into the House of Ephraim in order to be one of the chosen people of God and get salvation. I now find it an insult to focus so much on genealogy. It is racist. I happen to personally believe that I am a member of a different House of Israel based on the things I have read in the book of Genesis.

In the end, I have decided that my blessing was more of a curse; the sentence that didn't make sense could be part of the making of a curse. My "blessing" limited me instead of freeing me. It was not right. That is why I threw it in the garbage. I didn't reread it at all. I just threw it away.

It was all untrue.