When I was a young Mormon mother of 5, yes 5 children, I was under so much pressure. I exercised every day to keep my weight at 130 pounds, I baked bread three times a week, I rotated cleaning one of my three bathrooms every third day, so I cleaned a bathroom every day. I washed three loads of laundry every day, and mopped my bathroom and kitchen floors every other day. Every day was the focus of special cleaning for one of the rooms in my house so that I could keep up with continual cleaning. This was all done in order that I would keep the appearances of a good, clean, Godly woman.
I had five children ranging in ages from pre-school to Junior High. I had three boys in baseball, and a daughter in dance and Cheerleading. They all needed to get to practices and games, so that there was a great deal of driving, running and coordinating. Then there was the homework - endless homework with the kids and keeping them at their ultimate performance...this so that we could show how successful, good and Godly we were.
Sundays were their own special kind of hell. Hair washed and curled, dressed in the best fashion in proper dresses, ironed shirts and ties, and arriving on time. Sundays dinner were a requisite, so roast, potatoes, dinner rolls, jello and salads were prepared before Church to be presented in Sunday best fashion when we returned home.
Oh, and did I tell you I worked full time? Yes, and so did my husband. He worked 7:00 to 4:00 and I worked from 4:00 to about 10:00 or more each night. We barely saw one another, but we tried very hard for date night. Date night for us was an Archery league where, you guessed it, I was under a supreme amount of pressure to hit the mark!
Eventually, I failed. I figured out that I was failing BIG TIME, no matter how hard I tried. I hit a point where my kids were failing, my marriage was failing, and my health was failing - and I just wanted to die, and even THAT was a big failure!
That’s when I was introduced to God and His GRACE, and He reached down to the very bottom of my deep, dark pit and breathed into me His life.
I have never, ever looked back upon my Mormonism. It is a trap, a horrible almost inescapable pit. But for Him, I would be dead in my sin, my trying, my ambition, my standing and my ego.
I have a question for you in all sincerity and without any judgement attached.
What was it that made you think or feel that you needed to do all those things in order to feel Godly, or as you wrote "show how successful, good and Godly we were"?
This topic intrigues me greatly. Probably because I've never experienced the pressure and I don't understand where it comes from. Every person's life experience is unique, so every person's story is valuable.
I washed three loads of laundry every day, and mopped my bathroom and kitchen floors every other day.
If it would not start or it was broke down she had to use a scrub board and ring the clothes out by hand, and most of the time it was broke down, she had an easy job of cleaning three bath rooms because we never had one, we had an out house.
Oh, my mother had it so easy, she never had to take excerise because she never had that much time to spare,
She got all she needed cooking, including baking every day for at times seven kids, ( some of the kids left home at an early age ) sewing patches on pants and shirts, ironing, carrying water in from the barrel or well or a quarter mile walk from the spring, cleaning dirt floors and then dampening them and repacking them.
She never had to drive us kids around because she never had no car except when dad was home but she never learned to drive any way.
Did i mention chopping the wood for the cook stove for cooking and warming the water for the bathes of the little kids too young to do it for them selves?
Milking and feeding a cow or up to twenty cows and sometimes feeding pigs,( not us kids but other pigs,) feeding and caring for chickens, and on top of that raising a big garden, working in other peoples fields right along beside us kids hoeing weeds for 15 to 25 cents an hour.
And the times we lived in town she took up washings and ironing’s at home with the same old wore out washers and the same old clothes lines which we took with us when we moved, and the same irons that you had to put on a stove to heat, plus all of the other work she would normally do.
Thank God we never had no band practice or other school socialist programs that she would have had to walk from several blocks to several miles to attend.
My mother was not a Mormon, during these years the Mormon women also worked hard but were living
much better in comparison.
Sorry you had it so rough.
cc,
Thanks for sharing your experiences in a way I could never do.
I am happy for your peace of mind in Christ now. Ain’t grace wonderful?!!
May each mormon reading this thread come to know the Gospel of Grace and the God of Love Who made it possible. May they leave the false gospel of works and turn to the true God.
ampu
(Thank you for your testimony)
Really enjoyed your comments and homepage. My sister lives in AZ and LDS stuff comes up off and on but I know very little in that regard.
kg/nancy