Relevance

Looking back I think we all can agree that childhood experiences form us or at the least dent us.
I had a roommate who remarked on how often I tend to explain-away most of my quirks or views through a childhood episode. And that’s very true. I do that. Quite often.

This topic is no exception.

When I was in third grade I knew about God. I knew I was Catholic. My experience and ideas concerning religion were innocent. I remember being asked by a close schoolmate what church I went to and after declaring I was Catholic, my peer quickly disregarded me. The interaction left me confused and hurt.
For some reason (I believe we were studying a unit on holidays or such) a discussion of religion came up, and the teacher polled the diverse religious population of our class. She asked for Christians to raise their hands. I raised my hand promptly. The schoolmate, who had questioned me before, rebuked me “You’re not Christian! You’re Catholic. And you,” she spat at my best friend, “you’re Mormon!”
Horrified, my teacher corrected the student’s assertion, “Catholics and Mormons are Christians. And even if they weren’t, they are still people and should be treated nicely.”

That was the first time I ever heard the term Mormon. In that context. Great, right?
When thinking back on that moment two words come to mind: camaraderie and Christian.

Several years later my family would move, and a year after that, I’d have another best friend who was Mormon. There was little camaraderie and few Christ-like peers offered to her in her Young W omen's group.
(I’m pretty steadfast in believing that girls should be isolated from society from the age of 11 to 17 for the sake of mankind. The possibilities of damage we inflect is sky-high and excessive and we can just be down-right ugly to each other.)

So I began going to YW and church activities with my friend.
My sister married a Mormon guy and later was baptized.
My friend stopped attending church and I tried to keep going.
My sister stopped attending church and I tried to keep going.
I was by no means a perfect investigator or a “golden” contact. I didn’t follow all the teachings of the Church (ha, ask anyone I went to high school with), but towards the end of high school I began to recognize a simple pattern: I was more content when keeping the commandments than when I was not. It uncomplicated my life and more importantly how I lived it.
I mean, I was seventeen and I graduated high school without getting pregnant or addicted to some substance and was college-bound. Trust me, that’s a big deal and an infrequent event in my family. Serious cause for celebration. And although many teenagers manage that without a belief system, I couldn’t have. So there.

I was finally baptized at eighteen. I spent seven years test-driving a religion.
So, no, my house wasn’t the last one the missionaries tracked before calling it quits for the day, I didn’t find a discarded Book of Mormon or have a premonition or grand vision to guide me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It was quite simple. In fact, it may have been how you and many others were introduced to the Church: I knew a Mormon.

The difference is why I joined the Church…
ahem, I don’t think there’s a set of ellipsis big enough to describe the amount of pause endured to reflect on that subject,
but I will try an umbrella statement to cover all my thoughts:

I joined the Church because its teachings were relevant to my life when I was a teenager. And, I will always be a member because the teachings continue to be relevant to my life ['cause like we say from our pulpits- it's true, the church (talk about an umbrella statement, right?)].
That is the very minimal I can say about that.

(I say this after 600-something words, ha.)

Some teachings that are relevant to me RIGHT now (click the images):