When Love Isn't All You Need
Sorry John Lennon, at least when you leave the LDS church, love is not in fact all you need.
"Among the greatest gifts one person can offer to another in this life are those of genuine love, attentive listening, and hearing another’s story without judgment."
That's nice, right?
That's a nice thought.
It’s a quote from an article on churchofjesuschrist.org called "Going After That Which is Lost."
The article goes on to say,
"Empathetic listening and loving is needed.... especially for those sheep who, for whatever reason, have left the flock."
What we need isn't lecturing, correcting or preaching, what we need is love.
Love is always the answer. ALL we need is love.
Right?
I certainly thought so.
Guess who wrote that article on churchofjesuschrist.org?
Me.
(Plot twist!)
I wrote it in 2018. It was one of the last articles I wrote for the church.
In the years before I left, this became a soapbox issue for me- that the people who leave the church don't need our reactivation efforts- what they need is our love.
Former me is not the only one to think so.
Recent book publications from Deseret Book reflect that it is indeed all about the love these days: "The Law of Love" by Steve Young, Love Boldly by Becky MacKintosh, Listen, Learn, Love by Richard Ostler, Let God Love You by Wendy Ulrich.
In his recent talk "Shepherding Souls" Apostle Gary Stevenson says the most important thing we can do to shepherd souls is to love them. "We reach out in love to others because it is what our Savior commanded us to do."
Sing the Beatles ballad with me with me, "love love love love love love love is all you need love is all you need love is all you need......"
"I don't know if you still believe in Jesus or not, but He still loves you. He will never stop loving you."
An old friend texted this to me when she found out I left the church.
I believe her intentions were nothing but generous. I imagine she envisioned me to be sad, so she reached into her bag of loving offerings. She shuffled around the contents until she found the biggest, brightest, big pink heart-iest offering she had in her possession - Jesus's love.
I imagine this filled her brain with dopamine and her body with warm fuzzies to offer it to me.
I tried to accept her offering in the spirit it was offered.
But.
My brain was decidedly not filled with dopamine.
My body was not flooded with warm fuzzies.
Somewhere in the hand-off, her love was lost in translation.
Its as if we were living on two different planets, with two different languages. On her planet, "Jesus's love" is thought to be universally translated and understood as peak warmth and tenderness.
But when her universal love message entered the atmosphere of my planet, it morphed into meaningless robotic churchy gobblety goop.
I wonder if she had any sense of how her offering of love felt on the receiving end.
"At a training I attended several years ago, I introduced myself to a Mormon coach and I let her know that I coach post-Mormons.
When I boldly told her that leaving the church had been a good choice for me—without missing a beat—she looked me in the eye and said, “I believe you.”
I almost fell off my chair.
I had no idea how powerful those three words could be.
"I believe you" was what I least expected to hear and what I had never allowed myself to hope for.
I still tear up when I think about it."
Ahhhh, there's that dopamine!
This is a quote from a recent Instagram post from Claudine Foudray of @postmormon.coaching.
Sometimes an "I believe you" feels so much more loving than an "I love you."
After we left the church I was negotiating the amount of contact we wanted with my daughter's Young Women's leaders.
I was told I was loved. I was told my daughter was loved.
But it wasn't love I wanted.
I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted my boundaries to be respected.
A friend of mine told me a story once of a conversation she had with her therapist when she was trying to make the difficult decision of whether or not to move towards divorce.
With her permission, I'll share it with you.
"Do you love him?" her therapist asked her.
"Yes, I do........ But I also loved the church before I left it. I loved it with all my heart, but the church was a harmful place for me. Just because you love something does not mean its good for you. It doesn't mean you should stay there. Love isn’t always enough."
What good is love without equality, without justice, without fairness?
"Among the greatest gifts one person can offer to another in this life are those of genuine love....."
That's true 2018 Celeste, that's true.
Love is a undoubtedly a wonderful gift.
Sometimes it's just not the one we need.
Sometimes we need to be believed.
Sometimes we need equality.
Sometimes we need justice.
Sometimes we need respect.
Sorry John Lennon, at least when you leave the LDS church, love isn't all you need.
This is something that goes through my head every time I hear of an LGBTQIA+ person in the church. What I hear is that the “Love” from the church, and a lot of times family members who are trying to “live righteously”, is not enough…and doesn’t feel like love to them.
This is so good. It also reminds me of what I learned when I decided to make my sex life a nonissue. We had love, but that wasn’t all we needed. I needed to cultivate some erotic feelings. I needed lust in addition to love to make sex good for me in my marriage. Love being important but not all we need is such a fantastic topic to discuss in so many areas of our lives. Thank you!