My Book of Mormon Fail

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I missed all of the Saturday sessions of General Conference in October. I was on a plane flying from Dublin back to my home in Texas.  I tried valiantly to get my laptop connected to the plane’s wifi and did hear the announcement about two-hour church. But I had entirely given up hope of a decent connection by the time Women’s Conference rolled around. I figured I’d catch up later that week.

 

Within hours of landing I heard lots of buzz about many women I knew taking a break from social media and reading the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.  The social media fast seemed reasonable; I’d gone on one a couple of months earlier and it gave my life a lovely breath of freshness and freedom. But I had just begun a very earnest and deep study of the Book of Mormon the month before.

 

I am not a scriptorian. Although I love the Book of Mormon, I have spent much more time “likening it unto myself” than worrying about which Nephi was which. I savored the messages of the love of Jesus Christ and the lessons about the Pride Cycle. But I can’t tell you who, exactly, the Anti Nephi-Lehies were or which kings were bad or good. So when my kids went back to school I began an in-depth examination of the Book of Mormon.  I’d pull out my scriptures, three study guides and read a few verses and try to understand all the different aspects of the verse and then write a journal entry about what that meant to me. After a month of that I was barely through first three chapters of 1 Nephi. But it was great, and I was learning so much!

 

And then came this exhortation to start speed-reading through the Book of Mormon, the complete opposite of what I had been doing before. I initially dismissed the message to read the entire Book of Mormon by the end of the year because I had just started my new study plan and was loving it. After a couple of weeks, though, I expressed my concerns to my husband about not following the prophet. My husband reassured me that the prophet would be happy with what I was doing. But I wasn’t being obedient. Not exactly. And wasn’t that a recurring message of the scriptures, to follow the prophet?

 

Every time I sat down with all my study guides and my journal I felt guilty about not doing what the prophet had said. I would hear constant messages at church about how much everyone else was growing and thriving by this new super-concentrated Book of Mormon reading. So after a month I sat down and figured out how much I would need to read each day to catch up and finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.  It was not a small number. But I started reading.

 

And I did not like it one bit.

 

I felt like I was trying to guzzle a bucket of water every day instead of savoring a few mouthfuls.  But that was what the prophet asked me to do! But I hated it! And it was soooo muuuch reeeeading!  I eventually ended up doing what I always do when I can’t figure out exactly what the right choice is: I quit.

 

I quit my in-depth study. I just felt like I was being rebellious and not heeding the words of the prophet every time I sat down with all my books laid out before me.

 

And I quit my reading plan of getting to the end of the scriptures by the end of the year because I was angry that someone (even if he was the Prophet) was telling me to do something that I did not enjoy at all and honestly felt a little hollow, like I was just checking off a box.

 

After all my angsty deliberations, I was so far behind that I would never catch up so why even bother?

 

So mostly I did nothing and felt guilty about that for all of November and December. Which I can now see is not at all what the Lord or the Prophet would have wanted. But you know how Satan is called the deceiver? Yeah, he’s good at that.

 

I also felt angry at myself for not more humble and teachable and that I can’t simply do what the Prophet says unless I mull it over in my mind for a few weeks first. I mean, do I believe he’s an actual prophet who is telling me the word of the Lord? If so, then what’s the problem?

 

I’ve always claimed that if the prophet tells me to do something, I will absolutely do it (such as allowing the extra holes in my triple pierced ears to close back in the 90’s). But it turns out I’m a lot more stubborn and prideful than I would care to admit. Apparently if I can’t study the scriptures my way, then I don’t want to do it at all.

 

Instead of increasing my testimony, this exhortation to read the Book of Mormon showed me what a lot of my weaknesses are. Which is a good—but unpleasant–thing. You can’t change if you don’t know what’s wrong! So I’m starting this new year with a deeper awareness of what I need to do to become a better servant of Christ. I’ve had several more epiphanies about my weaknesses that are too complicated to go into in a simple blog post. But let’s just say that the Prophet’s command to read the Book of Mormon by the end of 2018 still had a powerful effect in my life, even though I didn’t do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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