"Let all evil speaking be put away from you"

My husband went to do a visit with the missionaries. They visited a less active sister, and I cannot begin to say how angry I am about what happened to this woman.

She told them everything. The rumors people in my ward started about her and her kids. The names they've called her. What I heard was so vile, it doesn't bear repeating.

I am beyond incensed. I remember when this woman stopped coming to church. She went from being at church almost every Sunday to completely disappearing. I don't socialize much at church, so I never heard any of the rumors. But I am ashamed to associate with anyone who would talk about a single mother like that. 

I'm angry enough that I can't sleep. My heart is broken.

There's one thing my husband repeated to me that I just can't get out of my mind.

"I didn't stop coming to church because I don't have a testimony. I stopped coming to church because I got tired of fake people being fake."

How many people who don't come to church anymore fit that description? They love the Lord. They love the restored gospel. They believe everything they've been taught to be true. They just can't take being abused and bullied by the people who have every reason to know better, who promised before all the hosts of Heaven to do better. 

I honestly don't know how to go and sit in those pews on Sunday. I don't know how to occupy a space where the way people behave is so completely incongruent with what we profess to believe. I don't know how to show my face in Relief Society. All I want to do is stand up and demand the truth. 

Who said those things about her? Why? How could you? How dare you?!

This woman doesn't need visiting teachers coming with a plate of cookies and some obnoxious shallow message. She needs the women responsible for this to go to her, to her children, and apologize. That's what she deserves. I'm not going to listen to one more sermon about home and visiting teaching without stating that fact as plainly as my language and emotional restraint will allow. 

This woman deserves to be in the Church. She deserves to live the life of faith she envisioned for herself when she was baptized. She deserves a friend. The only thing I know how to do with what I feel is to tell her I will be her friend, and the seat next me is always hers.

It doesn't feel like enough. It feels like such a shriveled offering that is coming years too late. I want to rain down fire and destruction on every person that did this to her. Part of me feels like that's the only way I could ever make this right. The rational part of my brain tells me the flipping tables is best left to Jesus. But it doesn't stop me from concocting every imaginary testimony and Sunday School comment my brain can concoct. 

I won't tell you where I started. But for now, this is all I could probably say without going into fisticuffs and Hulk-tearing the Relief Society lace tablecloth: 

Don't say anything behind anyone's back you don't intend to repeat to the Savior's face