Christ-like Empathy: The Art of Treading Lightly

Someone was trying to encourage people in my circle online to prepare for General Conference by reposting this post from Hayley Clark from Instagram in full. It starts off by telling people there are no valid reasons not to tune into General Conference as it's happening, and deteriorates from there. And it reminded me so much of what I used to think when I was younger. It felt like looking at something I might've written and posted in my twenties. I've learned and grown a lot since then, and rather than pointing out how reductive and harmful that messaging is, I wanted to respond by explaining how I learned that lesson. And since it's a season of my life that's difficult to talk about, I wanted to preserve my response here so I can reach for it in the future if I need to.

Many years ago now when I was a young teenage convert, while studying my patriarchal blessing and worrying about the future, I found out from God that I would never have my own children. I also found out that if I ever got pregnant, I would end up having severe complications and end up dying in childbirth.

This scared me when I heard it the first time. And the second time. And the third time. And every time I thought and prayed about it afterwards. The answer never changed, for years afterwards, no matter how much I tried to change the will of God afterwards. Not when I went to BYU. Not when I went on my mission. Not when I got married and was sealed in the temple. Not when my husband and I tried to have a family. Not when I got diagnosed with the cause of my infertility. Not when the depression related to my infertility got so bad, I couldn't stand the sight of children anymore because it caused me so much pain. And not in any of the years that passed as I continued to age, year after year, watching everyone else have the blessing I so desperately wanted.

I tried to throw my life away for the sake of giving my husband a child. Just one. And that was the only time God has ever truly scolded me in my life, as gentle as it was. I valued myself and my life so little, I would've traded it away because I thought that's what was expected of me. And even then, God wouldn't give me the thing I was asking for.

Anyone who hasn't been in that situation cannot know the pain I carried month after month, year after year, calculating the ages of the children I would have as I aged, what their names would be, what they'd be doing now. The other kids at church who would be their same age. The milestones they'd be passing. If I had gotten pregnant when we first got married, they would be 10 now. They'd be in fifth grade, getting ready to go to middle school next year.

So when I tell you there was a time when everything about being in church, including General Conference, caused me a tremendous amount of pain, that there was no peace for me there, you don't have to question me about that. I was there for talks in General Conference that were so hideous and spiritually violent to infertile and childless women like me, it made me nearly suicidal to think about them for years afterwards. But I did exactly what this post is telling people to do. I put my nose to that grindstone and did so much harm to myself because this was the expectation—not from God, mind you. From the people in the pews next to me. From leaders in General Conference who painted families with such broad strokes, it made me question what my purpose was in life if I couldn't have children and form the kind of family they were always talking about. What value did my life have, if not to do this?

The inability to put it all down, take a deep breath, and get some logical perspective apart and away from the social pressures church leadership was putting on me to be someone I would never be, was compounding my problem. Not solving it.

If the messages in General Conference are becoming tangled up in toxicity and social pressures that are destroying someone from the inside out, finding healthier ways of engaging is EXACTLY what they should do. If that means disengaging from General Conference, either in part or in full, then so be it. Their blessings and comfort from God can and will come from other places—including all of the talks and lessons at church over the next six months where everything that was said will be reexamined and contextualized through the lenses and voices of faith of their own community around them.

There was a woman in one of my wards, a real Mother in Israel, who carried me through so much of this pain in a way no one else could. She would see me run away from church during Mother's Day and knew what it meant. She followed me outside one day and told me her story. She and her husband had a child who had died young.

"For a long time, I hated Mother's Day and I hated babies."

She made me feel seen and understood. She provided the recognition of my struggle when I felt so totally isolated in it. She was a living example of the kinds of burdens people in the Church carry that never end, that can't be fully resolved through some miraculous act of God. When I think of "Relief" the way Sister Camille Johnson invited me to a couple weeks ago at the Relief Society devotional, that sister who helped me is the one I think of instantly. She was the stand-in for the Savior in that season of my life. Her hands were his hands.

I understand why people put social pressure on others to participate in absolutely everything the Church produces the moment it happens. They have a narrow sense of what it means to access God's blessings right then and there, with no sense of his compassion and timing. If that person isn't there, they'll miss it! Don't they see that?

No, they won't.

Have faith in our Heavenly Parents to know and love their children. Have faith in their perfect compassion. They know exactly where each and every one of us are on the journey of life. None of us are lost to them. There is a way forward through every trial, but it doesn't always look like being at Church and listening to other people. Sometimes, it looks like Jesus going up alone on the mount to pray. Other times, it looks like a very specific person, who is not you or anyone whose names you will ever know, reaching out to them because they have what that person needs.

What I don't like about this post above is it is tone deaf and lacking in compassion. It's purposefully leaving out the context that is going on right behind the words: that those who are struggling are only doing so because they're doing something wrong, and it would all just be resolved if they started doing the right thing.

It doesn't take into account the times when bad things happen to people that cannot be changed or minimized by anything that anyone can say or do. The pain just has to be felt, and the careless, compassionless, and reductive things that people say are making it worse.

If you want to love others like the Savior does, you can't always ask them to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go to them where they are. And if where they are means they make some accommodations and are doing the best they can, you accept that and celebrate with them that they found a way to the Savior, no matter what it looks like. You thank God that you've been fortunate enough that you've never experienced what they have to need those accommodations, knowing that some day that might change. And if you are wise, you learn from their example of how to keep their faith alive when the harsh realities of life try to extinguish that faith.

No one is obligated to perform their faith in the ways you want them to. You don't know what is best for everyone. You can't cajole anyone to heaven, no matter how much you may want to. And if you try, you're in a lane you don't belong in. That space belongs to Jesus Christ alone, and you have much to learn about his methodologies if this is how you approach him.

You have the privilege to witness the miracles that God will do in your presence. He is the source of that healing and those miracles. Not you. And when you truly believe that, your words won't gloss over the feelings and pain of other people you don't know like this. You'll take them seriously and not offer weak and feeble solutions to their pain.

If you want the skill set to relieve pain, to be the kind of person others trust with their most profound struggles in life, there are many right ways to do that and only one wrong way. Invalidating others through the oversimplification of their needs is easy. Earning trust by listening long enough to believe people about their own experiences, learning from them, and fixing what is broken in yourself before you try to help others is hard.

There's no confusing the difference between the two, of who has done that work and who has not. Once you see the difference, you can't unsee it.