The Modern Mormon

Hello God, Are You There?

December 16, 2021 Kami Satterlee Season 1 Episode 19
The Modern Mormon
Hello God, Are You There?
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode I talk about why we doubt, and that our brain wants to avoid negative emotion. I discuss the importance of believing in a higher power and the benefit that can have not only on your relationship with yourself but also in your hardest times.

Unknown:

You were listening to the modern Mormon episode 19. Hey there, I'm kami Satterlee. And I'm the modern Mormon. I'm an Advanced Certified Life coach who's dropped the all or nothing approach to life, and religion. I can't wait to show you how. I've got you, girl. Let's go. Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome to the podcast. I am a life coach for women. And I help them drop the all or nothing in their life and in religion. And because of that, I like to change my podcast a little bit. I know, I'm the modern Mormon. But there's a lot that comes with that. And so a lot of my topics are on basically everyday life type of things. But every now and then I like to throw in some spirituality. And because it's December, I thought, there's no better time than to talk about our relationship with God. So today's topic is, hello, God, are you there. So you might be in a place right now, where you feel like your faith is really strong, your relationship with your Savior is super strong, you know who you are what you believe, or you may not. And regardless, it's always good to kind of reflect on what our beliefs are, question them, and kind of refocus of where we want to be. So I want you to think about the times in your life that you have ever doubted God's existence, that either he hears your answers or prayers or that he loves you, or that he actually you know, has a plan for you, whatever it is that you've kind of doubted, I want you to kind of go there. And maybe some of you listening, don't even have a belief in God or a higher power, whatever it is that you you know, believe in. Or maybe you've left like the church, the church, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or maybe you're in a faith transition, and you're not sure of you know, what you want to believe. Regardless, it doesn't matter where you're at, I want you to think of a time that you have doubted, and that could be in the present moment, right now you could be doubting, and in kind of a state of confusion, but think of that circumstance and think about the things that are surrounding that sweet spot surrounding that doubt. I want you to think about the trials and the struggles that you were encountering during that time. And for me, personally, my time was after marrying my husband, he was not a member, we had just had a baby super young. And I was, you know, out on my own, for the first time married to somebody else and kind of trying to cling on to my parents testimony, it was the first time that I realized I hadn't really built a testimony or a relationship with God myself. So because of that, when I started to doubt it was because of my circumstances in life, I wasn't strong enough. And I didn't have a strong enough faith to know that I could do it on my own. And so it was so much easier to just go down the path of this is not right for me. And I want you to think about this. Because anytime that we are doubting, we're not going to doubt from a place of pure happiness, where everything is going right in our life, right? We're gonna doubt when things are struggling when we are on our knees, and we're like, where are you? You promised to be there, I don't feel your presence, things are not changing, everything's going to crap. And I've done my best. That is when we are going to doubt. And it's amazing to see what the brain will do in those type of situations, how we will justify, like letting go, how we will justify quitting, and stopping our goals and stopping, you know, our beliefs, whatever it is to feel a different feeling a different emotion than we are currently feeling. And that typically happens, right? If we're looking up to God, and like, where are you and he's not there, it's so easy to just lose that faith in Him. Because once we do, we feel like now we are in sort of more of control of the situation, right? That whole idea of giving it to God and letting God be the leader in your life and give all your struggles and pray and do all those things. And the outcome is going to be fine. Because it's God's plan. It can feel very out of control for us. So in a need to be in control, and we are kind of flailing all over the place. It's easy to quit. And I love this so much. Because it's in those moments and those trials and struggles, where we get to see where our truth, Faith lies. We get to see how deep our testimony really is. And do we really know who God is? And how do we feel about him? How is our relationship towards him? I know when things get bad, I, I have such a deep connection with my husband. And I know we're going to get through anything because we have in the past. But when it comes to religion in my past, it was so easy to drop God because I didn't have those same thoughts towards God, like I did my husband. I didn't truly have a knowledge of God's love for me. And part of that also was because at the time I wasn't really happy with who I was inside. And if we don't have a love for ourself, we obviously will not be able to have a love for the people around us including Our Father in heaven. And so it's really easy to see where our spirituality is, and where our heart is like, we look into our souls in those moments, because it really showcases our thoughts about God in his perceived absence. When we are doubting if he is truly there, it's because we have underlining thoughts, that whatever it is that's going on in our life shouldn't be happening. And whatever we're dealing with, we don't deserve. And sometimes it can even mean, our life shouldn't have gone this way. You could have expectations that it was supposed to be different, I did all the right things, I don't deserve this outcome. Sometimes the roles can even be flipped. And we can feel a lot of shame in our lives, where we feel like we've made mistakes, and we've done things, that we're not worthy of God's love, that we don't deserve it, that there's no coming back from whatever it is we've done. And that's what that doubt is, it's kind of stuck in that shame and blame cycle where it's, I'm not worthy of this, or I don't deserve this. In these moments of doubt, we either sit in our shame, and we hide and we don't, you know, tell anyone or we don't try and progress and we stopped doing the things that, you know, bring us closer to God or bring us closer to our true self and aligned with where we want to be. Or we'll put blame on other people or other things, other circumstances. And we'll say, oh, because of you, God, this happened. So I'm done with this, and I'm done with this. But basically, in both of those scenarios, whichever it is, we are not staying true to who we are inside. We are not staying within our own brain and learning to manage that. What we are doing is trying to escape negative emotion. And this is why the atonement has kind of just rocked me this year, I've learned a lot about it I wasn't really familiar with it had a testimony of it aside from the sheer. And the more that I've studied it, the more that I realize what it is, is an opportunity to let go of shame. God does not want you to hold on to shame because if you hold on to shame, you let go of him. And I've said it before in previous podcasts, but I really believe that the adversary lies in shame. If we stay in shame, we do not propel forward, we do not keep going, we don't keep trying, we don't keep having faith in God and in his plan, we quit. And we don't just quit our you know behaviors, we quit our relationship with God, and we also quit our relationship with ourselves. And once we do that, then we can't even have the awareness of how to get back, suddenly, it just becomes a opportunity for your brain to just find so much evidence to justify your quitting. So then it's well God did this and he did this and see I'm so much happier in my life without him. And it just kind of escalates and escalates. I've talked about before how I've had lots of friends leave the church. And you know, if you leave the church, I'm that's not a huge deal to me. But what the biggest thing is, when you stop believing in a higher power, and you stop believing that you yourself have a purpose and a plan, I feel like everything starts to kind of crumble down. And I've watched it with friends, and not just behaviors like, you know, there's coming back from that, but it's more so of their thoughts about what's important. And if anything is actually important in life. This is why I fell in love with coaching is because once you can understand the 5050 of life and understand that trials and struggles are a part of life. And it's not a negative part of life, they're actually a great part of life, it's a time to reflect it's a it's a time to get, you know, within yourself and in your body. And it's a time to feel emotions, things that you don't do when everything is rainbows and butterflies. And knowing that it is so much easier for me to have a relationship with God. And it's kind of crazy, because this year is been it's been the first year that I have, you know, established a relationship. And I've prayed and I have read the New Testament. So I've started to understand Jesus Christ in his life. And it's also been probably one of the worst years for my husband and I not in our relationship, but just you know, with circumstances in our life jobs, and change and everything. It has been rough. And yet I still know that God's there. And I know that because I'm okay with feeling negative emotion. I have accepted and understood that it's not a problem. There's never a need to put blame on anyone, anyone else or the circumstances in my life. It's especially not a time to be putting blame on God because I find this as an opportunity to show my dedication and to also show myself where I'm at spiritually because sometimes my doubt lies within myself. So in preparing for this podcast, I had a situation happened with my Some where he did some things that were not acceptable, and he got in big trouble for them. And he got some things taken away. And he was so angry about it. Apparently fortnight had some, you know, I don't even know, some three day built up showcasing of some new I don't even know how to explain it, but he was so excited for it. And he didn't get to participate in that. And he was so mad. And because of that, he said to me, you don't even love me. And it was so interesting to me. Because in that moment, I realized that is exactly what we do. Right? He was putting his, you know, frustrations and blame and shame for himself onto me, and saying that I don't love him. Through coaching, we know that our thoughts, our reflections, you know, our results are reflections of our thoughts. So his thought that I don't love him was him being so mad and in shame about himself. And so tying that into what I'm talking about right now, it's what we do in life, too. If we're having a struggle, we're like, God, Hello, where are you? I need you. Isn't this what you're supposed to be here for us, tell us to pray all the time to you. But yet you're not answering my prayers and the way that I want you to. And instantly it is, well, you don't love me. So these are just examples of times in our life, when we doubt God's existence, we doubt that he's there for us or loves us. And so when we're talking about wanting to prevent that doubt, or we're talking about how, how, and what do we do, in these moments, I think the biggest thing is you can't change anything without awareness. So if you don't even know what your brain is doing, then you're not going to be able to stop it from doing what it's going to do. Because your brain knows you so well. So if your brain is wanting to quit, it's going to quit, it's gonna tell you all the reasons to do it. So having the awareness and being on to yourself in those moments of, hey, I'm struggling right now, I'm going to sort of get curious with my brain and watch what it does. That is so important. And in that watching, what we will see and come to find is what we make everything mean in our life, what we make our struggles mean, what we make the mean about ourselves, what we make it mean about God, and whether he's there for us what we make it mean about our beliefs, and whether we're gonna stick to them or drop them. And suddenly, you'll just see it kind of just show its face in all the different areas of your life. And it can be just like a fascinating thing, if you just sit back and you kind of watch it. And I have done that this past year. I've really I've had, you know, highs and lows, but throughout the entire thing, I've watched my brain and not judged it, not try to change it not to go to a new thought or anything like that, I've just watched it. And what it has done is it strengthened my confidence in myself, and my ability to handle negative emotion, I realized my brain would want to just run free and it would just, you know, skyrocket with worry and fear. And I would kind of be in a rush and a panic, like I needed to solve something. And then I'd have the awareness of it. And then I bring it right back down to the present moment. And I just kind of kept doing that for months. And it was amazing the process of it. And I learned so much through it. And I also learned that when I incorporated God in those moments, he helped me bring back that piece into my life. What he does, in my personal opinion, is when we pray or we meditate, whatever it is, and it can be you, you know, praying to energies, I don't care what it is. But when you do that, it brings up a wisdom within you and a knowing that regardless of whatever happens, you've got your back and whoever it is that you're putting your faith in your hands into they to have your back. And that is such a comfort. And then when you add on that faith that God has a plan for you, there's a purpose for you. There is more to you know this life than what we think there is. It makes it so easy to let go of it all. And to just realize that everything is happening, how it's supposed to, it's happening for you. It is happening for your good for your progression. It's getting you to the next level, and you don't know what that level is. And that's the beauty of it. If you knew and if we had a, you know, certainty about everything in life, there would be no growth. So just knowing Oh, every time I feel a negative emotion, I'm growing. This is a growth opportunity. This is the part of my life that I get to step up to the next level. And in a way, I guess you could say I've been viewing it kind of like a challenge. When you see something as a challenge. The last thing you want to do is just drop it or quit. Last thing you want to do is go to shame that you've done something wrong. What you want to do is how can I view this in a way that serves me so that I can continue my relationship with God and I can continue my relationship with myself and who I'm becoming in life. So I really wanted to kind of get a little deeper and explain the why behind everything because I think especially within the Church of Jesus Christ, when you are a person that is struggling, and you are starting to doubt, if you go to somebody within the church who is currently not on that level, their typical cookie cutter answer is read your scriptures and pray. And I'm gonna tell you, if you are struggling, there is nothing more worse than hearing that. I feel like it is so frustrating. And for me personally, that made me do the complete opposite. When I got that answer, I wanted to punch somebody and give it all up basically, if I'm being honest. And I think the reason it's frustrating is because it's so cliche, but here's what I'm gonna tell you is understanding that emotion and understanding what's going on the reason that we say to read your scriptures, and the reason that we say to pray, is because in those moments, those are the times of growth. So if you are struggling with your relationship with God, if you're struggling in life, that is a growth opportunity. And in order to grow, we have to have wisdom, we have to have knowledge. So how do we obtain that? Well, we have to go out and seek it. So when you open your scriptures, and you're trying to, you know, read out of obligation of Hello, God, this is what I'm supposed to do now fix my problems. That's not going to work. But if you do it out of I have faith. I know I'm struggling, what can I learn here? What is it that I need to know to get to this next step? It doesn't feel like a rush. It doesn't feel like you're trying to solve a problem. It feels like you are opening up to being taught being teachable in life. Anybody that is hard headed and frustrated, and feels that their rights and putting blame on other people that is never going to propel them to learn. It's never going to make them their best self, they're going to stay in the knowledge and the wisdom that they currently have. But in those moments, if you can say, You know what, I probably don't know everything. What else can I learn, not only does that allow for accepting the current emotions of your situation, instead of feeling like they are taking over you, you're out of control, and they're going to kill you something terrible is going to happen, which is what we think, right? That's what our brain thinks when we feel negative emotion is in a rush to get rid of it. Which is why we avoid it and quit things and you know, cover him up and stay in shape and all of those things. But when we can accept it, we just sit with it. And we ask for help. And we ask for help from God. We're opening that communication, we're opening those doors for evolving, both mentally and spiritually. So the next step after we have the awareness, and after we allow the emotion and accept it, take accountability for it by opening up to it and asking what is it that we can learn through this, then we keep our lines of communication open with God and with ourself. And we do this by reading scriptures, meditating, journaling, praying, whatever that is. And what that does is it will reconnect you to your Father in heaven, but also yourself. And this type of reflection will create an accountability within yourself, where you won't tie all of your thoughts and feelings to your external circumstances in life in your trials, you take ownership of them, and you will then grow and you will learn through those things, you will grow more and learn more about who you are, and focus on who you want to become in those moments where you are future focused, you are driven to move forward versus saying other people are doing this, these circumstances aren't fair. They'll keep you stuck and reflecting on the past. And if you are a person who has never had a relationship with God, I would use these hard times to establish that it will take your brain off of the circumstances and it will put it on a higher being and a higher power than yourself. So that you're also focusing on how can I become better? And is somebody else out there that loves me that I can turn to in these times that are super hard? And whether you know if there is a God or not? What is his? What are his teachings, learning about that can help you also understand your purpose in life and whether you are going to be okay. You know, if we don't know who we are, and what we're all doing this for what is the purpose of this life? If we don't understand that and have a knowledge of that a belief then it would feel like when you are circumstances in life are so heavy that your entire world is about to be over. And I think that's the difference between people that have a spiritual connection versus not is it kind of loosens the heavy emotions where we understand that these are just superficial things within the big picture. And that's the difference is incorporating God in your life. It will change all of that for you, you will be able to put your focus and your value on things that matter. Thoughts, knowledge, family, things that you would feel like you can take into this next life if you believe in one, or things that you think are actually going to make you become the person that you want to be in this life. So the next time you're questioning God's existence and questioning if he's even there, in your hard times, make sure that you're the one that's dialing his number. Make sure that you're the one that's keeping those lines of communication open between you two, that you continue to speak to him, and that you are able to stay calm and present and quiet so that you can receive wisdom for your life through him. If you can stay committed to this, you will never have to doubt God. But you will also never have to doubt yourself. If you're ready to drop the all or nothing in your life, then I would be honored to be your life coach. Head over to the modern morman.com To start your journey in becoming the confident authentic and best version of you