056. Love Over Fear
Stephanie Carstens
Faith Transition Vlogger
youtube: My Great and Spacious World
instagram: @mygreatandspaciousworld
There is so much I could say... At the time of recording with Stephanie I was still in the church. I was “content in my discontent.” But it was throwing my life out of whack. As I have been transitioning out of the church, I have been feeling an immense sense of relief. Which is not what everyone goes through, as Stephanie shares in this episode.
Everyone is different. Everyone reacts to things differently. If you see someone struggling after they have made the decision to leave the church it does NOT mean they have made the wrong decision. It just means they are working through the big changes happening in their love.
I absolutely love how Stephanie said, multiple times, that you need to come from a place of love. Not fear. The answer is love. Always, always love.
Stephanie has a YouTube Channel where she vlogs about her faith transition. It’s pretty great. I especially loved the video “Never again will I… now that I’ve left Mormonism.” Check out her vlog, My Great and Spacious World.
Now I leave you with great quotes from the episode.
”I don’t know if any of my relationships are safe... it’s like the time that I need the most support in my life, the time that I need the most acceptance, is the time where I’m rejected and isolated.”
”There was a lot of times that I felt like I was in a tug of war between the church and my marriage.”
”People were so afraid about what was happening with my family that all they could see was the fear, and that got in the way of them understanding us and what was happening, and loving us. It was very fear based. And I couldn’t thrive in that situation anymore.”
”I think when people think about, Oh this person’s going through a faith crisis, they think, Oh, well the problem is they don’t believe, and we need to help them believe again. But the real problem is that they can’t be authentic. They can’t be accepted for who they are, and they’re losing everything, so quickly, and no one’s there to help them.”
”But if you’re going through a faith crisis, that’s just another thing that you’ve lost that you can’t use to help yourself. Like all of your good coping mechanisms, all your good support systems, they’re gone. It’s not like there isn’t other good support systems or other good tools, but you don’t know about any of them, because this is what you’ve used your whole life. I was born and raised—I don’t know any different. I don’t know how to function outside of the church. I don’t know how people build their value system and keep it internal, cause I’ve always had an external value system. It’s already been decided for me and they tell me and I internalize it.”
“People had made promises to me as I was trying to leave. Like, ‘I promise you won’t be happy, I promise your life’s gonna start falling apart, I promise your kids are never gonna end up in a healthy place.’ They’re like ‘The church may not be true but it’s the only place to raise children.’ And these are people that I’ve allowed to have influence in my life, so when they say these things, it’s hard for me to be like, No, that’s not true... it’s hard for me not to internalize it. And again, that’s what I have always been taught, is truth comes externally. Not internally.”
”If it is unhealthy for you, I think people need the space to leave with their dignity, and be treated with love instead of fear, and have their choices be respected. And I feel like there’s no room for that currently within the community, and I think that’s why people going through a faith crisis are struggling so hard because there is so much loss and no support for us.”
”If I could give advice to a believing member who is trying to help someone who doesn’t believe, it would be to offer them love and understanding and support, and if you feel yourself coming from a space of fear, for sure that’s not gonna be helpful. And I think another great way is to talk about the feelings because you can relate to someone’s feelings even if you can’t relate to the why’s.”
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