JOSEPH SMITH'S PLURAL MARRIAGES

Recently the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published a historical document on its website, describing the polygamous marriages of Joseph Smith. Although, I had known about these unusual relationships since my college days, the publication gave me an opportunity to re-examine my personal convictions about Joseph Smith and his calling as a prophet. 

I am not a fan of the “doctrine of plurality of wives”. None of my church leaders has ever told me that I must be an ardent supporter of this principle in order to be a devout Latter-day Saint. Nevertheless, Joseph Smith’s controversial behavior is still something church members must deal with in some fashion or other.  This is how I deal with it.

In the gospel of John, chapter 9, we read about an amazing miracle and its very interesting aftermath. Jesus heals a man who had been blind from his birth. The news spreads quickly through town and the Pharisees are thrown into confusion. Eventually, they bring in the blind man’s parents for questioning. The religious leaders want to know if their son was truly blind when he was born. The parents affirm that he was, but they are very intimidated and refuse to say anything more. They point out that their son is an adult and can answer for himself. So the newly healed man appears before the Pharisees, who warn him not to give Jesus any credit for his restored sight, “Give God the praise,” they tell him, “We know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner.”

But the once-blind man displays both courage and wonderful common sense. He says to the Pharisees: “Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”

This is how I feel about Joseph Smith’s strange plural marriages—marriages to young girls and older women, marriages to single women and to women already married.

Whether he sinned in these marriages or not, I don't know. 

This is what I know.  Every day of my life overflows with extraordinary spiritual blessings. They are the direct result of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this was the life’s work of Joseph Smith. He suffered and struggled and labored and ultimately died, so that I could have these blessings.

I am convinced that he was truly a prophet of God.

GRIEF JOURNALING

Grief journaling is a technique I created to help me deal with the death of someone that I loved deeply. I did not seem to be able to cry or to talk about my loss and I was sliding into misery and despair.

About this same time I heard the psychiatrist Norman Rosenthal          interviewed on the subject of dealing with trauma.  He said that trauma victims have the need to tell their story, not just once, but over and over again. And that they need to tell it in a different way each time.

So I decided to write about my loss, using this idea of telling the story repeatedly, but differently each time. I found that it worked extremely well. It was a gentle, effective way to release sorrow and lift depression.

This is how I practiced grief journaling:

1) I chose a sad or traumatic experience.

2) I got an inexpensive, spiral bound notebook and start writing about the experience.

3) I did not allow myself to write more than one sentence per day. More than that was too painful, but I could manage one sentence.

4) After several days, I had written a short paragraph. That was when I stopped and started over on another page. I wrote about the same events, but used different words.

5) After several more days I finished that paragraph too.

6) I returned to the first page and started writing again, continuing to tell about the tragedy that had I had experienced.  But always, just one sentence per day. And at the end of each paragraph I stopped, moved to the second page and described the same events over again—using different words.

7) I continued in this manner until I had described the tragedy completely at least two times.

7) I didn’t go back and read over what I wrote. In fact, I may decide to discard it. It was the writing process that seemed to be important, not the finished product.

Because this is such a slow process, it took me over a year to describe the trauma that I was feeling. But I experienced immediate relief—from the first day that I wrote the first sentence.  My depression started to lift and I began to feel that I could cope with my grief. 

From time to time, the depression would return. Every time this happened, I realized that I had forgotten to write each paragraph two times. Apparently, repetition is an extremely important part of the process. When I went back and started rewriting the experience, my depression would again lift.

I am not a therapist or a psychologist, so I do not feel I can prescribe grief journaling for anyone else. But it has been so helpful to me, that I thought I should share it. You can decide for yourself if it is something that you would like to try.