ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

To say that I wasn’t into blogging in 2011 would be something of an understatement. Last year, I published 18 new posts here at ClobberBlog and 2 new posts at Προστάτις—an average of 1.7 posts per month. I didn’t do any blogging at any other blogs: LDS & Evangelical Conversations, Burning at the Stake, or The CBE Scroll. I don’t know how often I commented on the blog posts of others, but I’m sure that number was small, too.

I have been active at one Mormon-themed message board largely populated by critics of the LDS church, and created a thread there in May that turned into an exhausting, sixty-three page affair. I somehow managed to get banned from another Mormon-themed message board largely populated by apologists for the LDS church in spite of the fact that I hadn’t posted there in months at the time of my banning. But most of my blog readers are participants at neither forum.

Throughout the year, I’ve gotten comments and e-mails and pokes on Facebook from friends and readers asking how I am or wondering where I’ve gone. It’s been a long time, but I probably owe you some kind of an explanation. Here goes.

Me

I spent most of 2011 struggling with an anxiety disorder and severe clinical depression. I actually think that I’ve probably had both for a long time, but it viciously flared up at the end of 2010, and things went downhill from there. I’ve been in and out of therapy (out right now). I’ve been on and off drugs (off right now). I’ve been ashamed to talk about it, afraid to talk about it, even with some of my closest friends. That I’m finally able to say it in public, in a format that anyone could Google their way into if they wanted, is probably a good sign of how much I’ve improved.

I’m still in school and inching towards my degree, and the administration and professors at TEDS have given me about as much latitude as they can. If I fail, it won’t be for lack of accommodation and nurturing on their part.

I haven’t fallen prey to alcoholism or drug addiction (prescription or otherwise) or pornography. I probably play video games more than I ought to—why did 2011 have to be such a good year for video games???—but that’s about it. Right now, my hopes are that I will finish my degree this year, take a break from school, and start making some more babies.

My Family

My daughter is amazing. She finished her second year of preschool in June and began kindergarten in September. She goes to a full day of kindergarten, attending a special education class in the morning and a regular class in the afternoon. She is in her first year of Daisy Girl Scouts and she loves it. She needs a second cleft palate repair surgery, but we haven’t scheduled it yet. She is adventurous and wild-hearted and fun. I made a really good baby.

My husband is also amazing. He has been teaching ballroom dance lessons full-time. We have been married for over 8 years now and are still going strong—so no, I haven’t been silent because the interfaith marriage is kaput. There are cracks in the religiosity of our marriage, the result being that we don’t talk about our respective faiths much, and I don’t want things to be that way, but I don’t know how to fix it. He is still compassionate and gentle and intelligent and awfully sexy and I feel blessed to have him in my life.

My father was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy last year. I guess it is pretty rare for a man in his 50s to come down with a new case of MD, but it is what it is. It is genetic; I could have it, or my offspring could get it. He seems to have found a treatment that is working for him, and after initially being told that he would be in a wheelchair by the end of 2011, he is still walking and hoping to stretch his walking time for years to come.

Blogging, Etc.

I hope the details I’ve just provided on my personal life helps account for my absence from blogging. However, that isn’t all of it.

I reached a point of feeling pretty severe burn-out in my attempts to dialogue with Latter-day Saints. There are some factors that come up again and again that just seem to come with the territory, and I needed to step back from it.

I got tired of entering conversations and having people bring up the fact that I’m not LDS, even when my input on the topic had absolutely nothing to do with my non-LDS status. Mormons seem to place way too much emphasis on the identities of the people they interact with—and unwarranted assumptions about those identities—rather than sticking to what is being said.

I also got tired of seeing my words combed over and second-guessed, even when I was merely repeating things that I had heard from Latter-day Saints or utilizing terminology that Mormons themselves seem to use. I don’t understand why we can’t all just give one another the benefit of the doubt, and when a word or phrase can be taken more than one way, assume that the better sense is intended—or, better yet, ask how its intended.

Finally, there was the “but Christians do it, too” response—and this is something that I’ve witnessed from Mormons and ex-Mormons alike. For whatever reason, people who have been LDS seem inordinately concerned with whether or not the rest of the Christian world shares in Mormonism’s traits, particularly if the traits are perceived as negative. There certainly is a time and a place for comparing the two, but there comes a time when one just want to discuss Mormonism without being accused of being a hypocrite for not preemptively rolling out a lengthy list of qualifications and concessions on how the rest of Christianity compares.

And in fact, that’s why I’m not using this section to list off ways in which evangelicals hinder and fail at dialogue. They do; that’s just not the topic of this post.

All that said, I’ve had my break. I would like to get back into dialogue and interfaith commentary. But I’m also not sure that I want to do that here. What I mean is, I’m not very satisfied with ClobberBlog anymore. Neither the title nor the catch-all format that I’ve often employed. The title was originally supposed to refer to my more curmudgeonly side, the fact that I wasn’t afraid to “clobber” someone who got in my face. But I’ve changed a lot in the 3.5 years since I began blogging here. That curmudgeonly side is still there, but it’s a smaller and smaller part of me as time marches on. I’d like to create an interfaith dialogue blog that’s friendlier and more professional.

So, while I think that I will formally abandon ClobberBlog at some point in this year, I would like to start a new blogging project. I’m not sure what format that will take yet. It’s something I’m thinking through.

Thank you again to everyone who has supported this blog over the course of its 3.5 year run. Thank you to everyone who has asked about where I have been in the past year. I appreciate the prayers and concerns and encouragement that were directed my way.

And most of all, thank you for still being here.