SomeoneCares

This is an open letter to the banned user, who has been keeping us very busy lately. I know that someone will make sure she gets to read it. You are not alone. You've been here with us a long time now, so I know it must hurt to feel driven off and forcibly seperated from your friends. Despite what happenned, Heavenly Father still loves you. So do your friends, including me. It took great courage to admit to the things you did. Most of us would be too ashamed to talk about them. However, you went perhaps too far in the other direction. You know how Heavenly Father feels about that stuff, so I don't need to remind you. You have some very strange ideas, but you have a good heart. Something you don't seem to realize is the forums and chat are seperate. In chat, everyone knows you. We're used to your blunt honesty and bursts of excitement over the smallest things. We know how you tend to get a bit childish when you feel that someone hasn't been treating you fairly. You make us smile, you make us laugh, and we like having you around. We miss you! The forums are another matter. Some people go to both, but a lot of the people who visit the forums don't visit chat, and they don't know you. Try to see it from their perspective. All of a sudden this stranger shows up and starts talking about the things you did. How do you think they felt about that? They don't know that you are a well-meaning, genuinely caring person. They just saw you as an incredible pervert looking for shock value. You may have posted what you did to keep it away from where it was inappropriate, and you were right to do so, but the forum members didn't have any context to know why you might have a good reason to say all that. Never mind the poorly handled mess about the unexplained change of site rules. You didn't understand the forum/chat split, so you overreacted when people were negative towards you. Your behavior after that point wasn't out of line, but it didn't help incline people to trust you or see things from your point of view. I'm not sure if you get this, but you were banned for trying to get people to contact you, and not for your post. As on the forum, many of the moderators don't know you, and they were concerned that you were trying to offer inappropriate products and services to the members. I know you wouldn't do that, but the others did not. Not everyone knows about the church you are creating and the values you hold dear. It's like you're trying to tap out a song and have people guess what it is. The tune is in your head, but all they hear is disconnected tapping. Sometimes things are so intimately familiar to us that we have trouble imagining how other people can't understand them. It's like that for the church too. Sometimes people can hear the tune so loud in their minds, they don't understand how other people only get the taps. Your behavior needed to stop, but I don't think you really deserved to be banned. [omitted] Maybe you won't be coming back here, but it's not too late to come back to church. Never mind the name removal. You know in your heart that Heavenly Father wants you to return to Him. You have too sweet a spirit to convince me otherwise. I hope you will remember the tune. Life can be so lonely if all you notice from Heavenly Father is the tapping. You got too angry and upset, and now this has happenned. Please try to learn from the experience.