strangesquirrel

Sounds like me. Absolutely everything has gone out the window. Maybe it's more like a tornado. Or a fire. Anyway I've doubted before, but nothing on this level. I've always tried to question everything, things I always "knew", but I guess I didn't realize how much my family impacted that. It's really hard to believe. "If something's too good to be true, it probably is." The idea that there's a God, Jesus, and all that definitely seems like it's too good to be true. I'd really like to be proven wrong though. Thanks for all the responses so far. I'll probably reread them dozens of times as I try to ease into this.

First I'll start off saying hi. I used this site several years ago on another account*. The layout is totally different, but at least I see some familiar "faces" around. Anyway I'll get to it. Background: I was raised Mormon, in an active family that regularly attended and basically did everything right. My life growing up wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows, but whose is? Growing up, I was largely disinterested in the church. Everything made sense to me though, even if I didn't get overly emotional most of the time like others did. Going to church was boring though, so after completing seminary, I slowly became less and less active. By now, it's been a good few years since I've gone. I've been largely content with this. I still felt like I believed deep down, but I just didn't really care. Fast forward a month or two ago. My dad tells me he no longer believes in the church. He said he spent the past three years trying to figure it out. I was surprised, because like I said, he was active - he did the whole two year mission thing, he was even bishop for a time. I didn't think much of it though. At first I was actually worried about my mom, because I figured that would be really hard on her. For a little bit it was okay. But over the past couple weeks, I couldn't help but think about it myself. I always thought that people who fell away from the church just weren't doing the things you were supposed to be doing. Going to church, reading the scriptures, praying, following all the "rules" and recommendations and all that. I figured people just didn't try hard enough. The fact that someone I knew and respected had spent years trying to do everything right, and then concluding that he didn't believe - that has impacted me severely. To be fair, I'm not all that close to him, so maybe I can't really judge. All I know is that I don't know what to believe, and that I've had a whole ton of new insights on life, death, and religion in general. I'm not talking about the LDS faith, or even Christianity - I mean faith in general. A belief that there's something out there. Is there something out there that directed the workings of the universe? Or is it all just a series of coincidences, science and all the forces of nature coming together, because if atoms smash together zillions of times, it can happen? I can see both sides. They both have their arguments. I've been pondering this for the past few weeks - and the thoughts terrify me. I can't figure out whether or not there's more to life or not, and the result is that I think about what if there isn't. What if this is the end? What if I die, and then there's nothing? I stop existing, and that's just the end? Death scares the hell out of me now. I want so badly for there to be more. I want to believe in something - anything. One day in particular, I was so terrified I couldn't sleep, so I texted a friend of mine who was really religious (not LDS) and vented everything. She helped a bit, enough to ease my mind for a week or so. But the thoughts returned. It's not pure terror anymore (still scary though, if I think about it too long) so I guess that's better, but instead it's constant obsessive thoughts. Every other thing I see, every other thing that happens, my thoughts go to how that thing factors into the argument of whether there's something more or not. Is it a good sign? No maybe not, it could be a bad sign, it could mean this, or that, etc. It's like a war raging in my head that I can't forget about. And I really wish I could. I'll also say that the thoughts aren't all bad. I've found some motivation in this too, like living life to the fullest, etc. I can also look at the world and see how amazing and complex it is, and the miracle of life, and all that. So I have some hope. But it isn't enough. I'm largely pessimistic about this. I know from my past churchgoings that the standard answers here are to pray, go to church, etc. Maybe I can work up to that. I'm still afraid that I'll go and just wind up debating in my mind the whole time being scared, or thinking that if I find something that I wanted to hear, that it's just confirmation bias (I'm fairly logical). Like that whole thing where you open your scriptures and look, you can find something that helps you. So instead what I'm asking here is for convincing. Help me believe. I want to be optimistic. Even if it's stupid to be optimistic. If there's nothing more to life and I die believing that there was, I won't have lost anything. I just don't want to be scared anymore. I want to ease my mind. So if anyone reading this has anything to say that can reassure me, even if it's just something small, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for hearing me out either way. --- *If this is a problem, I apologize, I'm more than happy to message the mods with the old account if you want to make sure I'm not banned or something, I'm just paranoid about linking personal problems to that username since I've used it on other sites.