(Don’t go to my site, it hasn’t been touched in about 18 months).
Well, I was debating on whether or not to respond to your post or not. I hopped on your site looking for your picture of your broken foot and still haven’t found it 🙁 But I did find this post regarding why you don’t go. It is interesting and I have to say that I have had some of the same issues before. God gave us the freedom to choose, why should government or any other group take that right away from us? The problem with that is that people don’t always know what is best for themselves. Take suicide for example, Why is it illegal? It doesn’t hurt anyone escept the person dong it. But it is illegal because government is trying to protect us from ourselves. I’m not saying that there should be a law or there shouldn’t. Government isn’t our parents and it isn’t our God so it shouldn’t be allowed to control everything we do and some things are personal decisions. However church is a little different. As you know the LDS church says it holds the ‘Fulness of the Gospel’ and is directed by Christ himself through apostles and prophets. If this is true then what you have to ask yourself is if you are willing to do what you need to do to return to your Heavenly Father. I was going over my mission notes on mission conferences, etc that I had put together and one note that come up more often then not is ‘God doesn’t ask for your opinion, only your obedience.’ This is hard to do sometimes as we thing we know what is best for ourselves better then God does. I can honestly tell you that this is not true. As much as we do know about ourselves he knows a lot more about us and what we need.
About the ward and not feeling welcome, I can tell you that I myself have been there before, I never did feel part of the Ashburn ward. Monique and I didn’t go several sundays and you’re right, it is easy not to go. It is easy not to read the scriptures and it is easy not to say prayers and it is easy to tell Bro. Nielson, when he calls you last minute, that you can’t go out with the missionaries. But the easiest road isn’t always the best (most of the time it isn’t). And when you follow the harder road you gain strength and you get blessing.
I’m not trying to lecture and I hope that I’m not coming off that way. I appreciate your honestly but felt it my obligation to respond to it. Thanks for taking the time to read this, it turned out way longer then I had originally planned.