This isn’t the post I planned to write this week; it is the one I feel like I have to process and write before I can focus on anything else. Last night I saw something on Facebook that I just can’t stop thinking about. It was one of those things where someone I know reacted to something shared by someone I don’t know. That person was commenting on something written by a man who wasn’t identified and may have written anonymously. Let me be very, very clear; I don’t know the man who made the original posting.
If I were guessing, I’d say that it may have appeared on the Reddit Exmormon site because I’ve read enough there to recognize the tone. I don’t think for a moment that it was written by Exmormon, if that is actually a single individual. Honestly, I don’t know how Reddit works; I hardly know enough about the internet to get my own posts up each week. I wouldn’t have any idea how to contact or respond to the feelings of that original writer, but I wish I could. He starts each sentence with “I am angry,” but as I read his words I feel a great deal of hurt, disappointment, and pain along with the anger. I wish I knew how to reach out, give him support, and look for ways to calm the bitterness.
The hostility in his text seems to be directed at the LDS church and its culture, but it seems to me that if he felt pressured to do things that were wrong for him, that pressure must actually have come from the people whose opinions mattered the most to him—his family, friends, neighbors, and local leaders and teachers. So, I want to respond as one of them, and the role I identify most closely with is as a mom. In my title I called him exmormon, but to make this more personal, I’d like to refer to him as Max. I don’t know if Max has a mom, and if he does, I don’t have any idea who she is, or how she feels. This is fiction. These are my feelings and what I would want to say if I was Max’s mom, after reading his thoughts.
Let’s start with Max’s words exactly as I saw them on Facebook:
I am angry that I was pressured to delay my education 2 years to serve a mission.
I am angry that I was required to pay for my mission instead of using the $10,000+ towards my education and other future obligations.
I am angry that I was pressured into obtaining the temple ordinances, without knowing what I was getting into.
I am angry that I was pressured to marry ASAP after my mission, and being told that not being financially more ready wasn’t a good excuse.
I am angry that I wasn’t able to establish myself before starting a family.
I am angry that I was pressured to start having kids right away, regardless of the fact that I was still in school and in debt.
I am angry that my wife was pressured to be a stay-at-home mother, instead of pursuing her passions and allowing her to contribute to the financial stability of our family.
I am angry that I had to go into further debt in order to get a graduate degree so that I could support our family with only a single income.
I am angry that I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on tithing, instead of paying off my student loans.
I am angry that I missed out on many precious and important moments in my kids’ childhood, because I was still in school and too busy with my callings.
I am angry that my career has suffered, as I often had to choose church work over my paid work.
I am angry that I struggle to pay bills and provide for my children, because I am required to pay 10% of my income to the church.
I am angry that the church has pitted my wife against me – not because I did anything wrong, but all because I can’t bring myself to believe in a fantasy anymore.
I am angry at the years and years of guilt and shame heaped upon me for not living the way a group of out-of-touch, isolated geriatric males said I should live.
I am angry that I cannot easily leave my situation without committing social suicide and causing family separation.
I am angry that the church has painted me as the bad guy for wanting to know the truth, instead of taking responsibility for the lies and emotional harm committed by the organization.
I am angry that the church has taken so much from me and given back so little.
Hopefully you can see why I’m angry.
Dearest Max,
I’m sorry you are angry, and frustrated, and hurt. Your rage seems to be directed at the LDS church, but it seems like it would be more justly directed at me. After all, it was me who sang primary songs to you as lullabies, who knelt next to you and taught you to pray, and who dressed you up and dragged you to church every week, even if all we did was wrestle in the foyer. It was me who taught you to sing “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission”, who helped you to save for a mission, who told you missionary stories, and celebrated mission calls, farewells, and homecomings.
I was the one who got you a bank and showed you how to pay your tithing before you spent money on anything else. I don’t believe you would ever have gone to tithing settlement, if I haven’t scheduled an appointment and taken you. On and on it goes; as you list your grievances, I recognize my role and influence. I didn’t do these things alone. Dad and I, our family and our whole village worked as a team, but I only want to answer for my part, and my part was huge. I acknowledge that I taught you the gospel for all I was worth.
You could excuse me by saying that I was also brainwashed by forces from Salt Lake, but I know in my heart that it isn’t true. I didn’t read with you, or make you do your homework, because of the school board. I didn’t teach you to budget and save because of the Federal Reserve. I didn’t feed you vegetables, brush your teeth, or enforce a bedtime because of the medical community, or require chores and promote hard work because of the Department of Commerce. I know that the influence of the first presidency or other apostles had less influence on my parenthood than my own lived experiences.
Sure, I went to church, listened to leaders, and was molded by the way my own parents raised me. I also read and listened to parenting experts, motivational speakers, and educators outside the church. I processed my own insights and was a keen observer of the successes and failures of others. In the end, right or wrong, the way I raised you was my best attempt to give you all the skills and knowledge I thought you needed to be a happy and successful adult. I know I was far from perfect, but I also know that I loved you with my whole heart and soul, and made the conscious decisions that I believed were best for you.
Truthfully, I’m struggling to understand why the same faith that I count among my greatest blessings—that I rely on as a source of strength, peace and joy in my life—feels like an affliction to you. I question why the same teachings that I have observed working so beautifully for generations of others are causing you so much anger and pain. It is heartbreaking to hear the very real resentment and pain in what you have written, and I want to acknowledge it and express my sympathy that your life has turned out so differently from what either of us dreamed for you.
I keep second-guessing myself and asking what I would do differently if could raise my children all over again. It seems obvious that I did things that were wrong. How else can I account for your resentment towards your upbringing? I believe that I should have taught a more nuanced view of the gospel, and somehow addressed the thorny issues with the church and its history that I now concede exist. At the time, however, I don’t know how many of those I was really aware of or concerned about. It is only now that I am finding time to grapple with those, or to examine and dissect my own beliefs on a deeper level. Back then, I was in over my head just making ends meet, taking care of the many and varied needs of my children, and trying to keep an organized home. I was young and immature and didn’t know yet all the things I didn’t know. I wish that I had found a way to make it less about the church and more about the Savior, and I’m still not sure exactly sure how one avoids teaching black and white thinking, while simultaneously teaching simple faith.
That seems to be at the root of the problem. I would still rank teaching you to have faith in and a relationship with God above reading, writing, or anything else I taught you. I taught you about God and the meaning of life the way I understood it. I hoped it would work for you, and give meaning and purpose to your life, the way it does mine.
I worry that the religion I conveyed has somehow left such a bad taste in your mouth that you will neglect your own spirituality. I pray that you won’t try so hard to raise your children without the negatives you perceive in your rearing that you will also deprive them of the positives. You see, I can’t separate the way I raised you from the gospel I taught; for me it was all one in the same. It’s who I was as a younger mother and who I am today.
The big question seems to be this one “Where we go from here?” How do we validate your experiences and opinions, and discuss your feelings without anger? How do those like me get past feeling condescended to, blamed and rejected? How do we improve our relationships and our interactions with others? How do we support, help and lift each other even though we have some strikingly different views? I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the questions, but I could use some help with the answers.
All my love, Mom
