Panic. I glance at my phone again. Only moments have passed, but worry makes it feel like an eternity. Another case. The death toll goes up. There aren’t enough masks. The spread is inevitable. It is the coronavirus; covid-19.
I tend to catastrophize, so I’ve had to take a lot of deep breaths this week and remind myself that my family has survived zika, swine flu, ebola, and all the rest. Its been a challenge to turn off my phone, focus on doing productive things to prepare my family for the worst, and remember that it probably won’t be as bad as I think it’s going to be.
Part of how I cope with anxiety is reading and learning. I feel like the more I know about a threat the better I will be able to handle it. This coping strategy can be helpful, but at some point you have to admit that there isn’t enough knowledge in the universe to quell the fiery furnace of anxiety. The newest news article or podcast isn’t going to give you the magic cure to your fear. As I’ve studied viruses, I’ve pondered on the modern idea of something “going viral.” Viruses, with their ability to replicate and spread exponentially are the perfect metaphor for the spread of information, media, and ideas online. Viruses are not only bad and dangerous, there are good viruses too. Virologists study ways we can use our knowledge of viruses to actually create and distribute helpful viruses.
The doctrines and principles that the Savior taught were and are viral in the way they spread and continue to take hold in the hearts and minds of those who find Him and are changed by Him. Faith in Him is contagious in the best way. Embracing the compassion and empathy that He embodied makes each disciple a better human being; a more contributing member of the human family.
There is something really special that is happening in my ward family. Maybe even something viral. Today was fast and testimony meeting. People were sharing their struggles and their stories. We had a really good lesson in Sunday school. It was amazing to feel the spirit so strongly with others as we testified of the atoning power of the Savior. The Bishop made a comment about how everyone, no matter who they are, or what they have done can repent and be saved. The energy in that room was so palpable as we expanded on that idea. I talked about how having a mental disorder, ADHD, I spent so much of my childhood listening to adults tell me to find my stuff and complete my work and that the shame of who I was was so overwhelming. I said that I prayed that God would take that away and make me like everyone else that seemed to get it. I thought that was healing. He has taught me over the years that he will never take away who I am and what makes me unique. He only tells me that I’m enough, with him. That together, he can make me an instrument. That I can do what he needs me to do.
That resonated with a brother who confided his story to me after church. First he said, “Thank you for your willingness to share your vulnerabilities. In the church, I wish we would talk less about our successes and more about our failures. That is what we need to hear. We need to hear about our vulnerabilities.” I was so surprised to hear that from a man. Especially a man who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. You never know who your story will impact. I wrote the things he told me in my personal journal, but since he shared only with me, I will not share the details with you. I will say, his story was incredible and inspiring. I feel a strong bond of brotherhood with this man that I would never have if I had not shared my story.
The power of story is incalculable. God gave his only Son so that we could come here and make our stories. Triumph, despair, success, failure, friendship, betrayal, emnity, and resolution. Our stories are sacred. Our experiences are bought with an eternal sacrifice. How and whom we share our stories with is our choice, but we have been given a light. Doesn’t it deserve to shine on a candlestick that all might benefit from what it reveals? I think so.
I choose to share my story. I hope you will share your story. You never know who needs to hear it. I feel strongly that the virus is a metaphor for our time. We can make vulnerability go viral. We can share our burdens with others. We can support and strengthen the meek with the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. His light and his eternal power can sustain us through this troubled time. All those who will own him Lord, who will put aside pride and the vanity of the world, can come together in humility and true imitation of the greatest man who ever lived. He can bring us unity and peace. He can heal the trauma of our past and empower us to help others heal as well. There is no other path that will lead to peace and happiness.
Let’s make our testimony of the Savior go viral! How has he blessed your life? Tell three to five people and tell them to tell their story to three to five people. If we do it, we can make a covid-19 spread of hope and salvation. He is the way, the truth, and the life. If any man believe in Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live! He was meek and lowly in heart. He was despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet though Him, the world can be redeemed! Share the good news! Let’s make it go viral.
My Grandma Eva was as close to a Saint as a non-Catholic family could have. By saint, I mean the kind of person who is so good even Jesus would be impressed; the kind of person who if she approved of you, would put in a good word for you and it would count with God. According to family narrative, she was the perfect mother and wife. She was constantly cooking delicious food, helping her kids excel in school, and reading poetry. She was also a performer in the Road Shows that used to be a big deal in our church. She probably walked on water too, although no one ever mentioned it. She died tragically when my dad was six years old from a ruptured appendix. His home life was rough. His dad remarried, and his step mother didn’t like him. He grew up in a tiny house full of step-brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, and half-brothers and sisters. It was chaotic and not very nurturing, but he always had the memory of his mother to keep him going. She was his angel mother.
When I was born, on Eva’s birthday, I became “Little E.” Little E. was expected to be perfect, like her namesake. I can honestly say, I did my very best to become Eva. And I failed. When I went to counselling for severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation as a young mother, I found myself looking across the room at a counselor who was asking me about my dad and my family and Eva. I had been telling myself for years, “There’s nothing wrong with my family!!” and I believed it. Even as my symptoms got worse. Even as I started to realize that I was never going to be able to live up to the impossible expectations of my parents. I couldn’t even consider the possibility that there could be something wrong with my family.
I knew how this worked. One of my aunts, my dad’s half sister, had trouble with mental health. She went to counseling and they started saying stuff was wrong with her home life. Her parents put a stop to that right away. There was nothing wrong with them. Ever since then therapists were under a cloud of suspicion for our family. Apparently the therapist had told my teenaged aunt to “just do what she wanted to do” to help her to feel better. That was the most ridiculous solution in the world, I was told. Now I was sitting across from a counselor who was going to try to make stuff up about my family; like that we weren’t perfect and that I wasn’t supposed to be perfect. That I wasn’t totally responsible for everything that was wrong with my life. That it wasn’t totally within my power to fix it and make everything perfect, the way I knew I had to.
What should I do? I was trapped. Suicide was a sin. I didn’t want to die. I had two kids by this time. I would go to hell and leave my children to suffer like my dad did. Or I could talk to this counselor and maybe he could help me. It was so hard, but I decided to talk. It felt like I was betraying my family, but what choice did I have?
So I talked and talked and talked about the pressure I was under to be perfect and how I grew up terrified of my dad’s angry outbursts and physical assaults. He called them spankings, but that is minimizing what they were. I knew they were wrong, and I was determined that I would never do those things to my children. My dad believed in spanking. It wasn’t a tool in his parental toolbox, it was the toolbox. He used to say, “The foundation of discipline is fear.” And we feared him. That was how he was raised. All of his many siblings were devoted believers in this type of physical abuse which they knew was necessary for children to grow up to be good people. It was almost a religious zeal.
I remember a group of my dad’s siblings sitting around telling stories about their lives. One of my aunts talked about how she saw a couple of boys talking during a scout function. She explained how she snuck up behind them to hit them in the back of the head to get them to be quiet. Everyone laughed because that was “just like dad,” who was particularly fierce about “discipline.” I didn’t know my grandpa very well because he died when I was really young, but I was told awful stories about how he would beat them with a belt whenever they did anything wrong. It was terrifying to think that anyone could be more harsh than my dad, but according to him, his dad was much worse. I was lucky. My dad was so much better than his dad was.
When I had my first baby, it was all bliss. I was a perfect mother and I would show my dad that I was just as good as Eva was and then the needy hole in my heart that craved affirmation would be filled. I had quit my job as a fourth grade teacher when Devin was born to be a full time mom. Devin was perfect and I was perfect my dad was sure to agree. We went to visit my parents when Devin was ten months old and I put all my parenting skills on display. Devin wanted for nothing. I read to him, tickled him, played games with him, loving corrected and redirected him when needed. Dad pulled me aside. He said that I wasn’t disciplining my son. He explained that women are so kind and gentle that they don’t have the stomach to do what has to be done to make their children hurt and they spoil them. He said ideally Ben would do it, but he could see that Ben wasn’t that kind of person either. That was unfortunate. He insisted that I needed to spank my son and do it soon before he was spoiled. I was so shocked and frustrated. My dad was disappointed in me as a mother. Again, like so many times before, I wasn’t good enough. It made me angry and resentful of him. I thought, “Who spanks their ten month old?” My dad was just weird. About a year later, I had second thoughts.
My life was not so perfect a year later. When Devin was fifteen months old, his brother Layne was born. I was so desperate to survive by the time I had Layne, my dad’s ideas about discipline began to seem more appealing. After two rounds of therapy, I was back on the couch again. I was overwhelmed in a little two bedroom apartment trying my best to take care of two babies one just born and the other a rampaging toddler. Ben had just graduated from school and wasn’t making enough to make ends meet yet. We had to rely on the church to give us groceries. Dad’s discipline lectures started to get to me. I decided I would do it. I would spank my son. If it made my life easier, I was ready to try anything. Dad coached me on what to do. “Make sure you take his diaper off. You don’t have to hit him hard, just make it sting. That’s how you do it.” So I did.
Devin was a stubborn little guy. He had broken all the pictures on the walls of his room. His bedroom door was pitted and covered with chipped paint from the toys he would throw at it while he was in timeout. He was active and into everything. I decided I wanted him to leave my jewelry box alone. When he got into the jewelry, I took his diaper off and spanked him. He screamed and cried. I let him down and he went right back to the jewelry box. We did this several times and each time, he went right back to the box. I became frustrated. Maybe I wasn’t hitting him hard enough, I thought.
I put him in timeout, and while he was in his room, he climbed onto the changing table and emptied out the wipes out of the wipe dispenser. When I got him out of his room and I saw the mess, I felt the anger rise inside me. I was so frustrated!! I spanked him and then I tried to get him to help me put the wipes back, but he was off to make another mess somewhere. I put the wipes away, but the moment my back was turned, he had emptied them out again. Even in my anger and frustration, I felt a distinct impression that I had a choice to make. I could continue to spank and scold and make myself and my child miserable, or I could put the wipes on the high shelf.
Devin and I looked at one another. He had not a bit of defiance or fear in his wide blue eyes framed with thick lashes. He just looked at me, and I looked at him. He had turned my world upside down and yet I still loved him. I sat on the floor littered with wipes, and he came to me. I held him in my arms and he started talking to me in his sweet baby voice. He picked up each of his toys and he brought them to my lap and I just listened and marveled at the amazing little person that God had given me to love and care for. Soon after that, he fell asleep.
I put the wipes away and moved them to the high shelf. I also secured my jewelry box where he couldn’t reach it. Spanking just wasn’t for me, I decided. I would rather just put the wipes on the high shelf. Hours later, after dinner, I went to change Devin’s diaper. The light was getting low and I was trying to wipe off some stubborn dried on poop. It just wouldn’t come off. In horror, I looked closer at my child’s bottom. I turned on the light so that I could see better. There were bruises, not poop on his bottom. In my anger I had put purple speckled spots on my baby’s creamy skin.
I will never forget the shame and regret that I felt that day. I had hurt my child. I had done what my dad told me to do, and together, we had done this. I knew that it was wrong before I had done it. I had put my own comfort and convenience over the welfare of my child and done something that was contrary to my values. I felt sick. I vowed to never spank my son again. It was wrong and I knew it.
I was in therapy at the time. I told my counselor what had happened. He said, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not going to tell you its okay.” I felt a wash of shame again. His criticism stung all the more because it came so infrequently. He followed up with some reassurances that if I changed my parenting strategy, Devin wouldn’t suffer long-term harm from what I had done.
For years afterward, my dad continued to insist that if I just spanked my kids that my problems with my depression would be over. Even after I told him it hadn’t worked, I remember he said, “Well, don’t throw the baby out with the bath…..” and he had some other ideas for ways I could instill fear and obedience into my little tornado baby. It was so disconcerting to me that he was continuing to pressure me to go against my conscience and hurt his grandson! He still vehemently believes that parents today are doing it all wrong and he has his brothers and sisters to back him up. It took me years to accept that I would never change his mind. No matter how perfect I was, it would never be enough. I would always be “Little E” to my dad, just a little girl in the shadow of a woman who was more myth than flesh and blood. Gradually, I came to accept it and let go of the need to please him.
Sometime in all of this, I had a dream that has haunted me. In the dream I was in heaven. The spirits were surrounding me, but there was someone I was looking for. Eva. At last I saw her. My heart sang with joy as I walked up to her. She had a blank and confused expression on her face. I explained that I was her granddaughter and I was born on her birthday. I had been looking forward to meeting her my whole life. She said coldly, “I don’t know you,” and then she walked away. Shame and devastating sadness overwhelmed me before I woke.
That dream revealed to me my greatest fear– The rejection of Eva. If she disapproved of me, I would have failed as a person. And yet, as the years have passed and I have walked a different path than my dad and his siblings, I see that I’m not really like them anymore. I have embraced the reality of the brokenness of my family and learned to see the beauty in it and the beauty in the person I have become even in my imperfection. Eva has changed in my mind too. She used to be the person I was determined to become, but now she is a mystery to me; a strange and unrelatible caricature of the perfectionism I have cast aside. The blank stare of her spirit eyes as they seemed to look through me in my dream express my own confusion. “I don’t know you.” Who is she? If I died today and faced my Grandma Eva, would she see me as family? Probably not, especially after this week.
My Aunts (Dad’s sisters) attacked me on Facebook on Wednesday night. The Trump presidency has driven a wedge between my parents and I. We had decided that politics were not something we would talk about, so I was surprised when my mom posted something on my Facebook. I had posted about the concerns I had about the Kurds in northern Syria. Her reply belittled my concerns. I felt disrespected and angry. If I had it to do over again, I would have deleted the post and told her to back off. Instead I replied to her post angrily, blaming her for the predicament the Kurds were in because of her support of the President. My Aunts decided that my angry reply to my mom was disrespectful and unkind and they felt the need to publicly admonish me. I was already upset about the Kurds and the conflict with my mom, but I had been coping. I had reached out to my mom with some feeling statements via text message, but had not heard back.
When I read my Aunt’s posts, I became hysterical. One Aunt belittled my feelings and shamed me by explaining how much my parents love and pray for me. After twenty years of battling with the perfectionistic demons my parents implanted in my brain, that comment hit a nerve. I beat my head into the hardwood floor and screamed. I went back and forth between blaming myself and hating myself to screaming at my Aunts as though they could hear me and venting my fury at them. All the while, I thought of how they would see me if they were there. They would think I was a lunatic; a defective and spoiled little brat. They would despise me all the more because of my pain at their words. And yet all I had done all my life was to do my best to do the right thing and be a good person. It would never be enough. I could drive myself to death and I would never be good enough for them. I would kill myself. That would prove to them that it was their fault; them and their stupid family and Eva and all the rest of them. I would go to hell and then they would know that I was really sick. I hadn’t made the whole thing up. I had taken medication and spent thousands of dollars on doctors and therapy and hundreds of hours of painful emotional processing, but they still blamed me for my pain. If I was dead they would know that it was real and it wasn’t my fault.
At the time it made sense, but in the cold aftermath of reason, I realize that even my suicide would be blamed on me. Even my death would only confirm to my family that I should have been more perfect. Thankfully, Ben was home. He kept me safe and I took some sedatives and eventually I was able to calm down. I’ve had a pretty bad headache, but that’s probably as much from crying as from my self inflicted injury. The last couple of days I reflected on how much the opinions of my aunts meant to me. Why?
Why does their approval continue to mean so much? Why can’t I see myself as a good person without meeting their expectations? I’ve unfriended almost all of my dad’s family on social media. I’m also taking a break from my parents for a while. Right now, I’ve decided I don’t need them and their dysfunction in my life. I don’t need their parenting judgments and their opinions about whether or not I treat my parents with enough respect.
I know I’m human and the last few days anger and horror and fear have clouded my reasoning. I’ve said things in anger that I probably shouldn’t have. I’ve assumed things and after sincere reflection, I see that reality is not as I thought it was. I’m wandering on the beach of shame feeling the tide flow in and out. Sometimes I’m a good person, and sometimes I’m an idiot. Sometimes I’m the only one that sees what’s happening, and sometimes I’m the one that plays the fool. In the end it’s probably somewhere in between and that’s okay.
But I’m glad I’m alive. I’m glad I have the mental health resources and support network to keep me progressing in my recovery. What would my Grandma Eva think of me? I don’t know, and in the end, it really doesn’t matter. My Savior is my Lord and my judge and he knows my heart. What she thinks of me is between her and her Savior. All I can do is be the best kind of broken I can be, and always come back to the feet of Him who is Mighty to Save.
I have hope that maybe I’ve been able to create a more healthy environment for my children than I grew up in and that my parents grew up in. That’s what the Savior wants me to do. When he commands me to honor my father and my mother that doesn’t mean I need my parents to approve of me. I honor them by following Him even when they disagree with what that looks like. I can leave false and toxic traditions behind as I seek to walk a path that better aligns with what God wants for me and my children. When they grow up and have kids of their own, I hope they follow their hearts and raise their kids the way they feel is right. And they can whine to their counselor all they want about the ways I screwed up their life. They can even post about it and write it on a blog! I hope they do. I’m sure they’ll remember things differently than I will. I’m just glad I’ll be alive to read it.
It’s been a difficult time again. A ‘low period’ as various healthcare professional like to call it – don’t you just love the power of understatement. What a‘low period’ means for me is a blackness – I heard someone on TV the other day calling depression a blackness and there is simply no other colour that will do. Red is angry.Grey, black and washed out are the colours we have in our limited palette to describe something that is hard to describe, a situation where there seems nothing to hope for. But also it is a time when the physical act of placing one foot in front of the other acquires a level of difficulty that leaves me in awe of others who seem able to do it.
Interestingly I heard on the radio this morning an item about the lamentable under-diagnoses of PTSD available to members of the police…
I’ve been following Chelsea for a while now. She posts specifically about the challenges of parenting with mental illness. Her mental health blog helps me not feel alone.
Awhile back, I advocated in favor of having children when you have a mental illness. Even at the time, I felt wishy-washy in doing so. I may talk the talk and chase after the children I’ve birthed, but I don’t exactly walk the walk.
Birthing children and raising them is HARD. Doing so whilst battling Depression or Anxiety or Bipolar is HARDER.
However, unless you’ve got a serious condition, producing a mini-you or two is possible. It’s worth it. It’s fun.
To anyone sitting on the fence of indecision, having a child is the best thing I ever did. To those reading this at 2 a.m. and feeling ready to return their child to the hospital, I’ll add that I’ve been there, too.
Mental illness or not, you need some helps in place when a kid comes around. Even those who don’t regularly admit to mental issues need helps. Babies…
“I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil…”
Isaiah 45:7
For my mother who pushed me to the edge. My father who said, “Fly!” And my beloved who helped me open my wings.
Chapter 1 Part 1
First
They offered her freedom
From the hell of her own making.
Then they gave her knowledge
Of good and evil…
July 16, 2015
Though the path be lonely Follow your heart.
Though the path be dark There is light in your heart.
“Look, Dear!” Mother cried. “It says right here that Jesus died for our sins! Isn’t that wonderful!” “Mommy? What is a sin?” “Well a sin is all the bad things you are going to do when you grow up, Dear!” (But Mommy I’m a good girl. Daddy tells me so.)
If ever there was a kid who needed therapy—— “Get in the car.” (Slam door…
I’ve become fairly comfortable with expressing my opinions online. There are some of my relationships that have suffered because of that. I’m working through the messy process of helping others to understand my motivations and also taking their perspective about how and why what I post can be so uncomfortable for them. I try to be sensitive to the privacy concerns of friends and family, but at some point I have to allow people to own their own feelings about what I write. The letting go of the need for universal acceptance and validation is an important part of my growth. When I’m by myself, that is easier to do.
Out in public, in face to face interactions, I am less secure. Yesterday, we recorded our Christmas songs from last semester in the belly of the great Meyerson Concert Hall. It was a grueling twelve hour day of standing, singing, waiting, and occasional socializing. I felt distance from some people and I knew that those people were probably uncomfortable with some of my posts. That is unsurprising as I post pretty controversial stuff. It’s hard for me to feel the gaze of judgemental acquaintances and strangers and not feel shame.
Not everyone has responded negatively to my posting. In fact, I have developed some deep and meaningful relationships with several sisters in the choir from many different choral sections. That is a little unusual with a choir so large. I ate dinner with two of those women last night. We discussed the problematic polarization, the difficulty with political expression on social media, and the need for Americans to shed their party labels and focus on finding real solutions to the problems we face that we are all suffering from. The rising costs of prescription drugs, the problems in our schools, and the homeless who have insufficient protection from the cold weather are all issues that affect both democrats and republicans and that we can work together on if we stop demonizing one another. It was a good conversation. One woman whom I had just met sat at our table. She was pretty uncomfortable discussing politics at first, but even she warmed up and had some good observations to share. One of the things I noticed was her fear. Although she was intelligent and well informed with good ideas, she said she avoided political discussions because of their volatility. I wish such people did not feel obligated to be silent. We need more non-polarized, peacemaking voices if we are to recover as a nation.
As I listened to a podcast by Hidden Brain from NPR in the shower this morning. The podcast called, “Passion Isn’t Enough,” was all about how, for many Americans, politics has become a spectator sport that relies on entertainment, flashy national figures, and an over-reliance on national verses local politics. They analyzed the psychological reasons why it is easier, feels safer, and feels better to engage with politics in this way. It is also much more polarizing and much less effective than face to face local political involvement.
I asked myself some tough questions. Why do I follow politics? Do I really want change? If so, what is keeping me from being involved at the local level? Why don’t I attend the school board meetings? Why don’t I know my mayor’s name? What am I doing to show my local representatives that character matters to me, not just on the national level, but at the local level? Not just in government, but in all leadership? These are complicated questions and I’ll need to ponder on them further. My endless ruminating can make me feel so alone and isolated. My choice to stay at home and care for my young children has made it difficult to adequately meet my intellectual needs and find like minds. My willingness to engage online with uncomfortable issues has allowed me to have more meaningful face to face interactions and better meet my own intellectual needs.
My blog has been such a useful way for me to share thoughts and feelings and find needed support. I hope it has been useful to others as well. For those who question my motives, please understand that mental health blogs are a thing. There are actually a lot of mental health blogs online. People with mental and emotional illness or who support those who have it have found that sharing strategies and experiences with one another reduces the isolation and hopelessness that come with the stigma and the burden of caring for those who suffer. This sharing is healthy and young people especially are more comfortable with talking about these issues and being open about them. My older readers might not understand why I am posting or see my posts as evidence that I am in a very bad place. It may be hard for older readers to see the value of sharing things that used to be kept secret. I understand your concerns.
I am under the care of competent licensed mental health professionals who are confident that I am not a danger to myself or others. My depression is a difficult condition to manage, but I hope my readers will not worry needlessly about me when I have a bad day or post something negative. Please don’t feel obligated to check on me through relatives. I will be fine. If you are concerned about me or anything that I write, please message me and I will get back with you. My counselor and my psychiatrist have both encouraged me in my blogging seeing it as a healthy part of my recovery.
Mental health problems are rampant. I feel it is vital for us to share what knowledge we have about mental health. There are many who cannot, for whatever reason, get the help they need. If you haven’t been in their shoes, you might have had to support someone who is. Perhaps you have a brother with bipolar who refuses to take his medication and shows up at your door needing a place to stay but you don’t have room to keep him long term. Maybe a friend is so depressed she can’t care for her baby. She’s afraid to go on medication because she is breastfeeding. These are common scenarios that anyone can find themselves in. If our social networks are full of false and harmful ideas about mental health, how can we support these people? How can we direct them to the resources they need to heal? We need to talk about these things. And not just online.
I know in my heart that to really make a difference, I need to resist the urge to think that expressing online is sufficient. I need to do the hard work and have some face to face interactions. That is going to be very uncomfortable for me. I hope that I can rise to this challenge. I hope that as I build relationships with other people of good will who are working to solve our problems that this will be the beginning of a powerful phase of my life.
In sacrament meeting this week I was sustained as the Relief Society Secretary. Yikes. This is going to require a new level of courage for me. It is also going to require a new level of emotional maturity. My weaknesses loom large in my mind as I think of what is being asked of me. Still, I know that with the Savior’s help, I can do everything that is required. I am so grateful for supportive friends, a wonderful husband, beautiful children, and the many opportunities that the Savior has put in my path to serve my brothers and sisters. I don’t need their universal approval to serve, I only need His call and His power which I will strive to be worthy of every day.
Jackson VanDerwerken plays Nephi in the new Book of Mormon series. He was just 16 when they started shooting. He is currently serving a mission in Brazil.
The church has put out a whole series of new movies about the Book of Mormon. I don’t know what I expected; wooden acting, flat characters, scriptures being read in radio voice……the typical church videos. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to start watching them. They are really good! I know when the movie is good when I read the book and the characters in my head look like the characters in the movie. That only happens when the actor is able to capture the character. After thirty years of reading the Book of Mormon, when I think of Nephi now, I can see the actor in this series. That’s pretty impressive! The acting, the script, the set, the filming is all first rate. If you want to know more about the Book of Mormon, but don’t feel like reading it, this would be a good place to start.
And not only am I a fan, my thirteen year old son snuck out of bed last night to watch the next episode. Impressive. The fact that he spends hours each day watching low budget YouTube gamer videos might indicate that something as useful as scripture videos would be boring. On the contrary, I think these Book of Mormon videos have some serious appeal to teenagers. I’m no expert on teens, but one thing I have learned really fast; they can smell hypocrisy. They expect inauthentic behavior and they invent them in parents even if they aren’t there. They are creating their mask of perfection and they know you have yours. On the flip side, they seem to love authenticity. Ugly and honest reality resonates with them.
Nephi is his willing to tell the story of his family. It isn’t the whole truth about it of course. It is his perspective and should be recognized for what it is and what it isn’t. Every family is defined differently by each member who has their own memories and perspective. We’ve all had those weird moments when a sibling recalls the details of a family vacation we can’t even remember taking. For some reason, that vacation was meaningful to that person and it was seared into their long-term memory. It wasn’t meaningful to you, so you forgot it. It isn’t that your memory or theirs is wrong. Together, your memories can create a more complete picture of the reality that is and was your family.
Family is so intimate. Our siblings and our parents shape us. Telling the ugly truths about them can feel very personal. Life is messy. There is snot, slobber, and poop. There are addictions, mental and emotional disorders, chronic illness, allergies, muffin tops, cellulite, and a hundred other distasteful things that exist behind closed doors. Nephi lays it all out as he tells his story. He doesn’t spare anyone, even himself and his own father and mother. When they doubt, murmur against God, and cause problems for themselves and their family, he writes it. Maybe no one really wants to have a family like Nephi’s. We would all like to have things be a little more pretty and simple; suits and dresses sitting in a row on the bench at church. No problems here!
Nephi shares his and his family’s personal and physical struggles as they strive to obey God’s commands and make a new life for themselves in a new land.
The truth is, life is hard and messy when it comes to families and the scriptures don’t paint a rosy picture. Jacob and Esau were in a constant state of sibling rivalry even in the womb. Joseph was beaten, imprisioned, and sold into slavery by his brothers. In his misery, Job’s wife told him to “curse God and die.” These accounts aren’t flattering for these families. No one wants to be Job’s wife in this story. No one wants to be the brother who sells his sibling into slavery. Still, a mature reader can have immense empathy for a wife who has lost everything and feels despair or a brother consumed by hatred and jealousy for a favored sibling. The unflattering details in these accounts are important because we can learn from them. Life is hard and sin, death, and disease are real, yet not many people in the history of the world have been willing to talk about the ugly in their families. Often no record at all is made of a person’s life and family. I have talked to people who plan to burn journals before their death; determined to keep their inner lives a secret. This seems such a waste to me. So much can be learned about oneself and the world when we look at life through the eyes of another person. Also, no sin or problem is so great that the Savior’s atonement cannot save. Where is our faith?
Nephi was one of those rare people who recorded his inner thoughts and feelings about his family and gave them to the world. Something about the story of Nephi, Sam, Laman, and Lemuel seems to reveal so much about family relationships to me as a mother of four sons. I’m glad that Nephi made the choice to share the truth about his family even if it wasn’t always pretty. It makes him relatable. Honestly, I relate to Laman and Lemuel too. I relate to Sariah and Lehi. They are real people to me because their lives weren’t perfect. If Nephi had only written the flattering things, I think I would have seen through the deception. Brothers tying one another up and beating each other with sticks…..sounds like my world!
So millions of people have read and will read the Book of Mormon. Now they have made a decent video series that will be watched by many people. Judgements will be made about Lehi and Sariah, their parenting, their children and their posterity. Laman and Lemuel surely would have felt that Nephi’s account was not fair to them. Of course, they were free to make their own scratchings on metal plates if they wanted their story told. Something tells me they never bothered to do that. Will their anger against Nephi be fueled unnecessarily by this willingness to make an account with so much detail and honesty? Does their resentment still smolter against their brother in the afterlife as millions read his story and their unflattering portrayal? Was it okay that Nephi wrote about his family? What about you and I? Should we write the truth about our families from our perspective? If so, when and how should it be shared? These questions are not simple or easy to answer.
I’ve been doing some digital portrait art. It’s so hard to artistically represent a person! One portrait I looked at for hours. Something was not quite right. I had to erase much of the face and redo it because the jaw line was wrong, the ear was not quite long enough, and the eyebrow was too far from the eyelid line. I was trying to be accurate and fair with my first rendering, but it still wasn’t right. Writing about people can be just as difficult as drawing them. How can you reproduce a person accurately and fairly without caricature? How can you convey the essence of a person whether in print or in art? When you are finished, there is no guarantee that the person will like it or want it to be shared. What then? You drew the bags under their eyes, or the lines on their forehead. You drew what was there and if you took those things out, it wouldn’t be them, but they don’t like it. They want a more flattering image, but what if that image comes at the cost of authenticity?
Authenticity makes things meaningful and we humans are very good at being able to tell whether something is authentic or not. Check out this video of a robot pretending to be a person. Some very smart people have spent a lot of time and effort to make an authentic human being, but even a very young child would be able to tell that something isn’t quite right with Sophia. Pick up a stack of Christmas family letters and read them out. Do you get a sense of who these people are? Are the authentic contours of their lives clearly seen? Probably not. The people described are probably more like stick figures than real people.
To clarify, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the way we write Christmas cards or make robots. I’m just trying to point out that authenticity is not something we do very often outside of art. Artistic expression is limited to very few people. There are advantages to this. The drama of authenticity can be exhausting. Sometimes we don’t really want to know about Grandpa’s indigestion or Aunt Francis’s depression much less their deep dark secrets and sins. There are also disadvantages to hiding our authentic selves. When the grandkids read the Harry Potter series and cry for days over the death of Dumbledore, but then don’t seem to care much at all when Grandpa dies, don’t be surprised. Grandpa may not have seemed much like a real person to them compared to Dumbledore. We make emotional attachments to authentic human beings we can relate to. J.K. Rowling managed to make characters that connected on a deep level with many different people. She did it by making them authentic. If we fail to share our authentic selves with those we love, we may find ourselves alone and disconnected.
I’m finding in my own life that authenticity is extremely important. Meaningful connections keep depression and anxiety at bay not just for me, but for everyone. No person can thrive in isolation. Yet today we live in a world in which individuals are increasingly isolated. Transactional relationships are everywhere in our highly specialized and civilized world. We can pay people to cook for us, clean for us, take care of our children for us, and even help us process emotional trauma. Behind those transactions, can we see the humanity? Can we make authentic connections? We can, but it can be difficult. For me it has taken some vulnerability. I have taken off some masks that I got comfortable wearing. My blog has been a big part of making the journey toward authenticity.
As my parents and I go through the family counselling experience, the blog has become the elephant in the room that is at last being addressed. There are benefits to family counselling, but it is hard. I’ve had a resurgence of depressive symptoms as I have attended these sessions. I’m also reconsidering the purpose and content of my blog in light of my parents’ feelings. I’m trying to answer these tough questions.
In spite of my discomfort and my parent’s discomfort, I feel compelled to share my story with authenticity. It may seem that my efforts at expression are more trouble than they are worth to me and the people I care most about. Maybe they are. Maybe I’m wrong to share. Maybe there are things that are better left unsaid, as I’ve been told. Or maybe Nephi was right. Maybe if we share the ugly truths about our families we can put things in perspective. Our family’s ugly might not be so bad when compared with others! Also, we can learn from each other’s experiences to be better parents to the next generation. I am working on my privacy settings to try to create a blog that works for me and my family. I appreciate your patience as I go through posts and try to decide what audience I want to share with.
I pray that as I go through this process that I will be guided by Him who is Mighty to Save. I know that as dark and difficult as this journey feels right now that it will have a happy ending. There is hope and peace and blessings at the end of this road and maybe even along the way. Thank you for walking this path with me!
This morning I lay in bed with Pepper nestled sleeping behind my knees and Austin curled up in my arms. It was heaven. For maybe five minutes. And then Austin wanted to snuggle Pepper and then they started playing and climbing all over me and there were twisted sheets and rumpled blankets and strained bladders. The moment was over. Sigh.
I still didn’t want to get out of bed and face the day. My mind cast about for something productive I could do in bed that might transition me out of sleep. I thought of listening to the Book of Mormon. We have been trying to do better this year at studying the scriptures as a family. Last night at dinner I realized I hadn’t read my scriptures that day. Ben ended up carrying the discussion. I wanted to do better.
So I opened my gospel library app and I tapped on the headphone icon and I listened to a few chapters while I tried to settle the dog and the child in for a few more minutes of rest. I thought of how easy it was for me to get my gospel “reading” in without even leaving my bed. Why is consistently doing something so simple so hard for me to do?
“Layne, you read the Percy Jackson series in a week! You could read the whole Book of Mormon in like, a day,” Devin said at dinner a few nights ago. I had just challenged the older boys to read the Book of Mormon for the first time. I told them about how I read the Book of Mormon for the first time when I was about their age and that I had received a witness of the truthfulness of the book just as Moroni promised I would in the final chapters of the book.
Devin was right, of course. The Book of Mormon is not a long book. It isn’t boring either. It is a compelling record with piercing insights. It’s not overly hard to read or understand, and yet, why is it so hard to get past first Nephi? I think the difficulty lies in the simplicity. Like Naaman in the Old Testament who was told to wash in the river to cleanse his leprosy, it was just too easy to feel like it would be effective.
There are a hundred things like that. Eat a few servings of vegetables. Take a walk. Go to bed early. They are simple and relatively easy, and yet how hard is it to consistently do these things? Each time I start getting better at one or two, I start sliding on the others. But today I listened to the Book of Mormon, and I played the Switch with Austin before I took him to preschool. I fed the dog. I ate some healthy food. I’m off to a good start.
I’ve been thinking about how life is full of paradoxes. Easy simple things that are really impossibly hard. Living in this world while remaining unspotted from it. Embracing your feelings and accepting the reality of them without drowning in them. Repenting and changing constantly while remaining committed to core principles. Living centered in yourself without being centered on yourself. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to walk a tightrope than learn to do these things.
Last week in therapy my counselor said something off hand that has stuck in my brain. She said it like, “of course you know this and everybody knows this, but I’m just going to say it because it fits.” But to me, it didn’t fit. I knew it was true but I knew that I didn’t really believe it. Even after over a year of doing it, I’m still not totally comfortable with it. She said, “Expression is good.”
Of course, my whole blog is based on the premise that expression is good; that hiding and repressing and denying the expression of thought and emotion is profoundly unhealthy. In our society we allow certain people to express in limited ways. Writers, actors, singers, and children are allowed to express if they have sufficient talent to make their work valuable to us. The rest of humanity must tend to more practical matters. Expression is a luxury. Education, personal development, and expression are luxuries only to be experienced by a select few. If such luxuries were distributed to the wider population, what might happen!?! People might engage their brains and become excited. They might start doing dangerous and unexpected things. They might start changing the world.
And yet, I know what the alternative to expression is. I know what it is to hide and be afraid and force my mind into the stupor of pragmatism. I choose expression. Even with the chaos and the messy emotion, expression is better than the alternative. I choose to sing and write and paint and bear my witness that Jesus is the Christ. A portion of his spirit lives in me and he wants me to share it. Like Joseph Smith, a fourteen year old child of no status or significance, I can hear a voice from God and witness to the world that the heavens are not silent. That there is more to this life than the pursuit of power, money, and pleasure. That if you seek after Him who is Mighty to Save, you can also feel of His love and have the desire to express yourself as His creation; not of this world, but of a better world.
Yoda said, “Luminous beings are we! Not this crude matter.” True this is. Wise this is. As I lift my eyes from the mess that is this fallen mortal world, I see that the Savior is the author of our salvation. He has shown me the reality of a better world; repented, redeemed, and saved by His matchless power. It is possible to create that world, with His help, in our own lives. In our own homes. I imagine it as creating an oasis of salvation within a desert of sin. Weary travelers that the Lord brings into my path can rest and take strength as they pass through this life’s trials and experiences.
My ward family is supporting a member who is struggling with some heavy burdens. Yesterday she had another major setback in her journey. Then I read that last week another ward family member, a young father, had a heart attack. Another family in our ward has been displaced and living in a hotel for months while their house is repaired. A woman in our ward gave birth to her baby prematurely. As a family, we have been praying for a fourteen year old boy in Denton who was paralysed in a trampoline accident last year. It’s hard to see how all my prayers and efforts have made much of a difference. Austin prays every day for “Jo-shwa BLACK,” but he is still paralysed. The miraculous healing I hoped for has not happened. I showed Austin the latest pictures of Joshua Black as he stood in his standing frame. He has made slow and steady progress and there is great hope that he will regain the ability to walk. I try to encourage my boys to keep praying and to celebrate those small successes, but I can sometimes see the unspoken questions in their eyes. “Why hasn’t God helped these people?”
The uncomfortable answer is, I don’t know. It isn’t what I wanted or even what I expected. Sometimes it’s incredibly discouraging bearing one another’s burdens when those burdens seem to never lighten. I could say all kinds of things that might make it look better. I could say, “We are exercising our faith,” or “God has helped them, we just can’t see what he has done,” or “God works in his own time.” But something tells me to hold back and let my children feel the sadness and discouragement. That is part of the process. Loving those who suffer is sad and discouraging, but that is what the Savior did. He did it, and so can I. Ironically, as I suffer with them, I find joy. It’s back to the paradoxes again. Losing your life and saving it; sacrificing your happiness and finding it. In a weird way, it makes sense.
Well, it’s time for me to do some laundry, plan a family trip, and prepare for my session with my counselor tonight. I’m going to keep expressing because expression IS good. It’s uncomfortable, and raw, and awkward, but it’s good.
The Broken Handmaid 