Can We Stick This Out?

I feel so fucking dead inside today. This is not really an entry about LDS life so much as it is that I want to bitch about my life being the shits right now.

My wife and I do not see eye to eye on a LOT of things. Church issues are just the beginning. I hold much of my church issues inside, because I don’t know if our relationship would be able to bridge the chasm between us about what I now feel is really important in life and my changes in spirituality.

Because of the LDS indoctrination program, she feels like shit because isn’t living up to the stereotypical Mormon ideal: being a stay at home mom with half a dozen children. She’s been looking at blogs posted by other women she knows and comparing her life to theirs. She seems to think these people are with it because they can manage to slap something on the web every once in a while. She feels guilty for not having a sparkling house, not being spiritual enough and for not being able to completely focus on her job as a realtor.

She is also depressed lately because she is failing at her current expensive diet with little to show for a month of effort. I really feel for her, but I seethe on the inside about the cost of the Medifast food (about $300/month) and her constant whining about the putrid taste of the food. So now I have $500 worth of shitty diet food sitting around and a depressed wife looking at the “grass is greener” all over the place outside of our home.

Add to that the fact that I feel like she definitely knows something is up with me, but can’t get her arms around it. She looks at me as an abject failure because I don’t make more money, because I could give a shit about climbing the corporate ladder at church, and would rather stay away from church as much as possible. I am supposed to be this paragon of spirituality in our house in her mind, but that is not what I want to be. She sees and measures me through this Mormon prism, and I never can seem to be enough to satisfy the Mormon stereotype.

What kind of fucking church does this to people!?! I have hard enough time dealing with her as it is, without thrusting a third-party (i.e. the church) into our relationship! I think right now, both of us are just hanging on by our fingernails and gritting our teeth, hoping something will get better. The other day, I was going through a mess of Valentine’s Day cards that my oldest daughter had strewn around, when I noticed an piece of notebook paper with the words “I don’t love him anymore” hand-written on it. I showed it to my wife and she made some excuse that my daughter had asked her to write that. My bullshit meter was topping out on that one. I think she must have been having a bad day on Valentine’s Day and squeezed out some of her true feelings onto that paper.

It’s not like I haven’t felt the same way, though. I am thinking that I can stick this out for a few more years because I want to be there for the kids. Then I wonder why I bother. My wife and I are just tolerating each other as it is. She wants more from a partner. I can tell from her wistfully mentioning the pictures of happy couples on their blogs. (As if someone would actually put ANYTHING negative about themselves on a family blog!) How long is enough to make a difference for these kids? I would hate to not be able to come home and love on my kids. I just hate having to deal with a grumpy wife who sees me as lower than pond scum because I can’t live up to the impossible milestones she has set up for me.

Uuuugh!

Apostles’ Salaries Cause Dissonance

It’s amazing what gets you. My wife and I were “watching” General Conference this weekend when I saw what confusion cognitive dissonance can cause someone who is a true-believing Mormon. I use the term “watching” loosely because I was marginally engaged in the things being transmitted over the television. Mostly I was looking for things that might set off a firestorm in the blogs and forums on the internet.

At some point, my wife and I were talking about the newest LDS apostle, Todd Christofferson. She knew I was disappointed that they again chose another middle-aged white man from Utah. I mentioned how this was probably a big change for him and that it meant immediate retirement. She misunderstood me and thought I meant that all the LDS apostles worked in the private sector as well as being apostles. They don’t. So we sorted that out, and the conversation then transitioned to me mentioning that his lifestyle would now change dramatically, and given his former status as a lawyer and banker, he would probably now actually take a pay cut.

My wife looked confused for a second because she believed as we were all told that the LDS church has a” lay ministry”. I told her that the apostles actually make about $500K a year (a number that I had heard bantered around in internet forums). So much for “without scrip or purse”. That revelation caused a reaction that I never would have imagined. She mentioned how that “sours things” for her. She thought that $500K was well above the simple stipend for living she had always been informed they received. I then let her know that everyone above the stake level was a paid position as well. I told her about a mall in Salt Lake City that the church owns that they are re-building to the tune of two billion dollars, and I complained that this type of money should be used on LDS/Primary Children-type hospitals in other locales outside of Utah.

Throughout the remainder of the conference we had a running dialog about how I should navigate the corporate ladder of the church to get a pay increase. In a way, that felt like a personal cut about my current earning ability, but I realized even at that time that there was a sense of cognitive dissonance setting in for her. She knew what she believed was the truth and what was actually the truth were different and it was bugging her. I tried to let my perceived slight slide and encourage her dissonance. Pick your battles, they say.

In a way, I’m glad to be an undercover non-believer, because when things like this come up, I can act authoritative and not be subject to her skepticism because of the status of my testimony.

Letter to Me at 18

Me,

This is your 30-year-old self writing to give you what words of wisdom I can from my current vantage point.

You sure have come a long way! Right now, you’re probably really missing your friends from CWU. You feel like you are on the precipice between the past and the future, with all your previous experiences behind you and looking towards the great adventure in front of you as a Mormon missionary. You’re not sure what to expect and what you will make of yourself, but you know it will be fun.

You’re right, it will be fun, but it is not without consequences that will affect the rest of your life. Your mission will provide with the first opportunity you’ve ever had to analyze the religion you were born in. Before this time, you’ve never had a reason to question it. It was something you accepted, and you even thought you had given it the critical eye once before. During your missionary service, you will find many things that cause you to step back and wonder how different you would be if you weren’t LDS.

Your mission will let you encounter TWO new cultures and languages and meet so many new people. They will affect you profoundly. Until now, you have kept yourself surrounded by those of your faith (or even those with no faith) and have been sheltered. Your mission will allow you to encounter other religions and faith beliefs on a personal level for the first time. You will question why you are trying to tear people from their own religion to yours when you can’t even live it perfectly. You will experience guilt deeper than you ever have before and you will repress your doubts because you believe they are wrong and that YOU are broken.

I encourage you to do what your natural curiosity tells you. Attend as many meetings of different faiths as you can. Do not let your arrogance as a Mormon give you the sense that the people in other belief systems are in error, but enjoy them as equals as they are. Love them in their own faith experience and know that they too are striving to be better people. Walk away from those meetings and let those people be happy without ever knowing who Joseph Smith is. They don’t need him. Find those who need a Savior or faith and throw away the silly memorized lessons and teach them about Jesus.

Do not feel guilty when you are not promoted into leadership quickly. When you are promoted, you will not find gratification in doling out empty encouragement and false promises to those you are assigned to lead. Do not play the numbers game, but find people to love and serve. Take advantage of church resources to improve the lot of those impoverished people you encounter, even if there is no chance the will become active members! If God loves all his children, he will want you to help them, Mormon or not!

Finally, ask your questions, but don’t bother bringing them up to other missionaries. They will have NO answers to your tear-filled questions. Towards the end of your mission, you will encounter a tract from the Jehovah’s Witnesses which questions the origins of Mormonism. It will scare you because you have never heard these things said about your religion. Embrace this new knowledge, don’t push it away. If the truth cannot stand up to scrutiny, it is not truth. For God’s sake, keep that tract instead of throwing it away! It will be like an artifact for you when you realize Mormonism is not what you always thought it was!

Take care of yourself. Your mission will be a worthwhile experience, but not in the way you are currently expecting it to. Know that when you are done, there would be no shame in walking away from the Mormon church and never looking back. Trust me, I wish you had sometimes.

God bless,
Me