A Widening Cravasse

June 2014

"For the first time in my life, I think I can relate to the pioneers," J said as he finished editing a video for our Stake Pioneer Trek. 

I was surprised. I could not remember a time when I didn't feel keenly for my ancestors. Their struggles mirrored my own in ways, and I said as much to J. 

"Of course," he said dismissively. "You lived in a tent. You didn't grow up like everybody else." 

His comment bothered me. 

Yes, I had spend my childhood living in some unusual places, but camping {which we only did for a few months!) had very little to do with my identifying with the pioneers. As a kid, I had been very aware that my family's life looked unstable. We moved 29 times in 19 years, and while I knew my parents to be intelligent, hard working people of character and testimony, they were, above all, dedicated to following the spirit-- and sometimes it led us into financially precarious situations. At an early age, I found myself wrestling with the dichotomy of that: the comfort of feeling deep in my soul that we were being blessed, directed and guided, and the fear that God might lead us to the edge of a cliff and ask us to jump off of it. God's version of fine wasn't necessarily my version of fine.  

"I thought that they would understand how I felt," I told him. "The Mormon Pioneers were asked to leave all they knew to set out for Zion. They weren't just blindly obedient. They received promptings and comforting feelings from the spirit, and yet life was hard for them. They were persecuted and called crazy, then driven from each place they attempted to settle. More often than not, their reward for remaining true to the faith was hunger, sickness and death along the trail. All of that felt so familiar to me. I recognized the mental reckoning that has to be made when a person knows that what they are doing is right but all visible evidence in their life seems to point to the contrary. I knew our life and decisions looked crazy from the outside, but I also could see the Lord's hand in all of it. The pioneers would have gotten that." 

J had a distasteful look on his face that often appeared when I talked about such things. "Yes, but your family was unusual," he asserted, as if to comfort himself. 

"Maybe the particulars of our situation were unique, but the principle is the same," I countered. "I was learning that righteousness isn't a mathematical formula; that if I know what is right, and then I do what is right, it doesn't necessarily mean that things will turn out the way I believe is right. When God asks me to stand in a fire, sometimes I'm Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, but just as often, I find that I'm Abinidi-- and that that isn't a bad thing." I leaned forward, warming to the subject. "I learned, and am still learning, that I can't become invested in an outcome," I said earnestly, "because I rarely know until after the fact the true value of a trial; the way it shapes me, changes me, or allows me to be an instrument in someone else's life. None of those things are ever visible from the outside looking in." 

J looked at me patiently, but without comprehension. I struggled to find common ground.

"It's like when we almost lost the house!" I exclaimed. "Remember? We both kept feeling comforted when we prayed about the type of job you were pursuing, but for a long time, that didn't mean that we suddenly had work or our problems were solved. In fact, for a long while, things got worse."

He looked confused. "But I did get work," he said. 

"Yes, eventually, but it could have just as easily gone the other way," I explained. "We could have lost the house and filed for bankruptcy and it wouldn't have meant that we were wrong to feel comforted or to follow those promptings as best we could." 

It was obvious from his expression that he didn't get my point at all. I started to feel a small flutter of panic in my chest that appeared whenever it seemed that J and I weren't speaking the same language. 

"We could've been like my brother C," I tried again. "He and his wife have felt just as many promptings and have been just as comforted, but from the outside, their results have been polar opposite. That doesn't mean that they're less faithful or that--"

"That would never have been us," J cut me off, his expression still and inscrutable. I was silent for a moment, confused at how the force of his words didn't match the calm of his face. 

"It almost was us," I countered hesitantly. 

"No," he dismissed again. "We never really would have lost the house. I would have got a job-- any job-- if losing the house had been a real possibility."

The panic in my chest turned up a notch.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, utterly confused. "It was already a real possibility! We were living off of church and state assistance! We couldn't pay the mortgage! We had drained all available resources, were completely on the brink, and you didn't once waver about looking for a job in your field--"

"We were never even close," he interrupted once more, rewriting history with a wave of his hand. "You keep talking about promptings, assuming your brother is in the position he's in because he was led there, but what about agency? Don't you believe that some bad things happen because people make really bad choices?"

My mind reeled. I couldn't believe he would bring up bad choices in light of how devastating his own choices had been in our life. Was he that oblivious? Was he that incapable of being self-aware? 

"Of course bad things follow bad choices. But my whole point is that bad things also happen to good people, and that only the Lord knows the deeper purpose for suffering. It's impossible for someone on the outside to judge, because we don't see what the Lord sees."

"I'm not being judgmental," he assured. "I'm just saying that we would never make the choices that your brother is making, and I would hope we would never be like your parents and enable those kinds of choices. If it were our child," he continued, "we wouldn't allow him to live with us. We'd tell him to get a job at 7-11 if he had to-- anything but mooch off of another person's resources just because of a stubborn belief that he's been called to something else.

"Promptings can be followed to a point," he concluded, "but when your life starts to look like that, you know you're doing something wrong. You're following your own desires, not the spirit. That's why our life would never look like that. We would never go that far."

I was stunned. I couldn't even think of where to start in dissembling his logic. By his own reasoning, we had been 'enabled' countless times. We'd even lived with his own parents--twice-- while HE pursued an unlikely career. Honestly, 'following his own desires'? Could he not see the hypocrisy in his words? The beam in his own eye? I sat for a moment considering how to respond.

"You know," I attmepted, "to many people, our life and our story wouldn't make any sense either. I remember back when I first found out about the porn and you were adamant that it wasn't a problem-- I was so full of despair. I logged onto a bulletin board for wives and read a post from a woman who had known about her husband's addiction for 10 years; and in those years she'd had 3 kids. I couldn't understand why she did that. Why didn't she leave? Why would she bring children into such an ugly situation?"

J watched me cautiously, not seeming to see where I was going with this.

"I wrote to her. I said, Please don't be offended, but how could you possibly get pregnant by that man? How do you survive?" I shook my head ruefully, "And of course she was offended. But she wrote back and answered, All I can tell you is that I felt prompted to have each one of them." I paused and looked across the table at him searchingly. "If my 21 year old self could see me now, she'd be asking the same questions. She'd see that I stayed, that I had more children, and that you'd still never been sober for longer than a year and she would think that I must not have any self-respect. She would feel horrified, disgusted and trapped, and there wouldn't be any way I could explain to her the spiritual experiences I've had, or the growth I've gone through or the ways I've felt carried after being told again and again to wait and be patient and fear not. All she would see is that I felt prompted to stay but things got worse, not better. And she would feel completely justified in declaring that I had made a mistake; that the spirit couldn't possibly prompt me in such a way without God being a cruel and manipulative God, and I would be unable to dissuade her because some things are just impossible to perceive from the outside looking in. That's why we can't judge anyone else's life or choices." 

I leaned back, satisfied that I'd expressed myself properly, but he just shook his head. "That isn't the same thing. Of course you were prompted to stay in our marriage-- Heavenly Father isn't going to tell you to break up an eternal family. God wants families to stay together, just like He wants fathers to provide a good living. He would never prompt your brother to do something that makes it impossible for him to support his wife and kids, and that's how I know that he's chasing his own dreams, not listening to the spirit." 

"That's not knowing, that's judging," I retorted sharply. "Eternal families, a good living, healthy children-- those are all ideals, but none of them are guaranteed in this life no matter how righteous you are. You can't know what God wants! " I was both alarmed and angry, speaking forcefully now. "You think the Lord never leads people in ways that seem contrary? Then he couldn't possibly have asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac; or told Nephi to murder Laban, but spare Laman and Lemuel despite the fact that they would lead to his people's demise; or allow Joseph Smith to be taken into custody so he could be killed by a mob and leave his children fatherless! In fact, why tell His people to build a temple only to have it burned to the ground? Those prophets must have made a mistake!" I said sarcastically, "They must have been following their own crazy desires because we all know that God would never ask them to do something that didn't lead to a picture perfect outcome!"

"I'm allowed to have an opinion about your brother," J began.  

"You're not being opinionated, you're being judgmental," I snapped. 

"And," he continued, "I don't want to fight with you. I think you're getting all worked up because you feel like I'm attacking your father and the way you were raised, but that's not the case." 

"I'm not fighting," I said stiffly. "But we're talking about fundamental approaches to life--the very basic aspects of faith--and yet we don't agree on any of it! This is important to me." I took a deep breath, then let it out shakily. "These hard things we go through in life; these times we're asked to step into the dark; that's the price we pay to become acquainted with God. It sounds to me that you're saying you have a limit on the price you're willing to pay, and that scares me. I'm afraid that if we were in the same position as my brother, you wouldn't make the same choices."

He nodded, his mouth a hard line. "And I'm afraid that you would."