Here is my talk from Mormon Stories. Obviously, some changes were made during delivery, since I had to stop a few times to make fun of myself for crying the whole way through. I guess you could say I felt the spirit. Or speeeeeerit, if that is how you roll. But this is the jist of it. It is longer than the average fare here, so beware. Also, this might cause my more believing friends some grief. Let my faith journey be mine, and I'll let your faith journey be yours.
There should be some audio version available soon, and I will post it when it is available.
Lastly, you know I wrote out my jokes for my opening. I'm an English teacher, it is what we do.
Mormon
Stories Conference 2012
By Stephanie
Lauritzen
I’ve heard that when you are
nervous about speaking in front of a crowd, you should picture the crowd in
their underwear. I don’t know what kind
of weirdo feels more at ease looking at a bunch of people in their underwear, especially
if you are wearing the Mormon kind. However, I am very nervous, so instead I
will picture you all as the type of people I’m most comfortable around: now you are all my high school Language Arts students.
That means you all have bad hair and acne. If you are sitting next to someone
you might be physically attracted to, please scoot away and pretend like you
hate them. Much better.
A few weeks ago, my students and I
read a short story by Percival Everett called “The Fix.” In the story, a man
named Sherman Olney can fix anything. He starts out with broken refrigerators
and faucets, but eventually, he is faced with bigger problems. Marriage
problems, tax problems, and one night, he solves the ultimate problem: he
raises a woman from the dead.
The end of the story finds Sherman
standing on the Golden Gate Bridge, preparing to jump. He feels overwhelmed
from the demands from everyone to fix their problems. A crowd stands below, begging
him not to jump, screaming “Fix us! Fix us!”
Like the people in the story, I’ve
spent a long time wanting to be fixed. When I was an angsty teenager who loved
poetry, I loved the John Donne poem where the speaker begs God to “batter my
heart” in to submission and faith. Even as a teen, I felt like a bad Mormon. I
balked at seemingly nonsensical rules about earrings and dress length. Since
when did God care about earrings? And knees? In Young Women’s, talk of finding
a man to “preside” over my family made me shudder. I found the rhetoric on
homosexuality disturbing. It didn’t help that my parents raised me as an ardent
Democrat, alienating me from my peers. If I had a dollar for every time a
classmate told me that Democrats liked killing babies…well I’d be really rich,
and since I used to be a full-tithe payer, the church would be too.
Despite feeling different from my
peers, I found myself mimicking them in most religious settings. Like my peers, I’d offer tearful testimonies around
the Youth Conference campfire, promising that I knew the church was true; I
loved my parents, and I believed President Hinckley was a prophet.
I could never admit it, even to
myself, but I think I hoped that if I said it enough, I’d believe it. Fake it
‘til you make it was my subconscious spiritual mantra.
Sometimes I would fantasize about a
cataclysmic event that would give me an instant testimony. Nothing painful or
maiming, just a pissed off angel calling me to repentance, or a near-death
experience that would solidify my faith. I was envious of Alma the Younger. All
he had to do was sleep for three days, and suddenly, his faith crisis is over.
So I would pray to Heavenly Father to help me believe. Help me believe better.
Send an angel. Make this easier. Fix me.
Fix me.
It wasn’t the first or the last
time God didn’t answer my prayer.
As an adult, I sought a new path.
My journey out of traditional Mormonhood started when I took out my endowments
in the LDS temple, a few weeks before marrying my husband. When I promised to
hearken unto my husband as he hearkened unto God, my heart broke inside. After
all the weeks I spent repeating the Young Women values as a teenager, confidently believing in my own divine nature
and individual worth, it all came down to listening to someone else. For
eternity. Suddenly, it would take a lot
more than an angel, or a three day nap, to make me believe enough to accept my
Temple covenants as doctrine.
But it wasn’t until Conference
2010, with the fateful Elder Packer talk, that I was finally ready to leave my
perfect Mormon path. Up until then, I had followed the Mormon blueprint
perfectly. A baptism, Young Women’s medallions, Seminary graduation, followed
by a temple marriage to a returned missionary. Despite feeling broken, I was
willing to try, willing to shelf my unease about the temple and patriarchy if
it meant God would fix me, and make me a perfect Mormon. But Packer’s talk
signified all that was wrong with my faith. I was doing mental gymnastics to make
myself believe. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, when Packer asked “Why would
our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?” He was asking why God would make
someone Gay. We disagreed on the message, but ironically, Packer and I were
asking the same question. “Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?”
Why would Heavenly Father make it so hard for me to be Mormon? Why would he
tell me he loved me, that I was his child, if I need a husband in order to hear
him? Why would he deny me access to a Heavenly Mother? Why would our Heavenly
Father do that to anyone? Like the
people in Percival Everett’s story, I was once again broken and confused,
begging anyone to fix me.
So, I decided that if I couldn’t be
a good Mormon, I’d be an awesome apostate. I broke my spouse’s heart when I told him he
wouldn’t have the happy Mormon family he signed up for. I wrote angry blog
posts criticizing the church. I stopped
praying, and would mentally berate myself when I’d slip up and ask for help
from God. “Stop it, “I’d think. “You don’t believe that anymore.” But it wasn’t
enough that I didn’t believe. Week after
week, I tried to convince my true believing husband to see the error of his
ways and enter the world of shopping on Sunday and R-rated movies.
Despite my anger and bravado, I was
scared. I needed someone to help me be this new person. If I could convince my
husband to leave, it would validate my choices, it would fix me. I wanted my spouse to help me stop believing,
help me apostatize better. Make this easier. Once again, I was asking someone
to fix me. Fix me.
However, Dan had other plans, plans
that did not include leaving the church.
He did, however, want to fix me, but not in the way I wanted. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t look past
the things that bothered me about the church. There is a tendency in the church
to attribute disaffection with a simple offense. That’s why Band-Aid statements
like “The church is perfect but the people are not” exist. Dan thought it was silly that I would leave the
church based on something said by an old man in General Conference. Like many
who are perplexed when an active member decides to leave, he thought I was
simply offended. At the time, he didn’t
realize that the root of my disaffection stemmed from core doctrines of the
church. I felt the negative impact of patriarchy and inequity in my life. For
me, the feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness I felt in the temple and
during Elder Packer’s conference talk wasn’t an issue of an imperfect people,
but a deeply flawed church.
The more I distanced myself from
the church, the more involved Dan became. He was not just an active member, but
a super member. He served in the Elder’s Quorum; he went on campouts in the
middle of winter with the scouts. If there was an old lady who needed help
cleaning up her yard, he was there.
There was no talking him out of the church, even when I replaced my
believer underwear with a much more aesthetically pleasing option. That is a
strong testimony. Much stronger than the faked testimonies of my teenage years.
But the different directions of our lives made me wonder if our marriage had a
chance.
When discussing potential subjects
for this talk with a friend, it was suggested that I talk about the humorous
aspects of living in an apostate/believer marriage. Maybe I will find this
hilarious in a few years, but right now, I don’t see the humor just yet.
But I do see hope. At some point on our never-ending battles on
religion, I realized something very important. I didn’t marry Dan because he
was Mormon. He didn’t marry me because I was a Mormon. We married each other after a long road trip
where we didn’t kill each other. We
liked talking to each other. We had always been opposites in many ways. He
liked Star Trek, playing Ultimate Frisbee, and voting for Republicans. I liked
crappy reality TV, poetry, and voting for awesome people. If I could love a
Trekkie, couldn’t I love a true-believing Mormon? If he could love listening to
my Bachelorette recaps, could he love a questioning non-believer? Partially out
of exhaustion from fighting, and mostly out of devotion, Dan and I decided to
really listen to each other. We stopped trying to convince the other to change.
I learned some important things
when I stopped trying to apostatize my husband.
I learned that his faith went deeper than callings, outings, and service
project. He believes. He believes with his whole heart, and it is an integral
part of who he is. His belief has made
him a kind person. He is a great example of someone who tries his very hardest
to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. He
loves his neighbor, and forgives trespasses against him. Dan wouldn’t be the
same person if he wasn’t Mormon. Dan didn’t need to leave the church to live an
authentic life. He was already living authentically.
But I was not. I wasn’t being
authentic when I was half-heartedly repeating the testimonies of my peers. But
I was also not authentic when I forced myself to stop praying, and refused to
let myself realize that there are some parts of my Mormon heritage I want to
keep. I remember the first time I prayed
to my Heavenly Mother. I was driving to work, and my prayer was uncertain. I
didn’t have any rehearsed lines to fall back on, but I knew I wanted to try.
When I prayed and felt immediately comforted, I wasn’t sure if it was because a
divine presence was answering my prayer, or if I felt peace because I was
finally allowing myself to live the spiritual life I wanted. Maybe it was both.
There are many things I no longer
agree or believe in regards to Mormonism. Likewise there are many things I no
longer believe about myself. I no longer believe I need to be fixed. It is a difficult path, the one between
believer and non-believer. I am constantly re-evaluating the world I live in to
make room for the faith traditions of my past, and the faith journey of my
present. True believers and non-believers may question my devotion to either
cause. But living an authentic life allows me to be a better person, a better
spouse, and a better parent.
Dan and I have found some common
ground. I still don’t like Star Trek, and he still hates reality TV, but we
both want a better world for our new daughter. We both want the church to be a
better place. Dan now understands the pain and negative consequences of some
church doctrine. He has watched me live with consequences of decisions I did
not make, and wants more for our kid. I have seen the good the church does in
helping my husband live the gospel he believes. I want my daughter to love
others like he does. Last Sunday we both
blessed our daughter. I prayed that my daughter would learn empathy and
compassion for others, traits I see in her Dad every day. Dan prayed that our
daughter would have wisdom and a discerning mind, traits he is learning to see
in me as I question and re-evaluate my faith. Neither of us prayed for our
daughter to be fixed. Like me, and like Dan, she was never broken to begin
with.
If there is a Heavenly family, who
loves us, I say this in their name. I also say this in the name of my new
authentic family. In the name of Stephanie, Dan, and Clara Alice Lauritzen,
Amen.
