Transcript: Episode 40
40. Molly’s God
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
We have gotten several emails on the website about our faith tradition and how insiders work together for practicing any kind of faith tradition and not practicing any kind of faith tradition. So, I wanted to talk about that today. This is not a preaching kind of podcast. There’s nothing in it about trying to convert anyone. It’s just an expression of what our faith tradition means to us and how we came to work together on that. So, if it’s not something you want to listen to, definitely skip this episode. But, you’re welcome to listen just for our perspective and what that has meant to us and what’s been good about it and what’s been hard about it.
Just like anything else with DID, it’s sometimes hard to put the pieces together. I went through four years of postdoctoral residency for chaplaincy training and had to do a lot of this work - at least enough to tell my story. And I had a lot of help from my supervisors trying to put these pieces together. And we talked a lot about why that might be difficult and some different pieces to it. But, I know that’s something we’ll talk about in therapy as we continue and I will understand more then as well.
But because of having done that work so far, there is a general outline, or at least a narrative, that I’m able to put together and can tell you a little bit about our history.
I have, for whatever reason, I don’t know exactly how DID works, I’m still learning...but for whatever reason, it’s easier for me to access some of the more recent history than some of the history from when we were little. But there are some things that I know about from when we were little. I know that we were a military family and that we traveled a lot.
Both of my parents have family in the area near where we live now. So, we often came back to this area, but we also lived in different countries and different states and traveled and moved quite a bit fairly often.
I know that my mother did not attend church and would not attend church. Her family when she was growing up, did not attend church. I know this only from conversations with her before she died and things that we found in her house when she died. So one of the things that I found out about later, after she died, that I talked to my aunt, her sister who’s still alive, but we rarely, almost never have contact with...but she came to our wedding - well to the reception after the wedding. And one of the things that I learned is that while they did not attend church, they did attend Rainbow Girls, because they’re father was a mason and had attended the Masonic lodge. And so rather than going to youth group at a church, they went to Rainbow Girls at the Masonic lodge.
My father’s family did attend church and I know this from talking to another aunt who was my father’s sister. Also someone that I do not have contact with very often and she did not attend our wedding. So I have not gotten to discuss it further, other than a few conversations when our grandfather was dying a couple years ago. What I learned then was that they always attended rural churches, small churches, where my grandfather on my father’s side, was a music minister. And so my father did the same thing as what he experienced growing up, which was to attend small, rural churches where he was the music minister.
That’s actually the only job that he ever kept that I’m aware of. My mother had to work full time often as a librarian. She worked for the VA. Our military experience was a little different, because we often traveled for her work and she used her job to transfer from VA to VA and that is how we were able to move around so much growing up. Which is a different story which was sometimes good and sometimes not good.
But my father did not have a day job other than he was a music minister in small, rural churches in the country usually. We almost always lived out in the country. He was also in the Airforce ,but he was not an active serviceman and he was also in the Airforce. But by the time that we were born, he was not on active duty and so he did travel to some sort of training and several weekends a month. I know this from my aunt and also there have been some things I found that we have written about in the past from experiences on the base.
We lived on base several different times and when we lived on the base there was a generic service of church on the base that was just Christian oriented in general and in which the father then led the music for that service as well. When we did not live on base, our father was a music minister in small, country churches that were usually Southern Baptist churches. And specifically in the area where their family lived, where we often returned to live as well, he could continue ministering at the same small church in the country, even though we lived in different places.
The longest we lived in any one place was on a farm, near the grandparents, which is one place we talk about sometimes. But there were other places we lived as well and also were at times in foster care. So when we were in foster care, we attended church with the family that we were staying with. Through that, we had many different exposures to many different kinds of churches. Most of these were mainline Christian churches, such as Presbityrian or Catholic or Nondenominational Christian of some sort.
But when the father took us to church with him, it was almost always a small Southern Baptist church, specifically the same one I’m pretty sure, but I don’t know for sure in the country, that was sort of in the middle between several different places we lived when we were young.
Besides this, there was also a campground where different churches go to during the summer. And the campground was just down the street and around the corner, off the main road where our farm was. And so we spent a lot of time at this camp ground as well and both during summers, when other churches were there as well as off season where sometimes my father was paid to help keep the grounds. The back of the campgrounds backed up into the woods that were behind a land, past the grandparents house, who were sort of in the backyard of our house where we lived on the farm.
So, the woods between our house and the grandparent’s house and the campgrounds all sort of were in the same area and the campgrounds had cabins and a pavilion for church meetings and a kitchen and cafeteria - not a cafeteria like a nice one, but church camp in the summer kind of cafeteria where the big room, with the kitchen in the back. And the different cabins where the different youth groups stay.
So we spent a lot of time on that land and a lot of time in the woods and a lot of time on the farm. So for us growing up, we very much enjoyed being outside and really feel that being outside and in nature was as much of our worship experience, if you want to call it that, as anything attending church.
There were also things that were not good that happened, because of the people we lived with or were with or our father and his friends. So, I don’t at all mean to say it was all positive. And again, I know some of this is very triggering. So, please be careful as you listen and I’m trying to be careful what I share.
But because of the grandfather and our father and the man who owned the campground and our father’s brother and the sheriff, who worked with the grandfather who was a bail bondsman and sometimes a deputy, there were these five men that were very much sort of centered in controlling our life and what happened through our church experiences. I don’t want to talk about that more right now, but I know that those were the five men that were involved. And I know that sometimes when things went wrong or abuse happened, that sometimes there were problems with it being reported because of their involvement in law enforcement in that area.
Also, I want to be really clear that we ourselves have a differentiation between what people did in the name of religion or in the organization of religion or in the context of church settings that what according to what we learned in the Collin Ross and the Warwick Middleton podcast’s...those interviews taught us that that is called Organizational Abuse when those things happen in those settings, because a church is an organization. So, I want to be very clear that we differentiate between those experiences that were negative or traumatic or even abusive in some ways that I know I’m not even aware of, but have some information about a little bit that we know. That I know and understand that that was not God’s fault or that God wanted that to happen or that my own spirituality is very separate and distinct from what they did in the name of religion or games that they played to practice other things. There’s a separation for me between what people do and say and who I believe God to be or who I believe me to be. And I think that’s really important, because a violation of who God is or who you are is a very deep and traumatic violation that is deeply unfair. And the injustice and the pain and the trauma of that deserves to be on the ones who did that, not pinned on God or pinned on you. And I think there’s room in the justice of God for that.
So, that was the setting of any kind of church or religious experience growing up as far as the physical story of it. The Husband and I did drive, one time, to see the house and the farm and the campground, which is still there and an active place. Different people own it now and I know that many people go to church camps or other places like that and have very good and healing experiences. So again, I don’t want to blame even the setting on what people did that were wrong there, because it’s what they did wrong. It’s not the campground.
And we were also very much on our own at times - neglected maybe, but also just being young and being outside and playing and so even though there are some bad things that happened in some of those places, it’s also a very sacred ground to us to be outside and to have those kinds of experiences and it’s very important and special and healing when you can have the opportunity to do that. We never had an opportunity to return to a place like that and get to experience it, but I don’t want to take away from the experiences of the others, while also not minimizing what we ourselves and others have been through that were not good. Because I know that those can be really special and powerful places that when used well and with good and safe people can offer many good and healing and restorative experiences that are important in the development of many people - not just in their faith, but socially and mentally and in the depths of themselves as well.
So that was the setting of my early years and any exposure into church settings as well as any experience through foster care. But as I said, my mother did not attend church. She also kept my brother home. She did not like him to be around those five men or to attend church with our father.
When we went to church with the father, we went alone, with just us and him, not our brother and not our mother. So that gave me another experience, very much like the woods that we grew up in, of being on my own because he would be leading music or having meetings and we could wander around. And again, even though there were some things that happened in those experiences that were not good, which I am learning about now and don’t want to talk about today. But also at the same time, those moments in quiet, sacred places were very good for me and offered me some safety as we endured those things.
This is an example of why it can be so very hard for other survivors who have been through Organizational Abuse or anything that tries to mimic that or use those same patterns for other things, because in my faith understanding, we are very much as spiritual beings as we are physical beings. And so the violation of that and who you are, not just physically, but also spiritually, it’s really a terrible thing. But it doesn’t take away the fact that we are spiritual beings and care for and known and loved.
Through these experiences, we also had many encounters that I don’t know if you would call dreams or hallucinations or the reality of it. I’m not sure, but different encounters that felt very angelic. And I don’t know if that was DID or if that was just real for what it’s worth in a way that we can’t understand in a temporal setting, such as everyday life, or if that’s just really how bad things got and we imagined it or if it was real because things were that bad. I don’t know, but they were sacred moments and there are more experiences about that that we could share another time.
I know that our parents were divorced when we were in fifth grade. That is also a different story, but it means that after that we were no longer allowed to attend church. So there were many years from fifth grade through high-school, that we were not allowed to attend church and didn’t participate in any spiritual activities. This is again why moments outside or playing on our own in nature or having alone time is very important to us, because those were the only ways we were able to connect with God during those years.
We did visit our father for visitation weekends for only one or two years and around the time we were 13 or 14, that stopped and we never saw our father again until right before he died. So when we saw him on visitation, we were still taken to the same churches as when we were young, because he had moved back to where his family lived.
When we were 16, our brother who was also in high-school at the time, was struggling with bullying in school. There were other issues going on and mental health problems and when he was inpatient in a hospital for a while, they recommended a smaller, private school rather than the larger high-school. So for our Junior and Senior year, we attended a private, Christian school in town near where we had lived when we were young. This was a Nondenominational school and so had things that we were familiar with in some ways - such as the Bible and praying. And we learned many new songs that were different than the old hymns we had heard growing up.
However, it was a private school and so to pay for our school, we had to work and tutor the younger children there. We have a letter that I think the therapist has right now from that school about how we had to work and to pay our tuition ourselves. So we worked during school and after school and also served the lunch at the school and cleaned up the lunch and the cafeteria after the other students had lunch in order to pay for our tuition and to pay for the brother’s tuition.
We were graduated and in college for three years before we were able to pay it all off and actually receive our diploma. Because we ran away from home when we were 17, we were living as a nanny, we had had foster care come in again. But this time, they told us that we were too old to come into state custody and it would be better if we just left. This was a very hard time for other reasons that we can talk about at another time.
But because the school was associated with the church, there were families at the church who helped pay for our lunches and pay for...because we were not getting to eat… and pay for our uniforms so that we have clothes to wear to school and who let us stay in their homes until we found a place to be. Ultimately we began to nanny so that we would have a place to live in exchange for food and housing until we could go to college. So we were emancipated so that we could get financial aid for college, because we proved that we had a place to live and could provide for ourselves.
And instead of going to one of the schools of choice that we had hoped to attend, I know that we were sent to a small Christian college because that’s where everyone from that church had themselves attended college. So, that college was a Nondenominational school and where we attended for several years. It was during this time that we received our diagnosis and were sent to our first therapist.
She did not feel that the school was entirely a safe place for us and referred us to other therapists and moved us into her home to keep us safe from other things that were happening at the time and contact with our family and some of those five men that were not safe. So again, that piece is a whole different story. But that exposed us more to Catholicism because she was Catholic. Something I appreciated about the Catholic tradition, was hearing the ancient stories about the many people who made such sacrifices to preserve the scripture and to bring change to the world in good ways that we would not have access to some of these teachings or scriptures if they had not done what they did. That’s still one of my favorite things about the Catholic tradition.
I know that in the news all the time now, it seems like there are things about organizational abuse with the Catholic church and so I know that’s a sensitive topic. But what I’m sharing is that from my experience, that was something I appreciated, because we very much enjoyed reading ancient writings and ancient stories and so many of them are survivor stories in their own right. And so I very much appreciated that. Also, it’s another example of a paradox, because the Catholic Mass is very much a ritual in its own rite. It is a rite in a r.i.t.e kind of way and so there was something about the experience of attending Mass with her that was both triggering and also familiar. And so again, there was that double-layer of what was happening at the same time where there were some things that were comforting and helpful and that we learned from that experience, but other things that were very triggering and very difficult for us.
When we returned to school and went to graduate school at a different place, part of our studies there required us to attend different services. Through this and through some of the travels where we lived in different places around the world, we were exposed to everything form Islam to Judiasm and Hindi friends and holidays and difficult cultural experiences where we gained a respect for the different pieces of truth these different religions had and what is important to them and what is good to them. I do agree, as many of you have endured in your own stories, that any of these taken out of context or misapplied with people making bad choices in the name of the religions are all dangerous and violating and it’s not good. But in the purest form, with good people who practice their faith well, these are really beautiful experiences and taught us many truths and many things about peace and hope and comfort and even love that we would not have learned otherwise.
As an adult we did not attend church on our own, but after a series of two or three relationships with alcoholics and realizing that there was a pattern and that we needed to fix that pattern, our spirituality was one of the things that we turned to. As we’ve shared in other podcasts, it was difficult to find someone to help us with the DID and to know how to find help with that or when we could ask for help with that and so I think our return to religion was both an act of faith as well as that same paradox with a bit of masochism in that it was putting us into the situation to face some hard things that were very difficult, but important to work through.
So one of the things that we did was attend different churches during that time. We had come out of years of grad school and postdoc residency and heavy liturgical study of ancient Christian traditions and Judaism and so I think that there were some inside especially who needed to balance that after those intense years of study. And so we sort of went the opposite direction as we explored churches. We tried a Unity church, a Unitarian church in part because she had been dating women at the time and felt more accepted there, except that they would not accept handicap people and while any deaf person will tell you that deafness is not a handicap - it’s a language and a culture. That’s the deaf-culture perspective on it. We still needed...at the time...it was before we had cochlear implants and we were absolutely reliant 100% on sign language interpreters and they would not provide them. So, we stopped going to that church.
As we worked out our relationships and became single and committed to several years of being single so that we could separate what were our issues and what were the issues of other people, which I think maybe is one of the greatest acts of faith we’ve ever done, was to commit to those years of just being single and on our own so that we could seek some healing and build some boundaries and learn ourselves better. During that time, it was very, very good for us. And during those years, we attended some churches where everything was more bold. There was coffee in the lobby and the music was loud and everything was active and everything was about social justice or doing good in the community and these things were good and there were good people there. And those were positive experiences, but our problem became that when the music is so loud that we cannot hear our own spirits then that for us, makes worship difficult. And I also believe that there is a fine line between needing worship and emotional manipulations. Not that these were bad people trying to do bad things, but there was an authenticity level there that I was very sensitive to and not comfortable with. And so we stopped attending those churches.
After some time of exploring several different churches, we did end up in a faith tradition that was far more conservative than we ever expected to appreciate. When I say conservative, I mean by lifestyle rules, such as we cannot drink any alcohol, for example. We have committed to that. So while there are some rules, we don’t see them as oppressive rules put upon us. We see them as covenants that we have made where we are offering this say, Cassi not drinking wine or alcohol for example, is a sacrifice for her. And she’s doing it as an act of faith in attempt to be more present and to make better choices. And so in response to that act of faith, there are blessings that God gives and strength in ways that he helps that we could not do on our own. So we see it as a relational covenant about...not just having a personal relationship with God, but an interactional relationship with God. Which for us seem to be something that was really important after the things that we have been through while growing up.
In addition, we don’t see those things as oppression put upon us in a being too restrictive kind of way, but in a boundaries we have set for ourself kind of way. And we are much healthier and happier because of those boundaries and because of keeping those covenants, which has at times been very difficult and absolutely has caused us to learn to work together in other ways. So in those ways, it’s been really good for us. We also like our particular faith tradition now because it is very much about social justice and helping others in the world and our own communities and our own neighbors and focused in service in that way, which is something we thought was important to us.
The other thing that was significant for me in particular is that we had for many years explored feminist spirituality and the role of women...not just in churches, but in faith development and even in an expression of God. And if you read some feminist theology, you will even see the holy spirit referred to as female or as God as a she or things like that. And one thing about our church that we have landed in now is that they actively teach that. It sounds so bold to say it so directly and even though we understand like Judaism, there is one God and those sort of ideas of God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit and how they work together in purpose. At the same time, we believe those are distinct beings. For example, when Jesus was baptized and you heard the Heavenly Father’s voice or when he died and you heard Heavenly Father’s voice, those are separate things happening. So there’s more than one there and if that’s also true, then having a Father in Heaven also implies a Mother in Heaven.
And so even though that’s an entire doctrine that I’m expressing in less than 30 seconds or describing in a very brief way. For us it resonated as something we had already known was true and so I was so excited to embrace that in a way that was formalized when so many churches will sort of push that away and push that down and it is only a male God and it is only a male expression of God. And so it was a way that we could keep healthy boundaries, be safe in our worship experience, not feel manipulated, and then also had this whole experience with the feminine God. And so that was very important to us.
And then finally, our particular faith tradition is not at all about what other people say is true, it is specifically and explicitly about you go pray for yourself and you find out what is true and you have that confirmed to you - not here’s what we think is right and you should believe this way. And especially because of the things that we’ve been through, that was really important to us.
So that’s sort of the history of our faith journey and how we got to where we are and where we are now. The other part of that question was how we work together. There are many systems with DID where this is a really difficult issue. I know that there are some where different ones have different religions and that’s their story. And they could talk about that. There are for us the same thing in different ways, but it’s sort of like anything else, where the different people inside, I think they are more attached to...I’m really new to learning this so I hope that I’m understanding. But from what my experience has been, their perspective is more attached to an experience in time rather than a declaration of who or what they are religiously. So what I mean by that is that we have littles who are still stuck back in time who know more than I do about those little country churches or about the campgrounds or about the woods. We have others who were more dominant, I guess for a lack of better words, when we were at that Christian school teaching and tutoring little children to pay for our tuition. There were others who were out more when we were at the Christian school or in grad school or living out in the country and didn’t know about it.
As we become more aware of each other and communicating more, there’s definitely negotiation that happens with religion and our faith tradition as much as with anything else. Sometimes church is a trigger for us and we’re just not able to do it. We try to attend church and it’s important to us to go when we can, but when it’s too much or too difficult, I don’t think it’s fair or helpful to force anyone to go. So when our family, with the children and the husband, arrives at church, the husband always gives us the keys and if we’re uncomfortable at any time, we go sit in the van and read a book.
More recently, Emma is starting to connect with some of the ladies at church - just a few. It can be really overwhelming, even for me. I would much rather have a very private faith experience and be on my own than be connected with the community. In our particular church since we moved here is a very active group. They have book clubs and they go for brunch and they have girls night outs and all these different things. We don’t participate in any of that. There is not one of us that is that extroverted that wants to participate in all of those activities.
But there are one or two women from our church that Emma is trying to be friends with and they both also know sign language - one is the wife of an interpreter and one also has cochlear implants and is deaf like us. So they have a lot in common and we have children the same age. So it’s an opportunity for her to learn to make friends. But again, that’s very difficult for us and we don’t have many friends and are not necessarily interested in trying that hard when other things are already hard. Therapy is pretty intense right now and so those friendships we are taking very slowly, because it’s just a lot of work and takes a lot out of us. And even when the connection is very good, it’s very difficult and very draining.
Other issues are difficult to negotiate in other ways. Like there are one or two absolutely rather have alcohol still from time to time. However, at the same time, it’s not just about church. We don’t not drink alcohol because our church says so. We don’t drink alcohol because we promised not to. And part of that is seeing the difference in our life since we stopped. So for us, no alcohol is just better and we’re in the place of recognizing that, even if we’re not finished with therapy for DID or have different people who have different preferences. Some never preferred that. Some never had that so it’s not a big deal. Others did have that, would prefer it, but know that we’re better off without and so they don’t even when it’s hard. I don’t know what our faith development will look like as we continue to heal. This is just where we’re at right now. As we continue to work through therapy and work through different issues, I know that spirituality and our understanding of God and our expression of our faith will absolutely be one of the areas that’s a challenge and that we will have to continue to renegotiate. I don’t think it’s something that’s ever settled other than we have chosen to preserve it.
That’s something that’s been very conscious for us and something very deliberate for us and something that’s like what I said earlier where it is about an interactional relationship, not just a personal one but an interactional and active covenant based relationship. Because we are in this together and receive that help in the same way that we offer our acts of faith even if that’s just still trying to figure it out.
So with any other area, we continue to negotiate that and we’ll figure things out as we go in therapy. I think like other areas, even parenting for example, we are very good at knowing what we don’t want, but struggle to learn what does feel safe and what we are comfortable with and how to connect to those things and those people. That’s where the challenge is for us, I think.
Finally, it’s interesting that this question came when it did, because I do have to speak for a women’s conference of our church tomorrow. So, I would like to share what I’m going to say, just so that you can experience that with me and that perspective of what I have to share and how I say it, because this time it’s a big deal. They often ask me to speak about deep subjects or deep doctrine or untangle things, because they know that I know Hebrew and that we are very good at speaking. That does not mean that we enjoy speaking. Speaking actually brings on a lot of anxiety and we get hives every time we speak - really bad hives all over. So, it’s very unpleasant, but it’s something we do for work and so now happens a lot for church as well.
But here’s what I’m going to share with my church tomorrow where I for the first time disclose that I was abused when I was young. I don’t go into details and it’s not one I’m going to put up on a blog or print out where everyone can see it like other things we’ve shared, because that doesn’t feel safe. But I do feel okay sharing my talk with you and sharing my talk on Saturday, because I think it is something that all organizations need to talk about and address. And it also feels congruent in some way - like a new layer of being able to be present and aware. And as I’ve helped with the little’s inside more and learning a tiny bit of their story and what they’ve gone through, even though some of it I’m kind of guessing, because I don’t entirely know yet, but just being around them and trying to help and observing different things. There are some things that I’m guessing and there’s some things that I know and it breaks my heart, but if that’s part of our story, our story as a whole, then it’s time that we say it out loud. And it’s time that we speak that truth and honor it in some way.
So, I don’t focus on it at this talk and I don’t go into details or any depth at all. But I do acknowledge it, because it seems very important to me to do that now that I understand and I don’t know how I could not. So, let me share with you what I’m going to say at this conference tomorrow. Here’s what I’m going to say.
I recently shared at a conference that so many bad things happened during our first year of marriage that my first anniversary gift from my husband was a book about Job from the Old Testament. It really was that bad. My husband was caught in Hurricane Sandy a month after we were married and then laid off at Christmas time, because of storm damage. We had a late-term miscarriage and then another and then another. We found out the miscarriages were because I had cancer. Then my father died of cancer. And then my mother was killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the funeral.
It felt like Job’s story where all we held dear was destroyed just when we were supposed to be creating our new life together. And all of these things were complicated by what came before and after it. I grew up in an abusive home with domestic violence between parents and divorced as I was starting middle school. It was a hard life then and a tough time in my identity development with all kinds of lessons mixed up and given to me backwards. “Don’t tell secrets.” “Don’t ask for help.” “Don’t trust anyone.”
So when I met the missionaries as an adult and when they told me they knew how I could be with my family forever, I did not want any part of that. I had worked hard to dissociate myself from what I had endured as a child and I had not been in contact with my family for over a decade. I wanted nothing to do with any kind of gathering and absolutely did not want to be with my family forever. But what got my attention was their definition of God and the idea that I had heavenly parents - plural. Because I knew that I already had the parents from hell. But when I heard someone outside my own self say that having a Heavenly Father implies having a Heavenly Mother also, that I knew what they were saying was true and a more complete picture than anyone else had ever painted for me.
It answered years of my questions about who God was and what my relationship with God had been was now and could be. And what I learned from studying the scriptures was that abuse and hostility, unkindness and cruelty, wars and contentions, and false traditions get passed on and on and on and I wanted it to stop. I began doing my family history - not just learning names or finding dates, but discovering people, good people in my own family who had done good things. Good people in my own family who were still good even though their lives had been hard. Good people in my own family who are faithful to the truth’s they knew even when they didn’t have the whole story yet. And then something happened.
I realized there were other people working on the same ancestors. I had relatives, however distant, who had done good despite all odds, who had also found their way into the church. I contacted them and one of them wrote me back. I cannot describe to you the tears that I cried that day. To have found something good in my family or the healing that it brought to my spirit or the power that seemed to come to me in a way I never had before. I drove all the way to Albuquerque overnight to meet her and to Masa the next day. And for the first time in my life I was not alone. And for the first time I wondered and thought maybe that part of my family struggled so much was because they didn’t know. So I started praying for them and writing to them and testifying to them and I have no doubt how annoying I was.
But this mattered. For the first time, I had hope, not just for me but for my family. Maybe I could even have a family. It was tricksy and unpleasant, this hard work on morality. My father did not want to see me. My mother did want to see me, but the baggage was heavy. Keeping my covenants gave me strength to also keep good boundaries and protect myself emotionally. But very carefully over that first year, I began to reconnect with my family in some ways.
It didn’t solve everything. There was no time for my father to learn how to be a father before he died, but the atonement brought us back to zero just in time and that was something. His shadows no longer had control of me. My mother and I still had lots to work out and I had to do it as a safe and healthy adult, but I was able to care for her during difficult years and really, to be honest, her getting dementia and me getting baptized both did a lot to improve our relationship.These were sacred moments that could not undo the consequences of the past, but did absolutely redefine our future and empowered me to create one in the context of a family when I never had imagined it would be something I even wanted.
I met my husband because my supervisor told me about his cousin in New York. We exchanged letters for several months before he came to town to visit his parents. We spent all day together for a whole week. Got engaged at the end of the week and then he flew home. We continued writing and then I flew to New York. While we visited for another week and then I flew back home. We got married six months after starting our letters and having only spent two weeks together in the same time zone. I share this piece not because it was a big deal to get married after only seeing a person for ten days or knowing them for less than half a year, but I share this piece because what it taught us was how to listen to the spirit. It built in us habits of prayer and scripture study on our own and together as a couple, no matter where we were or what was happening in our lives. It taught us how to budget, manage our time, and prepare for future plans. It taught us how to build our relationship outside the warm fuzzies of new dating. It taught us how to stay connected spiritually and emotionally and mentally, even when we were physically and geographically separated. And all of those things prepared us for what happened after we got married.
So yes, the deaths of both my parents right as we got married was hard and the miscarriages were worse and finding out your miscarriages are because of cancer. So now not only can you not have children, but also you have to start chemo. That was pretty rough. But all of these things we were already prepared for it. I don’t mean it was easy or that we were glad of it or that we wanted any of those hard things to happen, but we were absolutely prepared, because we had already been obedient and already had done the hard work of being prepared and we were okay in the middle of crisis. We didn’t invite it. It wasn’t fun. None of it was easy, but we were okay. It was like being in the eye of a storm with so much happening around us, but in the middle of it all, we clung to each other and to our covenants and to the promises given us and we were okay. We were in this together and I’m also glad it was him that I married, not just that I was married, but that I was married to him. This kind and gentle soul who didn’t let go no matter what happened to us, who worked as hard as I did and tried as hard as I did just to keep moving forward in faith. I was not alone.
After that, we never got a chance to be alone again because children. We began fostering before we had the miscarriages and we fostered more than 85 children - talk about tornadoes. That was a whole different kind of hard. Fostering was absolutely the hardest thing I had ever done in my entire life, hands down. It was also amazing working with families, helping them heal in the same ways I had been healed, even when that meant more grief when children went back home. But not all of them did. Six of them could not go home and those were the six who stayed. We have triplet 10 year olds now, one who’s deaf, one who has autism, and one who has cerebral palsy. We have twin six year olds, one who has fetal alcohol syndrome and one who has reactive attachment and the youngest was born without an airway, which is obviously a problem.
She had a twin, whom I held while she died. And our daughter was not expected to survive that first day, but she did. She did and so they put her on hospice, because she wouldn’t survive the month, except she did and then she did again. Surgery after surgery, growing up in hospitals, she survived one day at a time. And so did our family who endured months apart because of lifeflight helicopters and ambulance rides and hospital stays. For three years we were almost not in the same state together as when we had first dated. One of us was always in the hospital with her and one of us was always home with the children.
We spent our first year of marriage grieving and the next three years of marriage a thousand miles apart just as we had begun. It nearly destroyed us financially using up every resource, even until we literally sold our house to pay off her medical bills. Moving all eight of us into an 800 square foot house rented next to the hospital just so we could be together. And we lived off food storage for a few years - those were hard years, except somehow we were okay.
When she was finally released from the hospital on palliative care with her G-Tube and oxygen as accessories - that’s when we came crawling to Zion, moving here to be near the hospital and have what all our children needed for their variety of special needs and finally all of us in one place and then we collapsed. We had been used up in every way - emotionally and mentally and physically. We had had enough. We had been driven through the wilderness literally in circles, like the Israelites stripped of everything we thought kept us safe and comfortable and close. But we had never been left alone.
In Hebrew, the word for enough is dayenu. It’s used in a song during the Jewish Passover where the phrase is sung over and over as the miracles of God are recounted. It would have been enough if he had brought us out of Egypt. It would have been enough if he executed justice upon the Egyptians. Verse and verse, over and over, it would have been enough through the retelling of the passover story. It means it would have been enough if God had only done this. It implies that also he did this. In effort to recount not just our history, but the purpose and meaning behind all we have endured, it reminds us we have never been left alone or abandoned and that all our trials and hardships have been for a purpose beyond what we understood in the moment.
Those first five versus are the miracles of being delivered from slavery. The second five verses are about the miracle of while being delivered into the wilderness. It would have been enough if he had split the sea for us. It would have been enough if he would let us through on dry land. The third five verses are about the miracles of how wandering through the wilderness brought them into the presence of God. It would have been enough if he had given us Shabbat. It would have been enough if he had led us to Mount Sinai. It would have been enough if he had given us the Torah. It would have been enough if he had brought us to the land of Israel. It would have been enough if he had build the temple for us. Each verse layers on the one before it, declaring the works of God for his people and helping us remember how much he has done for us.
It is a song that changes our focus from how bad and how hard things were in the past to the awe and wonder to how God brought us through them. And a song that changes our perspective from how dark and dreary the wilderness is to the miracles of provision and protection while we wandered through it. And a song that helps us look beyond the oppression we endured and the opposition we have faced and the seas we have crossed and the circles we have wondered. To see how the journey through mortality brought us into the presence of our God which makes all of it worth it. Which means there is no shame in wondering. It is a song that implies not only it would have been enough if only he did this, but also he did this too.
What’s important about the dayenu is the recognizing the graced offered in it would have been enough. And the tender mercy of but he also. It isn’t just the recounting of the story so much as connecting how one thing led to another. It’s not a retelling of all that was bad or hard so much as testifying of what God did to get you through it. It is not murmuring or complaining or whining, but recognizing and discerning and acknowledging that every day miracles that surround us. It is a song about how it would have been enough for him to restore the priesthood and temples in our day, but he restored me too. It would have been enough for him to send the missionaries, but he also sent me family and a husband and children. It would have been enough for him to give me this family, but he also sent me strength and comfort and hope.
You and I, we sing the same song about how it would have been enough. And my story isn’t any harder than yours, it’s just different. And the story of the kinds of things we endure in our day is different than the kinds of things the early saints endured, but our knowledge is the same and we are women with the same hearts of conviction. And it is with the same faith and determination that we walk our own individual journey through mortality, creating our own safe havens and temple spaces and cities, even families of Zion. It is grace given by God as power to receive strength and assistance, do good works, care for others in ways we never could on our own.
When people read the verse about God showing people their weakness, a lot of times they automatically add a plural so that God is showing us our weaknesses, but that’s not what it says. It’s not plural like a bunch of nouns, like a list of all we are doing wrong, it’s just weakness. Of course we feel like we’ve had enough, because we are mortals on a journey in the footsteps of a divine savior who is learning to be like our Heavenly Father. We aren’t there yet and that’s okay.
Of course we feel like we’ve had enough. We can’t do it on our own and he already knows that. That’s the whole reason we have a savior. Heavenly Father presented us a plan by which he calls us by the name that tells us where we come from and who we are and who he has called us to be. We know that we are enough and so we declare that honestly. I am not that yet. I am only this. That is not my name, but he knows that too. But he already knows that too, because he knows and loves us perfectly and that’s why he already offered the atonement, which we so gratefully receive, even claiming for ourselves and by doing so, we are welcomed into his presence and embraced by the father of all prodigals. And it is there on that same holy ground that we are empowered to do more than we have ever done before - acting in his name through his work, having been promised all blessings that make the impossible possible.
I testify that this is the plan of happiness. It’s not the plan of easy or the plan of comfort. It’s the plan of happiness and I testify that even when life is hard, there is joy for us now, not just later. I testify that we are children of Heavenly parents who love us deeply and know us intimately. I testify that our savior lives and advocates for us, even cheers us on. I testify that the spirit offers not only connection but also comfort. I testify that you are known and remembered and loved, even surrounded by angels on our left and on our right, bearing us up, protecting us, and helping us accomplish all that is asked.
I promise you that you are enough because the provision of protection he offers us will be enough and helping us accomplish all that has been asked. Together we are enough.
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