Considering Temple Ordinances when You're the Child of the Incarcerated
My father was a deeply flawed human being, whose lifetime of behavior was deeply influenced by three things:
- He believed he had been wronged or failed by every person in authority in his life
- He believed he was accountable to no one
- He couldn't handle any loss of control
These are based on what I heard him say about himself, what I've learned about him from people who knew him, and what I saw in him for myself as his daughter.
I don't know the full extent of what my father's criminal history was like. I know it went on for years through addiction, domestic violence, and a general vindictiveness that at times that overtook his rational behavior. Cops came and went powerlessly through my life. My father was what they called "Teflon." They could never make any charges stick to him, could never get a conviction.
For whatever reason, where I'm from, being a serial abuser, an addict, and incarcerated wasn't enough to terminate his custody. My mother tried numerous times. Every time she tried, she opened herself instead to scrutiny about whether she was a fit mother.
His self destruction continued to tear through my family's private life until we each put an end to it through forced separation. At 15 years old, the first and only time he was ever incarcerated, I told my father to stay out of my life. It was a request he never fully respected.
Because I'm from a small town, I lived in constant fear of running into him. This happened several times throughout my life, most commonly at the library. But I believed, rightly or not, that he stalked me without my knowledge throughout my life. He showed up uninvited to my high school graduation and caused a scene. He took a day that was about me, and made it about himself and his needs. It was the pattern I had come to expect after eighteen years.
I attended college at BYU primarily because I wanted to put as much distance between myself, my father, and the community in which I was raised, as my money could buy. I was home for the summer from BYU after my freshman year. He was homeless, living in a van behind the church my grandmother attended. He had already ruined his ability to stay with her because he kept bringing drugs into her apartment.
I was at work on the other side of the state. My mother showed up and told me that my father was dead. She kept looking at me expectantly, waiting for my reaction. I truly didn't have one. What was I supposed to feel? In a lot of ways, in relation to my father, I'm still sitting in that moment, trying to figure out what my reaction should be to his life, and its place within the context of my own.
I don't love him. I don't even like him. After years of trying to force myself to feel differently out of guilt, I managed to achieve a kind of indifference towards him. To me, he's a stranger. Someone I don't know anymore, and I have no desire to know.
When the Ties that Bind Aren't Blessed
The reason I bring all of this up is because this history is a strange backdrop that, seemingly by design, never really leaves me in my worship as an active, practicing Mormon.
His death was on the front page of the newspaper in my hometown, made headlines across the state. In all the stories I every saw, except his actual obituary, my relationship to him was never mentioned. But it didn't matter. The church rumor mill had already gotten a hold of it. All I wanted was to be left alone. People I went to church with were all so sorry. Really sorry. Didn't I want to know how sorry they were?
This bothered me, but I could have put up with it. Yes, thank you. Your concern and sympathy are duly noted. (Please stop.) Thank you. (why am I thanking them?) Yes, it was sad. (I feel like I'm handing out participation trophies at the sympathy awards.)
But then they started bearing testimony. They didn't know my family, but they sure as hell thought they had my family and God's plan for it all figured out. They knew there was no pain like losing a parent (that's not why I'm hurting) and that families would be forever (God, if you're listening, I'd like to negotiate my contract) and I would see him again.
Do you want to see him? Would you be saying this of he had killed someone else? Why do you think I want to see him, then?
"He will always be your father." (Jesus, come get your people. I'm about to use my hands instead of my words.)
Getting through my father's temple ordinances, especially as we progress through the check boxes, is getting harder. He's overdue to be sealed to his parents, which then puts him into final position to be sealed to me. And I am not okay.
I get through life in a "family-oriented" faith by pretending my father doesn't exist. When we say families are forever, I hear indistinct buzzing noises. When tuning it out doesn't work, I just think to myself "that doesn't apply to me yet."
This is a huge part of why I'm a temple worker at a young age. Because God needs me to want something that is completely incompatible with my own desires. My eternal progression depends on this. That's what everyone keeps telling me. And every conversation I have with God on this subject has sounded like: "Why are you making me do this?" followed by silence.
I know God can change me. I know God can fix my father. I know everything I need to know to feel differently about his situation. It hasn't helped because this isn't a situation that can be changed by what I do or don't know. I don't want to feel differently. I want justice. And I disagree that forcing me to reconcile with my abuser for the sake of an ordinance is what I deserve.
Am I cutting off my nose to spite my own face? Maybe. Am I the one who has to deal with that? Yes. But there is no recognition for people like me at church, no narrative that helps us through experiences we just don't want to be having.
I am not going to be able to do the ordinances for my father and his family without listening to people talk about how happy they are for me. They don't understand. They don't understand me. They don't understand how I feel. They don't understand my situation. And listening to people who will never understand what I feel is exhausting.
The way some women felt about polygamy? Like it completely erased them, in exchange for exaltation in some future moment?
That's how I feel about this.
