I went to church yesterday

That experience came with a lot of complicated emotions and difficult decisions for me. I think it would be helpful for me to retrace my steps through the experience so I can metabolize it all.

It started with someone I've never met. Someone from a podcast I listen to. He's Mormon and his girlfriend isn't. But he asked her to go to church with him anyway because he doesn't like to go alone. It's left me thinking about the value of showing up for someone else. I realized I never stopped to think about what my absence from church has meant for my husband. It means he goes alone now. His church experienced is now shaped by everything that comes with that.

How could I not notice that?

If I'm being honest, it's a mix of a lack of emotional awareness on my part, still not fully understanding these things because I wasn't raised in this culture, and (the biggest one of all) He has never made my absence at church a problem. He doesn't nag. He doesn't scold. He doesn't treat me like this part of my experience is a problem for him to solve. I'm not something broken that needs to be fixed. And at the risk of sounding somewhat dense, I've never stopped to think about how fortunate I am to have that respect.

He has allowed this part of my life to be my private space. My inner world. The sacred space where I am free to be myself and feel exactly what I feel, with no interference from anyone. He has never once tried to take that away from me. He has given me the gift of unconditional love while I was undergoing fundamental changes he doesn't understand. I don't have to wonder if he only loves me because I signed onto the social contracts underpinning Mormonism with him. I now know it transcends all that.

He has done that for me while my process of self-discovery has been long, tiresome, and the fodder for gossip and public consumption in the spaces he still occupies. He has navigated that experience with honesty, devotion, and respect for me first. Always. Every time.

It took me until a few days ago to realize how I've been on the receiving end of all of this emotional labor. Labor I haven't acknowledged, appreciated, or fully reciprocated. Which, of course, is unacceptable. So when my husband asked if I would go to church with him and his mom at her nursing facility for her birthday, it was an easy decision to make. I would do that for him, and also to show gratitude to my mother-in-law. Because, as I realized in that moment, I have her to thank for this.

Who taught him to be sensitive and keenly aware that being separated from the Church is a complicated emotional and spiritual space worthy of respect at all times? To not make other people's religious struggles about himself and his feelings? 

She did.

I've been so focused for so long one everything we do in managing her memory care, I was completely blind to what she has done for me. This beautiful person she brought into this world and raised into the amazing man he is. She did that. And I benefit from it every day. I also thought about my brother-in-law, who wants very little to do with the Church anymore. But that hasn't stopped him from showing up for the people in his life, even when the Church is involved. I realized today this is something I can learn from.

So I went. I went to church, not because of what I expected to get out of it, but because of what my presence would mean to the people I care about. This may sound obvious to some. But I've never had this experience before. This is all completely new territory for me.

Now, the more orthodox members in this audience want to hear a happy ending to this story. The stillness of prayer and the spirit of worship touching my heart the way it once did, and that being enough to silence the tempests of doubt in my own mind. Hell, I won't lie to you. I'll be the first one to tell you that this is exactly what I want to happen. Even after all this time, and everything I've learned, I still yearn in my soul for it to be this simple.

That's what I was thinking about when I took the sacrament today. How much my body still remembers this entire experience. The yearning to take the sacrament because it has always been such a source of nourishment to my soul. Seeing that this hasn't changed or faded away. But in that same meeting where I witnessed all the reasons I desperately want to come back, I also witnessed the same toxic messaging that keeps me away. The reminder that being in the Church means having to take the good with the bad, and I'm just not prepared to do that anymore.

Now, my husband warned me to check my expectations with the speaker. He'd heard him speak enough times to know he wouldn't be the type to resonate with me. The kind of person who ruins perfectly good talks by choosing to focus on errant topics that aren't Christ. And that's exactly what happened. Smack dab in the middle of a beautiful message about "why do we bother coming to church?"⁠—something I've been asking myself endlessly for the past 2 years⁠—he took a sudden left turn into "why did Paul tell women to be silent in church?"

The problem, he assured us, wasn't that women were speaking. That's a mistranslation, you see. In actuality, it should read that women shouldn't rule in church. What Paul meant to say there was that women can participate in church, so long as they're not in charge.

After telling a rambling anecdote about how he uses "WOMAN" as a joking pejorative with his wife (think Fro-zone and the super suit), he got to the point he thought would tie a nice bow on all of this. The fact of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, that if men weren't in charge at church, they probably wouldn't show up at all. They're fundamentally lazy, you see, and already only minimally invested. And if women held the priesthood, well, they'd be running everything. "And doing it better" was the unspoken implication of this entire thing.

Now, I'm sure you're asking yourselves: "How does any of this help the target audience of seniors in a nursing facility who live in a state of diminishing physical capacities and the complexities of aging in a health care system that devalues their continuing existence?"

I have no idea.

But I can tell you who it also didn't help. His daughter and the other young girls in that room who just listened to this man say this to them. About them. And their mothers. And me. And every woman they know at church. "We tolerate mediocrity in men to make sure they have a place, even at the expense of women who are more talented and qualified" is just about the most toxic thing you could say to anyone. Absolutely no one is uplifted or edified by that message.

This is why I don't like going to church anymore. I'm tired of trying to build a relationship with Christ in a minefield of ignorance, prejudice, and toxicity. I show up searching for Christ and any positive gains I make are ruined by our collective inability to improve upon silence. 

Before the emotional labor I did this morning, I would've just been privately angry, tired, hurt, and sad in relation to all this. But when my husband and I shared in the experience of rejecting everything he said, together, that was different too. I saw that my discomfort, irritation, and frustration in response to all of this, I wasn't alone in it. I realized my husband saw this experience I was having, could see what it was doing to me, without me having to say a word.

And in thinking about this experience from his perspective, I can imagine him being frustrated with that guy. "SHE FINALLY COMES TO CHURCH AND THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO HER." Because, as I've only just articulated today, he also wants better for me than this. So, even though this entire thing was a bit of a shit show, I left feeling closer to my husband through it. Despite of it. Maybe even because of it.

Everything I hate about going to Church is still there. Nothing about the circumstances have fundamentally changed. I'm beginning to question if they can change, and if they ever will. What I also took from today is that everyone I love is still there. And I have a deeper appreciation for them and how they've been navigating this nonsense for longer than I've been alive. And I realized today I'm still holding onto that because it's worth holding onto.