"I could never be a convert" and Other Lies I've Heard

In response to me telling literally any story from my formative years as a member of the Church, I get a response that I'd like to unpack and dismantle, so no one ever feels the need to say it again:

"Wow. You're so strong. I could never be a convert."

I'm not here to turn whether being a convert to the Church is harder than being born into it. That is not the conversation we're having. There are no pissing contests here, so let's just not with all of that.

Much of what was hard about joining the Church as a teenager to me were not obstacles that the Church created. They were obstacles my family created to my participation in the Church. There are people who would blame the Church for that, but I don't.

My mom spent a long time processing the feeling that she just wanted me to be Catholic and I was just never going to be. All parents want things for their kids they're not going to get. This one was hers.

This played out in so many different variations of the same conversation: 

Me: I'm going to Church.
Mom: No you're not, because I'm not taking you there.
Me: Fine, I don't need you to take me, I'll find my own way there.
Mom: Whatever. [goes back to sleep]

There was one Sunday, however, where this was different. My family was getting together to pick crabs (it's a Maryland thing) on a Sunday and I was expected to forego attending Church to be with them. Had my mom just asked or invited me like a normal person, it would've been fine. Instead I got "Come with us on Sunday or I'll know who is really most important to you and I'll never speak to you again."

At that stage of my life, I didn't like crab. I didn't like the smell. I didn't like getting my hands dirty. The Old Bay seasoning, like lemon juice on a paper cut, finds and sears every open wound without apology.

At 16-17 years old, I'm having to navigate my mother's insecurities around something truly important to me in such a way that she wouldn't take it from me. I wasn't thinking about that Sunday. I was thinking about every Sunday after it, how she would treat me, and how to prevent this power struggle from becoming a pattern in our interactions with one another.

So I missed Church. I sat there, not eating, just to make her happy.  

I'm not the one who turned one Sunday away from Church into some existential crisis. With very few exceptions most members are reasonable enough to say "It's family time. That's not a big deal. There's always next week." The Church and its members didn't do this. My mother did.

So to the extent that I sat there feeling guilty and anxious about the week to come, it wasn't from some extremist or fundamentalist dread of divine retribution for missing one Sunday at Church. It was wondering what the fallout of this power struggle would be, and if God could help me navigate it effectively. 

That's what I prayed for that Sunday. That somehow, this situation which had gotten completely out of control, could find some peace to it.

I had a notebook with me and I think I was taking notes for the family tree I was starting to build. My grandfather's sister, my great aunt, was there that day. She noticed what I was doing and invited us back to her house afterwards. A cousin of hers had sent her an exhaustive family history for her side of the family. It had been sitting in a box with all her things for years, and did I want it?

Yes. Yes, I did.

The younger version of myself saw it as a miracle, that God could bless me wherever I was, even when I wasn't at Church. That extreme and exact obedience about going to Church no matter what would've cost me this opportunity. And best believe I bring out this story every time any person in any lesson tries to teach that version of extreme, exacting obedience. To view the world that inflexibly is contradicted every day by the real situations members of the Church have to live in.

But as I'm getting older and I think about that story more, I'm realizing something important. The prayer I said for my family, for us to have peace with each other, was the only reason I was able to think such a thought. In every moment of that interaction, I wanted to be bitter and spiteful, ill-tempered and mean as only teenagers can be. I was in a moment in which my maturity and my instincts were not sufficient for my needs. Had I been left to my own devices, I wouldn't have done the right things in that moment. It wouldn't have turned out for the better the way it did. I would've made sure of that because I was angry and hurt about being manipulated the way I was.

The prayer for peace I said for my family mattered more than anything else I might've accomplished that day. Prayer, that moment I took check myself, is why that situation turned out the way it did. 

I'm only doing the same thing that members of the Church do constantly when they find themselves out of their element and backed against the wall by life. I prayed for help and tried to do the best I could with the insight and correction God gave me.

So could any member of the Church do what I did in that moment? 

Yes!

They do it every time they pray. 

I, and the converts whose stories you learn about in your family histories, are not superheroes possessing some deeper, magical connection to God that is fundamentally different from yours. Converts aren't inherently more spiritual or filled with greater faith than other members of the Church by virtue of being first. That's not how this works.

I am who and what I am today because I've had a lot of help from people who weren't converts. My community, made of disciples of every kind and experience, is the reason I still try with my family after all this time. The help and wisdom they have given me is part of that miracle. I couldn't do this without them.

Remember that as we enter the Ancestral Worship portion of the LDS liturgical calendar. 

Pioneers were regular people who narrowly avoided pushing people into horse manure by prayer and the grace of God.

 Converts are human just like you. And if you were in their shoes, that's exactly what you would continue to be.