The Pain of Growing Up

[I'm worried about this post. It's pretty close to my heart. I wrote it weeks ago, but I keep putting off publishing it. And then in quiet moments I’ll think of it and feel, again, like I need to say it. So let's all put on our generous hats, shall we?] 

One Christmas I came home to visit my family and realized that my oldest niece and nephew were growing up. They were twelve, I think, on the cusp of teenagehood, and I realized I was terrified for them. They were (are!) such awesome and good kids, and I was excited for them, in a way, but also scared. That was when the world got complicated for me, and I don't think I've ever quite forgiven the world for becoming so. When I say I was scared for them, I mean I was nearly trembling. It was almost a physical reaction, a slow-motion "Noooooo!" in my head, willing them away from the cliff of further development.

I just got called into the Young Women's program, the organization in our church for girls at just this age—from twelve to high school graduation. And I've been asked to teach the youngest girls, the twelve to thirteen-year-olds. Last Sunday, I went to meet them and sit in on the lesson, which was being taught to all the girls by someone else. And it was an hour of that "Nooooo!" feeling. I kept looking at these girls, and thinking about myself at that age, and looking down at Henrietta asleep in her car seat, and wondering how on earth I could teach them anything worth knowing, how I could avoid destroying their lives. I drove home, singing to the baby to keep her happy, but nearly trembling all over again. It was an upsetting Sunday for me.

I really am worried about destroying their lives. They had this scrubbed-clean look, this fresh-faced beauty. Oh, they are beautiful girls. Physically lovely, but also strong and smart and well-dressed and savvy and compassionate and good. It shows. They glow with it. If there's hope for the future of the world, it must be in (young) women like these.

But I think what panicked me was a sense of their tendency to think in black and white: that there are good people and bad people and categorically good decisions and categorically bad decisions, and if we follow all of the rules and be very good girls, everything will be fine and we'll be happy forever and ever amen.

And hey, I used to be that girl. I used to believe that. I wanted it to be true, and I thought I was being told that it was true, and I lived my life believing it until it became absolutely necessary to change my way of thinking or perish. I was a zealot, my friends. I used to correct the "bad" language of my church friends. When someone once asked me if I'd ever done anything wrong, I told them of course I had because I knew that's what I was supposed to say, but I honestly couldn't think of anything I had ever done that I shouldn't have. I wondered if I was perfect, and at the same time knew that this was a problem, that the fact I was wondering whether or not I was perfect was, in and of itself, bad news. (Sigh.)

Still, I was a relatively happy zealot until the discrepancy between the narrow way I understood the gospel and the way I was beginning to experience the world nearly tore me in half.

So I'm worried. I'm worried I'll muck up that fresh-faced-ness with too much nuanced thinking too soon, and I'm worried they'll someday feel torn in half if I don't acknowledge the complications.

And maybe I'm being too vague now, or maybe you've stopped reading because I'm sounding too liberal, and this is the part I was worried about writing, but listen, here's the thing: 80% of single women in their 20's leave the Mormon Church. Let's let that sink in for a moment. 80% of single Mormon women in their 20's leave the Church.* I found myself looking around at these young women, wondering which of them would leave and which of them would stay, and looking at my baby and wondering what her experience would be, and thinking about myself, and wondering if I counted as someone who stayed, or left.

I stayed, officially. I never stopped going to church, even when it nearly killed me because I couldn't feel anything when I was there and I was lonely and sad and nothing at church helped me feel better. I would have panic attacks in the pews and come home early, but I kept attending.

For me, this was all a bit past where they are now, but when I was going through that transition from black-and-white to more nuanced thinking, I had a lot of blame for what I learned at church when I was their age. I walked around wondering why no one told me that though there's a Plan of Happiness, the details of our individual lives are meant to be unique and God knows our lives will be complicated, and He means for us to do the absolute best we can anyway, and He loves us. Nothing we can do can interfere with that love (though our choices can make it harder for us to feel), and it's a big shiny monumental love, that, if we let it, fuels our lives and makes us strong, regardless of what happens. I wish someone had told me that.

So for the last several years I've been frustrated with the Church, thinking it somehow failed me. But in the wake of that introduction to the group on Sunday, as I've worried about my involvement and wondered how I could help, I've been talking to my sisters about their kids who are this age, and I've realized something huge, something that changes everything.

That black and white thinking? That, to some extent, was me. I mean, religious structures tend towards it, sure. And as teachers and leaders of teenagers, we are obliged to be careful about how we approach significant subjects, and not all of my teachers played things perfectly. But to some extent, I've been blaming the pain of growing up on the Church, and really, growing up is just painful. It's hard to grow up and become who you really are (e. e. cummings said so), and it's pretty normal for kids to see the world in black and white, and I was even more prone to it than your average kid. There's not a lot I can do about how these girls see the world; they'll have to make their own transitions, but I can listen and I can speak to my own experience, and I can tell them about that love, that most significant love.

This is already long, but will you permit me to say one other thing about this? I think part of what I'm worried about is what I'll say if they ask me about my marriage to someone outside the Church. And I can't answer that question in a sentence. I can't really explain in a concise way how I love and value Temple Marriage, and encourage them to head in that direction, and how I also love my husband desperately, and feel like God led us to be together. And maybe that's what I'll tell them, just that, that both of those truths are true, and sometimes that happens.

But part of the answer is also that Sam helped me navigate this transition. While he didn't share my faith, he never belittled it, never tried to get me to be not Mormon, and he helped me understand how to see things with more nuance and still walk around in the world. He helped me grow up. And on the other side of that (am I on the other side of that?), I couldn't bear to let him go. The world didn't make sense without his enormous brain to help me figure it out.

This was just as true last week, when I came home from church wide-eyed, and wondering what to think. I told him about my experience, and he said what I think is true, that God must be behind this, that I'm meant to help these young women see a bit more nuance and be prepared for their future, and that they are meant to help me remember what it was like to be that girl, to get in touch with my previous self, who was very sure of wrong and right.

I like the sound of that. I wouldn't mind visiting that little Deja again. She wasn't at all perfect. But she was good.





*Edited to add "single," which wasn't in the original post. I forgot that was a piece of the statistic, and I'm sorry to have misrepresented. It's still disturbing, yes? I know I just barely made it out of my twenties still active. I've had some questions about it, so go here and here if you want to hear more talk about this statistic. I'm working on tracing it back to its absolute original source. If you know it, let me know.