Working through time Pt. 2 - Transition

My mission did do a lot of good for me. Growing up in Canada, I had a sort of big brother image of the USA. Our foreign policy seems to be more reactive than proactive, and at times it can feel like we are being pushed into things in the name of neighbourly relations. Living in the Georgia for the better part of 2 years changed a lot of my image of the USA and Americans in general. The warmth and kindness extended to me by the folks in the south was amazing. No matter how much they didn’t want to hear our message, we were generally treated warmly, were cared for and well fed, and I made a lot of good friends. A few of them I can still call up today (some 15 years later) and talk about almost anything.

Among the best things the mission experience did was to force me to question things. I already knew I could survive some pretty challenging circumstances (thanks to Cadets), but here without parents to look over my shoulder, and having a religion I wasn’t sold on in my face, I was able to make my own code of living. I found myself more and more unenchanted by mormonism, and less and less believing what I was telling folks. By the end of the time I was in Georgia, I had pretty much stopped spreading the word, and was in a relationship – something that is definitely no approved of by the mormon church. With weeks to go before I would have returned home triumphant and with honour, I was called into the mission president’s office.

I remember sitting in the office lobby from 8:00 in the morning until late in the afternoon without anything to eat or drink, and then being pulled into the mission presidents office where I was demanded to give a confession. I told him what I had done, and was told that my confession was inadequate. I was handed a pad of paper and was told to go into a private office and document every relationship I had had in my life. An interesting challenge.

After a couple more hours of being left alone, I was called back into the office, and made to go through each relationship in detail. Who was the person – describe them. Describe the relationship. Describe the intimate moments. Describe how you felt. Describe where you were. Describe, describe, describe. It came to be more and more like the confessions of St. Augustine – reliving the ecstasy of the moment, while begging forgiveness of it. I am sure the president had an interesting evening with his wife that night.

I was loaded onto a plane and flown home the same day, arriving as a disgrace to my family. Before seeing them, I was made to sit with local clergy and redo the whole repentance process (another exhausted clergyman’s wife), and then go through it a third time with the Stake president (area clergy). In the third time through (by now it was just a story to spit out without much meaning) I was excommunicated from mormonism and given the map to get back into the church. In order to make things right, I would have to make written apologies to the everyone I had had an ungodly relationship with, I would have to marry quickly and raise a family unto the Lord, I would have to seek forgiveness from God, and from the mormon community by committing acts of service and giving to the church. The list was lengthy, and in order to be sure I was on the right track, I would have regular meetings with the bishop where he would go over my written confession with me to remind me of failures and then would give me readings to complete from mormon writings.

Within 18 months of returning home, I had married a mormon girl, bought a home and was well on my way to getting right with the church community. I had also been kicked out of meetings, had gossip and rumours spread about me, given a pile of money, and been used for every sort of project from cutting lawns to moving to repairing cars and cleaning houses and building sheds and doing renovations. Not that I mind lending a hand and helping out, but when you are constantly being told you are inadequate and that this will buy favour, it gets to being a bit much. I am still not sure why setting things right mattered to me so much but I went through the process with diligence. It was a difficult time.

Through all this I developed a close friendship with Jim. Jim is a friend who still stands for all the positive things in the mormon church. He and I spent a lot of time canoeing together. Whether we were floating down the Grand River, or crossing Algonquin Park, it was a great escape. We shared secrets across campfires, and lent a hand to each other in our families. What was even better was that my wife and his were close friends, and our families would often get together to watch movies or have barbecues. It was great to have someone who could still show you brotherly love regardless of what you past held.

Since I had married so quickly, I needed to find work to support my family. Between my mission and the cost of buying a house to keep my wife happy, I had drained all my savings. I took the first job that came available to me, and went to work in a factory. Now I am not a dummy, and I was able to churn out some pretty good work. I was quickly moved into an apprenticeship, and got my ticket as a general machinist. I don’t regret that. The trouble was that I had never yet made a decision; I had simply taken what came to me. Everything from school to career now was a history of taking what was easy. Taking what was handed to me. Working 12 hour shifts and coming home covered in cutting oil and metal filings was the reward.

A year into my career as a machinist, my daughter was born. She was a ray of joy to me and continues to be to this day. But it is a difficult thing to raise a family while working 12 hour shifts, four nights a week. I would come home and find her lying in her crib, her diapers overflowing, while her mom lay in bed, or sat on the computer. Diaper rashes and sickness were a problem. My wife eventually got a job at a fast food restaurant, and decided making $8 an hour was better than sitting home with a baby. “I’m just not cut out to be a Mom” was her explanation. Now my wages had to cover daycare and family expenses. My wife considered her money to be hers alone since it was the man’s job to support the family.

About a year into this arrangement, I went on a solo canoe trip into Killarney Provincial Park. My daughter went to stay with my parents since my wife would be working through much of the weekend. The park offered me the solitude and the escape I had come to relish in a wilderness canoe trip. The first day went by without mishap, it was good. Sometime in the night rain began. The rain was steady but not especially heavy, and on the second morning I quickly packed and headed on into the wilderness through the rain. After a slippery portage, I made my way to the base of a trail leading up Silver Peak, the highest point in the park.

As I started my ascent of the peak, the rain picked up in intensity. Now Silver Peak is hardly noteworthy as a peak. It is long walk to the top, but there is no climbing, and no challenge to reaching the top of it. It is barely a hike, let alone a climb. About halfway up, I twisted my ankle, and limped the rest of the way to the top. When I arrived, the rain was falling with such fierce intensity, that you could barely see beyond the end of your outstretched arm. It was a disappointing way to reach what is supposed to be a great destination. I made the decision to cut the trip short, and instead of camping out that night, drove home through the night.

When I got home, I was met by my mother, who was livid. She gave me my daughter, and advised that I keep closer tabs on my wife, then left without saying much more. My wife got home around 4:00 am dressed in a miniskirt, with smeared makeup. She was dropped off by someone I didn’t know. Our marriage ended shortly thereafter. Again I was called into the church offices, and questioned why I had allowed the marriage to disintegrate, why I hadn’t acted as the man of the house and prevented this. My wife meanwhile began spreading rumours that I had not been canoeing at all, but that I had cheated on her before she did anything to me. Once again I was removed from membership in mormonism. I was now a single father with no support network working long shifts at a job that didn’t bring either happiness or money in the sort of supply I needed. My bright spots through this were in my friendship with Jim, and living for my daughter. It was time for some serious reconsidering, and it was Jim who kept saying to me that this was temporary, and that I was better than all this. Between his belief in me, and the unconditional love of my then 2 year old daughter, I knew that eventually I would overcome this.