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So as the title said, my brother wants to serve a mission. Normally I would say more power to him and respect his decision but I can’t. Because apparently I’m his inspiration… So I was talking to my dad the other night and he said that he had been talking to his bishop and he’d mentioned that the bishop has said that my brother had mentioned in an interview that he wanted to save for a mission and that his big brother was a big inspiration to him. My first thought was “if this was in an interview than why the *%$@ is the bishop telling you about it? and why doesn’t it bother you that he tells parents (of 18 year-olds) what goes on in a supposedly-private meeting????
After I swallowed that back down. The idea that I’m an inspiration to him really sunk in. Normally I would be proud but my mission is such a complex experience for me. I would absolutely do it again without a second though because of where it’s brought me. I learned so much in those 2 years–not what the church wanted me to learn, mind you, but a lot nonetheless. But as a missionary I hid my testimony struggles from my family. They were struggling themselves and hardly attended church and looked to me as the shining beacon of righteousness in our family. I didn’t want to do anything that would disappoint them in that moment. I wrote home plenty about my struggles with my companions but it was all really superficial. They know nothing about all the times my unorthodox views got me labeled apostate or accused of not having a testimony, etc. The know nothing of all of the doubts I was having about JS or the BoM or how I cringed when I taught lessons half the time. You know something is wrong when you’re in the middle of a missionary lesson and your companion is talking and the investigator is loving it and all you can think is “they’re actually buying this?”
Since my mission those doubts have grown and since my marriage and the death of my grandfather they’ve stopped being doubts and become realizations.
But like I said, my brother doesn’t really know any of this. Before I’d heard this I’d been starting to tell my family more “colorful” stories from my mission. My point with that was to try and show them that I wasn’t the missionary robot my family (and especially my dad) thinks I was. I think my brother appreciates this idea but it’s impossible to convey to him how strong the pressure is to become a robot and how hard it is to be yourself in the face of it. I was 24 when I left and he’ll be a young(maturity wise) 19-20 year-old when he goes. I’m not sure how well he’ll deal with it.
I guess I just don’t feel comfortable with him being inspired by a testimony he imagines I have. I want to talk to my parents and to him about it but I don’t want to be responsible for damaging their testimonies any more than i want to be responsible for strengthening my brother’s. My mom has been somewhat receptive to me talking non-specifically about my fc but if she realizes how far I’ve come she’ll shut off. My convert dad has such a simplistic view of the gospel and a very pollyanna view of missions (he didn’t serve one) that it’s impossible to have an honest discussion about it. There’s no common ground. He just tries to make me feel better about my mission by reminding me of my converts. I don’t have the heart to tell him how conflicted I feel about the people I baptized. The happiest moments on my mission were volunteering for a Catholic thrift store/food pantry/soup kitchen. I felt like all I did there was love people, not try to convert. That’s when I felt closest to God.
I feel like I need to have a heart to heart with my parents and my brother but I really don’t know where to start. I think that going on a mission is fine for him but I don’t want to be the inspiration because if he comes to the realizations I did on my mission I don’t want to appear that I lied to him.
If my family knew how inactive I’ve become and how liberal I am with interpreting things like the WoW or garment-wearing I don’t know what they’d do.
😯 I’m OK with the church right now as long as it’s on my terms. But that’s anathema to what missionaries are supposed to teach….
Ugh.
Let go. It’s his decision – and don’t over-think the inspiration aspect. Take it as the extreme compliment it is. If you are interested, you might want to share some of the following with your brother. My daughter is very much an unorthodox believer, and she is loving her mission:
“The Advice I Am Giving My Daughter As She Departs on a Mission”( http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-advice-i-am-giving-my-daughter-as.html I would talk to them. I wouldn’t tell them every thing, all the issues, but I would let them all know that you are struggling. If they end up with issues with the issues it won’t be your fault because the issues are out there for all to discover. Just remember he has just as much right to make his spiritual journey as you did, even if he may have read more into your example than you may have liked. He may end up coming to the same end as you and then again he may not. Personally I would have a really hard time on a mission these days but I think at 19 it’s exactly what I needed. Who knows, maybe that is where he’ll learn to have the strength to not be a robot or learn to navigate the deep waters of the church culture while being different. Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2
wuwei wrote:I guess I just don’t feel comfortable with him being inspired by a testimony he imagines I have.
This is me as a parent. Wish I had some wisdom for you.
Thanks, everyone. I felt a lot better after writing this. That happens a lot where I just need to get something off my chest and unfortunately there really isn’t anyone I can truly do that with in my not-internet life.
I remember reading your blog post before, Ray. It seemed good advice then and it seems like great advice now. It’s so different from what I was told before I left.
As everyone has pointed out, it’s his decision. I have to respect that. I went based on misguided impressions of what it would be like and I turned out OK. I’m still generally of the opinion that missions can be a very good thing. And if nothing else it will help my brother grow up–a lot. I think I’ll keep telling honest stories from my mission. I won’t say anything about my current faith crisis but I won’t hide so much of what I went through as a missionary. I was the first in my family. So no one really knew what to expect. But I can perhaps help build him up a bit before he serves by giving him examples of putting the spirit and your own conscience ahead of rigid obedience.
I think I need to be honest about my experience with him but not spin it as “you should really think twice because…” but instead as “you can still have a successful mission even if…”.
Ann, that questions haunts me in all my relationships. I feel like my parents, brothers, and wife all look to me to be some sort of spiritual leader because of my mission experience. I feel so uncomfortable because I’m not who they all think I am. It’s not that I’ve mislead them per se. Just that they form their own opinions and I don’t have the heart to correct them. And now when I look into my 3 week old son’s eyes I just wonder what I’m supposed to teach him hehe.
But at 3 weeks old there’s lots of time for him.
Quote:I won’t say anything about my current faith crisis but I won’t hide so much of what I went through as a missionary.
This. This exactly.
You can share with him your experience, truthfully, and try to help him understand why you would do it again even though it wasn’t what you had expected. You can help him go with his eyes wide open.
wuwei wrote:I went based on misguided impressions of what it would be like and I turned out OK. I’m still generally of the opinion that missions can be a very good thing. And if nothing else it will help my brother grow up–a lot.
Missions are a right of passage in the Mormon community. If he stays in the church his being an RM will serve him well. Even if he someday leaves the church he will probably find value in his mission experience.
wuwei wrote:Normally I would say more power to him and respect his decision but I can’t. Because apparently I’m his inspiration…
Personally I think this is one heck of a better reason than “because my parents are making me” or “because my parents will buy me a car.” He could have much worse for a role model right? I know nobody wants to be a role model because we all have flaws, but people need role models during important developmental periods. It doesn’t help these people to intentionally pull down their admiration. As we grow we learn that the people we admired were just people after all. I think this is a normal and healthy process. Just be yourself and let his perceptions of you evolve as he needs them to.
In a completely separate track – my older sister served a mission. I found out later that she did this to be a good example for me because I didn’t have any brothers and I was a somewhat rebellious teenager (by Mormon standards). This made me feel guilty for three reasons: 1) I barely noticed. She had already gone away to college so her being away on a mission was more of the same for me. 2) I was self absorbed and didn’t write. 3) My sister was injured on her mission (nerve damage), completed her term in suffering, and then went on to years and years of seeking relief from the pain. Because her mission experience was so aweful she NEVER talked about it. I later did serve a mission but not at all because of what she did… and so I feel guilty.
wuwei, I struggled for a long time with the same kinds of things you are talking about. I finally got past it by realizing that I am not responsible for the faith or lack of faith or degree of faith of anyone else. I baptized people on my mission who loved the church and who where changed by joining it. It brought happiness and hope into their lives. When I was there, working, I believed it would do exactly that, and it did. Now that I’m no longer a believer, I have reflected on that and I realize that it doesn’t matter what I believed then or what I believe now. Their lives are not about me. My son served a mission knowing that I am an atheist. He went anyway. Loved it. It was a wonderful experience for him. He didn’t do it because I told him to, but I am certain that his family life and hearing about my mission was a major portion of what drove him to go. It was his decision and his mission.
Put another way, I have an older brother that I look up to. When I was young, he was happily married with wonderful, perfect family, and I thought of his situation as idyllic. I learned a lot about my future life by observing him. I was shocked and saddened years later when they divorced, and everything that was once so beautiful went out with the garbage. That was really tough. Yet, I still married, had a family, love my wife, and love my kids. My wife and I have been married about twice as long as my brother was married. In other words, I found inspiration when I was young, but when I got to a certain point in my life, I went on my own path.
Ray, I loved your advice for your daughter… I’d love for the Church to make that a Proclamation or Official Declaration. Loved it. wuwei… The one thing I always tell future missionaries is that it is very hard… way harder than they expect, but that there’s plenty of reward with it.
You might consider coming clean sometime soon. This is helpful for not feeling like you are lying. My advice for anyone making that leap is to completely avoid reasons, and just talk about belief. I tell people I’m no longer a believer, and that is it. For my wife and kids I’ve told them and they are fully aware that I respect and support their involvement in the Church. Again, this is all based on the idea that their faith belongs to them. I have a relative now serving a mission and when he was called, I was as excited about it as anyone else. I know someone who is becoming a nun, and I was just as happy and supportive for her.
So I ended up having a talk with my mom about just about everything today. It wasn’t planned but we just got on a tangent and it led where it did. It turns out she and I are pretty similar. She just still is a bit afraid of exploring things. I could tell talking about it made her really uncomfortable but I guess I have to understand I’ve been hiding these feeling for 3-4 years. She’s been hiding hers for 30-40.
Funny enough, her eye-opening moment was when her grandfather passed away when she was younger. She felt that even though everyone would have said he had his chance in this life and was supposed to be in spirit prison or whatever that it all just seemed wrong to her. For me the final push into exploring things was having the same feelings at my grandfather’s passing last november.
She and I also both found out about JS and the hat from the South Park episode and both have bitter feelings about being told one thing all our lives only to find out that it’s not true and that the church still perpetuates the lie to this day.
Anyways, it was a really positive conversation. I think she still places more trust in the church rules that I would. Thinking that they are necessary and you have to set the bar somewhere. My view is that they can be useful but aren’t necessary and that one can be a good and moral person without them. But we really weren’t far off.
She’s been wanting to share some non-correlated church history with my brother to help prepare him for what he’ll hear on his mission but hasn’t figured out how yet. And her knowledge of it isn’t quite what mine has become. I don’t really think she needs to know what most of us here do unless she feels like looking herself. But there are things she feels he needs to know.
She also gave me some good advice about my marriage. Long after they were married my father had some mental health issues just explode that completely altered her life. Although he’s back to being a TBM (except attendance is hard due to mental health problems) she talked about how hurt she was after his breakdown because he was angry at God. He had a “I was doing all the right things, this shouldn’t have happened!” attitude. Like avoiding caffeine prevents psychotic episodes. Anyways, while he wanted nothing to do with God she said she felt so hurt because that wasn’t what she signed up for. We went overnight from perfect (on the outside, at least) mormon family to a very troubled one.
Without more specifics of my family, I can see how my wife could feel the same way. And this pertains to my other thread as well (New Father, New FC). But I think she’s more understanding.
As for my brother, I will encourage him to go on a mission. I think he’s at least as ready as half the missionaries i knew in the MTC were. And I hope I can help prepare him a little more. It’s good to know that my mom is understanding of my feelings at least. We ended talking about how the church has been a net good in our lives. I tried talking about how I’m trying to reframe my relationship with the church. She still feels like she can’t “make her own commandments”. I wanted to say “why not? that’s what JS did…” but I held my tongue.
:silent: I just explained that in my experience if the spirit or your conscience seems to contradict what the church’s line is, go with the spirit or your conscience. The core of mormonism is that I can get understanding directly from God and don’t need anyone else. If God tells me one thing and TSM tells me another, I will choose God every time.Oh, and On Own Now, I really appreciate what you said about your mission. I’ll admit it’s a struggle because I look back on my mission and think about things I taught that I now think are completely untrue. But I guess I need to remember that when I was there I was still me. I still was trying my best to help prepare people for baptism, not just baptize. I didn’t hold back or purposefully mislead. So if I hadn’t been there, another missionary might have who wasn’t doing everything in good faith like I was. I guess I am too hard on myself sometimes. I was really doing the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time. I was trying to bring people close to Christ and help them be happier–not just baptize them.
Thanks for the update, wuwei. I’m really happy for you – and for your mother, just as much.
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