A personal essay by Erin Lee
“I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.”
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How was I to separate my faith in a perfect God from my imperfect mortal father? Where had those roots first begun to intertwine? I read Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated a few weeks into September 2020, and I saw myself in it (the quotes between this essay’s sections are from that book). Though Tara’s upbringing was much more extremist than mine, I understood the battle of faith and family, of love and distance. As I read, I found myself remembering the moments when my father and my spirituality had collided.
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“When my father was in my life, wrestling me for control of that life, I perceived him with the eyes of a soldier, through a fog of conflict.”
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Just as important to my father as attending church on Sunday was our Monday night ritual. It was sacred family time, following the words of living prophets. Every Monday at seven pm, we’d start with an opening prayer, followed by a song, a scripture, a spiritual lesson, another song, a closing prayer, an activity or game of some kind, and dessert—always in that order.
Once, when I was nine and it was my turn to be in charge of the “lesson,” I chose for my topic a sermon given by a church leader about putting “eggs” into our metaphorical baskets. Eggs like church and family were good. Eggs like sin and anger were bad, and didn’t leave room for the good in our lives. I even had cardstock props to illustrate my point.
My father told that leader about my lesson. One thing led to another, and I was asked to speak in a stake conference - the biggest of all the local meetings. I would be in front of hundreds of people. I accepted the assignment. I remade my cardstock props to be larger, so that the whole congregation could see them. My mother came up with me on the day I was to speak, both to hold my props up and to let me know if I started speaking too fast like I’d done in practice.
My father still mentions this talk when he’s complimenting me. He was so proud of me for being so active in my faith, in our religion, even at a young age. And because of his pride in me, I was (and am) proud of myself.
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“I could not make out his tender qualities.”
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When I was fourteen, my friend and I entered a talent competition together. The show was hosted by our high school, and run by the choir teacher, who we’d already grown close to despite having only been in ninth grade for a few months. We sang in the only harmony we could: octaves. Somehow, we made it past auditions. The first round was originally scheduled on a Saturday, but a conflict moved the performance to the next Monday night.
When I told my father about the change in schedule, he sighed. He told me that he knew I would make the right decision. Monday nights, after all, were sacred, just as important as church.
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In the end, I chose to perform.
After we sang, my friend and I sat in the audience.
My family never came.
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“When he was before me, towering, indignant, I could not remember how when I was young, his laugh used to shake his gut and make his glasses shine.”
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During my teen years, I had a room in the basement. Most times this was convenient, as it was quiet, and stayed cool in the summer. Other times, however, I wished desperately to be somewhere else.
Those times were usually late at night, when my younger siblings had long since fallen asleep. Outside of my room, the basement was unfinished. We’d laid a scrap of carpet out and put a couch and TV to create a second family area. This is where my parents would come to have their “talks.” And since they were only a few layers of drywall and insulation away, I could hear everything.
It always began the same, with both of them speaking calmly. Over a few minutes, my dad’s voice would get firmer as my mother became more frantic. In the end, she would be sobbing—pitiful and broken—while my father remained cold. I would wrap my pillow around my head, pressing it to my ears to try and block out the sound. Is this what marriage was like? I wondered why I’d been born in this family, why I’d been placed here where I would have to hear my mother’s heart breaking over and over and over again. What purpose could God have for making me go through this?
There had to be one. That there might not be a God never occurred to me.
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“In his stern presence, I could never recall the pleasant way his lips used to twitch, before they were burned away, when a memory tugged tears from his eyes.”
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At nineteen, I left to serve a proselytizing mission for the LDS Church. I went to the Columbia River Gorge, right on the border of Washington and Oregon, for eighteen months. In one of the areas I was assigned to, there was a man with some...rather strange beliefs. He had been assigned as “ward mission leader”—that is, he was meant to be the bridge between the missionaries and the local church membership.
He claimed to be able to see auras. Mine, he said, was closed off. I was buckled down. My companion, on the other hand, was out there and vibrant and happy. I felt attacked by his evaluation of me. What did that mean, that I was “buckled down”? I already felt doubts about my ability to be a good missionary and to bring people to this gospel that I truly believed in.
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He told me to not lose sleep over it, to focus on what the Holy Spirit told me about myself instead, and to work on who I wanted to be without worrying about what someone else thinks. He told me that this aura-reading felt a lot like horoscopes or fortune telling, and that perhaps it didn’t have much validity, even though this man was in a position of authority over me.
That email exchange has changed how I look at who I am, and how I take criticism. It made it possible for me to interact with that man who wanted to tell me who I was, and to still respect him for his abilities and his kindness and his faith. Was there some truth in the man’s evaluation? Perhaps. But that was mine to find out—my father taught me that.
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“I can only remember those things now, with a span of miles and years between us.”
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After my mission, I moved back in with my parents for a summer, in order to save up money for school in the fall. I was twenty years old. My mission had been so hard, but I’d learned a lot about people, relationships, who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to be around.
So when I began noticing how my father talked about my mother (particularly her weight), and how uncomfortable I was, I was determined to communicate with him openly about it. After all, I was sure he would change how he spoke so that he wouldn’t negatively affect my younger sisters and their body image and self-esteem. As I planned this communication, I began remembering other things from my childhood: hours of lectures on how we children were selfish and entitled, the things he would tell me about my mother even when I was only eleven or twelve, and more. I couldn’t let those lie any longer either.
I finally confronted him and laid out my grievances. He listened. My words felt harsh, but I had to speak up. He was quiet for a time, and I had hope that he would change for the better.
It lasted one day. He pulled me aside and said “Someday I hope you’ll see how much I’ve done for you.” But it didn’t stop there. He told me how he’d worked so hard—sixty hour weeks! dealing with my mom!—and even though he wasn’t perfect (he was sorry for that), he’d tried his best.
I understood. He would not change.
His “sorries” were smokescreens and shifters of blame.
I moved to college two months early.
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“But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self.”
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My husband and I had filled the room with friends and family. Our fathers were the witnesses—a necessary part of the marriage, both the religious ritual and legal union. My father signed my marriage certificate.
I knelt across the altar from my husband and I vowed to stand with him for time and all eternity, just as he vowed to do with me. My father, sitting at the front of the room, wept openly. He has a tendency towards tears, and it was especially apparent that day. When the ceremony ended, he hugged me tightly and told me how proud of me he was, how good of a man my husband was, and how sure he was that we would be happy together. We were so faithful, and after all, we had gotten married in the temple.
If we stayed on a righteous path, everything would be okay. I knew that because my father taught me so.
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“If there was a single moment when the breach between us, which had been cracking and splintering for two decades, was at last to be bridged, I believe it was that winter night, when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror…”
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A week after the wedding, my father texted and asked if he and my mother could video chat with us later that night—it was important.
It was Mothers’ Day, 2018.
My husband and I opened my laptop and accepted the call. My hands shook. The faces of my parents appeared on the screen.
They told us they were getting a divorce.
They asked if I had any questions. They assured me they still loved me and that it wasn’t my fault. I could only nod or shake my head. I couldn’t speak. Finally, my dad, in tears, ended the call with a final “I’m sorry.” My husband and I cried together for a long time.
A day later, I received an email from my father. It had also been sent to each of my four siblings. In the email, my father expressed his regret: he never wanted a divorce, and he still didn’t! He then proceeded to describe my mom’s struggles, including the fact that her temple recommend had been temporarily taken away. He emphasized his own efforts to help her and asked us to pray for her. Outwardly, the email was benign, yet it left me in turmoil—it implied that he had done nothing wrong, that all the fault lay with my mother.
The status of an LDS temple recommend—a document signed by religious leaders declaring one’s worthiness—is extremely private. I had no inside knowledge of what my mom had been going through, nor did I want to know (unless she wanted to tell me). I confronted my father about his inclusion of this information. “Oh, I thought you knew,” he said. “I thought everyone in the family knew.” Why even bother mentioning it then? But I let it go. Perhaps it was an honest mistake. Perhaps he had only meant well.
That summer, a woman from my mission came to visit. Of course she asked how my family was doing. She had attended my wedding, and she and my mom got along very well. We talked about the divorce, which was public knowledge by then. This sister mentioned that a couple months ago, she got an email from my dad about my mom getting her temple recommend taken away.
I was furious.
There was no excuse for this. The sister was not related to us at all. She knew my family only peripherally. There was no more “I thought you already knew”—he had deliberately tried to come between my mother and someone who she called “friend” by making her seem unworthy and unfaithful.
He was trying to isolate her. He would be the victim, the virtuous martyr, while she was sent like a witch to the pyre.
I didn’t tell him that I knew about this email. I no longer wanted his excuses.
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“You could call this selfhood many things.”
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The battles for custody between my parents became battles within my soul. I confided only in my husband—I could trust him to let me take my own path without trying to influence me. I read everything I could find about the LDS Church, about my faith, about spirituality and religion in general. I searched for truth, for that kernel of certainty that I’d once known.
I signed up for a class at the start of 2020 (it feels so long ago), a senior seminar centered on the relationship between literature and spirituality, hoping it would assuage the conflict in my mind and heart. This at once made my spiritual journey harder and easier, since, after all, if I decided the LDS Church was not the truth and BYU found out, I would be expelled. But the attitude of the class was welcoming. I even felt safe to open up about some things I was struggling with, including my father.
I kept a spiritual journal. In one journal entry, I wrote: “I am afraid to approach God about my questions about the church. I am scared he’ll tell me it’s not true - and I’m scared he’ll tell me it is true. And I’m not sure which one of those I’m more afraid of.”
So much of my relationship with God had gotten tangled with my relationship with my mortal father that I dreaded finding out that he was right about God as much as I dreaded finding out he was wrong. When I realized this, I finally began to untie the mental knots that bound the two together. I began to decide who I wanted to be, regardless of whether or not my father approved.
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"Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal."
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So I did the work. I buckled down. I researched. I watched YouTube videos. I read scriptures. I studied history. And although I didn’t find the certainty I was searching for, I did make my beliefs my own—not my father’s.
My father insisted on flying out to help me and my husband move in. We didn’t necessarily need the help; however, we didn’t turn it down either.
During his visit, we fell onto the topic of faith. I wanted to be honest, and so I told him the truth: that I had been struggling with my spirituality. He asked if I wanted to talk about it with him.
I said no.
I. Said. No.
My spiritual journey had become personal, separate from needing my father’s love and approval, from trying to be like him. I felt independent, empowered to make my own decisions regarding what I believe, who I confide in, and how I live. My testimony and my faith were—and still are—my own.
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“I call it an education.”
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I may not possess any spiritual certainty, but isn’t that what faith is about? Isn’t that what the gospel is about? The Book of Mormon says, describing the Brother of Jared, that “he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting” (Ether 3:19). I don’t know many things for certain, especially spiritually, and perhaps that is okay.
But I do know one thing. Just like Tara Westover, I love my father—but just like her I need distance and firm boundaries in order to keep loving him. And just like her, I will keep working, keep looking forward to a better future. I am still researching. I am still reading. I am still seeking truth. The boot will fall eventually—my dad will confront me about my doubts. He may bear his testimony, full of emotion and tears. He may try to convince me that my questions are not worth my time. But that is for me to decide. I am choosing to move forward with faith while acknowledging my doubts. That decision is my own. My life is my own.
My father taught me that.
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Image Credit: Wedding photo by Amy Lynn Photography (print release available upon request). All others are personal photos, taken from Facebook or home video footage.
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