January 27th in Posso's Prompts

How has faith and religion impacted your life so far?

My parents met in a way that could most likely be made into a romantic comedy. My mother, born and raised in a family of Mormon faith in Utah, became a registered nurse as a young woman. My old man was a rehabilitated troublemaker trying to prove his self worth by starting anew as a construction worker in Utah. Their fates so happened to intertwine when dad was on his way home from work one day. At an intersection, a drunk driver struck my dad while he was on his motorcycle. Dad’s leg was completely severed from the knee and was rushed to the local hospital. He has described it to me a few times; he doesn’t remember much but knowing that his leg was ‘hanging from a string of skin’ he knew he was in a lot of trouble. After one of the first major knee and lower leg reconstructions done in the eighties, he was assigned a recovery team full of doctors and nurses to monitor his rehabilitation. One of the many nurses that happened to monitor him daily was my mother.

My parents continued their relationship outside of the hospital and into a complicated situation. My parents fell in love but there was a big issue; my dad wasn’t a Mormon. That led to a bigger issue - me. My mom’s family couldn’t believe what had happened. Their daughter had made a grave mistake. She had been led astray by an outsider; someone who was not of their faith and that in itself was already bad, but then to be having sexual relations out of wedlock AND be pregnant? The stress that my mothers family caused on top of a young developing relationship almost caused the end before the beginning. My dad moved back to Wisconsin and my mom ended up taking care of me alone for the first year or so. From what I’m told though, my father decided that he couldn’t just walk away and he actually loved my mother and wanted to have a role in his son’s life, so they rekindled and worked on their relationship to the point where my dad agreed to be baptized into the Mormon faith and proposed to my mother. I was three when my parents got married. They decided I should be responsible for the rings at the wedding.

It was time to start a family. My first brother was born the same year my parents got married (clearly the whole wedlock thing was only a big deal for the first one.) My mom’s family was relentless though.
“They should be going to church, they need to be baptized, so they can be baptized again and be cleansed of their infancy.” (its a thing - you’re baptized twice if you’re born into the Mormon religion, preferably at seven so you’re ready to be a sinner like me in kindergarten kissing girls in playground swings.)

From what I remember of my experiences as a Mormon, it was as typical as one hears. As my parents tried to figure out life, they moved a lot while I was young, but the church was always consistent; welcoming with open arms, asking for little voices to speak up and proclaim how great Jesus Christ was. Thanking God for everything great in life. Blessing everyone for everything; from the color of the sky to how long your fucking fart was. The mysticism captivated and captured me as a kid - I didn’t know any better. Once I started getting older though, I saw what happens when you’re born of impurity. I was always scoffed at when joining my grandma at church Sundays when we would visit from Wisconsin. “They’re not really Mormon, right? They aren’t here all the time.” Shit like that sticks out in your head when you’re eight, nine, ten. You are already going through the trials and tribulations of being a kid and trying to feel like you fit in to the third school you’ve been in in three years and then you’re told you’re not fitting into your own family? Not to mention the other absurdities of Mormons: I can’t have Barq’s root beer because there’s caffeine in it? You’re telling me my dad sins every morning with his cup of regular coffee? What kind of bullshit is this?

The religious dynamic almost tore my family apart a few times. My mom’s mom, Grandma Jo, was the matriarch. She was never a fan of my dad - he had corrupted her only daughter. Jo wanted all of her grandchildren to be part of the Mormon hive mind collective. I received a copy of the Book of Mormon for my tenth birthday. My dad looked at me when I got it and I’ll never forget the seriousness in his face when he said, “Son, wait until you are older to read that. If you believe that book now, you are going to have more problems than you deserve.”
It’s not that my dad or my grandparents weren’t religious - they went to Methodist church when my dad was young. My dad’s side of the family also flows rampant with drug and alcohol abuse. Grandma Jo, knowing this, would throw this into situations with my parents to cause more problems. Mom asked for a loan because money was tight? Must be because dad’s parents had to bail another one of dad’s siblings out of a drug predicament. My dad moved our family to northern Wisconsin not just because it was where he grew up, but it was far away from Utah and very little signs of the Mormon ‘nuthouse’ were around. Dad called my mom’s family ‘crazy,’ mom’s family called dad’s side ‘troubled and junkies.’ Trying being a kid in that shit. My parents fought a lot, and very often. My mom was the full time worker in the family, my dad, disabled. In society at that point, what kind of man were you as a stay-at-home dad? Pops ate a ton of shit for that and it was visible that it bothered him but he was limited and it was something he couldn’t help. Why use that as something to bring him down? Mormons wouldn’t do that to one of their own, but dad wasn’t one of them. Mom had already sinned enough, what was a little divorce and a new husband going to change with her relationship with Jesus at that point?

It ate at me as a teen. How can you believe in something that favors one over another? Wasn’t that the concept of religion? Sure, I wasn’t a professional by any means but you’re going to tell me to pray and believe and then tell me my own dad is not worthy enough to be heaven bound in Jesus’s eyes? Because a drunk driver hit him with a car? Tear apart my family for someone that I or millions of others have never ever seen? Even after all the attacks on faith and her own faith, my mom still made us pray before eating, pray before bed, scream at me when I’d grumble ‘goddamnit’ while doing my homework. She was atoning for things she shouldn’t have to? I’ll never forget the day when I told my mom I thought ‘Jesus Christ was bullshit.’
“I don’t care what you end up believing in, Zachary, I just want you to know there is a power out there that no one fully understands or can explain, and you’ll eventually feel that feeling where you need more hope than you have and more help than you can get and it doesn’t hurt to feel that you can’t control it. This is why I praise Jesus Christ. You can worship or pray to whoever you want.”

I love my mom and dad dearly. We have definitely had our fair share of misunderstandings, disagreements, full out fights. I still say the blessing with my mom when we eat together. My dad held my hand and said a prayer after I had my testicle removed during my first round of cancer. I wouldn’t describe myself as an atheist. I definitely mock and make fun of religion when it needs to be, its a self defense mechanism, but I also do believe there are things that I have no control over that someone end up working themselves out, and I am always thankful for it. Having cancer multiple times seems like something someone would deserve if he didn’t have faith, but then again, there has to be some kind of faith there in order to want to live and survive from the battle. My dad did it after having his leg demolished. He wasn’t someone that feared God then, it was a random act of chance, so random that he met my mom and made me. If there’s one thing I’ll never make fun of, it’s someone’s faith in finding a reason to stay alive. God can give you a reason to live and I am perfectly fine with that solution. I do think that that was my mother for my father, and I think that I have decided that I still haven’t done anything worthy of what I am capable of to be taken off this earth yet; that’s the faith and belief that drives me. It’s something I’ve needed to remind myself of, especially as of late.