Families are Forever

It's interesting having my closest Tennessee friend not be LDS.  Here's this girl, Emily, and we have class together three days a week, and we work together three days a week, and we go to yoga together twice a week, and we study together almost every night for over a week leading up to a test.  And yet, when I'm upset about the recent excommunications in my Church, it takes a really long time to explain it to her.  First, what is an excommunication?  What's the deal with female ordination?  What's a bishop and why is what he said at the end of Sacrament meeting (whatever that is) offensive?  Here's how this goes with LDS friends:

I'm not sure about my position on female ordination.  But I do know that I feel unequal at Church in many different ways.  I don't feel valued or respected.  We don't treat our girls well.  Something needs to change.  Kate being excommunicated hurts and is hard for me on a personal level, because... could I be next?  No, I didn't start a movement for something that the Church defines as apostasy, not yet, anyway.  But have some of my actions been defined that way?  Has speaking up and out about my feelings as a woman in the Church marked me in some way?  Is that why after being in my ward for 2 months and having introduced myself to the bishop on my first Sunday I have yet to speak with him again, do not have a calling or a visiting teaching assignment (or for that matter, visiting and home teachers) and have not been asked to speak in Sacrament meeting?  Must I hold my tongue like my foremothers have been doing for centuries?  WHY is "foremothers" marked during spell check but "forefathers" is not?!?!

Anyway.

It has been an eye opening experience.  It's been a long time since I've had to think about things or explain details that are second nature to me.  Emily and I have been slack lining a few times with this guy Kyle from church.  Kyle mentioned that he had spent some time in Nashville for work training and had gone to a few climbing gyms.  Emily is from Nashville and loves climbing, so she asked what else he had done.  He said that he was there for two days so on one day he went climbing and on the other he went to the temple.  And then Emily asked what the purpose of temples was and I... let Kyle handle it.  Because the last few times I've explained stuff to her I usually end up on a diatribe about sexism.  Kyle talked about baptisms for the dead and left it there (thank Heavens.  It could have gotten more confusing).  And then I hastily added that people also got married there.  Emily responded with something about how I'd mentioned it was the only socially acceptable place for young LDS couples to get married (again, I had gone off on a tangent when explaining something at some point) and Kyle then explained how we believe in eternal marriage and being with our family and extended family forever.  I joked about how people claim that Heaven to them is being with their family, which makes me laugh because I would have thought that it was the opposite if you hadn't been brought up with these beliefs.

And then Emily said something that was pure gold.  She said, "it seems to me that if you believe that you'll be with your families forever that you would probably treat each other better on Earth."

I had never, ever thought about it that way.

I once had a friend explain to me that because he wasn't sealed to his family that he felt like a drifter.  Maybe it doesn't need to be said that my parents were never sealed in the temple.  I've never felt completely like a drifter--I've always had wonderful close friends.  But I have felt the pain of wondering why my family doesn't love each other like other LDS families do.  I wish that my brothers and I got along and that all I wanted for my vacation was to see my mom and hang out.  These are things that I want for my future family.  But I don't actually want them with the family I have now.  Maybe it's time to change that.  Because, after all, one day we will be together forever.  Maybe the heavenly version of Jason won't be such a conspiracy theorist.  Maybe the heavenly version of my mom will not be on an eternal quest to find love.  Maybe the heavenly version of me will have a better heart.  But also, maybe none of those things will happen and all we will have is what we currently have.  And I could be doing much better.