a mormon memoir part two: coerced commitments
An entire childhood of repressing my emotions and channeling this energy into religious zeal was becoming less and less effective.
At 18 years old I sprinted into adulthood like it was an obstacle course, my new home the perfect arena. Provo, Utah: the hottest place to be for a young, single Mormon. Frozen yogurt shops, hiking trails, arcades, and the best sunset watching peaks sprinkled the valley like a 1950s milkshake, inviting its inhabitants to remember their eternal purpose during this season of their earth life: dating to marry!
My YSA (Young Single Adult) ward kept me heavily engaged in this mission:
Church every week, with most Sunday School lessons focusing on courtship and preparing for eternal marriage
Sunday night Ward Prayer, a Sabbath-Day-approved social gathering for singles
Monday night Family Home Evening, where we were divided into pretend families. Two leaders were picked and we called them mom and dad. They planned activities and service projects for the group.
Every other Wednesday for Relief Society (the women’s group) activities.
Monthly Friday night dances
Monthly Saturday service projects
Once a month for visiting teaching. I was assigned a sister companion from the ward and we were given an assignment to visit two other sisters in the ward. We visited them once a month to build friendship bonds and share a gospel message from the church’s magazine The Ensign.
Once a month for home teaching teaching visits. Two men from the ward would come to our apartment and hang out with us, give us priesthood blessings, or ask us if we needed any help with things like assembling furniture or getting our oil changed.
Quarterly interviews with the bishop to discuss our spiritual progress
I did it all and loved it. I said yes to all the men who asked me on dates, even if I wasn’t interested. I was taught from a young age that saying no to a man would hurt his feelings and it was my responsibility to make sure he felt good about himself. I finagled my way out of relationships by remaining aloof and surface level. I didn’t care about dating as much as I thought I would.
I watched my childhood friends leave on Mormon missions. The boys embarked on two-year missions, fulfilling their priesthood duty to serve. Those who didn’t go were looked upon with pity. “I heard he has a pornography addiction…” we’d whisper to each other. Sometimes a missionary would come home early from their mission and it was incredibly awkward. If they came back for medical reasons we were heartbroken for them. But if the reason wasn’t clear we’d look at each other with knowing glances. It was probably porn.
At 19 some of my female friends left on their 18-month missions thanks to a new revelation received 2 years prior by the prophet President Monson. I would never forget this epochal General Conference of October 2012.
General Conference is a bi-annual 10 hour conference held at church headquarters in Salt Lake City every April and October. The conference takes place in the grandiose conference center on Temple Square and is live streamed so that members and Mormon-curious people across the globe can tune in to spiritually uplifting messages. The apostles and other church leaders give talks on topics that Heavenly Father has urged them to speak about. The most exciting moment of the conference is always when the prophet speaks: through him we receive the most direct communication from Heavenly Father himself.
Prior to October 2012, women who wanted to serve a mission would need to wait until they were 21 years old. Quite commonly a woman would be married before that age, so sister missionaries existed in much smaller numbers than men. But during that groundbreaking General Conference, President Thomas S. Monson stated that, effective immediately, women can serve their missions at 19! For the first time in my life I started to seriously consider serving. My friends and I mused about how the Lord must be hastening the work for His second coming. We were so empowered by this faith He had in us to do this important work.
Missionaries are not allowed to contact home except through email or handwritten letters once a week. I missed my friends who were scattered across the globe and as I read their inspiring emails I knew I wanted to serve too. 4 months before my 19th birthday, at the earliest possible moment, I went through a series of worthiness interviews and submitted my application to serve. I jumped around excitedly with my roommates. I was going on a mission!
I secretly hoped to be called abroad even though wishing for a specific call is selfish and worldly. I had traveled all over the US but had never lived outside of Utah. I craved to experience a different part of the world. The thing about a Mormon mission is that you have no say in the matter of where you serve. After you submit your application to church headquarters, the prophet and apostles pray to know where the Lord wants you to serve. Everything is in God’s hands.
Church headquarters then mails you a letter with your mission call: where you’ll be serving and when you’ll leave. Opening the mission call is a huge milestone in a Mormon’s life. Typically your friends and family come to gather in your living room or on a video call as you open the letter and read it aloud in real time. I had attended so many mission call openings and I was buzzing when my special day finally arrived.
Standing in my Sunday best in my parent’s packed living room, I read aloud my mission call. Along with a lot of flowery language about my eternal purpose to bring souls to salvation, I read that I was called to serve in the Sofia, Bulgaria mission. Yes!
My entire knowledge of Bulgaria was limited to some flashcards I had used to study for my AP World History exam in 10th grade and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but suddenly that country became my country. My ego swelled. I would learn Bulgarian and touch the souls of countless Bulgarians! I would leave the country better than I found it, with stronger church membership and seeds of truth planted for generations to come. I would be Sestra Bocanegra!
In the 4 month period between receiving the call and the first day of the mission, I committed myself to studying and living the doctrine more than ever before. I went through, once again, another series of worthiness interviews with church leadership for approval to receive my endowments. I didn’t entirely know what that meant, I just knew it was a necessary saving ordinance for entering God’s presence again and that I needed to have done it prior to serving a mission. Friends of mine who had already “taken out their endowments” as they phrased it, told me little of the ceremony. “It’s kind of weird, but don’t worry, it’s full of symbolism,” was all they divulged. They seemed so mature wearing the garments, the sacred underwear that only endowed members of the church can and must wear. My regular underwear felt childish.
With ease I passed the interviews and I got the required signatures on an advanced version of my temple recommend. “The temple is full of symbolism. It might be hard to understand at first but with time I think you will come to appreciate its depth,” my bishop told me as he signed off on my new temple recommend. This barcode would grant me access to the upper levels of any Mormon temple! No longer would I be confined to the basement.
I was so curious about what went on upstairs. All my life I’d watched adults attend the temple carrying little cloth briefcases with mysterious contents inside. I was told what they did in there was sacred, not a secret, and that’s why they never spoke about it. I’d always wondered about this ineffable ceremony. As a small child I learned a pretty song about the joy I would experience going through the temple one day. We sang it often in primary and Young Women meetings. With all the fuss and excitement about the temple, I couldn’t help but look forward in anticipation to the day I would receive the temple’s higher knowledge.
Finally, my special day arrived. Just like my baptism, everyone I knew and loved (though this time only those with the special barcode on their temple recommend), showed up with smiling, eager faces. Earlier in the day I went to Deseret Book, a popular Mormon bookstore, to purchase the supplies I’d need. I’d never paid much attention to it before but in the back of the bookstore is a sectioned off area only accessible to those with an advanced temple recommend. A clerk scanned my barcode and I entered a room of aisles of packaged garments. Pink packaging for women and blue for men. Another clerk took my measurements and filled a shopping basket with a variety of garments in different fabrics and slightly different cuts. I was not to open the packaging until I was endowed.
I knew what the garments looked like from years of helping my family and Mormon neighbors do laundry. They were knee length, cap-sleeved, white, two-piece underwear sets with markings stitched on each nipple, the belly button, and the right kneecap. I knew adults wore them day and night and that they offered an additional layer of protection from the adversary. Mormon folklore tells of burn victims whose garment-covered skin remained untouched by the flames or car accident fatalities that were avoided because of the garment’s seat-belt-like protection. Garments were a privilege, just like other commandment from God. They kept us safe.
After filling my basket with a sufficient stash of garments to fill my underwear drawer I picked out a long-sleeved, floor-length, plain white dress. In the temple everyone wears white to symbolize the purity of heaven and equality of souls. I looked forward to the spiritual experience of being in a room where everyone would be clothed in the color of His Kingdom.
I thought I was done with my purchases at this point, so I was surprised when the clerk led me to a small back room behind the rows of garments. She shut the door behind me and unlocked cabinets stacked with more clothing items. In the cabinets she looked around for my size and when satisfied with her choices, laid out a strange ensemble: a long white robe with pleats, a long white sash, a white veil, and a bright green apron embroidered with a leaf pattern.
A strange feeling, like centipedes crawling around in my guts, crept in as I took in the oddity of the accoutrement. This wasn’t what I pictured when I thought of sacred. Fortunately, I was quite accustomed to pushing uncomfortable feelings aside. I knew how to rely on faith. The clerk folded up the clothes with reverence and placed them in a white cotton pouch. With a smile she handed the pouch to me. No explanation. I obediently followed her to the register.
That afternoon I carried a stiff cloth briefcase and walked past the basement entrance of the temple and into the main lobby. A temple worker scanned the barcode on my recommend and another worker pinned a pink tag on my shirt. “It’s her first time!” they whispered excitedly to each other. I was led to the women’s dressing room and instructed to put on the garments for the first time. Examining my garment-clad body in the full-length mirror, it hit me that today was the first day I really felt like a woman.
As instructed, I placed a heavy, white tunic over my sacred underwear. I stepped out of the dressing room and the pink tag was once again fastened to my clothes by a temple worker, my escort for the day. She then ushered me into a small, makeshift booth. It was sectioned off on all four sides by a white curtain. In the privacy of these curtains, another temple worker came in and unceremoniously told me my new name.
I knew about the new name I would receive in the temple, it was something I had learned about in seminary. This new name was actually my name in heaven and must be kept private until my wedding day where I would share this sacred name with my betrothed. He needed to know this name because he would use it to call out to me after our resurrection. It’s how he would find me and we’d be together. I would never need to know his name.
The temple worker whispered, “Ruth” and I tried to connect with my premortal self through the name. Ruth. Maybe it would come in time. I covenanted I wouldn’t tell a soul, not until my wedding day.
It was now time to complete the next saving ordinance on my Celestial journey: The Initiatory, a precursor to the Endowment. I didn’t know anything about what would happen next. In the privacy of this booth, I sat in a chair as an elderly woman stood above me and placed a few drops of consecrated oil on my scalp, just like my dad and other men in the ward would do when they gave me priesthood blessings. She then placed her hands on my head and recited a blessing.
A woman was giving me a priesthood blessing! I remembered the many arguments I’d heard angry feminists make about how the church is sexist because women cannot hold the priesthood. Well, it just simply wasn’t true. I heard her say that I was blessed to one day be a “queen and priestess unto my husband”. Those words felt so powerful as I imagined myself as a co-creator of worlds. I was in on one of the luckiest secrets in the world!
The fullness of the gospel was much more intricate than I could have imagined and I knew I needed to come back as soon as I could in order to better understand the wisdom of her blessing. Her blessing! I almost felt the love of my Heavenly Mother, who is too sacred to talk about or mention by name, in that moment.
After the beautiful revelation I’d received that women hold priesthood powers in the temple and would have them in heaven as well, I couldn’t wait to learn more from the Endowment ceremony about Heavenly Father’s divine plan.
I dressed myself in the white dress and discovered an unusually large pocket. “It’s for the pouch,” my temple escort whispered as she re-pinned the pink tag on my chest. I slipped the mysterious pouch inside. “Put your veil on now. But it doesn’t need to cover your face yet.” I did as I was told.
She escorted me upstairs to the chapel where my family waited. Dressed in white, they greeted me enthusiastically (but also reverently). The women wore veils and the men wore funny looking poofy hats, like a baker’s. A family member squeezed my hand excitedly, simultaneously diffusing my questions and normalizing the scene. A man in a white suit played soothing, familiar hymns on a white grand piano and sunlight refracted in magnificent beams through stained glass. A taste of heaven.
Soon a temple worker, our host for the evening, came in and excused us pew by pew to the endowment room. We walked single file through an ostentatious hallway crowned with a weeping crystal chandelier. He led us to a room that looked like an all-white movie theater. Men were instructed to sit on one side while women sat on the other. It was finally happening! My thirst for higher knowledge would soon be quenched.
An 80s film began to play. The creation story! I watched beautiful footage of the earth, like a nature documentary, and then watched a computer generated universe in which God and Jesus Christ commanded Adam to go to earth. Most of the narration was the familiar story from Genesis and the dialogue between Adam and Heavenly Father seemed like it came from the Pearl of Great Price, a Mormon book of scripture.
The story then shifted to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The film continued with the same familiar story about the tree of knowledge of good and evil and how Satan beguiled Eve. Periodically the host paused the film and instructed us to put on an article of clothing from our pouch. Each article of clothing held a symbolic meaning: the green apron to cover our nakedness, the robes of the priesthood, a sash around our waists to represent holiness. I felt a bit goofy but everyone around me wore them so earnestly. Reading the room, I pressed forward in faith.
More symbolism came. The film ended and we were ushered to a different white room where we were taught what the host called the signs and tokens of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood. Each was a way of clasping hands and came with its own word or phrase. Four total. When performed together, this created a handshake that, ostensibly, we’d perform with the angels who stand as sentinels at heaven’s gate.
I was surprised that this handshake seemed to be the bulk of what we learned in the temple. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. This must be what people were referring to when they say the temple is “so symbolic” and that it “takes a lifetime to understand.”
We were guided to yet another white room and a couple kneeled across from each other over an altar with hands locked in the Melchizedek grip. I took in the scene like I would a novel from English class. Did this couple symbolize Adam and Eve? Perhaps the holy union of marriage between a man and a woman? Or perhaps even the sacred union between Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother? A group of us stood around the couple to form what the host called a Prayer Circle. We locked hands in the Melchizedek grip. Everyone had the motions memorized like it was second nature, and I knew in time I’d be right there with them.
The women were instructed to veil their faces. My escort helped me fasten the veil over my face. Now covered, I wondered if the veil symbolized my gender’s proximity to the other side of the spiritual veil. I was taught that women don’t need the priesthood in this life because we are intrinsically closer to God. Our bodies are creators! We are the empaths, the nurturers, the moral compasses, the mothers of the world. We are in tune with the divine. And through our service, our labor, we come closer to Christ. Because men do not have these same life-giving and caretaking opportunities, they need priesthood power and leadership opportunities to practice living like Jesus.
As I pondered the symbolism of this lightly suffocating ritual, we chanted the words of a prayer together repeating each line after the host. Placed on the altar was a bag filled with handwritten names. I knew about this. In lower levels of the temple, temple goers can write the names of people they know who may need extra blessings: the sick, the weary, the poor, the doubters. Despite the bizarre display (the chanting, the secret handshakes, the matching outfits, the veiled women), I thought it was nice that we took time out of the ceremony to acknowledge the pain in the world and put our collective power into healing people who needed it.
After the prayer we were led into, of course, another white room. Nearly two hours had passed and the ceremony still had momentum. We sat facing a curtain covering the entirety of the front wall. Slowly, the curtain began to rise.
I watched in anticipation as a second curtain, this one illuminated, was revealed. Sewn into the curtain in magnification were the very symbols stitched onto my holy garment: a “V” over one nipple and an “L” over the other, and a horizontal line over the belly button and over the right knee cap.
The host taught us the meaning of each symbol. At this point in the ceremony I was tired and ready for our dinner reservation at my favorite sushi restaurant. I tried to pay attention but my thoughts wandered. My body was used to sitting still for drudging church meetings but despite this new, opulent setting I couldn’t help but return to the dissociative homeostasis I’d long ago created for myself. It would end eventually, it always does.
I came back to the present when the host asked us to make eternally binding covenants. I wondered if this part might be more interesting. He instructed us to put our right arm to the square, a motion I was familiar with from my many years in church sustaining our local leaders. Along with everyone around me I raised my right hand to the square and covenanted to obey with exactness the law of the Lord, to keep the law of Chastity, to refrain from loud laughter and ill speaking of the Lord’s anointed, to give all my talents and efforts to the Kingdom, to wear the garment for the rest of my life, and to pay 10% of my income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I also covenanted to never reveal what I had learned today. I repeated “yes” each time I was prompted.
Easy. I was already following all of those commandments except for refraining from loud laughter. I was confused by that one because I had laughed loudly with every single family member in that very room who had apparently already made these covenants. I figured it was a symbol for something else that I’d come to understand later on.
The end of the ceremony was nigh. The host instructed us to line up on either side of the curtain and await our turn to perform the entirety of the handshake. Hands peeked through the belly button symbols of the grand curtain. These hands, belonging to temple workers, must symbolize the angels guarding heaven’s gates, or perhaps even Heavenly Father himself. I awaited my turn with one of the hands.
We followed a script, a role play of this eternally consequential interaction, and my escort helped me through my lines. “First timer,” she whispered to the figure on the other side of the veil. She assured me I’d soon have it memorized after repeated temple attendance. After correctly completing the role play, the hand pulled me through a gap in the curtain and I entered a room of grandeur. I knew this symbol: the Celestial Kingdom.
My family, clad in the spectacle of the temple robes, greeted me excitedly. This reunion symbolized the joy I’d feel making it to the Celestial Kingdom after a lifetime of obedience. Everyone was quick to ask how I felt and I assured them how happy I was. In truth, I was overwhelmed and couldn’t identify what I was feeling. My thoughts felt stuck, like a clogged pipe.
The Endowment ceremony wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It was so long and I didn't get to learn about the kind of mysteries I was hoping to learn about: like life in the premortal realm or how God really created the Earth. And the clothing looked so weird.
I posted on Instagram, “So grateful for the temple and this family of mine. What an amazing experience! This gospel is true.” It was true, in a sense. I knew I needed to return again soon, and often, for this ritual to grow on me like the familiarity of church attendance. It would become amazing in time.
And so, I did. I made a goal to attend a session every week and I stuck to it. I searched for records on ancestry.com, a Mormon-owned genealogy software and database, to find my own ancestors awaiting this important work. Going through the motions of the Endowment ceremony was dulling but the opportunity I had to spend as much time as I wanted in the celestial room after a session became holy to me. It was quiet and beautiful inside and I used this time to pray and reflect on my eternal existence.
The months leading up to my mission were an opportunity to fine tune my focus on Christ. I needed to be completely ready to bear His name as a missionary. A heavy assignment. I sang church hymns every time I felt negative emotions like sadness or loneliness creep in. Heavenly Father has a divine plan for my life. I am known and loved. I am in His Hands. I reminded myself of this frequently, desperately warding off any feeling that wasn’t in alignment with living in the manner of happiness. A church lesson helped me remember how to focus my energies in order to feel good: JOY (Jesus, others, you).
I gave a bold talk in church the Sunday before I embarked on my mission. I told a story about a friend I’d made at college who was no longer active in the church. He was experiencing doubts because of anti-Mormon lies he’d found on the internet. I shared how I had testified of the truthfulness of the gospel to him and that I stood firm in my defense of it despite his anti-Mormon arguments. I spoke from my heart about how in the absence of faith in the gospel, we can simply hope that it is true. And that through the divine workings of Jesus Christ, that hope can be turned into faith. I requested the congregation sing my favorite hymn, “How Firm A Foundation”. The words reminded me of how a belief in the gospel could get us through trials, doubts, and negative feelings.
Sitting in the pews that Sunday was my boyfriend of 5 months. My first love. I knew it wasn’t the best decision to get so attached before my mission, but in his presence the emotional loneliness I carried throughout childhood melted away. Provo had worked its magic.
I broke up with him tearfully the night before I left, though we both held dreams of being together after my mission. A returned missionary himself, he supported my decision to serve. As attached to him and as marriage focused as I was, I held a private longing to hold onto my independence as long as possible. I believed the mission would fulfill this longing.
I didn’t know it at the time but my Mormon halcyon was about to come to a close. An entire childhood of repressing my emotions and channeling this energy into religious zeal was becoming less and less effective. After 19 years of squashing my desires and diluting my individuality in exchange for belonging, I couldn’t imagine another way to be. Drowning myself in religious doctrine effectively scratched my itch for meaning and spirituality. It had worked thus far because I’d never had to leave my comfort zone. I would soon come against friction that would force me to change.