rt,

Sent several messages but never received an answer. However, like a voice from the past I keep trying. This time, the reason is that I follow your blogging from time to time. In one of the latest you published a picture of your liquor and cigar cabinet and asked rethorically: how low can a man get? Well, I can answer that question for you: you can never get so low as to be out of reach of the helping hands of your parents or the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why I put you and [DW] on the prayer list at the temple. You may find this totally unnecessary or even ridiculous. Well, then we'll wait a little longer. I cannot command angels, like in the case of Alma's wayward sons, but I do have eternity. Know that we think of you fairly regularly and act as you see fit because: [quotes a hymn I don't know the English words to:] the Lord doesn't force you into heaven because he gave us agency. I doubt, however, that your current choices are correct.

With kind regards,
First Name

===========

The spelling, spacing and wording is as close as I could translate. Actuallyt, the spacing wasn't that hard, since there was none....

In the past 8 years, there has been one (1) e-mail from my dad's second wife (my mom died earlier):

"If you think it is time to make contact with your father he is hoping for that and he will be in Europe between 06 June and 07 Jully at the following address: [...] You can also write to him via e-mail or via the post. Your father loves you and he misses you very much."

So there you have it. Feels good to be loved...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2012 06:31PM by rt.

Im so sorry... That hurts.

It's like I said to my parents:
"That's love? Then stop it! I don't want to be loved by you."

hmmmm roughly same thing my dad said about me in an email but he sent it to someone else. Saying I needed to come back to church and everything and all my problems would be sorted....all by just going to church.

Yet I moved out of their house over a week ago and still no phone call from them or anything...dont you think if you havent seen your child or heard from them in a week but still in the same town you would call??

yes, nice to be loved isn't it....

I'm sorry. That must sting badly!

I think they really do love and miss you, but they just don't see how they come across. All they can see is they're extending their hand to you. They never see the slap across the face that happens with that extension.

It's too bad that they can't see that you're a good person who's living your life the way you choose and still love you as their son. What a loss.

That is so horrible- we love you here! That must hurt, even after all the time that has elapsed.

Sucks for your Dad to be so sure that he is right all the time.....life is short and he's blowing it.

You have my sympathies.

As the Scots would say: he is an "EEJIT!"

"after all these years I just wanted to let you know that we often think about you and how your are wrong and we are right. I saw evidence on your blog about how horrible you are and how low you've sunk. We are righteous and not only go to church but have Temple recommends. Remember we are right and you are wrong but we, being magnanimous people, love you anyway,"

so he saw a photo of a liquor cabinet and a cigar and how he thought you are the lowest of low. lot of disney movies from the 60's and 70's have that, does he think they are the scum of the earth? I guess anyone who has ever taken a drink even once is the lowest of the low. So your dad is very wrong, mabey he'll realize that he is the crazy one, and that there is nothing wrong with you. you seem to be the calm person and a stable environment. Mabey you should pray for your dad, it looks as though your dad is going crazy

so are they "low" too?

So much conditional love and so judgemental and arrogant. I would respond with something like...

How you still love them even though they are part of an organizition that supported racism and the sexual perversions of Joeseph Smith blah blah blah. I would turn it around and show him just how ridiculous his words were.

I'm sorry about your Dad; that sucks.

I bet most people on RfM would appreciate your liquor and cigar cabinet. Perhaps even covet it! ;-)

I'd be like, "A simple, 'Hey, how are ya?' would have sufficed. Can't you ever just have a normal conversation? Why does everything have to be about your church?"

Sorry your dad is treating you this way.

Your father loves you-

"if" you will come back to church

"if" you didn't have a liquor cabinet

"if" you would make the right choices as he defines right

"if" you didn't blogg the things you do

Conditional love is never love for the other person. Conditional love is about them. It's about their fears, how they appear to others. They can only love you if you live up to their expectations.

Conditional love sucks.

Yeah, that’s the way to win rt’s heart, Dad!


OMG, rt. Your father is fully drunk on the cult’s Kool-Aid. No wonder you never returned his messages! You are smart to stick with no contact. Sadly, in such circumstances, this is the healthy choice.

Thank you for your thoughtful posts, rt. I am sure many readers have benefitted from them!

Plus a bazillion to WWN's comment

Those of us who come from families that have mastered the LDS version of love-

LOVE you WHEN
LoVE you IF
Love you BUT

This is all too familiar. My friends are the family that I have chosen for myself- You are not alone.

Thanks for sharing.

But he thinks he is being loving and it's the thought that counts more than the words. He doesn't know how.

Actually, I'm not that sad anymore. The only thing I took from this e-mail is that nothing, absolutely nothing changed on his side in the past 8 years. There is nothing new in this mail, no hope whatsoever.

His loss. In the mean time, I had a second daughter, made it as an independent consultant, bought a house, left the church and discovered a whole new world. What a journey!

I was abused by my dysfunctional TBM family, both mentally and physically.

I know you feel pain about your father, but if you stop and take some deep breaths, you will realize that as a father yourself, it is your parental obligation to shield your children from abuse and lies.

I know this sounds harsh, but, perhaps your daughters and your wife and you are all better off without your critical, judgmental father in your life. He wants to shun all of you, and to cause you such pain that you will be forced to return to the cult. This is not loving. All those years he missed knowing you and your family, being a stranger to his own flesh and blood--this has been his choice, and he has been the one who has missed out--not you.

He is suffering because he does love you. And because he is damaged in his ability to properly connect cause and effect, it is your fault he suffers because you having left the church. We all know that choosing your own religion is a basic right which every person has and their choice deserves respect.

The church deliberately taught him to make this false attribution with years of conditioning. They have to because Mormonism is so demanding while being full of lies. If they didn't use cult methods, they wouldn't have any members at all. Joseph Smith was such a prick, it almost makes me believe in miracles that the "church" he founded still exists. (Sorry about that side comment, I've been reading his discourses)

Your father's email is the (desired) result of Mormon brainwashing. Were he a member of a church which reinforced family bonds, he would have been taught the importance of the individual for who they are rather than as a soldier who is expendable in the War Against Evil. He was conditioned to think of you as a failure if you let go of the Iron Rod the same as if you were a military man who went AWOL.

The obvious pain in his email and the lack of spacing makes me wonder if he has received a diagnosis. There is a sort of desperation in him reaching out to slap you like that, you know what I mean? Why bother?

I don't know how old you are, but old age tends to make you tired of playing nice. Fascades which were easy to maintain when you were young are too much work. You begin to see who your family really is and learn what they really think.

Taking a moment to read between the lines, your father probably thought he would cut you off like the church says to do and the Lord would repay his righteousness by sending you back into his life. In his mind he is the father in the story of the prodigal son, waiting for you to be returned to him. Scanning the horizon for you, reminding himself that God is bound by his promises. Years passed by, no you. So he blames himself and suffers even more. He does not have enough faith or you would have come back to the church. Maybe you just need a reminder that he hasn't forgotten his parental responsibilities. Maybe if he pleads with the Lord the 1001st time, the Holy Spirit will speak to your heart and show you that smoking and drinking are wrong and you should come back. He asks his wife to write you an email because his hands shake so much, but she says no, because you are not supposed to sympathize with apostates. "We are getting old," she says, "the last thing we need is to have problems with the Lord now that we need healing--and how will you answer your Temple Recommend interview? Especially now that you have the Big C. Nothing doing."

So he says, "All right then, I'll do it myself, but I'll make it clear that I don't support what he's doing so I can tell the bishop I'm not sympathizing. Is that all right with you?"

She answers, "Well, if you want to waste your time, fine, but I don't know why you want to give yourself more pain. He isn't going to answer, you know."

And she's probably right. It would take a mighty effort to see that email as love reaching out. Jesus said, "By their fruits ye shall know them" speaking of how to identify his followers. This right here is a strong indictment against the Mormon Church being anything remotely connected with Jesus Christ. This father's critical attempt to reconnect with his child before he dies, without losing God's favor, is what Mormon parental love looks like. This is their fruit.

Shudder. I hope you see past it and show him what a wonderful, loving and successful person you turned out to be. I hope you show him some real "fruit"--some understanding and compassion.
I imagine he has precious little of either.

Hugs to you and thanks for posting.

Anagrammy

anagrammy Wrote:
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> In his mind he is the father in the story of the prodigal son

That's exactly what he said in his last letter before I stopped answering him (a man can only take so much verbal abuse). Funny, I always thought one was to identify with the prodigal son in that story, not the father/god-character.

Our falling out wasn't over the church, btw. It was over money - him wanting me to be a lien for his mortgage and me not wanting to do that because I'm trying to provide for my own family. I was in my early thirties at the time.

I save, he spends like there's no tomorrow. I never said anything about that because I figured he's free to spend his money as he pleases. I guess he took that as approval and was very surprised and mad when I said no, because to him, that came totally out of the blue.

He then started a letter-writing campaign that became ever more vitriolic so at a certain point I just stopped answering the letters. I mean, be a man, pick up the phone, talk to me (he had moved to another hemisphere and I didn't have his number - still don't).

I could see the letters were carefully crafted to be as hurtful as possible to me and my wife who, you'll be surprised to hear, was to blame for everything. She was a good mother and all so I didn't need to divorce her, but psychiatric help might be in order.

Well, you get the picture. For me, there's nothing to gain and so much to lose. If this is love, I don't need it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2012 09:35AM by rt.

Then again, with as little as he's contacted you, perhaps just holding your course works best. Sorry your father isn't able to just love you as you are. I agree that the Mormon Church teaches them not to practice unconditional love. It's a terribly sad thing.

I think the church reinforces what's already there. Even before I left the church, I was a big fat failure in his eyes. I didn't choose the profession he had in mind for me, I didn't marry the type of wife he had in mind for me, I listened to (gasp) pop music, etc.

It's like life stopped for him when I was 15. I can understand that to a certain extent; kids grow up really fast. But hey, get over yourself dad...

Me, too, rt. I thought the humble Christian is the prodigal son and God is the father in the story. It is entirely plausible that a priesthood holder who sees himself as a god-in-embryo would put himself on the throne.

Imagine that paradigm where you, the parent sit on a throne and your children are paying homage. They are the "jewels in your crown." They exist to reverence and verify you--not for their own sakes. The Bible contains passages which condemn children who do not reverence their parents to an early grave. This is loving? This is the kind of loving Heavenly Father we have? I'm taking a pass on that form of love.

From the additional information we see that your father is angry that the rewards he was lead to believe didn't come through. And it's your fault. You are a faulty delivery system, my friend :)

Thank goodness you came out of that hellhole with common sense and a responsible attitude toward your own family. It is truly sad that your father's paradigm is coming to it's karmic end and I am happy to see that you are able to be the balanced adult in the equation.

He is reaping what he himself has sown. I think of Jesus who wept about the destruction of the temple and likened the Jews to chicks that he would have taken under his wing, but they wouldn't have it.

It is possible to feel sad when people get what they deserve. I have read about it, have heard about it, I admire people who do it (Gandi, Jesus, MLK). It's one of my goals :)

It's too bad he has chosen to scapegoat you instead of the true villain here, but none of this is personal. You were never a real person to him, he never knew you, so his hatred or vitriol directed toward you is meaningless.

Kudos to you for protecting your family's future. I am typing this thinking "I hope rt doesn't have to take care of his dad when he's demented. I hope there are TBM siblings ready/willing/able to step in..."

Warmly

Anagrammy

For MORmONS THE church always ALWAYS comes first.....

LOL he wanted you to co-sign fo his loan? Unvelievavble.
Hope you referred him back to the church he loves so much.

You are better off without this "parent" in your life, let him be your stepmother's problem.

I would reply:

Dear Dad,

Thank you for writing to me. I know it's been a long time since we've been in touch and I miss you (and new wife's name if appropriate and true). How are you feeling? I hope you are well. How's the (insert Dad's favorite hobby here...the coin collecting, fly fishing, favorite sports team...)...going?

I'm glad we're in touch again. Know that I love you (if true). I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Love, (your name here)

What was the intended meaning?

Of course I only have your dad's description go to on, but based on that, it sounds like some sort of reference to the insane Mormon fear of substances. I'm just wondering, why on earth would you even pretend to buy into that?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2012 03:08PM by munchybotaz.

munchybotaz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What was the intended meaning?

It was a thread on my exmo forum (dad doesn't know the difference between a blog and a forum) about how one's home changes post Mormonism. No Jesuses or temples on the wall and such. And then there was this little corner in my bookshelves where I have a few bottles of whisky and a small humidor. It's not like I'm a chain-smoking alcoholic or something...

Even if you were a chain-smoking alcoholic, it would have nothing to do with your morals.

At least now you know your dad's been snooping. It's sad that he's so blinded by the fear of substances that he would identify with an imaginary character in this way, wanting to command angels to save his son from cigars.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2012 04:52PM by munchybotaz.

Dare I ask? :)

As Freud said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I was thinking the same thing -- anyone with the Aaronic Priesthood does, according to Mormon belief, have the power to command angels.

D&C 84:26

"And the lesser priesthood continued, which priesthood holdeth the key of the ministering of angels and the preparatory gospel."

D&C 107:20

"The power and authority of the lesser, or Aaronic Priesthood, is to hold the keys of the ministering of angels, and to administer in outward ordinances, the letter of the gospel, the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, agreeable to the covenants and commandments."

So ...

"Dear Dad,

Perhaps you should actually make an effort to fully understand your religion before lecturing me about it."

Why can't your dad command the angels? I thought any worthy man holding at least the Aaronic Priesthood could command the angels... is that not one of the powers provided to those who hold the Aaronic Priesthood?

but he will force you out of heaven whether you like it or not.

Mormons rarely acknowledge that counter-point.

Silent as a tomb, I'm guessing. But as soon as he sees something to harp on, he breaks an eight year silence so that he can lecture you. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this nonsense.

I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable, but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.

So that's what he has been reading...