When Justin finally returned my text, it was everything I had been trying to tell my parents for months: That he and Lindsey had had no idea why they were being treated this way. That the last time he had tried to reconcile, it had gone horribly awry. That it had been painful to be left in the dark, “tossed off and forgotten,” and that his wife was angry about the way the church had managed things. Justin was afraid of getting into trouble for this text exchange, too, and promised not to tell anyone but Lindsey.
At least we had that assurance.
But from what Justin said, Lindsey seemed done with the drama. She saw no hope for change. Justin told me that the elders had even forbidden sewing lessons with some of the younger girls that Lindsey had planned with their parents. She and Justin had planned a “double date” with another young couple, and that, too, had been disallowed. I was baffled. Having meals together was a regular part of our fellowship, and had been for as long as I had been alive. To my mind, it was now undeniable that the elders’ decisions were primarily driven not by Scripture, but by a need to keep church members in our place. To make us understand that bending to their will was the only option. Nothing else mattered.
Justin and I tried to orchestrate the circumstances of a church-sanctioned apology from Grace to Lindsey: we would each separately and cautiously reach out to my parents. We were still trying to make it fit. Still hoping we could make it work.
But it wasn’t to be. When I gently approached my father that evening, he blew up. He had heard enough from me about the issue. I retreated with the same feeling I’d gotten almost every time I’d challenged his decisions over the previous year: that hardliners like Steve and Sam were behind this new authoritarianism. When I disputed elder edicts, my father’s choices were limited to either shutting me down or resisting the militant faction among the elders—and we both knew how the latter would go. He also just seemed convinced that their collective wisdom had to be correct. After all, this was the Lord’s church.
And on top of everything else, he was surely as exhausted with the whole mess as my mother, Grace, and I all were.
“Time to despair,” I wrote to Justin that night. “There was a blowup (no one knows about any of our discussions, though). Abort mission. I’m so sorry, friend.” Justin responded that he was at a loss. Miserable. Hopeless. We’d reached the end of the line, but he thanked me for even making the effort.
“Take care,” he said.
I told Grace everything just before bed, breaking down when I got to the part about our father. In our estimation, he was one of only two or three elders who took to heart that verse about humility—in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves—and it contributed to his unwillingness to challenge the others. “They should have been learning his compassion!” I wept bitterly. Instead, they had insisted he take on their severity.
I slumped onto the bed beside my sister and pressed my face into a pillow. She reached over to stroke my back, and as we lay there in silence for a moment, I realized it wasn’t just the change in my father that I was mourning. It was the final crumbling of an image I had held so long in mind. Westboro Baptist Church. Special interest of the Almighty. Uniquely guided to eternal triumph by God Himself.
Sordid. Base. Banal.
Human.
* * *
Making the decision to leave gave me greater boldness in my futile attempts at reform, but it also introduced yet another impossible question:
When?
Neither Grace nor I had an answer—just a growing list of reasons that it couldn’t be now. We couldn’t leave before Mom’s birthday, surely. And what about our parents’ anniversary? How cruel it would be to ruin everything right at this moment. And then there were the things we couldn’t bear to leave without, all that we would forever lose access to once we left. What about family recipes? And home movies? And old photos? We should wait just a little while longer …
There was no denying that this was partly a stalling tactic, based on a dwindling hope that drastic change would occur and save us from our plans.
At the first prospect of losing everyone back in July, Grace