Page 61 of The Confidant
They really must not know what day of the week it is.
Even though I didn’t want to bring the big elephant into the room, I asked, “Don’t you have church, though? It’s Sunday, right?”
They always had church. Even when we were on vacation, or they were on business trips, they still found a way to attend their church meetings.
“About that…” Dad sat up straighter and cleared his throat. “I guess now is as good of a time as any to tell you that your mother and I...well—” He glanced at Mom briefly then back at me. “I think it’s probably time for us to tell you that this past month or so, we embarked on a similar journey that you and Bash took and…” He paused for a second before finishing with, “We actually stopped attending church three weeks ago.”
“Wait. What?” I took a step back, not sure I’d heard them right. “You stopped going to church?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “We did.”
“But…?” I shook my head, my mind reeling with what they were saying. “How? How is that even possible?”
Hadn’t she just been telling me that I’d been contaminated by Satan? And that I deserved to be disfellowshipped because she hoped it would help me get back on the right path?
I was disfellowshipped around the end of December. It wasn’t that long ago.
But they stopped attending in January?
“How about we all sit down in the living room to talk about this?” Dad suggested.
We walked into the living room where Scarlett and I had watched the movie last night. My parents sat on the couch together while I took the chair.
“We’ll just start from the beginning, okay?” Mom said, pulling one of the throw pillows on her lap like she needed it to ground her.
“Okay.” I set my mug on one of the coasters on the cocktail table, so confused and curious.
It had taken me four months of intense study before I really felt okay not going to church. And another four months after that before I removed my name from the records.
But I’d only been raised in the belief system for seventeen and a half years. My parents were almost fifty and had been members of The Fold their entire lives.
They’d done so much, served so many hours—paid millions of dollars in tithes to the church over their lifetime.
And suddenly, they were out?
I mean, if this was true, I was probably going to throw a party because the idea of having my parents understand and accept me was something I hadn’t dared dream of. I thought for sure they’d continue believing I was #TeamSatan until they died.
But how was it possible for them to go from “all in and planning to live their eternity without their sons by their side” to suddenly quitting church cold turkey?
All within the timespan of six or seven weeks.
It sounded way too good to be true.
Unbelievable, really.
Mom blew out a long breath. Then swiveling on the couch cushion, she looked at me and said, “It all started when you told us about your meeting with Pastor Caldwell.”
“It did?” I was so confused because she hadn’t exactly been very sympathetic to my painful experience at the time.
“I know I responded horribly in the moment, when you first told us. I said a lot of really stupid things because I was so confused that my smart and wonderful boy would even land in that kind of a situation.” She shrugged. “But after a few days, your dad and I realized that along with the pain we were feeling over losing yet another son, we were also disgusted. Disgusted that our sweet boy, who had never done anything wrong aside from losing his faith, would be treated in such an un-Christlike way by someone who was supposed to be God’s servant.”
“You didn’t see it as being for my own good then?” I asked, surprised at this one-eighty.
“Obviously, I reacted terribly at first.” She looked down at her hands. “I responded really harshly in the heat of the moment, and I said a lot of things that I’m really embarrassed to have said.” She glanced at the large family photo above the hearth. When she wiped at the corner of her eye, I realized she was becoming emotional.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, reaching over to touch her shoulder. I hated seeing Mom cry. “You were just doing what you’d been taught.”
Even though some of the things she’d said had hurt at the time, I’d known it was just her religious programming talking. I knew she only said those things because she loved me and was just worried about losing me.
