It Wasn't a Gift

I went to a retreat this week about “Faith Crisis” and after listening to myself talk, hearing the anger and resistance to being told this was a “gift” and being asked to list some of the good things that have come out of it, I finally figured out what was going on and why I’m probably NEVER going to say I’m glad this happened to me.

My faith crisis happened as a result of my daughter’s death. I can’t separate the two timelines. I wish I could. I really wish I knew if I’d have gone through a faith crisis at about the same time anyway. But as far as I can tell, it happened because of my grief and guilt over losing my daughter.

So many friends and family who are Mormon church members told me this narrative that God had caused this to happen because there was an important “lesson” for me to learn about my daughter’s death. It was supposed to bring our family closer together. It was supposed to make us more righteous and lead us to the celestial kingdom, where we would see her again.

I tried SO hard to accept these messages as loving, but what they really said to me is—something is wrong with you and that’s why a bad thing happened to you. If you were good (like the speaker telling me the message), then this wouldn’t have happened.

I don’t know how to explain how very damaging it was to hear that these people felt my lack of a certain quality (whatever it was) had caused God to decide to kill my innocent daughter. I know they would tell me that’s not what they meant. But it’s what I heard. And as someone who then and now considers my mothering to be a vital part of my identity, it was enough to make me suicidal. Eventually, I gave up belief in that God entirely. I’ve had to completely rebuild all my morality and my belief in God (such as it is) since then.

So when someone asks me to say that my faith crisis is a gift, that it made me a better person, can you see why it feels like the same pressure as Mormons telling me that my daughter’s death was a gift. This is what I have to say to that:

My daughter’s death was not a gift. I would rather have died than go through this. If there were a time machine, I would go back a thousand times and stand in front of a bus rather than see her dead. This is what I call being a good mother. I would always, always choose for her to live.

I accept now that I don’t get to choose that. I accept that I lived and she didn’t. I know these things happened, and that I can’t change them. That’s what it means not to be God. I refuse to accept that any loving God caused this to happen. I refuse to accept that there is any lesson that is worth my daughter’s death or that I will ever EVER reach a point where I will say that I’m grateful that she died.

I can never know if I caused her death. I try really hard to not carry the weight of believing I did or didn’t do something that killed her. I was so impatient for her to come that I started running again pretty hard the two weeks before she died. It probably didn’t do any harm, in the end, but I can’t know for sure. I had a “spiritual prompting” to go to the hospital which I didn’t listen to. I can’t know if they would have saved her or not. It would be very convenient to believe that she was going to die anyway, but I’m just masochistic enough to refuse the kinder, gentler narrative.

I also struggle to believe that she is still alive in heaven, waiting for me. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. It’s more than a struggle. It’s a nightmare. I cry if people try to get me to talk about why I don’t find it comforting. It’s because I don’t want to believe that I will have to meet her again and face the daughter I might have killed because I was too selfish or just not smart enough or unrighteous or whatever it was. I can’t bear that thought. I just can’t. I’d rather she was gone forever than that.

Were there things I learned in the last fourteen years after she died? Yes. Are they things I value? Yes. Do I think I could have/would have learned those things regardless? I think so, though I suppose I will never know.

I am a more compassionate person now than I was then. I’m less judgmental. I’m more willing to just sit and listen to someone else’s experience. I’m more self-aware. I’m more gentle on myself. I’ve learned to let go a bit more.

But I don’t think that I would say I’m a better person now than I was then. There are a lot of nasty consequences that have come about as a result of both my faith crisis and my daughter’s death.

I’m physically less healthy and strong than I used to be. I’m less able to DO things because I just question all the time whether they’re worth doing. I leave my house rarely because one of the results of the faith crisis was massive anxiety about everything. I don’t trust other people. I don’t believe they love me. I don’t believe they know me or want to know me. I suspect I sound angry a lot, but to myself, I just sound broken.

I am not the person I was. I know sometimes it may seem like some traits remain the same. I’m still autistic. I still like to focus on numbers and measurements. I am still a writer, though I’m writing very different things now than I once did. I still exercise more than other people do, though it’s A LOT more now than it used to be.

But inside, I don’t feel like the same person at all. It feels sometimes like the old me died because she couldn’t bear to live anymore. This new person was forced to take over and she isn’t happy about it. She’d have preferred to have an easier start to life.