Birthday Trouble

I was scrolling Facebook again when I came across a post by one of my cousins. Her son is on a mission and one of the families in his area took the time to make him a birthday cake. They took pictures and some video. They sent it back to my cousin to share a little in that moment of happiness. Normally, this would be a moment that would make me smile and is one of the reasons I still keep my Facebook account.

However, there was something else in the post that unsettled me. My cousin prefaced her post with the words, "I hope I don't get in trouble for this…"

The tragedy in these words is an arrow in my heart. The rest of what she wrote was warm. I have no doubt that seeing those photos were a reminder of how much she misses her son. However, in her proud mother moment, she was showing something ugly.

She was showing the pathology of an institution that says that when your son or daughter is on a mission, they are no longer yours. They belong to the God you believe in, all you're doing is paying rent in a very real way.

Your time, efforts, and talents are fully devoted to the task of spreading the message of the gospel. Everything else is secondary.

There's nothing I want more than to reach out to my cousin and say, "There's nothing wrong with posting photos and a video of your missionary. He's still your son. I have no doubt that his thoughts turn to home more often than he will admit. He's been conditioned to focus on the work. But that doesn't mean you have to shrink from wanting to share a moment of happiness and care that your son is being shown."

But that's what the church teaches you to do — it teaches you that your will, your wants and desires, are secondary. What matters most is God's will. You're supposed to lose your life in God's service so that when people look at you, they only see Him. At least, that's what I remember thinking when I was a missionary and what I wanted to be when I was an active member.

It's hard to recognize how much the church asks you to give away when you believe it's the most important thing. There are eternal stakes. When you believe the consequences stretch into forever, two years feels like a small price. A birthday hardly seems consequential enough to notice.

When the Work Is Everything

Seeing my cousin's post didn't just make me sad for her. It made me remember. The same logic that made her pause before sharing a birthday photo was the same logic I lived by when I was out there. It felt familiar because the church had the same influence on me.

I don't think you realize how invested members are in the missionaries until you are one. I know I didn't. This post reminded me of the time on my mission when I got sick with pneumonia for a while. The word got around that I was unwell and suddenly all the members were pharmacies. They gave us medicine, Vicks vapor rub, and made us chicken noodle soup.

I'm not saying this as if it's a bad thing. It highlights how much people rally around you. It shows how the members will come together for each other. It's one of the things that I have experienced rarely and, at the time, I barely knew how to receive it. I remember thinking it was too much.

Growing Up Hungry

That is a tragedy of its own. Growing up, I often felt out of place, particularly around my peers. I never felt fully accepted. For the most part, there wasn't maliciousness, just a quiet neglect — the kind that leaves no bruises and no evidence, only a person who grows up not knowing they were hungry.

I think the contributors were my own tendencies to keep to myself and not knowing how to reach out to others that kept me in this spot. I didn't know how to be seen or to say that there was something missing. I didn't have the language to say it even if I would have known that's what was happening.

Part of what the church offers someone like me is a ready-made community. You are seen — not necessarily as yourself, but as a member, a missionary, a son of God with a purpose. For someone who had grown up not knowing they were hungry, that feels like being fed. The problem is that the food is conditional. The belonging has terms. And when you're used to nothing, you might not ever notice the strings.

So to suddenly be shown so much care from my missionary ward, it was uncomfortable for me. I didn't want to go to the members' houses because I didn't want more sympathy. I only wanted to work. Even when I was struggling to breathe, I still thought the work was more important than rest and getting well.

The Terms of Care

I think now of what the subliminal motivations might have been for those members in light of some of my current perspective. It took a long time for me to see how men are valued for what they contribute, what they provide. I was a sick missionary. It's not hard to imagine that part of the motivation of those people was to see their missionary get well so he could continue his work.

I wonder if my cousin doesn't feel something similar. Her son is supposed to be focused on the work, but instead he's celebrating with a family that is his surrogate family for the moment. They took him in because he's part of the program. Would they do so if he was a random stranger? I won't say they wouldn't; but their willingness might not be so great if the circumstances were different.

I don't think anyone in this story is acting from cruelty. The members who gave me soup probably genuinely cared about me. The family who made that birthday cake probably genuinely cares about my cousin's son. But institutions shape the conditions under which care is offered, and this one has shaped those conditions in a particular way: care flows toward those who serve the mission. My cousin's hesitation before posting wasn't born from suspicion of any one person. It was born from having internalized, over decades, that her son's life now belongs to something larger than her love for him — and that to claim otherwise, even for a birthday, is something she might get in trouble for.

My cousin said she hopes she doesn't get in trouble for sharing what she shared. Why should any institution have such a grip on your psyche that it makes you think such thoughts?