Open Writing

She was the prettiest girl in the class, bordering on extremely beautiful, but beneath her outer glow lurked an inner darkness that drew her from the light into the dim corners of human life to a death alone in desperation. She was just sixteen when I started teaching the class, but already the seeds of her destruction were spreading their roots into her troubled soul.

We talked at one point of Celestial Marriage; the ideal of every Latter-day Saint youth. As I spoke the words, she was instantly dismissive. “Huh! I’ve seen that at home with my Mum and Dad, and if that’s Celestial Marriage you can keep it!”

Gently I tried to explain to the class, more eager now than ever to know how to address an unsatisfactory home life, that with the best of intentions life, including Celestial Marriage, was not a destination but a distant goal and that human perfection is something that takes time.

It was a hard sell, depending on the willingness of young people to allow their parents to be the less than perfect people they are even as they reach upwards for the Gospel ideal set by a loving Father in Heaven as the perfect pattern for raising children to physical, mental, and spiritual maturity.

It was a hard sell because she was not the only one to know that some of the things that went on in their own families fell far short of the ideal model that we encourage them to embrace and strive for in Church classes and meetings.

How sad it is that parents are human and prone to fail. Yet it is a greater tragedy when parents do not overcome at least some of their long term faults and foibles, and continue to argue and fight within the family as if the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ had never unfolded its brilliance into their hearts and homes. Those most at risk of disappointing their children are those whose public personas stand in stark contrast to their private behaviours. Such hypocrisies never escape the attention of young ones, and after love has faded into disappointment, it remains only a matter of time before that dissolves into destructive bitterness and, ultimately, hate.

There is grave danger in thinking that our children remain unaffected by domestic wars and the abrogation of public principles. It lies in the fact that children see themselves as integral to, and as extensions of, the family as a whole, so that everything that happens within the family becomes either the blessing or the burden of each child. Some children are sensitive to a degree where they un-invent themselves and reconstitute themselves as the extreme antithesis of the values the family insists it stands for, with the result that they leave the family and turn their backs on all the righteous values that are the foundation of Gospel living, and lose interest and hope in their exaltation.

This is what happened to my student. After teaching that class for a year I was reassigned, and, as she was not a member of my congregation. I lost sight of her until some years later when I learned that she had died as a result of inhalation asphyxia brought on by vomiting the alcohol and drugs in her system when she was too vitiated to assist herself. She was found behind the front door of her flat a few days after her death.

It would be easy to say that her death in those circumstances was inevitable, but as I remember her six years earlier as a lively student, I cannot force myself to that conclusion. I ask myself what I could have done that I didn’t do. Could I have made a difference if I had done anything other than attempt to have her see that imperfect beings sometimes struggle for a lifetime towards a goal that seems to recede from their grasp even as they reach for it?

I tried hard to persuade her, and her fellow students, to make some allowances for their parents because to hold them up to the template of perfection, especially as understood by young people, is to inevitably reach the conclusion that their parents are abysmal failures who are not worth continuing to love and honour.

From my own experience I knew that most parents do their very best, even when they seem not to be making the grade. It is not easy being a parent. Wisdom does not come in ready-made packages to fit each individual or pair who optimistically and with glad hearts step out on the rough and rocky road of parenting and family life. The success we determine to be the right kind does not always come.

But it is precisely in those particular circumstances that our own powers of love have to make generous allowances. If allowances are not made for imperfections, if grace is not applied, forgiveness and understanding extended, then no one can be saved, salvation is an empty promise, exaltation is not achievable, and God has lied.

I knew her parents, and although I do not doubt that some of her criticisms were well-founded, I also know that her parents could be called ‘goodly’ without stretching the truth. The tragedy is that she never understood this. I knew her parents well enough to believe that they will take upon themselves the heavy burden of responsibility for her misfortune. I also know that they were not to blame. Who can we blame either for human misunderstanding, or for human weaknesses?

Our task is to minimise the possibility of other such tragedies by our awareness of the possibility that they could happen, and by asking ourselves, “What must I do to raise the despairing to hope, the suffering to well-being, and the disillusioned to a realistic view of themselves and the true nature of the human condition, and assure them that God has not lied?” Parent, child, and teacher engage in the work of saving souls and generating human happiness through the maintenance of Christ’s ideals for living in our hearts, our homes, and our classrooms.

Copyright © Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Other stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html