When the only possible reaction is gratitude

Last night, I finished reading a book that has been occupying my thoughts for a week. The book is called Escape, by Carolyn Jessop, and it chronicles her life in and escape from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) cult.

 

When I saw the book sitting on the library display, I remembered the news reports about the children being taken from their mothers. I was appalled by that, as was everyone else I knew. But the news reports fell off quickly. What happened later? I hesitated to read it, out of respect for two families we know, both Mormon, whom I hold in the highest esteem. Even though this cult is not connected with the Mormon Church, they can’t help but be affected because of the history they share with this cult.

 

I’ve often wondered what my friends thought of the FLDS situation, but I never had the courage to ask. I know what it’s like to have your faith maligned because of the actions of people who really aren’t of your faith. Take Mel Gibson and what he calls Catholicism. It is not Roman Catholic at all—yet in our sound-byte culture of oversimplifications, he is portrayed as practicing the same religion that I do. It offends me.

 

Anyway, I went ahead and checked the book out of the library. And for the next six days, I could not put it down. Carolyn Jessop’s story has haunted my dreams—literally—and churned in the back of my mind throughout every day.

 

Escape centers on polygamy, a practice so foreign to me that I can’t even fathom why anyone would want to live it—on a practical level, let alone a moral one. She explains the ideal of how polygamy is supposed to work. But her book paints a picture of the much uglier reality caused by the simple corruption of original sin, inherent in every human being, as well as the more insidious corruption of men who use religion as an excuse to domineer, torment and ruin hundreds, thousands, of lives. That number sounds exaggerated, but by the time her book closes, her “husband” had a hundred children. A hundred.

 

There is the offense against marriage, against human dignity implicit in the woman’s degradation, and then there is the offense against humanity in the treatment of children. Jessop unfolds a horrifying story of children who are brought into being, not because they are a gift from God, not because their parents love each other, but simply so that they exist. Once they’re here, their welfare, bodily and emotional, is of no importance.

 

Critics of the Catholic Church seem to believe that the Church prohibits birth control so that there will be as many children as possible, regardless of circumstances. This distorted view has always annoyed me, mostly because the slightest bit of digging would reveal that the Church thinks no such thing. Children are a gift to be treasured, nurtured, and loved. They are a gift both to parents and to each other. Alex and Julianna, with their rough-and-tumble way of showing love, illustrate that beautifully. But having more children than you can really care for—spiritually and emotionally as well as temporally—is as sinful as refusing to have more children because you want to live a more affluent lifestyle. This is what the Church teaches about children. It boggles my mind to think people would actually believe that anyone would advocate a “have as many as biologically possible” stance. It’s irrational. No one can possibly think like that.

 

Except, what I discovered in reading this book is that yes, people can think like that.  Jessop speaks of a household of two or three dozen children, by various mothers, who are on the verge of starvation because their father doesn’t give them enough money for groceries. A “family” in which children are dragged out of bed for “prayers” which actually consist of tattling on each other—of two-year-olds beaten until they are bruised and finally stop screaming, not because they understand their error, but because they are too exhausted to do it anymore—of “wives” who make each others’ lives living hell in order to gain some modicum of control over their own existence.

 

It’s a chilling picture. Abuse exists. We know that. But to see it practiced on a wide scale, on an institutional level, and in the name of God… I can’t even finish the sentence. There just aren’t words to express how horrible that idea is.

 

In the end, the emotion that I draw from this book is gratitude. Gratitude for my own life, with a home full of emotional and temporal security, my spacious yard backed by trees, my beautiful children (who are, after all, really wonderful kids despite my frequent gripes), and above all, my wonderful husband, who sleeps by my side every night and who moderates my excesses—and whose excesses, in turn, I help him to draw under control. We are a partnership. And that is, after all, what God intended the marriage relationship to be.