what I wrote for my mom for mother's day

Whenever anyone learns that I’m the youngest in my family, they always joke about my being spoiled. I tried to deny it for so long, but it’s true. I am spoiled.

Of course, everyone thinks of being spoiled in the material sense—getting whatever toys and clothes and money that one asks for. I can’t say I didn’t get more of that than my older siblings, but I also refused quite a bit of it, conscious of the stigma. No, when I say I’m spoiled, I mean I’m spoiled by how my mother, Carolyn Housley, sees me. I can do no wrong in her eyes. I’m always right, always noble, always the hero.

The downside of this is that I want everyone else to see me that way, to look past my mistakes and questionable judgment calls and see me as a hero. I tend to test girlfriends by pushing them away, trying to see if they can value me in the same way my mother does. I’m almost offended when prospective girlfriends look at my lack of marketable skills and aversion to conventional employment and don’t see me as destined for greatness.

But the upside of my being “spoiled” greatly outweighs any downside. My mother’s love has helped me to value myself when others haven’t, when I’m tempted to measure myself by my failings.

A couple of winters ago I was going through a really hard time. I had just graduated, moved across the country, and was preparing for law school in the fall while working at a law firm. Most significantly, I had fled the pharisaical culture of Utah County Mormonism, realizing that not only was it making me increasingly edgy and bitter, but I was myself was beginning to adopt the prevalent keeping-up-with-the-Johnsons spirituality.

I was confident in my assessment that such an attitude wasn’t intrinsic to the LDS Church, confined only in the self-righteous bubble of Provo, Utah. Consequently, it was devastating to find the same kind of attitude in the same kinds of kids in the same kind of ward in Washington, DC. I felt inadequate—even with the plan of going to law school, I felt directionless and foolish for having moved there without a short-term plan. I felt undervalued—no one seemed to want to talk in Sunday School about the kinds of questions that I did. And, I felt lonely. Mormons in DC were absorbed with things that I cared nothing about—titles, salaries, position, power, influence, esteem.

It was at this low point that I heard a talk from a member of the stake presidency at stake conference. The talk was pleasant enough, if not entirely memorable, up until one of his last points. He began to extol the virtues of “good” music, opining that the natural order of God’s creation is reflected in harmonious, sonorous music. He scorned discordant music, likening it to contention and confusion.

The point was innocent enough, unless you are attuned to its subtext as I happened to be. His point, aside from being medieval (a particular musical interval was banned by the Church in the Middle Ages for being demonic, based on its dissonance) hewed closely to the culture war of the last few decades that I had studied in my last semester. What he meant was, Don’t listen to the noisy music of the unstudied, unwashed riffraff—heavy metal, punk, rap, etc. Probably 80% of my beloved music collection wouldn’t pass his bogus consonance litmus test. I left after that meeting on the verge of a panic attack, breaking my personal Sabbath music rule to blast the most dissonant, tuneless music I had while I drove home.

His stance on music deconstructs easily enough—any music is meaningless without tension and dissonance (not to mention that any one definition of dissonance is not the same across cultures). But that wasn’t entirely the point. I didn’t need to prove to him or to myself or to anyone that he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. It was such a fleeting point, practically an afterthought, that most of the congregation probably didn’t even register it. But because of this, it felt like God Himself had singled me out and rubbed it in my face that I didn’t belong.

I called my parents that evening.

Before I continue with the narrative, I want to first tell a friend’s story for sake of contrast. The grandson of an apostle, he would try to talk to his parents about his doubts and frustrations with the Church. They couldn’t sympathize, or at least wouldn’t allow themselves to show that they did. This is the expected Mormon response. In talking about the Church, any opinion that isn’t simultaneously a bearing of testimony makes Mormons uneasy. The typical response is usually a prescription—read the Scriptures, pray, don’t fault-find—instead of an expression of sympathy. The Church is perfect, so it must be your own damn fault. This friend left the Church not long after his mission.

So when I called my parents that evening and told them I didn’t think I could go to church anymore, my dad did the wisest thing he could have done. He handed the phone to my mother.

She asked me a question that betrayed her incisive intuition: “Is it the culture of the Church or the teachings of the Church?”

“The culture,” I replied. I went on to tell her the story of the talk I had heard earlier.

“Well, Nathan,” she said. “You’re just more intelligent than everyone else, so it’s hard on you. You’re a musician, and you know more about it than he does.”

I fully had not expected to tell my parents that I wanted to stop going to Church and hear a compliment in response. But it was exactly what I needed to hear. She reminded me that what I valued in myself actually is valuable, despite how much others may fail to appreciate it. She was wise enough to build me up, not kick me when I was down. I don’t believe that in actual fact she had traded on her loyalty to the Church to do so, but the fact that she was willing to even make it seem that way when so many others wouldn’t is a testament to the love she has for her children. This love has been a sustaining force for her children and will be passed down through the generations of her descendants.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom.