Glory Be to Candor

October 24, 2009. I had to check my journal-blog to make sure, but that was the day when a bishop I already loved taught me a lesson I will never forget.

I was in a YSA ward at the time, and we as a ward were going to take a year and visit all the temples in Utah at the time — 13 of them (there are 15 now, as Brigham City and Payson hadn’t been built yet). The temple of the month for October was Logan, and myself and a few other ward members were on the way back down to Salt Lake after attending an early session with the bishop because he had a BYU football game to attend later that day. We were talking about presidents of the Church, and he told me/us a story about when he lived back east in high school and his team won their region for high school Church ball and came to Salt Lake for the all-Church tournament. His Priests Quorum adviser at the time was Andrew Kimball, then-Elder Spencer W. Kimball’s son. So, while the team was in town, Brother Kimball arranged for them to meet Elder and Sister Kimball at their home. I asked the bishop what he thought of the experience, and he looked over at me and said, “I didn’t go in the right spirit, so it wasn’t as good an experience for me as it could have been.” It may not sound like much for the telling, but that reply set me on a course I’ve been on ever since — advocating for more candor and less glossing-over, sugar-coating, and plasticness among Church members.

It would have been very easy for him to say something like, “Oh, it was wonderful.” I wouldn’t have known the difference, but he would have, and because he was and is the type not to worry about telling unflattering stories about himself if there is a lesson to be learned from them, and because he is admirably comfortable in his own skin, he chose to tell the truth.

Considering the effect this choice of his had on me and my priorities, I must ask why this is such a hard attitude for us to have. Why do appearances matter so much? What is wrong with telling someone “I’ve had to fight like hell to make it to this point” or “I really messed up badly in that situation, but here’s how I was able to move forward and improve”? More often than we might think, there is no need to sanitize or gloss over, because some of the greatest teaching we will do to each other will come in moments when we choose the unpleasant details…the *whole* truth…instead of only telling the pleasant result of the unpleasant facts’ effects.

This same bishop, in another memorable instance of true candor–this time over the pulpit–told of living on opposite ends of the house from his wife for two whole years of their marriage, during which time he–get this–was called to be their ward’s bishop. That calling, by his own admission, saved his marriage because it forced he and his wife to decide whether they wanted to save their marriage or not. You could have heard a pin drop in that chapel that morning. Everyone was gobsmacked, including his counselors, but man, what a lesson he taught us all that day! I am not expecting this level of honesty out of anyone else I come across — he is most likely an outlier in his willingness to be full-disclosure, but you can see where experiences like this would lead a person to see the value in not being afraid to tell it straight, unvarnished, unadorned at least a little bit more than is their current practice. So many people gained so much respect for him that day, and so much of a feeling that the Lord is in the details and that healing can come such that it’s hard to imagine a person/couple/family/whoever ever having been otherwise, as was the case here, that I am persuaded it is worth the risk when the Spirit says “tell them.”

Why do we avoid grittiness? Part of this tendency to avoid the hard parts can be found, in my mind, in the oversweetened, oversimplified corners of the bloggernacle. I’m not going to name names here…you can probably think of at least a few examples on your own. Too often, some of the most popular authors seem to exhibit a distressing (to me, at least) fear of going into detail about the bad times, apparently thinking that it might detract from the overall positive and uplifting spirit the writer wants to impart to the reader. What if, though, some credibility could be lent to the idea that discussing the whole process and not just the happy ending is even more edifying than just skipping over what it took to get there? (One notably popular example of this courage is Stephanie Nielson.) I understand keeping your eyes on the prize, and that is no doubt hugely important in working through trials, but can we not be honest about what was/is/will be on the trail between here and there? When you are in the middle of a battle, having someone to pat you on the head and say something like “It’ll all be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end” just does not do it for me, and I am pretty sure I’m not the only one. Don’t just SAY you’ve been there–SHOW you’ve been there.

Maybe it is the culture of social media bleeding into other aspects of our lives. A popular meme I’ve seen lately talks about how a person should go for Halloween as the person they purport to be on Facebook. We see the pretty parts of each other’s lives on FB and the other outlets, and maybe that makes us think in those terms generally. “Nobody will ‘like’ me if I don’t carefully curate the impression I give them of me.” Well, if you want fake friends, then yes, that’s true. Social media allows us to keep others at arm’s length, and because we like the feeling of being the decider of what everyone sees about us, we choose to take this approach away from Elder Teixeira’s four-inch screen and apply it to our three-dimensional life. This must not stand. For the health of our real-world relationships, and our own mental health individually, we *must* let people in. We must let others see good and bad. We must not feel compelled to put up the strong front 24/7. Everyone? No. Every detail? No. But at least the majority of the appropriate ones, depending on the circumstances.

While we’re on the topic of social media, I also wanted to call out the overabundance of FB memes that seem to promise those who are struggling (all of us) some glorious ending to their troubles (God, I feel like Andy Rooney kvetching like this, but anyway). I saw one earlier this week that said something like “If you could see the size of the blessing coming, you’d understand the depth of the trial you’re enduring.” Oh? You know that for sure, do you? I’m not saying hope is not worth having, but it’s also dangerous to get one’s hopes up that high. Desperate people are going to latch on to anything they can, including some dumb message on Facebook. Can’t we just support people through things and not quasi-promise them some huge, satisfying resolution of the difficulty? This, to me, is another example of candor lacking in our lives. Don’t tell people it’s going to work out, because sometimes it doesn’t. Tell them you will be their friend and supporter, come what may. That, to me, has more of a ring of truth and validity than any promise you can make of a glorious finish to a tormenting process.

God does not give us experiences for us to never speak of them again. To a degree, I see this as an example of ‘let[ting] [our] light so shine’ (Matthew 5:16), as the light couldn’t shine like it does without a lot of effort and perseverance on our part. Show some scars. Be your real, authentic self. Overcome the fear and reticence you might have previously felt, and know that the Lord is pleased when we turn our own dark times to bless others’ lives.

P.S. If you want to read a good example of such candor, check out Elder Oaks’s story here. Amazing, no? If he can tell the whole Church such a harrowing story, we can certainly tell our own to friends, family, blog readers, and those to whom we teach and testify at church.