Dear Sister Tidwell,
If you’re even just reading this sentence I am so lucky. Please don’t stop reading. Please, please, please just give me a chance to explain. Let me at least ask for your forgiveness. You don’t have to give it. Ever since my baptismal service I’ve wanted to talk to you, but you went home just a few days later, and I was so ashamed I couldn’t even get off my couch.
Sister Harris brought by the note you wrote me before you left and you’re pretty polite about it, but I can tell you hated me when you wrote it and for all I know right now you want to wad this letter up into a ball and toss it in a trash can, and if you do I totally understand why, but please don’t, Sister Tidwell, please, I’ve read that note so many times that I have it memorized and you should know everything you say in it is absolutely true.
I am a liar. In fact, I told lies you don’t even know about. I did waste your time and I am a hypocrite. I had no right to make you feel guilty about emotionally manipulating me toward baptism when I was already a member, and I felt guilty about all those things, Sister Tidwell, I really do, but I why I can’t go on living with myself is that part of your note where you say what I did has tainted your memories of your mission forever. I was half the missionary you were Sister Tidwell and the mediocre memories of my mission have pulled me through some rough times, so I probably can’t, but I have to try to make those missionaries precious to you again by giving you more information.
There were things about me that you never knew, Sister Tidwell and not just that I was a member of the church and a return missionary. I was married before and I have a daughter and I had it all built up in my mind that if I could get back into church my daughter’s mother and her grandmother would let me see her more, but even that’s not exactly why I said yes when you asked me if I’d be baptized.
Before I went to that family home evening at the Bishop’s house I read in Alma 32:23 that “little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned,” and that made me think about everything Katie said, that’s my daughter’s name Katie, when I talked to her on the phone a couple days before. When you challenged me to be baptized in front of everybody a phrase Katie said over and over popped into my head, “Say, yes, Daddy.” And so I did. I thought it was a sign. I think I might have a mental condition where I see signs where there aren’t any, Sister Tidwell.
I told myself it wasn’t wrong. I told myself God understood. A couple guys I met over the internet got me thinking about the history of rebaptism in the Church and I even thought I could justify it that way. But also I really just wanted to make you happy, Sister Tidwell.
What I want you to know is when the day of the baptism service arrived and I was standing with my bare feet on that cold lime green tile in the men’s room dressed in that awful white jump-suit I knew way back in my mind that it wasn’t right. I was horrified. I was sweating so much I had patches showing through. It felt like I was already immersed and when I saw Ronnie slowly get in the water ahead of me and turn around and wave me in, well, for one thing, I could tell the water was freezing which annoyed me because I specifically asked that it be luke warm after having baptized many people in cold water in Chile, but more importantly, I knew I had to get the hell out of there and come clean.
I don’t remember much else. I don’t even remember what I said when I came out of there and started babbling away at the podium, but I do remember standing there and seeing your confused eyes and that might have been when I fainted.
I still feel horrible about the whole thing. I mean there were a lot of people there and a lot of them brought refreshments and everything.
As soon as I came to I wanted to talk to you, Sister Tidwell, but once the Bishop and Ronnie made sure I wasn’t dead they were pretty disgusted with me too, and I don’t know if they were protecting me from you, or you from me, but I got the impression they wanted me to go home and soon. Ronnie even ushered me out to the truck and I can see him standing in the church parking lot, dripping, a puddle at his feet. He really should have toweled off first. I bet the church custodian was pretty pissed off about that, but I guess that’s beside the point.
The point is I wanted to come find you right away, I wanted to try and make things right, but the very next day I suffered kind of a big blow. I had this old neighbor named Dale, he’s the guy who loans me his truck so I can go to church and besides the two of you back then he was the only person I had to talk to so I went over to his house the next morning to tell him what an ass I’d been.
His house was really quiet and I knocked on the door a couple times and there was no answer. I finally went in and there were some beer bottles rolling around on the floor. Not too unusual, really, but I went in the living room and Dale was sitting totally still with his eyes shut in his easy chair. He had the bible I got for him on his knee and between his fingers was a cigarette burned down to the filter. He looked peaceful sitting there with the morning light coming in the window and I didn’t want to disturb him, but for some reason I started to freak out.
TO BE CONTINUED…
