Room

Thanksgiving came and went with light questions looming on the back burner, near the giblet gravy. They weren't big questions, and they didn't bother me. I actually felt pretty normal about where we were at that point, and well into December.


Jack, though, was quiet. It was a little unlike him.


Then one day when I was driving by myself, going to the library or something, I was just praying to Heavenly Father about the things we'd been going through. I knew Jack had something going on in his head, and that he needed to work through it. I took a deep breath and thought about my testimony. My very strong testimony. And I told Heavenly Father that I had room in me for all of this. Room for him to search out anything he needed to search. Room to listen to him when he needed to talk through things or bounce ideas out or ask for suggestions. Room to let him wander as far as he needed to wander. Room to love him all that he wanted or needed while figuring the truth out.


It was a small moment for me, but it felt like a big thing, like my heart was yawning and could afford any pain I might go through to understand the truth of the gospel. (Seriously, I had no idea what the pain would be like.)


Within a few hours, the kids were in bed, and Jack and I had retired for the night. We'd read a little, then we turned off the lights and laid quietly. After a few minutes, when I was sure Jack was asleep, he spoke up and asked if he could talk to me. Of course, I replied.


Serious concerns were going through his head about Joseph Smith. I felt calm and peaceful as I listened to him. This is what I'd said I was ready for, and I'd heard many stories before about Joseph Smith without being the least bit bothered.


Jack talked about the several versions of Joseph Smith's first vision. I knew those. I'd actually received a copy of most of them in a Sunday School class about 10 years prior. They were imperfectly matched, but I could accept that. The discrepancies clearly bothered Jack, but he was also very calm talking to me. In fact, everything he said sounded like a big sad sigh of relief, like he'd been stuffing it in for a while and it needed to breathe, but even in breathing it felt like a loss.


He talked about the Kinderhook plates, which were some fabricated writings a contemporary of Joseph Smith had come up with to see if he could trick the prophet into translating false documents. Apparently, Joseph Smith didn't get around to translating them but indicated that he was able to translate them fully but indicated in reviewing them briefly that they were about a man who was a descendant of Ham and Pharoah. I wasn't deeply concerned by this, either, because 1. Joseph Smith didn't translate them, and 2. Someone may have lied and said that Joseph Smith had proclaimed they were translatable.


Jack mentioned that there was another man, Emanuel Swedenborg, who had written about heaven having three degrees of glory, the highest being called the Celestial Kingdom, whom Joseph Smith may have certainly gotten ideas from, as Swedenborg's book was in the Palmyra library while the Smith family lived there.


Also, though I'd known for my whole life Joseph Smith was a FreeMason, I was unaware that he became such just two months before he introduced the temple endowment ceremony, which we all know and accept has many similarities to the Masons. I didn't realize they were so closely tied together.


That last two piqued my attention. The two previous concerns had depressed me a little, either because they might be valid or because there were people lying about Joseph Smith, but the third was a disturbance. I felt serious unease, and it seemed my testimony at that point had received a serious wound. I expressed my sorrow to Jack; he felt the same way, and it was in his grief and concern that he'd spoken to me. I told him that I was going to look into everything on my own, that I wanted to read documented and historic accounts of anything that was a concern about Joseph Smith so that I could figure it out.


I knew what the result would be. There would be no clear references, and I would be able to help him come through this, come back to the peace of the gospel.