When my son received his call I created a new file in my computer called "The Mission".  Because I have OCD tendencies, I created sub-files in this folder which included: my to-do lists, packing lists, a video file of the opening of the call, a file of all the pictures from the farewell, a file for the pictures taken at the MTC, a file for the pictures he sent us of him in the MTC, and finally a file that would document each month and area that he was going to serve in for 22 months.  I was going to scan in his mission call and letters he received before he left.  I wasn’t going to miss a thing.  Shutterfly and I were about to become fast friends over the next two years.  I would be so organized that I would have this beautiful book of his mission fully documented and ready to hand him as he stepped off the plane.  Isn’t that what good LDS moms are supposed to do?

But as reality would have it, nothing got scanned into my files and the emails seemed to come much faster than I had time to fix his grammar and punctuation and organize them on my computer.  They kept piling up in my email box as one of those projects I would get to “one of these days.”

And then suddenly there was no need to worry about a beautiful Shutterfly book – those dreams were dashed with the phone call.  The missionary papers that were stacked neatly on my craft table suddenly caused me great anguish to even look at.  When our son came home and showed us the pictures he had stored on his camera and talked of his few days in the field all I could think of is “what I am supposed to do with these now?”  I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a missionary journal that consists of ten weeks.  How would he handle this with his own children one day?  How will that conversation go someday?  What is proper protocol at this point?  I asked friends what they would do and none of them knew. Google didn’t have any answers either.

I gathered all the papers, memory cards, and anything else that had to do with his mission and put it in a file that I left in his room.  I told him this was a chapter of his life that he would have to figure out what to do with and until then, all these things could sit in his closet where I didn’t have to see them on a daily basis.

And then moving day for my son came five months later.  I have always told my kids that when they leave home my gift to them is a big plastic storage bin that they can fill with whatever keepsakes they want to show their future spouses and children.  What they fill that storage bin with is their decision.  Everything else in their room goes with them or goes in the yard sale pile.  My house is not a storage unit – my OCD would never survive that. J Their pictures are documented in scrapbooks and important papers and certificates are filed away in our safe.  He had everything he owned packed up nice and neatly ready to move to his new apartment.  His storage bin was filled with karate metals, yearbooks, scouting awards, a couple of favorite t-shirts, and lots of Pokemon collections.  Next to his storage bin on his bed laid the file of missionary stuff, his name tag, and Portuguese Book of Mormon.  We both just stared at it for a few minutes as I tried to steady myself for the flood of pain and memories it brought back.

He asked me what I wanted to do with it.  He knew he wasn’t going back out – he didn’t have a desire to serve.  It was time for a new chapter and a new start with this move.  I told him the decision was his, that I didn’t have a need for it so he could decide for himself.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to choose.  To hang onto it didn’t seem to make any sense.  Yes, this was 10 weeks of his life but it was 10 weeks we all were trying to forget so we could move on.  On the other hand, you can’t just erase that part of his life and throwing it away seemed so final and perhaps a little drastic.  I could have come up with a million reasons for both sides so I simply told him whatever he felt he wanted to do was fine with me and left the room.  Deep down I think I secretly hoped he’d throw it away so that I never had to stumble on that stuff again. 

He loaded up his car and drove to his new apartment and his new life.  I went downstairs to his room to see what he had decided.  I found his Portuguese Book of Mormon with his name tag clipped to the book sitting on his desk.  Everything else had been thrown away.  I put his Book of Mormon inside his storage bin, placed it in the top of the closet and shut the doors.  With four sisters, his closet would now store the prom dresses that were piling up in their closets.  The trash wouldn’t be emptied for a few more days and during that time I wondered if I should rescue that file from its eventual fate at the dump.  Garbage day came and I still debated on whether or not to grab that file.  Had we let enough time go by to not be making this decision based on emotion?  Would it even matter because on the 1% chance he did change his mind and go back, it wouldn’t be to the same place and we wouldn’t need any of that information anyway right?  That mission call and that life no longer applied to him. 

I was thankful to hear the sound of the garbage man a short time later picking up our trash and carrying away painful physical reminders of something that was no longer what I had expected.  As the garbage man carried away the paper trail of his mission I gave myself permission to delete the electronic trail of his mission.  The emails, photos, and videos were also deleted without another reading or viewing of them.  I hadn’t been able to do that since the day of the phone call.  This chapter was over meaning we had only the future to look forward too. And maybe the one silver lining  I had one less scrapbook to do now which would save me some money.  I could buy new shoes with that money. :) 

When our son moved out in May of 2012 I felt a lot of relief.  I was relieved that he was mentally stable enough to take this next mandatory step.  I was relieved that he was ready to move on with life.  I was relieved with the possibility that “out of sight, out of mind” might jump start my heeling. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son, but I also knew that putting space and distance between us was going to be good for both of us. I had great faith that as our son began standing on his own two feet, finding himself, and building his own life, that the Lord would answer our prayers and guide this next phase. 

From the beginning my husband and I never prayed that he would return to his mission.  I can’t speak for my husband but I knew that I would never send another child on a mission again because this was just too painful of a first experience to ever repeat again.  I have one son and four daughters so not having to do the mission thing again is well within reason.  Our prayers have always been that he would remain in the gospel, find his testimony, be able to move on with his life in the most meaningful way possible, and not let this experience be an anchor around his leg his whole life.  The best piece of comfort advice I read was that missions are not saving ordinances and men can still be good, strong men in the church if they didn't serve a mission.  While that has brought me comfort, it will never erase the disappointment of having a missionary that returned far too early.

When my son moved out he found a full time job that required him to work on Sunday.  I don’t think I was surprised by that.  I believe I expected him to rebel a little when it came to attending church.  Church attendance has never been an option in our house so I think I naturally figured that once he was on his own he would test those waters.  For the first few months he was enjoying the freedom of being on his own and making his own decisions – which did not include going to church, attending ward prayer, or going to FHE activities.  I continued to pray that once his membership records arrived in his ward that a home teacher, bishop, elders quorum president – anybody- would reach out to him and fellowship him.  I knew that if I prayed hard enough, the Lord would answer my prayer.  But as more time went on we would ask him if he had been visited by anyone in the ward he would say no one had contacted him and he was just fine with that.  I was confused.  Why was my prayer not being answered?  Don’t we preach fellow shipping, reaching out, and making each member feel important by giving them a calling?  I have sat through enough leadership meetings to know this is what is supposed to happen.  I chalked it up to summertime in a student ward and maybe things were just different.  Certainly school starting in the fall would change all this.

Fall came and school started and our son still hadn't been visited by a bishop.  He didn't have a home teacher.  He wasn't a home teacher.  He didn't have a calling.  He had switched jobs towards the end of the summer and no longer worked on Sunday.  He casually let us know one Sunday night over dinner that he had been going to church.  Two more months went by and still nothing.  He talked about his ward every Sunday now.  He really liked his Bishop but he would say, “it’s like the Bishop doesn't know I’m supposed to be in his ward.  He calls me the wrong name.”  We found that odd and were confused by that.  We kept praying he would get a calling.  And then one Sunday he said, “I love our gospel doctrine class, it would be fun to teach a class.”  It’s like he was asking for a calling.  I wanted to call his bishop and say, “Please!  Answer my prayer.  Give my son a responsibility to help him stay in the church.”  But still nothing.  And it was starting to bother our son.  He would frequently say, “I feel like I’m just lost and no one knows I’m supposed to be here even though I come to church every week.”

And then our answer came at Christmas.  We received a letter from the membership department at church headquarters in Salt Lake two days after Christmas.  The letter stated that his records had been lost for months and finally ended up in some department of the church that I didn't even know existed.  They wanted to know if this was our son and where his records should go.  I was really angry about that.  I felt that all my prayers and all my faith that someone would reach out to him had been for nothing for almost seven months.  Why would the Lord allow that to happen?  Why does it seem like anything that can go wrong with a kid in this situation has gone wrong?  I would have thought that his records would be in a brightly colored bulky folder that read, “Early release missionary…handle with care.”

 We called our son to tell him about the letter and he wanted his records sent to his ward immediately.  I continued to struggle to make sense of something that felt devastating all over again. All I could think of was those lost month when progress could have been made if his records had been in his ward.  But in January I was talking to him and he gave me my answer. He said that maybe the whole record experience had actually been a blessing.  He told me he knew what it felt like to be lost in a sense and how happy he was to have been found again.  Once his records got to his ward he was given a calling and he felt like he truly belonged and mattered in that ward now.  Maybe he had to experience the difference of being lost and then found to truly understand. He attends his ward every week and I have seen the difference it makes in his countenance and his testimony.

I know that this experience was part of the calculated experiences the Lord gives each of us because He knows what we need when we need it.  It reminds me of President Uchtdorf’s talk in March 2013 at the Young Women broadcast called, “Your Wonderful Journey Home.”  Each of us embark on different journeys through our lives, all designed to bring us back home to our Heavenly Father.  This experience is another one of his individual journey stories.