My missionary is home . . . early.

For many of you your first thought is pity for me because you assume he has a moral issue and that I’m embarrassed. Or perhaps he was poorly committed to a mission, like so many young men seem to be these days. Or ill-prepared in the first place.

That’s ok. I’ve been in your shoes. I’m not offended.

Luckily, he is surrounded by people who embraced him with open arms and soft hearts when he came home, not quite sure what he was supposed to do, or who he really was. He didn’t ask to come home, and his mission president didn’t want to let him go. He was sent home by Missionary Medical because he was suffering from anxieties so crippling that they were eating away at all of the good he had been able to accomplish in ten months. “Go home, stabilize, and come back,” they said. After a couple of tense weeks praying hourly for his safety, I couldn’t be happier to have him home where he can get therapy and recuperate from the self-torture the past few months have been.

And he’s doing so very well, settling in, searching for ways to serve, asking a lot of pointed, poignant questions about eternity, humbly accepting both that he is broken and that he won’t be forever.

What has surprised me more than any other thing has been the response of other people. Not the ones who have judged him, because I haven’t encountered even one person who has unveiled a sharpened opinion. It is the souls who have experienced this kind of brokenness who have come forward to privately ask how he is with eyes full of knowing tenderness because of their own wrenching experience, some of whom have deep and painful wounds even still.

Like the mother whose son was suffering from an undiagnosed heart condition and asthma, who was sent home unexpectedly, shamefully judged as lazy, on the day of his sudden departure sent to clean a filthy shed in his suit, then dropped off at the airport in only the filthy suit he was wearing, after his plane had departed, to sleep without food or contact or care, until the next day when he was finally, tearfully reunited with his family.

I will spare you more stories. Most mission presidents are not ex-military. I am certain missionary service is a growing place to send your child. It was for me. My son’s mission president was the perfect priesthood leader for him. Mental illness, as well as physical illness, simply tends to become more apparent in early adulthood and so it comes up for missionaries. As heart-rending as those shared experiences have been, I don’t think they’re the norm, and I embrace the opportunity to weep with those who have been hurt.

But what do we do with our broken?

I have a profound fascination with healing, and both my son and I have blessings that promise us gifts in this area. We have had experiences with healings in the past – profound ones. We believe. We have the faith to be healed.

Or do we?

Here he is, broken still. And here I am, broken in my own ways. Perhaps we don’t have the faith to be healed after all.

Nested strangely in a revelation on the Law (D&C 42), we read a few verses, out of the blue, about being healed. Priesthood callings are described, and the order of things laid out. The ten commandments are reiterated: “Thou Shalt Not.” Teach and prophesy by the spirt, and give of your properties in the Lord’s way. Then there is this:

And whosoever among you are sick, and have not faith to be healed, but believe, shall be nourished with all tenderness, with herbs and mild food, and that not by the hand of an enemy.

Always, all my life, I’ve read that and thought, “everything would be better if everyone just had the faith to be healed.” A few verses down it continues:

He who hath faith to see shall see. He who had faith to hear shall hear. The lame who hath faith to leap shall leap.

You see? The goal is to be healed. We need to work harder at our faith. Our perfect society will come as we are individually perfected. We need to get on with it. There is something a little bit insufficient in lacking that faith, don’t you feel?

Last month as I prepared to write another encouraging letter to my son, far away, struggling with feelings of crushing inadequacy, I read those verses and saw something else.

And they who have not faith to do these things, but believe in me, have power to become my sons; and inasmuch as they break not my laws thou shalt bear their infirmities.

It is easiest if everyone has the faith to be healed right now, but it is not eternally requisite.

I’ve been mulling this idea in my mind ever since, playing with it. My experiences have taught me that we bond better to one another when we are each a little bit broken, like a wound whose edges are sealed together by roughening the surfaces a bit before binding on a bandage and salve. We have a hard time trusting each other when we feel a distance between us, whether that distance is opportunity or skills or gifts or appearance or wit or health or wealth. In this sense, we are better broken – more likely to become one with each other.

What if some are healed, because of their faith, to stimulate faith, and others are not healed, because of their lack of faith, to stimulate faith, and it all works out the same anyway? What if that “lack” of faith isn’t a judgment at all, but simply a weakness waiting to be made strong, a gift of its own? What if one of the hidden glories of the Atonement is that if we stay in there no matter what happens, he will perfect us all in the end?

What if what matters in the end is whether we endured to believe in him?

In the last few weeks my heart has grown around these words:

And whosoever among you are sick, and have not faith to be healed, but believe, shall be nourished with all tenderness, with herbs and mild food, and that not by the hand of an enemy.

The hand of an enemy.

Is that how we serve those who are broken? Do we nourish them with an enemy’s hands?

I have had many opportunities to see my own Pharisaic tendencies, and the persistence of judgment (of thinking I know why other people suffer) is there, however deep, even as hard and long as I have tried to root it out. That image – an enemy’s hand feeding someone – will now never leave me.

All my life I have believed that embracing my own imperfection was selling out, giving up, and being a burden; that having faith was my best contribution to making myself lighter to bear, one less person who needed nourished by the tired few who have the inclination to minister and too many mouths to feed. I’ve learned to accept my inadequacies and needs as part of the roughening that makes it possible for us to be one.

And now I know that it’s not even the ideal that we are all healed, all filled with faith, all unburdened – now. I am more one with my dear friends who have unburdened souls regarding their pain, all made possible because my son has experienced pain. That shared pain is what unmasks us and proves that we are not enemies, that we can be trusted, and then allows us to heal with each other.

One day we will all be healed, and perhaps it will be because we once . . . weren’t.

The answer to the mortal Law, perfectly centered as a focal point for the chapter, is not perfection (perfect obedience, perfect faith, perfect immediate whatever) for its own sake, either physical or spiritual. It is this:

Thou shalt live together in love.

I’ve watched this video several times and I’m mesmerized. What would happen if we quit turning embarrassed eyes away from imperfection and embraced it within each other, nourishing each other with all tenderness and not by the hand of an enemy? Would all our ideals of beauty, comfortable (and important) though they are, be destroyed if we accepted the range of reality?

Is embracing imperfection a valid way to build perfection?

Pro Infirmis. It means “for the sick.” See if your heart grows three sizes too. It’s magical. Perhaps your hands too will be transformed, willing to nourish, patient to persevere with imperfection, no longer an enemy.

Wouldn’t that be perfect?