Wood Shipp

I knew when I wrote the post about women and the priesthood that I was leaving out something significant. It took only a few days to realize the missing chapter was about Bishop Shipp. But in order to explain his influence, I have to turn over some ugly stones and write about pornography and its effects on a marriage.

Before I was twenty, my experience with pornography amounted to this: one day when I was in about sixth grade, some girl friends and I walked to the local drug store to buy treats. On a circular rack was a magazine featuring a picture of Burt Reynolds, advertising a nude centerfold. My friends rushed over to look and I didn't. End of story. (Now I am a little skeptical of the whole thing. Even in my liberal Virginia community I doubt a magazine available to twelve year old's included full nudity. I guess I'll never know.)

At twenty, everything changed. I got married. My husband was a returned missionary, a student at BYU, and we married in the temple. It never occurred to me to ask personal questions like "Is looking at porn your favorite pastime?" My first clue was on our second day married when we walked into a hotel in San Diego that had brown-paper wrapped magazines in the gift shop. I watched my new husband's eyes as he glanced across the titles. My heart sank.

The real heartache began when we returned home. I actually went with him when he signed up for cable TV and premium channels, never having watched them before, completely naive about content. When later that night the first hard R film came on, and I protested, his answer was, "That's why I got the channel." He could tell I was disappointed, so soon he learned to tape his favorite movies at night, while we were asleep, so he could watch them when I wasn't home. Hearing the VCR click on in the middle of the night brought me something like panic attacks. My heart would race and I was filled with sadness. This went on for years.

I can't see any reason to detail other marital experiences, but over time it became evident that my husband was very addicted to pornography. Looking back, it seems obvious that I could have ended my marriage, or made stronger demands, but the culture and the time didn't prepare me for those options. Instead, we built a family and continued a marriage. We moved to Portland, Oregon, and began associations with friends who will forever be dear to our family. One of our dearest friends was our kind bishop, Wood Shipp. Bishop Shipp had a daughter my age, and grandchildren, and a gentle, beautiful wife.

With his fatherly ways, Bishop Shipp knew how to make every girl feel lovely. I don't think at first he even knew I had problems at home. Still, during my first few months in the ward, he staged a melodrama for the ward's entertainment, and cast me as the heroine. I wore a vintage lace dress and ringlets in my hair, playing against a dashing young hero and an equally dashing, experienced villian. I was 28 years old. Now I know that therapy comes in many disguises, and one of them is the theater: Bishop Shipp was affecting my self esteem. I just thought we were having fun.

His kind demeanor and this experience alone were enough to cast Bishop Shipp as a hero in my eyes, but we had an even more poignant experience. Several years later a friend offered me a book about sex addiction. I stashed it away for several weeks before I actually dared read it. Then one afternoon when I was alone I pulled it out and read it cover to cover. Never before had written words impacted me so deeply. I felt like it had been written just for me. The next Sunday I mentioned the book to my bishop only to have him answer that he had just picked up the same book and had read it on a plane flight the day before. Then he gave me a priesthood blessing, promising that my self esteem would no longer be impacted by my husband's actions.

I am sure there are women who don't care about a husband's fascination with airbrushed, cosmetically enhanced, professional fantasy sex partners. I now know that his addictions had nothing to do with his love for me. But it took a long time--and a divorce--for me to separate them. It wasn't until just a couple of years ago when I was sorting through old memorabilia that I came to a pile of all the special occasion cards he had ever given me. In one he had written "To the most wonderful person in the whole world." I believe now that he really thought that about me. I know now that his addiction grew from his own self esteem issues and a sensitive, idealistic temperament, and years of unmet needs as a child. I wish I could have been better prepared for his weakness and more helpful to his rehabilitation. But instead I was devastated.

Bishop Shipp's blessing planted the seeds of detachment that later gave me the strength to divorce. And yet he gave still another gift. This one happened quite a while after he was released as bishop, but it still counts! A few months before I moved away from Portland he planned another melodrama. He'd done a couple more since I'd been the star, and he'd always had young, perfectly cast heroines. But this time he wanted a reprise. He asked me to be the heroine. He staged me with a young, handsome hero--ten years younger than me. Every time I had to smile and bat my eyes I felt like my face would crack. I was a 39-year-old divorcee whose dreams had been shattered. But over the weeks of rehearsals I actually learned to sparkle just a little. And when we performed, the audience (my ward) joined in the spell and loved it.

There are so many ways to rescue a human being! For wives, love comes by feeling beautiful, capable, sexy. My ninety-one year old grandmother just told me how happy she was because two people that day had called her pretty. Pornography destroys that confidence in women. Bishop Shipp had just the knack to restore it.