Last week, ALSSI released a “Ragecast Potpourri” episode covering a few recent headlines and explored some questions raised by recent changes. For fun, we challenged you all to share your best rage haiku with us. As always, we were BLOWN AWAY with the responses and just had to compile all the amazing poems in one place. This issue includes some of the haiku that were submitted on Facebook, Instagram and Substack. They have been grouped based on a loose theme to help fully absorb the impact of communal voices coming together to speak on one topic.

Haiku on The Nature of God

“The Lord loves effort!”
I’m confused because I thought
The Lord would love me.
Candice Clark Stevens

God was never small
only what you built around
I found Them outside
Kim G Bohne Landeen

The church claims Jesus.
Jesus claims no church on earth.
Who do they follow?
Valerie Atkinson

Is God asking us
To reach higher than a church
To really know Him?
Erin O’Dell Garrard

Please hear my prayers
I want answers to suff’ring
Not to find car keys
_louise_e

Do not blame Jesus,
Grasping tightly to dead things
And never growing
kjkj6363

Haiku on The Divine Feminine

I’ve needed so long
to know Her I can’t just stop
reaching for Her now
Mara Haslam

Dear Heav’nly Mother,
The boys are gaslighting us.
They need a time out.
Carol Colvin

I know no Goddess
Who claims my autonomy.
This reveals their lies.
Hannah H

“We need our Mother”
Jingle jangle go the keys
“You have a FATHER”
Shelli.Elle

Behind these shut doors,
I speak to Her as I please,
You can’t stop my prayers.
times.of.faith

Haiku on Purity Culture

“Modesty?” -humbug
avert your eyes if my thighs
offend your male gaze
Kajsa Kaufusi

Holy cloth clings tight
Texas sun turns faith to fire
I choose bare skin now
Julia Baldwin

Purity Culture
The seed of shame incarnate
Don’t yoke us with it.
Pat Catherall

They see us simply
Jezebels and Gilgolos
Unworthy of trust
Lisa Fluckiger

Storms rage in our hearts
One garment wedgie away
Mormon laundry sucks
Heidi C.

“Women are equal”
But men give us approval
On our worthiness
Laynie.markisich

You’d approach our girls
If a Prophet said to prey.
Blind trust is your God.
Annika Evelyn

Trans friends chaperoned
Sexual predators not
I’m out of here, Bye!
Sarah Porter Otter

Temple wedding day
Sorry you can’t come in
You did not comply
Kyra Dunshee

Purity, shame, guilt.
We cast our pearls before swine.
Not for God: for men.
Hannah H

Haiku on The Patriarchy

You win a crouton!
Oh, and YOU win a crouton!
Why aren’t you grateful?
Rebecca Bigelow

“Trust us, don’t murmur.”
Say, “All is well in Zion.”
Just bow and say, “Yes.”
Jessica Mitchell

For Eve’s transgression:
All women shall be punished
Ruled over by men
Nicole Slater

“Defend the BRETHREN.”
“What about the SISTREN, Jim?!”
Eyes flash. Heresy.
Kajsa Kaufusi

I am told to not
Get ahead of the brethren
But they do not move
Amy Sego Shumway

Leaders LOVE women
But we must scream to be heard
Silenced is not loved
Elizabeth Ludwig

A sister speaks up
Shhhh! Stop. The men are speaking.
We love the sisters!
Madwoman_c

“You don’t understand”
They tell me when I speak up.
They don’t understand
Elisabethbingham1

Trapped in spirit pris’n
Stunted in a male domain.
No progression here.
Mama_gale

By their fruits ye shall
Know them. Why are so many
Fruits then so rotten?
Eleanor Clark

“Stay off the damn stand”
“Not on the front row, either”
“Go make me donuts!”
Carol Colvin

Dear Patriarchy,
We have a Heavenly Mother
and no women leaders?
Nicci Cameron Lovell

Truth should not fear light
Questions were never the sin
Silence was the cost
Erica N.

Old men lead the way.
What will we do without them?
Shout hallelujah!
Pat Cathall

Waiting and hoping
Maybe things are improving?
Then disappointment
Whitney Webster Pack

Teach what men preach.
Personal revelation?
Keep it to yourself
Allison.deibel

I am not enough
To pass bread to the people
But twelve year olds can
Aerynnec

I am the witness!
But then a man from the back
Does my job for me
Ajsjonm4

Haiku on Feminism

“Feminist” was taught
To me as a bad word. Oops.
I’m one, anyway.
Kaylee.a.skinner

Perimenopause
Meets ongoing faith crisis
No wonder they’re scared
Jilleneladle

I am not enough?
I throw away the men’s words.
I find I am strong.
cristallharper

They buried our names—
wild seeds under heavy stone.
Still we rose up green.
Melanee Green Evans

I bent till I broke
now I rise without your name
whole, and not afraid
Kim G Bohne Landeen

Please, tell me again
what I can and cannot do.
I know my power.
Annisija Wallin Hunter

You shudder at my
“wokeness”, yet holy words call:
Awake and arise
Sarah Hale

Women, we breathe life
Heart listeners-who lead
With healing and hope.
Ananda Isaken

Coercive marriage
Taught to absorb all the harm
Rage feels like freedom
Unschmuck

Please less “explaining”
Just don’t care much anymore
Your view from up here
Christiehp

Notice me I said
I did everything right here
I want to be seen
Heathermimib

Haiku on Spiritual Autonomy

Words are powerful.
Screaming out in defiance.
No, no, no, no, NO!
Jessica Mitchell

Lie to me today
To gaslight me tomorrow
Watch me walk away
Stephanie G.

I don’t like meetings.
“Where will you go?” they ask
I go home and nap.
Su_lott

Not Naive, not blind.
Eyes clear, arms weak, willing heart.
I plant my feet here.
The.vision.beautiful

Smile, serve, and be still.
Questions bloom like contraband.
I walked out in bloom.
Becky Sanchez

Foundation anew,
I choose my own bricks this time:
Spiritual freedom!
Andrea Meecham Neahusan

I must leave to love
The tender heart who receives
Careless musket fire
Jenny Garrard

I bent till I broke
now I rise without your name
whole, and not afraid
Kim G Bohne Landeen

Don’t rush connection
Covenant path instruction
Can not satisfy
Brooke

I asked honest things
They called it a slippery slope
Yep. Slid on out
Erica N.

We take our lives back
Joyful, adventurous, and
Our own to direct
Lisa Fluckiger

I see the forest
And the trees. I know
I am not alone
Kcampbella

When Faith Loses Focus: For every woman whose questions were treated as a spiritual problem

by Brittney Walker

The night my brother came out to me, I got off the phone

and went straight to my knees.

I had questions and I knew where I’d been taught to take them.

I prayed for a long time. And what I felt was peace. Clearly, unmistakably, the way I had been taught to recognize revelation. Not the complicated kind. The simple kind. My brother was right just as he was. He didn’t need fixing.

I stood up from that prayer believing something true.

And then my brain, the one that has never once in its life left a loose thread alone, started pulling.

The thread you cannot stop pulling

If my brother was right, and the feeling was real, then the disconnect was somewhere else.

So I went looking for it.

I didn’t choose to go looking. I want to be clear about that. The search wasn’t an act of rebellion or spiritual carelessness. It was compulsion. My brain identified a problem it could not resolve and it went to work on it the way it always had—relentlessly, around the clock, whether I invited it to or not.

In the middle of sacrament meeting. At 2 a.m. On the drive to pick up kids from school. The questions kept arriving.

If the feeling was right, was the teaching wrong? If the teaching was wrong, who taught it? If he taught it, was he—the prophet—wrong? And if he could be wrong about this, what else? And if that, then what about …

The dominoes fell all the way down.

To the prophet. Then further. Then to God.

And then there was nothing left to land on.

What they called it

There is a word the Church uses for what I was experiencing: doubt. Sometimes faithlessness. The cure prescribed is almost always the same: pray more, study more, serve more, trust more. Do not let your intellect get ahead of your faith. So I did.

What no one told me was that I have a brain with a specific, documented, neurological inability to leave a question unresolved.

I have ADHD. I also have scrupulosity, an anxiety pattern that hijacks the religious framework and turns it into an engine of obsessive moral accounting. My brain doesn’t just notice inconsistency. It cannot rest until inconsistency is resolved. It needs certainty the way other people need sleep.

Put that brain inside a faith system that asks you to hold unanswered questions peacefully, to sit with not-knowing, to “doubt your doubts,” and you don’t get a crisis of faith.

You get a machine that cannot stop running.

I wasn’t falling away from God. My brain was doing exactly what it was built to do. It was following the evidence. It was refusing to look away. It was doing, in the language of faith, what it had always done in every other area of my life: working the problem until it either resolved or broke open entirely.

That’s not weakness. That’s not wickedness.

That is an ADHD brain, functioning precisely as designed, inside a system that had no category for it.

The year of falling

What followed was a solid year of grief.

The only image I have ever found that fits is this: falling through space. A bottomless black hole. Nothing to grab onto. Nowhere to land.

I had built my identity inside this structure. My calendar, my community, my sense of what I was for—all of it organized around something that was coming apart faster than I could process. And the falling felt endless because there was no floor. Every answer I found opened into another question. Every certainty I tested failed.

I want to say something to the women who are in that falling right now, or who have been, or who are watching someone they love go through it:

The falling was not a punishment. It was not evidence that I had been faithless or careless or spiritually reckless.

It was what happens when a brain built for pattern recognition finally finds a pattern it cannot reconcile.

The grief was real. The loss was real. I am not going to tell you it wasn’t.

But the falling was not my fault.

What the Church called sin

Here is what I have come to understand, years out from that night:

Every trait that made my deconstruction feel so total, so unstoppable, so consuming—the relentless question-following, the inability to unknow something once I knew it, the need for coherence, the refusal to hold contradiction in peaceful suspension—those are not spiritual defects.

They are ADHD.

The same brain that got sent into the hall for asking too many questions in Primary. The same brain that couldn’t stop mentally arguing with myself over what was said in sacrament meeting. The same brain that needed the pieces to fit, always, desperately, at the cost of everything.

That brain didn’t destroy my faith.

It followed my faith all the way to the edges and kept going when the edges ran out.

There is a version of my story the Church would tell where I was deceived, or weak, or led astray, or just didn’t try hard enough. In that version, the problem was always me.

But here is the version I know to be true:

I went to my knees the night my brother came out to me. I sought God in the way I had been taught. I received an answer that felt true and real and certain. And then my brain—my beautiful, relentless, impossible, truth-seeking brain—refused to stop at the edge of what that answer meant.

That is not a failure of faith.

That is faith, taken seriously by a mind that could not do it any other way.

What I wish someone had said

Your questions were not a spiritual problem.

Your inability to sit with uncertainty was not a character flaw.

Your brain’s relentless need for coherence was not the enemy of your faith.

It was just a mind doing what minds like ours do: following every thread, refusing to look away, insisting that the truth, whatever it turned out to be, was worth finding.

The Church didn’t have a category for that kind of mind.

But that doesn’t mean the mind was wrong.

Contributor

Brittney Walker

I am an ADHD coach and writer living in Arizona with my husband and a lively household including six sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. I spent many years trying to be reverent, organized, and less distracting, and now I write about executive function, faith, deconstruction, and rebuilding identity with a different kind of brain. My work explores neurodivergence, belonging, and the slow process of learning to trust yourself. You can find more of my writing at exmoadhdcoach.substack.com

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Eager to Hope

by Susan Hinckley

Last weekend I participated in our local protest,

because I think protests are public hope and I needed to both give and receive. Despite this being the reddest of small towns, there were hundreds of us—5x as many people as I expected. The crowd was anchored by a few full-size US flags, confidently riding the morning wind. Those flags understood the assignment; something in me quickened as I parked. A small marching band trumpeted hope up and down the sidewalk.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben was once asked, "What's the best thing I can do as an individual?" He said, "Stop being an individual.”1 I showed up needing to feel less alone, and got all the right medicine. Most of the passing drivers honked, waved, and gave us a thumbs-up.

Of course there were a few whose sneers and gestures made clear their contempt. As I stood fighting to keep my poster upright in the wind, a red car approached and slowed to a stop in front of me. The window slid down. A woman leaned out, looked right at me and said, “You know, he is YOUR president. He is the president of every single one of you.” She drove away.

As if that should end the protest. As if anyone could so smugly close the lid on hope.

I haven’t stopped thinking about the woman in the red car, and about all the things I didn’t say in response.

There are a few lessons I’ve always thought God made particularly obvious. Diversity is one—look around—and creativity is another. A third I see writ large in the natural world is hope. Morning was the first advertisement for this concept, but because it comes every day we tend to stop noticing. Maybe God knew we’d have a hard time paying attention to a thing that happened so often. Maybe that’s why they also came up with spring.

Of course God put winter first to really get our attention—to bring us right to the edge of giving up—before adding spring to the calendar. In ink. Not often enough that we’d quit noticing either, surprised by joy every time a weeping cherry drapes itself sky-to-ground in pink ribbons.

The thing about spring is, it always comes. It doesn’t matter how hard the winter is, or how evil the king. It doesn’t matter if there’s a huge snowstorm in April that pushes us to the brink of really not being okay. Spring prevails every time.

American theologian Walter Brueggemann said, “Hope arises from memory.”

Rebecca Solnit explains, “You can turn that inside out to say that despair arises from forgetting. If you forget that every good thing we have came about as the result of a heroic struggle, of course you will despair.” She says that optimism and pessimism “assume we know the future, and therefore nothing is required from us. I think the future is radically uncertain, and therefore much is required of us.”2

But is hope too much to expect in the face of radical uncertainty?

Well, what else is there? Gripping everything tighter isn’t going to give us any guarantees, but engaging with hope means we’re showing up for the future no matter what heroic struggle it brings, because there is no way to get where we want to go next except through whatever is happening now.

I remember exactly where I was sitting in an AP English classroom about 100 years ago when the teacher ridiculed a student for using the word anxious when they actually meant eager, and I realized for the first time with a spark that those words aren’t interchangeable. No matter how often they get swapped in casual speech, eager is about positive anticipation and anxious is about worry. As that came into focus for me, the very next second I thought, “Pretty sure Joseph Smith made a mistake.” In D&C 58, being “anxiously engaged in a good cause” was surely meant to be about eagerness to do good. I don’t think he meant to suggest we should feel nervous about the uncertainty of our actions or outcomes while we engage in that goodness.

But I’ve been anxiously engaged my whole life as a Latter-day Saint. I took the words to heart just the way Joseph wrote them.

I’m not sure exactly how this worked, but all that anxious engagement over many decades seems to have resulted in some serious hope muscle. As I enter my later years, I find my core is all made of hope. Maybe it came from so many years showing up and doing all the church things while thinking, “I’m really not very good at this. I’m not sure I’m doing it right. I have no idea whether it will be enough.” Maybe when you feel a little doomed from the start, but you press on anyway, you get in the habit of grasping anything you can find that might make up the difference. You hope.

And I don’t mean feeling hopeful. I don’t mean a grin that comes back no matter how often reality turns its power-washer on you. I mean hope as a verb. As a thing you decide to do. As a perspective you have, because you bring it. Hope is not something that arises spontaneously and promises to work everything out. Anxious or eager, the work is the same. But I’ve come to prefer eager: Hope is a way I can choose to engage.

I wish I’d known I didn’t need to feel so worried all those years. I wish I could go back and tell my young self, “See those flowers? They probably aren’t worried at all—yes, winter knocks ‘em out, in fact, it straight-up kills some. But there’s always spring, and flowers don’t have to earn it—all they have to do is wait for it.”

“Consider the lilies,” Jesus said. “They seem to remember something you don’t.”

Flipping from anxious to eager in my spiritual life has mostly been a function of embracing my own hope. “God is always present in reality as it is. Not as it should be,” says Richard Rohr.3 I think this is one of the reasons Jesus showed up on earth, getting everyone’s hopes up, but then surprised even the people closest to him by becoming victorious only after an unimaginable defeat. It was a lesson so bewildering, even people who desperately wanted the miracle had a hard time accepting the truth of what they were seeing in real time. How could something so awful be the doorway to lasting hope?

Thomas had his doubts; unfortunately he’s remembered for them. But do you know what he did next? He took Christianity to India and beyond, converting many to the very idea he had such a hard time getting his head around. He may have needed to touch for himself, but that experience powered a lifetime of ministry. It’s fair to say reality transmuted the moment of doubt into something truly sustaining.

But God’s love was in the world before Jesus ever got here. “It is good, in fact, it is very good,” God says, the punchline of the whole opening monologue. A few minutes later, we find out “good” may be more complicated than we thought—no one was going to be allowed to stick around, basking in the very-good-ness of a garden. I think everything God says and does after that is trying to teach us about hope—even in the face of the bleakest reality—and I can see why the best object lesson to do that would probably be our own screw ups.

“We’ve met the enemy, and he is us,” says the famous Walt Kelly comic strip.4 The practice of hope must be a principle through which God thought humans could remind ourselves of divine love no matter what else is going on.

I’ve decided another idea articulated by Richard Rohr could be repurposed into a good definition of hope: “the ability to flourish inside of paradox.” We know what has happened, and we know what’s happening now, but I don’t think we can be at all certain what it means in real time, and we never know what’s going to happen next, even when we think we do. We can be sure it will be bad and good and then bad again and then sometimes better, but there’s no guarantee. A yes for every no, and a no for each yes. Life will be loss and abundance, joy and sorrow tossed together. “Reality’s conjunction is always and,” writes Christian Wiman.5

That’s where I think hope lives. Hope is in the and.

So what do we do when we’re really not feeling it? Hope, faith, and love show up together in the Bible. Sharon Salzberg teaches6 that the word translated there as faith is actually a verb—it’s not a thing we have so much as a thing we do. Hope and love already operate as verbs in modern English; moving faith into the verb column makes sense, if these foundational principles walk hand in hand. A quote from Rabbi Abraham Heschel says, “Faith is mostly faithfulness to the times when we had faith.”7 I understand this as, “Faith is a thing we keep doing because we once felt it.”

Anyone who’s been in a long term relationship knows love operates the same way. We fall in love with someone, then we keep loving them on the days it’s hard to do so, because love is no longer a feeling so much as an action.

The emotion of hope is also less useful than the action. When hope-the-noun becomes hope-the-verb, we go to the protest whether or not we think it will change anything. We’re eagerly engaged, smack in the middle of not knowing. We follow hope instinctively because it’s all there is to do in the face of such radical uncertainty. It’s the thing we can control.

The woman in the red car—and everyone else who flipped us off that day—thought she could impact my hope by insisting the situation was hopeless. She (and all the efforts I’ve seen since to minimize that hopeful act or dismiss it outright) is missing the point of hope. The only thing hope insists is that, eventually, things will change. That’s based in reality—a measure of calm certainty can reside in the uneasiness of it. Hope-seeds arrive buried in the same dirt we’re standing in. It’s because reality is often objectionable that I choose to orient myself this way. I engage eagerly because of what it does for me today, not because I think it will ensure any future outcome. Hope—and faith and love—don’t operate in the future. They’re how we survive the now.

Trying to stomp out a protest by throwing reality on it is a bit like telling me it’s winter, and I may as well accept that as final. But I spent many years living in the upper Midwest. I know a thing or two about winter. And I know a lot about hope.

Susan Hinckley

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Something I see differently today than I did 10 years ago is the idea that a savior needed to die…and the whole concept of the atonement.

Ever since I became a parent, my perspective has gradually shifted. The idea of “I sent my son to die for you” feels very different to me now. It doesn’t align with what I would expect from a loving, all-knowing, supreme being.

As an imperfect human, I would never require one of my children to die for anyone else. And if I had created all of this, I wouldn’t make the people I love inherently unworthy in the first place.

Feels so strange to me now.
—Jamee Andelin

I have shifted the way I view trials. I no longer believe that “everything happens for a reason” and God had some master plan that involves giving me my trials. I currently view the hard times as just part of the condition of being mortal. Sometimes good can come from them. They’re not pointless. But God didn’t handpick them to prove me.
—Jessica Mitchell

How about in the last 6 months? I think about God differently. Instead of a God who is a gatekeeper, demanding, and to be feared and obeyed or else, I know believe He is ALL loving and no matter my choices or how I get things wrong I will always be loved and welcomed to live with Him and my loved ones.
—Kathy C.

That putting my family over policy is extremely important. To Think that I was trying to keep a family eternal with rules that strained relationships is now laughable. People come first now, and if that send me to hell, so be it.
—Jillian Tueller

Personal revelation over obedience to church leadership. Wow what a difference! I am using the gift of agency instead of blindly following man’s interpretation of God’s laws and it feels so good.
—Dee Adams

A couple of my favorites are that I am God and God is in me. There was never, and could never be, a separation. And, closely related, that we and all of God’s creations are connected. When one is harmed, we are all harmed. Conversely, when one is healed, we are all healed.
—Marley Orton

My connection to God has no gatekeepers.
—Leslie Boyce

I don’t believe in God anymore. But I am happy to see women reclaiming their power and autonomy when it comes to their religion.
—Erin Pfleger

I have claimed my spiritual authority, I don’t need a man of anybody else’s authority to have a relationship with God. I also believe in a God who is not legalistic, but is love.
—Gaynor-Marie Glass

Many things, but mostly how we have been saved by grace, and that we will all return to our Father in Heaven. I think our temple visits place us on perhaps a higher plane of righteousness when making promises to the Lord and showing our respect and submissiveness in following the gospel and doing His will, but I don’t know in my heart that some things performed in the temple will need to be done when we pass by the sentinels in Heaven.
—Holly Christensen

Mainly, my vision of eternity has transformed. I believe God is more than a body of flesh and blood. God is more that 3 degrees of glory and God is more than gender. My beliefs are so radically different they seem unrecognizable to some, but I think they fit seamlessly into what my heart and head have always felt. We are still an eternal family, each of us still aspires to become like God once was. Love is forever the foundation and being like Jesus means focusing on that love and helping people to grow. What’s really changed is I have lost fear. I follow myself and my inner soul. I can’t believe the relief I feel and I think my “fruits” speak for themselves. Less judgment and service that is heartfelt, not forced. I’m happier and more self confident. Losing myself really has led to finding myself. I found this podcast at the beginning of my journey and I feel like I have walked this path with many of your listeners. Thank you for allowing what I believe to be the echoes of eternity brought forth into light.
—Pamela Kennedy

My own personhood and autonomy. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but here goes: I was relieved when my husband chose me when I was 20 because it took the pressure off me having to make risky choices like trying to get into law school. This was the mid-80s, and my Mormon bubble didn’t have many examples of career women. Being someone’s wife was safe, known, preached from the pulpit. So I made the sacrifice, squelching any desire to develop myself and following the known quantity of temple marriage, stay-at-home motherhood, all with relief that “at least someone chose you!” I willingly, albeit blindly, chose not to develop a ME.
—Becca T.

I have 2: paying tithing on gross, off the top, for 30 years when I should have been putting that money in retirement. And also starting having babies at 20 and not finishing my education because I hadn’t self-actualized. I had so many interests but didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I tripped into SAHMhood.
—Brooke

Wearing garments for over 35 years. Being out of touch with my body. Disliking my body. Living with the fear that if I didn’t have them on, something bad would surely happen to me.
—Nancy

I sacrificed my dreams. LDS culture said “if you are a woman, your dream is motherhood, and that’s it.”

And I love being a mom, but I didn’t realize until much later that I hadn’t even allowed myself to have any other dreams.

Another one I regret less is that in high school I gave up a trip to Europe for Girls Camp. I had signed up to travel to Europe for two weeks with a group of high school musicians from all over the state. Since I had turned 12, Girls Camp had ALWAYS been the second week of July. I was scheduled to return from Europe at the end of the first week of July. We had already put down over $1000 towards the trip when the dates for Girls Camp that year were announced. It would be the first week of July. I was devastated. I loved camp and this was going to be my last year. After a few weeks of agonizing I decided to pull out of the Europe trip. We lost the $1000. Most expensive year of Camp ever. I’ve still never been to Europe.
—Zinah B.

Putting LITERALLY everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. Trying so hard to be that selfless woman that’s spouted about in church.

Thinking that the natural woman is an enemy to Godde. ( yes I changed it on purpose ).

Those beliefs led me down so many roads that led to intense personal decisions that impact me to this day.
—Genna

I can completely relate to the sacrifice of my true self, getting an education, having my own career, and the tithing.

Which brings me to the answer that came to my mind when I read the question. The biggest sacrifice I’ve made in my life was going to work (two jobs!) at age 45 when my youngest was six-years-old so we could avoid bankruptcy (mostly medical bills) because it was WRONG to go bankrupt if we could avoid it, and of course paying such a generous tithe guaranteed God would give me strength to work 50-60 hours a week (half of those just to pay the generous tithe). At a low-wage jobs because I had no education. But can I call it MY sacrifice if it was my children who suffered the most? Yes, it was rough on my brain and body for those eleven years and yes, it battered my marriage beyond repair, but my kids are the ones who paid the price of having an absent or cranky/exhausted mother. I can’t begin to express my anger and grief. How can we claim the family to be the most important unit when our teachings so often cause harm to families?
—Katy O’Barr Smith

Giving up on becoming a medical doctor because I thought having a family took priority. I did have the satisfaction of working in the medical field for 25 years after the youngest was in school, where I was able to make a difference for good. But I often wonder if there were greater opportunities to make a difference had I chosen differently. I don’t regret having 8 children. Not at all. They are wonderful people and each of them and theirs are making a difference for good in the world.
—Pat Catherall

I alienated my entire family because they were not members of the church and could not enter the temple for my wedding to my husband.

That was emotionally and spiritually devastating - but demanded [by a] religion that prizes obedience and worthiness above all else.

Putting the church’s demands over what my own conscience told me was wrong will be part of my deconstruction for the rest of my life. The harm from that one event has echoed through our relationships for years - and still does in the distance it caused in the lives of my children relative to their grandparents.
—Jessica Mertz

A mission, while the mission itself was a great experience, I felt very alone when I returned. As a person on a visa, I had to enroll in school full time a month after. I had no family close, very little money, ate little, it was winter and it was one of the hardest times in my life. I was very poor.
—Carolina Bell

One thing is serving a mission to Idaho. It was probably at least twenty years or a little more before I admit, it’s anyone publicly that I have been disappointed in that mission call. Even now, I did learn to love the people of Idaho, and I had tears when I left, i had wanted to go to either a Spanish- speaking mission or a welfare mission. I feel it is something that I do or rather did to show love for Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.

Another one is perhaps not really a sacrifice, by just being single and not having children. I’m at a point in life for reviewing my life, and knowing those dreams and hopes will never ever happen. It is a devastating kind of feeling. And there’s a part of me that wonders what my life would have been like, perhaps without the influence of the church on dating and what type of people to look for.. For instance, I’m sure church culture and church teachings probably influence some guys to not like me.

Another one is unfortunately due to my job. I have a job that basically requires homework in terms of paperwork and such. So I have sacrificed personally due to the kind of job that can impact one’s life balance. I feel like i’ve given a lot to my job. Trying to help patients yet in hindsight, even though I did what needed to be done, I wish I had been better with boundaries than life balance in some aspects of my work.
—Nita

My personal autonomy. It was 2003 when I got married at age 20. I knew plenty of women that had an education/career, but no one, not even my parents, ever actually talked to me about having hobbies or interests, going to college, or any sort of personal development (except Personal Progress, of course. My mom once told me Satan had his hands on me because I didn’t want to do it.) So I never had any plans for life except get married. So now I’m an empty-nester at 43 and trying to figure out who I want to be and what I want to do.
—Kayla

No one “chose me” until it was too late for the motherhood part so I was left with education choices that put me near poverty because they were good degrees for a mom.
—Heather G.

Men’s opinions on women’s issues.
—Haley Mann

ANYTHING a man says. I’m serious. I was taught that anything and everything a man said was literally smarter and wiser than any woman, especially myself. No more. Done with that. That is not true in the slightest.
—Mary Cox

Every damn thing! Swearing, what I wear, what anyone says I’m supposed to believe or do, counsel from ward, stake, and SLC leaders, the Word of Wisdom, the importance of meetings, shopping on Sunday, the temple, the afterlife, and, again, SWEARING!
—Carol Colvin

My children’s salvation looking like church activity and a “covenant path” lifestyle. Now that I don’t take that seriously, I’m so happy, relaxed and can and enjoy my adult kids 100%!

Boy, do I ever love them.
—Nancy

The afterlife. I now choose to focus on finding joy in this life.
—Jodi Gale

As I recover and heal from scrupulosity, I've taken a break from attending my rather prescriptive LDS Ward. In so doing, I felt like Alice in Wonderland for a while last year. I didn't know which way was up, what was real or false, or right or wrong. Instead of enjoying the adventurous ride, I stressed and cried almost every day for months as my spiritual foundation crumbled.

After a few months, finding a bit of stability and soft landing in a local, progressive Methodist community, I found myself crying and stressing less. I still relapsed at times with tsunamis of guilt or shame. During one of these relapses, I distinctly heard in a loving, almost joking tone, "You've got to stop taking Me so seriously!"

I've been enjoying this spiritual adventure so much more since that moment.

So, long story short: GOD.

I’ve learned to take God less seriously, in all the good, wholesome, healing, playful ways that God wants for our relationship.
—Andrea Neahusan

The opinion of anyone regarding my “worthiness”.
—Laura Balmaceda

What we are “supposed to” do and feel and be.
—Joy Wil

Everything that is not about secure attachment. If it doesn’t affect secure attachment relationships, it’s not serious.
—Paula White

That 15 old white men were the mouthpieces for God and that their words were what should guide all my actions.
—Meadow Petersen

Sadly, the belief that I could bring about any kind of change in my ward.
—Rebecca Bigelow

A transactional God. I actually think that God CANT intervene in our lives. They are God in that they love and care for us and the ultimate form of worship is to have a relationship with them. That thought makes them seem more loving to me. Otherwise, it means that they pick and choose when and who and how to help...or not help. And that just doesn’t make sense to me.
—Tara Northcutt

That there were good reasons for all the things the church encourged or discouraged. Now I know that many of those reasons are just inherited cultural baggage.
—Laura Glasglow

I think patriarchy/hierarchy has been a hard but freeing belief to let go of. I still believe that some version of the gospel according to the LDS church is true. There are a lot of things where I’m like “yeah, maybe something kind of like that is true, but probably not in the way we’ve learned it.” But the whole idea of patriarchy, even though it’s so central to the way the church is run and supposedly continues into the eternities.... No. I can’t keep trying to believe that an oppressive system comes from God.
—Kristine Napper

I have let go of so many things but the biggest is that my religion (Jehovah’s Witness) is THE TRUTH.
—Melinda Kopilow

I’ve let go of believing the church has all the answers. And that what the church did was “God’s Will” and there must be a reason for the things that didn’t seem quite “right.” Like denying priesthood to groups of people. Or polygamy.
—Maria Krieser

The belief the Church has all the answers. They don’t and wanting them to was hurting me.
—M. Alva

Learning to let go of the Mormon “I have the answers to everything and I am right and you are wrong and ‘playing church’” (cough, cough Brad Wilcox) has been SO FREEING!! For a long time after deconstruction, I felt like my beliefs might be wrong or right, but it didn’t matter because I was learning, thinking, and growing! Now I realize I was close, but just barely missing the point = there IS NO RIGHT/WRONG in spiritual growth and learning!
—Sage

As an enneagram 8 - being wrong is one of my LEAST favorite things -- BUT - allowing the vulnerability of being wrong is also the gift of a healthy enneagram 8 (I’m not quite there yet, don’t fret) -- it’s where I learn about myself -- and that’s when the growth happens. I also think that the more I’m wrong about some of the little things, I trust myself to be RIGHT about the bigger things.
—Mary

I’m never comfortable with being wrong. But I’m also learning to lean into the discomfort for “productive discomfort”.

That said, there’s still plenty of times I don’t wanna lean in, but instead get unproductive discomfort and just be sassy or lean away/walk away from it to not be so uncomfortable.
—Nikki Nelson

I didn’t even know feeling comfort was a thing. Been feeling uncomfortable since birth. Adventures ahead.
—Evelyn Galbraith

I’m not comfortable with being wrong (mostly because I am a recovering perfectionist, considered the smart one in my family and was usually right) but I’m much more comfortable with not knowing all the answers. I’m okay with saying “I don’t know, but I’m sure everything will be fine.”
—Carol

What was a woman’s role at church and in heaven, other than supporting other people’s dreams and lives? Luckily I had faith that once I went to the temple, god’s true plan for women would be revealed. And…we all know how that turned out.
—Jodi Gale

I was taught “No necking and petting,” and no one could/would answer what that meant! I’m still not sure.
I think most of what I learned was ambiguously taught, hence still so much is ambiguous to me.
And - all those handshakes to determine evil spirits and resurrected spirits, etc. How on earth was I supposed to remember all of this? Still confounds me; I see no relevance.
—Ronda Weaver

How will we get to heaven? Like will it be on a rocket ship to Kolob? Or will we dematerializing into energy and transported like on Star Trek. I spent way too much time thinking about this. Not one Sunday school teacher had a satisfactory answer.
—Ginger Hanson

If EVERYONE gets a body, when does the Holy Ghost get a body? I assume he would be the last spirit to be born, so there is an end. Also, after he gets his body, does that mean we no longer have “The Gift of the Holy Ghost” here on Earth? How does that work? I did ask the question once. The poor Bishop had no idea how to answer. Or that it was even a possible question to have. I got some version of “God will work it out in the end” The greatest non-answer answer the church has.
—Christina Beal

Are women only there to raise boys who will go and do cool things and girls to raise more boys and so on down the line ...
—Amanda Funai

I remember the day I learned about Polygamy. 14 years old in Seminary, Church History year. I asked my mom about it after school that day and she confirmed what I’d heard. I sobbed in my room in utter disbelief and despair. The first jar on my shelf. I tucked it away because it physically hurt to think about. Honestly, it still does.
—Farrah Nordquist

The 3 degrees of glory: where is the “cutoff” line?

If God know what decisions we will make, why bother with a thousand years of peace and judgement day, etc.

Why cant I play with non-morons? When I moved to Utah this was the first thing they TRIED to instill in me. Segregation of Mormons from non.
—Ricci Giles

Two big questions for me in my teens:
1. Why would God disallow black men from receiving the priesthood (6th grade when that started)
2. Why was Emma not worshipped for all she did!! Members didn’t even want to talk about her when I was a youth.
—Janene Goubert


My mother joined the LDS church when I was 5, my father was already a member. She was raised as a devout Catholic, parochial school too. My maternal grandparents were my favorite people! They were kind, loving, loved Christ, served in their church and so much nicer than my paternal, LDS, grandparents. I am old enough to remember when the “Great and Abominable Church” was directly identified as the Catholic Church. That didn’t sir well with me. I always wondered if they got that wrong, what else did they get wrong??
—Theresa Nowling

When I got a little older I read the scriptures a lot. I was focused on the idea of univocality in the scriptures and thought that if I could just study hard enough I would be able to find the true answers to all my questions.
—Mara Haslam

I obviously didn’t get the repentance message prior to baptism and soon after got into a physical fight with a friend at school and thought I would go to hell. That worried me for a long time.
—Diana Kell

Sacred Space, Loud Mind: Creating Room for Neurodivergence in the Church

by Brittney Walker

In church, stillness is a virtue.

Fold your arms.

Close your eyes.

Sit quietly.

Reverence. It’s how we show respect and love for God in His house.

For many people, those instructions are simple. For some of us, they are an impossible puzzle.

We weren’t trying to be irreverent or disobedient. But our brains don’t experience stillness the same way.

ADHD doesn’t turn off when sacrament meeting begins. Thoughts still move quickly. Bodies still carry energy. Attention still searches for stimulation the way other people breathe.

And when a faith tradition teaches that spiritual sincerity looks like stillness, children who cannot sit quietly will start to assume something is wrong with them.

The girl trying to listen

Every few minutes I would snap back into focus.

Wait. What are they talking about?

I would sit up straighter and resolve to listen this time. Sometimes it worked for a few minutes. But then my mind would jump ahead to a scripture reference the speaker mentioned, or a question I wanted to ask, or the sudden realization that the woman in front of me had the exact same purse my mom owned in 1992.

Eventually I developed strategies.

I drew pictures in the margins of the sacrament program. I counted the ceiling lights. I peeled the foil off gum wrappers and pressed them onto the program. I split the ends of my hair and lined them up along the edge of the bench.

Sometimes my mom and I played the dot game on the program. We would draw a grid of dots and take turns connecting them, trying to capture squares and write our initials inside before the other person could block us.

Other weeks we played the “I love you” hand squeeze game during the talks.

It looked like fidgeting. But it was actually concentration. Keeping my hands busy was the only way to keep my mind in the room.

Eventually I learned an even better trick: taking notes. If my hand was moving, my brain stayed anchored.

The effort no one could see

From the outside, ADHD rarely looks dramatic. Especially in girls.

We are not usually the ones climbing the chapel furniture. We are the ones whispering.

A question about something the speaker said. A connection to a church magazine story. A thought that arrived so quickly it came out of our mouths before we had time to decide whether it should stay there.

Participation felt natural to me. Stillness did not.

The early lessons

Sometimes my parents had to take me out of the chapel. I remember sitting on a parent’s lap in the foyer, trying very hard to hold my body still long enough to prove I could go back inside.

As I got older, my job became escorting younger siblings out for water or bathroom breaks. Everyone knew that those trips often turned into a few minutes of running around the church building before returning reverently to the pew.

The sacrament itself was one of those moments. The moment the bread and water reached our row. The small sensory shift of participating.

Afterward, we unfolded the accordion-folded paper cups and formed them into flowers.

It wasn’t irreverence. It was stimulation in a room that offered very little.

When difference becomes shame

Many women with ADHD grow up believing their brain is a spiritual problem. Nobody says those words directly. But the traits that come with ADHD are easily and often interpreted through a moral lens.

For girls especially, the message often becomes: be quieter, calmer, smaller.

What belonging could look like

The hopeful part of this story is that inclusion doesn’t require sweeping changes to doctrine or worship. Often it simply requires widening our understanding of what spiritual engagement can look like.

A Primary teacher who welcomes questions instead of shutting them down. Even if the lesson veers around a bit.

A youth leader who understands that a girl whispering excitedly about a thought from the lesson is not being disrespectful. She is processing out loud. And when someone finally receives her that way, when a leader leans in instead of shushing her, something shifts. The story she tells herself changes. Not overnight, but it changes.

A calling where someone who struggles with administrative details receives structure and support instead of quiet frustration.

Small moments like these can change the story a child tells herself. Instead of I am bad at reverence, the story becomes my brain works differently. And that difference can belong.

A wider kind of reverence

Looking back now, I see that my ADHD didn’t separate me from spiritual life. If anything, it drew me toward it.

Curiosity made me ask questions.

Energy made me volunteer.

Intensity made me care deeply.

Some people experience God in stillness. Others encounter the sacred through curiosity, conversation, movement, and connection. Both can be forms of devotion.

The child whispering questions may be deeply engaged. The teenager who cannot sit still may be thinking harder than anyone in the room. The woman whose mind moves quickly may be offering gifts the community doesn’t yet know how to recognize.

Sacred space doesn’t always have to be silent. Sometimes it just has to be large enough for every kind of mind.

Brittney Walker

I am an ADHD coach and writer living in Arizona with my husband and a lively household including six sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. I spent many years trying to be reverent, organized, and less distracting, and now I write about executive function, faith, deconstruction, and rebuilding identity with a different kind of brain. My work explores neurodivergence, belonging, and the slow process of learning to trust yourself. You can find more of my writing at exmoadhdcoach.substack.com

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Along for the Ride

by Blakelee Ellis

From the time I started thinking about getting married,

I understood that there were complexities about joining two lives together. Gender, family dynamics, finances, personality differences, expectations were all complexities that I knew would have to be navigated. The complexity I didn’t anticipate was deciding how to raise kids. There are those famous movie moments when a couple of different faiths decides to get married or have kids and someone always asks them, “But how will you raise the children?” I naively assumed that was the major difference of opinion between adults raising children, and because we were both LDS, that wouldn’t be a problem for my husband and me. All of you who are reading this who are raising or have raised children are laughing hysterically. I am too. It’s quite the kick in the pants to glance back at our past selves, when we had so little experience or knowledge, and truly begin to understand how stupid we were.

My husband and I were raised very differently. Which might be hard to believe considering we were both raised by white, heterosexual, middleclass, LDS parents who were also born and raised in Utah. We both have so many privileges. So really, how different could our childhoods be? Perhaps you are laughing again. Because you know as well as I do now, that parenting can not be boiled down solely to race, sexuality, socioeconomic status or faith. Because the type of parents we become is shaped by the type of parents we come FROM. I’ve frequently said that there were things my parents did when I was growing up that I was NEVER going to do. And I stuck by that. The cruel irony I know now (I hear you laughing again) is that besides those very clear things I wanted to do differently from my parents, the rest of me continues to grow into them. We all become our parents. Don’t misunderstand me: I love my parents. I respect my parents, but I didn’t really want to morph into them. I’m exaggerating, of course, because I am still my own person with my unique personality and experiences. But much of who I have become and so much of how I raise my children is a result of how many parents raised me. Of course, the same is true with my husband. Trying to merge our personalities, our own backgrounds, our own opinions on how to raise our kids has been, for me, the most complicated part of our married life. I thought that BEFORE my faith shifted several years ago. Now, some days it seems nearly impossible to come to a unified decision about how to be a parent.

Without going into great detail of how we were both raised, I’ll just tell you that I am the “fun” parent and my husband is the “mean” parent. We each had different expectations placed on us as children and so, naturally, the expectations we have for our own kids are very different from each other. Parenting is an amalgamation of so many decisions; some important, but mostly little day to day decisions that eventually build up to make an entire picture of a life. Will I let the kids jump on the couch today? Do I have the energy to allow a giant crafting mess? Will I yell during my son’s temper tantrum or will I be the calm in the storm? Will I apologize for the mistake I just made? Will I make dinner or will we go out to eat? Will I make the kids get off screens and go play outside? Will I react with compassion when my daughter admits she lied? Will I make my son come hang up his backpack or hang it up for him? Will I make my kids eat the recommended serving of vegetables today? There is no way to list all the minute decisions we make during the day. But now, as my spiritual life is complicated, many of the decisions I make about my kids also become extremely complicated.

One of the biggest personal musings continues to be: how much do I share with my kids? How do I inform them, while allowing them to keep their hearts and minds open to the LDS church? How do I bring up my qualms, without overly influencing their decisions? How do I inform them, but allow them to experience things for themselves? I have a deep desire to help foster my kids’ relationships with the divine alongside an even deeper desire to raise critical thinkers. In a church system that doesn’t want us to put question marks after the words of a prophet, it seems nearly impossible to raise children who are “all in” but know how to challenge the injustices of the system. My conscience will not allow me to sit back and watch their spiritual growth dampen and take on LDS rhetoric. If there is anything I can do to prevent my children from going through a mid-life faith crisis, I’m determined to do it. I will not have them fall apart as an adult because their spiritual life no longer works for them. It’s too damn painful. So I ache and think and debrief and deconstruct and reconstruct with them as often as I can. I will walk that tightrope to save them future spiritual pain. I guess I’m the second side of the same coin—LDS mothers everywhere feel a deep responsibility to usher their children down the covenant path so that they have the best chance at eternal life. On the flip side—I feel it is my responsibility to usher my children down their own path to have the best chance at happiness. I trust them to make the best decisions for themselves.

I’m helping my son clean out his room and I notice a, “For the Strength of Youth,” in the garbage. I pull it out.

“You’re getting rid of this?,” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Oh. I don’t really care, but can I ask why?”

“The section on chastity says that marriage is only between a man and a woman. I don’t think that’s true. I’m pissed about it so I’m throwing it away.”

How do I keep him from throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Do I really care if he does?

“Are there other teachings in here that you feel might apply to your life? Do you want to keep it for other reasons? Or you still just want to throw it away?”

“Throw it away.”

So I do.

Several months ago, my son had an appointment to renew his temple recommend. My husband had made the appointment for him without consulting my son. In my husband’s world, you go get your temple recommend renewed regardless of what is happening in your life. To him, it is a commandment and if you truly love God, you obey commandments. Even if you don’t see the point, or don’t understand the need for the commandment. I completely understand his point of view because I used to think the same thing.

It’s a reality that we are inherently lazy creatures. That if given the option, we will all stay comfortable and content, never being pushed, never doing anything hard or uncomfortable. Especially as a kid. So much of what we do as parents is teaching our kids that hard things are not only necessary, but are good. That discomfort pushes you and boring, pointless things, actually have a purpose and can help mold you into the best version of yourself. Also, that those hard, boring things are a necessary part of life that will ALWAYS exist. Hard, boring things are never going away and you have to learn how to handle them.

Brushing your teeth, learning math, going to bed on time, showering, cleaning your room, being kind to rude people, tolerating your siblings, practicing physical skills, just to name a few. I know we as humans learn the value of doing hard, boring, things we initially dislike by being forced to do them. I can’t say I now love to pull weeds since I had to as a kid, but I know it’s something that has to be done to have a beautiful yard.

What I’m having a difficult time with is deciding how much of my children’s spiritual lives is a necessary evil they have to get through to see the value in later? Yes, church is boring and mundane and it takes a lot of work to get anything spiritual out of meetings. I no longer believe that my family’s salvation relies on us attending church every Sunday, but I do know that it’s where I first learned to have a relationship with God. But I now believe there are so many other ways and places to build a relationship with God. Church is not the only place to do it.

My son was getting ready for his appointment and asked which parent was taking him. I asked if he had a preference and he asked if I would take him. I said I would and was determined to do so without unloading all my thoughts about temple recommends and temple recommend interviews on my son. We got in the car and I just knew I was going to internally implode if I didn’t speak my mind about some things.

“Listen,” I said.

“You know one of the interview questions is about the law of chastity. Sometimes, bishops ask additional questions about masturbation and pornography use if they feel inclined. I don’t think that is any of the bishop’s business. I don’t think he has the right to ask you those questions, but I want you to be prepared if he does ask. Are you uncomfortable answering those questions in front of me? Because I am not sending you into that interview alone so if we need to have your dad go, instead of me, then dad can go with you.”

My son said he had no objection to me taking him.

I sat through the interview with my son and everything seemed fine. But then he surprised me as we pulled into the garage.

I asked, “Do you have any questions or concerns about the interview that you want to talk to me about?”

He yelled out, “It’s bullshit” and yes, he yelled.

I said, “What’s bullshit?”

“The fact that we believe that a prophet is so much better than anyone else and can hear God better than anyone else. He is just a man like anyone else. So why should he have all the answers? It’s bullshit.”

As I listened to him rant all I could think was, “I am so glad that I’ve deconstructed my faith because if I was still the person I used to be I would be FREAKING out at the things my son was saying. Instead, I can give him a safe place to question and think through things without thinking he is being led away by the devil.”

I’m not afraid of making mistakes like I used to be. I always knew I could repent, but I still felt like things were going on my permanent divine record. That ultimately, they would be held against me. Now, mistakes truly are just a learning process. My GPS never says, “made a mistake.” It just says, “recalculating route.” That’s life. If I make a mistake, oh well. I’ll course correct as necessary. And so if my kids make what turn out to be monumental spiritual mistakes, I hold no fear about their eternal salvation. It takes a lot of pressure off.

At the beginning of this year my husband approached me and shared his feeling that we need to make fasting each fast Sunday more of a priority for the family, including the kids. I bristled and there was no hiding my immediate trepidation from my husband. Such a seemingly simple request brings up so many problematic feelings for me and a barrage of questions.

Has God really COMMANDED us to fast?
What’s a commandment anyway?
Are modern day revelations from authority figures commandments? Or guidelines?
Why do we have to fast if there are other ways to build a relationship with God?
Does God truly care about how we connect with divinity? Or is the relationship enough?
Why do we have to force the kids to have a connection with divinity?
Is it not enough to demonstrate our own relationship with divinity to the kids?
What if they don’t want a relationship with God right now?

There are some youth that love going to church and find such belonging, fulfillment and spiritual connection there. But I feel confident in saying that the majority of children, mine absolutely included, would never choose to go to church if given the option.

Because my ideas about God, obedience and grace have all changed so much during my journey, it’s changed my parenting style in many ways. The spiritual “requirements” I used to expect of my kids are now basically non-existent. Kids don’t want to say nightly family prayers? Cool with me. Church feels like a drag? I agree, let’s skip it. You don’t want to waste time going to the temple? All your friends are going and that might have social consequences, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You don’t want to read the scriptures? Okay, not everyone connects to God by reading their scriptures. Maybe you’ll find a different way. You don’t want to go to Young Men’s camp? I don’t care.
By having almost no spiritual expectations for my children, am I damaging them? Am I stunting their growth by never pushing them to do something difficult or boring or seemingly pointless or mundane?

We all start with a stage one faith (if you’ve never heard of stages of faith, here is a quick run down on one of the models).

If I never make them develop a stage one faith, can they even ever progress to later stages? Am I crippling their ability to differentiate because I’m not helping them build enough of a foundation?

How do I help my kids understand the potential for spiritual awakening when I no longer feel awakened there myself? How can I make them sit through two hours of church when I don’t want to go either? How can I make them fast when I hate fasting and don’t think God cares much? I think God is interested in a personal relationship with me, but how I best enter into that relationship is immaterial to God. God just wants to know me. And I believe I’m a better person when I daily come to know God. But if I never force my kids into situations with the potential to know God, how will they ever know if they themselves want to know God? How will they understand that the relationship can get them through hard times? How will they find a path that can lead them to existential love and generosity?

While expressing my heartaches of motherhood, some of my current struggles and loneliness, Susan sent me this message (yes, I’m so lucky that I get to have regular correspondence with Susan and Cynthia):

“Everyone can relate! I’ll admit, I’m laughing at the thought of you being able to ward off the dark night of the soul later for your kids by not indoctrinating them now. I don’t think the spiritual life works that way. One thing the Living School is teaching me is that this deconstruction stuff is really just doing the work of living well. Whether you’re religious or not, something is going to kick your ass good in this life, and you’ll be knocked to the ground by it. But the journey that sets you on is THE journey, so going through the hell is worthwhile. I didn’t say worth it, and absolutely no one would choose it, but it is the most worthwhile work I’ve done in my personal life, in my opinion. There’s my two-cents you didn’t ask for.”

My jaw dropped. Susan articulated in one sentence what my struggles really are all about: the need for control. It’s layered under love and good intentions, but it’s still there. The maternal need to protect my kids from pain and control how they move through this world. It’s parenting 101: you truly have no control over your children and the sooner you realize that, the happier you’ll be. I literally just said (in paragraph four to be exact) that I trust my kids to make the best decisions for themselves. I don’t intend for that to just be lip service, but rather a guiding force for how I parent. So in this moment I’m reminded that all I can do is offer love and support, but ultimately, just be along for the ride.

Blakelee Ellis

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My Journey With Grief

by Emily Richards

It’s hard to know where to start. If I’m being honest,

my faith has been unraveling for years, I just wasn’t paying attention. We were busy with raising three boys, moving abroad, and getting my husband to a point in his career when we could finally slow down a little and reap the benefits of sticking with an intense career path. That point finally came almost two years ago when he became a partner at one of the world’s largest accounting firms. We were relieved to finally reach this stage in our lives, to get back to traveling again, and to feel like we “made it.” But something was gnawing at me. I was unsettled and chalked it up to perimenopause anxiety. Then it happened. My husband was diagnosed with Stage IV colorectal cancer at the age of 41.

My world fell apart. It felt like everything had been taken from us without our consent and certainly without any reason. We had worked hard our whole lives, gone to church, paid tithing, served in our callings, gone to the temple and the list goes on. There was no history of cancer, he’s the youngest in his family and in great physical shape. The idea that we chose this trial in the pre-mortal world didn’t make any sense. I don’t think my 41-year-old husband chose before he came to this earth to get cancer and leave three teenage boys with one of them having significant disabilities. Can you even imagine such a thing? Or that God gave us this trial like he’s up in heaven hand picking who gets what and looked at us and said, “You know what, you’re strong people—I bet you can handle this one.”

What has happened in the last 16 months since his diagnosis has been a complete transformation. I shouldn’t say “complete” because I know I’ll continue to evolve and grow through this experience. But I’m not the same person I was before his diagnosis and I never will be. And when he dies and leaves this world, I know I’ll continue to change and have transformations. That’s a whole other side to this grief, that my person won’t get to see the woman I’m going to become.

I know I’m not the first woman to lose her husband in her 40’s, but can I just say it’s different for those of us who are on the younger side and I don’t think anyone would argue with that. It’s called “widow math,” which is essentially the longer I can keep him here (as if I have any control over this), the less time I have to do this life without him. Either way, I’m looking at the next 30-40 years without my person and it’s an unbearable thought. We met at BYU when we were 18, we grew up together and built a family. Our youngest son was born with Down syndrome 12 years ago, which was another transformative experience and if I’m being honest, I thought that was the BIG event of our lives. Little did we know.

This experience has clarified so many things for me. Spaces I had occupied before became impossible. It felt like everything and everyone was out to get me from seeing a middle-aged man playing pickleball (something my husband and I love to do together), watching older people (including our parents) go about their lives with little health issues, to seeing other families on Instagram traveling, or simply being asked by a grocery store clerk how my day was going.

Church was the ultimate test. I can do small talk for about five minutes and then it’s time to go. But seeing the throngs of people every Sunday chatting and laughing in between meetings and after reminds me that we are in a completely different world than everyone else. I wish I could be light again, I wish I didn’t know how quickly life can turn upside down. They all seem to be living in a world where that can happen (because we are the proof of that) but not to them.

One of the things I’ve felt so strongly in our home since my husband’s diagnosis is the love of the Divine. I know He sees me, heaven is crying with us, and is giving our family all the support they can right now.

The mantra I had to learn at the beginning when all I wanted to do was scream in the middle of sacrament meeting was “not everyone gets a front row seat to my grief.” Most of the time I have to completely disassociate at church, especially when topics like “hope” and “trials” and “miracles” come up. We talk a good game in the church, but until you’re faced with something completely out of your control, all of your former lines of thinking no longer apply. All bets are off as they like to say.

I’m not exactly sure how to wrap this up in a nice bow that’s easily acceptable to the masses. I’m very aware that my story can spark a lot of fear and anxiety in people, which makes me somewhat of an outcast. Luckily, I have some incredible women in my life who will see me through this—and are. Thank God for these women.

I’ve had to rethink everything these past 16 months. From logistics like where will I live and how will I provide for my son and myself after supporting my husband in a big career for the past 20 years, to what will I do about church after he’s gone. Church is hard now and I can only assume it will get harder. We also have a very specific situation with our youngest—he tolerates church and the only way we can get him through the first hour is by giving him goldfish and letting him watch Youtube. He’s non-speaking and has significant hearing loss so he gets nothing out of being there. He’s also overwhelmed by crowds and closed doors (aka the chapel). I can’t wrestle an 80 pound child who’s asking for his dad each Sunday just so I can be sitting in the pews. I don’t think anyone would argue with this, or certainly not with me.

Another scenario I’ll be facing is that I will no longer have a priesthood holder in my home when my husband dies and my two older boys leave home in the next three years. I was taught to marry a worthy priesthood holder (check) and yes, I still have the letter to my future husband I wrote as a Beehive. How will this work?

All of this brings me to THE question, what does it mean to “live the Gospel” when our traditional ways of doing so are no longer possible or cause pain? I have to believe God understands my situation. One of the things I’ve felt so strongly in our home since my husband’s diagnosis is the love of the Divine. I know He sees me, heaven is crying with us, and is giving our family all the support they can right now. I can feel I’m being prepared for a life without my partner. So many miracles have happened and will continue to happen, just not the one we want the most. And no, He’s not taking attendance and He certainly isn’t going to withhold His love and protection from my home because a man no longer lives in it. Someday, I’ll be a widow raising a son with serious disabilities, and who do we think God is more likely to give His power to, me or a man?

Someday, my time will finally come and let me just say that I have no fear of death now. It will be a happy day when it’s my turn. I have nothing to fear in death. I’ll finally be back with my person. And when that day comes I imagine my Heavenly parents will pull me into their arms (after my husband of course, he gets first dibs) and tell me how sorry they are that this happened.

Note from the author: I wrote this a couple of months ago when I thought we still had at least a year left with my husband. Just five weeks ago, his cancer took a turn and we are now on hospice and in his final days. Everything I wrote then is still true, but there have definitely been some new struggles and feelings that have come up now that we are at the end. When my brain can put sentences together someday, I’ll write again.

Kneeling

By Nicole Slater

Temple Recommend Questions and My Heart

by Ellen Hawkins

When I first went to the temple I was 21 years old.

I was WAY too young to get married and WAY too young to make temple covenants. I was just doing what I thought was “right” even though it was not right for me then, and sadly isn’t now. Although some of these rituals have changed recently, it was already too late for me. It felt unsettling covenanting to obey my husband, veiling my face, changing all those robes multiple times, and forgetting the answers at the veil. I was always mildly scolded by the gray-haired, well-meaning sisters who wanted me to be fully ready to enter God’s presence. At the beginning of the ceremony, when asked if I wanted to withdraw rather than take on sacred covenants, I didn’t know if I did! I didn’t know what they were until after the ceremony. I was not witness couple or prayer circle material. It seemed I was the last person getting robed or disrobed, and I would panic that I wasn’t more adept at tying bows under pressure.

My ADHD was undiagnosed at the time and sitting through a two hour, repetitive ceremony was excruciating. I wondered why I felt little joy. One was supposed to feel joy at the temple according to every Relief Society lesson given since 1842. No one talked about not feeling joy. Was it something I was doing or not doing that prevented me from feeling the spirit that I was promised? The celestial room was a lovely, peaceful place and definitely a conduit to God’s love. But it was not transformative in the way I expected or hoped. Where was Jesus? I wanted to learn about Jesus—not about Peter, James, and John, Adam and Eve, or Satan. Why were they front and center?

But I really tried and went occasionally as much as my mental health would allow. I found some satisfaction in participating in sealings and initiatories. I enjoyed seeing the names and ages of the sisters I was proxy for. I wondered if they knew what was happening from the other side, and did they want to have temple ordinances performed for them? I attended when two of my children went on missions. I attended when my son got married. I answered the temple recommend questions half-heartedly in order to be there for these special occasions. I am prone to feeling intense guilt about everything, and so feeling unworthy (whether I was or not) to go to the temple weighed heavily on me. I knew I was disappointing my husband. I was certain Jesus was disappointed in me. I now realize that he wasn’t then and isn’t now, and this knowledge has lessened some of the pain. It’s sad to think how many years I wasted thinking that Jesus’ love for me was dependent on my relationship with the temple.

When or if my daughters decide to get sealed in the temple, I have been wondering about my course of action. Will I choose to sit in the waiting room? What will more “righteous” family members think when the mother of the bride is waiting with others who chose not to sit through a worthiness interview? Who chose not to answer invasive questions that don’t measure our desire to follow Christ and the good things we’re trying to do?

These questions require us to look higher and broader. They require us to think about all of God’s children, the goodness to be found in all religions, and the potential to find Christ through service. Above all, they are Christ-based.

The temple recommend questions do not reflect a person’s heart. They don’t reflect my heart. Since they lack depth and insight into my commitment to follow Jesus, I decided to rewrite them in a way that just might make me want to attend the temple again. If they were written this way, I could reflect on whether I was a true disciple of Christ, and not just adept at answering questions about sex, underwear, coffee, and money.

I know that we will never see these revised questions in the handbook, but I hope that Jesus will be in charge of temple “worthiness” someday instead of church leaders. These questions do not ask about exact obedience to LDS prophets or their infallibility. They don’t make LDS prophets the only ones who can speak for God. They don’t ask us to avow that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more truth than any other religion that provides comfort and joy to God’s children. These questions require us to look higher and broader. They require us to think about all of God’s children, the goodness to be found in all religions, and the potential to find Christ through service. Above all, they are Christ-based.

Here is how I would rewrite the questions:

Do you believe in God the Eternal Father, Heavenly Mother, in their Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost?

Do you believe that Christ is our brother, Savior, and friend, and that through His grace and atonement we can be forgiven of wrongdoing?

Do you believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains truth, can strengthen family relationships, and provide support and community for members and non-members?

Do you obey Jesus’ commandment to love God and your neighbor?

Do you strive to provide service to those in need in your family, church, employment, and neighborhood?

Are you willing to financially assist people, worthy organizations, and the church when possible?

Do you accept all people regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, social status, and religion as children of God? Do you believe that they can be worthy to participate in all church activities and attend the temple?

Do you believe that men and women are created equally?

Are you faithful to your spouse?

Are you a faithful partner in raising your children?

Do you strive to take care of your body by eating healthy foods, exercise, getting adequate sleep, and avoiding harmful substances?

Do you seek to build a relationship with God and Jesus Christ through church attendance and creating a loving and supportive community with other members and friends?

Do you seek answers to your questions through scripture and other enlightening books or music or nature?

I can only hope. Until then, there is still a lot of work required to be a disciple of Christ despite these revised questions. Maybe even more.

The Nervous System and The Body Of Christ

by Sarah Maxwell Neipp

In May 2004 I returned from my first semester away

for college and went for a bike ride as a reunion with a best friend along the foothills of the Salt Lake valley. I was grateful my dear friend let me borrow a bike since I did not have one of my own. A short while into our bike ride, my upper body began feeling quite sore—I was not an experienced biker and assumed I was paying the price in muscle fatigue. The soreness continued to intensify even after our ride, but I thought nothing of it. I was elated when later that evening the soreness and aches suddenly disappeared. We had met up with more friends to reunite and reconnect after months apart.

We decided to get in cars to gather at a different home, moving in the herd-like fashion from high school. I walked over to my friend’s car and when I went to open the door, my hand simply would not do it. I chuckled at my malfunction and attempted again, but was still unable to open the door—I could not even grip the handle between my fingers. We all had a good laugh—I think my friends imagined I was clowning around to entertain. Eventually a friend opened the door, and I got in. I went home shortly after to quiet since my family had gone to sleep—they did not hear me awkwardly trying to change into pajamas to go to bed with hands that were incapable of gripping anything. I thought that sleep would fix everything—I would wake up with normal capacity and an entertaining story to tell in the morning.

I was wrong. I woke with numbness in both of my hands, some of my arms, and a new band of numbness around my stomach. I told my parents, rested most of the day (it was Sunday after all), and Monday morning we called my physician.

That summer I was diagnosed at age 19 with Multiple Sclerosis. I had MRIs, CAT scans, cortizone injections, and began betainterfuron treatments. I gradually gained most of the feeling back in my hands and stomach, but the strength in my hands—particularly my thumbs—is to this day ever-so-slightly less than it was before this incident.

The nervous system is remarkable! Its complexities and intricacies continue to marvel me as I learn more about its functions in bodies. The nervous system is intended to operate as a bi-directional feedback loop—motor signals go out from the brain to different areas of the body and sensory input sends data back to the brain. The sensory input provides information for the brain about touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and positioning of the body through space. This allows the brain to process the information and modify future messaging. Sometimes this feedback loop is interrupted in both directions, as it was when my hands, arms, and stomach went numb. Alternatively, sensory neuropathy occurs when the brain can send motor commands to areas of the body but that area of the body cannot communicate back sensory information—ultimately injuries can occur, balance and coordination often suffer, and generally the individual will begin to over-compensate in a certain area (often visually) because they cannot rely on sensory input from their body. My father, who has neuropathy in his feet, broke his toe and was unaware for months—ultimately he needed reconstructive surgery on three toes to repair the damage from walking on his injured toe for more than a year.

If our desire is to be one—to value each member—then we must improve both our systems and willingness to hear feedback from each part of the body.

The hierarchical structure of the church is one of a disrupted feedback loop. One direction of information flows normally—from the “brain” or leadership of the church to the rest of the body—but the return signal is lost. In addition to this top-down-only flow of information, at a more local level we hear all too often of a similar failure of communication where the true feelings of individuals are reprimanded, shut down, or withheld for fear of the many consequences of pointing out flaws in a system we declare to be inspired, but that we also infer is without a need of adjustment. This disconnection is regularly evident as individuals who defend the church talk past those who point out the pressure, discomfort, and pain created by the church in lives of other members.

When we dismiss the experiences of individuals, we are telling another area (person) of the body of Christ, “I have no need of your sensory data.” We are rejecting Paul’s injunction that, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26) Many individuals who have left the church have done so because their cries of discomfort, pain, and position are ultimately unheard, unwelcome, or shut down, and the data they are trying to share does not make it back up into the brain to synthesize information from the external world into the commands sent to the body.

If our desire is to be one—to value each member—then we must improve both our systems and willingness to hear feedback from each part of the body. If the general leaders send unread letters and emails back to local leaders, then we are preventing the sensory feedback of the members from reaching the brain. The pain and damage happening to the members will continue right in front of us when it could be addressed and prevented in the future if we would facilitate a bi-directional feedback loop between leaders and members. When we are selective about which members of the body of Christ we listen to, we create a veritable echo chamber of validation. Unless we prioritize listening to the diversity of experiences throughout the body of Christ, we lose awareness of and connection to data that should be so valuable to us in our efforts to follow Christ’s injunction to “be one” so that we can be his.

The Girl Who Talked Too Much

by Brittney Walker

I don’t remember squirming in Primary so much.

But I remember talking.
And being sent to the hall. Again and again.

It wasn’t rebellion. I just always had something to say: an idea, a joke, a connection, a question. It popped into my brain and was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I was the first to memorize every scripture, the first to raise my hand, the first to volunteer. I wanted so badly to be good. But somehow, good was always quieter than me.

I was told I talked too much.
That I interrupted.
That I should learn to “reverence my voice.”

No one said I might have a brain that moves faster than my mouth can keep up.
No one said my excitement wasn’t sin.

Reverence and other impossible virtues

In the church, being “reverent” isn’t just about noise. It’s an outward manifestation of your relationship to the divine. The “good girls” are soft-spoken and graceful. They fold their arms and cross their legs, sing in the right key, and sit through sacrament meeting like angels carved from stone.

I tried to be one of them.
I memorized all the Articles of Faith before anyone else.
I bore my testimony as soon as I could toddle to the pulpit (and to anyone who would listen).
I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.

But reverence never came naturally. My voice was too loud, my laugh too big, my feelings too close to the surface. I wasn’t defiant. I was enthusiastic. I wanted to participate in everything, and I didn’t understand why that made grown-ups sigh.

What I learned early was that being “too much” was just as bad as being “not enough.”

The unseen kind of wrong

ADHD in girls doesn’t usually look like the Primary boy balancing a chair on his head. It looks like a girl who blurts answers, over-explains, talks fast, laughs loud, volunteers for everything. And still gets labeled “distracting.”

It’s the invisible kind of wrong. Earnest, high-energy, rule-following, and somehow still failing.

We weren’t the kids skipping Seminary; we were the ones teaching the lesson when the teacher didn’t show. But our report cards came back with “bright girl, talks too much.” Church leaders praised our testimonies and then reminded us to tone it down.

You learn, after a while, that the best way to please people is to shrink yourself.

Obedience as personality

ADHD girls are masters at overcompensating.
I became the kind of obedient that could win awards for it.

Color-coded scripture tabs, perfect Visiting Teaching records, Relief Society lessons that would bring a tear to your eye. My effort level was Olympic. My nervous system was fried.

The church rewards that kind of over-functioning. Especially in women. We call it diligence. We call it faith. But it’s often the coping mechanism of someone trying to prove she isn’t defective.

When you have ADHD, chaos is always humming beneath the surface. So you build structure out of guilt and glitter. You keep saying yes to every calling, every committee, every meal train, hoping the doing will finally quiet the noise inside.

It never does.

The gospel of repentance

If obedience became my personality, repentance became my reflex.

The harder I tried to live up to every expectation, the more proof I found that I couldn’t. I lacked consistency. The kind of daily steadiness that was praised from every pulpit. Scripture study, morning and night prayer, timely preparation for callings or meetings. I meant to do them all, but my follow-through never matched my intentions.

And yet, I never forgot to repent.

Every skipped morning prayer, every missed journal entry, every talk prepared last-minute went on the invisible list of things to be sorry for. I carried a prayer in my heart … of apology. I was always confessing, always resolving, always promising that next time I’d be better.

What I didn’t know then was that inconsistency wasn’t a moral flaw. It was my ADHD showing up exactly as it does for everyone else, just in the language of faith. But back then, inconsistency felt like sin.

So while other girls were building testimonies, I was building a case against myself.

The burnout prophecy

By adulthood, I was exactly who the system had trained me to be: responsible, spiritual, dependable—and exhausted.

Every late bill, every missed appointment, every Sunday morning meltdown felt like moral failure. I’d think, If I just tried harder, prayed harder, planned better…

People would say, “You’re amazing! I don’t know how you do it all.”
And I’d smile and think, Me neither. Because I can’t.

Burnout, for me, wasn’t a slow fade. It was the moment my mind said, No more pretending. The checklists that once gave me safety now felt like cages. The structure that once kept me safe now made me suffocate.

That’s the problem with trying to earn your peace. You can’t keep up forever.

When the name finally fits

Getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult was like reading my patriarchal blessing and realizing it had been misfiled under someone else’s name all along.

Suddenly, everything made sense.
The noise in my head, the bursts of energy, the forgotten forms, the half-finished projects, the guilt. The GUILT. The big emotions. All of it.

It wasn’t a lack of faith or discipline.
It was a different kind of brain, living inside a system that didn’t know what to do with difference.

That realization didn’t make me bitter; it made me merciful.
Merciful toward that little girl in the hall.
Merciful toward the woman who kept saying yes.
Merciful toward everyone who tried to make sense of me with the language they had.

What I wish she knew

If I could whisper through time to that chatty Primary kid, I’d tell her:

You weren’t bad.
You weren’t unruly.
You were curious, alive, and trying to connect in a place that prized quiet over authenticity.

You memorized every scripture because your brain loves stimulation.
You volunteered because you craved connection.
You talked because silence felt like being erased.

None of that was wrong.

Your voice was never the problem. It was proof you were here, thinking, feeling, learning, trying.

The church told you to be still and know God.
But maybe God was never in the stillness for you.
Maybe God was in the conversation.

The girl who talked too much was never broken.
She was just early to the truth.

Contributors:

Emily Richards

At the moment I am a heartbroken caretaker. My husband Todd is in the final weeks of his life after 20 months of battling cancer. I am also a mom to three boys ages 17, 15, and 12. Our youngest son, Ben, has Down syndrome so I also consider myself an advocate for not only my son, but all those with disabilities. I spent 15 years in the PR field and plan to take those skills I developed to build a new life for Ben and myself by starting a day center for adults with disabilities near the ocean (Ben’s favorite place).

Nicole Slater

I am a creator, a wife, and a mother of three who lives in New Mexico. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and freelance occasionally in Graphic Design and Photography. My free time is almost always spent reading.

Ellen Hawkins

I am a junior high reading and writing teacher and spend much of my day repeating instructions and answering questions I've already answered. Sometimes teaching happens. I am amused by 12-13 year old students, and I love watching all the real life that is being navigated in the halls and classrooms of the public schools. There is no better place to learn about what it means to be human in a complicated, stressful world. Reading is my true joy along with fires, cozy clothes, lunch with friends, Sunday night dinners, movies, walks, flowers, and Pilates. I am trying to phase into girl dinners, writing more, and meaningful conversations with people I love. I have four grown children, and two granddaughters who live way too far away. I try to visit them as much as possible. My husband and I live in Utah.

Sarah Maxwell Neipp

I grew up in Salt Lake City and have lived in Virginia, California, and Washington D.C. (where I served an LDS mission). I received two degrees in vocal performance and currently teach and perform locally. I love my husband and two children along with our dog and two cats. I’m an Enneagram type Nine.

Brittney Walker

I am an ADHD coach and writer living in Arizona with my husband and a lively household including six sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. I spent many years trying to be reverent, organized, and less distracting, and now I write about executive function, faith, deconstruction, and rebuilding identity with a different kind of brain. My work explores neurodivergence, belonging, and the slow process of learning to trust yourself. You can find more of my writing at exmoadhdcoach.substack.com

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We Have A Mean Streak In Mormonism

by Cynthia Winward

I once overheard a family member— whom I love dearly—

several decades ago say that girls who have premarital sex deserve to get pregnant as a punishment for their sins.

I witnessed this convo between a male family member who was in a heated discussion with other female family members. They were trying to convince him his attitude was cruel. Why would anyone ever want a difficult life for a young girl? I had at least five cousins who became teenage mothers so this was a big topic in my big Mormon family growing up. The adults probably had no idea I had listened to this convo. (I was one of those kids who preferred to sit and listen to the grown-ups rather than go play with my cousins.)

Just revisiting this experience in my thoughts makes me want to write a whole ‘nother essay about the strictness of the law of chastity. Does it do more harm than good? Maybe I’ll write that another day. (Also, stay tuned for a podcast episode in March with therapist C.A. Larson about purity culture/law of chastity….can we ever talk about that enough?) But today I just want to focus on the mean streak that I see in Mormonism—in my childhood and sadly still now.

Perhaps a mean culture exists because in high-demand religions we often sacrifice so much (sometimes happily, sometimes reluctantly) that we need there to be Big Consequences for these sacrifices? We want the blessings of sacrifice, but maybe more so, we also want to make sure there is a punishment for those who break the rules? We religious types have a lot of feelings about the idea of anybody ‘getting away’ with ‘sin’.

I know all this because—as embarrassed as I am to admit it—I used to be one of those people that loved to conjure up the mental scoreboard when the consequences of ‘sin’ became evident to me. I learned it best from my religious community—to mentally ‘finger wag’ at sinners. That’s not an excuse for my mean thoughts, just an explanation that I did learn this behavior somewhere, from someone. In particular, I learned it from my own leaders.

Teachings such as these—

“If a person hasn’t suffered, he hasn’t repented. . . . He has got to go through a change in his system whereby he suffers and then forgiveness is a possibility.”
–Dallin Oaks quoting Spencer Kimball

“You cannot commit a little sin without being subject to the consequences.”
–Russell M. Nelson

“This clearly sets forth the ultimate banquet of consequences and the cumulative impact of choices not in accordance with the Father’s plan of happiness.”
- Quentin L. Cook

“Therefore I command you to repent… otherwise you shall suffer… how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not.”
–Doctrine & Covenants 19:15–18

The language of these teachings is vivid, threatening, and physical—suffering is framed as deserved. Not only do we preach about the judgment of others’ sins, but we also have teachings that turn that mean voice of condemnation inward—

“For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us;”
(Alma 12:14)

This internal judgment then becomes our own prosecutor. And prosecutors of self naturally become prosecutors of others. Or maybe we prosecute others first and then turn that judgment inward? Whichever comes first, in my observation, we have developed a culture of meanness. We flog others and we flog ourselves. If there is any breaking of a law, or a commandment, we demand—and revel in—swift justice. For example, how often during the current warrant-less immigration raids occurring in the US have I heard Mormons say, ‘well they broke the law.’ Why is that what gets typed out on social media thousands of times a day? Like here—

As followers of Jesus (who was once a refugee displaced in a foreign land!) why isn’t mercy always our default? Why doesn’t kindness and respect, which are the actual core teachings of Jesus, come before (or instead of) Article of Faith 12 in that social media comment? Why are we okay with people in windowless detention centers, being separated from their families? Why do we favor laws—even unjust laws—over kindness, compassion, and mercy? Why hasn’t my church joined the many other churches decrying the current inhumane treatment of immigrants? The most current statement from January 2025 says, first and foremost, that “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obeys the law.”

I remember an experience I had as a teen. A couple of my friends had submitted their mission papers—only there was a problem. They didn’t have legal status in the US. Our stake president wrestled with this dilemma and ultimately he decided (with leaders at the top, I assume) that mercy would guide his decision. My friends were allowed to serve missions stateside where their legal status wouldn’t be an issue. Mercy over law. Bless him. I am sure stories like this are still happening today, quietly at the local level, but why haven’t leaders at the top made another statement clarifying where they stand on current events today?

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A world of hurt and harm has happened since the last immigration statement, yet Church leaders remain silent. Jesus, however, was not silent. In the Bible we repeatedly see Him choosing mercy over law—

What about the woman caught in adultery? (Or as I like to call it, the men caught in hypocrisy.) She is brought to Jesus, but he refuses to condemn her even though the punishment for adultery (well, for adulterous women) was death. He doesn’t deny the law, but he refuses to weaponize it. Jesus chose dignity and compassion over judgment. (John 8)

What about healing on the sabbath? Jesus says, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4) Jesus breaks a law to relieve suffering. In this example He directly challenges any theology that treats rule-keeping as morally superior to human care.

What about the parable of the good Samaritan? In this parable it’s the people most obedient to religious law that fail morally, while the heretical Samaritan succeeds. “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” (Luke 10:37-38) To Jesus it is mercy, not correctness, that defines righteousness.

Those are just three examples! I could list many more examples where Jesus chose mercy over the law, over and over. As Richard Rohr writes in Dancing Standing Still,

“Jesus is always on the side of the crucified ones. He changes sides in the twinkling of an eye to go wherever the pain is. He is not loyal to one religion, to this or that group, or to the worthy; Jesus is always loyal to suffering.”

May we check any meanness in our hearts.
May we bury our lust for justice and consequences.
May we choose the better way of mercy, as Jesus perfectly modeled for each of us.

Cynthia Winward

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The Beauty of Agency

by Jillian Scott

I want to speak to those who have experienced,

or are experiencing, a loved one—be it a spouse, child, family member, or friend—who has left your faith, or has taken a different path in their faith journey than you hoped for them. I also want to speak to those who feel they are currently in their own faith crisis, deconstruction, reconstruction, journey. Between these two, this should include just about everyone. From my own personal experience, going through a faith crisis/deconstruction, and having someone you love dearly leave your faith and take a different path, feels very uncertain, lonely, fearful, worrisome for your salvation or your loved ones, and even very dark. So much weight is on your mind and shoulders. I remember feeling like I just wanted all of the uncertainty to end, to have all my beliefs and relationships back to normal. But that just can’t be, and we are left during these dark times of struggle with doubt, discouragement, and deep questions that often feel unanswerable.

Maybe we feel something has gone wrong, or we have done something wrong, to have these questions or uncertainty come into our lives. But during this time for me, which felt so dark and uncertain, I came to know my Heavenly Parents and my Savior at a deeper level than I ever thought I could have. I came to learn so much about Their grace and love. I came to learn a beautifully different perspective about our eternal plan and purpose that I feel is often overlooked by many of us, and I want to offer this perspective today. I hope it will bring peace and assurance to your hearts during what may be a dark and uncertain time in your life.

I’ll start with a question. What is the purpose of our mortal experience? Is it A: to believe the truth and be righteous, and always do the right thing and never waver? Or B: to exercise our agency and grow and change, make mistakes along the way but learn from them? I think we would say of course it’s to grow and change and learn. But it seems we more often than not expect ourselves and others to live option A.

When we adjust our perspective to align with B and realize it is God’s plan for our experience here, it changes the way we see the mortal experience. We gain peace and assurance when we realize God is with us in our whole journey on earth vs. that He leaves us when we take a wrong turn. We gain peace in this perspective by knowing that we’re safe to exercise our agency, knowing that the whole learning and growing process was part of the plan vs. something went wrong in our journey when we made a mistake, or are faced with doubts and uncertainty. We learn in 2nd Nephi 2:16,21:

16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

21 And the days of the children of men were prolonged according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men.

I think it is very significant that in this chapter we learn the transgression of Adam and Eve was a part of God’s plan, that it wasn’t a mistake. Verse 23 says:

23 And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.

24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

This is all possible through the atonement. It is beautiful, and it wasn’t just a backup plan for the fall of Adam and Eve. It was the plan.

With this, we can have peace knowing that all the conditions of mortality are acceptable in God’s plan for us vs. any wrong turn or choice is detrimental to our eternal salvation. If the point of this mortal experience was simply to just believe the truth and be righteous or our eternal salvation would be at stake; if sinning, making mistakes, deconstructing parts of our faith, and taking different paths in our faith were truly such a detrimental thing on the grand scale of person’s eternal progression, then life would likely look a lot different. God could have made this world very differently.

1) The veil wouldn’t be over our eyes, to cause us to wonder and ask questions.

2) We would not be allowed to be agents unto ourselves. To make our own choices according to our limited understanding.

3) Church history wouldn’t be so messy and cause so many of us to really search and ask questions.

4) The picture could have been a lot more clear for us to be able to live the “right” way. The conditions for mortality are acceptable to God. And He knew this mortal experience was the best way to accomplish His purpose and plan for us.

Embracing this perspective gives us peace by allowing us to focus less on what we fear the outcome to be and focus more on God’s ability to help us, teach us, and lead us to where we need to go and what we need to learn, not fearing the process. The Lord tells us many times in the scriptures to not fear this mortal experience. We learn in John 16:33:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

2nd Timothy 1:7:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Isaiah 41:10,13:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea I will help thee; yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. For I am the Lord thy God. I will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, fear not; I will help thee.

Rev. 1:17:

...Fear not; I am the first and the last.

We need not fear when we trust in God.

This perspective brings us peace by allowing us to be more honest and patient with ourselves about what we really believe, what we know, and what we understand. We can only really grow when we can be truly be honest with ourselves, and not pretend we know or believe, or force ourselves to know. If we are seeking truth and wanting to do what’s right, God is in that. We don’t need to be ashamed of our questions, doubts, struggles, dark times. It’s the process. He is teaching us, and guiding us through. Trust Him in your journey.

In this perspective, we will judge, assume, and fear less for others in their own journey, and have more respect for their choices. I love what President Uchtdorf taught:

I also love this quote by Hank Smith:

We can know that God is just as much with them as He is with us in our journey. Everyone’s path and understanding is different. None look the same. We need not fear.

This perspective can help us choose goodness, and gain spiritual strength and knowledge because of sheer conversion and change in our hearts, if it happens. I love how Elder Renlund puts it:

Exercising our agency allows us to become, and choose for ourselves. I remember during the depths of what I felt was a faith crisis, I realized that much of the reason why I stayed in the church, and did the right things, was mostly based out of fear and guilt. I didn’t feel safe to step back and actually be honest with how I really felt, and what I really believed. I just did it because it was what I was told I should do, and not question. But I realized, even though the things I was trying to do were all good, I was not doing them out of love or for the right reasons. It was not out of a converted heart. It seems that some of us do use fear or guilt to motivate ourselves and others to do and believe the right things. But is this what real change and conversion is about? Is this respecting the process of agency? Is this healthy for our souls? President Uchtdorf said:

I love this. I believe that to allow ourselves to be truly honest in our hearts and thoughts with God, even if those thoughts and beliefs seem terrifying, contrary to what we think they should be, this allows Him to work in us. If our desire is to understand and find the truth and do what is right, we are safe to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings. God is not disappointed in our process of learning and changing. He is in it. When we allow ourselves to be open to Him, without fear, He will teach us, and change us into who we need be, and those we love. Our desires to follow Christ will naturally come as our hearts and understanding change. We can’t force conversion and change. We must let God change us and teach us naturally. This is the whole point of mortality. We must not use fear, guilt or shame to motivate ourselves or others to do the right things or believe the right things. The Atonement made it possible for us to exercise our agency. To be allowed to be honest, learn, and change naturally, and safely.

Please understand that I am not saying we are shielded from the natural consequences of this mortal life, nor should we be negligent in our actions. But I am saying we don’t need to fear the process of change and becoming for ourselves and others. Let’s trust that God is doing His perfect work. He knows what each of us needs. He’s got this. I want to close with President Uchdorf’s words:

I love my Savior, I love my Heavenly parents. I am grateful for the hard times in my life that have brought me to know God better, and to feel more of His love and mercy in my life. I know His power is real and working. I love how the gospel works.

Hiding (Sanctuary)

by Shanna Davis

My Molting

by Joleene Watabe

As I walked down the trail, the vibrant colors

of the earth surrounded me. On one side, the lake shimmered a deep, soul-stilling blue. Beneath my feet, the dirt path curled forward in warm brown ribbons. On the other side, the hill rose like a living embrace—lush with grass and speckled with wildflowers, as if joy itself had taken root and blossomed. It felt like walking through a love letter from heaven, each breeze a reminder that beauty was all around me.

An outcropping of rocks caught my eye as I sensed movement. On top sat two bespeckled lizards, basking in the open—fearless and unapologetically receiving the light. I stopped and admired their boldness. Every time I see a lizard, I think of my late husband. He used to spend hours with our kids hunting and catching them—once even smuggling a couple onto an airplane because our daughter, a daddy’s girl, couldn’t bear to leave them behind. I smiled. I paused with my hiking companions to share the story, feeling a quiet connection through the act of revealing a piece of myself.

We resumed our hike, and I took the lead. Just a few steps in, the tall grass beside me erupted with sound—a sharp, unmistakable rattle. My heart leapt into my throat. I screamed and instinctively jumped off the rocky trail to the dirt below, adrenaline surging. I had startled a rattlesnake. It coiled, its tail buzzing a clear warning: stay back. We froze, breathless. Then, in stunned silence followed by nervous chatter, we watched as the snake uncoiled and slithered up the hill, disappearing into the grass.

Though we continued on, the moment lingered. Something in me had shifted. My eyes stayed fixed on the trail, scanning the ground and the brush, alert for hidden danger. The beauty of the world around me remained, but now I saw it through the lens of vigilance.

It wasn’t until we returned to the car that I could exhale. Later, I soaked in a hot bath and afterwards I retold the story—what felt like a brush with death—to my family. For weeks I flinched at the sound of rustling leaves. It took time, conscious effort, and repeated safe encounters with nature for my body to unlearn the fear.

I realize now that I startled the rattlesnake as much as it startled me. I doubt it gave me another thought as it slithered away. It just went back to its life—shedding its skin when needed, growing, and doing what snakes do.

And still—I think about that snake. As a human, I assign meaning to things. Was it a warning? A symbol? A test? A sign from a God? Were the lizards a message from my husband—or heaven itself—telling me that if I pay attention, I’ll be protected? I don’t know. But one thing is clear: my nervous system responded exactly as it was designed to. It pulled me into protection mode—into fear, vigilance, and survival. Into scanning the world for threat.

The rattlesnake moment wasn’t just in the grass—it lives in me. Beautiful lessons about love, faith and becoming whole taught me that life is about more than just existing. For most of my life those lessons have been entangled with messages rooted in fear, pressure and shame. Obey or face consequences. Know your place, study and listen, help others willingly—or feel the weight of disapproval. Those words cause my body to go into survival mode—all I can feel is the buzz of danger beneath the surface of beauty.  Over and over, I was told that if I walk in faith, I’ll be protected—but I did not feel protected when the life that I knew fell off the cliff.

When my husband died while serving as a leader in our church, something in me shifted. His death occurred on a church outing which has made my relationship to church and to God complicated. He was serving as Bishop for our church congregation in Ohio. He met the Boy Scouts at Hocking Hills State Park because he believed in helping them learn to do hard things. He was the only one certified in rappelling safety. While setting up the ropes, he fell over the edge. No one saw what caused him to slip. The rope wasn’t tied correctly, so it didn’t catch him.

That loss—so personal, so devastating—opened my eyes in ways I hadn’t expected.

Growing up, I was taught to keep my eyes fixed on heaven’s rewards. Somewhere in that, I missed the memo about experiencing the divine here and now.

Before his death I did not realize how programmed I was to view the world through the lens of safety. Most of my prayers and even my day-to-day thoughts revolved around keeping myself and my family safe. Maybe that mindset elevated my life by pushing me to do and be better—but even that is a form of survival. 

After my husband’s death, I began to understand that while staying safe and surviving is pretty important, it’s not the same as truly living. I don’t want to miss the picturesque wildflowers or the soul stilling lake. We talk about being stuck in survival mode because we know deep down, we want more from life. When I began searching for what I truly wanted, I found that happiness, peace and joy come from connection—connecting to others, to myself, to the world around me. And true, deep connection does not happen when my focus is on staying safe. 

Recently I should have celebrated my thirty-fourth wedding anniversary—my eighth since Tim died. Life keeps moving forward without him, which feels both amazing and devastating. I almost forgot about the anniversary until a friend texted me that morning to send extra love. I’m not sure if forgetting is good or bad—maybe it’s just … a thing.

Part of the forgetting is weariness. I’m tired of anniversaries without him. Part of it is because life is still happening here—my youngest just started high school, and that’s been my focus. And part of it is acceptance. I’ve settled into life as a single mom. Most days I feel at peace.

Life is good. Life also stinks. I could name a hundred reasons for both. Maybe learning to live in that tension is the point of mortality—finding balance so my body isn’t always on alert, so I can enjoy what I have now.

Growing up, I was taught to keep my eyes fixed on heaven’s rewards. Somewhere in that, I missed the memo about experiencing the divine here and now. Learning to do that has changed everything. Losing Tim too soon taught me that God and Love are found right here, in the messy middle—not just in some future reward.

Today I came across one of Tim’s notes on a Bible verse in Luke, where Christ suffers in agony. He wrote: “At some point in our lives we will receive a glimpse into that suffering.” I’ve had my glimpse. And what I’ve learned is this: pain is not punishment. Pain is a sacred space. It’s often the very place where God’s love is found most deeply—if I can let go of fear and stay open to it.

Finding my way back to the sacredness of life is my healing journey. I’ve had to ask some big questions: 

How can I trust in a world that is so full of pain and suffering?

How can I find peace in spaces where my nervous system flares with warning?

How can I feel joy, or clarity in a world that mistakes control for holiness?

And so, I molt. Not to abandon what is sacred—but to shed what is not.

I shed the skin that told me to fear my own instincts if they differed from the current narrative. The skin that taught me to distrust my direct connection to the divine. The skin that contorted itself to survive inside systems not built for growth and flourishing—unless it was the kind of growth approved by those in power.

What I’ve found is that love and truth are still here—just not where I was looking. I’m not walking away from what I was taught. I’m walking away from the version of myself who thought she had to stay hidden to belong. I am shedding shame. Shedding obedience rooted in fear. Shedding spiritual smallness. Whether others accept me or not in my new skin is yet to be seen, but I know whatever is divine and good in this world already does.

And with each layer I release, I move toward something deeper: toward the Divine, as Love. Toward beauty, unguarded. Toward sacredness that does not rattle—but welcomes.

Like the snake, I move forward—quietly, deliberately.

Like the lizards, I receive the light when it finds me.

And like the earth itself, I remember:

it’s okay to be both soft and strong.

To be bold and tender.

To shed and still belong.

This is my molting.

It’s messy.

It’s holy.

And it’s mine.

The List

by Stephenie Glissmeyer

Contributors:

Jillian Scott

Jillian currently live in Kaysville, Utah. She is married and has three amazing children and loves being their mom. Jillian loves learning new things. She loves talking about deep and meaningful subjects with others, and learning things from their perspective. Jillian loves nature, and finds that there are so many valuable lessons to learn there and from all creation.

Shanna Davis

Midlife wanderer finding joy in looking back, living in the present, and dreaming forward. Proud mama of 3 amazing humans who inspire me even when they call me out (why did I teach them that?) Lucky friend of beautiful souls, convinced the Divine sent them to me. Woman who is getting to know a new version of herself or was it always there and it simply wasn’t time to discover?

Joleene Watabe

Joleene is known for her warmth, steadiness, and ability to hold space for difficult emotions. Her life has taught her the power of presence, empathy, and making space for both pain and hope. She values family, authenticity, and the quiet work of healing.

Stephenie Glissmeyer

Stephenie is a middle-aged woman with lots of dreams that are finally come to fruition, even though she wasn't expecting them to happen in a body this old. She's a nurse, a teacher, a wife, and mother of six kids ages 14 to 30. She loves her job, yoga, hiking, paddleboarding, reading, and writing on Substack

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The Long Game

by Susan Hinckley

Little Nancy Etticoat
In a white petticoat,
And a red nose;
The longer she stands
The shorter she grows.

My grandma died when I was 8,

and when they cleaned out her house I inherited a very old book of Mother Goose rhymes that my mother and her sisters had grown up with. It had wonderful illustrations for many verses, but there was no illustration of Little Nancy, who was a riddle as well as a rhyme. I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was talking about. Maybe I wasn’t that smart, but in my defense, candles were a familiar household staple when the nursery rhyme came to be, but mostly absent from my 1970s world. We didn’t use them at home or church.

I forgot this verse until I bought my first child her own Mother Goose book. It had this classic illustration, and I had a big moment of Duh.

As I heard Jim Finley describe it recently, “We’re all melting like candles.”

Yes we are, and at this phase of my life, I don’t know much but I’m beginning to know how Nancy felt—I’ve been standing quite a long time. I’ve never been tall, but now when I look in the mirror, my older face tells a hard truth: I’m short.

Most of the time I successfully ignore the facts, but as the years twirl by it’s getting harder. I’ve reached a stage where the body and the story can’t quite hold themselves together.

This may be why Presence has begun to beat an insistent drum. In the past decade, someone or something has been trying to get my attention, to convince me that no matter how hard I run, I can’t run away from what’s real, so I may as well stop trying. I’d approached life persuaded that there was always something better around the next corner, and my religion didn’t help; from church, the main idea I picked up was that the point of this life was actually to focus on the next.

The shorter I grow, the more I understand that The Here and Now has been the gift all along—a gift I’ve been trying to exchange for as long as I can remember.

A dear friend used to quip, “The older we get, the more like ourselves we become.” I was in my 20s when she started saying that, and it always made me laugh but inside I was thinking, “Oh no! Please tell me there’s a Me coming that’s better than this.” I didn’t know how to love or value myself—either it wasn’t in the nature, or it wasn’t in the nurture, and after a point it didn’t really matter which.

A big part of growing older has been coming to accept my humanness. It’s a lesson my body is getting obvious with—if younger me had been paying any real attention, I’d have noticed a suspicious amount of old people. That should have been a clue that there’s a human path, we’re all on it, and I would not turn out to be the lone exception.

But for most of my life, in my heart I believed my humanity was not the important part of it. “Human” might do for other people; I had a perfection mandate, a thing just out of reach that I assumed I must chase until I die.

Onward and upward, always always always. Anywhere but here.

Presence, letting myself BE right here in the right now—noticing it, allowing it, breathing it, steeping in it, letting it be what it is without needing to find any shiny parts to make it (or myself) more lovable, staying open to what it has to teach me—has come with some truly gut-wrenching lessons. I thought getting perfect was hard, but it turns out getting human is the real work.

Or as Carmen Acevedo Butcher says, “Being human is harder than being spiritual.”

Do Mormons want to do this particular hard work though? We’re a worker-bee church, anxiously engaged in doing all the things all the time, right? And it hasn’t ever felt easy to me, like I could just coast. I never felt like I was avoiding all the dirty work like growing or grubbing around with the messy people, getting covered in stains. But as I think about it, I must admit that might have been my goal with everything I was doing—scriptures, meetings, lessons, temple work, and keeping my kids in a straight line behind me—do this work to avoid having to do that. Of course perfection could never be here or now, and its hamster wheel only distracted me because I was running.

Getting knocked off the wheel felt confusing at first—I kept trying to climb back on because I thought it was the only way to get where I wanted to go. But about the same time I noticed myself thrown off the wheel and lying face down in life’s dirt, I noticed for the first time that the Jesus in the Bible had more to do with the mess of being a person than with the perfection of not being one. I realized that all the spirituality in the world wouldn’t teach me how to be like Jesus because doing the Jesus-work required me to get hands on with my own—and everyone else’s—humanity.

“God is about presence,” a Christian friend (with whom I sometimes disagree theologically) recently announced to me via Marco Polo on his morning commute. “When I was small, I thought God was about rules. And then, for most of my life, I thought about God as Law Giver and Provider … somewhere out there. Now I realize God is about presence, right now, whether you’re ready or not, and it’s probably best not to try to be ‘ready,’ for a bunch of reasons. Which is interesting, because if God is about presence, that actually comes back to how I thought about God when I was really little, up to about age 7. Then I didn’t question it, I just liked it. It’s so cool being human—you start to realize what human means, and it’s cosmic.”

I paused to look up cosmic: Limitless. Universal.

Yes.

He continued, “The real problem, ontologically, is that I’d rather go to McDonald’s, but I like to look in on the folks behind the counter at Wendy’s—they’re my pals. A few of them are going through really hard stuff. And already, from clear up the street here, I can see there may be a person sitting on the Wendy’s corner who needs to be fed.”

Spirituality + Jesus—humanness as somehow both cosmic and at Wendy’s—was the perfect New Year’s message. His ramble arrived as a small tap on the shoulder from the Universe, pulling my attention back to that place I mean to stay but can’t seem to stop wandering away from: Presence. When you meditate and you get distracted by thoughts, you redirect, bringing yourself back again and again to your practice—my life is one long distraction. I redirect.

Christianity has not rewarded a fully-embodied spirituality though. If a 7 year old can recognize God as presence—if we can know the Source in our bones—why do we need the church?

This means at least on some level, churches are probably invested in keeping us separated from the truth of our own bones and hearts and humanity. I get it—a middleman will naturally defend his position.

For me, reimagining my faith began with the full acceptance of my human experience. Jesus was, after all, a human—in addition to whatever else he is. For now, this life is the point at which his experience and mine intersect. But it’s not for his humanness that we are taught to worship him, it is for having transcended it.

No wonder I learned to show up at church with only the shiniest parts of myself showing. No wonder I was taught that the natural man was an enemy to God (and if the man was, I could only wonder how that god might feel about the even-more-earthy woman?) No wonder I internalized that progress must include casting aside my most human parts: my failings, wants, hungers, needs, and desires—the common thread by which I’m connected to all my human siblings.

All of which runs completely counter to Presence.

How could I love the thing I had not been taught to reverence? And why would I believe God loves me if I had not been taught to love myself?

Returning church members to ourselves—and to our lives—is the missionary work I want to do now.

I’ve been reading a book called Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year, by Christine Valters Paintner. She describes how people would come to the desert fathers and mothers—"elders who, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, went to the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to cultivate a life of radical simplicity and ongoing devotion to the presence of the divine in their lives”—and say, “Give me a word.”

“This tradition of asking for a word was a way of seeking something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. A ‘word’ was often a short phrase to nourish and challenge the receiver. A word was meant to be wrestled with and slowly grown into.”

The point the book makes is, you’re not supposed to choose your own word—the word is supposed to choose you. I’m not the kind of person who picks a word every year, but sometimes ideas have presented themselves to me that have felt important. And this kind of thing—right up at the edge of woo-woo—has kinda been my shtick for a long time. One thing any kid growing up in my house could count on is that at some point during the day, I was going to read her horoscope from the newspaper on the kitchen counter. If her friends came over, they were going to have to endure hearing theirs, too.

So while I’ve been wandering around waiting for a word to choose me the past few weeks (and I’m not yet sure it has, or will), I’ve been paying extra attention to random stuff. One of my own horoscopes this week said this:

“You’re playing a long game.”

As I picked up those words they settled into a familiar groove, like they’d only just now fallen out of my head after living there forever.

“It is said that all you are seeking is also seeking you. That is, if you lie still, sit still, it will find you. It has been waiting for you for a long time. Once it is here, don’t move away. Rest. See what happens next.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Whether or not this phrase has chosen me remains to be seen, but it means something to me right now and I will continue to sit with it and see what happens next.

Though it exists in moments, presence is actually the long game, the thing that never ends. Paradoxically, my human life and this body with which I have grown so familiar are not permanent. I’m a very short woman to be trying to learn to play such a game—at 62 my white petticoat has grown longer than what’s left of me. But the tension between these two ideas—never ending presence within a life that will—has just the right feel. I take hold of them together; I will try not to move away.

Richard Rohr writes, “There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand.”

Just one? Sometimes that feels like a description of life, and some patches can be pretty rough. But isn’t this place he’s describing—where we encounter what’s real, then choose to sit there with it—the place we find the potential for growth? Doesn’t what feels like we might not survive it also bring us one step closer to our true selves, and therefore to God?

Richard Rohr reminds me, “I can live and work with all of it, because apparently God can. Everything belongs.”

Come to think of it, “everything belongs” is a phrase that chose me several years ago. Those words came into my life and changed the way I thought about so much—about church and Jesus and faith and every spiritual thing I was struggling with at the time, but more importantly about myself. Somehow that phrase “showed me to my seat” in my own life, introducing me to the practice of sitting with my humanness, allowing myself to just be—and be enough—in every moment and circumstance.

Author Maeve Binchy said, “I’m getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years’ time.”

Me too, and I’m not talking about some kind of eternal progression toward my own perfection. I mean I love myself and my life right now in ways I never knew how to before.

Thank goodness it’s a long game—I’m only now beginning to practice it.

Susan Hinckley

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When I Began to Know Mary

by Francesca Georgi

At Christmastime, we often focus primarily on the story in Luke 2,

the birth of Christ. It’s a wonderful story, and its familiarity is comforting. I love the yearly reminder of the story of the beginning of redemption. Its words are peaceful and passive, like watching beautiful scenery. But this year as Christmas has come closer, I’ve been unable to stop thinking of Mary. We know so much about her compared to many women in the Bible, and yet I feel like I know almost nothing. We often see her portrayal as a beautiful dark-haired young woman, very humble and willing to serve the Lord. We think of her as a vessel to bring the Son of God, and we predominantly focus on the story of how things happened, rather than the people who lived the story.

My last pregnancy was an incredibly difficult one, and I was so sick around Christmas last year. I was a little under the halfway point of my due date, and I just felt like I couldn’t do this. There were too many balls in the air, and something had to drop, but there were no plastic balls, only glass. There was no option but to go on. I was trying to settle in after our move, continue being a mom and wife, make Christmas happen, attempt to have a healthy pregnancy, and work for a good school semester in an area where I felt very out of place. Many times as I was lying on the couch, too sick to make it to bed, I found myself thinking, “Is this how Mary’s pregnancy felt?” I found myself praying, hoping that would somehow affect the past, that her pregnancy had not been this way. I thought of her so frequently that I began to imagine her spirit being alongside me when my pain became too intense to bear alone with no way to share the pain with someone else. I began to feel for Mary in a way that I never had before, as I suffered in a way that I never had before. The Christmas story became far more personal. I imagined myself in the situation as Mary, and I began to realize there was so much complexity beyond a few verses in scripture.

I realized Mary prepared somewhat to feel as the Savior did in the Atonement; by her long journey to Bethlehem, not being welcomed or helped by anyone, a long labor without the benefit of pain relief, a life changing event in a lowly place, the postpartum bleeding rendering her unclean according to Jewish law, the inability to really rest after her ordeal, the cluster feeding and needing to keep giving of herself after she’d given everything she could. She was ordained to be the Mother of the Beloved Son, but to prepare Him for what He needed to do in his mortal life, she needed to have an idea of what He would feel. She could never experience His pain the same way He did, but she could develop empathy alongside the fear that comes with being a mother. She had to learn to experience these emotions, so that she could understand how to let Jesus continue His tasks, instead of following a motherly instinct to protect Him.

She had to teach her child to want to save everyone, as God is no respecter of persons. He needed to understand the importance of literally every individual. Maybe part of the reason Christ reached out to those on the perimeter was because his own mother, the Mother of God, was an unwed mother. We talk so much about her faith, but we don’t mention her hardships beyond the actual birth. People tend to reach out to those who are different from them, or different from what society deems acceptable, when they’ve experienced some of the grief and ache that comes from ridicule and exclusion. Maybe the reason He went to be with people termed sinners was not just because of His mission, but also a learned empathy as the son of an unwed mother. He felt as many of those on the fringe felt because He was one of them. Similarly, we find the people with the greatest humility are the highest of the high and the lowest of the low. Somehow, He managed to fit both categories. We know He loved Mary so much, and as much as He would have struggled with how society treated Him knowing He was conceived outside of marriage, I believe part of it was that He didn’t want anyone to suffer as His mother did. He is the Beloved Son. She was His beloved mother. The gospel is a very personal experience turned into outward expression.

The entire story is about love, and looking beyond those that are easy for us to love.

Near the end of His mortal life, Jesus went to Mary where she was serving a wedding banquet. When there was no wine left, Jesus spoke with Mary. According to the JST version of John 2:4, Jesus said, “Woman, what wilt thou have me to do for thee? That will I do; for mine hour is not yet come.” When I think of that interaction in our modern day speech, I imagine that would have sounded something like Mary insisting He didn’t need to do anything, that she would figure it out or accept the embarrassment that would come with not having enough wine. I imagine Jesus would have pulled His mom aside and said, “Mom, you know I love you. I want to help you. I know you’re worried that I have things to do, but I wouldn’t offer to help right now if I couldn’t. Let me help you while I’m here with you.” The following verse, John 2:5, says, “His mother saith unto the servants, whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” She accepted His help with incredible faith. She didn’t need to ask how this was going to work, she didn’t need Him to explain every step of the process, and she didn’t continue to shun help. She accepted His offering for peace. The Prince of Peace was sent for just that, to bring us peace. There is no matter too small for Him, just as there is no matter too great for Him. When He says His love is sufficient, it’s because it is designed to fit us perfectly, individually. Following this interaction in Cana of Galilee, Christ and His disciples went to Capernaum. Mary went with Him. I don’t really understand the significance of why it was recorded that she went with Him. There are so many reasons that could be. What I do know is that the feeling of peace it brings me to know that His mother was near in the final part of His mortal life, is palpable. The love she had for her Son probably helped the Messiah in His transformation to the Christ.

After Jesus died on the cross, we came full circle. His body was wrapped in linen, similar to His swaddling clothes. His body was anointed with spices, similar to the gifts of the Wise Men. Mary was still alone, still going through immense pain, still possibly questioning her role and her worthiness. Both times, Jesus lived. Both times, love was abundant and unceasing. Both times, the Savior was glorious. Mary was given her Son. He was her Prince of Peace, and He was called Wonderful.

We often think and talk about Christ as a step above us all, and rightfully so. But the story of Mary gives me hope. If Jesus could love and adore someone who experienced normal mortality, including mistakes, fear, sin, and sorrow, then He might love and adore me just as I love and adore Him. As our Counsellor and our Advocate with the Father, Christ is definitely on a pedestal higher than we are. But there was a reason He was born in a stable and died on a cross. His humility makes Him accessible to us, although sometimes it’s hard to imagine because of His perfection. The story and concept of Mary helped make the Savior more accessible to me, because I could find a new angle from which to learn. As Mary loved Jesus in a more personal way than only as her Savior, we are invited to love Him so personally. He genuinely wants us to come to Him, He wants to be our Savior and Redeemer; but He also wants us to have the type of relationship He did with Mary. More than just knowing our name and us knowing His, He wants our stories to mesh and become more beautiful as they entwine. He doesn’t want us on the perimeter alone, He’s already sitting with us if only we will see it. He was born on that lonely night so we never have to be lonely. He has offered His help, just as He did with Mary and the wine. He’s telling us that of course He has time for us. He’s asking us to go with Him, as Mary went to Capernaum. He walked a lonely path so that we will never have to, and it all started with a sweet baby and a lonely, tired mother.

The entire story is about love, and looking beyond those that are easy for us to love. We need to look to the perimeters and the lonely outskirts for those that feel they don’t belong. Maybe sometimes even we as individuals don’t think they belong. But I remind myself, and all of you, that the Savior was one of those who we as a society wouldn’t have thought belonged. We never know the influence of those we would dismiss. I’m so grateful for Mary showing me a new way to see this story, and reminding me that my capacity for love is unlimited, and it’s my divine instruction to love everyone, just as I strive to love Christ.

This Christmas, as we remember Christ, I invite you to think of the love He has for you individually, even knowing about the things you think would move you to the perimeter. He loves you anyway. What better way to celebrate the birth of our Savior than spreading love with no respect of persons.

Onward

by Lisa Fluckiger

When God Delights in the Chastity of Women

by Jessie Santa Maria Whittaker

I read Jacob chapter 2 in preparation for the lessons on

plural marriage. And I think it might be one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture. It’s raw and emotional and deeply human. Jacob doesn’t want to give this sermon. In fact, he says it “grieveth” him to speak so boldly. But he does it anyway because love sometimes means saying hard things.

The chapter begins with Jacob calling out pride. Which includes the Nephites’ obsession with wealth, appearance, and hierarchy. They had started to believe that prosperity made them righteous. That being better off made them better than. Jacob warns them that this mindset is corroding their souls.

When I was a kid, my family used to read passages like this during scripture study. And the focus always landed elsewhere. Pride got redefined as anything that drew attention: piercings, “worldly” hairstyles, bright clothing, or self-expression of any kind. I learned that humility meant blending in: being small, modest, deferential. That faithfulness equaled disappearing.

And maybe because of that, I also internalized something deeper and more dangerous. It was my job to prevent harm from happening to me. If a man looked at me wrong or crossed a line then I had failed at being modest enough, humble enough, safe enough…

The responsibility for other people’s choices, and for my own protection, landed squarely on my shoulders.

Reading Jacob 2 as a teenager only confirmed what I’d already absorbed. “For I, the Lord, delight in the chastity of women,” meant that God’s love depended on my ability to keep others pure. That holiness was a fragile thing. It was easily lost and it was my duty to guard it at all costs.

Reading this chapter now, as an adult and as a social worker, I see something entirely different.

Jacob isn’t chastising women; he’s defending them. He’s speaking to men who have justified exploitation and harm under the guise of divine approval. He calls them to accountability for “breaking the hearts of tender wives” and “losing the confidence of their children.” He’s naming not just individual sin, but systemic harm, the misuse of spiritual power that leaves women and children in emotional ruins.

This is the part of scripture that resonates most with my values as a social worker. Our code of ethics begins with the belief in the inherent dignity and worth of every person. It calls us to challenge injustice, to protect the vulnerable, and to hold power accountable. Jacob is doing that. And he does it courageously. He’s centering the voices of the wounded and insisting that their suffering matters.

So when I read that God “delights in the chastity of women,” I don’t hear a demand for purity. I hear a declaration of dignity. I hear a God—both Father and Mother—saying, “I delight in your wholeness. I delight when you are safe, when your body and spirit are honored, when your relationships are mutual and kind.”

That interpretation feels even more powerful in contrast to the Come, Follow Me reading of Doctrine and Covenants 132, a section that has long been painful for me and countless others. It’s the one used to justify polygamy as “God’s higher law.” [Insert barfing emoji here]…

Chastity, in its truest form, isn’t about repression at all. It’s about reverence.

But I can’t see it that way. I don’t believe a higher law could ever justify a practice that causes so much suffering, silences women, and fractures families. Jacob 2 feels like a direct rebuttal to that idea. A reminder that when religion excuses harm, it ceases to reflect the divine.

If there is a higher law, I believe it is love expressed through justice.

If there is a divine pattern, I believe it is equality, compassion, and mutual respect.

And if there is a God who delights, I believe They delight in the healing of what patriarchy has broken.

As I read Jacob’s words, I can’t help but see him as an early advocate for trauma-informed ministry. He is someone who understands the ripple effects of betrayal and exploitation. He doesn’t shame the wounded. He mourns with them. He names the grief and calls the community to repair.

And as someone who has struggled with sex for a variety of reasons (be it shame, condition, pain, fear, etc.) I find something deeply liberating in reimagining chastity as sexual integrity.

For so long, I believed that taking control of my own sexual experiences was a sin. That pleasure, agency, and exploration somehow contradicted holiness. But now I wonder if the opposite might be true.

Maybe the Law of Chastity is more about self-mastery. It’s about respect for one’s own body and others’ bodies. About knowing your body, your boundaries, your desires. About saying yes and no from a place of awareness rather than fear. About embracing the divine drive to create, connect, and experience joy. About integrating sexuality into one’s overall being in a healthy and moral way.

Chastity, in its truest form, isn’t about repression at all. It’s about reverence. For yourself. For your partner. For the life force within you. It’s about being the ultimate authority on what feels safe, sacred, and right for you.

I think this is what it means for God to delight in chastity. Not delighting in our restraint, but in our integrity. In our wholeness. In our courage to reclaim what has been taken, distorted, and hidden in shame.

The more I study Jacob 2, the more I see that the heart of the message isn’t about restriction. It’s about repair and remembering that holiness and humanity were never meant to be opposites. They were meant to hold hands.

God delights in dignity.

God delights in truth spoken in love.

God delights when we choose integrity over image, compassion over compliance, and healing over hierarchy.

That’s how I want to obey the Law of Chastity. Living in the right relationship with myself, with others, and with the Divine.

Come to Me

by Eliza Dosch

Contributors:

Francesca Georgi

Francesca is a wife and a mom of three daughters. She lives in Utah County and will receive a bachelors degree in Spring 2026. Francesca is also the author of Unlocked from The Exponent II winter edition of 2025.

Lisa Fluckiger

Lisa is a second year grad student in Chadron State College’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling MAE program. Her most recent work has been providing SEL education and support for middle school students. Long ago at BYU, Lisa earned a BA degree in chemistry and then a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, with an emphasis in the inclusive classroom. Her family owns a small artisan bakery in the small town where they live, and it is a place where her daughter, Eleanor, can have meaningful work and continue to participate in the community. Totally her husband’s dream, and she is all for it! In addition to studying mental health, Lisa is loving life beyond church, running with her dogs, yoga, and writing. Also Netflix.

Jessie Santa Maria Whittaker

Therapist, writer, professional meaning-maker, wife, and momma. Jessie sits with big feelings, sacred questions, and nervous systems that have had a rough day—or life. She is a lover of Christmas magic, messy faith, honest stories, and the brave work of becoming fully human.

Eliza Dosch

Eliza is a non traditional student finishing a bachelors degree in Music Education. She is a single mom of 2, and has been navigating her faith journey for about 5 years.

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Finding God

by Blakelee Ellis

It feels like from my very beginning,

I was camping, hiking, fishing, star gazing and singing around the campfire. Both of my parents spent so much of their own formative years doing those same things so when it came to raising my siblings and I they decided to pass on their love of the outdoors.

It was always very clear to me that nature is where my dad best connected with deity. The stress of his daily life, including his career as an emergency medicine physician, wore him thin. But no matter how busy he was, he took us camping almost every weekend in the summer. There I could see the stress melt away from him. He relaxed. He laughed and he was contemplative as he reset his heart and mind. He always expressed gratitude and awe at the natural beauty that God had created. To this day I can still recall EXACTLY what his voice sounds like when he looks around and says, “It’s beauuuutiful.” He never questioned that something greater than himself had crafted this beautiful world.

I have always connected with God through nature and leaving my everyday life behind, but it took on a new meaning and a new reverence in the past few years. When I suddenly couldn’t find God at church, at the temple, or even my own home, I felt completely lost. I didn’t know where I could connect with the spirit at all anymore. I felt totally alone.

I wish I could say I remembered my pull to nature and went looking for God there of my own volition, but I’m not nearly that clever. When I could no longer find God, God reached out to me through nature. I was smack dab in the middle of my faith deconstruction. I was broken, alone, constantly heartsick and spiritually adrift. After church one Sunday, my sister-in-law suggested that we should take our families on a short hike to see a waterfall. It wasn’t a “normal” Sunday activity that we engaged in, but we decided to give it a try. We made it to the waterfall and let the kids splash around in the water. I was so devastated by my lack of connection with God during church that day. I was desperate for any feeling of God in my life. I planted myself at the base of the waterfall, closed my eyes, breathed deep and reached out my entire being to God. And out there, without expecting it, I collided with God more forcefully than I had in months of longing. I didn’t hear a voice or have any words come to mind. I just felt a breeze, heard the rushing water and felt seen and heard and known. I had experienced God simply by being, by breathing and by yearning. By turning in on myself and crying out with my soul. It was a type of prayer I had never tried before. Less formality, fewer words, much more contemplative, much more visceral. I felt like I had been thrown a lifeline. That afternoon I decided that I would develop a new ritual to try to find God.

In comparison to the complex worship rituals I had experienced up until then, especially in the temple, my new ritual was extremely simple. Many people would just call it “meditating.” While that may be true, for me it was more significant. This was one of the first times I truly took ownership of my spirituality. Church was no longer working for me. I longed to make something work and I got to decide what that was. For someone who has had a lifelong struggle with self-confidence this was a huge area of growth for me. It was the beginning of a new me. Every evening I would take my dog on a walk and stop at the field attached to an elementary school. I would unleash my dog to run free and intentionally start my practice. I didn’t have much to offer God. I didn’t know anything anymore. But God says all we need is a broken heart.

3 Nephi 9:20

And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart … , him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost

On those nights I would close my eyes, tip my head to the sky, breath deep and imagine my physical heart opening wide. As my heart cracked open so too would my entire self. I would lay myself bare to the universe in hopes that God would see me open wide and decide to step in.

It’s February 26, 2024 at 9:23 AM. I don’t remember all the details of the day, but some situation left me feeling desperate. I only have the specific date and time because of my handy phone. I wish I could remember what set me off, but for the life of me, I have no recollection of the specific circumstances. I only know that in my desperation I stomped out of my house, turned north and walked until I was at the top of a nearby hill. It was maybe 200 yards from my house and “hill” is a generous term. It was a slight incline. But it gave me the space to breath and calm. I rage dictated into my phone everything that I was feeling and this is what came out:

My family and I were on vacation in St. George, Utah. We had heard that the shores of the Virgin River were a fun place to take the kids. In the heat of the summer the shallow waters get as warm as a bathtub and kids are free to skip rocks, make sand castles and bask in the warm water. Again, I was feeling so disconnected from the God I once knew. The one I found at church and with my community didn’t exist anymore. I was still in the deep trudge of unlearning and relearning everything about my spirituality. In his book, The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr calls it our “inner journey.”

Once the real inner journey begins—once you come to know that in Christ, God is forever overcoming the gap between human and divine—the Christian path becomes less about climbing and performance, and more about descending, letting go, and unlearning. Knowing and loving Jesus is largely about becoming fully human, wounds and all, instead of ascending spiritually or thinking we can remain unwounded. (The ego does not like this fundamental switch at all, so we keep returning to some kind of performance principle, trying to climb out of this messy incarnation instead of learning from it.)

I was having a difficult time wanting to take my kids to church at all and longed for something different. I was so pleased when my husband suggested a Sunday afternoon river visit. I sat in the sand and watched my kids play. I marveled at the tall reeds, the warm water and the sun warming my skin. I felt such joy and wholeness in that moment. My kids were joyful and so was I. I paused and thought, “God, are you here? You are more present in the river and reeds than you have been in a church building in years. I’m so grateful to encounter you today. Thank you for making your presence known.” After a few hours we jumped back in the car to head home. Before we could even pull away I turned and I said to my kids, “I felt God today. I felt God out there in the water and the wind and the sun. I’m so happy I found God today with you.”

Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”

—Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ

This definition of contemplation teaches us that location is not a determining factor for finding God. In fact, the scriptures are full of stories illustrating that God will meet us where we are, as we are. Haggar is cast out into the barren wilderness. She cries out to God and receives a blessing that lasts for generations. Jacob wrestles with an angel on a river bank. God appears to Moses through a burning bush. After much fear and exhaustion, Elijah flees into the wilderness where he finally stills and hears God. Deborah, a prophetess and judge of Israel, lives under a tree and receives God’s blessing to help destroy the Canaanites. Ruth believes God called her to follow her mother in law into her home land. Priscilla constantly travels through her ministry. Jesus himself fasts and prays in the wilderness for 40 days.

In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus did not wait for her to come to Him. He went out of his way to meet her where she was. She was shunned and broken. She was desperate enough to break all societal conventions and journey to the well midday. Jesus showed up for her in a desert place where society and religion had left her parched. Jesus not only met her there, but changed her life.

19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This woman is lamenting the fact that she cannot worship God in the place she has been told is THE ONLY PLACE to worship. She is literally banned from the temple. She believes she has been exiled from God. But Jesus gives her hope. Jesus basically introduced her to an entirely new way of thinking. It isn’t about location at all. It’s about spirit and truth. It’s about coming to understand that every encounter in our lives can be an encounter with the divine. Because we can take spirit and truth with us WHEREVER we go.

In his podcast episode, Jesus H. Christ: Part 4 - The Whole Thing Is A Temple, Rob Bell says:

This is a new understanding in human history about what it means to be human because what this story keeps insisting is that a human is where the divine dwells… Now his first followers took this and went with it because…in the letter to the Corinthians, Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in your midst? [Jesus] comes to show you that the whole thing is a temple, that you are a temple.

The more I learned about grace, about my true divinity as human, the more I understood that we are all divine. I mean, I had always heard that, but I began to internalize it on a different level. I began to REALLY understand that. We are all divine. The rubber really met the road and I put that into action. I surmised that if I really am divine, if I really have God within me, then I encounter God by being my highest self. By putting aside my ego, my pain, my selfishness and looking for God within myself. To quote Richard Rohr AGAIN (sorry, y’all. He is just the best):

You see, we do not earn or find God. We just get ourselves in the way. We let go of illusion and the preoccupations of the false self. As the cheap scaffolding falls away, the soul stands revealed. The soul, or true self, cannot be created or worked for. It is awakened. It is, and it is already. The soul is God’s ‘I AM’ continued in me. That part of me already knows, desires, and truly seeks God. Here ‘I’ and God seem to be one ‘I.’

Maybe nature really just gives me the opportunity to get out of my own way. To connect with the divine that is inside me. It gives space, time and quiet for the spirit in me to connect with the spirit everywhere. If God is within me then a major part of encountering God is becoming my highest self. Nature facilitates that for me. So the question isn’t, “WHERE do I find God,” or “HOW do I find God,” but “Where do I find ME? How do I find ME? Where and how am I most connected with myself?”

At the beginning of October my dad and I decided to summit the Pfeifferhorn, a peak near the Salt Lake Valley. The peak stands at an elevation of 11,326 ft. For context, the Salt Lake Valley has an average elevation of 4,327 feet. We would nearly triple our elevation in this climb. Our schedules only allowed us to summit on a Sunday. So instead of going to church with my family, I went on the 12 mile summit climb with my dad.

I was physically exhausted at the end of the day, but my heart was full. Even though I had left my family for the day, I had done something that brings me true joy as a form of worship. My worship was savoring this beautiful world that God created, being centered in my body, pushing myself to my physical limit and silencing my mind enough to let my spirit reach out to the God within me and the presence all around me. I stood in awe of the world around me. And I experienced all of this with someone who has shaped my life and spirituality, someone I love so deeply.

In this moment I felt gratitude, I felt connection. I felt God.

As I hiked I listened to another episode of The Rob Cast, and almost on cue, almost as if God orchestrated it to be so, Rob says:

…This life that you and I have in this house, it flows from something, it flows from somewhere, it flows from someone.

It is a gift that we receive. When you took your first breath, that is a gift. The breath you just took, a gift.

You are the recipient of this extraordinary gift of life itself. The universe has been generous with you. Before anything else can be said about any one of us, we are the recipients of an overabundant, overflowing act of generosity, which I think is all of the people I have interacted with over the years who have gone through tremendous trauma, tragedy, suffering.

It’s like you have to, you absorb that, you feel it, you grieve, you weep, you are angry, you shake your fists at the heavens. You give it all its proper expression, because you are human and you need to, otherwise it is stuffed down in there. But what I have observed is how many people at some point, after working through all of the very real human emotions of difficulty, suffering, it’s so interesting to me how many times people will tell some version of the story in which, and then one day they got up and thought, but I am here, I survived, I am still breathing.

It’s like the gift keeps giving. So in spite of all the ways that the world feels unfair, all of the betrayal, loss, injustice, every reason any one of us have to say, come on, house, goodness, seriously, there is this truth that is the truth that undergirds everything else. The first word about any of us is not everything that’s gone wrong.

The first word about any of us is that before anything, we received this extraordinary, generous gift of life itself…In some ways, …you begin the prayer by acknowledging source.”

I’m here. This is before anything else a gift. And I begin by returning to that primal, original impulse of gratitude for the gift.

The RobCast, Ep. 210, Jesus H. Christ: Part 2 - 66 Words

Blakelee Ellis

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Behold Thy Mother: The Sacred Pattern of Women Who Create

by Sheryl Rose

This week I’ve been sitting with the weight of lived experiences,

theology, and even the paradoxes of agency and sacrifice. I’ve been thinking of a dear friend who confided in me the pain that she experiences when thinking about her patriarchal blessing. Her blessing promised her a joyful and happy marriage, yet in reality it has been one of the most sorrowful parts of her life. Still, she has chosen to stay because she knows it’s the right thing for her children. In many ways, she has chosen her family over her own ease or comfort. She described a moment to me in which she felt she had to choose either promised personal blessings or the happiness of her children. To grab hold of one felt like letting go of the other. She ultimately chose her family and ripped to shreds that sacred personal document.

As I’ve sat with that tension this week, I’ve been thinking about Eve and Mary, two women who mark the great thresholds of the human story. They stand at opposite ends of scripture, but mirror each other in courage, wisdom, and surrender. Both chose to bear the weight of love, knowing it would break their hearts wide open.

For women, especially in our faith tradition, the language of sacrifice can sometimes feel heavy. Many of us already feel the relentless pull to give and then give some more. I don’t share these thoughts to add to that impulse or to say that pain itself is holy. Instead, I want to name the holiness already present in the sacrifices women make—not because they are mothers, but because they embody the divine capacity for empathy, intercession, and creative love.

The commandment was given to Adam not to partake of the tree of Knowledge. Only after this did God create Eve as his help meet (Ezer Kenegdo). Eve’s choice to partake of the fruit was not a fall from grace, but a step toward growth. Her decision introduced mortality, knowledge, and the possibility of agency, all essential conditions to experience joy. The Hebrew word used to describe her role, ezer kenegdo, means “helper,” but not in the passive sense we sometimes assume. It means rescuer, protector, even savior. Eve saw beyond immediate obedience to the deeper work of God’s plan. She chose separation from paradise, willingly embracing suffering, so that humanity could experience life, learning, and love. Her act was the first great act of redemptive courage and was a deliberate descent for the sake of creation.

Adam’s role was to obey the command that was given. Eve’s role was to see that obedience alone was not enough, as it’s often not when we’re faced with an impossible choice. Somebody must embrace the cost. My friend is in good company as women throughout history have often carried out this same pattern: taking on suffering, limitation, or isolation so that others might have life and possibility.

Eve and Mary teach us that divine womanhood is not defined by roles, but by participation in love’s redemptive and creative work.

Centuries later, Mary stands at the other end of that story, also facing an impossible choice. When the angel announces the overshadowing of the Spirit, she replies, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” Like Eve, she consents to bear both life and suffering. Her “yes” opens the way for grace to enter mortality. Simeon’s prophecy pierces her heart: “yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” And it does. She watches her Son suffer and can do nothing but remain present, faithful, and compassionate.

When Christ, her fruit, hangs upon the cross, His words to the beloved disciple, “Behold thy mother,” ripple outward through time. They are not only an act of care for Mary; they are a revelation. Christ invites all of humanity to behold the archetype of divine compassion: to see in Mary the reflection of God’s mother-heart, the same nurturing spirit that hovered over the waters in Genesis. It is a call to every soul, male and female alike, to awaken to divine empathy, to participate in the redemptive love that binds heaven and earth.

In this light, Eve and Mary become mirrors of the same mystery. Through Eve, humanity descends into mortality; through Mary, divinity descends into mortality. Through Eve, we are born into the world of experience; through Mary, God is born into the world of humanity. Each chose to bear the cost of creation, knowing it leads through sorrow and the valley of the shadow of death towards the greater joy of reunion.

My friend’s decision to remain in her marriage, despite the ache of it, echoes this ancient pattern. She has chosen to stand within her own Gethsemane, allowing love to lead her rather than comfort. Her blessing is not nullified by her pain—it is being fulfilled in deeper, unseen ways. The joy she was promised may not come through her marriage alone, but through her children, her steadfastness, and the compassion being refined in her soul.

Eve and Mary teach us that divine womanhood is not defined by roles, but by participation in love’s redemptive and creative work. Through Eve’s fruit, we were born into knowledge and choice. Through Mary’s Fruit, we are reborn into grace and compassion. Through Eve’s sacrifice, we were born into mortality. And through Mary’s sacrifice we are reborn into immortality. Our mother Eve descended below all things to give us mortal life and the mother Mary, through her son Jesus Christ, descended below all to conquer death.

The patterns they set teach us that every act of empathy, every choice to remain faithful in the face of suffering, every willingness to see and to stay are all echoes of that same divine pattern. And through all who embody divine empathy, who choose love, who hold space for suffering, who bring life to others in countless forms, God’s creative work continues.

Too UN-Acquainted

by Brooke RaNae Palmer

A New Take on Martha and Mary

by Maria

Every churchgoing woman has some opinion about this story.

It’s one of very few scriptural stories that has two women interacting, although in this case they actually interact with Jesus as an intermediary. You have Mary, who is cast as the “wiser” sister in this story, and Martha, the grumpy overworked sister. I’ve heard countless times some version of how we all need to be like Mary, and while I agree on some level, it often doesn’t feel so good. So I was both interested and wary today when Pastor Jamie at First Presbyterian announced that the sermon topic would be Mary and Martha.

Martha represents the everywoman to me, the women in the background, the women that everyone takes for granted, the women that make everything happen. But no one ever seems to notice, appreciate, or offer to take on some of the tremendous mental and physical load she does to make everything happen in a way that looks so effortless and magical. Dinner is just always on the table. The laundry is just always done. School lunch is just always packed. The carpool is just always there on time. A meal for Jesus and His followers just always appears on the table at the right time.

Pastor Jamie pointed out that the house in the story is Martha’s house (Luke 10:38). It would not be called Martha’s house if she had a father, husband, or son. The odds are good that Martha was a widow, about the only way for a woman to have her own possessions in ancient Israel.

Pastor Jamie did a little breakdown of the language used in Luke 10:40-41. In verse 39, we learn that Martha had a sister named Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet, just like his male disciples. This was a man’s role, to be a disciple and sit at the feet of the rabbi. Not a woman’s. So Martha is a widow, taking on all the masculine tasks that her husband should have been doing and fighting tooth and nail to do it as a woman, but also still expected to do everything to run the household that a woman is normally expected to do. So here is Mary, getting to do the part of a man’s role that might actually feel good and fulfilling, and Martha, stuck doing all the less-fun aspects. Under those circumstances, I think it only makes sense that Martha is described this way:

“Martha was distracted by the many preparations that she was making.”

Pastor Jamie pointed out that the Greek work used for “distracted” here in the most original manuscripts we have is “periespato,” which translates to “deeply anxious, frazzled, or literally ‘to be ragged around.’”

Interestingly, the word that is used for the preparations that Martha was making is “Diakanos,” which translates directly to “deacon,” a church title.

Then, after Martha makes her plea to Jesus for some help, Jesus replies “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and trouble yourself about many things.”

Here, the Greek for “anxious” is “consumed, overwhelmed, or overtaken with anxiety.” And the word for “troubled” translates best to “disturbed, angry, or to cause an uproar or riot.”

Martha is pissed. Martha is tired. Martha feels used and unseen. Martha’s mental and emotional load has just hit its limit. She sees her sister sitting with Jesus like a male disciple might. She feels the incredible injustice of it all. She gets so emotionally overwhelmed that she acts out, not simply turning to her sister to ask for help, but looking to the most powerful person in the room to demand help.

Is it possible for Martha to break free from those chains like Mary did? Well, yes. But it is a huge and tremendous work for a woman who is used to being the underpinnings of so many other people’s lives.

Pastor Jamie this morning said that Jesus could see that Martha had lost the plot. She had gotten so buried in the mess of everything about her that she’s gotten stuck in the chains of a stressful life. Mary has found a way to get free of the chain, and Jesus is defending her right to be free of those chains. He wants Martha to be free of them as well.

What Pastor Jamie did not say, but what was firmly in my face, is that Martha was a victim of a patriarchal system that kept her in chains. Is it possible for Martha to break free from those chains like Mary did? Well, yes. But it is a huge and tremendous work for a woman who is used to being the underpinnings of so many other people’s lives. Including, I might add, that of Jesus, who was able to live as an itinerant preacher in large part because of the lives of people like Martha.

Martha also represents a very common archetype of the crazy, emotional woman who just lost it on everyone when everything was going just fine. This is also a common response to women who break under the pressures of a patriarchal system, and the victim blaming that keeps them down, and keeps other women from trying to speak up, lest they become an object lesson like that poor, crazy woman who just lost it over there.

The story in Luke ends with Jesus’ statement that “Mary has chosen the good part, and it will not be taken from her.” We don’t know what happened next. Did Jesus invite all his male followers to come take a little piece of Martha’s load so that the work was spread more equitably, and everyone could still have time to listen to Jesus’ teaching? Did Martha have a moment of transformation and decide that she was also going to sit and listen to Jesus, and everyone could eat half-cooked bread from a dusty table? Did Jesus himself stand to work alongside Martha? I have no idea. I hope at least one of those things happened. I wonder if the very first record of the Book of Luke might have had a more conclusive ending to this story. The earliest fragments we have of Luke date to the late 2^nd or early 3^rd century, and none of the earliest fragments match each other. So there were already variabilities added in by then. I’d love to know how this story was told orally before it was written down. What other details are we missing out on? Did Martha successfully transform her life? Was she able to achieve some sort of balance with Mary, without pulling Mary back into patriarchal expectations? I’ll never know in this life, but that’s what I want to envision for Martha.

In fact, here’s a fun way to close. Did you know that Martha acquired a rather incredible post-resurrection lore? In Medieval times, people believed that Martha traveled to France, and “encountered a dragon on a nearby beach. She faced a gruesome sight: a dragon that was described as a giant half-beast, half-fish with long, sharp teeth. When Martha happened upon the scene, the frightening monster was eating a man. Martha was undaunted. She sprinkled holy water upon the beast, confronted the demonic creature with the cross, and calmly tied it up. Martha performed additional miracles, interspersed with a preaching agenda similar to Mary Magdalene’s.” (Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood).

In this passage, I see a woman who has successfully thrown off the chains of patriarchy, and has released herself from the crab bucket. Martha, whoever you were in real life, I honor you for your strength and perseverance. I honor you for playing a difficult role in a world that wasn’t designed for you, and for asking for what you needed when you were overwhelmed.

The sermon on Mary and Martha from First Presbyterian

Additional reading sources:

On trivializing the “unnecessary” labor that women do: Just Do Less

On how women can appear to go crazy or lose it emotionally when no one expected it, and why it should have been expected: The Day I Went Crazy

Can I be the box?

by Amy

From a listener:

There are so many thoughts swimming in my head that I don’t even know where to begin. There’s this part of me that wishes to be held in your arms, embraced by two individuals who have so much love and compassion to give. I feel as though it would be extremely healing.

My name is Jessie Santa Maria Whittaker and I want to share my story with you. Like so many women, I was taught, or made to believe, that I wasn’t worth hearing. That my story wasn’t worth telling. Still, to this day, I am fearful of what other people will think if I speak up. I’m tired, and I feel alone, and I think that might be why I’m inclined to share because I don’t want to be tired or alone anymore.

Here are the most important things to know about me: I am 31 years old. I am working on my second grad degree, an MSW. I am half-Mexican. I grew up in a Mormon household, the oldest of eight children. I am pansexual, and lean towards being gender fluid, but I’m married to a cisgender heterosexual male. I have struggled with infertility and miscarriages, have no children of my own, but have been a guardian to my youngest sister for the last three years, and now find myself 19 weeks pregnant with a boy. I teach percussion. I love Bigfoot. My faith crisis really started last fall when for the first time ever I didn’t receive an answer to prayer/fasting weekend; not only was there no answer, I didn’t feel anything.

I have struggled with the church for years, for many reasons, but I believe that my faith crisis really started at the end of last summer. I had just had my fourth miscarriage and I wanted to know what my husband and I should do next, especially since earlier that year, in January, we had felt prompted that our family was about to get bigger. I wanted a clear answer from God about what to do in regards to growing our family...and I didn’t get one...and I was angry. For years I had been trying to live the good “Mormon” life, I did what was asked of me, I held callings, I forced myself to go to the temple, I tried to pay tithing, I read my scriptures, and listened to conference, I believed that if I did “X,” then God would give me “Y.” And when it didn’t magically happen after our family fast last summer, or rather an answer didn’t come about how our family was going to get bigger, I was so angry and hurt. I was mad at an organization that made me expect certain things. I was mad at a patriarchal God. I thought I was being punished because I wasn’t playing the perfect Mormon woman, so I stopped going to church (which was easy, considering it was home church at the time). Since this experience I’ve put some pretty strict boundaries in place for myself in regards to a church life.

I’ve stopped wearing my garments, I don’t go to church or the temple anymore, and I definitely don’t participate in my Relief Society because that’s where I feel the most alone and misunderstood.

Contributors:

Sheryl Rose

A bridge-builder at heart, Sheryl Rose finds meaning in connecting people, ideas, and faith. She is passionate about grace, truth, balance, and agency, and she seeks to live with purpose while helping others feel that they belong. Her work and study reflect a devotion to growth, peacemaking, and lasting impact.

Brooke RaNae Palmer

Brooke is a big thinker, voracious reader, stained glass enthusiast, and heavy metal headbanger, in addition to being a loving nana, mother of 4, happy farm wife and badass homemaker.

Maria

Amy

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Dustless Speed

by Cynthia Winward

Five years ago as I hiked in Provo Canyon

I came across this sign in Hope Campground instructing drivers to go very slowly so as not to create too much dust for the campers already settled into their camp sites. Being the new podcaster I was, I snapped this pic and said to my friend, “Well if that doesn’t explain the LDS church, I don’t know what does!” I turned this pic into a social media post where I said this—

Is there a way to talk about the churchy issues that interest me, confuse me, and sadden me, without kicking up dust? I haven’t found a way yet to have the types of conversations that need to happen without making at least a few people uncomfortable….If I move at a dustless pace that never stirs up dirt, well, I’m not sure that’s the place where the growth happens. A little dust is ok, it clears fairly quickly, and what’s left is a new way of seeing the world.

In our book, on page 120 I wrote about a time I met with my Bishop to ask (beg?) that we talk about the hard stuff. I wrote—

“I said I wanted to discuss racism, LGBTQ+ issues, faith crisis, and more in our church lessons. He tried to explain to me that it’s a difficult balance between having ‘softball and hardball’ lessons at church. He didn’t want to make ward members fearful and uncomfortable [ahem…clouds of dust] . I can sympathize that a bishop wants to make church a good experience for all who attend, but I’m not so sure comfort should be our number one focus in our Sunday meetings.”

It’s funny to look back on that experience because I’ve stopped making appointments with male clergy. Mainly because after having conversations and kicking up dust for over a decade, I can look back and see nothing has changed. We never had the tough lessons. Never had a 5th Sunday lesson on faith crisis. Never had a class on the Gospel Topics essays.

In all those years of being a Dust Kicker I can see exactly two changes I helped bring about. First, girls became ushers at stake conferences (before it was in the handbook) and second, we did have an LGBTQ Family Support meeting, but it was quickly canned after six months. The man in charge of it told the stake president “it had run its course.” Nevermind he had zero LGBTQ family, a man knows best. In other words, all my dust kicking resulted in just crumbs.

If it sounds like I regret those dusty years being so engaged at the ward and stake level, I don’t. It’s never wrong to try. It’s never wrong to advocate. It’s never wrong to let the dudes in charge know that parts of our church are ouchy. I’m glad I was heavily engaged back in those days with the Men In Charge, but I’m pretty burnt out now. Maybe it will be right for me to engage again someday, but for now, I’m pretty silent. One comment on the original Instagram post said this: “I feel this to my bones. I feel like I am always trying to have uncomfortable conversations, and very few are willing to participate.” I get it! It gets lonely being the only one advocating for change.

And as far as I know, nobody else in my ward decided to replace me as the unofficial Dust Kicker. So my ward stays safely settled in their campsites with no feminists, or allies, or feminist allies, driving through the campground creating clouds of dust.

It’s interesting to think about the ‘dust’ that Susan and I have kicked up since 2020. Podcast episodes, a book, numerous interviews on other podcasts, multiple interviews with The Salt Lake Tribune, The New York Times, and Religion News Service. Not to mention speaking engagements online and in person. My now-twelve-year-career as an unofficial Dust Kicker has gone in a much different direction than my bishop’s office a decade ago.

In many ways my engagement with the church mirrors the arc of our podcast. We talk less about the organization and more about our individual spiritual lives—because our lives are the real place of change. As a Cheap Seater I’ve influenced official change close to zero percent in my ward, but in my personal life, where I’ve chosen to move at a softly-dusty speed, that change is more like 100%. On our episode with Whitney Call of Studio C this week I said—

“I need to be the arbiter and decision maker in my life, not men who are in unmerited positions of authority.”

I know in many LDS wards the male leaders are kicking up some dust, addressing the needs of the marginalized, but for the most part, like Richard Bushman said, we’re saving the grandmothers in Sanpete county at the expense of their grandkids. Or, in my words, the organization prefers to move at a dustless speed. The good news is that in your life, you decide the dust level. I guess that’s why I stopped most dialogue (for now) with male leaders. I’d rather focus on my personal life. Thinking out loud with Susan and all of you has done more to clear away my own personal dust than just about anything else.

“Our voices are not yet lost to the dust. We can speak. And we must. It is time to say—on behalf of our Nephite sisters and brothers—on behalf of ourselves and our posterity—let us learn to be more wise than they have been.”

Carol Lynn Pearson
Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings

Cynthia Winward

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My Journey

by Rebecca Bigelow

I joined the church at 31 when I met my husband.

We both wanted one religious education and faith tradition for our future family, and we chose the faith tradition that he was raised with. I just jumped in with the benefits of community and built in friendships, which I appreciated as a new mom in a new town. However I was really taken aback by all the things, so many things that I did not realize. I kept quiet, and just went along to get along as long as I could. My goal was to make it until our youngest graduated high school. Well, I didn’t make it. When our middle son wanted to go on a mission, my shelf exploded, my eyes opened up, and I couldn’t fake it anymore. I looked into the many issues I was uncomfortable with, and I am still recovering from the betrayal, manipulation, and my own self-suffocation I was trying to endure. This is all very heavy and negative, and so I’m also trying to remember the positives. Our kids had fun activities, and a moral education that they can draw from or not. There are benefits to belonging; however, I just can’t pick through the hurtful parts anymore. So I’m in a holding pattern now. I sprinkle in my thoughts here and there, but this is difficult to navigate with a husband that is still in but isn’t bothered by the hurtful parts. He can compartmentalize, and I can’t. I am increasingly true to myself though so that is where my healing has begun.

After years of hiding my head in the sand, my shelf exploded with the confluence of many factors. My youngest daughter entering Young Women and seeing the disparities, my middle son preparing to go on a mission, my oldest son wanting to go to BYU, Nelson’s Think Celestial talk, being asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting, a visit to my dentist, and the discovery that polygamy is still being practiced in the temple. I can’t give a tidy timeline or sequence of events, but all of those things were happening at once.

I feel I need to explain the dentist visit a little though. Once my middle son “put in his papers,” as they say, my husband and I were asked to give prayers, talks, etc. We had both been able to fly under the radar for a long while, but this brought our family into the Mormon forefront. I was asked to give a talk from conference, and I was determined to use only women speakers. I was teaching in Relief Society at the time, and I had already used my favorite talk; that left two. One I had major issues with, and one I could tweak enough to make it just about “You have heavenly parents that love you, You are on your own path, God’s love is unconditional, Nothing else matters.” Which in a nutshell was all that I ever said when asked to teach or speak. The following week I had a dental appointment, and my dentist is in my ward. At my appointment, he told me that he really appreciated my talk, and he told me that he had been on a long faith transition, and he only attends to sit with his wife. I was shocked and also just bubbling over that I wasn’t the only one! He sent me several names of other women in similar situations. I reached out to them and started talking. Talking, talking. And listening, listening to their stories. And I started looking into subjects that were always bristly to me. I learned so much about polygamy, patriarchy, purity and modesty culture, worthiness, tithing, the temple, the Church’s finances, sexism, racism, the LGBTQ policies, the Word of Wisdom, D&C Section 132, Joseph Smith’s “translations,” garments…

You name it, I looked into it. Mostly from the Church’s own website! I found the At Last She Said It community. I listened to every podcast and started participating in the chat. I educated myself finally and was appalled. I thought I was appalled before, now I’m disgusted…and mad.

However, I have a husband who takes only what he needs from the church and isn’t bothered by the other parts; and he is a staunch defender of the truth of the church. We have three kids that were raised in the church and are still in. Now…mom is having major troubles with 90% of the church, so what do we do now? They can’t all pivot just because I want them to. We are all on our own paths. So I’m in a holding pattern, trying to navigate what is really a mixed-faith marriage, and giving my kids alternate ways to look at all things churchy.

One story I can tell that will give a look into my mindset before my middle son left for his mission has to do with the temple. He started home MTC at the end of January and so in late fall/early winter I looked at my husband and said “Well, I guess we need to ask for interviews to go to the temple.” Neither of us had been in about 15 years. I was damned if I was going to let this keep me away from attending with him. I knew that he had to go for his endowments before his mission, and I didn’t want him to go without us. So we both made appointments. I just sucked it up and answered the way I interpreted the questions and got my recommend. When I got home, I looked at my husband and asked if he realized that “I was just in a locked room, alone, with a man in a position of power, answering questions about sex, money and underwear.” His jaw dropped to the floor, and he finally saw one of the church’s many issues. After going through all that and buying all the clothing that I needed, we went to my son’s endowment. I steeled myself for the part where they asked the women to cover our faces with the veil. That was the absolute worst part for me, and I resolved to refuse to do it. I went alone into the locker room, put on the hideous, hot, itchy, uncomfortable clothing and then sat out in the hall alone. My son and husband went to do the initiatory, so I sat and waited alone. They came and got me when they were done, and we went into the endowment room. I sat on the women’s side alone. The one happy part was that we didn’t have to veil our faces anymore! I endured the boring session and went up to the veil alone. I went through and got to sit in the celestial room with my son and husband but had to be quiet. I did get to give him a hug. Then went into the locker room alone and met them out in the hall to go home. It was a very lonely experience. I have never felt so separated from him. All that trauma, expense and emotional preparation to go to the temple with him, just to be completely alone.

I’m afraid I am losing him to the church. I want to tell him all I’ve learned about polygamy, the LGBTQ policies, church finances… But I save all of this for my therapist, and I focus on supporting him through his choices.

I have never cried so much during that time he was preparing to go. I continued crying practically every day when he left for months. I was under an incredible amount of stress, my body started rebelling against it, literally begging me for some relief. I started seeing a therapist. I took a break from church. I learned to meditate, went to Reiki sessions, retreats, sound baths, yoga, Pilates, and my husband even gave me a blessing. I have three tattoos and a new piercing. I’m writing about my thoughts. I am taking care of myself, reclaiming my authority, expressing myself to safe people, and being truer to myself.

For my husband and 2 of the kids, I talk to them occasionally about how I feel about certain issues, and only when the time is right. Initially I was so angry that I scared them, and they doubled down on church. Now, I tread lightly. For my son on his mission, he does not know anything about my journey. Our video calls are with the entire family, and we talk about the cultural experience and how he is doing. We tell him about what’s going on in our lives, show him the pets and the updates we’ve done to the house and yard. We talk about his sibling’s sports, band, college, and high school stuff, our work. He tells us about the food, service, what he does on P days, and what he needs us to send him. His emails are all about the lessons, who is “progressing” towards baptism, who is not…

Some of his letters make me cry. I see the indoctrination. I cringe at the colonialism and any mention of having the ‘“truth” or following commandments perfectly. I shudder when he quotes Benson or Brad Wilcox. I want to fly down and take him home before it’s too late. I’m afraid I am losing him to the church. I want to tell him all I’ve learned about polygamy, the LGBTQ policies, Church finances…

But I save all of this for my therapist, and I focus on supporting him through his choices. He chose this activity just like he chose marching band in high school. It’s just another one of his activities, and he is learning a new language and being exposed to a new culture. He is learning to live in an apartment in a very poor area with a roommate, he is cleaning his apartment and getting up early every morning. I focus on the service he is able to do, the English lessons he teaches, and the life lessons he is learning. However, I have been able to send him a few thoughts in writing. After general conference I send him a link to my favorite talks and tell him especially why I liked them. I told him that I really disliked the abortion talk by Anderson and why. I send him videos of very nuanced topics from BYU professors. I always talk about grace and unconditional love. I wrote him a long letter all about giving himself and others grace, that he is eternally and inherently worthy, and that his worthiness can never be measured by a checklist or interview. I wrote to him and tell him not to stress about numbers, that he can’t make decisions for other people, that relationships are the most important thing. I give occasional feedback to his weekly emails centering feminism and social justice just to give him a different viewpoint to think about. But mainly I just tell him that I love him and that I am proud of him.

I have a few months to ground myself and practice the differentiation that I will need when he returns home. I will focus on expressing unconditional love and understanding. I will be happy to finally have my boy home.

I Am A Product

by McKinsey

At Last I Write It

by Carol McCullough Colvin

Before I moved into my current ward,

I lived in the same house and went to church with the same set of Mormons for 31 years. Our family was the perfect picture of Mormon bliss. Over the years I served as a Primary teacher, choir pianist, Relief Society president, Gospel Doctrine teacher, and seminary teacher. And then it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. When my oldest child came out as gay, I went from stunned and confused, to hopeful and zealous, to defeated and sad, to angry, all while clinging to a sense of duty to attend church every week. Finally, on advice from my therapist, who said I wasn’t doing anyone, least of all myself, any good by going if I couldn’t keep my angry thoughts from coming out of my mouth or showing on my face, I quit going. About six months later, after lots of processing, I felt calm enough to go back to church just for Relief Society. There were a few sisters I trusted to make space in their hearts for my feelings, and I found a somewhat fragile sanctuary with them. And then, just as I thought I might make it through sacrament meeting and even Sunday School without wanting to run away, COVID shut everything down.

Fast forward to four years ago. For several reasons, one of which was my desire to start fresh in a new ward and stake where no one knew the defeated, sad, or angry me, we moved to Oregon. As the masks came off, I met my new Relief Society sisters. I committed to being honest and vulnerable in talking about my faith journey, and as I did so, I learned I could trust them. I allowed them to be themselves, and I loved and served them wherever they were on the faith spectrum, and they learned they could trust me. I was asked by one sister to substitute teach in Gospel Doctrine a couple times, and recently I had the opportunity to teach Relief Society. This is my experience last month.

I was asked to cover Pres. Eyring’s conference talk, “Draw Near Unto Me.” Whenever I’m asked to teach, I read through the assigned talk to try to get a feel for what the speaker wants to have happen, and then I ask myself if Jesus would want the same thing. If the values of Jesus and the speaker align, I agree to teach from that talk. But these days I like to do things a little differently. I am not a fan of those lessons where the teacher distributes numbered quotes from the talk and they are read, one at a time – “who has number 7? Anyone?” - and we discuss them. I don’t think we need to cover the exact words of the speaker. I DO think it’s nice to cover the scriptures used in the talk and take them a bit further, a little deeper. That was fun with this lesson because the title of President Eyring’s talk comes from D&C 88:63. Much of the Doctrine and Covenants is now quite “itchy” for me—there’s no way in the telestial kingdom I would teach a lesson based on section 132, for example—but I’m sort of in love with section 88 and all its beautiful language about love, light, and Christ’s descent below all things so he could comprehend, or include, all things. This section is full of quantum physics!

I’m calmer these days but still vocal about supporting LGBTQ+ people, I wear pants, I have double ear piercings, and I made my own DIY sleeveless garments when the new designs came out as fast as I could find my scissors.

I was a bit apprehensive about how my lesson would be received, especially by some of the more conservative sisters in my ward, partly because the content of the lesson was a little “out there,” but mostly because I, myself, am still a little “out there.” I’m calmer these days but still vocal about supporting LGBTQ+ people, I wear pants, I have double ear piercings, and I made my own DIY sleeveless garments when the new designs came out as fast as I could find my scissors. I knew that some sisters would wonder why on earth I, of all people, would be asked to teach Relief Society, but at least most of them already knew and liked me. They were accustomed, after almost four years, to my edgy outfits and my constant droning on about how we all should love one another. But we had two new sisters in the ward that day and four visitors, and this was their first exposure to me.

The lesson went better than I imagined it would. I had a lot of participation, even from the visitors. Afterwards, one of the new sisters, an elderly widow from Utah, who seemed very conservative at first glance, came up and told me how much she enjoyed looking at the scriptures in a new way she hadn’t considered. Another sister said her mind was blown. The sister missionaries said they loved it. I got a text message from the former RS president, who loved that I referenced so many scriptures. My 83-year-old friend texted to thank me for the “energetic” lesson and said it gave her a lot to contemplate and work on. Even my sister’s 11-year-old granddaughter, who attended Relief Society because she wasn’t comfortable visiting Primary, said my “science presentation was really great.” No one had anything negative to say about my outfit—and a few said they liked it!

I went home that day feeling emotionally and spiritually uplifted by the support and love of my Relief Society sisters. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that level of safety in my faith community and been confident enough to be myself with no apologies and a genuine smile on my face. I think I’ll be okay here.

My Two Part Soul

by Gena Carpenter

From a listener

Faith Challenge started at the age of 37 years old when I realized I may never bear children since I am getting older. My patriarchal blessing states that I will be able to bring children into this world easily. I have had 3 miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy which resulted in losing a fallopian tube. My husband and I adopted when I was 35 years old but I have yet to bear children. This has made me question everything. I still attend church but not sure if it is the only true church and if I want to still attend the temple and wear garments. No church leaders have been able to help me with my questions.

-Anonymous

Contributors:

Rebecca Bigelow

She is a solar-powered nature-lover that needs her feet in water, any type will do. Lakes, rivers, streams, but the ocean is the best. A tub in a pinch. Rebecca loves animals and volunteers for a dog rescue. She is a retired physical therapist and is married with three kids, a big garden, chickens, two dogs and a new kitten. She is an opinionated eco-feminist, and am getting better about not simmering at a low burn. Rebecca is more on the introverted side of the continuum and always the mediator. She loves the smell of rain and pine trees, and she is always trying to just figure this life out.

McKinsey

McKinsey is a product of the 90’s residing in Davis County Utah where she works a variety of jobs to support her family. She loves being her kids biggest advocate and cheerleader. She expresses herself through art and poetry when she has a free moment. She wakes up most mornings surprised by the middle aged lady in the mirror and wonders what it was all for.

Carol McCullough Colvin

Carol version 3.0 benefits from a thoughtful investment in R&D with her user group—one husband, 3 adult children, and a cat. Upgrades include a feminist module, rainbow vision, and a patriarchy/gaslighting alarm. This new version retains all of the sass and style of the 1962 model, but with more love. She will still beat you at Bananagrams, but she won’t gloat. After deleting box-checking and people-pleasing apps at the last reboot, there was room to install ballroom dancing and strength training. To experience the new Carol for yourself, come to Eugene, Oregon.

Gena Pratt Carpenter

Creative thinker and doer. Advocate. Storyteller. Mother of four and second-career law student seeking to make the world a better place. No, really. She is.

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by Susan Hinckley

Cynthia and I are taking the CAC’s Living School course

over the next year, and the curriculum this week includes a video in which someone brings out a chair and sets it down, then Richard Rohr makes his slow way onto the screen and sits. He introduces this sitting with a few lines—something about how contemplation is “a long, loving look at the Real”—and then we all sit.

We sit, and we sit, and we sit.

Actually, I end up watching Richard sit in his shady New Mexico courtyard, since I can’t keep my eyes closed and concentrate on being in my own body for the whole 13 minutes of sitting. I don’t know how you’d do, but after a few minutes its me watching Richard sit, wishing the video would end. I’m not very good at just being.

He offers the beloved lines:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

He’s still still. Meanwhile, my head doesn’t miss a single beat, banging on insistently that it’s meant to be running this—and every other—show.

Such clenched hands.

When I was working as a fiber artist, the comment I heard most often as people studied my work was that I must have enormous patience. They’d look for a moment, step closer, look a bit more, and suddenly it was like they could hear the slow tick of hours through the glass in the frame. My pieces were finely detailed and meticulously crafted—I white-knuckled every one of the thousands of stitches that went into them, and often spent as much time unpicking as I did putting stitches in. I worked on each piece for a month or more, despite their small size (6-8 inches or less). So many layers of dense work, so much of it unseen in the finished piece.

And such clenched hands.

The picture people saw in that frame was really a careful veneer covering a month of foundation stitching, unpicking, false starts, failed ideas, cover-ups, swears, what-ifs, wrong choices. Each piece was a journey, and when I finally settled it behind glass, it was because I was ready to stop fussing over that particular story and move on to the next. Eventually, each arrived at a place where I could walk away and let it rest, the relic of an original idea and where pursuing that idea had taken me.

So I understood why “patience” might be what some people saw in my work, and yet it surprised me too—I don’t think of myself as a patient person, and I never felt my art required it. It was, after all, a labor of love. I created it only because I wanted to. That so many other people appreciated it was icing on the cake.

And I did love the journey, valuing the process more than the product—each step building on the last. I loved trying to fix mistakes, how they sometimes sent me in new directions, or required that I learn to live with them. To me, my mistakes were often glaring, but choosing to stay in the discomfort of a thing I could have done better or wished I’d done differently was a baby step in the direction of my own growth. Hand sewing was a practice of sorts: imperfection inevitable.

But such clenched hands.

I kinda loved it when a finished piece didn’t reflect the original plan at all, because somewhere along the way, the work itself had shown me a better idea. I never felt I had much control over any of it, actually. I could make a drawing, I could have a plan, I could cut to the pattern, but when I began the slow work of stitching, the process took over and I was along for the ride.

I like to think this made my work better than it would have been if I’d been skillful enough to control everything from start to finish. When creating I tend to think small, focus too much on perfect execution and not enough on concept. I tend to hold too tightly—to the needle itself, but also to my own ideas and desires, my fears and flaws. If you’ve heard me talk about my 3 word prayer—open my hands—you can know that’s a direct reflection of decades of stitching.

My too-tight grip on the work was only ever a drawback. It never improved the finished piece. Years down the road, I can’t help but wonder how many things in my life might have been different if I’d known how to hold anything lightly.

When I first began speaking up about my struggle in Mormonism, I was thrown into a process where I also felt a loss of control. I’d kept my doubts contained for so many years, once I gave them voice I was afraid they’d never stop talking. I wondered where it would end. The only thing clear to me was that I would no longer be able to follow the pattern I’d relied on in my life up to that point. I was terrified, and after flailing around for a few years not knowing what I wanted to have happen, I realized something: faith wasn’t a tidy thing to carry in my pocket like an ID card. It wasn’t membership in a club or assenting to someone else’s rules and principles. Faith didn’t really have much to do with what I knew or didn’t know, but was instead about how to know.

I didn’t know then what I do now: that I do know how to know things. My bones register deep recognition, my heart discerns truth. I am safe in this journey. My head doesn’t dream knowing up, and my hands can’t squeeze truth into being, no matter how hard they clench. Faith is process, not product—a practice of imperfection.

I think often of a story a pilot friend told me. He was a teenager, sitting in the plane before his first solo flight, all sweaty palms and jittery stomach. His instructor looked him squarely in the eye and said, “You’re safe in the aircraft.” The teacher had watched this student carefully, and knew he was prepared for the next step.

No one in church ever said that to me—I’d had no practice trusting myself in spiritual things. No one had given me permission to just be. No one had assured me I was safe in my own faith-craft. And practice matters! After many thousands of hours, I could trust my hands with the needle. I made mistakes, but I knew they were really just part of the process.

Faith is the most human of journeys. It’s making our way along life’s path by feel. This thing God and I are creating together will always be a work in progress, densely layered and detailed, its evolving picture the product of my personal life, mind and heart. The journey is mine to experience, mine to create, mine to live. I walk it only because I want to. Whether anyone else appreciates it is immaterial.

Life happens one moment—one fleeting stitch—at a time. And we live with all of them.

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor. “My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”1

She’s assuring me I already know how to do this.

In another Living School lesson, Shara Moscinska used the phrase, “an opportunity to grow down.” My ears perked up immediately: I recognized that things like sitting still for 13 minutes gave me just such an opportunity. That learning to be present to myself—present to the moment and whatever I’m doing in it—is growing down. As a kid, all I wanted was to grow up. As a Latter-day Saint, I thought all I was supposed to be about was growing more perfect, and therefore less human. No one ever mentioned, nor did it occur to me, that growing down might be where real learning could happen. That roots are more important than veneer. That what makes a thing real is all those thousands of stitches you don’t see.

Gripping it all more tightly? That’s never going to save me. Certainty won’t either—knowing is not an answer, but knowing how to know may be. I’m finding nothing is exactly what I thought it was, but again and again when I relax my grip, a little more of the picture reveals itself. My understanding of things I thought were settled continues to evolve.

Everything is more than what I saw when I first looked: I have realized that patience is trust. That waiting is preparation, stillness is practice, opening my hands is invitation, presence is willingness, being is prayer. I’m learning to listen for the slow tick not of hours but of moments—
This one right now.
Now this one.

I pray to let go of whatever exists five minutes from now in favor of this, to savor each little forever, to settle into the familiar rhythm of working without knowing, to remember that sometimes the work itself shows me a better idea, if I’m willing to let it. To grow down, down, deep into my most human soil. To be.

Richard Rohr describes prayer as “immersing myself in this moment.” I spent decades doing slow work. I wouldn’t have known to call that prayer at the time, but looking back I can see how my years of patient stitching were practice for being present to my real life. I am safe in the process—there is nothing to figure out, no need to unpick the stitches behind me, nothing to be gained by clinging to the ones ahead.

1

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

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Susan Hinckley

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We Don’t Allow Dual Membership

by Rachael Day

My faith journey is not that unusual. It started

with being born in the covenant to an orthodox and loving Mormon family. I was raised in Utah during the 80's and 90's in a time when everyone and everything in my life was touched by religion, and there was never a reason to question it. My adult years and the birth of my daughters brought into sharp focus the patriarchy of my church, and the knowledge that while I might be able to ignore it for myself I couldn't choose that for my little ones. Modern day issues surrounding the LGBTQ community, financial scandals, and abuse cover ups led to a deep search into church history to try and make sense of it all. There were no anti-Mormon lies, there was just history, and most of it on the church's own website. Once we knew we no longer believed it was true, and could no longer support the organization as good, it was time to leave. We went from tithe paying, temple attending, calling holding members, to gone in the space of a week.

It took every last scrap of faith in us to even attempt to find a new place of worship, and my list of requirements was high. My family eventually landed at a Presbyterian church with a female pastor, full membership without exclusions to the LGBTQ participants, financial transparency, background checks for everyone involved with youth, and a congregation leaning heavily into stage 5 believers. My slightly agnostic self is fully welcomed, and I'm encouraged to take what serves my soul and leave the rest behind.

My husband, out of a desire to serve, joined as an official member last year and our Christmas card that we gave to friends and neighbors had a small line that stated he enjoyed serving there. A new bishop, and previous friend, in our old ward was called, and in his first week he researched excommunication in the handbook and found an obscure line that said he 'may' excommunicate someone for apostasy for joining another church. Not 'must', not 'shall', he had his own discretion. He took the information to the stake president for confirmation and permission, and used that to call my husband and let him know that "The LDS church doesn't allow dual membership." The only way he knew at all was because we'd given his family a Christmas card and gift.

We hadn't removed our records, it wasn't something on our radar. We love our friends and family who are still members and have been intentionally quiet in our faith journey so as not to impact others’ beliefs. This intrusion into our peace and lives, and the petty targeting of my family as the new bishop made this the top priority in his first week, was deeply hurtful. He could have focused on Christlike love, service, compassion, community, or a thousand other things more worthy of his time. In his theology, that bishop believes he has the literal power and authority to revoke the exaltation, salvation, family bonds, and eternal access to the presence of God. And he thought that was the fitting punishment for my husband daring to serve somewhere else.

We decided that rather than going through the religious trauma and violence of a disciplinary council for a church we no longer attend, and headed by men we no longer believe have power over us, we would resign our entire family. Excommunication is a barbaric and draconian practice, there is no way around it. I frequently hear the phrase "they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone!" referring to ex-mormons. We tried to leave it alone, to just live our peaceful lives, and they came after us anyway.

For those thinking we just had a bad bishop, please consider that he is exactly what the church gets when they get a perfect bishop. If you have had a 'good' bishop at some point, they were good despite the organization, not because of it. This man is loyal and obedient, even against his own conscience, and he will be rewarded for it. Our family is going to be fine, we will lead blissfully beautiful lives with or without them. The LDS church lost a lot more than we did with this move.

About Her

by Sarah Hale

It May Fall On Deaf Ears

by Sunny

I am the mother of a transgender child. I have tried

to write this letter many times, but I have never felt that I could successfully communicate my love for my child, how much she has to offer, and that she is a child of God as worthy of love and dignified treatment as any other person.

Despite my struggle to find the right words, I would like to share my message. I feel it’s a way of showing love, support, and awareness for my child and other transgender people.

My daughter is thoughtful and generous, always looking out for the underdog and donating to all sorts of causes. She is smart, witty, and creative. She writes amazing stories filled with detail, color, and imagination, weaving in ideas from history and cultures all over the world. She thinks in inventive ways that give me new perspectives. She is determined and stands up for herself and others when she believes in her cause. She can be vulnerable and admit her mistakes. She has an incredible memory and analytical skills. She is often insightful beyond her years. She is courageous and faces her fears, despite having more than the average person. Like all of us, she also has her struggles.

When my daughter was young, we could see that she was very intelligent and had some difficulty with social norms and customs. She was diagnosed with autism. She read the Book of Mormon at a very young age and bore her testimony in church about it. People in our ward showered her with praise, and she felt special and accepted.

As she grew up, she read widely and soaked up information like a sponge: religion, science, philosophy, history. At church, she asked questions outside the box. She got some funny looks and felt that her questions were not taken seriously. I feel like a small breach opened, and she began to feel uncomfortable.

People on the autism spectrum often feel as if they don’t belong because they don’t understand typical social norms. It’s often described as feeling like they come from another planet. My daughter started to feel like this at church.

I also began to feel uncomfortable, whether it was me feeling not good enough, feeling that we didn’t fit the Church-family mold, others stepping back, or both, I can’t say.

In the past, I have been crippled by fear, not sure how to love because I am afraid of those who are different or who are not members. But I cannot not love my own daughter…

In seminary one day, my daughter said that she wasn’t sure that she believed that same-sex attraction was wrong. Instead of allowing her to question, discuss, and share her beliefs, she was asked to leave the classroom. I feel like the teacher acted out of fear rather than love. He made my daughter feel that she didn’t belong and that questioning was not okay.

On another occasion, a transgender woman visited our ward and bore her testimony about her love for the Savior. Afterward, I was very happy to see that a woman in our ward got up and thanked her for her testimony. But then our bishop got up and said that the proclamation on the family says that gender is an eternal part of our identity, and we must follow those commandments. I felt as though he had gotten up and publicly shamed the transgender woman and invalidated her testimony. I can’t imagine a bishop calling someone out at the pulpit for, say, drinking alcohol or not keeping the Sabbath day holy.

And yet, I understand the bishop. I have, in my life, said things that were unkind, judgmental, and offensive because I thought that was my duty. Ironically, I thought I was showing that I was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Sometimes, the message we get at church is that ensuring compliance is more important than love. In the past, I have been crippled by fear, not sure how to love because I am afraid of those who are different or who are not members.

But I cannot not love my own daughter, “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Through years of infertility treatment, I prayed for her. She and her twin sister came as my miracle babies, whom I held in my arms as tiny newborns. As parents do, I felt an overwhelming love for her. I got up with her in the middle of the night when she was sick. I laughed when she rode the training wheels right off her bike. I cried with her when she was bullied. I proudly photographed her with the mayor when she won the book reading contest.

When she told me she felt gender dysphoria, I could not relate, but I tried to understand her. I did not want to invalidate her feelings and experience. Who was I to say what she felt? I was also afraid of the discrimination she would face. I felt the most Christlike way to act was simply to love her, as John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”

My daughter’s twin sister served a mission, and during that time, our missionary daughter was talking to a fellow missionary about LGBTQ+ people. This missionary said that he wanted to take his gun to houses where people flew the Pride (LGBTQ+) flag and shoot the people inside. My daughter was terrified for her sister, for herself, and for our family. She still breaks down crying when she thinks about it. She fears for our safety, and she is beyond sad that someone would interpret the gospel of Christ as justifying this type of hate and violence.

Incidents like these show me that people in the Church (and outside as well) are often filled with fear, misunderstanding, and hate for transgender people. They may not even know a transgender person, but they have a skewed vision that causes them to act in unfair, intolerant, and discriminatory ways. The way we think, talk about, and treat transgender people often makes them outsiders and makes people think it is okay to act this way toward them.

My daughter’s autism is relevant to this situation. People on the autism spectrum are more likely to identify as transgender or gender-diverse than the general population, with some studies showing rates up to six times higher. The medical world has only a limited understanding of autism and gender dysphoria and their intersection. I feel like I should hold my judgment in check for these things that we simply do not understand.

The stigmatization of transgender people will undoubtedly increase prejudice, fear, and mistreatment toward them, not only in the Church but also in the community.

In a world where my daughter already feels isolated, Church policy further marginalizes and vilifies her. For example, transgender people are not allowed to be called as teachers, work with children or youth, or stay overnight at activities such as youth conferences. These policies seem to suggest some kind of innate unworthiness or even inherent deviance or danger in trans people. It says they are undeserving of callings and activities. And since the policies apply to those who have only transitioned “socially,” that means someone who does nothing more than wear atypical clothing would not be allowed to work with children or youth.

I think it would be great if transgender people taught youth Sunday School. Transgender people could show kids that everyone has something to offer, and the youth could learn to better accept people who are different from them. Some kids may not be different from them, having gender dysphoria themselves, and see that they have worth and have a place at church. I think many people in the younger generation would be happy with the arrangement. They seem much more open to accepting people’s differences than some of us older people.

I’d like to share a few facts about transgender people. We may think that gender-diverse people and those with gender dysphoria are a new phenomenon because transgender issues are prominent in the news right now, but cultures and histories around the globe have mentioned transgender people, some as early as 5000 B.C. Transgender people exist. We cannot pretend they don’t, and we cannot erase their existence. But we can decide if we are going to love them or not.

A study published in 2021 by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that transgender people in the United States are more likely to experience physical and sexual violence than cisgender (non trans) people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in 2019 showing that transgender students were more than twice as likely as cisgender students to be bullied at school.

“Violence against trans youth and inappropriate non-intervention have been identified as the primary reasons for the disproportionately high levels of absenteeism, push out, eating disorders, substance misuse, self-harm, and suicide attempts among trans youth.” (McBride, 2021, p. 17).

Excluding people, harassment, verbal abuse, failing to see their contributions, and shaming them because they do not conform can also inflict a more subtle pain on transgender people. Even underlying messages about belonging (or not) can have profound, lasting negative impacts on people’s well-being.

The scriptures show us so many examples of Christ loving the most marginalized, hated, and persecuted people. He ate with sinners, befriended the tax collector, healed lepers, gave water to the Samaritan woman, and showed mercy to the adulteress. When asked who we should love, the Savior shared the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was from a despised group, those who were not considered fully obedient, but was the hero of the story. Jesus sincerely loved and served those who were shunned by others.

Transgender people are some of the despised and suffering of our day. They are often “those who mourn” and who are “poor in spirit,” whom the Savior promises to bless and comfort. It seems to me that the Savior would want church to feel like a place of love and safety for them and not a place where they are judged harshly or altogether rejected. I believe Jesus would treat transgender people with love, warmth, and welcome.

Finally, I’d like to say that our restrictions for transgender people seem to be disproportionately severe. We all sit in the pews with our imperfections, but transgender people are singled out for wide-ranging exclusions, more so than people with “same-sex attraction” and more than nearly everyone else. For example, my stake president was released from his calling after having an extramarital affair, but less than six months later, he was called to be the Young Men’s president.

The stigmatization of transgender people will undoubtedly increase prejudice, fear, and mistreatment toward them, not only in the Church but also in the community. Prejudicial church policies legitimize discrimination against trans people.

Perhaps worst of all, these policies may cause trans people to struggle to love themselves and believe they have worth. They may question whether God loves them.

My daughter has infinite worth, just as any other human, and any message that contradicts that is not compassionate or Christlike in my view.

Deconstructing the Shadow

by Alaira

I’m heartbroken. More than that.

I am breaking. I never knew it was possible to feel every inch of yourself just tearing apart. This life I once knew, my source of spirituality I loved and fought so hard for is a lie. I thought if I believed more, tried harder, read more. Prayed harder. Was more sincere, was more faithful, stronger…then things would be different. It never was. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a perfect life. I was just hoping for something good, true, and reliable among the trials. What I got instead was a shadow of something real. I believed an imitation of the real thing filtered through expectations and beliefs that kept me small so I wouldn’t stray. I want my family to see this shadow for what it is so they can find the real thing. I want them to know joy, love, goodness, freedom; not separation, or endless striving that will never measure up. I want them to know what the shadow is made of so they can know where to look for the light. I want to yell, scream, and cry because I lived so much of my life for this shadow and the shadow molded me into someone who was passive, worried, belittled, made to feel less than, ashamed of my body, not good enough, and tired. I don’t say this with anger—I say this with ache. I know what it’s like to believe the promises one was handed only to watch them break. The shadow promised a happily ever after, but all of it was conditional. Conditional on being what the shadow wanted me to be. Conditional on forgetting who He knew I was all along. Like a mantra I sang, “Families Can Be Together Forever.” I didn’t realize the weight of that one word: “can.” They can be—but only if you become subject to the shadow and live under its onerous care. Families can be together forever—if they look like, act like, and do exactly what the shadow commands. But I have come to realize:

I am not breaking—I am becoming.
I am not a failure of faith—I am a witness to truth.
I am not less than—I am deeply cherished.
I am not loved for my obedience—I am loved because I exist.
I am not bound by conditions—I am free in grace.
I am not small—I am bold.
I am not a whisper—I am a voice rising.
I am not tired from striving—I am rested in being.
I am not formed by the shadow—I am formed by His hands.
I am not alone—I am held by love that never lets go.
I am not just hoping—I am living in truth.
I am not what the shadow said I was—I am who He says I am.
I am His.
I am free.
I am already home in His light.

I am not chasing the shadow anymore – I am walking in light.

From a listener:

I was so glad that you addressed the porn issue. I have been married for 30 years and most of that has been trying to navigate my husband’s porn addiction. It came to light on our honeymoon as I sat and watched him lust after women right in front of me. One of the lovely young women was coming out of the temple newly married. I confronted him when we came home and he denied it. Tangible evidence showed up so I confronted him until he came clean. I was a very boxy Mormon at that time so I did what I thought was the right thing to do. I made him contact the bishop. Long story short, 4 bishops, 2 stake presidents, and an LDS social service counselor all put his addiction on me. They asked me about my addictions, if I had wet dreams, asked me if I was frigid, and the counselor asked me if I was “juicy.” And the consensus with all of them was to make sure that I had sex with my husband so he didn’t turn to porn. I always walked out of these meetings feeling like I had done something wrong and it was my burden to carry. I was fresh in the Church and didn’t know or have the words. I also wasn’t supposed to talk about it anyway, so I guess it didn’t matter if I had the words. It was all very harmful and caused a great deal of pain and 30 years later it is still a problem in our marriage. I reached out to an Area Seventy, because I wanted more training for bishops. He pretty much brushed me off and gave the men a pass. They are fallible just like me. This is a big eye-roll. I am not an active member of the Church so going to leadership wasn’t about me, it was about future women who go to their bishops and receive very faulty advice. There are so many women who are going through this with their spouses. I never once had a bishop give me any compassion and see how this was affecting me. It was all about protecting my husband.

—Brenda

Contributors:

Rachael Day

Rachael is an avid outdoor enthusiast, hiker, paddler, mother to incredible daughters and wife to a gentle husband who took this journey with her. She is thrilled to know that a relationship with God is not transactional, and that her personal values can now align with her religious beliefs. Her favorite quote is by Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Sarah Hale

Sarah is an amateur artist & musician, wife, mother, homemaker, nerd, and lifelong learner. She is navigating her faith journey by channeling her anger into poetry, drowning her sorrows in dirty Cokes, and finding joy in the glimmers of divinity she sees all around her.

Sunny

Alaira

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Note from the author:

I apologize if you experience dejavu while reading this piece. I wrote a previous essay with a similar theme a few months ago. It’s a topic that is heavy on my soul and never very far from my thoughts. Hence, my preoccupation with it.

Hope is the benefit

by Blakelee Ellis

My friend’s father recently passed away very

unexpectedly. I sat in her living room a few days later and grieved with her. “I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason,” she said. “Sometimes, it's just hard to figure out the reason.”

All I could do was smile in reply.

There are so many words we use for that sentiment. Fate. Divine Will. Kismet. Destiny. Karma. God’s plan. Everything happens for a reason.

But what if it doesn’t?

Humans are meaning makers. We look for the meaning, for the purpose of almost everything in our lives. The world makes more sense that way. We don’t look for meaning in solely the good things that happen in life. We tell ourselves stories for the bad and the ugly as well. We feel more in control when everything happens for a reason. We take great solace in the stories we tell ourselves: that a loved one died for a reason, that you weren't meant to get that job anyway, God has something greater in store for you. We tell ourselves these things to organize the chaos and help things make sense. To give meaning to our joys and our heartaches. Because the alternative is terrifying. If everything happens by chance then we have to admit that we are at the mercy of the universe. That there is no one out there controlling things. It’s much more comfortable for us to believe that things happen for a reason.

It is unfair and unkind of me to lump all of humanity together in my cynicism. Of course, it’s more complex than everyone just telling themselves stories. There are many many people who truly believe and find hope in the thought of a God who is always involved. There can be comfort in the belief that God controls all from the greatest to the smallest. This vast universe is controlled by fluctuations in minuscule particles. Energy that controls the entire cosmos is held in electrons, protons and neurons which are almost too tiny to know they exist. The physical world is shaped by the constant flow of energy. Perhaps God not only exists, but works on this infinitesimal level.

I used to find solace in that God who controls all, but not anymore. I used to be certain about a lot of things, but not anymore. I no longer claim I know very many things, but one thing I do know is that God loves ALL of humanity with a love so big and so grand there is no way to truly understand it. I believe that not only does God give love and grace, but God gives it in abundance. I believe that God is wholly good and so no bad thing can come from God. But there is more in the world than love and grace. There is plenty of evil, corruption and destruction here too. Christianity’s story tells us that if there is a giver of grace, there must be a giver of evil. So, we told the story of Satan.

It’s literally a tale as old as time: good against evil. God always makes good things happen, but Satan stops those good things from happening.

But, do bad things really really really have to happen or do they just happen? Why does it comfort us to have a reason for bad things happening? I believe we’re here on earth to be made over in the image of God, to grow and expand and love with abandon in hopes that we experience some small measure of what it is to love as God loves and then to exist some way after life. Does the plan have to be more complicated than that? Do people really have to die for a purpose? Or get cancer for a purpose? Lose a child for a purpose, lose a job? Have depression for a purpose or eating disorders or go through divorce, experience betrayal, or is that just the nature of this world? Does God force us into bad situations? Does God cause suffering or is suffering something we can just use to learn and grow from? You’re gonna walk through hell so you might as well not come out empty-handed, but did God put us in that hell or did the hell just happen? Are those just things we can turn into good? I don’t believe that there’s some evil force keeping good at bay. For me, there is no devil, no Satan. I believe it’s just the nature of the Universe. The reality of the mortal world that we live in. Evil, pain, or suffering is a natural outcome of living in a human body with overwhelming emotions and poor decision-making and erratic behavior, coupled with chance.

I believe this because it’s so painful when God seemingly doesn’t show up. It causes disbelief, pain, suffering, anger, disconnection. If God picks and chooses when to intervene whether or not that’s with a grand scheme of things or not, it just shows up as plain old favoritism in my book. I don’t believe God plays favorites. God loves us all equally. But is God something that made us and then left us alone? An absent God doesn’t make sense because there are things that happened in my life that can seemingly only be God. So, how do we reconcile God not showing up for us? Can there be a world where the bad things just happen, but good things ARE orchestrated?

I go around and around and around in circles, many times ending with fewer answers then when I started.

When I grew up, my family treated stake conference as a free Sunday in our pajamas, but my husband’s family never missed a stake conference. So, of course my family went to our last stake conference and found out that Elder Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was presiding at the meeting. We arrived 10 minutes early (or 10 minutes late according to my husband) and found some seats near the back of the overflow chapel. Two hours of sitting with no breaks is tough on little bladders, so I ushered my two youngest children to the restroom before the meeting began. I was standing in the hallway waiting for my children when a group of men approached. It was Elder Christofferson accompanied by my stake president and several other men. We locked eyes and Elder Christofferson smiled at me. He shook my hand and then proceeded into the Chapel. I returned to my seat with my kids in tow and survived the stake conference.

A few days later, I got a text asking if I would be willing to meet with the stake president and my heart immediately sank. I’ve had several meetings with leadership over the course of my faith transition. A few have turned out well, but most of them have left me feeling alienated and misunderstood. I’ve been disciplined for things I’ve shared at the pulpit; I’ve been told I was in a “fallen state”; I’ve had my worthiness questioned; I’ve been stripped of my temple recommend. I assumed that the only reason my stake president wanted to meet with me was a bad one. Had someone said something to him about comments that I’ve made in church classes? Was he wondering why I skipped out on most of my Relief Society meetings? Did he want to have a discussion about my lack of a temple recommend? Eventually, after knowing that my husband would come to the meeting with me, I agreed to the meeting.

That Sunday, my husband and I went to the stake president’s office. He smiled warmly, shook our hands and invited us inside. As I sat down, I took a deep breath and anticipated the worst. I crossed my arms and legs, leaned back and waited to be disappointed. He said, “This may sound silly, but I needed to let you know that when Elder Christofferson shook your hand, the spirit touched my heart.” He said in that moment the spirit let him know that there was a reason that I was in the hallway to shake Elder Christofferson’s hand. “It was a divine meeting,” my president said, “more than chance.” He wanted to let me know that God is aware of me, that my family is right where we need to be and that he is thankful that we are in the stake. With that, he stood, shook our hands and we were out the door.

I don’t keep a journal, per se, just a notebook for doodles and random thoughts during Sunday classes. After this meeting, I grabbed my notebook and wrote down what happened. I rarely feel the need to record large entries or even complete thoughts, but I needed help processing what I was feeling.

Let’s say I don’t believe God orchestrated that meeting in the hallway with Elder Christofferson. Is that the end of it? Case closed? Then why did I feel connected to God? Can I decide to believe that somehow in that moment, God found a way to help me belong? Are there circumstances that maybe aren’t really set up because they’re supposed to be, but God is still there? I do believe that God‘s spirit can touch our hearts and our minds to help us know how to become the best version of ourselves. I don’t know how my stake president knew that I felt alone and that I needed to hear that I belonged. Maybe he’d been having meetings with the various bishops to talk about “wayward” members of the stake. Maybe he heard from some other ward members? Maybe he told everybody that happened to shake hands with Elder Christofferson that day the exact same thing. I’ll never know. My question now is, does the origin really matter? Or does it only matter that at that moment I felt seen?

Is it possible that God doesn’t orchestrate, but works with chance? Does God see us tiny humans running around in the universe and think “Aha! This is a moment that I can use right now. Let’s see if they will pay attention.”

It reminds me of a scene in my favorite TV show, “The Good Place.” We won’t go into a full synopsis here, but what you need to know about this scene is that four humans are trying to figure out what a demon wants them to do. The demon, Michael, has had a change of heart and is actually trying to save them. The humans retrace Michael’s steps, analyze everything he has said to them and eventually make a plan with the clues they THINK he left them. Their plan works and the humans and Michael are reunited:

Chidi (human): “We got all four clues you left us.”

Michael: “ Oh that's great. I mean, I actually left you more than 1,200 clues because of how primitive your brains are, but I’m so glad you got enough to figure it out.

Could God always be leaving clues, but our primitive brains only occasionally grasp 4 clues out of 1,200? Maybe God is always available to intervene in ways that we don’t understand and all we have to do is just open our “eyes” to it? Maybe God‘s energy, God’s will, God’s love, God’s magic, whatever you want to call it, is not only existing, but working all the time. God tells us that we are all divine; we have divinity within ourselves. We are that same energy. Perhaps our souls are looking to always connect with one another on that divine infinitesimal level. Maybe God doesn’t ever really “tell” us things, but perhaps we just encounter God’s energy and somehow translate that into whatever is needed in that moment? God planted that divinity in us and expects us to do the rest. We can be God in those situations. I do believe that God’s spirit can touch our hearts and our minds to help us know how to become the best version of ourselves. God put us here knowing that we have the capability to be refined, to gain empathy, compassion and love. All we have to do is get out of our own way, connect with God and we can know what to do.

The question is can we make meaning out of something that is seemingly innocuous? Even if things in my life are a complete chance, can I still feel God in that encounter? Does it have to be fate, kismet, destiny, karma or God’s plan? Can circumstances just happen? Circumstances that are not at all fake, but not quite destiny? Can we still glimpse God in those moments?

Is it delusional to believe God doesn’t orchestrate, but seizes opportunities? I don’t think so.

What’s the downside to believing that?

I don’t think there is any downside.

What’s the benefit of doing so?

Hope.

Hope is the benefit.

How do we cultivate that hope? That's what truly I’m interested in because the alternative is crumbling and dying from grief over the fact that God didn’t show up. But I can’t crumble because I have experienced miracles. God has shown up. So I try to find meaning in the meaningless and I have hope.

Hope has helped me believe that God has to be standing back, watching, rooting for us, loving us all.

Do things really have to be orchestrated by God to be meaningful or is there some middle ground where I decide to make meaning out of chance? Does it really have to be all or nothing? I’ve come to think that almost nothing in life is black and white, but that we live in shades of gray.

So why would this be any different?

Blakelee Ellis

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The Mother’s Room

by Caroline

As I lean back in the velvet chair of the mother’s room,

I anxiously look around. Just six weeks postpartum, I’m still learning to breastfeed—as much as my baby is. I debate whether I need to use a cover and settle on a strategically placed burp cloth. When I hear the door open, I scramble to cover up more, but relax when I s…

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by Cynthia Winward

Most of you know that the Church worked perfectly well for me

until the age of 40. I went to EFY (Especially for Youth, a type of youth summer camp), graduated from early-morning seminary (daily scripture class for high school kids), drove to stake dances all over the Los Angeles area, played the piano in Young Women, served on youth councils, and the list goes on. And like many of you, I also grew up singing ‘I Hope They Call Me on a Mission.’

I wanted to serve a mission. I loved the Church with every fiber of my being. (Sorry, I had to say that.) I was an extrovert. I loved talking. And I wanted to share the True Gospel with everyone I could. Until then, I invited friends to church activities, seminary, and even gave a Book of Mormon to a dear friend.

Add to that, my patriarchal blessing which talks about missionary work. A lot. It didn’t specifically mention serving a formal mission, but it had phrases like this: “I bless you to understand languages of this earth, those that are necessary for you to bear witness of the truthfulness of the gospel.” And also, “There are those who live in spiritual darkness who will come into the glorious light of the gospel because of your light and testimony.” I just knew I would be the kind of missionary to change lives for the better!

But here’s something I knew deep down but never dared say out loud. My parents would never be able to financially spare the $400 dollars a month it cost in the 1990s to send out another missionary. (With inflation that is the equivalent of $944 today in 2025.) When my older brother went on a mission, I remember the financial discussions in my family. Various relatives had been contacted to see if they could donate a few dollars a month to his mission fund. I didn't come from a family of savers, or rather, we didn’t have the luxury of saving money. My parents worked hard, hard, hard for our family of seven. My dad worked maintenance in a grocery warehouse in Los Angeles and my mom cleaned houses.

By the time I was old enough to babysit, I paid for most of my clothing by babysitting loads of hours a week. The summers of 1986 and 1987 were also spent living weeks at a time at my grandmother’s to earn money by dusting her thousands of knick-knacks. That money always went towards the new school year—clothes, P.E. uniforms, team basketball shoes, and later on to car insurance and gas money.

When it came time to apply to college, I was shocked to be turned down for a Pell Grant, so student loans are how I financed tuition and books. Once in college, I also worked as a cashier on BYU campus to pay for food and rent. I still remember that I lived on $20/week for food and entertainment. (In other words, no entertainment.)

Basically, there was never a dime to spare. I lived hand to mouth like most college students. It’s also worth mentioning that because I had student loans, I was pretty sure I would have to start making payments if I did leave school to serve a mission. So many obstacles!

In 1995 (the year I turned 21) a mission would’ve cost me around $8,000. (That’s $16,000 dollars in today’s dollars, with inflation.) I think I always knew that a mission wouldn’t be a financial possibility for a girl like me. And I wasn’t wrong. Years later when my baby brother served a mission at age 22, he too had to have family members supplement costs. However, some family members never did pay what they promised so “debt” piled up in the ward under his name. After my brother returned, the clerk or bishop finally came to my family and said they needed to pay his debt. My youngest sister had a full-time job by then so she took a significant amount out of her savings account to pay the mission debt.

A few years ago my husband, Paul, was the stake clerk. He noticed that several wards had missionaries with deficit amounts, meaning current and also returned missionaries had “debt,” just like my brother. Some of these missionaries had been home for years and their families had since moved out of our stake! Did you know that if a missionary’s parents move while she is on her mission and that family has missionary “debt,” the new ward’s bishop can choose to accept that mission debt or not? Why would a bishop ever accept debt? Knowing that, it’s easy to see how wards can be saddled with debt years after missionaries come home and their families move.

In addition to missionary debt, Paul also noticed several wards had ward missionary fund surpluses. Surpluses happen when ward members contribute, for example, $10 a month for years on end to the ward missionary fund, but there are no “needy” missionaries being sent out from that ward. Paul, ever the CPA, decided to contact bishops, via the ward clerks in the “surplus wards,” to ask if they would be willing to help missionaries in need (ahem, in debt) from other wards in our stake. Several wards agreed, but some did not. The wards that agreed transferred their missionary fund surplus to the stake and then Paul transferred that money to needy wards, zeroing out debt that had been on the books for years.

I have no idea if every American missionary has to pay for their own mission, or if all wards go into debt if something goes wrong and the missionary can’t finish paying, but I do know that in other countries the Church will pay for entire missions. No questions asked. My daughter-in-law is from Mexico and the entire cost of her mission was paid for by the Church. In the US, prospective missionaries are required—in their mission applications—to list how they will be paying for their mission.

The financial burden to me and my family was out of reach in the 90s but it’s much worse today. In today’s US economy the median cost of a house has increased 93%—in just the last ten years! And since the dinosaur days when I was in college in the 90s, tuition has increased 435%. How can we continue to burden young adults and their families by asking them to fund their missions in addition to giving 10% of their gross pay1 to the church in tithing? How are families supposed to do all that and also pay for housing and tuition?2

Money kept me from even planning to serve a mission. Like I said, I was too afraid to even say it out loud. Just like I knew study abroad programs were not financially possible for students like me, I also knew that a mission wasn’t a realistic possibility either, not without severely burdening my family like it did when my brothers served missions. In a church that has billions in investments, shell companies, land and assets, money should never be what stops a willing young adult from serving. After all, serving a mission is free labor on behalf of the organization, so at the very least shouldn’t the organization bear the cost? I hope that going forward our church can at least consider making big changes to the cost of missions so that all young adults, no matter where they are from on the globe, can serve missions if they choose.

Cynthia Winward

Please enjoy this poetry edition of Say More. We thought it was perfect for a midsummer read.

I’m An Interpreter, Too

by Kaitlyn

I’m sitting in the pews highly conscious of my daughters beside me. The sister across the aisle is deaf, and I soak in the beauty of her receiving the service in her own language. And then I realize: I’m doing that, too.

I interp…

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by Susan Hinckley

There’s a lot to be said for just doing things the way you want to do them.

On my walk the other day I came across a desire path.1 I noticed it mostly because I hadn’t thought about that phrase desire path for a long time, and as my brain registered the shortcut I remembered those words with satisfaction. I’m not sure when I first heard that description, but I liked it immediately. As a person who’s spent my life insisting no one gets to tell me what to do, I take satisfaction in doing even the most mundane things the way I do because it’s the way I want to do them. It’s kind of a personality flaw, really—sometimes I’m just insisting I know a better way when I absolutely do not. In many cases my way is probably not the best way, but I do it that way anyway. I guess it’s the principle of the thing. I prefer to travel my life via a route that feels like I chose—if not actually created—it.

I don’t belong to a church that respects desire paths though; in fact, quite the opposite. I belong to the church of the covenant path.

He marked the path and led the way, and ev’ry point defines…

We’ve probably all sung this hymn line a thousand times, suggesting that Jesus already showed us exactly where and how to walk, and we’re required to follow Him exactly, if we want to get where we’re supposed to be going. It’s not an overstatement to say that Latter-day Saints insist there’s one way to heaven, and we give a collective side-eye to anyone we see cutting across the grass. In fact, we dismiss whole denominations of those we perceive to be short-cutters: anyone who leans too enthusiastically on grace, for instance, or who thinks they’re “praying” when they’re reciting, or whose prayers don’t look anything like we’re convinced prayers must look. Anyone who picks love over obedience or mercy over justice in that age-old argument. Anyone who sings a song we don’t hear as sacred. Anyone who ignores our covenant path to make their own way through this life.

Our church insists that Jesus staked out the sidewalk, and our leaders have been pouring concrete ever since. That concrete is meant to end the debate.

We call this ongoing restoration. But what about ongoing creation? I mean like the difference between making America great again, and making America great. Who wants to be restored to any “greatness” that wasn’t ever that great for a lot of people? Great as defined by one specific bunch of white men in _____ (pick your date and place)?

I want the kind of greatness we’ve never seen yet, a kind that asks us to be more than we’ve known how to be, to do things differently than we’ve ever done them. Greatness that is for all of us here now, but greatness that also looks for better ways forward.

And if we’re talking about church, are we restoring the one that originally sidelined women? How about the one that conducted the crusades? I’m betting every iteration of Christianity has claimed to follow divine guidance. Our church describes it as restoring the one Jesus Himself started, but…did he? I don’t remember Jesus doing most of the things we insist are essential now.

I want restoration that meets this moment by creating a church more expansive than anything we have yet come up with. Restoration that weaves our billions of disparate human paths together into such a wide and willing net, it’s capable of gathering any- and everyone walking this planet, no matter how or where it finds us.

Both those visions of restoration require ongoing creation, a nimble way of moving and willingness to walk in any new direction the present moment may point. Being ready to ignore the old sidewalk in favor of a better way, even if we’re the first to walk it, feels obvious to me. No one’s ever lived in this exact world before. Why would we insist old ways are the best—even only—way to go?

Here’s the thing about desire paths, which is why I love them: they very often ignore a path that’s been laid out by someone else in favor of a different route to the same destination. Desire paths opt for the grass even though some transportation or landscape designer has insisted in concrete that the sidewalk is the correct way to go. My favorite description says this:

“Where the designed way is often straight and rectilinear, the desire path bends and flows. It offers grace rather than instruction.
“Paved roads show us where we ought to go, but desire paths are made when we step off the road and let our hearts decide the way. They seek out the most direct connection between where we are and where we wish to be. Worn by the pressure of passing feet, they’re declarations of a kind: there is another way.”2

No matter how specific a path the church insists we walk, when I look at the way Jesus walked through the world, I see more desire-path than covenant-path. Dust, not concrete.

I see him stop and talk to whomever he wants, whether or not the people with him think that’s a good idea. I see him lag behind when he feels like it, even if it’s going to get him in trouble with his parents. I see him separate himself from the crowd when he needs a little peace and quiet, rest and rejuvenation. “Come, follow me,” he says, but he doesn’t give us a lot of specific directions on how to do it. He doesn’t say, “First do this, then do this, then do this, and it’ll take you straight back to God!”

There’s no list of boxes to tick. It’s more like gesturing toward something very big, so big and so find-able we won’t be able to miss it if we’ll just keep walking His direction.

Grace rather than instruction.

To me, marking the path and leading the way Jesus-style looks more like stopping to have a conversation with one person or healing another, asking some questions or telling a few stories, with an expectation that listeners can draw their own conclusions. Why do you think that is?

Why do you think we’re left to figure out for ourselves the best way to get where Jesus wants us to go? Why did his footprints mark a path through dust?

I think it’s because if there is anything humans might call a covenant path, God knew it must be, first and foremost, a desire path. We’d have to want to find our way, but also be willing to strike out on our own to do it. Because walking through our very individual lives, every one of us will surely encounter many places where the sidewalk everyone else is on isn’t getting us exactly where we need to go. Sidewalks are straightforward, but life-walks are much less so. Sometimes we have no choice but to march right off the end of our map.

People who plan public spaces know that desire paths will inevitably emerge, and often show something that works better for the people using the space than the original plan that was provided by someone else does. Users eschew the designated path in favor of forging their own way for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s time or efficiency. Sometimes it’s because the experience is better. Sometimes there’s something off the path that beckons for a closer look. And sometimes it’s because, like me, they resist being told what to do. A desire path says, “I’ll go where you want me to go … but let me get there my own way.”

When I see a desire path, I see a tangible manifestation in the world of the principle, “Yes, and—”

Yes, I can go that way, and I can also go this way.

For instance, Jesus showing me an example of how to pray doesn’t mean I can’t also go in search of God by what I call vespering—walking my meditative laps under the stars. I pray to the whole sky on those walks, because I discern more answers in a dark expanse than I’ve ever received from my bedroom ceiling. Both kinds of prayers are reaching for the same thing, but I prefer to talk to God with my feet and words at once.

Research suggests 15 journeys are all that’s required to introduce a new path through an established environment. I know that 15 nights of walking under the stars shook me loose from my own prayer life and put me on a path that could really get me somewhere. Similarly, 15 people following someone’s footsteps across the grass rather than taking the sidewalk will change the landscape. New ways can become legitimized simply because people choose them.

What could a church (or any) institution learn from observing members’ desire paths? Everything. If there’s anywhere you ought to be able to walk a personal path rather than a designated one, it’s through your own spiritual life. Before it can have any kind of real transformative effect on the people walking it, surely any covenant path must become a desire one.

What might desire paths look like for members of our church? Here are a few ideas:

Find a lot of meaning in your garments? Wear them.
Wear them however and whenever it feels right to you. Feel like a cross represents ideas that are spiritually meaningful to you? Find one you love and feel good every time you have it on.

Reading scriptures filling your cup? Do it.
Feel like you need a little something more? There are so many great writers and thinkers putting books and podcasts into the world. For the first time in history, we have the whole expanse of human thought at our fingertips 24/7! Why would we limit ourselves?

Getting what you want from your prayer life? Keep it up.
Want to switch the emphasis from communication to communion? Create new ways of expressing what’s on your heart. Or maybe just “be” with a little more intention sometimes—let God know when you’re available.

Who knows where each of our desire paths will take us? Who could know? The important part of a phrase like “ongoing-anything” is the ongoing part. Creation isn’t a one-and-done project, it’s an orientation to life and everything in it. Cutting across grass generally spits you back out on the sidewalk eventually, if that sidewalk is going the way you are. Evolution never stops, progression is eternal. It is in any universe I want to live in, anyway, and I do have all the say in how I perceive this great whole and my place within it.

We’re forever choosing where to go and how we want to get there, scanning the path ahead for the next right place for our spiritual foot to fall. Institutions will always lay concrete, but people will still choose dusty paths. Changing direction can be as easy as changing your mind. So go ahead, let your desire mark your path. Let your feet lead your way. The destination is so big, you won’t miss it no matter how you choose to walk. Just keep going.

Susan Hinckley