Say More: At Last She Writes It

No. 10 | February 2024

All Good Things Come to an End

by Cynthia Winward

I was released from my youth Sunday school teaching calling

last Sunday. I feel like I sealed my fate two months ago here on Substack by saying how excited I was to teach the Book of Mormon to the youth this year. I jinxed it.

In reality, I had been in that calling almost four years, so it was time. But I will admit that as I sat in the bishop’s office Sunday, next to my husband,* and then the bishop asked me how I felt, I burst into tears. I was crying for two reasons.

First, I was crying because in that moment I felt complete gratitude for the four years I was entrusted to teach the youth about Jesus Christ. Teaching the Doctrine and Covenants and the Old Testament wasn’t my favorite—hard to find Jesus nuggets, ya know—but I could always find a line or two that could help me focus the entire lesson on Jesus and then we were good to go. (Okay, that and I showed up for each lesson with full-size candy bars!)

In that moment, choked up with tears, I explained to my bishop that being in this calling had healed my heart.

I told him it had taken me years after a faith transition to feel like I belonged again at church. (Ugh…..I actually used that phrase—faith transition—because I wanted to normalize different stages of faith. But still, cue vulnerability hangover an hour later!) I told him that trusting me to be in the same room with the youth with open scriptures was part of that healing process. I had worked hard to keep engaging with my ward during the toughest years of my Total Churchy Meltdown. Showing up to cook at camp and help at funerals wasn’t easy, and it’s not right for everyone to keep showing up, but as an extrovert who’s lived in the same neighborhood for decades, it was what I needed. I completely realize in this moment that Bishop Roulette was the reason I could even have this teaching calling, but I do believe in expressing thanks to my leaders when they take a chance on someone who is less orthodox than the norm. I need them to know that I notice their efforts to create belonging through diversity.

My bishop is a good man who has slowwwwwly earned my trust over the last couple of years. Trust me, I’ve had him under a microscope. I am not even saying that microscope is fair, but my wounds from patriarchy run deep. Probably deeper than I have been willing to admit to myself until recently. So feeling completely comfortable explaining to him, even thanking him, for letting me be in this calling felt extremely vulnerable. I said to him, “I know I think differently than many do in the church. I have a rainbow pin on my bag, I wear pants and a cross, but I have a deep love for the teachings of Jesus Christ. And I think that kind of diversity at church is essential today. Thank you for letting me share my testimony of Him with the youth.” Like I said, my bishop has earned my trust, so it felt right to open the door to my heart just a few inches and share what is inside. Again, this isn’t right for everyone, in fact my default is usually to keep my personal beliefs under lock and key. As the amazing Jeralee Renshaw has said, once you share you can’t unshare, so proceed with caution.

Second, I cried because I’m simply going to miss these kids. I had only taught this new batch of kiddos once in January, and missed February due to travel, but we had just laid out for our class the kind of treats we would have. I am no dummy— I know that’s the most important part about teaching teenagers. Melted cheese on chips goes a long way to happy teens when class is at 2-freaking-thirty-on a Sunday afternoon. They were excited about the melted cheese.

Cynthia’s church bag dons this pin year round.

On that first Sunday in January, I read to the youth from the title page of the Book of Mormon where Mormon says, “And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men.” I said that we would spend the year together talking about the scriptures, maybe even some of those mistakes, and that all wrestle-y thoughts and questions were welcome in our class. This was a safe space. I saw one of the boys look down at my bag with my rainbow “I’ll walk with you” pin and I wondered what he was thinking.

Cynthia and her teaching partner Shea. The dynamic duo! With a pot of melted cheese behind them.

Slight confession … I guess maybe the second reason I cried is a bit egotistical. I think my teaching partner and I have been offering something unique to these kids. And it is okay to be sad about that ending. It’s been a good run, but all good things must come to an end.

*Husband Dude and I were called to teach the Self Reliance course. More on that as we proceed!

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Editor’s Note:

In Cynthia's essay she referenced opening up to her bishop in a tiny way. We get loads of comments and questions from women wondering how they handle interviews with bishops, conversations with Relief Society presidents and other leadership. We think Jeralee Renshaw has given the best advice ever about this on ALSSI Ep. 118, Living at the Edge of Inside.

You can also read the full transcript of this episode here.

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art by Sadie Harper

Finding the Sacred

by Carrie Cook

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photo by Tawna Allred

Community

by Tawna Allred

Mormon Community: I don’t know how to stay.

I don’t know how to go.

I’m good at being alone.

Memories get altered and mixed, and there are good reasons for this.

My first memory of community is church. I am 5, and I’m taken by a parent to speak in front of the Primary. I start crying and a little boy blurts, “Look! She’s scared!” I am helped back to my seat, head in hand to hide the tears. If words of comfort were offered, I don’t remember them.

School is a little easier, because at least when I am there, I can be smart. Teachers praise my good work but then leave a note scribbled on the edge my report card: she needs to come out of her shell.

Years later I’m in college, finishing my senior year. After flirting with becoming an art teacher, I decide to finish my bachelor’s degree in oil painting. I’m newly married to my opposite; a man who drives fast motorcycles and cars and is good at talking with people. I’ve traveled to Salt Lake City with a class to look at what “real world” art professionals are doing. We visit a photographer (who doesn’t show us his boudoir photos because we’re from a church school) and a graphic design agency run by a woman. She has several employees and an intern. The intern is a girl tucked away in a corner, working on an assignment. Her boss says she does good work, but she is quiet and doesn’t participate much with the other employees. In a more private conversation, I hear her say she probably won’t hire her because of this.

It makes me sad.

Her fate was determined by social rules instead of her credentials. I knew the exact same thing could happen to me.

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I’m taking the reins back to a life that has felt dictated by others in so many ways.

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Fast-forward to my thirties. Fate and a decision to re-engage my creativity allow me to change course. After another round of school (this time online), I start my own interior design firm. I don’t really have a choice. There aren’t any design firms to hire me in small-town Wyoming. With help and grit, I forge my new path with three kids in tow. I’m taking the reins back to a life that has felt dictated by others in so many ways. It gives me confidence and growth I never could have imagined.

It’s also about this time that I read Susan Cain’s book “Quiet.”

Another realization hits: I’m not broken. And it wasn’t just the shy girl at the graphic design agency that was playing in a world built for extroverts; there are many more people like me. Almost half of any community that has ever gathered!

I finally understood why church was exhausting.

It was why I hated being in front of others but could talk for hours with anyone that was willing to dive into deep and interesting things.

Now I’m 42. I only have one child left at home. I’ve weathered a slow faith transition for the last 10 years … or has it been my whole life?

A year or two ago, when I put myself in counseling to wrestle the big-life emotions that were coming with an empty nest and a changed faith, I was asked if I had a support system if I quit church. I smiled and said yes. I have good friends; women who I know will stick by my side no matter what.

On the flip side, I have no community at church that pulls me back. For years I’ve extricated myself from their systems and expectations. I quit visiting teaching (aka ministering) in my Susan Cain years, knowing how much mental energy was spent thinking of picking up a phone or sitting in a living room with Ensign messages I didn’t want to teach. I have a very narrow window of callings I’ll accept, and many of the leadership know about it. Every new Relief Society president tries tactics to reel me in, but I lay down my “no’s” like the yellow stripes of an un-ending highway.

Church doesn’t feel like home, but it’s complicated.

I raised my kids to believe in my orthodox days, and while I’ve introduced nuance in their teenage years, they want to stay. So I sit in the pews week after week, hating most of the messages voiced over the pulpit and wishing I was in the mountains instead.

Church, 99% of the time, seems like one big pseudo-community.

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The next argument goes like this: but we need you. You are so talented. You can bless so many lives. To which I say, I am. It takes a different shape than the average Mormon, but I am.

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“What is diagnostic of pseudo-community is the minimization, the lack of acknowledgment, or the ignoring of individual differences. Nice people are so accustomed to being well-mannered that they are able to deploy their good manners without even thinking about what they are doing. In pseudo-community it is as if every individual member is operating according to the same book of etiquette. The rules of this book are: Don’t do or say anything that might offend someone else; if someone does say something that offends, annoys, or irritates you, act as if nothing has happened and pretend you are not bothered in the least; and if some form of disagreement should show signs of appearing, change the subject as quickly and smoothly as possible—rules that any good hostess knows. It is easy to see how these rules make for a smooth functioning group. But they also crush individuality, intimacy, and honesty, and the longer it lasts the duller it gets.” {M. Scott Peck, A Different Drum}

Church, for me, has been dull for decades.

I know that others point to the fact that we create our own circumstances. Trust me. I’ve heard it over and over my whole life. It’s some version of “coming out of my shell” that they think will solve everything.

But I ask, what are you trying to solve?

I’m not broken.

I’m quiet.

I’m good at being alone and that makes other people uncomfortable.

The next argument goes like this: but we need you. You are so talented. You can bless so many lives.

To which I say, I am. It takes a different shape than the average Mormon, but I am.

I don’t feel at home in Relief Society, but if a kid feels like an outsider in my primary class, they gravitate to me. In some invisible universe, we see each other’s discomfort. I open up a safe space, and they rush into its shade.

There! you might say. That’s why we go to church. That’s why we need you.

But I ask back, do you not see that people are uncomfortable here? Why do you think this is good for us?

Recently the Faith Matters community picked up the question, “Why church?”

There was a lady that mentioned something I can’t stop wrestling with. “I’m really smug and self-righteous sitting alone with my books,” she says into the camera. I recognize myself in her words, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I am good at being alone.

I can’t say that I’ve learned anything for decades from the pulpit at church, but I did get to see my teenage son help an elderly woman to her car, lifting her as gently as he could out of her wheelchair and tucking her safely in her seat. He got to think about someone else that day.

“How is community possible when … divisive dynamics are at work? The question assumes that community can happen only where there are no divisions of status and power—but such places do not exist. If community is to emerge, it will have to be in the midst of inequalities that appear whenever two or three are gathered. To argue that [divisions] must be eliminated before community can emerge is to assume a utopian alternative nowhere to be found: it is to give up on community altogether.” {Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach}

Have I given up on community?

I keep hearing people lament about friends and family leaving the church, as if their lives will now be one of ruin and pointlessness.

But what if it’s a better path for them?

What if it is more like Richard Rohr, who says “many people…are finding….solidarity in think tanks, support groups, study groups, projects building houses for the poor, healing circles, or mission organizations. So perhaps without fully recognizing it, we are often heading in the right directions these days. We are creating para-church organizations, and some new studies claim that if we look at the statistics, we will see that Christians are not leaving Christianity as much as they are realigning with groups that live Christian values in the world, instead of gathering to again hear the readings, recite the creed, and sing songs on Sunday. In that sense, actual Christian behavior might just be growing more than we think. Remember, it is not the brand name that matters. It is that God’s heart be made available and active on this earth.” {Universal Christ}

But does solidarity stretch us? Didn’t Jesus deliberately put himself where he was least welcome in his own religious community? Do I believe that’s how I turn into a better human being?

Next Sunday I’ll sit in the pews again, rolling those questions around and around in my head.

I don’t know that there is an answer.

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Sometimes I hate it here

by Blakelee Ellis

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Perhaps the Church is Imperfect by Divine Design

by Miki

I have long believed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect,

but that the Church organization is not.

To me, the Church is just an organization run by imperfect people to deliver the perfect Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Its imperfection doesn’t make it any less good, it just means it’s run by human beings with free agency and a knack for messing up sometimes.

Of course any organization run by human beings is going to have flaws because of that pesky little thing called ‘human nature.’ Even Elders Uchtdorf and Holland have said this and conceded that the Church has made mistakes in the past (see Elder Uchtdorf’s talk “Come Join With Us” and Elder Holland’s talk “Lord I Believe”). If even they are comfortable saying our church organization carries flaws, then why wouldn’t I be too?

Even so, many members do seem to equate saying ‘the Church is imperfect’ to saying ‘God is imperfect.’ The reasoning goes as such: this is God’s church, and God is perfect, and God cannot lead us astray—therefore the organization God created is flawless and cannot be imperfect. To say the Church is imperfect is heresy.

But the longer I ponder this, the more I’ve begun to wonder: is it possible that God purposefully created the Church to be imperfect? Could our Heavenly Parents have meant for the Church organization to have flaws, make mistakes, and do wrong occasionally, for our own growth and benefit? If so, could that allow for more space to accept imperfections without concern of heresy?

Here’s how I see it: our Heavenly Parents—who are perfect—created us, some very imperfect human beings. The reason for this was made clear in scripture: “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man,” i.e. to perfect us and make us like Them. Apparently, the best way to do this was to create imperfect, mistake-prone beings who become better people through the process of sinning and repenting. Creating something flawed was deliberately part of the plan to make something perfected later.

Why should the Church organization be excluded from that?

The Church is imperfect because humans are imperfect, and that is by design. That’s why we’re here on earth. We are supposed to make mistakes, learn, and grow. The Church organization is allowed to—perhaps even meant to—make mistakes for the same exact reason. The Church is a giant group project: we grow by prayerfully addressing our collective mistakes and becoming better saints in the process. It’s the best way to learn, and our Heavenly Parents know this. Perhaps They designed the Church to be an active work-in-progress for this exact purpose.

After all, if both scripture and temple ordinance is to believed, isn’t it part of our purpose on Earth to learn how to rule, reign, and govern like God does? How can we do this without messing up sometimes? We can’t—we need to be allowed to rule, reign, and govern the Church with the expectation that we will mess up sometimes, all so that we can repent and learn from those mistakes. This church is the “training wheels” version of the Kingdom of God, and we need to learn how to run it somehow. An imperfect, mistake-prone earthly church would seem to be part of God’s perfect, agency-centered design!

Grappling with the Church’s imperfections grew me as a person; maybe that was the point.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that at least for me, grappling with the Church’s imperfections actually made me a much more compassionate, Christ-centered, God-trusting person than ever before. Learning how to give grace to the leaders who try their best but still fall short, learning how to mourn with those who were hurt, and learning how to still trust God through it all has been quite the refiner’s fire for me. It has also led me to put greater faith in God instead of man, and given me a greater “spiritual ear” to hear the Spirit. All of that was hard work—it came with a lot of heartache, soul-searching, and pleading prayers—but it was worth it. I’ve grown so much.

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This personal growth I’ve experienced directly due to the Church’s imperfections is what leads me to believe that perhaps, just maybe, this is what God wanted all along.

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This personal growth I’ve experienced directly due to the Church’s imperfections is what leads me to believe that perhaps, just maybe, this is what God wanted all along. Maybe we aren’t being “led astray” when a church leader occasionally makes a mistake, because we are meant to turn to God and grow from that experience. Maybe acknowledging our collective failings and seeking to improve the body of Christ IS the Lord’s work, not a hindrance to it. Maybe the ability for the Church to make mistakes is meant to be one of the greatest teaching tools of all time, not a colossal stumbling block.

Maybe, just maybe, the Church was divinely designed to be perfectly imperfect.

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Contributors:

Cynthia Winward

prefers salty over sweet, TV over movies, and early mornings over late nights. She is enjoying the good life as an empty nester with her husband Paul. Hopefully you also know her as the co-host of the podcast, At Last She Said It.

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Carrie Cook

is a full-time busy body. She loves her job, traveling, spending time with her family, exploring the outdoors, listening to LDS adjacent podcasts, exercising, and reading. She recently picked back up writing poetry and short pieces to process her faith expansion. 

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Tawna Allred

is a multi-passionate creative. She draws and paints, designs homes, takes photos, arranges words, runs mountains, and works with horses.

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Blakelee Ellis

is an energetic, creative, extrovert who loves dance, photography, cooking and baking. Her favorite form of self care is reading a good book in a comfy chair. She continues to deconstruct, grow, love and learn more about herself. She has been married for 15 years and has three children.

Blakelee is so thankful to be a part of the ALSSI team and connect with so many other women.

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Miki

is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She is also an LGBTQ+ ally, advocate for women, and an avid asker of questions. Professionally, Miki’s a video game developer, and after work enjoys toying around with various crafts, collecting sparkly objects, writing, and hanging out with her spunky little 2-year-old weirdo daughter.

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