Exponent II's Blog, page 116

White Mormon Moms (and Others) Turn Red Over ‘Turning Red’

Have you seen the new Disney movie ‘Turning Red’? The movie features a Chinese Canadian family and stars a 13-year-old protagonist who tries to navigate puberty, friendship, and her relationship to her family – especially her mom – while battling a secret, hereditary quirk: when she gets emotional, she turns into a red panda. Although my teen years are well behind me, I thought the film perfectly captured so many of the feelings of adolescence: excitement, humiliation, awkwardness, and more.

And although I am Korean American rather than Chinese Canadian, I found so many cultural elements relatable as a second generation Asian immigrant: the tension between Western teen independence and Eastern emphasis on respecting elders, the genuine gratitude for the sacrifices your parents have made and the obligations you feel to contribute to your household, the emphasis on food – not just the making of it but remembering your loved ones’ favorite dishes and using flavors that celebrate your heritage – as a symbol of love. (If you need another example of this, I highly recommend the heartfelt memoir Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.)

Unfortunately, many white critics and white Mormon (and Christian in general) moms appeared to miss all the meaningful parts of ‘Turning Red’ and instead voiced criticisms that revealed unreasonable, prudish cultural expectations for children and deeply ingrained double standards. (The best review I’ve seen yet is actually from an Asian American teenage girl, and it couldn’t be more different from the critical review examples I’ll discuss below.)

Part of the movie alludes indirectly to the beginning of the main character’s menstruation, with the mother using hilarious euphemisms like “Has the red peony bloomed?” and offering pads. This led many moms to comment online that the movie was “sick” or “indoctrinating” children. One need only browse the one-star Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews (which are much lower than the critics’ reviews) to see this sentiment echoed over and over again by self-described mothers seeking to protect their children. What exactly are they “protecting” their children from? A basic knowledge of feminine hygiene and reproductive health practices? A lack of shame about ordinary biological processes outside of their control?

One Christian mom complained that ‘Turning Red’ “misses the mark” and “is not relatable to boys or men,” reinforcing the harmful idea that female stories are for female audiences only while male stories are for everyone. Others called the movie “limiting” or “narrow” because it focused on an Asian girl. Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor at Biola University, rightly identified such views as “the centering of whiteness” and continued, “It’s not like I could relate to Ratatouille… I didn’t even know Ratatouille was a dish. It’s not like we’re not exposed to things that don’t speak to us personally.”

Film critic Phil Villareal not only refers to ‘Turning Red’ as a “B-Team Pixar effort” but says it “can’t come close to…the emotional sensitivity” of ‘Up’ or ‘Inside Out’ – two excellent movies, to be sure, but ones that not-so-coincidentally feature white American stories. It is profoundly dehumanizing to be told that your stories are too foreign, too removed from common human experience for people who don’t look like you or eat the same food or speak the same language to possibly find anything valuable in them.

Others complained that the movie teaches children to rebel against their parents, including a now-viral post from an alleged Mormon mom. This criticism neglects the fact that distinguishing oneself as a unique and whole person apart from one’s parents is a crucial part of maturing and growing into a fully capable, independent adult. It’s highly hypocritical to defend the right of an eight-year-old to exercise agency and choose to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then reject the right of an older, more mature child to assert their agency because it does not match up with exactly what the parents want. Agency isn’t agency if there is no option to choose the alternative.

I also highly doubt the same intolerance for “Soooooo much rebellion encouraged” as described in the Mormon mom post applies to other, whiter Disney classics such as ‘The Little Mermaid’, where the main character runs away from home, gives up her voice to a witch, and crosses over to a dangerous world she and nobody she knows has ever experienced before so she can become the permanent partner of a man she doesn’t know. It seems to me sneaking to a boy band concert, as the main character does in ‘Turning Red’, is much more tame in comparison.

‘Turning Red’ resonated with me but is an important film for representation that everyone regardless of gender or race should be able to enjoy. It brings up topics like menstruation, puberty, and adolescent independence in respectful and funny ways that can serve as a wonderful starting point for wholesome and rewarding conversations between parents and youth – if the parents allow them. In my view, the panic from Mormon and Christian mom corners of the Internet and others says more about white and male resistance to diverse stories and a harmfully puritanical approach to sex and relationships than anything else.

Guest Post: Praying With My Daughter

Guest post by Bryn Neenos. Bryn is a teaching lecturer in composition, partner to an excellent spouse, and parent to three whole human beings who spurred her continuing journey to know Heavenly Mother. She should be writing right now, but is most likely distracted by counting down the days to the next season of Ted Lasso, a good book, or a walk in the woods.

Image credit: “Reaching out” by andrew and hobbes is marked with CC BY-ND 2.0.

It’s a unique feature of two-year-old toddlers that anything worth doing is worth doing twice, or three times, or unlimited times. So, somewhere between twelve months and two years, the nightly rituals of bedtime, the bath, the book, the finality of the shutting door, began to include first one prayer, then two. We shifted from my ritual whisper, “you are brave, you are strong, and it is time for you to go to sleep,” to one prayer, to “one more, mama.”

She invited. In that liminal space, I found opportunity. I prayed first for all the ordinary things (please Lord, help everyone to sleep through the night tonight), while the other prayer, the second prayer, became something else entirely. Something I hadn’t necessarily intended. It became a search for the Mother. My Mother. Our Mother.

Standing in the darkened room, next to the white wooden crib, with my tousled, damp, and footy-jammied baby in my arms, her soft arms flung loosely around my neck or folded into themselves, I voiced a prayer for my impossibly perfect daughter. Dear Heavenly Father, I am searching for my Mother in Heaven. Will you help me to find her? Where is She? Who is She? How can we become like Her? Please, can I find Her?

At odd intervals, when it was my turn to put the baby to bed, against the racket going on next door with the twins who would rather play with Legos than read and pray, I shut out the noise and held my littlest one close. The shadows from the streetlight shone through the blinds and striped the purple polka dot wall. These were the walls I had painted while she lay heavy in my belly, only a promise then. The quote I painstakingly copied, traced, and framed hung above our heads: Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History. My feet stood steady on a hard laminate floor, always strewn over with the detritus of the daylight, but I knew my way in the dark and never tripped between the lamp and the crib. And then the words came.

These were not the prayers I said over the heads of my older children, but somehow, with her, the need became urgent. It was for her, and it was for me. My heart was singing a song only my daughter and I could sing together, yearning for the future and lamenting the invisibility of the past. What I did not know I had in my youth, my daughter might know. She will know.

With the whispered words came answers, little wisps. I held my breath so as not to blow them away. A text from a friend with a link to art that brought tears to my eyes. A website here, a little gift there. A scholarly work. A book of poetry. The phrases that came to my lips–my heavenly parents–without realizing that wasn’t what I would have said before. When did the change begin? When did I begin to know? When did that knowing flower into doing and being? It wasn’t the first prayer. It hasn’t been the last prayer yet. It’s just me and my daughter, praying.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.

Guest Post: Upon Finding Mother Eve in a Bornean Jungle #ReconstructingFaith

Guest post by Janine Weaver Chase. Janine graduated from BYU in communicative disorders and education. She has an extensive background in integrative, holistic therapies and has worked in that field for 30 years. She has a great husband, six fascinating children, three children-in-law, and 13 grandchildren who light up her life. She lives in Orem, Utah. 

Leaning against a tree, deep in the jungles of Borneo, an unguarded group of orangutans gave me a glimpse of pure patriarchy that also helped me to see the majesty of Mother. 

It was 2015 and I had traveled miles upriver with an international group of caregivers who had been observing this tribe of orangutans for years. In the primal essence of this space—the jungle, the river, the animals in their native habitat—it was as if I had entered the Garden of Eden. I felt home in a way I had never felt before.  

There is something about orangutans that calls forth a connection with them that is millennia old. The Indonesian translation of the word orangutan means, “man of the forest.” Among their most observable traits is the strength of their patriarchal order. Over the years our group had watched their hierarchy play out in intense fighting, domination, protection, submission, capitulation, and in the creation and nurturing of offspring. 

On this particular visit, as I melded into the tree observing and meditating on what the orangutans had to teach me, something opened in my senses. I saw a light come down from where the ruling male was perched in the branches above me through the trunk into the roots and into me. It coursed its way through my whole body. It brought with it a phrase I could audibly hear with my inner ear, “This is what true patriarchy is.” 

It was somehow obvious to me that this message wasn’t coming from Tom, our name for the “king” in his lofty perch. It was coming from the wholeness of the place, a wholeness that was perceivable because the vicissitudes of civilization hadn’t yet disturbed the true order of life here. 

Held by that wholeness, I felt an almost overpowering sense of love that stretched out across the universe and, miraculously, included me as an integral part of it. In the depth and clarity of this oneness, I now knew this love to be the essence and power of God the Father. Gone was the angry, judgmental, measuring God that we have created and wired into our DNA through centuries of seeking to explain the narratives our lives. No, the Father God I could perceive in this place embraced power and yet surrender, was equally at home in light and shadow, and created intense connection that pulsed with gentle detachment.

Since that time this experience, as difficult as it is to give language, has left its mark deep within me and has forged a new path of the masculine through the jungles of life that simply has no attachment outside of anything that doesn’t speak of love, support, and oneness.

But there is more to this oneness than just patriarchy. 

As I blended in with this jungle home—the orangutans sauntering around brushing shoulders with me as though I was one of them—my meditation was stirred with another thought, a question.  

“And what do you call her?”

“Eve.”

“And why do you call her Eve?’’

“Because she is the Mother of All Living.”

The phrase shot through me with an intensity of light that reverberated through every cell in my body. I could hardly breathe with the power of it. It was as if Eve, the Mother of All Living, had revealed herself before me and awakened me to my divine presence, power, and majesty.

In the power of this maternal light, I felt a charge to step more fully into my mother role. 

There, amongst the trees and ferns with the rich damp smell of the earth and the humming song of the cicadas, I felt all Nature was poised to assist me—and all women—in fulfilling this role. I felt as if I was being told to pay attention. That this is the time to become who we always have been. In the light of this Edenic place, I could clearly see that as women take on the true expression of Mother, the fruit born will be beyond measure.

So how does the truth of matriarchy look in the jungle and garden of my daily life?

I am a healer, or rather, I do healing work and have done for the last 30 years. I have a college degree and have taken dozens of courses in healing modalities. I have witnessed healing in many forms. Each story has shaped my story. The road has not been easy for me. Occasionally people have felt threatened by my work. But I have always had support and encouragement from my family and friends, even bishops and a beloved mission president.

I have a gift. To be true to the mother in me is to state that as a matter of fact. I have been taught to develop this healing gift by some of the world’s leading healers and, more importantly, by Spirit. I have fumbled my way through breathtaking challenges and heartache, but the healing I share is always respectful of whatever anyone else brings to the table, including the strength of priesthood power.

So how do I step into what it means for me to be a “Mother of All Living” with authority and grace? And how do I do this in concert with my beloved patriarchal other? How do we learn to do this sacred dance together? 

One answer for me is to be present, moment to moment, with an open heart, taking on the true message of the Atonement—the divine love flowing from the bitter cup that Christ drank for us in the Garden of Gethsemane. I can see the power of this Love—of Christ’s Atonement—as I participate or witness true healing. In whatever form, healing one nourishes and heals us all. This is the true song of the Universe.

There are examples of this all around us. Recently, a friend with stage four cancer was in a great deal of pain. Another friend and I were in a frantic search to find a solution for her. I reached out to a third woman to see if she had the product we were looking for. She didn’t, but asked if she could help. I thanked her, but there was nothing else I could think of for her to do. But then I felt to stop and get quiet. I heard the phrase, “She has healing hands. Ask her.” I wondered if she would even know what I was talking about, but I texted her back, “You have healing hands. Imagine putting them on the abdomen and soothing it.” She said she would. Within 15 minutes, my friend with cancer texted that the crisis was over.

I, with all my training, couldn’t assist her at that moment, but the Spirit witnessed to me that there is a reservoir of healing for us to access. This woman stepped up and into who we always have been as women. There are countless ways to witness or perform this. And it doesn’t always require “doing,” but sometimes just being still and listening to that song that heals and harmonizes with every living thing.

On occasion I feel an orangutan brush by my shoulder and remind me of what it feels like to be in a jungle that is alight with wholeness. As women, it is time for us to step into and fulfill the role of be “Mothers of All Living”—with absolute love—knowing that we are in partnership with our Savior, Jesus Christ.

This post is part of the series, Reconstructing Faith. Find more from this series here.

Reconstructing Faith: Bishop Roulette

When all of the COVID lockdowns rang out, we were prepared. A handful of years previous to COVID we lived a three hours’ drive from the nearest church branch, thus, we were given permission for church at home. We already had non-disposable sacrament plates and cups, and we were disciplined enough to have regular meetings at home. Most importantly, we already knew it was way easier to do “home church” in casual wear than it was to wear suits, heels and pantyhose sitting at home.

Our new bishop, in a ward that was walking distance from our house, did not agree. He wanted us onscreen, on time, wearing Sunday best.

***

We moved into his ward a year before global Zoom church, happy to no longer be a distant family in a district branch. In connecting with us on Facebook, ward members quickly scoured our profiles. Before we set foot in the building, the primary president reported to the bishop that we did not vote in concert with her (and the bishop) in regard to the recent amendment of the Australian Marriage Act. The amendment occurred a handful of months before our move, and redefined marriage as “the union of 2 people to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life,” thereby removing gendered pronouns(1).

Within months of our attending this ward, every member of my family seemed to cross the bishop in one way or another. My children did not pray on demand in primary; we used phrases like “heavenly parents,” and “we treat everyone with respect and courtesy ” which resulted in lectures and awkward interactions with the bishop.  When I “contradicted” this bishop by quoting the prophet, he demanded to know how long I had been a member of the church- as if length of time of church membership made him more knowledgeable than me (and the prophet?). He hated us. And he did not hide his feelings.

By this time, COVID was beginning to hit the international media radar. Breathings of church and temple closures were wildly circulating by this time, so, securing childcare, I absconded away one afternoon for a much needed session at the temple. “Your recommend’s been cancelled,” said the man at the desk. I was dumfounded. “Yep. I ran it twice. It’s not expired, it’s cancelled.” The Temple President offered to phone the hateful bishop, but I requested they call the Stake President instead. He did, and within moments, I had verbal approval to attend the temple.

In the days following, I made contact with the Stake President, who was by that time, very stressed about sending missionaries home before state and international boarders closed. I felt like the least I could do is be patient while the Stake President attended to much more important needs. Soon the missionaries from overseas were safely headed out of the country, just as Australian missionaries began to arrive home. The Stake President contacted us, confirming that my temple recommend was cancelled by the  hateful bishop, sans reason. My husband’s recommend remained the same. Only mine was “cancelled.” Without addressing this, the Stake President noted that the temple recommend questions had been “revised” at the October 2019 General Conference, meaning that my temple recommend could not readily be restored: I would need to be re-interviewed. By the hateful bishop.

With lockdowns, I decided to wait until things were “back to normal” before chasing a temple recommend. In the meantime, we began logging in to zoom church. In these meetings, the hateful bishop would find some reason to contact me- commenting on my appearance,  signing in late, whatever. It took just two meetings like this for my husband and children to refuse to listen to or participate in zoom church any more. We turned church off.

That did not help. The hateful messages continued for me only. My husband was sure that in part it was blatant sexism as the bishop only even emailed or spoke to him like a “good ol’ boy.” But my husband was done; he stated that if the bishop ever set foot on our property, he would punch the man. I was done, too.

I deleted as much information as I could from the church app, and blocked the bishop from everything we could. We were sickened to find that no matter what we did, the bishop still had access to my phone number, email address, home address, our wedding anniversary, my mother’s maiden name,  our birth dates and more. In addition to this, the hateful bishop claimed to have contacted all of my former bishops about *my* atrociousness. This worried me that perhaps he even knew the name of the street I grew up on or other banking security-question style information. Paranoia in full swing, we contacted the church and were told that “managing” our church records was “something that the ward clerk” does. That was a lie. Anything we asked the ward clerk to remove was zombied back on our church records by the hand of hateful bishop.  The clerk told us he was powerless.

This was the final straw. My husband and I discussed resigning from the church, and agreed this was probably the only way our family would be safe. Testimonies be damned; we were being chased out of the church by a hateful bishop with the fire of the devil in his eyes. This bishop wanted to hurt us.  This bishop hated us. 

Our main concern was whether or not we would also be able to remove our children from church records; would they need to be adults in order to have their memberships cancelled?

We reached out to an old, trusted friend to ask him. We knew him from what we considered was our “home ward,” in another state. After a phone call where we shared our situation, he asked us to wait. “Let me see what I can do…” he said.

Within a couple of months, we received notification that our church records were in our “home ward.” In another state. Not just another ward within the stake we lived in, but a new ward, in a different stake, in a different STATE. It was our friend’s ward. He was a newly called bishop.  Our records change was approved by the First Presidency and Presiding Bishopric; hateful bishop could not override it. Finally.

I wept.

I wept because I felt the spirit.

For the first time.

In two years.

That tiny breath of the spirit is what keeps me in the church for now. I am taking it all one day at a time, and in no way am I ambitiously seeking anything spiritual. I have no calling, I do not bother with the temple, we no longer read the scriptures daily as a family and we don’t really do Come Follow Me. But I want to believe. If only because our “new” bishop loved us enough to contact church headquarters in the middle of a pandemic in order to keep us from resigning our membership.

Friendship. That unseen bond of love– that is what keeps me.

For now, that is enough.

P.S. We attended this ward a few weeks ago fir the first time since the pandemic. Our new bishop’s wife hugged me when she saw me– for about 5 minutes. “I am so glad you are here,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

(1)    Australian Federal Register of Legislation, Marriage Act 1961, Compilation No. 27  (accessed 27 July 2021)

This post is part of the series, Reconstructing Faith. Find more from this series here.

Values, Heavenly Mother, and Cleaning the Church

Photo by Fiona Art from Pexels

Like a leaf swirling in an eddy of a stream, a post titled It’s Time for the LDS Church to Hire Janitors Again has been stuck in my mind ever since I read it. All these weeks later, internet chatter about a stake training clamping down on talk of Heavenly Mother abruptly clarified for me the beliefs underlying the current meetinghouse cleaning system.

Wait, what? What does talk about Heavenly Mother have to do with cleaning the church? 

Let’s first consider meetinghouse cleaning. Monetary concerns were explicitly ruled out as the reason for making the now two-decades-old switch from paid professionals cleaning church meetinghouses to members cleaning meetinghouses. The reason provided at the time of the change is that cleaning would provide an opportunity for members to develop personal character and receive eternal blessings. To me this justification smells as bad as a pair of old gym shoes. I highly doubt that the presiding bishopric was sitting around thinking that adult members who give of their time and money to fill church callings were a slothful bunch who lacked opportunities for personal development. The presiding bishopric is tasked with temporal responsibilities which mostly means money. 

Cleaning is an act requiring feminine energy. Feminine energy is not the same as female or female gender roles. True, in the church female gender roles and the feminine are often thought of as being interchangeable. However, whether performed by a female or male, cleaning draws upon feminine energy. We all have energy and characteristics within us that are considered masculine and/or feminine. As an example, when I visit my acupuncturist, a male, the space is clean and calm with a subtle pleasant scent in the air. Soft textured fabric is placed on the treatment table while vibrational sounds and gentle light bathe the room. This feminine attention to the physical environment ensures the space supports healing. 

Feminine energy is healing, intuitive, nurturing, collaborative, and expressive, among other characteristics. Examples of expressions of feminine energy include writing, teaching, therapy, design, cooking and expressive arts such as dance, theater, music, and painting. Energy typically considered masculine is driven, clear, assertive, stable and logical. We could give different names to these energies or categorize them differently; I am speaking from my perspective as a white female living in the United States.

In the current church administrative structure, masculine energy and males currently hold more power and are more highly valued than feminine energy and females. That is because the current church administrative structure is a patriarchy; a system where some men hold power and make decisions for the rest of the men, all women and other people. Women rarely have power in a patriarch. Rather, as Katie Rich eloquently explains, women are limited to influence. In a patriarchy, what is the worst thing a person can be? The Mask You Live In, a documentary film, powerfully and heartbreakingly answers this question. The worst thing a person in a patriarchy can be is a girl. Don’t be a sissy. Don’t cry. Stop with the emotion. Don’t throw a ball like a girl or run like a girl. Pick yourself up. Don’t be a girl. Be a Man.

In a patriarchy, males are taught to squash their feminine energy. The feminine not being encouraged or valued by a large portion of men in the church shows up in a variety of ways from lack of concern about creating worshipful experiences in clean meetinghouses to the types of artwork approved for meetinghouses, to the structure of church meetings, to nurseries filled with old broken toys, to labeling a desire to know more about Heavenly Mother as ‘doctrinal drift’. In a patriarchy, females learn to disconnect from their bodies while males learn to disconnect from their hearts. Disconnection from the heart creates fear of the feminine. This fear of the feminine can show up as a desire to control it, hide it, and tamp it down. 

When a person, no matter their calling, eliminates monetary compensation for a feminine energy task such as cleaning the church when money is not an issue, it could be a reflection of that person’s disconnection from their heart. When a person, no matter their calling, expresses a need to control and tamp down dialogue around Heaven Mother instead of seeking for more information about Her, it could be a reflection of their fear of the feminine within themselves and others.

We are here on Earth to learn and grow; growth includes facing and wrestling with our fears. Growth also includes developing all parts of ourselves. It is a process that takes courage. The rewards are incredible though. I imagine how patient Jesus is as we are willing to, in the words Teddy Rosevelt, be the person “actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.” Developing all parts of ourselves is part of becoming fully human. Imagine how joyful the church will be when individuals and the organization as a whole value and develop both masculine and feminine characteristics. Clean chapels and more information about Heavenly Mother would be the beginning. When both feminine and masucline are valued, the possibilities of their synergistic energy creating opportunities for us to grow and heal as individuals, families, communities and a church are boundless.

Come Follow Me: Exodus 18–20 “All That the Lord Hath Spoken We Will Do”

Jethro educates Moses on the power of delegation

In Exodus 18, we see Moses take on some more prosaic leadership tasks, without the dramatic miracles highlighted in previous chapters.  His father-in-law sees his him at work and has a talk with him about his leadership style.

13 ¶And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to ajudge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.

14 And when Moses’ father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?

15 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to aenquire of God:

16 When they have a amatter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

17 And Moses’ father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good.

18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is atoo heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.

19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: aBe thou for the people to bGod-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God:

20 And thou shalt ateach them bordinances and claws, and shalt shew them the dway wherein they must ewalk, and the work that they must do.

21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people aable men, such as bfear God, cmen of truth, hating dcovetousness; and place such over them, to be erulers of thousands, and rulers of fhundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens:

22 And let them ajudge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the bburden with thee.

23 If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.

24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.

Exodus 18:13-24

Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, observed that Moses had a leadership style that could use some improvement.  This organizational chart shows how Moses was leading the people, with very few tasks delegated to anyone but himself.

Moses’ Organizational Chart

Jethro informed Moses that a leadership model that involved more of his congregation would be more effective, as represented by this organizational chart.

Jethro’s Organizational Chart






How can we apply Jethro’s advice in our own church callings and other leadership opportunities?
How did Jethro sustain Moses?




Spiritual Preparation

Let’s discuss the people in Moses’ congregation, who “stood by him from morning unto the evening” so he could help them with all of their “matters”.  Were they sustaining Moses?  I think it is clear that, at least during this time period, they respected Moses and valued his opinion, but I am not sure that their neediness could be considered “sustaining”.  Jethro was concerned that this pattern of behavior would cause Moses to “wear away” and that it would harm the people of the congregation as well.  Modern apostles have shared similar concerns:

Speaking figuratively, many a bishop keeps on the corner of his desk a large stack of order forms for emotional relief. When someone comes with a problem, the bishop, unfortunately, without a question, passes them out, without stopping to think what he is doing to his people…Spiritual independence and self-reliance is a sustaining power in the Church. If we rob the members of that, how can they get revelation for themselves? How will they know there is a prophet of God? How can they get answers to prayers? How can they know for sure for themselves?

—Boyd K. Packer, Solving Emotional Problems in the Lord’s Own Way, General Conference, April 1978

Why is “spiritual independence and self-reliance” a “sustaining power in the church”?
How do you exercise spiritual independence and self-reliance?
How can we become more spiritually independent or self-reliant?

When a crisis comes into our lives, we may be better able to be spiritually self-reliant if we are spiritually prepared. In Exodus 19, God gives the Israelites instructions in preparation for  a heavenly manifestation.

3 And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;
4 Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

Exodus 19:3-6

What does it mean for God to carry someone on eagles’ wings?


Do you feel like that has ever happened in your own life?


What is a peculiar treasure into God? A kingdom of priests? A holy nation?
How can we aspire for our modern church community to become a peculiar treasure unto God, a kingdom of priests, or a holy nation?

The Lord promised to visit the Israelites in three days, and in the meantime, he instructed them to “sanctify” themselves (Exodus 19:9-11).

How do we sanctify ourselves?


How do you prepare for sacred occasions?

The Ten Commandments
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Mount Sinai, Egypt, Photo by Vlad Kiselov on Unsplash

The promised visitation took place on Mount Sinai.

16 And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.
17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.
18 And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

Exodus 19:16-18

During this visitation, God gave the Israelites a list of commandments known today as the Ten Commandments.

1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

Exodus 20:1-18

Why do you think God choose these particular commandments to reveal to the Israelites at this point in history?


How are the Ten Commandments important in our day?

Contrast the Ten Commandments with the two great commandments identified by Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22:36-40

How do the Ten Commandments relate to the first and second great commandments identified by Jesus Christ?

Sister Carole M. Stephens, First Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency, told about this experience she had with her three-year-old granddaughter, Chloe, that illustrated why we have commandments.

I buckled Chloe into her car seat, secured my own seat belt, and drove out of their driveway. However, before we reached the end of the street, Chloe had unbuckled her seat belt and was standing up, looking over my shoulder, and talking to me! I pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and buckled her back into her seat.

We started again but had gone only a short distance when she was out of her seat again. I repeated the same steps, but this time before I could even get back into the car and fasten my own seat belt, Chloe was already standing up!

I found myself sitting in a car, parked on the side of the road, having a power struggle with a three-year-old. And she was winning!

I used every idea I could think of to convince her that remaining fastened in her car seat was a good idea. She was not convinced! I finally decided to try the if/then approach.

I said, “Chloe, if you will stay buckled in your car seat, then as soon as we get to Grandma’s house, we can play with play dough.”

No response.

“Chloe, if you will stay buckled in your seat, then we can make bread when we get to Grandma’s house.”

No response.

I tried again. “Chloe, if you will stay buckled in your seat, then we can stop at the market for a treat!”

After three attempts, I realized this was a futile exercise. She was determined, and no amount of if/then was enough to convince her to remain fastened in her seat.

We couldn’t spend the day sitting on the edge of the road, but I wanted to be obedient to the law, and it wasn’t safe to drive with Chloe standing up. I offered a silent prayer and heard the Spirit whisper, “Teach her.”

I turned to face her and pulled my seat belt away from my body so she could see it. I said, “Chloe, I am wearing this seat belt because it will protect me. But you aren’t wearing your seat belt, and you won’t be safe. And I will be so sad if you get hurt.”

She looked at me; I could almost see the wheels turning in her little mind as I waited anxiously for her response. Finally, her big blue eyes brightened, and she said, “Grandma, you want me to wear my seat belt because you love me!”

The Spirit filled the car as I expressed my love for this precious little girl. I didn’t want to lose that feeling, but I knew I had an opportunity, so I got out and secured her in her car seat. Then I asked, “Chloe, will you please stay in your car seat?” And she did—all the way to the market for a treat! And she stayed buckled all the way from the market to my home, where we made bread and played with play dough because Chloe did not forget!

As I drove back onto the road that day, a scripture filled my mind: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”1 We have rules to teach, guide, and protect children. Why? Because of the great love we have for them. But until Chloe understood that my desire for her to remain securely fastened in her car seat was because of my love for her, she was unwilling to submit to what she considered a restriction. She felt her seat belt limited her freedom.

Like Chloe, we can choose to see commandments as limitations. We may feel at times that God’s laws restrict our personal freedom, take from us our agency, and limit our growth. But as we seek for greater understanding, as we allow our Father to teach us, we will begin to see that His laws are a manifestation of His love for us and obedience to His laws is an expression of our love for Him.

—Carole M. Stephens, “If Ye Love Me, Keep My Commandments” General Conference, October 2015

How did providing the Ten Commandments demonstrate God’s love for the children of Israel?

Heavenly Mother and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Temple Open House

Payson, Utah Temple

In 2015 I went to the new Payson, Utah Temple open house on a complete whim one day. My husband was deployed to the Middle East and I was alone with three small children and we just hopped in the car and headed to Payson with zero planning or even reserving tickets. I have no explanation for why I did it that way. I just went – and it was during toddler nap time with two feuding older siblings who didn’t want to wear church clothes or put plastic booties on their feet. 

When I arrived they told me not having tickets wasn’t a problem and welcomed me in with the next available group. In between endlessly shushing fights and comforting a grumpy toddler in the church building adjacent the temple (during the pre-temple tour), I caught two significant parts of a movie the sister missionaries played about the temple. First, Elder Holland got emotional reflecting on his love for eternal families and the temple – “Heaven would not be heaven without my wife there, too” he said. (Or something really close to that.) Another part featured President Packer saying, “This is Heavenly Father’s house. We come here to learn of HIM, to communicate with HIM, and to rest in HIS house.” (Again, paraphrasing.) It bothered me. Elder Holland, you can’t imagine being a God without your wife? I can imagine what that would be like. I see it in the temple every time I go. There’s God – a man – without a wife. 

You know what *I* couldn’t imagine? I couldn’t imagine my husband having his own house, where our kids visit HIM, learn about HIS life, and spend time with HIM – all at the complete exclusion of me, his wife. (I had an unkind urge to punch a super cheerful parent I heard lovingly explain to their children on the tour, “This is a sealing room, where we can be sealed with our families so that we can return to Heavenly Father someday!” I WANTED HEAVENLY PARENTS.)

I will admit that I wasn’t at my best or most patient that day. The other people in my tour were walking extra slow and before long I was dying to get the tour over with and leave. It was hot and my pantyhose were falling down. I was carrying a ridiculously heavy toddler for a very long time and my arm was throbbing. My middle child was whining endlessly about the plastic booties on her feet/lying on the floor in everyone’s way and refusing to walk. Well meaning volunteers at the temple were trying to encourage this tired mom (me) by saying things like, “Don’t you just love being in the temple?” and I wanted to say, “Are you looking at me right now? Are we in the same room? Does it look like I love being here right now?!”

At one point in exasperation I gave in to my two older children and said, “It’s fine, sit on the couch in the celestial room”, thinking to myself, “I’ve helped pay for it with three decades of tithing and that’s all the use I’m going to get out of it any time soon”. The volunteers immediately reminded us not to sit on the furniture in the temple and I made my tired kids stand back up, which brought tears of frustration to my eyes. Why was keeping an inanimate piece of furniture pristine more important than helping a very tired woman in the throes of young motherhood? Aren’t couches meant to be sat on? Would Jesus insist I carry two children on my hips so that his favorite imported sofa fabric wouldn’t get wrinkled? My husband was deployed. Where was my military wife discount pass that lets me sit on fancy couches for one minute for free in an un-dedicated temple room? Why had I made the crazy choice to drive the four of us down here today??

In retrospect, I honestly think my intense irritation that day had more to do with an increasing awareness of the utter lack of Heavenly Mother anywhere in our most sacred space than my three grumpy kids. I was feeling the burden of motherhood with a fierceness that day, and my soul longed for some glimpse into the more holy and eternal role I was supposed to be preparing for. But there was nothing in that open house that spoke to that need, and it was even worse when I attended dedicated temples. At least in the open house an apostle mentioned his wife’s existence. But in the tour of “Heavenly Father’s” house itself, there’s nary a wife or mother seen or mentioned anywhere. Is that because He’s got a lot of wives, and they don’t know which one to talk about on the tour? Or are the temples on our planet where God comes alone, to get away from all of his wives and family stress for a little while? Sitting in my church clothes in the pre-tour movie that day, I just couldn’t understand how no one else was bothered by the fact that women are erased in the eternities, including in our holiest houses of worship.

Part of me wishes I had just sat down on that celestial room couch along with my kids and politely declined to stand up when asked. I was very tired from carrying my toddler and they could’ve just dealt with my butt cheeks on the fancy furniture for 60 seconds while I waited for the line through the temple to move again. No sofas would’ve been harmed or testimonies crushed by my actions, and I could’ve really used that little respite to have the strength to journey on to the end of the tour. 

These were my two older kids at the Payson Temple open house that day. I was holding the toddler and this was the best picture I could get of these two (who were completely ignoring me by this point when I told them to look at me). Imagine them punching each other and crying for the full effect.

Recently there’s been yet another crackdown from top church leadership to avoid discussion of Heavenly Mother online and in church meetings, verified by multiple reliable sources and causing a visceral reaction throughout the online LDS community. Stake presidents and stake leaders are receiving training from general authorities and apostles to stop seemingly harmless activities such as capitalizing the words Heavenly Parents (because only Heavenly Father can be capitalized, and it should be “heavenly parents” and “heavenly mother”). We also aren’t supposed to include or credit Her for a role in creation or the Plan of Salvation, refer to or teach about her at church, and as always – no communicating with anyone but Heavenly Father in prayers.

Tweet from Rachel Hunt Steenblik- emeritus Exponent blogger, Heavenly Mother researcher at BYU, and author of bestselling books of Heavenly Mother poetry.

Back in 2015 I was grumpy about not sitting on the temple couch but I complied because it was the rule. In 2022, I’m having a much harder time caring about rules that I think are dumb, no matter how high up in authority the person is who makes them. You know what I think? I think couches are for sitting and motherhood is hard. I also think telling mothers to just stand there no matter how tired they are, yet give them no hope of future rest and eternal glory (in fact, forbidding them from even discussing the possibility) is a really stupid rule…and I don’t think we should follow it anymore. 

Guest Post: Peace during Tribulation

By Miriam

Miriam is a PhD candidate in Prevention Science at the University of Oregon, mother of 3 girls, and striving to teach her girls that their voices matter.

This post was originally delivered as a Sacrament Meeting talk in Eugene, OR on March 13, 2022. Last time I spoke in church was 2017 and I caused a bit of turmoil among the ward members when I mentioned things like the sexism in the scriptures fits with the sexism in the history of the world (apparently we’re supposed to act like that sexism doesn’t exist or maybe we’re supposed to act like we like it? I’m not sure). Anyway, I went 5 years without being asked to speak until today. I don’t think I said anything controversial, but I guess I’ll find out if gossip ever gets back to me. Here’s the talk:

The World Population Review noted that, as of September 2021, the countries of Ethiopia, Yemen, Colombia, Myanmar, Syria, Libya and Mali are all engaged in Civil Wars. Algeria, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Tunisia are all engaged in wars caused by terrorism. South Sudan is at war due to ethnic violence and the Mexico government is fighting violent drug trafficking cartels (SOURCE).

Most recently, we’ve all been following the news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people working hard to defend their freedom.

We’re currently in the midst of a global pandemic where the official death count has surpassed 6 million people worldwide – and public health experts say that number is likely an undercount (SOURCE).

Our world is fraught with unfair inequality. About 9.2% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty (SOURCE). Structural racism threatens the lives and wellbeing of people across the world – including in our own community.

Climate change is causing natural disasters worldwide (SOURCE).

I could go on with depressing news – but I think we’ve got the idea, things are hard right now! I’m definitely not going to say things are harder than they’ve ever been – we’re currently reading the Old Testament for example! But we’re inundated with news regularly about how hard things are in the world right now.

And I didn’t even mention the personal problems that each and every one of us has in our own lives.

So what do we do about it? How can we get through these difficult times? How can we thrive through these trials? How can we try to leave the world a little better than the way we found it?

I was recently on a hike with a dear friend who is not religious. As we hiked, we began discussing the evils of structural racism in the world we live. She asked me how I process the difficulties in the world and she asked me if my religion helps me through that.

In the Oregon mountains, where I always feel God’s love

I paused, thinking. I realized that my relationship with God could help me get through difficult times (and it certainly has at various times), but sometimes – when it comes to thinking about these heavy issues, I worry that sometimes I allow myself to feel calloused toward suffering. I allow myself to scroll along without giving myself a moment to feel and to reach out to God.

However, I do know there’s a better way. I know that as we develop our personal relationships with God, God can help us to carry through hard times and can help us strive to make the world a bit better than how we found it.

When Joseph Smith was incarcerated in Liberty Jail in the aftermath of the 1838 Mormon War, he was, understandably, having a rough time. He recorded his prayer in what is now Doctrine and Covenants 121. He began his prayer by saying:

1 O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?

2 How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?

I’ve never been incarcerated and don’t understand the exact feelings he must have felt in this moment, but I can empathize with his pain as he turned to God and asked “Where art thou?” As Joseph Smith poured out his soul to God – questioning the reasons for this hardship, God replied:

7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

The first thing I notice when I read that verse of comfort is the part about the afflictions being a “small moment”. A small moment? He was charged with treason, incarcerated, then fled Missouri and spent the rest of his life fearing extradition to Missouri. I’m sure that would be hard to think of that as just a small moment.

But God had said a few things before that – He’d said, “My son” – a reminder to Joseph Smith that he was assuredly a child of God. Then God said, “Peace be unto thy soul.” Essentially, God was saying, “You are my child, find peace in that and this problem won’t last forever.”

I wonder how that phrase can help me and you as we face hardships – remembering that we are God’s children and he wants to bring us peace. These problems are not eternal.

Sister Rosemary M. Wixom (the Primary General President in October 2015) said that because we are children of God, “Heavenly Father generously shares a portion of His divinity within us. That divine nature comes as a gift from Him with a love that only a parent can feel. We come to this earth to nurture and discover the seeds of divine nature that are within us.” (SOURCE).

Because we have this divine nature, it’s a chance for us to act – with divine love. As Sister Wixom went on to say, “Now it is time to take that beloved phrase ‘I am a child of God’ and add the words ‘Therefore, what?’ We might even ask questions such as these: ‘What will I do to live my life as a child of God? How can I develop the divine nature that is within me?’” (SOURCE).

So that’s the question for each of us – how can we actually feel that we are children of God in order to bring the peace into our lives that we desperately need? How can we really feel that our tribulations are but a small moment as we examine our lives from an eternal perspective?

I know there’s not a one-size fits all answer. I know there’s going to be different answers to that question for each person here and likely different answers depending on the moment in your life that you’re asking it. Perhaps it would be helpful to take a moment today to pause and ask yourself how you can feel that in your current situation.

Though I know I don’t have definitive answers, I have a couple experiences I’d like to share that have helped me to feel closer to God – and to feel that I truly am a divine daughter of Him and can seek peace through Him, even in this world full of trials.

I had an experience back in 2009 that is ingrained in my mind – a strong memory that has helped me remember that I am indeed a daughter of God. I was a missionary in Peru and was still learning Spanish. I was with a companion that I had a hard time relating to – the language barrier between us was likely compounding our difficult connection. And I was lonely. I was following the mission rules and working as hard as I could, but even though I was constantly with another person, I felt like I was completely alone. One day, as I knelt to pray, I began to cry. The tears covered my face as I just thought how lonely I was – missing all my friends and family members that were all on another continent. As the tears poured, I remember feeling (and I’m not sure how to better describe this) but I felt a hug from God. It was as if His love enveloped me and I understood that my feelings were normal and okay, but that I could still feel peace through God. I am His daughter and He loves me.

The thing that sticks out to me about the memory of this experience now – 13 years later – is that I didn’t have to do some ginormous act of heroism to feel that I was God’s daughter. I just knelt down and prayed. Sometimes I think it is easy to think that in order to feel our divine nature, we have to go wild and do something amazing. And while doing amazing things certainly has its time and place, sometimes it is much simpler than that. We just need to take the time to talk with God and He’ll help us feel His love.

Sister Jean B. Bingham (Relief Society General President) discussed how as individuals, we each are small and fairly insignificant, yet, just as I felt in that moment on my mission, God knows each of us personally and is ready to help us. She said, “From the darkest parts of Earth, the naked human eye can see about 5,000 stars; from a brightly-lit city street, only about 100 stars are visible. A few years ago, astronomers in Australia used some of the world’s most powerful instruments to calculate how many stars are actually in the entire visible universe. From their measurements, they concluded that there are 70 sextillion stars—or 7 followed by 22 zeroes—and some scientists say the actual count could be much, much bigger still. Does that make you feel small? Contemplating that incredible number fills me with a humble yet exhilarating realization that, among all that vastness, our Father in Heaven knows not only where I am but who I am and what I am thinking and doing and struggling with. And He knows everything about you, too, and loves you more than you can even comprehend. God’s capacity for knowledge and love is infinite; His interest is personal and intimate and real. You are valued by Heavenly Parents because you are Their offspring—Their reason for joy. Their purpose is our progress. After all, Their work and glory is to bring about our immortality and eternal life. Each individual is not only valued but essential in God’s plan of happiness.” (SOURCE)

How humbling to know that God values me. God values me as an essential person in His plan of happiness.

In another experience I’ve had over the last several years, I’ve been able to feel that God does value me as an essential person in His plan of happiness. Though this isn’t a dramatic moment like I felt on my mission, it’s been a learning experience growing closer to God over several years.

In 2014 my daughter Ivory was born and I had a hard time with postpartum depression. I didn’t feel the Spirit for at least a year.

In 2016, while I’m sure I was still reeling from the year of depression, and still struggling to feel the Spirit, I began to feel spiritually prompted to return to school and obtain my PhD. I felt the Holy Ghost tell me that I should pursue that path in order to create a career where I could better serve my community. I began studying for the GRE – the test I’d need to take before I could be admitted to a PhD program.

I remember feeling like God was helping me study. It was a beautiful experience as I studied for that test. I took the test and did well enough that I felt like I’d surely get into graduate school.

However, when I applied, I was rejected. Similar to when Joseph Smith asked God “where art thou?” I felt like shouting at God, “Why’d you torture me by making me study for a pointless test that would do me no good anyway?” I remember questioning whether I had felt any spiritual promptings at all. But mostly I just felt angry.

Over the course of the next year I tried hard to feel God’s love. I began to feel it in ways that I hadn’t ever experienced before. I started doing art and mindfulness and yoga – things that were all new to me – but things that helped me feel God’s love.

After a year of healing from the postpartum depression and the anger about graduate school, I re-applied to graduate school. This time I applied to a different program I hadn’t previously known existed. I was accepted and now, as I’m about to graduate, I see that the hand of the Lord was working to help get me on the path I’m on now. God did help me study for that GRE, and even though I didn’t get in the year I thought I would, God has helped me every step of the way in His timeframe. Looking back now, it’s easy to see His hand at multiple moments during this and I’m glad it worked out the way it did. But during the process I felt angry and alone and it took a lot of work for me to be able to step back and notice, as Joseph Smith was promised, that my “afflictions shall be but a small moment.”

As I reflect on these experiences where I felt my divine nature, I also recognize that these moments motivated me to act in loving service – in a way that I believe God wants me to. On my mission, the love I felt from God helped me to love others in a more Christlike way and be willing to serve however God wanted me to serve. As I reflect on my graduate school experience, I recognize that, as God has helped me feel that I am truly His daughter and that He truly is helping me each step of my path, it is my duty to be willing to serve others and I hope that the work I do in my career can help create a world that is a bit better than how I found it. God didn’t just prompt me to get into grad school for my own well-being, but because He wants me to utilize my learned skills to create a better world. And I recognize that He showed me love, so I could learn to love myself in order to love others fully.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis wrote of the importance of truly loving ourself – seeing our divine nature – in order to be our full potential. She said, “By self-love, I don’t mean selfishness, self-absorption, or conceit. We all know people who hog the stage, dominate conversations, and have to be the center of attention, and I’m not arguing for that behavior. I’m also not arguing for narcissism, an exaggerated sense of self-importance that requires constant admiration. No, by self-love I mean a healthy delight in your true, imperfect, uniquely wonderful, particular self. I mean an unconditional appreciation for who you are, head to toe, inside and out: quirks, foibles, beauty, and blemishes—all of it. I mean seeing yourself truthfully and loving what you see.” (SOURCE)

My hope and prayer is that each of you here today can feel the love God has for you, feel that you truly are His child, and that you can love yourself in a way that God loves you. I know that as you do, you will be able to find peace during tribulation and will be able to help make the world a bit better than you found it.

I want to share that I believe that God loves me. I often question various points of my testimony. I wonder whether some talk or some scripture really makes sense. But, no matter how I look at those nitty gritty details, I always try to come back to my strong belief that God loves me. I am His daughter. And He’s going to help me each step of my life.

Dear Eliza, Is it Okay to be a Cafeteria Mormon?

Dear Eliza,

All of my life, being a member of the LDS Church has meant being “all in” and “exact obedience.” I’ve been all in by attending church, reading my scriptures, and praying about revelation give to church authorities. I married in the temple and followed a traditional path for an LDS woman. Despite this, I have doubts. I don’t always agree with what is taught over the pulpit. I’m not comfortable with fully embracing every part of the LDS faith. I’m at a place where I can no longer just put these questions or concerns on the proverbial shelf. When I pray with questions, I don’t receive an answer to simply obey. I’m not miserable or lost or falling into sin. When I try to talk with my bishop or my husband about my concerns, they speak from places of fear and warning. I want to participate on my own terms to support my husband and continue figuring out my faith, but I’m told this makes me a “Cafeteria Mormon.” Sometimes it feels like this is considered worse than simply not practicing any part of my faith. I love many things about the faith I inherited, but I have doubts. Is it okay to be a “Cafeteria Mormon?”

Sincerely,

Conflicted in Columbus

Dear Conflicted,

A friend recently referred to herself as a “Part-Time Catholic” and I told her about “Cafeteria Mormonism.” We both laughed a little at the commonality. She explained that she embraces the complexities of her individual faith, hangs on to traditions that move her, and doesn’t continually fret over the rest. This might not be the official handbook way to practice her faith and that’s okay with her.

Another friend of mine helped me find peace at the height of my faith crisis. At that time, attending LDS services felt unbearable and I agonized over whether or not practicing a faith I didn’t fully believe in–and sometimes disagreed with–was the worst hypocrisy. I also heard the refrains of “all in” echoing in my brain. My friend, who grew up in a different faith, understood. She told me how she visits her parents and occasionally attends church with them in a faith tradition that she no longer fully believes in. When she attends with them, she focuses on the beauty of the traditions, the commonalities they share, and the community of believers. She doesn’t have to agree with everything they practice in order to honor and appreciate their faith. This perspective dramatically changed the way I approached church services. When I am struggling with my place in religion, I remember her words and feel peace.

Yet another friend of mine has spent her adulthood seeking a faith home. This means she has joined with and fully participated in different Christian traditions. While they share commonalities, these faiths interpret the Bible and practice their beliefs in unique ways. It’s clear that this exploration has brought my friend joy, increased her empathy, and deepened her appreciation for the role of faith in her life. I’ve always felt that her journey was less about finding the “right” religion and more about seeking and connecting with God in diverse places.

Some would ask why we “Cafeteria Mormons” don’t simply find a new faith or give up religion altogether. There are a myriad of reasons for continuing to participate and attend, however. Simply leaving usually isn’t so simple. You aren’t obligated to defend your attendance or apologize for participating.

Only you can decide what’s best for your spiritual, mental, and emotional health. It is not only okay, but healthy, to doubt and question. That is part of spiritual growth for many of us. There isn’t one right way to experience or participate in faith.

Sincerely,

Eliza

Guest Post: #ReconstructingFaith about Sexuality and Gender

Guest post by Alma Frances Pellett (formerly Frank Alma Pellett). Alma has been happily married 20 years and has sired 5 children. She has enjoyed being a software engineer for the Church History Library for the past 8 years and looks forward to many other opportunities in the future. Her hobbies include reading, woodworking, playing euphonium, and trying to be the best stay-at-home-mother she always dreamed she could be.

My most recent reconstruction of my faith and membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (“the Church”) had to do with the teachings on gender and sexuality.  My understanding has diverged from the documented beliefs of most Church leaders, but I know that what I have managed to work out is good and right. It may change in the future as I learn and grow, but that should be expected. I also know that the Church is where I need to be, even if the Church reduces or removes my membership because of the actions I am now taking in physically and socially transitioning to womanhood.

I was fortunate that, growing up, my parents were good examples of seeking, wrestling, and re-examining their faith before and since they were each converted to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Various bits of theology were gathered from both inside and outside the Church, examined, good bits folded in, and the bad bits forcibly rejected. I may be much more liberal than they are now, but they taught me the basics of how to handle the shifting stones and beams that made up their faith.

One of the first doctrines I remember being taught in Primary is that “our spirits in the pre-existence looked much like our bodies do now.” It fit into my own growing theology, nestled in with many other assorted thoughts about the duality of mortality that grew and shifted over the years. It made sense for the world I knew.

Several years ago, while trying my hand at several Church-themed blogs, something started to shift. I started to read a lot more about the lived experiences of the people in these groups. The internet had made it possible to hear more stories about people on the edges of life than I’d ever heard before. It just took a bit for me to do more listening and learning than “trying to contribute.”

The question about “not choosing your sexuality” nagged at me. I’d known my sexual orientation since my teen years to be solidly attracted to women and not at all attracted to men. Didn’t everyone think that through? Apparently not.

The cracks started forming. If others knew their sexuality as well as I knew mine, then why would God do that?  Maybe it’s one of those “whole life challenges,” like a disability. I have a chronic condition that won’t get better in this life, so maybe being gay is like that.  But wait, gay people have options. They can have relationships and be really, really happy. Do we really need at least one of each gender in the afterlife, and why can’t they be happy like everyone else now? I hoped to let this settle at being ok with gay marriage and “true” marriage is what God wants for the afterlife.

But there was another aspect becoming part of the discussion. I came across a recent news article of an intersex person having their gender marker changed on everything, including in Church records. I learned that there are so many more variables than chromosomes and genitals. There were many stories of people knowing that their gender was assigned incorrectly. A medical term grouped these experiences together.  Gender Dysphoria.

Something in my roughly built theology was creaking. So many of the stories of dealing with gender dysphoria were bringing up memories of similar experiences in my own life.  My philosophizing and theological pondering had suddenly become personal. I have gender dysphoria.

I could almost let it rest as a “whole life challenge.” I mean, I had (and have) a marriage and family that I’d like to keep forever.  But that old load-bearing beam had to change. There were too many cracks, too many possibilities that I had to work out.

The Church has some complicated history on marriage, sex, and gender. Polygyny became an oddity, then was embraced as a necessity, then stopped. People were sealed to the Prophet, the leader of the Church, as a way of securing a place in the afterlife. A person was sealed as a servant. It didn’t matter if you even liked the person you were married to, the important thing was to be sealed together in the afterlife.

People were baptized for their ancestors of a different gender (though it was stopped because gender mattered). Crossdressing (for more than stage performance), openly gay couples, and even transgender people can be found throughout Church history. (Brigham Morris Young, Edith Chapman, and Eva McCleery to name a few). A transgender woman was permitted by the First Presidency of the Church to be considered female and later to be married to a man as a woman in the Temple in 1980.

Mixed into all this were the continuing scientific discoveries of how gender is not consistent across physical structures. This slurry of history, science, and theology was what I had to work into some sense of stability. All I had to work with were the tools that had served me so well in my life: faith and prayer.

What finally came into shape was unexpected, nuanced, and beautiful. God made this world, with all its imperfections, tragedies, and miracles. Some people have been set with conditions that may mean that their gender doesn’t match to what they were assigned at birth. What they do about these conditions, fighting against them, living quietly with them, or doing something to accept them, is between them and whatever God they may or may not believe in. Inside or outside the Church, I cannot deny their journey, because it is theirs, not mine. Joy was meant for everyone as much as possible in this life, not merely stored away for the afterlife.

Personally, I knew that I could manage my dysphoria, though the longing that I hadn’t a name for throughout my life remained. The relief from prayer that confirmed my beliefs of who I am gave me a peace that I didn’t know I was missing. I now tearfully and proudly join with my sisters as we declare “I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.”  I’ve done my best to anticipate the possibilities of the afterlife, fully understanding that even with so much prayer there is the possibility that I may be completely wrong.  This leans on the solid pillar I’ve kept from the observation made in 1 Nephi 11:17 – “I know that [God] loveth [their] children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.”

The knowledge and understanding I’ve been afforded in my life has caused any number of shifts, breaks, and reinventions of my faith and relationship to God and the Church. I expect and hope there will be more in the future, even if they threaten or break parts I thought would never change. Even if it is as seemingly foundational as “your assigned mortal gender is the same as your premortal gender.”

This post is part of the series, Reconstructing Faith. Find more from this series here.