Exponent II's Blog, page 73

Sacred Music Sunday: My Redeemer Lives

I recently got called as ward music chair for my second stint in the calling. It’s a calling I really enjoy, and one of the things I like about it is the ability to expose the congregation to wonderful hymns that we don’t seem to sing as often. One of those that I like is Hymn #135, My Redeemer Lives. It’s nestled right in between I Believe in Christ and I Know that My Redeemer Lives, and in my opinion it’s better than either of them. It’s short, peppy, and upbeat. It doesn’t drag or plod, and it captures the joy of knowing about Jesus.

I’m not in the mood to think celestial

I love the prophet and I loved watching him give his October 2024 General Conference talk. It’s fun seeing a 99 year old sharing their life wisdom – they’ve had a lot of life to think! Since that talk, the “think celestial” framework has been a focal point for many members of my ward. Women in my Relief Society meetings have gushed about how important it is to “think celestial.” It’s been mentioned repeatedly over the pulpit in Sacrament Meeting. It clearly touched a lot of people.

That’s great for all the people that were able to take comfort in those words and who can feel an increased sense of joy as they try to apply the “think celestial” principle into their lives.

Spoiler Alert: I don’t feel the same way. Living in the present is more motivating and comforting to me than thinking celestial.

For some reason, I (at this point in my life) am not in the mood to think celestial. It doesn’t feel the least bit motivating. Yes, I believe in a celestial afterlife. But, life after death just feels so far away. The details of what it will look like are super hazy. I can’t imagine making choices today based on my hazy imagination of what might be to come. I can’t imagine facing challenges based on that hazy picture in my mind. And I certainly can’t imagine seeking God’s comfort based on what I imagine might occur after I die. 

For me, it is much more motivating to think about what’s happening now and act accordingly. 

For example, when I see suffering in the world, I want to do what I can now to alleviate that suffering. That’s my motivation. The idea of thinking about some far off afterlife scenario and then choosing to alleviate suffering now because of how that’ll help me fare after death seems…ridiculous (maybe too harsh of a word? But I’m lacking a better word). When I make choices for my family, I want to do what’s best for my children as they grow now. Maybe even what’ll be best for them as they grow. But that’s as far as my imagination can handle. Thinking about what’ll be best for them in the eternities feels overly daunting and…impractical (again, I may be too harsh with that word choice, but it kinda feels that way).

Maybe I don’t have enough real faith in what the afterlife looks like? Maybe it just feels too hazy of a concept? Maybe it feels too far off? But whatever the case, it has never been my motivation.

And if it’s sounding like I’m a nonbeliever…I don’t think that’s the case either.

I’m someone who regularly tries to follow the Savior. I built my entire family life and career based on the personal revelation I received. But even my relationship with the Savior isn’t motivated by Celestial thoughts. When I repent, I’m not thinking about an afterlife. Instead, I’m thinking about making things a little bit better right now. I’m thinking about the comfort Christ gives me today. I’m thinking about the peace I currently feel in my heart. I’m thinking about trying to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday. I’m thinking about the love I’m allowing to freely flow in my home. I’m drawing near to God and feeling Him draw near to me in the moment. “Healing begins gradually when we first open ourselves to the possibility that we are already in the embrace of a love greater than any we have known” (All Things New by Fiona and Terryl Givens p. 146). I’m motivated by feeling that embrace now.

I’m not writing this post to convince people who were touched by President Nelson’s talk that they’re wrong. Not at all! If you were touched by President Nelson’s admonition to “Think Celestial,” awesome! Keep living it. But I wanted to put this out there for the people who might be more like me – confused and unsure how “thinking celestial” is helpful. Maybe you just need permission to think about today.

Honestly, I bet if we sat down and had a conversation with President Nelson, we’d find that my feelings are pretty much in line with his. That when I’m motivated by God’s love today, that is a piece of what he calling “thinking celestial” – but for me it’s just easier to think in the moment. And maybe that is how I think celestial. Maybe for me, thinking celestial means thinking about God right now.

I chose this picture that I took while on a hike because it represents so many different things one could focus on while hiking – the trees, the sky, the clouds, the fog, the broken limbs, the towering greens, or the heavens above – and I don’t think any of the options are wrong. But different people may choose one aspect over another

Why Mixed-Faith Marriages Fail and What the Church Could Do to Help.

This is the ninth in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)

Guest Bio: Callan Olive practices therapy in Indiana and has a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Brigham Young University and a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Texas Tech University. She’s an adventurer, a feminist, a therapist, and a coach. She lives near Indianapolis and works with clients from all over the US. Callan is a single mom with 4 small children and when she’s not working, she loves going on adventures with them or listening to audiobooks. Social justice issues like women’s rights and LGBTQ rights are very important to her.

Check out Callan’s Tiktok channel and her website.

Sarah (name changed) sat across from me, shifting on the therapy couch. “I’m just so lonely,” she said through tears. “We used to be able to talk about everything. I used to be able to come home from a long day and kind of melt into him, into the relationship we have together. Now it’s just tension. Even in our best moments, there’s an unspoken divide between us. The distance just grows and grows no matter how hard we try to find our way through it. It all feels so impossible.” 

I began seeing Sarah in my therapy practice during a difficult time in her faith transition. She was struggling to know how to move forward- leave the church and have it impact every relationship in her life or stay and continue suffering in the pain and disconnect she felt. Eventually, she concluded that there was no way to avoid the suffering and she had to choose what would help her be the healthiest version of herself, especially for her children. She decided to leave the church.

Meanwhile, her believing husband, Bryan, (name changed) was struggling immensely. He was thrown into what felt like a tornado of chaos, unsure who this woman, his wife of 12 years, was becoming. How could she change so much? How could she suddenly decide that the entire life they had worked toward didn’t matter anymore? While he loved his wife dearly, he felt betrayed and didn’t know how to trust her.

How could they move forward? 

As a Marriage and Family Therapist and lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have seen many couples in my therapy practice who were going through the same arduous process as Sarah and Bryan. When one partner undergoes a faith transition, both partners and the relationship itself are highly impacted. As I’ve met with these couples over the years, I have found myself wishing that the church did a better job of supporting mixed-faith marriages and helping its members build the tools they need before a faith transition hits. A church that teaches that “Marriage is the highest and holiest of all human relationships” [1] should provide tools and educate its members on healthy, successful marriages even when one partner is no longer believing or has never believed. It is not necessary that both partners believe in the same religion for a marriage to work, but it often feels necessary in the context of latter-day saint practice.

I believe there is one vital concept that the church could shift that would have a drastic impact on mixed-faith marriages. 

Differentiation vs Fusion

Sarah’s decision to leave the church had to be a personal decision. She was in so much turmoil about the church and its teachings, she couldn’t handle continuing to go anymore. To her, it felt largely unrelated to her marriage and much more about her relationship with the church, even though she understood her marriage would be impacted.

Bryan, however, felt Sarah’s decision was directly related to their marriage. How could she throw away the possibility of an eternity with him? How could they “be one” and prioritize the covenants they made to each other and to God if she no longer believed in those covenants? 

Sarah felt betrayed by the church. Bryan felt betrayed by Sarah. 

Every conversation they had would lead to cycles of blame and misunderstanding because they couldn’t see each others’ perspectives. Both believed they needed the other to agree and understand their perspective before they could move forward together. The new differences in their beliefs scared them and made them behave from a reactionary, threatened space instead of a place of wholeness and security. 

Sarah and Bryan, like every other couple in their situation, were struggling with fusion. Dr. Ellyn Bader, who created The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, stated that “fusion happens when a person is fearful of encountering differences. These can be minor differences including how one spends their time or their hobbies, or major differences such as conflict style and desire for togetherness.” [2] Fusion is a problem because it restricts the movement available for either partner. Any disagreement or shift is seen as threatening to the relationship and the shared wholeness rather than a natural result of two whole, individual people. 

The church’s teachings strongly encourage fusion in marriages. I wish the church’s rhetoric focused less on “becoming one” and “becoming whole” with your partner and much more on the “wholeness” and “oneness” that already exists inside each one of us. In the many instances that Jesus healed the sick, I don’t remember a single one that said “Thy faith hath made thee whole… but only if you are sealed to a believing spouse.” But that is often how we treat marriages in the church. There is a sense of deficit or defect in singleness and the only remedy is a faith-led marriage.

Due to the church’s focus on shared wholeness, when one partner has a faith transition, the believing spouse perceives the shift as a threat not only to the relationship but to their individual sense of wholeness. Likewise, the non-believing spouse feels that the only way to move forward in the relationship is to convince the believing spouse to agree with them. Neither partner has the tools they need to co-exist without believing together. 

The opposite of fusion is differentiation. Dr. Bader describes differentiation as “an active process in which partners define themselves to each other.” She states that “differentiation requires the risk of being open to growth and being honest not only with your partner, but also with yourself.” 

How different would a faith transition look if either partner could step back and say, “This is a lot for me and I realize it’s hard for you to support me in the ways I need right now, but I know I can take care of myself and find the things I need so that I can bring my best self to this relationship.” For a mixed-faith marriage to work, this sense of “individually together” needs to be achieved. Both partners need to learn to prioritize their own sense of wholeness, apart from their spouse or any other relationship. Once that is achieved, it will feel much less threatening to discuss the hard differences of belief and find togetherness.

The church should encourage differentiation and prioritize the individual relationship with God. They should change the rhetoric from “becoming one” within marriage to “becoming one” individually, becoming one with God, then bringing that wholeness to the marriage. 

This foundation of differentiation instead of fusion would make all of the difference to people like Sarah and Bryan who eventually divorced due to the reactionary nature of their relationship and the magnitude of how threatening their differences felt. If the church really does believe marriage is the highest and holiest of all human relationships, it should teach differentiation and show members how to be healthier, whole humans with or without a believing partner. 

Benson, Kyle. “Attachment and Differentiation in Relationships: An Interview with Ellyn Bader, Ph.D.” The Gottman Institute, https://www.gottman.com/blog/attachme.... Accessed 14 January 2024.

“However Long and Hard the Road.” BYU Speeches, https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffre.... Accessed 14 January 2024.

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This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

To share or Not to Share, That is The Question…Or Is It? Navigating sharing your thoughts and feeling in your mixed-faith relationship

This is the eighth in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)  Guest Post: Suzette Halterman is a certified couples coach that specializes in mixed-faith marriages. She is in a mixed-faith marriage herself, so she has to use the tools that she teaches couples within her own family on a regular basis. She has trained in multiple modalities of working with couples and is dedicated to helping people more effectively navigate all the complexities of their relationships. When she isn’t working with couples, she enjoys playing in the mountains of Colorado where she lives with her husband and four kids.   

I am both a certified couple’s coach specializing in mixed-faith couples, and I am also in a mixed-faith marriage myself. The dilemmas around how to navigate connection in a mixed-faith marriage and in mixed-faith families are personal to me, and also so important to the couples that I work with!

One common theme that has repeatedly come up in my own mixed-faith marriage, as well as most of the couples that I work with, is about sharing authentic thoughts, feelings, and experiences related to religion/faith in a mixed-faith situation. Often people wonder whether they can really share their true joys or their pains related to their faith experience. They wonder if they can talk about things that are really on their mind, and they wonder what is appropriate or inappropriate to share with their kids in this mixed-faith experience.

The underlying questions are usually: Will I feel a lack of authenticity and connection if I don’t share my inner world? Will we drift apart without the authenticity of sharing our deepest experiences? Will there be too much conflict and division if I do share? What will happen to my kids and family if I do or don’t share? It can feel like a lose-lose situation where neither option of sharing or not sharing feels satisfying. So it is no wonder that couples and mixed-faith families often feel stuck around how to handle this! However, I have found that focusing on sharing or not sharing misses the more important questions. It misses the focus on self-awareness that can lead to more mature communication and healthy relationship patterns.

In my own personal and professional journey to sort out how to best handle the dilemmas around sharing, I have found a framework that is very helpful in navigating these waters of sharing. It is a framework that increases self-awareness, which is a very critical piece of establishing thriving relationships. Self-awareness can prevent reactive behavior, and it can open the door to finding more healthy, functional, and mature ways of relating and sharing. The more maturity you have in your relating and sharing, the more flexible and adaptable your relationship will be, which is great news for mixed-faith relationships!

Sharing is really a manifestation of something deeper

The first thing to understand is that the impulse to share is really more of an outward manifestation of something else that is happening internally. Sharing is an external symptom or sign of an internal process. However, when we share, immediately the focus quickly becomes on that external process and it becomes less about gaining self awareness of our own internal process. This is a huge handicap for us, because without deeper understanding and self-awareness of our internal process, we can actually become very limited in how we handle things and we can be very impulsive and reactive. Without self-awareness of our internal process, we will miss out on making important choices that best serve our own personal growth and our relationship growth.

The ultimate question to ask in order to get to the heart of the internal process:

The best question to help point straight to the root of our internal experience is “What is the function of this sharing?” Or in other words, “what am I hoping that sharing this will get me?”

All behavior serves some sort of function/purpose for us or else we wouldn’t do it. Psychologists have found that we can categorize all human behaviors into serving us in these 4 ways:

1) Escape or avoidance
2) Attention
3) Tangible access to something
4) Sensory experience

These 4 functions of behavior create the acronym E.A.T.S, which I will refer to throughout this article. Let’s take a deeper look into each one.

Escape and Avoid (E)
Human brains are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so we naturally do a lot of escaping and avoiding things that bring us emotional or physical discomfort. Some of the things we might be trying to escape or avoid through sharing our experiences are: loneliness, powerlessness, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, discomfort, and worry. We might share something because we feel that if our partner or kids join us in agreement, then we won’t feel these things as poignantly and we would escape those uncomfortable feelings. We also might share because we are trying to escape doing things we don’t want to do. For example if you don’t want to pay tithing or you don’t want to teach our kids certain principles, you might share in an effort to escape and avoid doing things that you don’t want to have to do.

Attention (A)
Sometimes we share because we are trying to get attention, but attention is more than just someone noticing us or talking to us. Attention can also be about feeling connected, accepted, validated, loved, appreciated, safe, and secure.Those are all things we naturally long for as human beings! As much as we are wired to escape and avoid, we are also wired to seek connection. Dr. John Gottman might call attempts for attention a “bid for connection” because that is really what most attention seeking behaviors are. We are trying to satisfy the very real parts of us that need and long for connection and all of the many things that are associated with connection.

Tangibles access (T)
We might share because we want to get something tangible. Maybe after a change of faith we want the tangibles of being able to drink coffee or alcohol, remove garments, stay home from church, spend tithing money on something else, or spend Sundays doing a different activity. Or oppositely, maybe within our faith we share because we want the tangibles of sitting with the whole family at church, attending church functions, interacting with members, participating in a calling we enjoy, quality family time, or time spent in scripture study or family spiritual teaching time. There are so many tangibles involved in the spectrum of belief, non-belief, and everything in between. Many of our behaviors are actually functioning in service of trying to get access to those tangibles. There is nothing wrong with wanting access to tangible things, but if we can’t identify that, we might inadvertently engage in very passive and indirect communication patterns that actually decrease our chances of getting the tangibles we seek.

Sensory (S)
Sometimes we share because of how it makes us feel good in our bodies. Again, humans like to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We might share as a way to find catharsis, or ease of the angst or stress we are experiencing. We might share as a means to try and feel peace, rest, or stillness. This is about getting some sensory pleasure and some relief. We are embodied beings and we feel many things at a visceral and physical level. Our internal feelings have a very real impact on our bodies and our ability to sleep, eat, and to experience pleasure or relaxation. Our minds and bodies are connected, and so many behaviors are about finding sensory pleasure and experiencing positive feelings within our bodies.

All behaviors that we engage in can be either functional or dysfunctional, helpful or unhelpful in achieving the underlying purpose at their root. For example, a child who wants attention can get that in a lot of different ways. Some of those ways could be dysfunctional and not serve them in the long run, or they could engage in responsible ways of seeking connection that will serve them well in their lives to build healthy relationships. The same can be said about our sharing behaviors. They can be dysfunctional and not actually help us to build a healthy and mature relationship, or they can be very functional and helpful to us to build healthy and thriving relationships in the long run.

So How Do I Use This Information?

The key to developing more healthy, mature, and helpful sharing behaviors that will serve us in creating better relationships, lies in going through the E.A.T.S. framework. First, Identify the underlying purposes that your desire to share, or not share, is serving. By doing this, you can gain self-awareness, which then opens up a whole menu of choices around what other behaviors are also available to you in order to achieve the same goal.

Let me give you a recent personal example (*Note that I am the non-believer in my relationship so these examples stem from that perspective, but you could easily find your own examples regardless of where you fall on the belief spectrum.)

Round 1: Identify all the different functions beneath your urge to share
I recently read an article about the amount of land the church owns. It bothered me and I wanted to share it with my husband. If I were to go through the E.A.T.S process to gain self-awareness around my sharing, it would look like this:

E-Escaping /avoiding: I often experience the loneliness of my belief system, I long for people in my closest circles to join me in being able to talk about these things. Sharing helps me to escape loneliness in that way.
A- Attention: Sharing is a bid for connection for me. I love the intellectual intimacy of talking back and forth about ideas, it makes me feel very connected to have intellectual conversations about things that matter to me and to talk deeply about things.
T-Tangible: Deep down I really don’t want to give any more of our money to the church, I want to use that money for other charitable causes or other things. Sharing the article is an indirect way to try to convince him that we don’t need to give more and could put they money where I would like instead.
S-Sensory: Reading the article made me angry, I want physical relief from the angst, I long for a physical catharsis, and sharing could feel like relief for me just to talk about these things.

When I have more self awareness about the functions beneath my urge to share, then I can go through the E.A.T.S framework again and think about all of the different options available to me that would serve the same purpose. In doing this I can see all the choices in front of me and choose what would be the most functional and beneficial to creating a healthy, mature relationship.

Round 2: What else could I choose to do that might serve the same purpose?

E: I can escape loneliness in a lot of ways. We have great physical intimacy, we share a lot of other interests that we can talk about. We haven’t been on a date in a while because life has been so busy. I could initiate a date night because the reality is that I am not alone and these other ways of connecting remind me of that and make me feel very connected. I could also initiate physical intimacy. I also have plenty of groups and friends I could have these deeper religious discussions with. The reality is that I have many ways of feeling connection to avoid feeling lonely, I would probably rather just initiate more closeness with my husband through spending some quality time with him on a date.
A: If I want some intellectual conversation, I can own that and share the article with the caveat that I am looking to honestly hear his opinion and have some debate with no goal of needing either of us to change our position. I could directly ask for the kind of conversation I am wanting. I could also bring up any other article in the news not related to the church and have an intellectual discussion about that because there are lots of things we like to talk back and forth about and we have fun in those discussions and I enjoy them.
T: If I want to not give money to the church, I could communicate that desire directly instead of through sharing as a passive way to try to get what I want. We could work out a compromise of how to spend charitable money (we have actually done that and have a good compromise about this, so I feel like I can let this topic go.) I would rather have a healthy compromise and show my kids how we can do a healthy compromise around our differences rather than totally prioritize my own tangible desires.
S: I have a lot of ways to reach catharsis, I love to go for runs or do an intense workout to relieve anger. My husband does not always have to be my source of catharsis, I am very capable of finding lots of ways to manage my internal experience independent of him. I would
rather have catharsis with him about parenting struggles and other daily stressors than use him for catharsis about this faith-related topics because it is not a fair expectation that he can be my source of catharsis for it all, that would get overwhelming I would imagine. And I have plenty of other things I need catharsis about!

The Result

In the end of the process I had much more self-awareness and had regained an internal locus of control about what I really want and all the many options I have to achieve those same purposes. I could see that my well-being was not tied into my husband reading the article,
listening to my thoughts about it, or agreeing with me. I could see how my initial urge to share was more about trying to use him to manage my own self, which is one of the most common (and damaging) things we tend to do in relationships! The end result of my self-awareness in this situation was a diminished urge to share. Instead, I felt very satisfied by focusing on all the things under my own control. Instead, I initiated a date night and some quality time with him. I brought up other intellectual conversations and felt attention and connection as a result. I worked out and lost the angst I was feeling and gained a sense of peace which made me a more effective spouse and parent. Sometimes this exercise might lead me to share things, but if I do decide to share, the process usually guides me into patterns of much more effective and direct communication patterns with a clear, stated purpose instead of passive, indirect communication.

I could give so many more examples, because personally I come up against this weekly. I go through the same process when I want to share something with my kids. Most often with my kids, the self-awareness I gain is that I am trying to gain some control by trying to guide them, and I am trying to escape the powerlessness of not being able to fully control their future. But I often find that in the process of this E.A.T.S. exercise I can come up with many other ways that I can guide them, and other ways to manage the feeling of powerlessness much more effectively than making my children the target of my own anxieties! I have a lot to say about sharing with kids as far as what things are helpful and not helpful to share, and thoughts about mixed-faith parenting in general, which you can find on my blog here:

https://www.suzettehaltermancoaching.com/blog

Summary

Using the E.A.T.S framework can help to gain self-awareness about your urge to share. The more self-awareness you have about your internal experience and the purpose that sharing is serving for you, the more you can explore alternative options that might actually be much more effective and less dependent on your spouse or kids agreeing with what you share. It puts the locus of control within yourself, which is critical to well-being and healthy relationships. Self-awareness is a skill and requires practice, so this framework may not feel easy at first. But the more you can use it, the quicker and easier it can get in time to identify your inner processes and then choose from your options which behaviors would lead to the most healthy kind of relationship. Healthy relationships look like each partner being responsible for managing their own internal experience, and each person using clear, direct communication skills to make requests for what they would like to be different so that they can negotiate workable solutions.

So when it comes to whether to share or not to share….the more important question is “what is the function of the sharing,” and “are there more relationally healthy and productive ways to achieve that same function that would better serve me and my relationship?”

Suzette with her husband and four kids.

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This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

 

 

Thriving in a Mixed-Faith Marriage

This is the seventh in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)

Guest Post: by a licensed marriage and family therapist

The year three of my children came out as queer (they use “queer” over LGBTQ+) was a rough one. My husband and I processed it differently and had different emotional experiences, but we got to the same page in terms of how we supported our kids. Being able to talk about it with each other and trust the other’s love and respect for these amazing young people we were parenting was a tremendous blessing. We ended up feeling closer to each other and to our kids.

The following year our kids started leaving the LDS Church and again my husband and I processed it differently, had different emotional experiences, and this time did not end up in the same place. After 3 years of faith journeying, 24 years of temple marriage, and a lifetime as members of the Church we found ourselves in a mixed-faith marriage. Navigating this new terrain has required communication, compromise and coordination about things we’d previously taken for granted. There have been additional sources of concern and additional need for respect and reassurance.

As a marriage and family therapist, I’m trained to attune to what lies beneath the surface of couples’ conflicts–the fears that fuel painful patterns, the longing for connection and respect, the need to know we’re safe. I handle the challenges in my marriage better when I’m coming from a place of compassion (for each of us) instead of fear and hurt. That takes continual effort, and I definitely mess it up, but problems that are addressed often heal into greater strength.

Below are some suggestions for establishing safety, connection and respect, and overcoming fears and hurt in a mixed-faith marriage.

Rebuild safety. 

It is normal for us humans to feel safe with others who believe, act and feel as we People who are on the same page as us seem more understandable, predictable and dependable. And we need to feel safe in order to connect–that’s how our brains work. When one person in a relationship stops believing, acting and feeling the way they used to, it makes sense for the other to be unsettled and feel unsafe. A key basis for predictability is gone and things that were taken for granted are now called into question. If a shared faith is lost, will shared love be lost? Fidelity? Morality in general? Eternal marriage and family? There is a lot to fear and grieve.

If your marriage began with shared faith and became mixed-faith, the effort to re-discover common ground is part of re-establishing a sense of safety. Instead of focusing on specific beliefs, try exploring values. Maybe one of you doesn’t believe in God anymore, but do you both believe in being kind, honest and doing good? Maybe now only one of you believes temple covenants are essential, but are you both actively committed to your marriage and family? Maybe you differ about whether children should be attending church, but do you both want your children to grow up to be responsible, respectful, moral people?

Religion can do a lot of the heavy lifting of establishing what someone’s moral page and vision for life look like. Doing the work as an individual and couple to determine a shared moral page and life vision can assuage a lot of fears and promote safety as you navigate a host of issues. It may help a spouse who suddenly seems frighteningly unpredictable, possibly immoral and rejecting of a shared vision begin to seem understandable and dependable again. It can also help both people feel personally grounded in their own moral authority–their ability to determine, believe, and act on the morals and a vision of life that they value. 

Be aware of your fears and communicate about them.

In a mixed-faith marriage, you might recognize conflicts about how kids are raised, how to navigate family events, whether porn, alcohol or other previously taboo activities are acceptable, how you are or aren’t supporting each other, etc., along with all the normal marital conflicts. When focusing on those it’s easy for communication to become conflictual and lead to disconnection. With some introspection, a change of focus, and willingness to be vulnerable, though, you can change the conversation and cultivate connection.

When working with couples in conflict, I inevitably find fears fueling their pain. Sometimes we have to dig to discover what is actually the core of the conflict, but it almost always comes back to fundamental relationship desires that aren’t being met, and the meaning people make of that. In a healthy attachment relationship, we want to feel respected, connected, understood, valued, important, accepted, safe, trusted, appreciated, wanted, supported, partnered. . . you get the picture. When we aren’t feeling that way, fears come up. Our minds may decide: “I’m not enough;” “I’m a failure;” “I’m unlovable/unacceptable;” or really start tuning in to every hint that: “I’m not safe;” “I’m not valued;” “I’m alone in this;” “I’m powerless;” “I’m being rejected,” and seeing the other person as the problem. Both feel terrible and terrifying.

If there is a conflict that comes up often for you, take some time alone to explore what is at stake for you in the conflict. Maybe the kids’ church attendance (or not) is actually about you feeling like you are failing as a parent and that you can’t succeed without support. Maybe it’s about feeling your experiences of hurt at church aren’t seen or respected. Coming to a resolution about the surface issue almost always requires communicating about the underlying issue. None of us are at our best when our fears are driving, and to get them out of the driver’s seat they have to be understood, communicated and validated.

Validating the other person’s experience is often hard for couples–there’s a sense that by really listening and reflecting what the other person is saying, we have to agree with them or give up our point of view. That isn’t what validation is about, though. It’s about creating a safe place, where fears and hurts can be heard and understood. It requires each person to hold onto themself (helping create safety can’t happen when we are letting our own fears drive) and lean in instead of pulling back. Validating is like getting out of a finger trap–trying to pull the other person to our side only traps us further; relaxing, re-engaging, and reflecting what the other person is saying releases us.

Focus on helping things go right.

You have likely heard the statistic that stable relationships have a ratio of at least five positive interactions to every negative interaction (no? It’s from John Gottman.) Healthy, thriving relationships have an even higher ratio of positive to negative. Every relationship has ruptures, so this means it’s important to be intentional about repairs. There’s a saying I love about relationships (because I mess up a lot): “What’s most important isn’t what you did, it’s what you do after what you did.” Reconnecting, with an acknowledgement or apology for what went wrong helps things go right.

Helping things go right also means overcoming our brain’s negativity bias and intentionally noticing and communicating the positive. For most of us (I’ve been assured it’s not just me) it’s much easier to see faults in the people and situations around us than to see what is going well. This isn’t a shortcoming necessarily–turns out we’re kind of programmed that way (look up “negativity bias” for more info). So we have to be intentional about seeing and commenting on the good.

Another way to help things go right is to do the basic stuff that we all know are good for our marriages. The things that (for me) often get relegated to the back burner in the face of all the demands of life and my lack of energy or brain power or both. And when there’s conflict that disconnects us further it can feel like the back burner just gets turned off and there’s this slow heat death of the relationship (where everything devolves into a frozen void).  So, you know, make the effort to spend fun time together. Talk about things that are interesting to you both. Watch fun shows together. Have sex. (And if there isn’t enough emotional connection or safety for sex, go to therapy!) Smile at each other. Give a compliment. Say “I love you,” and why. Express appreciation and admiration. Hold hands. Forgive. Apologize. You know the things.

I’m still pretty new to navigating my mixed-faith marriage, and I anticipate challenges will continue. My hope comes from the experiences of connection we’ve had based on doing the things above. Not every marriage (mixed-faith or otherwise) survives, and it is not within any one person’s power to make it survive. But when both partners are committed to doing the work, I’ve seen marriage come back from the brink and thrive.

___________________

This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

Come Follow Me: 1 Nephi 16–22, “I Will Prepare the Way before You”

Image from Church Media Library

At the beginning of class, hand out the “Nephi built a boat” coloring page from the Come Follow Me manual and provide art materials to color with. It may be wise to not provide scissors and glue sticks until the end of class. (Providing doodle paper generally improves class participation in my youth Sunday School class. I would definitely love it if Gospel Doctrine also had more busy-hands components offered.)

Ask the class “How do you act if you want someone to change their behavior?” Talk about how conflict often happens when people are stressed and not having their needs met. Talk about how getting people to work productively towards a common goal is a very common challenge. Say that today in class we’ll be talking about challenges Lehi and Sariah’s family faced while working towards the common goals of surviving in the wilderness and traveling to the promised land.

Ask the class “What happened to Lehi and Sariah’s family as they journeyed in the wilderness and when they were on the boat?” Make a list on the board. Try to keep your list chronological to aid in class discussion later on.

Lehi’s sons and Zoram marry the daughters of Ishmael (16:7)lead by the Liahona (16:10, 26-30. 18:12, 21)bows broke, no food (16:18-32)Ishmael dies (16:34-39)women bear children in the wilderness (17:1-3, 20. 18:7)Nephi builds a boat (17:7-16, 18:1-5)Nephi shocks Laman and Lemuel after they doubt his ability to build a boat. (17:17-55, Nephi talks about the children of Israel leaving Egypt from 17:23-43)boat nearly sinks when Nephi is tied up (18:9-23)

Start by talking about point #5 and having the class compare 1Ne 17:1-3 with 17:20. Talk about how Nephi views the women’s survival as a wonderful blessing, but Laman and Lemuel seem to have more empathy for the hardships their wives went through.* Ask if both perspectives could be true. Talk about how we never get to hear any perspectives from the women in question. Don’t you wish you knew what they thought and felt about their experiences? Talk about how Nephi is the one writing, so we are getting his perspective and how he experienced his brother’s thoughts. One of the wonderful doctrines of the gospel is that of atonement. We cannot be at-one with others if we are not considering everyone’s perspective. Jesus spent his ministry serving those who were ignored or shunned by those in power. Noticing whose voices are missing is a very Christlike thing to practice.

Next, divide class members into three groups and assign each group a passage to read.

1 Ne 16:18-391 Ne 17: 17-23, 45-551 Ne 18:9-23

Tell the groups to look for

What actions are helping the group reach their goal?What actions are unhelpful?Why do you think they behaved that way?Whose voices are missing? How might the story have been told differently if they wrote it?

Have each group discuss what they found with the whole class.

Talk about how we don’t have access to other people’s perspectives in Nephi’s story, but in our own life we can actively seek out perspectives we haven’t heard. This can help us resolve conflicts in our families (i.e. “Is this what you were feeling when that happened?”) We can also ask ourselves if our behavior is helping or hindering our goals.

Nephi told us that Laman and Lemuel had heard the voice of the Lord and seen how the Liahona works, but he also said that they could no longer feel God’s words (1 Ne 17:45). Ask “How would you act if you felt uncertain about the group’s goal?” Probably a lot like Laman and Lemuel, although hopefully less violent. “How do you think Laman and Lemuel’s abuses affected Nephi?” Sometimes when I read this story, it’s Nephi that seems callous and hard-hearted. After all, murmuring when you are hangry, grief after the death of a loved one, and anger when someone tells you to stop having a good time are all natural, human emotions. I wonder if the abuse that Nephi experienced hindered his ability to fully consider the feelings of those around him. Nephi’s ability to see the goal of the promised land and work towards it was a heavy burden of responsibility.

I’ll probably skip the Isaiah chapters for this lesson. There’s already plenty to talk about in the easier-to-understand narrative chapters in this weeks reading. But if we do have extra time at the end of class, I will discuss the structure of Isaiah’s poetry as a bit of a preview to 2 Nephi. Here’s how I’d format 1Ne 20:1

I find it much easier to stay awake reading Isaiah when I have a structure to look for, and staying awake definitely helps with deriving meaning from the text

Let the class cut and glue their boats. Close with this quote and express hope that God will lead us to a place where we can flourish:

“One beautiful spring day I left the door open to enjoy the fresh air. A small bird flew in the open door and then realized this was not where it wanted to be. It flew desperately around the room, repeatedly flying into the window glass in an attempt to escape. I tried to gently guide it toward the open door, but it was frightened and kept darting away. It finally landed on top of the window drapes in bewildered exhaustion. I took a broom and slowly reached the bristle end up to where the bird nervously perched. As I held the head of the broom next to its feet, the bird tentatively stepped onto the bristles. Slowly, very slowly, I walked to the open door, holding the broom as steady as I could. As soon as we reached the open door, the bird swiftly flew to freedom.

Like that bird, sometimes we are afraid to trust because we don’t understand God’s absolute love and desire to help us. But when we study Heavenly Father’s plan and Jesus Christ’s mission, we understand that Their only objective is our eternal happiness and progress. They delight to help us when we ask, seek, and knock. When we exercise faith and humbly open ourselves to Their answers, we become free from the constraints of our misunderstandings and assumptions, and we can be shown the way forward.”

Jean Bingham, Relief Society General President

“ That Your Joy May Be Full ,” October 2017 General Conference

*The discussion prompts in my lesson have absolutely been influenced by Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming’s book The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, volume 1. That book has helped me go from seeing Nephi as a pretty obnoxious younger brother, to having a lot more compassion for the hard things he experienced while still holding space to view his human imperfections. It offers a charitable and constructive way to look at the text, while also pointing out times where the authors of The Book of Mormon may have let their own hurt or prejudice affect their actions or teachings. One quote that made me smile: “Nephi writes in [1 Ne 17:2] that the women were strong like unto the men…[He] misses something fundamental because he uses a patriarchal lens that sees male strength as the highest standard. If the women are doing the work of men and the work of women, then they are actually stronger than the men.”

We Will Bless Our Baby (MFM Series)

Photo credit for main image: Megan Rei Photography

This is the sixth in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)

Guest post: Anna K. lives in Virginia with her husband, cat, and snake. She can generally be found reading, playing tennis, or foraging for mushrooms.

Growing up, I loved to read the personal stories in the Ensign in the Latter-day Saint Voices section. These little bite-sized anecdotes were full of normal people choosing God and practicing their faith in real ways. It gave me a glimpse into what I imagined adulthood would be: facing trials but also being blessed along the way. 

There was one story in particular that stuck out to me. I’ve tried to find it, but so far my online research in the old Ensigns hasn’t yielded any results. But whether or not my memory of the story is accurate, this is how I remember it. The lady in the story talks of a young woman in her ward. How she was so faithful and had such a strong belief in the Church. And then she grew up and got married – to a non-member. They had a beautiful wedding and her husband was an honorable man. A few years later, this young woman had a baby. Soon after at Church, there was a baby blessing for another baby in the ward. After the blessing, the young woman – with tears in her eyes – turned to the narrator and said “But who will bless my baby?” The story then finished with the narrator testifying of how important it is to marry in the temple and marry a worthy priesthood holder.

At the time I didn’t think much of it – of course I would marry a worthy priesthood holder in the temple. Of course that young woman was sad because her husband couldn’t bless her baby. Of course she should have married in the temple. I would never make such a choice for myself and I judged this nameless young woman harshly for hers.

Life went on – I went to BYU, served a mission in Portugal, graduated, and ended up working out in the Washington, D.C. area. While there were many local LDS singles, I took dating into my own hands with dating apps. After a slew of boring dates, I told myself I would go on one last date with a man I met on Bumble – that man became my husband.

I never thought that I would marry a non-member. But there I was, having dated this wonderful man for a year, knowing I wanted to marry him. Despite not even being Christian, he is the most Christ-like man I’ve ever met. Whenever I prayed about what choice I should make, I always felt that marrying him was the right choice. Which sometimes seemed strange – how could I be getting an answer that was the exact opposite of everything I was taught growing up? But I am so glad he wanted to marry me too and that I said yes.

Every day of our marriage I know I made the right choice. My husband and I are aligned in our values and goals. We support each other in our dreams and beliefs, even if we don’t fully understand them. Having a husband who isn’t a member has given me the space to interrogate my own beliefs, without worrying what will happen to our marriage. There are so many pieces of the Church that I don’t understand. There are pieces that I love! And then there are the pieces that I know are wrong and make me sick with how much pain they cause. Slowly working my way through these conflicting feelings has been hard. It’s painful and slow. I don’t think I would have had the strength to do so without being in a mixed-faith marriage. But the growth I am experiencing in my faith is profound and gratifying.

I don’t know where this faith expansion will lead me! Which is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. But the peace I feel knowing my husband will be there to support me through it all is the foundation I needed to let myself truly explore my faith.

If you find yourself in a mixed-faith marriage – whether by choice or not – please know that there is so much goodness and growth there. Our Heavenly Parents love us so much more than we can comprehend and I truly believe that they have a way for all of our families to be together forever – no matter what beliefs those family members hold in this life. I have two main pieces of advice for making a mixed-faith marriage thrive.

Always love and respect your partner, even if you don’t understand them. Approaching difficult conversations about faith from that perspective should allow you to better listen and support each other. Don’t think your partner will change and don’t try to change them. If I’d gone into my marriage on the assumption that my husband would eventually get baptized into the Church, I would have set myself up for a lifetime of disappointment and probably a lot of fruitless conversations where I tried to convince him to join the Church. Accepting your partner as they are will help to avoid disappointment and heartache at unmet expectations.

We don’t have kids yet, but occasionally I’ll think about that Ensign story. I feel so much compassion for that young woman. I hope that she feels peace and joy in her choices. And I know who will bless my baby. We will bless our baby.

We will bless them by unconditionally loving them.

We will bless them by modeling a healthy relationship based on love and respect.

We will bless them by demonstrating how to approach faith and religion in different ways.

We will bless them with the support to pursue their dreams.

We will bless our baby.

Feeling Stuck In Your Mixed Faith Marriage?

This is the fifth in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)

Guest Post: Chris Rich is an active believing member of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints.  She and her husband have been married for 25 years and have 3 amazing kids.  Her husband and all 3 kids have stepped away from the church.  Chris is a certified life coach and mental health presenter.  She delights in helping members of the church thrive in their mixed faith relationships.  She is the host of The Mixed Faith Relationship Podcast.  You can find her at www.chrisrichcoaching.com or Instagram and Facebook at Chris Rich Coaching.

After my husband left the church, there was a lengthy period of time where I felt stuck.  I had all sorts of emotions that felt like they would never go away. I felt victimized, worried, disappointed, angry, overwhelmed, sad, and I was grieving.  Looking back, I realize the reason I was stuck was because I was spinning in what I call “dirty pain”.  Dirty pain feels terrible.  I was constantly blaming my husband, arguing with reality, identifying as a victim, and feeling entitled to the life I thought I was supposed to have. Dirty pain is like a hamster wheel.  You can spin and spin with no end in sight.  There is nothing wrong with dirty pain, it just keeps you in a stagnant funk. Our pain can make us bitter or better.  Dirty pain is very unlikely to make us better.  

Here are some examples of what dirty pain might sound like:  

This shouldn’t be happening to me.He ruined our eternal family.I deserve better than this.She hurt me so I am going to hurt her back.The only way I will ever be happy is if they come back to church.It is all their fault.Etc.  

Clean pain is the alternative to dirty pain.  Clean pain is still painful, but it is the kind of pain that makes us better as we allow these difficult emotions to cleanse us.  Clean pain is more like the moving sidewalk at the airport.  It moves us forward from point A to point B.  Clean pain propels us forward into a better version of ourselves as we learn, grow, and improve along the way.  As we experience clean pain, we allow the atonement of Jesus Christ to work in our lives.

Here are some examples of what clean pain might sound like:

This is sad, I wasn’t expecting this.It is hard to watch my spouse make that choice.I feel disappointed about having (alcohol, coffee, smoking, etc) in the home.I never planned on my partner having their name removed off church records. Etc.

If you are wondering which kind of pain you are feeling ask yourself, “Is the pain I am feeling moving me forward or keeping me stuck?” If you would like to learn more about these 2 types of pain I go into more detail in this podcast episode.

___________________

This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

 

Feeling Stuck In Your Mixed Faith Marriage? (MFM series)

This is the fifth in a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing exponentabby@gmail.com. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)

Guest Post: Chris Rich is an active believing member of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints.  She and her husband have been married for 25 years and have 3 amazing kids.  Her husband and all 3 kids have stepped away from the church.  Chris is a certified life coach and mental health presenter.  She delights in helping members of the church thrive in their mixed faith relationships.  She is the host of The Mixed Faith Relationship Podcast.  You can find her at www.chrisrichcoaching.com or Instagram and Facebook at Chris Rich Coaching.

After my husband left the church, there was a lengthy period of time where I felt stuck.  I had all sorts of emotions that felt like they would never go away. I felt victimized, worried, disappointed, angry, overwhelmed, sad, and I was grieving.  Looking back, I realize the reason I was stuck was because I was spinning in what I call “dirty pain”.  Dirty pain feels terrible.  I was constantly blaming my husband, arguing with reality, identifying as a victim, and feeling entitled to the life I thought I was supposed to have. Dirty pain is like a hamster wheel.  You can spin and spin with no end in sight.  There is nothing wrong with dirty pain, it just keeps you in a stagnant funk. Our pain can make us bitter or better.  Dirty pain is very unlikely to make us better.  

Here are some examples of what dirty pain might sound like:  

This shouldn’t be happening to me.He ruined our eternal family.I deserve better than this.She hurt me so I am going to hurt her back.The only way I will ever be happy is if they come back to church.It is all their fault.Etc.  

Clean pain is the alternative to dirty pain.  Clean pain is still painful, but it is the kind of pain that makes us better as we allow these difficult emotions to cleanse us.  Clean pain is more like the moving sidewalk at the airport.  It moves us forward from point A to point B.  Clean pain propels us forward into a better version of ourselves as we learn, grow, and improve along the way.  As we experience clean pain, we allow the atonement of Jesus Christ to work in our lives.

Here are some examples of what clean pain might sound like:

This is sad, I wasn’t expecting this.It is hard to watch my spouse make that choice.I feel disappointed about having (alcohol, coffee, smoking, etc) in the home.I never planned on my partner having their name removed off church records. Etc.

If you are wondering which kind of pain you are feeling ask yourself, “Is the pain I am feeling moving me forward or keeping me stuck?” If you would like to learn more about these 2 types of pain I go into more detail in this podcast episode.

___________________

This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.

 

God and Me After a School Shooting

One of my biggest fears when my faith in the Mormon God started to weaken came with that famous phrase, “Where will you go?” If you don’t have this God, what do you have? More importantly, if you don’t have any God, what do you have?

Ten years (add a few probably?) into exploring my relationship with God, and I still can’t define exactly who or what God is. I don’t identify strongly with any denomination or their God. And I have some gripes with a God who is supposedly all-knowing and can impact things, but does so in ways that I can’t begin to understand or explain. Is God a chess master, a puppeteer, an overseer, a military leader, a parent? I’m not certain.

I have found, however, that as tragedy, heartache, and joy have come over those ten years or so, that these questions didn’t break me or define me like religious leaders told me they would. Where would I go when I saw my child hurting beyond my reach? Where would I go when my mother lay in a hospital bed and I was helpless to do anything? Where would I go when a teenager brought guns to our local high school the first day after Christmas break and changed our community?

Toward a love that is motivated by a shared humanity and desire to positively contribute to a greater whole.

Toward the people who choose love, community, and advocacy every day.

Toward people who act in love without the need to be united by one religious dogma or doctrine.

Where is God in my community after a school shooting? Certainly in the comfort of the many denominational prayers at our community vigil. But when those prayers reached out to some God for comfort and peace, the prayers that stood out to me asked God to work within our hearts to change us and move us to act. Instead of only asking God to step in to do something, these prayers asked for help to find the courage, love, and hope to continue in a better shared humanity despite our despair and helplessness.

“God” is in the people in our community who are coming together to help, to serve, to love; no matter their denomination or faith or lack of belief in any higher being. Frankly, I feel surrounded by a holy spirit the most when I’m with people doing daily good, often their life’s work, without mentioning any religion at all. There is a light within them, a drive to do good, a spirit of community, that carries such strength and hope.

I am not lost without a specific religious script to guide me.

For now, I go to work in a library every day where community services are adapting to meet our community’s new and ever-changing needs. People hold each other and send comfort to everyone in the community. At our school board meeting Monday night, the mother of Ahmir Jolliff, a wonderful 6th grader who died in the shooting, asked the community to call Dylan, the boy who shot her son, by name and not vilify him. She called for more, sustained kindness. And I heard God in her words.

Now more than ever, I’m convinced that there’s more than one way toward God/purpose/a meaningful life. I’ve been hurting. I’ve struggled with my depression. I even experienced my first panic attack last year. But I am not anchorless or afraid. Whatever good I can contribute in this life, even in my small ways, will be my communion with God and guide my life.