It’s been almost a year since my husband told me he no longer has a testimony of the gospel. Strangely enough, it seems like it was just yesterday. It feels like I’ve just lost a year of my life. But in losing it I’ve been given an opportunity to be found.

I’d like to share with you my story, though I feel I’m just in the opening chapter, really. I know there are many other people who find themselves in this same place. My hope is that by sharing I can help someone else feel a little less alone or maybe even just invoke more empathy from anyone still in the perfect cultural Mormon bubble. So here we go-

I’m that girl- the one that did everything right and got everything she wanted (I was far from perfect, but you know what I mean). I remember in Young Womens writing down my future and all the qualities of my future companion. I checked every part off the list (except for that non-spiritual one I added about my husband dancing- hah). It didn’t take a lot of extraneous effort to make it happen. Attend college at BYU? Check. (I actually didn’t plan to go to BYU. I just put it down because the girl next to me did.) Mission? Check. Married in the temple to an amazing priesthood holder? Check. Happily ever after? Check.

It didn’t stop there though. I kept hearing how tough the first years of marriage are. I didn’t understand what people were talking about. We didn’t argue or fight. We just lived in “La La Land” for almost five years. Then one night my happy bubble was burst.

He said he didn’t believe.

What did that mean for me? For us? We were all of a sudden culturally “broken.”

I will fast forward through months of depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and thoughts of running away to today. Though I still sometimes mourn for the ease and, well, mediocrity of the life I had before, I’m so grateful for my new and changing understanding of what I deem one of the most essential gospel principles- Agency.

We speak so often of the principle of agency in church. It’s what got us to the earth in the first place. We learn that we chose to come to gain experience through choices. Then we create this paradigm of what the perfect Mormon life looks like- Daddy is up on the stand in his freshly-pressed shirt done by his sweet little homemaker. The homemaker is sitting with their children showing them a quiet book she just finished from a Pinterest pattern. Exaggeration? Kind of (p.s. I see nothing inherently wrong with any part of this scene, but you get my point). But what happens when you throw agency back into this paradigm and someone doesn’t do their “part”? You find out that individual happiness can be destroyed in a matter of moments based on someone else’s use of his or her agency. No bueno. The goal in life becomes fitting the mold instead of being molded.

As an alternative, I feel a healthier model would be based on individual commitment coupled with love for others without caveat of them thinking or feeling the same as us. Hard, right? I think so. But if we are not allowing and loving then are we really trusting in the power that got us here in the first place? Are we trusting that the Savior knows each of us individually? I’m sure our value to Him is not based on the depth or even possession of a testimony of Him. We are of worth because we are.

Warning: here comes a metaphor (we are culturally so good at them). I used to apply the story of the oxen yoked together with me on one side and my husband on the other pulling along in spiritual unity. I now realize instead that it has always been the Savior on the other side (Though I have never read it, I hear that Elder Bednar uses this metaphor in his most recent book Power to Become). It is by unifying myself with Christ that I find peace and hope.

Don’t get me wrong. I still desire unity with my spouse but it doesn’t have to be in religion. I think we’ve slowly begun to develop it again through respect: I listen and truly try to understand his concerns with church principles/history and he listens to my perspectives. I realize this wouldn’t work for everyone nor does it work for us all the time but it’s what we have for now.

What it really comes down to is that maybe some of us Mormons need to calm down on being control freaks. I’m guilty. You can control your own decisions. That’s it with the exception of how you decide to respond to others who choose differently. Will it be love or judgment? I hope love.

I think the sum of where I am on this journey is most beautifully written in Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon. The beginning of the letter on faith states, “When your story wears thin and even you get tired of telling it, you’ll need faith. This is not faith that in the end God will, against all odds, save your story. Just the opposite. This is the faith that the life God offers you doesn’t need your stories to dress it up. Dying is hard, but you can be reborn only when you trust God enough to let your stories die.”
I lived the “perfect” Mormon life I mentally created for myself. It is time to let go of that story and let it die. Here’s your invite to that funeral. I give away my power and instead ask for God’s.

-RL