A Brush with Polygamy

Join us for this episode of The Clairity Podcast where we sit down with Sylvia  and discuss her brush with polygamy!  Through her experiences, Sylvia breaks down the corruption of polygamy, and explains how she woke up to the false narrative polygamy is. 

We also discuss in this episode the topic of friendship, how to have healthy friendships, and signs to watch for in controlling or manipulative friendships. We also delve into how we can resist the temptation to hand our God-given authority of making choices for ourselves to someone else; whether that be in a church, or even just in a friendship.

Tune into the full episode for all this and more!

Want to join us for an episode of The Clairity Podcast and share your story to Jesus?  Email me at clairity.podcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of the Clarity Podcast. I'm your host, Claire, and this week's guest is Sylvia Dahlia. Sylvia is from Sandy, Utah, and she's 43 years old, and we are so excited to have her on the podcast today. Everyone has a journey they are walking. And along that road, we are met with potholes, road bumps, rain, storms, and sometimes just fog. But through it all, we're really just walking. Thank you so much for being with us. So let's go ahead and just dive right in. Why don't you go ahead and give us a little bit of your background and tell us about your Mormon dynamic growing up?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Okay, so my background, born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in uh the wonderful, wonderful suburban town of Murray, Utah. And it was a lovely upbringing, actually, and a faithful family, both parents, very faithful, very serving. All of my siblings, a couple of them in and out of activity, but all very uh faithful overall. And I really, really at an early age, I think I decided I there was nothing more important than serving God and uh being and doing whatever uh He wanted me to be and do.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

So tell me a little bit about your your family dynamic. Like, so what I've seen in a lot of Mormon families is there's like the really legalistic families that are just all about the rules, all about following every single rule. And then there's kind of the lax families that maybe don't really follow the rules, but they're in the church and they're dedicated to the church. What was your dynamic like growing up? What were your parents teaching you?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Well, we, I mean, we fasted every fast Sunday. We went to church every week. There were times when we had aunts and uncles visit from out of town and we would go to a restaurant on a Sunday. But for the most part, it was like we don't shop on Sunday. We wanted to, we tried to keep the Sabbath day holy, but there weren't a lot of uh rules around that necessarily. It was more like the example was set by by my parents. They did a really good job of leading by example and trying to be before they preached and also giving us room to explore and make mistakes and learn for ourselves where where real discipleship was for us.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Okay. So tell us about your young women's experience. What was it like for you as a teenager growing up in the church?

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Okay, so it was a little different for me because I was homeschooled from fourth grade to um ninth grade, and I begin to I began to transition back into public school. But so the young women in my ward were rather close with each other, and I didn't really have a lot in common in the conversations that they would have about teachers in school and difficulties there. Some of them had conversations about their difficulties with their parents, and I didn't have a lot to relate to there, and they were into sports, and I wasn't. I so mostly my young women's experience was I loved service projects and I loved camping. I loved that. And my leaders were amazing. They were so caring, and for the most part, I believe that they really saw each girl as an individual, and they wanted to teach us and nurture us in a way that was personalized for each one of us as much as they could, you know, as much as you can when you're leading a group like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

So tell us about the part Jesus Christ played in your life when you were a teenager and a youth and kind of getting older, becoming more independent. What was your understanding of Jesus Christ at this time?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

My understanding of Jesus was that he was the savior, that he was my personal savior. It was a little conflicted because I knew, you know, people say, oh, he loves you. He died just for you as much as he did for everybody else. And if it was, if it had been only you that he was dying for, he would still have done it. But at the same time, I was trying to reconcile the idea of fearing the Lord. The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, figuring out what it means to fear God and know that he is my father. And so Jesus was my big brother, as I understood it, and he was my friend, but it was like a distant thing. And I knew that one day I would meet him, and that day would be glorious, and I looked forward to it, but I didn't really think that that was available to me in my daily life here on Earth.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Okay, so sounds like you were in a very dedicated LDS home. They taught you good principles, they taught you good morals. Um, you still loved young women's because you loved the God part of young women's and um you had an understanding of Jesus Christ. So tell us about your young adult years and what that was like for you. And were you married in the temple? Did you serve a mission? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah. So, okay, so I knew um I wanted to get married in the temple. And I was, uh let's see, I went through high school and did everything I was supposed to do. And, you know, I got good grades, and I I worked really hard in high school to try to be good. I my dream job after I got out of high school uh was to work at this horse and tack store. And uh that's where I met my husband, and we were just hanging out, we were just friends, and then one day he said, When are you when are you gonna invite me to church? And so I invited him to church. And we ended up, yeah, we ended up getting married in the temple. And he had been baptized when he was 18 and then and fallen away almost immediately. And then we, when he started going back to church with me, he was kind of accelerated through the the process of um what men go through to be able to go to the temple. And then uh, and then we were able to go and we got married in the Salt Lake Temple in 2002, and then we had our first baby girl when uh in December 2003, and from there on we just, you know, we're raising a family.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Okay, so tell us about the part that the church played once you got married. So you got married in the temple. Tell us the part the church played when you're starting to have kids, raising your kids. What kind of influence did the church have on your guys' life choices and family choices?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Sure. Okay, so the phrase no, no success, no worldly success can make can compensate for failure in the home was a big motivator for me. And it was, I think, helpful in most ways, but it it kind of with my own particular desire level to be and do good, I think it I I took it really far, and um there was nothing, nothing more important. And also, though, I was it it instilled a level of fear, and fear is not a good uh motivator to for making good decisions. Anyway, my husband didn't like we went to the temple, and then he didn't, he stopped immediately, stopped going to the temple almost. It was like two months after, and then he didn't go again for um a year, and then he got his temple recommend renewed, but then really he probably only went back to the temple with me three, maybe four times in our whole marriage, and we've been married now 23 years. So yeah, he just it it didn't feel right to him, but to me, it was very much like this is what I've been working for my whole life. This is what I've been taught my whole life, this is the point, this is it. This is the highest thing you can do and still be on earth, you know, our ancestors needed, and I did all of his family names that were available and which felt really cool. I did feel a closer connection to them, learning about their lives and gathering their names and building the family tree and everything. But anyway, so we did that, I did that, but he he wasn't really into it, and it it broke my heart because I to me that was like this is it. And and uh how can you not want this?

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Did you feel a lot of undue pressure from church culture to be able to perform in a certain way? So, like when your husband's not going to the temple with you all the time, did that make you feel less then? Like you weren't, like you didn't have control of your home. Tell us about the feelings surrounding that.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Right. Um, yes, I felt abandoned and alone, like I'd made a mistake. It was because I still felt like God was still judging me, like there was a judging still going on, and that I I might not measure up, you know, I might not be good enough to be welcome into heaven. And so we needed to be working anxiously engaged in a good work, which I still believe in, but sometimes I'm like sometimes that's rest. Yeah, the application is different. Yes, absolutely. And I would compare everything that my husband would say, things that uh we were learning. I would compare everything against what the elders of the church would say over the pulpit. And it was, I put a lot of weight on the priesthood, priesthood authority. I almost equated that with God. I really did. Actually, I'd probably even put it higher in some ways because whatever the Bible said could be trumped by what modern prophets were saying. Whatever the Book of Mormon said could be canceled out and written over by what the modern prophets were saying. Whatever I received in prayer for sure was able to be overridden by what the leaders of the church would say, because I'm just lowly little me, just this little girl trying to be good and not always succeeding. And they are these high and holy, called up God prophets, seers, and revelators, uh, holders of the priesthood. And, you know, there's that priesthood authority and and how we should uh submit to our priesthood leaders. And so anyway, so I would often shelf feelings of I should like relax and be at peace. I would shelf that to listen to the elders.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Okay, so what you're describing here are points of hindsight that you see now, but when you're in it, you're kind of just doing what you're taught to do. So let's get let's get into your awakening journey a little bit. So, what would you say was like your first moment of something isn't right here? You described a little bit of what, but what was your first like conscious awakening?

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah, because there were definitely inklings all along the way, but I just kept shoving them down because it didn't match with what the brethren were saying. But my first real awakening was when COVID happened, and what a blessing. I was on a date with my husband, and he I was thanking him for being the dragon slayer in our relationship and being able to handle kind of the bad news in the world and and let me hold the space of peace in our home with my men with my mentality. And he said, Well, what if I've come across a dragon that I can't slay? And it was something that he had learned about Joseph Smith that whatever, but that I I still don't agree with, but but the cool thing is I God spoke to me and he was like truth can bear inspection. And I was like, well, hey, no problem. Let's just look into it more. God's the only one who really knows the truth, so let's just ask God and be open to whatever because we should never be afraid of what God says. And then during that time, we also um prayed about whether we should get the injection or not, and we both felt like at least not yet, and we prayed about wearing masks to church because we were we didn't feel good about it, and so we prayed about it and got a no answer. And it it was it's beautiful now, but at the moment it was it was so scary, it was really scary to go against the gr the current of what everybody, the crowd just to go against the crowd. But we we stuck with what we got in prayer, and it that just that idea that whatever is true, God's not gonna be afraid to have us ask questions. And believing that God is love and that he's a loving parent opens that door, like he wouldn't reject us for asking questions, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Okay, so you had a moment where you realized that it's okay to ask questions. So what did you do with that? What was the next thing?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

So realizing that the church was pushing uh these things that we had been studying for a while, that vaccines were not what they're cracked up to be. And we had uh voided vaccines for our kids for the most part, and uh and then you learn more about them and you're like, ooh, I'm less and less sure, you know, when the church was kind of really kind of heavily pushing everybody should go get this shot, we were well, my husband was already out of the church at that time and and I was but we I don't know, we were unified in asking God about how to move forward through all of this, and so we were asking about the shots, and and then I you start to wonder who else is seeing this, who else is seeing that something's not right here, and and you start to see well-respected, very dedicated members of the church also saying, wait a minute, something's something's off here, something's not right. The more that you research, it's just like talking to the Wizard of Oz, and you begin to see the the man behind the curtain and and all the wheels and cogs and buttons that he's operating, and you're kind of like, well, a lot of this stuff is questionable. So one of the big things um that I had experienced was um a deep inquiry into the celestial or not nature of polygamy in years past. And I was raised to believe that it was celestial, we're just not practicing it now, and one day we will, so I better just get used to it. And or at least that's that was the conclusion I came to. I better just get used to it. And I hope I'll just love it somehow. So finding out that polygamy is not of God, and like all of the scriptures that people cite in the Bible and that are like, oh, well, these people pla practice polygamy, and these people did. And it's like, well, if you look a little closer, none of those were actually commanded by God, and they ended in conflict, they started with a with a feeling of not enoughness, and then they ended in conflict, and um those are not of God, or well, at least that shouldn't be the fruits that we're aiming for, you know. I'm like, well, then if polygamy is not of God, where did it come from? And come to find out that Joseph Smith, and I didn't know this when I was growing up, but Joseph Smith Smith said his whole life, polygamy's bad, don't do it. He excommunicated people for it. He testified over and over, I only have one wife. Then there are these other people who say, no, he did. He was just lying for the Lord. And lying for the Lord, I was like, that was something I always had trouble with because I know it's one of the basic Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not bear false witness, you know. So it didn't make sense. And then to find out that Brigham Young was involved in some nefarious stuff.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Tell us a little bit about your deep dive into polygamy and how you came to know that all of this stuff is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Okay. Yeah, that that I came to um through logic, which I wouldn't have thought was a good way to get to the truth with the Lord, because it's like, well, things don't always make sense, right? But this does. Okay, so with my brush with polygamy, I was looking for, I was so afraid, just in the spirit of fear, um, hearing about conspiracies and wanting to know what's the safe place, and believing that the church was my safe umbrella to be under, but then finding that there was some corruption in the church, I was like, well, then where do I go? Where do I go for peace and safety? Where do I go to safety? And I had a friend who was studying um these things with me, and she said, I found the right place to go. And we went, um, we started learning from this uh gentleman who was part of a group called the Apostolic United Brethren. And he and his wife were such good people and such just wonderful people and so faithful and knowledgeable. And I asked him to for more information and because I was looking for safety, I was motivated by fear right now. And so they he brings over, he comes over to my house and brings a binder full of research. And I at the time had been taught to not trust my own intuition, my own uh connection to God, my own answers from God. And so I was taught to look to priesthood leaders and um default if if anything I got disagreed with then, default to what they said. And this man was a priesthood holder, and in fact, he had evidence that said that his offshoot of the LDS church was the only one that had the actual priesthood, and so he um he was telling me about it, and part of it was part of the principle, part of their organization was polygamy. And I remember kind of thinking getting this feeling that, well, then my place in the universe is like a cow. I'm here for like breeding, and it felt awful and made me sick to my stomach, but I couldn't argue with all of his knowledge and all of his authority because I hadn't built up that strength to follow my my own compass. And so I remember feeling the subtle feeling of choice. I've got this choice to follow my own intuition, which is like this doesn't fit, this feels wrong, this is wrong, and he what he was saying, and I chose to follow to decide to believe what he was saying. And at that moment I felt the love of God drain out of me so fast. It was like someone flushed the toilet, and it just all of this love that I didn't even know that was just a part of me all the time, it just drained right out of me, and I I felt all Awful. And I was depressed for months, actually. And but I was we were studying more, and I forced my husband to study it with me because I was like, I can't res I can't fully accept a dis uh your opinion about this unless you study it and give it give it a good chance. So he was studying it with me and trying to give it as good a chance as he could in good conscience. And um and then one day we were invited to go to dinner with uh a couple who had left the Apostolic United Brethren, the AUB. They had left from different marriages and then joined the LDS church and met and married. And they were um we were talking over dinner, they were telling us about the inner workings of that group and and why they left and everything. And as we were leaving, the wife and I were um kind of stopped at the door and talking, and she said something that the spirit had been whispering to me uh for a while, and I I just wasn't able to fully accept it for what it was. But she said, Why can't we all just try to be more like Jesus? And I felt this ping in my heart, this ping of light and love, and I wanted to hold on to that like a lifeline. It was a spark of what I had lost, and I knew that that was a witness from the Holy Ghost that that that's it, that's it. Just try to be more like Jesus. Like there's so many rules that we're trying to follow to obey God, but that's it. And so that was let's see, I was probably 29 or 30, something like that. And we left that group alone, and but it was a gift to go down that wrong road because from then on I would see hints of polygamy, like a billboard that says need help escaping polygamy. Um, I'd see uh families, um, polygamous families at different gatherings, and um I was learning about uh gender and statistics and things and how uh and I understanding if you make your base premise that God is love and then you go build on top of that, God created all mankind and they are his children, how could God create such a discrepancy in this in his children and that would leave some of them not able to make it to the celestial kingdom? And that doesn't fit with a loving God. So I some people say, oh, polygamy works because women are more righteous than men, so more of them are gonna make it, and you know, we're gonna need several for one man. And I'm like, well, but God made men so that they would be more aggressive and stuff, and it's it's part of our our um there being a protector and a provider, and God wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that. We wouldn't create our kids, we wouldn't set them up in such a way that only some of them get to come back home.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

It's very interesting to me how much we like pin things like it's a man versus women thing. And the polygamy narrative really does that because it it does, it puts women down to the level of like cows, like for for milk, like for stock, like that's it. And so the problem is that we're arguing that, well, there's more righteous women or whatever, but at the end of the day, we're in a battle of good versus evil. We're not in a battle of men versus women. And when you're practicing polygamy, you are throwing off the balance of marriage because it's not just man and woman strengthening each other anymore. Now it's one man and a bunch of women, and there is no balance, and there's more room for discrepancies that are against God's law because you're already breaking God's law when you're practicing polygamy. So it's very interesting to me how all the justifications are made.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

So right. And I, you know, you one of the dreads when you believe that polygamy is of God, one of the dreads is what if I'm not the favorite wife? Yeah. What if I'm what if I have to be a single mom who never has a chance of having an equal partner? Because that's what a lot of them end up with. They have somebody who will come and impregnate them and have authority over them, but who doesn't support them and who doesn't father the children. And I understand that they make it work and good for them, but it's I I don't I don't see that that's God's law.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

No, and if you actually talk to people who are who have been in active polygamy in their life, they're not really making it work. There aren't good fruits associated with it, and there's fruits of that in the church too, because I remember as a single girl thinking, well, I either don't get married or I settle for a guy that isn't really going to be there for me. And I just be and I just act like a single mom because these guys are not, they only care about themselves. We're not teaching them. The the purpose of marriage is that both man and woman are laying down all the lusts of the flesh at the altar and killing the lusts of the flesh. That's the purpose of marriage. You take that purpose away when you practice polygamy, and then you see fruits of that in the LES church, even though we're not actively practicing polygamy. Why are there so many single moms in the church? Why are there so many women that are married with children but their husbands are never pre present? Why are we seeing so many issues, so many guys that don't want to get married anymore in the church? Why do we see these issues if the fruits of polygamy have not carried on into the LDS church?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Right. And I could see the fruits of it in my own marriage when I finally left the church and learned more about polygamy. It was that I I was never as authentic and open with my husband as I could have been because I believed now he refused the idea of polygamy even before we were married. He was like, absolutely not, never, right? And I I was like, well, smugly, like, well, you're going to one day, probably. So, you know, and because I just accepted it so fully. But looking back now, I realize there was always a part of me that was holding back because either he would accept polygamy and we would go into heaven and he would take a second or third or whatever wives, or he would not accept polygamy, and he wouldn't make it to the celestial kingdom. And so I would have to leave him if I wanted to be with God. So there was that, and then there was also the holding back because one day he's going to take another wife, and I'm going to have to be on my best behavior all the time. I'm going to have to be the one that he loves like the most. And I wanted to be fair, but I also wanted to be like, I don't want to. If if he sees my dark side, my my hard emotions or my flaws, then the other woman is probably going to be better than me, and I'm going to be the one that gets the shaft. I'm going to be the one that's a single mom who can't ever get married.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Oh my goodness. What like devastating consequences you have to consider when you're in this position of polygamy, and it's just, it's heartbreaking. I mean, I've only been married for a year and a half, and I just the freedom and only having one partner, just husband and wife, and nobody else is welcome in that relationship. Just husband, wife, and Jesus. That's it. There's so much beauty in that. And I it's so devastating to see the like the gymnastics we have to do mentally to fit polygamy into God because it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit with God's standards for us and for marriage. So right. So did you actually join the AUB group? Were you active LDS while participating with AUB people? What would what did that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Right. So we were still active LDS and we never joined the group. I never even went to one of their services, but we uh talked to this family a lot and hung out with them a few times and tried to feel it out, but it was so depressing. It was so depressing. And then I got really sick and I ended up, yeah, and then we we ended up going to that dinner. And then it was like, okay, obviously that's not the right thing. And then we we both just refocused on trying to learn from build from the ground up, like the Jesus said, love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And so we were trying to build from that foundation. I still had a lot of the baggage of the principles of the church and the priesthood and the temple and all this stuff that was for me, it was still like, well, that just fits in. And for my husband, he was like, I don't think it's that necessary.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Okay, so you started to see some discrepancies in what you believe versus what your husband believes. So first of all, kind of coming out of this place, so you had COVID and then you had your your brush with polygamy, is that correct? No, brush with polygamy was um 14 years ago. Okay, so that was before COVID then.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yeah, it was. Okay. It was a long time ago. But that was one of the one of the wrong roads that God led me down that was like just to help me know, to help me learn. So yeah, like polygamy's bad. And don't let fear be your motivator. That was another lesson I learned from that.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Okay, so then that probably carried over into the COVID years because you had already been taught do not let fear be your motivator. So when everybody's saying mask up, get your shot, you're gonna get sick, you're gonna die from this, you already knew. Wait a second, I should not let fear be my motivator. Will you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yes, absolutely. It was uh it was interesting to watch, and I still got caught up in it sometimes, but we played along with everything, a lot of things anyway, for the most part, because it was because it made everybody else comfortable. Uh, and we learned something from that right there. But so when the quarantine began in March, we left my parents alone and they were taking care of my grandma who had dementia, like she was living with them. And my mom was kind of the one who was we didn't realize this, but my dad already had advanced dementia as well. And so my mom was being the caretaker for both in a way. You know, my dad was still helping her a lot, but he was he was uh forgetting things and he was he needed care, you know. We we were used to going over once or twice a week to help her at the house, have dinner over there, to do crafts. She did sewing nights with my daughters, and um at the end of April I got a phone call from my brother-in-law that my own had collapsed. And I knew in that moment she was already she was already gone. Um but she was in the hospital on life support for three days, and we of course we threw the quarantine limitations out the window. We we all went over there and uh were at my parents' house to be with my dad and to be with each other. And I that was huge in helping me to throw off what authority figures say you have to do because she was m mom was alone for a month and a half um before she passed and taking care of the two people. Um and anyway, and we we we didn't get to spend time with her because we were listening to authority figures who said that this and that. However, I did call my mom two weeks before she passed, and we were just chit-chatting and somehow we came upon the subject of how we would want to pass, and we both agreed that we would love to just have a normal, high-functioning life, and then just go one day and and two weeks later she did. And I'm thankful to God for that conversation.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Okay, so you have this experience with your mom. You're waking up to the falsehoods of what the leaders are telling us, get the shots, isolate, get the masks. After you had that experience, did you start to rebel a little bit and not wear the masks? What did that look for like for you after that experience?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Yes. I yes. It was like, all right, I like I don't care. I mean when when somebody that you love crosses over, you're like, well then who cares? Like, uh, you can't hit me with anything worse than that.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

I'm, you know, so um because you have a realization that people are more important. People are more important, and this thing that they're telling us to do to so-called protect people, you're not protecting people. People were are not meant to be alone, to die alone, to suffer alone.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

We're just not. Right. Yes. And that was, I mean, that's one of the things I'm grateful for with COVID is that lesson right there. Uh like we're we're meant to be together, we're meant to be in community and to support each other. And so if somebody's trying to separate you from others, yeah, don't listen. Yeah, don't listen, don't isolate, be with other people. Yes. Um, so we didn't wear masks to church, we didn't um get the shot. Uh my husband kind of quit going. He would go once in a while to support me, but and then I got called to gospel doctrine teacher. And uh one week when I wasn't teaching, um somebody raised their hand to um make a comment about the lesson, and they were they said how um when the prophet asked us all to wear masks and get our shots, 90% of this congregation obeyed. And I knew that we were the only family that weren't. I mean, there's this other wonderful brother in the ward who didn't as well, but his family went to a different anyway, went to a different work. But yeah, I knew they were talking about me as the I was like, goodness. Well, and then yeah, well, I mean, would you like to hear about the the lesson that kicked me over? It was like, okay, this is it. Yes, yes, tell us. Okay. Um, so I was teaching, it was my turn to teach, and I pulled out my come follow me manual, and I was going to open it up. And the spirit was like, nope. And I thought, well, oh, maybe I should pray first. Okay. And so, and then I go to pray to get ready to prepare my lesson, and it was like, nope. And I'm like, Well, should I even do my lesson yet? And there, it's like, nope. And so I didn't. And then the morning of, I was like, okay, now I should though, right? It's like, nope. And then even in sacrament meeting before class, I have the book on my lap. And I'm like, I should prepare now though, right? And it's like, nope, don't even read over the lesson. So the time comes, and I get up there and I've got butterflies in my stomach. I'm so nervous, and I open it up to the lesson, and I just start kind of reading from the top. Okay, nice little introduction. I'm it's just not my style, and I'm so nervous. And and then I start reading the questions, and we come to this question that was like, Can you think of a time when you obeyed the prophet when it didn't make sense? And I had just read it out loud, and then I was like, oh my gosh, I can think of a time when I disobeyed the prophet and it didn't make sense. And, you know, but not saying anything out loud, and nobody raised their hands, nobody made a comment, and I thanked God in that moment for that lesson because actually, I believe that was in August and in January that year, I had prayed if I should leave the church, and I got a yes answer, but I was too afraid. I was still, I still couldn't trust my own answers from God. I was still handing my authority over to another human being. I I call that reaching sideways. You know, they're just human beings, same as us. But the brethren, the leaders of the church, are I was handing my authority over to them. And then in that moment, at that lesson, that was like, okay, okay, I'm ready. I stumbled through the rest of the lesson, and then I haven't been back except to talk to my bishop to get um my records removed.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

So I see a theme in your story of because you were taught so much to obey and listen to authority, that just like what you've talked about, you're kind of handing the torch to different people in your life instead of following your own conscience and your own like light, your own the light that comes from Jesus Christ that's guiding us inside us. So um, can you tell us about any other experiences you had with friends or where you you learned this lesson even more?

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Yeah. Um, okay, so I had a couple of them are long stories, but I have had a couple of other um experiences with friends when I put them, I I saw how good they were and how close they were to the spirit, and I asked them to mentor me. Oh Lord. So one one of them was a woman who was really good at um this uh homeschooling uh philosophy that I was aspiring to implement in my house. And uh I asked her to mentor me, and she actually muscle tested on everything. And muscle testing was in my house growing up, it was kind of normal, um, just muscle testing for which vitamins do I need today, whatever. So this friend uh muscle tested about everything, and the the real trick here is she said at one point she said and she recommended that I start to do the same thing, and she said, I don't even pray anymore. At the time it was kind of a red flag, but I couldn't deny that she had insights that I couldn't argue with. And so she was still my I still gave her my authority. She convinced me to well, she did a lot of she did a lot of things for me and gave me a lot of gifts, and I felt this dedication to her and gratitude to her because of that, and uh because I was in a lack mentality, so I didn't I didn't believe that God would provide for me uh beyond basically what it would take to stay alive. And then I also had this distorted sense of what gratitude meant. I thought gratitude meant like loyalty and dedication too. She influenced me to start isolating from friends and family, and she started telling me about the importance of her eternal callings, and then she started telling me that I was on the same path because she was allowed to, by her muscle testing, she was allowed to. uh share these things with me. And then she there was a lot of weird stuff that she would say mixed with real stuff. And so it was I I learned several things from this experience too. One of them was that gratitude is just saying thank you and feeling it for the gift. You don't have to be loyal to them for anything after that. Another thing is let go of the belief in lack and scarcity and look up for your source of your supply and your good. Another one was don't isolate. If somebody's trying to isolate you from your friends and family, don't do that. We need community. And then another one was uh just because somebody can perform miracles or has uh a strong strong intuition and psychic connection it doesn't mean they're of God. And uh because she helped me clean out my whole house that was one of the things she did for me that I was so grateful for and until we were almost you might say minimalist in the in our belongings. And she was able to pinpoint she came over to my house one time and she was like there's a little bit of darkness in your closet and so I went over and opened the closet and the coat had fallen off the hook. It was on the floor and I picked it up and put it back on the hook and she was like oh great and then there's something under your bed and I went around the corner into my room and there was a cable out of the wall um and so I like threaded it back into the wall and it and she's like oh perfect and then we could visit uh she was obeying spirits or influences that were guiding her all the time and she would tell me these crazy things that were kind of unbelievable but I was so lonely and she was my only friend now that I um I kind of went along with it. And then I would get up the courage later when we when she was back at her house and I was at mine to text her to just say hi how are you and then when she answered back I was going to say I've been thinking about this and I don't think it's true because of this. And she wasn't allowed to answer my texts uh she even muscle tested if she were to if she was to answer a phone call or a text and she wasn't allowed to answer when I was in that frame of mind. Hours later I would be lonely again just so lonely and I would finally concede and just be like oh she's probably right I don't know and then I would text her again how are you and then she was allowed to text me back and I knew my shift in mind she didn't know uh except that whatever she was communicating with did. And um and I I remember the the feeling of choice again at that time the first thing that she told me that was really off and weird was something about the solar system I don't remember. But I remember having this choice of like well my my intuition my mind my knowledge say this but she's saying this and I've got this I I could but I owe her I owe her so much so and I chose this and um I think in that moment instead of feeling the love of God drain out of me I think in that moment I allowed in a negative entity that was communicating with whatever negative enter entity she was communicating with and I know that sounds really weird but I have no other explanation for how she knew what was going on in my mind. I didn't say anything out loud when I was texting her, you know and uh anyway what woke me up was that um a a mutual friend of ours was contacted by this woman's husband saying that she had attempted to take her life and so this mutual friend came over to visit me and asked how I was doing and she told me that news and I just was like it's not of God okay and I just opened the floodgates and told her everything and she was like okay start reading your scriptures again start praying again and get back in touch with the Holy Ghost and then start praying about if this stuff is true. And so that was that was a really valuable learning experience of how to get closer to God and that not all miracles or miracle seeming things are from God. Not all unexplained ethereal spiritual stuff is from God.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Explain to us what you learned about muscle testing energy medicine kind of that realm what did you learn about those things from this experience okay that energy is neutral and energy work is neutral.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

It's like any other tool it's like a pencil you can use a pencil to write good things and you can use a pencil to write bad things and uh everybody's got energy every everybody's made of energy everything is made of energy and we do have dominion over energy particles because we're intelligence and we're children of God however it's something that you need to learn about and there is a right way to use it and a wrong way there's an uplifting way and uh a pulling down way and but God isn't afraid of us trying it out. He just wants to hold our hand while we do it. That's what I learned about it. It's like riding a bike if you fall down it doesn't mean give up on it forever. I did quit muscle testing for an entire year after that because I I was like I obviously I can't trust myself to know what's right and wrong. I can't trust myself with you know and my husband it made him so sad because that had been like we'd been into energy work since before we were married, you know, open to it and um learning about it and stuff but um finally I did get back into it and now I believe I'm more sensitive to it than I ever was before and I have a lot more guidelines to help me know when I'm in line with God's will and when I'm not and so I I would just you know that's what I've learned is that it energy is neutral. It's how we use it and holding God's hand the whole time is a good way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Yeah and recognizing where our power comes from it comes from Jesus Christ it's not our power it's God's power and we're simply just a vessel in his hands. And I I see a lot of stories like this about people who have practiced energy medicine that have kind of tainted it in general just tainted the whole idea of energy that we have an energy system that we can use our energy system when we know about it, we can heal and unfortunately there are people that seek power for whatever reason people that care about themselves more than other people and so that's where we start to see these issues of you know like your friend really controlling um basically wanting her narrative to be your narrative all the time. Will you tell us a little bit about what you learned about friendship through this experience with this person.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

Yes so I think that with her and with the other friend that was um introducing me to the AUB and other experiences there was a lot of good motivation in there and there was a lot of sincere caring in there um but it was there was overstepping and there was fear motivation and there was uh separation a belief in separation like we are not all equal in God's eyes uh we're not all um going to make it back to God and um that we are that we are basically separate from God and we need to work to get our way back to um union with him and and because of that worldview that separation view of like seeing everything through this lens um there was a lot of control uh like I said the fear motivation and a lot of like we've got to protect ours we've got to protect ourselves our kids our families and kind of everybody else is on their own like you know wish I could save you too but since there's not enough we've got to save our own and you know too bad for you guys if you won't listen to what we've got to say because obviously our way is the right way that kind of thing and okay so about friendship the one woman who came over to my house who spent an hour with me who listened to my experience and then gave me gentle loving advice to get back in touch with God she was a true friend.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Yeah I really like that I think our true friends will always point us back to Christ I think we can openly offer each other advice but at the end of the day a true friend is going to say go to God see what he wants you to do with this and then I think true friendship allows us to be our authentic selves with each other. I'm actually reading this book right now and it's called All My Friends Have Issues Building Remarkable Relationships with imperfect people like me that's what the book's called the very first chapter she talks about the most important one of the most important things you can have in friendship is the ability to be your authentic selves. Because what happens is that if you're in a situation where you feel like you have to shape shift and be different for a particular person, that's when certain controlling elements come into play. And so if you don't want to be controlled by somebody else, go show up as your authentic self and find out if they let you do that. Because if they don't they're probably not a true friend. And so that's where we can always be encouraging each other to live you know the way that God wants us to live. We can always be encouraging that but at the end of the day there are so many ways to live a Christ-like life and not everybody has to be like you like everybody not everybody has to be like me not everybody has to be like the the guy next door you know like we all have an opportunity to show up and be our best selves and Jesus loves us where we're at and he's going to help us get to higher places. And that's I feel like what we should be doing as friendships and that's where we can have empowering friendships. And I won't pretend to know that I even like have a grip on that because it's really hard to like make friends in this space of leaving the church. But I think there's value in the lessons that you learned in your experience of that a true friend isn't going to be really controlling of you and isn't going to you're not going to have to think just like them and just protecting ours and not not everybody else like there is an element of love that I think we all need to remember as we're seeking and if somebody is seeking for power over you they're not a true friend.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

That that's a really red flag right and if they want to be the only friend and if they you know um if they ever make you feel small.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

Yes that's a big one that's a really hard boundary to draw too like when you go to a group of people or a group of friends and you feel smaller than everyone else it is so hard to draw that boundary and to say I don't need to hang out with these people anymore. It is so hard to do that because you gain a love for these people but at the end of the day if you're hanging out with a group of people and I mean this for like friends, family, whoever it is, not everybody has to sit at your table. You can love them. You can be respectful to them you can do all those things without inviting them to come and sit at your table. And that is okay because you shouldn't have to be quote unquote friends with people that make you feel smaller and stupider than they are because we're all on this like messy journey just trying to figure out life together.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Right. And they say that people who are um I think it's anxious attached their attachment style is anxious attached they will um they will be drawn to crowds where they are or friendships, relationships where they're not sure where they stand. Yeah um and but that is the most anxiety inducing situation to be in is when you're not sure how they feel about you. They're warm and then they're cold and you're like I don't know am I are they gonna like me today? If I say this, are they gonna like me? And then oh shoot I said that and they they got really cold. And anyway be careful of that.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

Absolutely absolutely there's like a trauma response I have with friendships where I tend to like replay like conversations in my head because I'm like oh my gosh when is this person going to decide that they don't like me? Because in the church I had so many friendships that are exactly what you described that one second they're hot and the next second they're cold. And so now I do this thing where I'm like okay when is this person going to decide they don't like me anymore? And I share that because like that's kind of a vulnerable thing. But I think a lot of people can relate to it after being in the church and just having friendships that were only held together by a corporate institution. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Mm-hmm well and that dedication to and and I mean in a way we're all good people because we were so dedicated to what we thought was God's will right and it taught us good habits and stuff like morality and stuff. But I think that an institution like that any high demand religion teaches you that God wants you to come back to him but it's not guaranteed. And uh it depends on your behavior and will you measure up and there's there's this feeling I have that I haven't fleshed it out all the way but it's like if we if anything matters then everything matters. And before I began to believe that Jesus was telling the truth when he said it is enough it is finished I thought yeah there was always a chance that I wasn't going to be enough and everything that I heard from over the pulpit was like when they said memorize a scripture every week I was like well I'm not doing that yet so if I do that then you know that'll make me better and if if better gets me more likely to be accepted into heaven then that's what I want. So everything that they suggested over the pulpit became one more thing that I should add on to what I'm doing for God. A very freeing question that I learned to ask of God is what am I doing for you that you never asked me to do and when I asked that the list was long and when I when I asked him what do you want me to do for you and he said rest I could barely believe it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

I could barely believe it and I found myself defaulting back to wanting to do a bunch of stuff for God and and but when I slow down and listen and pray he goes back he he tells me rest rest be still rest yeah I love that one thing that was a shift for me is when I stopped doing things for God and I started doing things with God because two things happened first I got rest more and I realized that rest is necessary but the other thing is I realized I could actually do way more like it's like this weird shift that I accomplished way more but I was not grinding so hard. Yes and so there's something to be said for the fact that I think the gospel is simple and I think when Jesus says like take my yoke because my my yoke is easy and my burden is light like there is a natural it's not like I have to make sure I get there. I have to make sure I get to heaven I have to make sure and we're we're doing that checkbox and someone has said this before on this podcast and I'll say it again that don't turn the doctrine of Christ into a checkbox okay faith check repentance check baptism check back baptism of fire in the Holy Ghost check like don't turn it into a checkbox live your life walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and the rest will follow. We don't need to be grinding so hard to even receive our baptism of fire in the Holy Ghost. We simply have to look look at Jesus and say how do I want to be like him today and let him let those things happen for you because he's doing that power he has that power behind you all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

And so there's so much power in that it sounds like you've learned that in your journey yes oh it's so beautiful to walk with the Lord instead of assuming that he's behind you somewhere with the clipboard seeing if you do it right. Giving you a report yeah he's not standing back there saying all right now go do this and you just have to go figure it out or else he is he is with you all the time he's in you he's beside you he's in front of you he's behind you he's he's walking into it with you not just with you but he's preparing the way he's preparing everything and like you said you can accomplish so much more and you do it from a place of rest and receiving from the Lord. And when you receive when you empty out your fear and you receive from the Lord the strength of the Lord you and the love of the Lord you're inspired on how to move forward and when you move miracles happen. And I I just can't explain it any other way the Lord is with you when you move with him and instead of trying to do it for him.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:39

And it's a natural outpouring it's not something that we have to let we have to I had a friend explain to me this way the other day that she's like love used to be something that I used to have to really think about like oh I need to go serve this person. She's like but then when I found Jesus then I just started like going to see people visiting people making meals for people loving people it wasn't like a oh yeah I have to do that. It was just a natural outpouring and I think that's a huge paradigm shift when we've been in the church for so long but that's why the Book of Mormon tells us the world men's hearts will wax cold and we are seeing that and I think as we come out of the church we got to peel that part of the onion off like do not let your heart wax cold because now we're in a place of well we don't want to work our way to heaven. So no it's a balance like you don't work your way to heaven but you do good works under the power of Jesus Christ and it just flows naturally. And it it's a beautiful thing and it allows for rest. We weren't allowed for rest in the church and that was I think a really hard thing on a lot of us that were in the church.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:44

I think it was and I would say if it if you're not inspired if you're not feeling inspired to go do that nice thing for somebody if they if it's a should drop the shoulds go back to Jesus and receive from him because out of the abundance of the heart is where your your service to your fellow man should come from. And yeah if you're not feeling inspired to go do it go back to the Lord and receive some more and when it's time you will feel like doing it. It will feel good and it'll feel inspired and you'll want to go do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:22

It's funny because I've had a lot of people ask me questions throughout my life as to like why I do certain things and I never used to know the answer until I really came to know Jesus where now my answer just because I like it. Okay? Like none of these things are look how great I am all of them are look how great Jesus is because he gives me power to do these things and it's beautiful and I just like it. That's it. It's so so simple. And I think Jesus wants us to be in that place where we just like the light. We love the light and we want to stand in it and it's his light. It's it comes from him. That's that's the glory. So I really love how your story illustrates that and I really love how You've learned that. So through all the things, COVID, okay, your controlling friend, the waking up to polygamy, all the things that you've been through in your life. So sounds like have you removed your records from the church?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

Yes. It was kind of scary to meet with my bishop too, but he but um I felt like I should, so I went in um when my stake president reached out and said, We see you've got a request. Would you like to meet with one of us? And I said, I checked in with the Holy Ghost. And the answer was, yeah, go in. So it was scary, but it was um a nice conversation for the most part. And he he was kind of like, What are your reasons? And and I mentioned tithing and stuff, but anyway, yes, my name is removed. I I handed my trust over to the Lord when I stopped wearing my garments um because that was scary, those being a shield and a protection against the destroyer. And I asked, I mean, it was so scary. And I asked God, I'm like, oh, what is this? Like, I will am I gonna be okay? And he said, I will be your shield and protection. And also learning where the temple ceremony originally came from and stuff. It's like, okay, all right, okay, maybe I'm safe. And thank God, thank God, because I feel like I am a lot closer to him now that I'm trusting in his works and in his goodness and in his protection rather than anything here, anything earthly.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:37

I think there's a theme in your story too that throughout your life, it sounds like as you woke up to conspiracy theories, as you woke up to things that were going on, it sounds like there was a lot of a fear response. And since coming to know Jesus, you've been able to find safety in your heart. Will you explain that a little further for us?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

Oh man, yes. So learning about near-death experiences actually was a big part of helping me mourn my mom's sudden passing and the commonalities that they have um being accepted by perfect love and realizing that we are all connected, every one of us, and that we are completely seen, completely known, and completely accepted. And when you when you realize that someone who might be abusive or something, they had experiences that led to that. When God knows and when he takes into account all of the experiences, is that person actually going to be judged and sent to hell? And I don't believe that they will. So then if if God knows me, and I've made plenty of mistakes and big mistakes, but my heart, I've always wanted to do good. If even somebody who was what seems like purposefully abusive in their life would be accepted by God once all things are known, then surely I will too. And there's like there's nothing to be afraid of, really. In this life, we're we're gonna have pain and we're gonna have difficulties, but in the end, it's a blink of an eye, and we're back with God, and we are enveloped in love, and we're completely known and completely accepted. And so, yeah, when I'm feeling afraid, it means I'm believing something that's not true, and it's a warning light. It's like a check engine light. And I can just go, okay, what am I believing that's not true? And get back in alignment with pure love and the pure light and love of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

I love that. I love that a lot. I think that there is safety in Christ, and that's what you're describing is that safety in our heart, knowing that we're taken care of. And I love what you said too about making all things known, because I think when you find safety in Christ, there isn't even any fear in repentance, in confessing our sins and making things right. We don't have anything to hide. And I think that again allows us to show up and be our authentic selves for our communities, for the people around us, for our friends, for our family. And when we can do that, we're more empowered to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. So I love your transformation as you've come out of the church and you've come to know Christ better. So tell me, after all you've been through and all these things, how do you find clarity in your life now?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

Now I pray often. I stay connected to love. I check my motivations and I'm honest with myself. If I'm feeling bad, I I pull it out and I look at it. I don't try to stuff it down and hide it. And I show it to God. I show it to God. I'm like, here, here, Jesus, look, this is what I'm feeling. And he gives me peace. He takes from me the negative things that I believe about myself that hurt. And he gives me back truth and unconditional love. And when I'm in that space, I can move forward with clarity.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:34

I love that. I love that so much. Just being able to take the parts of ourselves that are hurting and show them to Jesus, and he will transform them in us. And he's obviously done that in you. So thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. We've loved having you on the podcast. Thank you.