Step by Step Parenting

This blog post is adapted from a three-part Instagram post on my heath and wellness account, @megs.miles.and.trials. I have made minor edits and corrections to better tell my story, but this is still only a condensed version of my story. For more regular updates and insights, follow my Instagram account or subscribe to this blog.

I was born and raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I went regularly for nineteen years until I stopped attending in 2019. I didn’t attend from 2019-2024 and for most of that time, considered myself an “ex-mormon.”

For as long as I can remember, I didn’t like the church culture and felt like I didn’t fit in. I was always taught that my highest calling as a woman was to be a wife and mother, and as someone who knew probably from the age of ten that I wanted to pursue higher education, this never sat well with me. Not to mention how modesty was taught while I was in the youth groups, how everything was taught as a list of “rules,” etc. People will say that this is culture and not doctrine, but (1) that MATTERS when you’re at church for 10+ hours a week, and (2) I did have people — LOTS of people, including college professors at BYU Hawaii — discourage me from school and work. At best, many people were very dismissive of my goals.

Maybe all of this would have been okay on its own, but while at BYU Hawaii, I fell deep down the troubling church history rabbit hole. I was not in a place to even try and work through all of those questions that came up, and honestly, I was angry. Between feeling like I had been swimming upstream at church for the past ten years, and finding out tons of information that I didn’t know, I felt betrayed and lied to. How had I studied this religion my whole life and NOT learned some of this?! Truthfully, I was pissed.

The only “answers” I got from within the church were along the lines of, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith,” or “No church is any better/different,” etc. But meanwhile, I realized that other ex-mormons (1) understood what I was going through and (2) had more sources and cited explanations for many of my questions rather than trite non-answers, so at the time, it just made more sense to leave the church.

And just to note: the church is NOT the same now as it was in 2019. In all of the most fundamental ways, of course, it still is; but nearly everything I struggled with in 2019 is different now. Many of the strict, arbitrary “standards” placed on youth, and especially young women, have been lightened or removed. Sundays services are now two hours instead of three, the way the gospel is taught has completely changed, and so much more. Watching this unfold during the years I wasn’t attending church should have been encouraging, but instead it just made me more mad. I couldn’t help but think along the lines of, “You’re telling me I got shamed for wearing short shorts and wanting to work outside the home, but now my sister who is six years younger than me is out getting second piercings?”

The church is also way more transparent and explanatory about church history now, and countless members have created their own online resources for sharing how they reconcile their faith and their questions. Overall, the church has gotten a lot more inclusive with all of their messaging. There is still one giant, glaring exception, but more on that another day.

During 2019-2024, I explored lots of different religions, read lots of different religious texts, and a lot happened in my life. I have always been a spiritually inclined person and I wanted to find a church home, so I put a lot of effort into figuring out what I believed and finding answers to my questions. I reread the Bible, read the Quran, attended Baptist, Catholic, and non-denominational churches, and even learned more about New Age beliefs and witchcraft. On top of that, I journaled constantly and went to therapy that whole time. In my personal life, I got married, became a mom, experienced loss, got divorced, fell in love again, graduated college, started law school, and got engaged. Like I said, a lot happened!

Once I met my now-husband, Kevin, he joined me on this spiritual journey. We read scriptures together, attended several different churches in the area, and talked about our faith. It was during this time that I realized I do believe in God and Jesus Christ, and at least narrowed down my beliefs to identifying as Christian. That was more than I could say at the beginning of this journey. After that realization, I continued to read and study the Bible and I started to listen to Christian music more, both of which I think helped me along.

Then in 2024, three big things happened that had a major impact on my faith journey: (1) I started law school, (2) I became friends with someone at school who was actively LDS, and (3) ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ came out on Hulu. Trust me, those three things are related!

First off, law school. This humbled me quick. That first semester was probably the most difficult, darkest part of my life mentally since being postpartum with my first daughter back in 2020 and 2021. It was worse. It wasn’t even that I was doing poorly in school; in fact, I was doing totally fine. But oh my goodness was it a lifestyle adjustment and identity crisis all rolled into one!

One thing I noticed was that while the workload was insane, reading and briefing cases felt extremely familiar and almost…easy. I realized that annotating and “book briefing” cases was just like studying the scriptures. I attended early-morning seminary all four years of high school, where we studied different books of scripture for an hour every day. All throughout my time as an active member of the church, I had loved the scriptures. I loved marking them up, diving deep into specific word meanings and translation caveats, etc. Law school made me realize how incredibly grateful I was for that aspect of the church. It seems silly to say that scripture study is what prepared me best for law school, but honestly, it’s true. I mean, when you start reading the King James Version of the Bible literally in kindergarten, a case from the 1800’s is nothing!

All of this to say, for the first time in six years, I was able to admit to myself that I was grateful for being raised in the church. And that I was grateful for the church. Of course, I vowed to admit this to no one but Kevin. But suddenly I found myself more excited to read my siblings’ emails from their missions each week, and overall, I just thought about the church a lot more. I continued my own individual Bible study and kept pondering all of this in my mind. And then, I met my friend at law school.

During my first semester, I made friends with someone who said they moved here from Utah. Naturally, that caught my attention. I asked where in Utah they were from and if they served a mission. In other words, I was trying to find out if they were Mormon without flat out asking, “So, are you Mormon?” I can’t remember my friend’s exact answer, but I found out that yes, he was a member of the church, but no, he did not serve a mission.

This intrigued me. I hadn’t served a mission either. Both of my siblings were out on missions at the time — one in Chile and one in Argentina — but given the fact that I left the church as soon as I got to college, a mission obviously wasn’t in the cards for me. Youth in the church, especially the young men, are strongly encouraged to serve a mission, so the fact that I happened to meet someone around my age who also hadn’t served a mission was interesting to me. Still, I pocketed this information and moved on. After all, we had bigger things to worry about, like passing our Civil Procedure exam. *insert sobbing*

And now, the third point, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… Secret Lives of Mormon Wives!!!

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking– how on earth did a reality TV show have a positive impact on my faith? I’m so glad you asked, let me tell you.

When I found out this show was coming out and what the premise was, I was stoked. Honestly, as someone who identified as ex-mormon at the time, this show sounded like my dream. A TV show dedicated to exposing the oddities of Mormon (and particularly Utah) culture? Sign. Me. Up. There are so many things about the church that just don’t make sense if you weren’t born and raised in it, so I was very excited to make my husband watch this with me. I was half kidding, obviously, but I told him he could learn about my Mormon heritage and that I would make us dirty sodas if he would binge the show with me. If you know, you know.

I expected the show to poke fun at the church, because that’s the “cool” thing to do these days. I was also really curious to see how accurately the show portrayed Mormonism, and I told my husband I’d let him know as we were watching if I felt like certain things were accurate or not. But what I saw on the show ended up surprising me.

Yes, these women can be crazy and immature, hence how they wound up on reality TV, but… I was surprised by how much I could relate to all of them.

The women that were inactive in the church (known as the “sinners” in the show) all stopped attending church for similar reasons that I had. They had a hard time with the history of the church, or felt like they didn’t fit in at church as the main breadwinner of their household, or didn’t like the way marriage and family were portrayed at church. One of them had recently divorced, and that significantly impacted her experience in the church. They were very honest and respectful in how they explained it, and for the first time in years, I felt seen, and was seeing people who struggled with their faith like I did on national freaking television. Meanwhile, I got scared out of posting my faith journey on my tiny Instagram account!

The women who were active in the church during the first season (known as the “saints” in the show) were ripped to shreds online. Members of the church nitpicked and criticized everything these women said and did, claiming that because they dressed a certain way or acted in some sort of way, that they weren’t “real” Mormons. These women were openly talking about attending church every Sunday, blessing their babies in the church, trying to be like Christ, and overall just trying their best, while members of their own religion were blowing up the comment sections telling them that it wasn’t good enough.

And honestly… I felt that. Even if it was never said directly to me, I always felt like if I stayed in the church, then I wasn’t a “good enough” Mormon, but if I left, then I ALSO wasn’t “good enough.” It felt like a lose-lose situation where no was happy and I wasn’t either.

But some of the cast of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives did not care. Their mentality boiled down to, “If I want to be a member of the church and am trying my best, who is anyone else to tell me that’s not good enough? If I want to be LDS but also wear tank tops, how is that anyone else’s problem?”

This is obviously simplifying everything down a lot, but it had never crossed my mind that not caring what others thought about me at church was even an option. It hadn’t occurred to me that rather than trying to force myself into a specific mold of a “model Mormon,” that I could just choose to make my faith my own.

Maybe it was okay if I didn’t understand everything.

Maybe it was okay if I didn’t have all of the answers.

Maybe I could still go to church on Sundays and read and pray and “be a Mormon,” AND have a career, support the LGBTQ+ community, drink my iced chais, and wear whatever I felt comfortable in.

Maybe I could figure out the rest as I go, and tell anyone who had a problem with that to suck it.

I dumped all of this on my husband as we were coming up with a list of goals for 2025. I told him that I wanted to try going back to church in the new year. I also texted my friend from school and asked if he wanted to meet for coffee (lol) because I wanted to maybe go back to church, but was nervous.

When we met up to talk, one piece of advice my friend gave me that really stuck with me is to focus on where I feel the Spirit. He pointed out that some people feel the Spirit strongest when they’re reading their scriptures, or when they’re at church, or maybe when they’re spending time outside or with their family. He reminded me to not get discouraged if I started going back to church and didn’t immediately feel the Spirit. This advice caused me to reflect on alllll the times over the past seven years I had felt the Spirit, despite leaving the church temporarily.

I remembered how I felt closer to God during my first pregnancy, when I gave birth, and during the postpartum haze afterwards. There were certain run-ins with strangers that happened when I needed them most, and I remember feeling like those strangers were sent by angels. I always felt the Spirit when I was hiking or spending time outside (and I still do).

This helped me realize that I wasn’t broken, and God had never left me. Yes, I went through some very hard things during my time away from the church — divorce, loss, etc. — but those things didn’t happen because I left the church, and I had never been truly alone. I knew that going back to church would only increase the amount that I felt the presence of God and Jesus Christ in my life, and I knew I needed that.

But I’ve lived in Clemmons, North Carolina for almost all of my life, and I was not ready to waltz back into the same ward (congregation) that I had been going to since kindergarten. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up before making any final decisions, including my family’s, so my husband and I decided to go to my friend’s ward about an hour away from where we lived.

This ended up being the perfect decision because this ward, although farther away, was maybe the most welcoming and friendly to new and returning members that I have ever seen! Whoever was conducting the meetings explained everything as if there was someone in the congregation who had never been. Whether the words, “temple,” “stake,” “ward,” or “fast and testimony meeting,” were used, whoever was conducting would always go on to say, “And for those of you who are visiting…” followed by an explanation. I knew some of it, but it was perfect for my husband, who had never been before. This ward also had a weekly gospel study class called, “New and Returning Members,” and the fact that they included the word “returning” made me feel included and seen in a way that I didn’t know I needed.

However… the first Sunday we went was also the first Sunday of 2025, and I found out that the study focus of the year was going to be Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) and I. was. not. happy. D&C involves a lot of church history — something I have always struggled with, and a subject area that the church gets a lot of criticism for. I had a pretty good testimony of the Bible, and even the Book of Mormon at this point, but D&C?… not so much. It seemed like a very heavy and complicated topic to dive into with my husband, who was completely new to the church. Honestly, I was worried that this would “ruin” it for him the way it once had for me.

That first Sunday School lesson was all about the Restoration, Joseph Smith, and how the Book of Mormon and the church came to be. I remember sitting there thinking, “Welp, Kevin will never want to come back and now the church sounds crazy.” When we got to the car, I asked my husband what he thought, and he said, “It all makes perfect sense. I really enjoyed that, I want to go back.”

Um… what?

I wanted to say, “There’s NO way any of that ‘makes sense,’ you think a fourteen-year-old boy had a vision and restored the church and translated the Book of Mormon? Doesn’t that sound unbelievable to you?” But that’s why my husband, who wasn’t even a member of the church, is such a big part of my story coming back. He wasn’t jaded like I was by years and years of being ex-mormon and spending time on Reddit forums and podcasts that were against the church.

Him and I had spend the past year of our relationship laying the foundation — we had been reading the Bible and praying together, and going to church regularly. Even though we attended several different churches during that time, we were committed to trying to find our “home” church. I think a part of me wanted to go back to the LDS church to prove that I still didn’t believe it and check it off my list of churches to try, because I was in such a belief that a part of me even wanted to go back. I tried to convince myself that I only wanted to go back because it was familiar, or I missed the community, or wanted to fit in with my family.

But I knew that couldn’t be true, because if that was true, I wouldn’t have spent an extra two hours every Sunday for the first two months of 2025 driving to a ward where no one knew me and I had no family. I didn’t tell my family that I was attending church again until I was well on my way back. The missing piece I needed the past six years was someone who was willing to go on this journey with me, who wasn’t judgmental of the church or me, who had no ulterior motive to “fix” me, who had an open mind, and who had an honest desire to find the truth. And that missing piece was my husband.

Seeing how all of these things within the church that I struggled with just made sense to him motivated me to spend more time prayerfully studying those things to work out my beliefs for myself. I no longer wanted a testimony that was based off of my family or Reddit or podcasts or friends or anyone other than myself. So in addition to studying D&C, my husband and I decided to read the Book of Mormon together.

We started in January, and he finished it in February (I dropped off at some point because law school, but now I’m almost done).

He got baptized in March.

We got married in April.

We found out that we were expecting in June, and July we found out that it was twins.

And I guess you could say the rest is history!

Well, kind of. This story isn’t “over,” but just onto the next chapter. We still have so much to look forward to: we hope to be sealed in the temple one day, we’re excited to welcome two new additions to our family next year and raise them in the church, and we still have so much to learn. But at the same time, I am so grateful and proud of how far we have come.