Faith Crisis - not what it seems

 A lot of life can happen in 10 years. When I started this blog, I was a newly hired teacher at the Provo Missionary Training Center, single and dating, trying to figure out what my major should be at Brigham Young University. That now feels to me like another life. After that period of many major life decisions and learning about myself, I’m now married to an amazing wife, with our 4th child due this month. We’re on our 3rd career-level job, 2nd house, I’ve served in the Primary, the Elders Quorum, the Bishopric, the Young Men… you get it: a lot has changed, and in many ways life has settled into a rhythm - a stark contrast to the uncertainty and ever-changing environment of young single adulthood. 

Now, almost a full decade after beginning this blog, I am coming out of the other side of what I have started calling a "faith maturing" (vs a faith crisis), and I can’t shake the feeling that I should write it down and share it. Maybe you're reading this because you’re experiencing something similar. Let me share an overview of my journey:

Up until 2 years ago, my "conversion story" was that I had always known the church was true and had always believed. I had many significant, faith-building spiritual experiences that changed my life for the better, but I had never struggled with doubt or disbelief in the slightest. Belief came easily to me. I served a mission and loved it. After returning, I taught at the MTC for 3 years and loved it. I took every calling I was extended and trusted that it came by revelation. I spent 7 years after my mission as a young single adult, learning and honing my ability to trust in the Lord and His timing as I tried to find my perfect match to start a family with. He led me to my wife, my perfect match, and there's no other explanation for it. We've had a very blessed life, but there have also been some challenges. I lost my job the week our first child was born, and we were poor for a while. Our next child was stillborn on her due date. My parents nearly divorced after 30 years of marriage. I think the song says “count your blessings” not “count your trials”, so I’ll stop there. But through these ups and downs, I had no problem believing in God, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, etc.

Then in April of 2020, some sort of switch flipped in my mind, and I started to doubt everything. Maybe it was me expecting God to be a certain way and being disappointed one too many times. Or maybe it was exposure over years to the many incessant voices on social media finally getting to me. Or maybe I was too perfectionistic in my attempts at discipleship. I don't know. But I started wondering "is God even there?", "is the church just a movement that caught on and has lasted this long because of 'good feelings', but no substance?", "President Nelson has good intentions, but is he deceived?", "did Joseph Smith make up the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants?", etc. I started questioning everything. I tried desperately to hold on to my faith but felt like it was slipping away. I felt like I had a dark cloud following me around 24/7 and I remember telling myself that I would do almost anything to get it to go away and things to go back to normal. I prayed and prayed and read the scriptures and begged Heavenly Father to take this away from me.

In those first few weeks, I had a couple strong spiritual experiences that brought me to tears, specifically about Jesus Christ and President Nelson. These were moments I felt something telling me that Jesus Christ’s mission was real, and that Russel M. Nelson was doing His work. But that wasn't enough to just change things "back to normal". I still couldn’t get rid of the nagging thought that I was simply convincing myself to feel something I wanted to feel. I desperately wanted God to somehow just tell me in a way that I couldn’t possibly deny. I tried getting out of my daily routine, asking God to give me some guidance in my day to day life, anything that would help me feel like my soul was progressing and connected to Heaven. The glimpses of heaven in my day to day were few and faint, even with all this effort. It was difficult. I researched a lot of the common doubt fuel, like polygamy, Joseph Smith's personal life, the various theories for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the growth rate and size of the church compared to the world population, Brigham Young's controversial statements, church finances, almost all of it. I saw so many of my friends and even a member of my family leave the church. Was there something to this? Was I deceived and were they enlightened? Every time I read the scriptures I would subconsciously approach them with criticism and skepticism. It was hard to feel God's light when I was simultaneously sabotaging it, but it didn't feel completely in my control.

I struggled.

But I decided to reason through everything. If I believed in a God, what would that mean for me? Could the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come from Him? I started to trace everything back to that one question: Is there a God in Heaven? I decided that I believed there was. I had felt his influence in my life over and over again, and I wasn't ready to deny that. So I decided to hold onto that, and I told myself that despite what others might think about the church, I believed and stayed because it's what I wanted and it's what I chose. I continued doing my best to be an active church member, and I continued reading, praying, and seeking inspiration in my life. During this time, we decided to move our family out of Utah and find a new place to live. We sought the Lord in our decision making.

We landed in Kentucky of all places, and for a little while the change switched things up enough for me that I felt like I was finally coming out of this funk. But in the back of my mind it was still a rollercoaster. I would feel on top of the world one moment, and kind of down and depressed the next, wondering about my testimony. Over time it seemed to be less and less frequent and less and less extreme. I got stronger, little by little, line upon line, you could say. As things were improving this way, there was an interesting combination of events that led to a life changing spiritual experience for me.

The home we had bought came at a steep discount because of some foundation settling that had happened over the years. We budgeted to fix the foundation, and right around General Conference time, we started the project. We had to remove a big front deck and some heavy steel stairs to make room for the renovation. When the crew came in to excavate, they destroyed some beautiful landscaping in the process. They chipped through our concrete driveway. They ripped out some big railroad tie stairs that went up the hill and behind our house. They ripped out several hydrangeas that my wife loved. But they had to do all of this in order to install foundation piers every five feet, all the way around the house, deep enough to get past the shifting soils and down to the bedrock, to lift and stabilize the foundation. And it wasn't just the physical destruction and inconvenience, this was also a very expensive project! There were definitely a lot of negatives to the process. The parallels in all of this were not lost on me. At the same time, President Nelson gave his talk about the Salt Lake Temple renovations, and likening them to strengthening our own spiritual foundations. "When your spiritual foundation is built solidly on Jesus Christ, you have no need to fear," (Russell M. Nelson, The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation).  The words made sense. I wrote them down. I wanted to feel them. But of course it was just one of many, many talks that weekend, and while it was all uplifting, nothing seemed particularly "awakening" to my spirit.

The Friday after General Conference weekend in October 2021, I woke up at 3:24 AM, with a clear and powerful thought in my mind and heart, almost an audible voice: "Build your foundation on ME and you'll be okay." This was the clearest moment of personal revelation I had ever had. I had never been woken up in the middle of the night with revelation, and I don't think I'd ever received revelation about a topic I wasn't in the act of pondering or asking about. Does God exist? Does He speak to me? Does He care about me? How can I be confident in my beliefs? Those questions were answered for me in a very powerful and personal way that night. "Build your foundation on ME and you'll be okay." -- These were literally the words of Jesus Christ to me; there's no other way I can explain it. I wrote it down immediately and then lay in bed awake for at least another hour just thinking about the experience and praying, giving gratitude for it.

That day I started a new study initiative for myself: seek Jesus in scripture, seek Jesus in the temple, seek Jesus at church, and seek Jesus in my day to day life. I'm in the middle of a Jesus-centered study of the Book of Mormon, where I'm writing down every single thing I can learn about Him from the words in that book, after which I'll move to the New Testament, and then other books of scripture. I want to learn about Him and build my foundation on Him. The rest of my doubts or questions don't matter to me anymore, because Jesus Christ made himself known to me. Because of that one point of testimony, my testimony of other foundational things such as the Book of Mormon & Joseph Smith, President Nelson & the latter-day church, has been strengthened. I finally do feel like I'm coming out of this faith journey with a stronger and more mature faith than I had before. My spiritual foundation is being extended down through the shifting soils of politics, culture, social theories, family tradition, and perception of history, all the way down to solid rock: Jesus Christ.

I can say now with new conviction that I believe with all my heart in Jesus Christ as our savior and redeemer, in revelation from Heaven to guide us in our lives, in a gospel and a church that was restored through Joseph Smith and continues to be led by Christ through a prophet, Russel M. Nelson.

A Few Lessons From This Journey

I'm also realizing that a faith maturation is something that nearly everyone has to go through. I wish I would have known that something like this awaited me. Of COURSE we all have to have our faith tested! That’s part of our whole purpose as beings on this beautiful earth! If you’re going through your own faith journey, is it a crisis or could it be a maturation? A renovation? If you’re at your weakest point, you’re probably saying to yourself “yep, it’s definitely a crisis.” But here are a few things I know now about this journey, after having spent a couple years in it:

1. It can feel like literal hell having intrusive doubts about things that you never questioned or cared about before. Where is the OFF switch? Why can’t I just pray my way out of this and move on? And the worst part of it, what is wrong with me for having these doubts? There must be something wrong with me, because nobody else in the church ever talks about feeling like this. 
2. Even after a lifetime of faith, your mind can suddenly and very quickly train itself into viewing things through a skeptic’s lens. But it can also re-train itself to look with eyes of faith again.
3. Yours might last a few weeks or a few years, but there is strength on the other side of this moment. It’s a different kind of strength than you might expect. It’s a mature strength, instead of a naive strength. It’s not a return to your greenie faith of your childhood and youth, but a morphing of your faith into something that accepts the Divine with eyes wide open to the skepticism and imperfection of humankind in their efforts to follow him and do His work on the earth.
4. If you go through this maturing process with as much faith as you can gather, it has the potential to turn you into a witness of Jesus Christ in a special way. By arriving at such a difficult part of your life’s journey, and choosing to go through it, you will “know that it is by [Him] that ye are led” (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 17:13).

Today, nearly a decade after I began this blog to share what I learned from my studies, I can say with pure, honest, and direct conviction that I believe in Jesus Christ and His miraculous mission, and in His gospel, as taught by His prophets, from Adam to Russel M. Nelson.