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No producer today, so this one is in three parts. Coming to grips with and responding to accusations and concerns, and grappling with my relationship to prophets.

Part b will be up soon!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy. This is an unusual episode, so I have to start out by telling you a story. Um, my sweet son who helps me with this, he had a really busy week this week, and he, um, got the video already and was trying to upload it yesterday and it had problems again. And his wife, who I love, is a huge Taylor Swift fan and she had gone to so much work to get Taylor Swift tickets in her concert in Las Vegas. And my son. I had to go take his wife to the concert and couldn’t get the video uploaded and I am so thrilled that I just, I just think it’s a sweet story. I’m so thrilled that my son. Sent me a text like, Mom, I’m so sorry because he knows how important this is to me, and I really like to have a video every week. But I, I, anyway, I’m just thrilled that they got to go do that and that he prioritized it and I thought it was perfect. But it did leave me, I wanted to release my episode with Jeremy Hope this week, which I’m really excited about. Um, but it has to be put off and maybe I’ll release it during the week. I don’t know. Um, in any case, we’re going to have 2 episodes. 59. I think this is episode 59, and so maybe this will be 59A. Well, it’s even a bigger problem because I can only talk for about 26 minutes till my, um, camera cuts off, and I don’t even have the ability to edit the videos together. So you might get two separate chopped up ones this week. And also I, um, can’t use, can’t plug in the sound myself, so I’m, I apologize that the sound isn’t as good. This is just what it is because this isn’t on the fly. Um, on the flight, did I say that wrong, right? Video, I’m very discombobulated cause anyway, this, so I’m releasing this episode. I thought, you know, as he let me know like last night and I was um thinking about it and kind of wondering what I should do and then I um Ah, it’s been a tough week. It’s been a tough week and um so I just thought, OK, maybe there’s purpose in this, Lord, and maybe I should kind of talk about what’s going on. And so that’s what I’m doing. I, even if there are, even maybe this will be episode 59A and then if I have to cut off and you have to look for another video, it’ll be 59B and then the next one could be 59C or or just have the wrong number. The, the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants had two sections labeled 66. So I figure the Doctrine and Covenants did it, I’m OK, you know. So, um. But anyway, um, I just wanted to get on, that’s, I’ve, I’ve named this discussion, am I leading people astray?

[00:02:40] And um because that’s kind of what’s going on. So, OK. Deep breath, right? I haven’t had time to prepare. We just got home from church and I’m just recording this pretty much live and I, I can’t do any retakes, so I’m sorry if I’m a little discombobulated, but Um, um, my bishop forwarded a letter to me today that he received, and I guess this one really concerned him and so he forwarded it to me and um it was hard. It was hard for me to read what people say and um I’m not at all. I, I’m actually very appreciative that my bishop forwarded the letter. He didn’t tell me who it was from or you know, but he let me read the words which. Was which I appreciated so I could understand kind of what they are dealing with and what so I could respond more specifically, you know, I asked him if he would be all right with me sharing it and he asked me not to but said I could quote parts or pieces, you know, I think he was concerned that I was going to be critical that the the he hasn’t listened to my podcast, but my um state president has who also got this letter and um. You know, so I’ve been navigating that space again and. I, um, I just wanted to come on and kind of talk about it, try to express my intentions, try to clear some things up, express some hopes, and, you know, just, just go forward the best way we can. I also do want to share my journey and my, um, you know, my ongoing relationship with the Lord and my daily repentance, right? I do feel, um, I, I have taken very genuinely seriously the counsel that I have received from both my, um. My leader who I’m so thankful for and also some other leaders in our ward who have taken care of us and who I’ve gone to for um insight and advice who’ve been watching the podcast, you know, both, both to see what I’m do both to hear what I’m saying, but also I think to see what I’m doing, you know, to kind of just help me a little like keep not anyway, maybe not keep tabs so much as just be and be aware, right. And so I am, I am profoundly thankful for the good people that um. I get to associate with and benefit from and learn from in this church. I am so sad about like can’t really express how sad I am about making anybody’s job harder. The last thing I want to do is make it’s hard to be a bishop. It’s hard to be a state president. It takes so much time and it’s really hard for me to know that I am making them take more time, that I’m adding concerns that I am. You know, putting them in it all and uncomfortable spot. I just, I just hate that so much and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I think that, um, you know, I expressed to him I don’t, I don’t think more letters are coming in because of what I’m doing now as opposed to what I was doing before.

[00:05:40] I think it’s because more people are coming to it and so as more people see it. They’ll probably continue to receive letters. I have um a couple of thoughts about that. I first have been thinking about I, this is gonna go everywhere. I hope I can remember to include everything because I can’t add something in later, but I have wondered about this part of our culture, about. Going to people’s leaders, like if you think about what that means you are looking up where someone lives and then going to find out what the word boundaries are and trying to find, or maybe you have some other connection to look up records. I don’t know, but and then, so you’re doing like that sleuthing work so that you can reach out to someone’s leader to express your displeasure or your disapproval with them. And I just was like, that can’t be. The way it’s supposed to work in this church, like if it was supposed to work that way, wouldn’t we have just a general membership record where we could find anyone’s leader or where we, I mean like really is that how it’s supposed to work? I was kind of asking, asking myself and asking, um, you know, some of these other people that are that are counseling me. I, I don’t wanna make it sound like they are my like they’re my advisors in general just this week I have um relied heavily on them for counsel. And so I’ve kind of asked him like, how is this supposed to work? And you know, like my friend said, well, as a bishop, I would probably, you know, because he has served in in all of the leadership callings, which is why I value him and his wife’s, um, input. But anyway, so it’s been interesting to think about that, but I just keep coming back to the scriptures that teach us if you, if your brother have odd against the earth if you have odd against your brother or your sister. Go between the two of you, a privily and talk to them and, and it says, and maybe you will gain a friend, right? Maybe you will like, it’s so hard for me to understand this culture of, basically, uh, I guess to put it in a crass way that’s maybe too demeaning, but tattling to the principle, right? Like, I’m gonna tell on you. I’m gonna get you in trouble. I, I, I just, I don’t understand that. It is so foreign to me and it’s hard for me to understand why we do that. I Guess it’s just a different approach, but I want to share my approach because I have thought about this a lot for many years about how to handle things. We all have struggles in the church, right? And for me, well, in all of our relationships and you know it’s I can’t claim that I’ve always done it perfectly, you know, as I have struggled through with different challenges, the solution I have come to through a lot of thought and a lot of inspiration, um. I really think there is so much value. Well, first, I think the first step is take it to the Lord. Lord, is this something that you can just take care of,

[00:08:26] right? This is really troubling to me. I’m really worried about it. I’m worried about what I’m seeing. Can I leave this in your hands and can you take care of it? And sometimes the answer is yes, and I have actually experienced times when something miraculous happened, just, and you know, I’m sure I get all of the credit because I prayed about it. I’m not saying that, but, but it, but the Lord was like. Like when I’ve just asked, can I just leave this in your hands, and will you please take care of this? And it’s been taken care of in beautiful ways, right? And then there’s another sometimes it sometimes I try to always be preferable, but sometimes it’s like, oh, I really feel like I need to say something and so. That, that is good for us. It forces us to be courageous and also very um open, like, like the only way to talk to someone well is to do it with a desire to understand, with a desire to connect. Even when you’re, so when you’re really upset about something, to be, to have the courage to be able to say to someone. Hey, can we talk about this? I, I, you know, maybe I’m not understanding, but this is really hard for me. That is such, that’s how we become good people, right? as being people who are willing to walk through that. And then on the other side, being someone who is able and willing to receive that to go, oh, OK, um, thank you for sharing that with me. Let me think about it or can I clarify some things or oh, that’s really good feedback, right? Ideally, That’s how we could work. I think that is a Zion society, right? A Zion society is a problem free, but it is like. Emotionally mature. And I, I think, and so that’s how I wish we would do things and, you know, and, and, and I know that there are people who you can’t do that with. I have at times, um, you know, some of the difficult relationships I navigate in. My family, you know, I’ve tried to do that at times and it’s blown up in my face and made the problem way worse. And then you have to decide, OK, that’s not an option. So now what do I do? And you go back to the Lord and say, Lord, will you help me? You know, and I think that in our church situations, when that happens is when you go to a leader, right? Like, if someone,

[00:10:37] I, well, I’ll tell you right now, my, um, email, where I will find it, if you send it to my personal email, it’ll get buried in the millions of emails about my kids’ stuff and But I have an email just for this channel that’s 132problems@gmail.com. If you or someone you know has an objection to, well, first of all, there’s the comments and I try to be involved as as involved and I can as I can in the comments and to respond to them. And, um, and I try really hard to not bring defensiveness to it, or, you know, and, and also I invite you if someone needs to to email me if like, like, let me know your concerns and we can talk about them. You might have really good feedback for me that I Can take and go, oh, I appreciate that and do better going forward or try to clarify something, you know, or, or I may be able to clarify something that I feel like you were misunderstanding, like, and maybe we could gain a friend, right? Maybe we could work things out that way. What a beautiful model that would be. And then, but I know that people will continue to send letters to my leaders and That makes me sad, so I, you know, so, um, it’s just going to be something that we’re all going to have to deal with going forward, um. Um, oh, I, I actually already recorded this once, but I forgot that it cut off at 26 minutes, so I, so I’m trying to remember what I said the first time because I can’t edit anything, but I, I am in a tricky spot because, um, well, one of the, one of the concerns expressed was that, you know, because when you build up a following, you want to keep your following, so that might shape what you say or what direction you go and that was interesting because it actually could not be more opposite than the truth like. Um, I, I, I’ll share some of this email, some of the parts, and some of the accusations, and, you know, and I’ll talk about some other things, but kind of this idea that, um, well, according to this woman, I am just completely, um, manipulative and scheming and, you know, a snake in the grass and using my affiliation with the church in order to deceive people. And, you know, anyway, it’s, it’s hard because you can’t really defend yourself against that if, if someone looks at me and that’s what they see. There’s, there’s not very much I can do, right?

[00:12:53] And so, um, and, and I do want to clarify that actually I have my desire is to be able to do what I feel like the Lord wants me to do, to be able to follow that inspiration and, and when you do what the Lord wants you to do, it brings you joy and fulfillment, right, as the Lord uses your talents that expands you and. So, so I, I appreciate this opportunity for those reasons. I’m very thankful that the Lord gave me this assignment for now, and um it’s something that um is really, really hard, but also feeds my soul in good ways. So I am thankful for this opportunity, but I get to do this whether I have 5 people listening or 5000 people listening, right? Like, like I get to do what I want to do, so I’m not shaped by my audience. And in fact, if I were at all strategic, I would do this way differently. I started out like the first lesson I taught often or, or, um, Not less than I taught, but the first thing where I was asked to speak often was on what I called celestial education, which I still want to do an episode about celestial education because I love, I love the things that I was taught, and I will share that here at one point. But when I was teaching that, I fully believed in polygamy, right? So. Like I had a little bit of a, I didn’t ever have a following or a fan base, but I had people who respected me and who appreciated what I did and wanted to come if I was speaking, you know, and some of those people, I think still can appreciate me, but many of them, if, if polygamy was their higher priority, they hate me now because I’m You know, I’m, I’m, I’m an apostate of a traitor from that perspective. So I burned that following then as I’ve been doing this, like, um, the episode I did like basically coming out that I have come to believe that Joseph was not a polygamist. Boy did I, um, lose subscribers and followers and people who had, like I lost a lot of respect from a lot of people, right? That, and, um. A lot of people who, um, I, I’ll talk about this with Jeremy, you know, but a lot of people who liked what I was doing, I, I guess, I think because they had left the church and I could wake up other people. But as soon as they saw that’s not what I’m doing, that I’m not just plotting or strategizing that I genuinely do have a testimony. I think they lost a lot of respect to me. And they were, they could be mean. I’m now pretty mercilessly mocked, and some of the people I had lined up,

[00:15:30] um, or was talking about with interviews have refused to come on. Some people I had done interviews with refused to publish those interviews. So, you know, that cost me a lot. So I just want to clarify that, that I am not like that’s one of the things I said to. To the people I’ve counseled with this week is I am genuine to a fault. I’m like transparent to a fault. I don’t have a good filter. I don’t like what I think is what I say and I, um, you know, some of the feedback they gave me is that I get going and, and, and things just come out and you know, I’m not as As careful as I should be, and that is absolutely true, and I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about that. I always say like, listen to what I mean, not what I say because I’m, I’m, my brain is just going so fast and my words are as like sometimes I just say the completely wrong words or the wrong names or sometimes I say things in awkward ways like someone pointed out in one of the videos, it was the one on um Oh, it was the one on Brigham Young shutting down the relief Society for 20 plus years and the women not being allowed to speak, to write, to talk together, to contribute, right? And I was, I was talking about that. And, and anyway, someone posted in the comments like, shackles of the priesthood, Michelle, really? Words matter, you know, and I was, I was like, What are you talking about? I wouldn’t have said that. I, I don’t think of the priesthood as shackles, but like, so I asked, you know, but I went and found in the video, and I did. You know, like, like, but I know exactly what I meant. I didn’t mean the priesthood. I meant like that the women had been held down and not allowed to contribute, and they knew that if they wanted to be able to keep contributing, they had to do it in the good graces. So I said something about no longer being held down by the shackles of the anyway, that was one of those things that if I could, like I would have never written that. I would have never intentionally, you know, so I’m sure there are lots of things like that. And um It makes me vulnerable because if people want to go through and pull out the little things like that, take them completely out of context and put them together and send it to my leaders, right? Like, like, yeah, you can do that. It’s not honest, you know, we are like not supposed to bear false witness against our neighbor. We, how do we, those of us who still love and honor

[00:17:53] the restoration and believe in Joseph Smith, you know, like, how do we like it when people do that about Joseph Smith? Like, Ah, so anyway, so I’m just acknowledging that yes, I’m not always as careful as I should be, and there was somewhere else I was going to go with that, and I’ve lost my train of thought, and I can’t figure out where I was and edit it, so I apologize if I left something off, but I’ll just go ahead and get into this letter now until it comes to me what I was what I was trying to say. But, um, well, let me just say this that um I also I was talking to, I, I, I have another episode I’m really excited about coming up with, um, my old friend Alicia Worthington talking about sexual health in our culture that is actually a really important episode. I’m looking forward to that and I think it was her that told me and maybe it was someone else if it was someone else, I apologize for not remembering, but. I, I am, I, I wanna tell you what she told me, but I am very aware that I am in this tricky spot because I, I, I was talking about not seeking a following, you know, and I know that there are people that, um, appreciate what I’m doing that I hate to say followers. I know none of you are like how insulting to say you’re my followers. Follow me. No, I know that, so you know what I mean. But anyway, I have people that follow me that are, um, faithful and in the church, right? And I have people that follow me that. I have left the church sometimes with a lot of hard feelings or have been kicked out of the church or, you know, and so or have felt led to go a different path and I, it’s tricky because I don’t want to invalidate or alienate anybody by, you know, like I guess I just think I strongly believe the Lord honors us on our path where we are. The Lord works with us. And, and you know, and I think we ought to honor one another on each of our paths. So wherever you are on your path, I honor you and I don’t want to claim that I have the answers for you, right? That’s so, so it’s a little tricky what my friend Alicia said is that um She read somewhere or heard someone say that there is beautiful um symbolism in the savior being hung on the cross with his arms outstretched to both sides, and we can see that as a symbol of like being pulled apart on both sides, but also reaching out and being inclusive of both sides, and I completely if that resonates with me so much because I think it’s really. I totally get being in the like, just faithful, unquestioning Mormon side where the prophet can never lead us astray and we’re the one through church and we have everything we need, and if everyone was just more like us, the world would be better and you know, I, I understand that perspective. It’s a Happy place to be. It’s peaceful,

[00:20:37] you know, and then I understand the perspective of like, the church is bad. I like, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, you know, and everything is manipulative or, you know, whatever people’s, I guess I’m thinking of how people think about me, but you know, that we just see everything with a critical eye. I get that too. I do. And I think that the challenge is being kind of in the middle where both sides might take offense, both sides might really be upset by things I say, and I’m just here doing my best to just do what I feel inspired to do. So anyway, I, I really liked that imagery and I think in a way, You know, the savior, the greatest being of all, sets a good example for us, and in a way, maybe these sites that we’re on don’t provide as much opportunity for growth as we could otherwise have, right, if we are a little bit more open up open to being stretching beyond just our comfort zone. So, OK, I’m going to go into this email a little bit and then I want to share some of the council and some of the discussion and I really want to get into my intention. And then, um, And then kind of talk to you about where I am, where I am now, right? So this woman’s email, it was just, it was quite upsetting. Um, some of the things that were the most upsetting, it, it, it’s, it’s very much filled, filled with distortions and untruths and you know, and I think that many of the emails coming in probably are somewhat like this, but some of the things I was most upset is that. It says she has mentioned, she mentioned several times that she has been called in to talk to her bishop or state president about her beliefs, and then basically brags about the fact that they are supportive of her endeavors and sees no problem with what she is doing. OK, that one was hard because it felt to me like it was just intentionally like it was motivated to try to create as much distrust and division and. You know, bad feelings as possible. I want to clarify that I have never done that. I have never claimed that I’m, you know, like that that my leader I that I have their permission and their support, and they love what I’m doing. I, you know, I think it makes them uncomfortable just like it makes many of us uncomfortable because these are uncomfortable topics, but um. I think I don’t want to speak on their behalf. I have um counseled with them, particularly with my state president. He has just yesterday we spoke on the phone for hours and um. You know, I, he, I, I’m taking his counsel and his concerns very seriously.

[00:23:22] He is letting me push back on things that I think are being misunderstood, and you know, we are, we are having an ongoing dialogue and I um, I just love this man so much and his goodness and his humility and his care for me personally. He He really, the, the people I’ve been counseling this week are some of the people that kept me in the church through their goodness and I think that they