Hi. I'm Jen

My daughter Rian was the first person in our families to ever serve a mission. She left on her mission Jan 1, 2020. By then, I'd been serving in the stake yw for 2 years and the frustration and anger had been building because of the lack of representation and the inequality I saw at that level of leadership. A few months prior to Rian leaving on her mission, my 16 year old son (her younger brother) came out as gay. We celebrated and loved him but he came home from church in tears most Sundays. We told him he was perfect exactly how he was but at church he heard that in God's eyes, he was not. Rian's first call home from the MTC she was sobbing. She'd chosen to serve a mission so she could teach people that they were loved by god and to serve people. She was quickly learning in the mtc that the mission was much more about rules and obedience and judgement and numbers. She was sure that once she got out into the mission field that everything would be different but it wasn't. For the next 10 months I tried to make sense of it all. I wrestled with what I "knew" was true and how I was feeling deep in my soul. I spend endless hours hiking and crying and searching for an answer that would ease my aching soul. Every Monday, Rian would call home and put on a brave face for the family but the last 15 minutes of the call were just her and me and that was when she would cry and break and fall. I told her to come home but she said there was too much shame in that. I would carry her pain along with mine every week. I felt so lost and broken and lonely and angry. In desperation, I attended a woman's retreat in Wyoming. I went alone and didn't know anyone. One night, a woman was talking and she said the words that would change my life. "If you are carrying something and it's hurting you, you can let it go. I am giving you permission to let it go." Let it go? I could do that? I knew in my heart that I had tried everything to make the church work for me and it was now time to let it go. So I did.