Adulthood
After my mission, I was woefully unprepared to navigate the trauma and mental health challenges I was facing. I had only a rudimentary understanding of these issues from a high school health class. So I failed to recognize many of my own behaviors as trauma responses. I didn’t know it was abnormal to feel panicked on dates, or to struggle to converse about anything other than the church. I simply chalked it up to adjusting back to civilian life.
A Fast Marriage
When I returned home, I attended the singles ward for just over a year before getting married. I never felt truly welcome there, but I assumed that was normal since I had always struggled to fit in at church. I was disappointed when attempts to make friends or date within the ward fell flat. It was taboo to share mission stories, but that’s all I could think about. The unspoken expectation seemed to be a casual, surface-level investment in the church – too much, and you were seen as prudish, but too little, and you were unworthy.
My wife and I met and started dating very quickly after our first semester at Utah State University. By Christmas, we were “official”, and by the next summer, we were engaged. I still laugh at how many family members told us we were rushing, versus those who thought we were dragging our heels. We were married about a year after our first date, around 18 months after we first met.
Our wedding, which took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a confusing and somewhat traumatic experience. We were sealed in the Logan temple early in the morning, and we were surprised to learn that our only role was to say “yes” when prompted, rather than the traditional “I do”. Especially because we had no say over our vows, this left us feeling disconnected from our own marriage ceremony.
In the years that followed, I took on a caretaker role for a family member facing ongoing medical crises. During their many priesthood blessings, I felt compelled to make grand, faith-promoting promises, convinced that God would heal them. But each time a blessing went unfulfilled, I was left feeling betrayed and questioning my own worthiness. Thankfully, they eventually found a successful medication, and their own decision to leave the church coincided with a significant improvement in their overall health.
My wife and I also had to scale back our church involvement for a time, due to both time constraints and health limitations. One particularly concerning incident occurred when the primary presidency visited our home, where we were both sick, and their first question was about how they could get us back to work in our teaching calling.
A Career in Logic
As I began researching formal verification, my fascination with the ability to model complex systems and make provable claims about their functionality grew. I started wondering if these logical principles could be applied to religion as well. Surely, I thought, if God and His gospel were perfect, the doctrine would be logically sound.
On a plane ride to a conference, my advisor asked how missionaries determine their assignments. As I tried to explain the belief in apostles speaking with God, my brain ground to a halt. I remembered meeting Elder Cook and not feeling anything divine. I recalled the traumatic experiences of my mission, and suddenly I wasn’t so certain that God had truly been in charge.
My advisor was respectful of my beliefs, noting that it was an interesting perspective for someone who hadn’t grown up in a religious context. This conversation would prove to be a pivotal moment, setting me on a path of questioning and deconstruction that would forever change my relationship with the faith I had once so fervently believed in.