Welcome and Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's December 18, 2024 and I'm here with Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:09] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:11] And we are here to give you another one of those classic bread and butter everyday Mormon stories. And joining us today in studio are Clare, Clare Howell Adams and Jackson Adams. And it's just a sort of a 20something, late 20something Mormon couple who recently has gone through a faith transition. And there's so many important stories that are, that are common in the Mormon stories. Experience things like perfectionism, anxiety, scrupulosity, purity culture, sexual shame, mission experiences, early marriage, childbearing, faith journeys, all the stuff. What am I missing in core themes? Anything.

Clare Adams [00:01:12] That's everything.

John Dehlin [00:01:14] Is that pretty good?

Jackson Adams [00:01:15] Yeah, you got it.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] Anyway, but y' all always ask for kind of everyday Mormon stories and that's what you're in for today, so. So Clare and Jackson, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Clare Adams [00:01:26] Thank you for having us.

Jackson Adams [00:01:28] Yeah, really happy to be here. Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] So normally we start with an intention. We like to give people a chance to kind of tell especially their believing loved ones, why they would want to. To be on Mormon Stories. So, Clare, why don't we give you a chance to go first?

Clare Adams [00:01:46] Yes, sure. I think for me, I have no ill intention whatsoever. This is me being authentic and true to myself. And Mormon Stories was such a lifeline for me going through my deconstruction. My hope is that if just one person can hear something that I have to say and resonate with that and not feel alone and feel seen, that's really important to me. I think you, you can feel crazy when you're in the middle of a deconstruction, feeling like no one else like you is experiencing it. So I just hope that I can help somebody like me feel not alone.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Love it. Beautiful. All right. How about you, Jackson?

Jackson Adams [00:02:34] Yeah, I think just to echo what Clare said, we're. We love our friends and family very deeply, including those that are still believing Mormons. These stories, they didn't happen in a vacuum. And so, yeah, they're gonna include some people in our life, but the intention is not to make anyone feel bad. And we're gonna be really respectful of everyone that still does believe in our lives. And then two, I think Clare is really kind of the hero of this story, so I'm here to support her on this. I was a little bit of a side character, but, you know, just really excited to see what she has to share today. So that those are kind of my Intentions.

John Dehlin [00:03:25] Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:26] We. We find you to be a bit of a hero too, though. Well, thank you. Maybe both of you in your own way.

Jackson Adams [00:03:32] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] We had pizza last night.

Jackson Adams [00:03:34] Yeah.

Clare's Mormon Upbringing and Childhood

John Dehlin [00:03:37] All right, well, great. Well, let's. Let's dive in. So who wants to go first?

Jackson Adams [00:03:47] I think you should start.

Clare Adams [00:03:49] All right, great.

John Dehlin [00:03:50] So where does your Mormon story begin, Clare?

Clare Adams [00:03:54] For me, it's just as a child growing up, really loving, devout Mormon home. And I had a great childhood. But there's a piece of my childhood. Like the thread that connects through my whole story has a lot to do with anxiety. I think I developed a lot of anxiety as a child. A lot of OCD behaviors and scrupulosity and something that I suffered with a lot as a child and a preteen and a teenager. And I didn't even really know that it was happening. It was so normal to me.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] And how did it manifest?

Clare Adams [00:04:37] It manifested through a lot of like, mental rumination as well as physical acts. So prayer was a really stressful thing for me. Every night I had this like, big night routine where I would start by praying and I'd go through this, a whole laundry list of items that I was asking God for. And it was all things that I was afraid of, like health wise. My dad traveled a lot when I was a kid and I would get a lot of anxiety when he was gone. And so like, that something terrible would happen to him. And so I would pray like, and it was always like I had to say something like a number of times, like, please bless that my dad will be safe, like a handful of times.

Clare Adams [00:05:21] And it was that with a whole other list of things. And I felt like if I didn't beg God enough for it, it wouldn't be enough for him to answer my prayers. So it was a whole laundry list of things. And then after that it was a lot of physical acts. So like, for example, after my parents would go to bed, I would go out into the kitchen. I had a lot of, what's the word? Like, intrusive thoughts that I was afraid. I was afraid of sinning, like doing something bad.

Clare Adams [00:05:53] And I was afraid of hurting somebody in my family, like while I was sleeping and like with knives or something. And so I'd go in the kitchen and all of the drawers that had knives in them, I would press my hands against them, like really, really hard until my hands hurt. And I knew like, I couldn't stop doing it until I was in pain. And then I felt like I had put enough like, effort into like being sure, like, okay, the door is closed. I'm not going to come out here like in the night. It's not like been left open. I would do the same thing to like checking locks to my bedroom door. Yeah. Am I forgetting anything else?

Jackson Adams [00:06:32] Just like the scanning of the ceiling

Clare Adams [00:06:34] that you would do. I just a lot. I was like just very concerned about safety. I developed a lot of health anxiety, particularly around cancer. That became very triggering to me. I don't know why in particular. Just something that I latched onto.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] They say OCD often has a genetic component. It's something that we can just and at least in some ways be born with, you know, in addition to ways that maybe a high demand religion or an upbringing can kind of exacerbate it.

Clare Adams [00:07:06] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] Sometimes it's part partly just what we're born with.

Clare Adams [00:07:09] Yeah. I. There's a lot of predisposition in my family, I think, for OCD and some mental health.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] Yeah. And when, I guess just for those who want to understand the scrupulosity idea, it's religious ocd. OCD tends to attack whatever you care about most. So if you care about your safety or your health or your family or your religion, that's what OCD is going to go after. So it sounds like that's what happened to you.

Clare Adams [00:07:39] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:07:40] Yeah. So that. So I mean, when you look back on your Mormon childhood, you know, there's always the songs in the primary and the activities. I'm wondering how it was for you in terms of enjoyment versus being terrorized by the OCD attaching itself to your religiosity.

Clare Adams [00:08:02] I would say overall it was very enjoyable. I enjoyed going to church and music's a huge part of my life. I love singing, so I loved that as a child. But definitely there were some things like talk around the second coming and, you know, you read about all of the natural disasters and scary things that are going to happen in the last days. That was always like really scary to me. 72 hour kits. My family always did those like every twice a year with general conference. And that would always stir up some anxiety, like. So for the most part it was a comforting thing, I feel like, and something that I liked, but definitely some hard things to deal with as well.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] What, where. Where were you in terms of birth order, siblings, and what city, state were you raised in? If you want to share.

Clare Adams [00:08:56] Yeah, I grew up in Centerville, Utah. Okay. Davis county, which is north of Salt

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Lake, kind of right before Ogden. Is that.

Clare Adams [00:09:03] Yeah, it's right. Right next to. It's in between Bountiful and Farmington.

John Dehlin [00:09:07] Okay.

Clare Adams [00:09:08] So yeah. And I'm the second in my family.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] Out of how many total?

Clare Adams [00:09:13] Out of four.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] Okay. And you, you said last night at Over Pizza that in some ways Davis county can actually be more intense than Utah County. Is that possible?

Clare Adams [00:09:24] I feel like it is just I lived, I grew up, spent 18 years of my life in Davis county and I've lived in Utah county for five years now. And I feel like the intensities are different, but I feel like it's a little bit more in Davis County.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] How. Give me some. Do you have any examples of how that it's even possible?

Clare Adams [00:09:43] I don't know. I feel like,

John Dehlin [00:09:47] I mean, I guess, I guess Utah county has a university which sometimes can bring some liberal tendencies or intellectual tendencies. I don't know if that's part of it. I know Davis county is Weber, but

Clare Adams [00:10:00] yeah, maybe that's it. I think at least in like the area that I grew up in, I feel like it was more like established older families and people and so maybe that had something to do with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] Okay. So anything else about your childhood before we go to adolescence, in terms of big things happening or family stuff or anything?

Clare Adams [00:10:23] I don't think so.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:24] I think I have, I have just a general kind of question around you and your childhood. Did you feel as you're describing yourself and how you coped? I think as a child it feels, feels quite. Even though you say that, you know, there, there was some enjoyment, there was some. It feels quite serious. Were you like, when you think of yourself as a girl now, do you feel like you were a very serious minded girl? Do you feel like you were, you know, quite obedient and as opposed to like, I don't know, playful or you know, kind of more lighthearted. How when you're looking back at yourself, what do you remember about yourself as a girl?

Clare Adams [00:11:11] Yeah, I think that's a good question. My mom always used to say that I was like a 90 year old woman trapped in a tiny body. Like I was always very serious, very mature, very concerned about adult things and wanted to grow up faster than I was growing up. That being said, I do feel like I was a playful child and I had a good imagination. But I was from the. I can never remember a time in my life where I wasn't concerned about like the future, big things or like how people perceived me. Like I was very aware of, like how am I being perceived? Am I acting mature? Am I being obedient? Like how am I coming off to people? It was Very concerning to me.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:04] Right. Yeah. Yeah. Do you view yourself as being quite social as a. Or were you more introverted or a blend? I mean, how, how do you. Did you enjoy school?

Clare Adams [00:12:17] Yeah, I think I was pretty social. I'm a little bit more of an introvert. But I always had a lot of friends. I didn't have a hard time making friends. That was. I feel like I didn't. All of most of my anxiety that I felt was at home.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:31] Yeah.

Clare Adams [00:12:31] I didn't really. That I can remember feel a lot like at school. I enjoyed being around my peers and probably just feeling like a kid.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:39] Uh huh. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:12:42] Can I say something about you as a kid? Not that I knew you, but from the stories I hear from her parents, Clare was also very. She had to know why. Right. She was very curious and you couldn't just say don't do that because I told you not to do that. You had to have a good reason for not doing that or doing that. So she always wanted to know the reasons behind why something was the way that it was.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:12] Yes. Wanting a deeper understanding of how things work and why you're being asked to do what you're doing.

Clare Adams [00:13:17] Yeah, absolutely. It was very important to me.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] Share your carrot story.

Clare Adams [00:13:23] My carrot story. This is just kind of a silly example, but.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] Well, it ties into religion and belief.

Clare Adams [00:13:31] It's a little more light hearted though. I really didn't want glasses when I was a kid and I remember like hearing. I'm sure my mom just kind of nonchalantly like trying to get us to like eat carrots was like, oh, these are really healthy for you. Like they're good for your eyes. Like they're. There's a vitamin in them or something that helps with your eyes. And so I would, I went through a phase where I would eat a ton of carrots and then pray every night, like, please bless that I won't have to get glasses. I really don't want glasses. I'm eating all of these carrots, like taking care of my body. And then I got glasses in seventh grade. So that was a prayer that God did. God didn't answer. And probably the first prayer that I can think of that he didn't answer.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:15] And do you remember what you thought about that at the time? This idea that, wow, I really prayed for that thing.

Clare Adams [00:14:23] I think I was disappointed, like, and confused. Like, okay, I really prayed. I not only prayed, but I did the works. Right. Like I was eating the carrots, I was being healthy and yeah, just disappointment. But then it was like, so quick to be like, okay, but it's not God's will. And I meant to have glasses and bodies aren't perfect. And. Yeah, like, I. I don't think I ever let myself, like, really go too far down the thought process of, like, why. Yeah, did this happen?

Margi Dehlin [00:14:54] Yeah.

Perfectionism, Modesty, and OCD in Adolescence

John Dehlin [00:14:55] And you, you mentioned your outline, the scripture in Matthew 5:48 being really influential. I remember this. This hit me a lot too. Do you want to talk about that?

Clare Adams [00:15:04] Yeah, yeah. Just how it says, be therefore perfect. And I obsessed over that up until. I mean, I still struggle with that, but my whole life. Sorry. It was just so important to me to be the best that I could be. And it manifested in a lot of different ways. But, yeah, I just really desire to be the best version of myself and to be holy and perfect. And they always talk about in church, like, oh, we can't really be perfect here. And that was confusing to me because it was like, well, then why does it say in the Scriptures to be perfect? Because, like. And it sounds like it's not possible. And no matter how much I try or pray or repent, I'm still not perfect.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Yeah. And it's Jesus saying it. It's not like it's, you know, some sub prophet or something.

Clare Adams [00:15:54] Yeah. It's like, I mean, that sounds like a commandment.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:57] Did. Do you feel like, when you ex. When you did make mistakes, do you remember how you felt when you did make a mistake? Was that kind of a trigger for you to pray and try to really ask for forgiveness? Or what was your response with your own humanity?

Clare Adams [00:16:15] Yeah, I think. I think it was triggering to me. I'm a very emotional person, very, like, vulnerable with my emotions. And that came across, I think, as being kind of a difficult child as far as, like, expressing my emotions. I had a hard time with that. And so I would feel a lot of guilt, like, after, like, doing something, maybe like not agreeing with my parents or something. I felt a lot of guilt and tried to repent from that. But, Yeah, I never felt like I was getting any better. Like it wasn't enough. So.

Clare Adams [00:16:59] And then at church they tell you too, like, you should be repenting every night. Like, I can't remember. I feel like there was a talk that came out at some point that was like, you should be, like, going through your day at the end of the day and accounting before God and repenting of all of your mistakes. And that stressed me out a lot.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] Yeah. It's like you go to pray and it's like, okay, I gotta Remember them all. And if I forget one, then maybe I won't, you know, I won't get like, God. God can't just kind of remember it and cut you some slack.

Clare Adams [00:17:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] You know, anyway, it can be really stressful. Yeah.

Clare Adams [00:17:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:42] Cool. Okay. So into your, I guess, adolescence. That's when kind of the modesty lessons and young women start emerging.

Clare Adams [00:17:52] Yeah. Yeah. Really heavily based on modesty. I don't know. Obviously at church they talked about it, and it was a big emphasis in my home growing up as well. And I just remember, like, becoming very. As you're a teenage girl going through puberty, you become very aware of your body and the changes that are happening. And it's very confusing and weird because, like, I never ever wore tank tops or short shorts ever until I was 28 years old. Like, never in my life, even as a child. And so I was so used to, like, okay, we cover up our bodies as women and as girls, and it's our responsibility to do this for the men.

Clare Adams [00:18:43] Like, I started to develop a feeling of I need to control the men's thoughts around me, which made me uncomfortable around men and made me feel, like, icky towards men. Like, shouldn't they be able to control their own thoughts? Aren't they responsible and accountable for their own thoughts and just develop some shame around my body? But I wouldn't have identified it as shame at the time.

Clare Adams [00:19:12] A lot of. I just felt a lot of judgment, like, growing up, like, oh, so and so her skirt's too short at church. Like, did you see that? Or her shirt was too tight, or so and so mows the lawn without, like, if it was a man without a shirt on or a woman with a tank top, like, and I took that, like, very seriously. And it was very confusing to me. Kind of like going back to what Jackson said, like, why, why would they do that if they know that they should be wearing their garments? And I was taught, like, prepare to go through the temple and wear only clothing that you could wear with garments.

John Dehlin [00:19:47] Yeah. We are so hyper focused on how people dress. And I think it makes us obsessed about body parts because we're constantly body checking everybody. I think it makes the problem worse.

Clare Adams [00:20:01] Thousand percent, I think.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] Yeah. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:20:04] Do.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:04] Do you feel like with the perfectionism piece, do you feel like you had that at all with your own body, with the way that you viewed your body, especially as your body was. Was kind of changing at all? Were you critical about your. Or aware of how your body looked, or was it more about the covering of it? Does that make sense?

Clare Adams [00:20:30] Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I think for me, I was never really unhappy with my body. It was more. Don't even get to know my body. Like, just cover it up. Like, this isn't. Not really. Like my own, almost.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:44] That's right. So it disconnected you.

Clare Adams [00:20:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:50] And then your health anxiety continued, is that right?

Clare Adams [00:20:52] Yeah, it got really, really bad as a teenager. Yeah, Just like, kind of became a germaphobe and started to develop a fear around cancer for whatever reason. I'm not sure what triggered that. And then that became a big issue going into my young adult and adult years and played a part with some struggle in our marriage as well, kind of later on.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] And talk about how in adolescence, your OCD started infecting your prayers even more in terms of ritualistic praying and stuff like that. I mean, that's a classic symptom of scrupulosity or OCD is ritualistic praying.

Clare Adams [00:21:38] Yeah, just. I mean, every night, kneeling by my bed, I would fall asleep saying my prayers, and then panic, waking up because I hadn't finished, and then going through the physical acts. And then it became like, okay, now I'm doing a second round of praying, laying in bed, and. And it was like this whole process before I could ever fall asleep because I felt so much anxiety, I couldn't relax. I had to. I just had to go through so many ruminations before I felt like I could take on the next day. Or like, I felt like I had to, like, fix myself. Like, why. Why am I having a hard time with this? And it. It was not a restful experience. It just became a big, stressful routine every night.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:26] So exhausting.

Jackson Adams [00:22:29] In Clare's childhood home growing up, there's a sign that says, pray, like everything depends on God and work. As if everything depends on you. It might be. Might be the reverse of that. I can't remember anyway. But yeah, the act of praying, almost, in Clare's mind, tell me if I'm wrong. Was almost an active work as well. Like something that you had to put a lot of effort into. It wasn't just asking some divine being for help. It was almost sacrificial self sacrifice

Clare Adams [00:23:06] in

Jackson Adams [00:23:06] an act of prayer. Am I off base there?

Margi Dehlin [00:23:09] Yeah. It's almost like I'm gonna work so hard that I will suffer.

Clare Adams [00:23:15] Yeah, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:16] And my suffering will be this, you know, evidence of how hard I work. Right.

Clare Adams [00:23:23] Absolutely. Yeah.

Clare's High School Years and Young Women's Experience

John Dehlin [00:23:25] Really quickly, what were you into in high school? Hobbies, interests? You know, what. What future did you see for yourself such that you would Were preparing for it in high school, that kind of thing.

Clare Adams [00:23:36] Yeah. I knew that I always wanted to be a mom, and I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. So those were kind of my, like, long term goals. But I was. I had a really, really great three girls that I was incredibly close with, and they were really good anchors. And I was really into music. I was in choir, theater, and I found a lot of joy and fulfillment doing that.

John Dehlin [00:24:03] Did you? Musical theater?

Clare Adams [00:24:05] I was in one musical my senior year.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Which one?

Clare Adams [00:24:08] It was Fiddler on the Roof.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Were you one of those sisters?

Clare Adams [00:24:11] Yeah, I was the oldest one.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] How did I know?

Clare Adams [00:24:14] Probably because I give off older sister energy.

John Dehlin [00:24:17] What was her name?

Clare Adams [00:24:19] Oh, Seidel or something like that. I might be wrong, but it's been a while.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] Matchmaker, Matchmaker. Is that your song?

Clare Adams [00:24:28] Yep. We all sing that.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] All right.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:31] All right. Can I ask you a question about that? When it came to theater or some of the things that you enjoyed, were you able to have a respite from your head? Like, were there moments where you were able to actually kind of get outside your brain kind of yelling at you? All these threatening, terrifying thoughts, what were they? Where were you able to kind of find a respite from that?

Clare Adams [00:25:04] Yeah, definitely the music helped that. Like I said, I was in choir all through junior high and high school, and I took voice lessons. And it was a really important, big part of my life. And that music resonates with me, gives me peace, helps kind of get rid of the static. And so I definitely felt free when I was participating in choir and just spending time, like, with my friends away from the home. And I don't want to say that, as in, like, my home wasn't a safe place for me or anything to do with my parents, but I just felt like because all of those rituals happened at home, it wasn't like a. I don't want to say not safe, but it wasn't like a mentally safe, calming space for me because it was so hyper focused on the rituals and the praying.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:58] Yeah, I mean, in many ways that's part of the genius of Mormonism, I think, is that, you know, the way it's constructed is that the religion lives with you. It's the family becomes the, you know, the proctor. What is it called when it would be like church, but at home, the family just reproduces all that. So in essence, you go to church on Sunday, you have activities, but also your family structure oftentimes is an imitation of the church structure just at home. So it really makes Sense to me that you would feel that way, especially with a devout family, someone who's really kind of taking the church seriously in that way.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:48] Can I ask you a question around young women's. So what was your experience of young women's at the time? Did you really enjoy it? And also, what are some of the main messages that you feel like really landed for you at that time?

Clare Adams [00:27:05] Yeah, I was really lucky. The neighborhood ward that I grew up in, there was like 12 of us who were all the same age and all like, we all got along. There was like rarely any drama for the most part.

Clare Adams [00:27:17] We're all pretty close. So I am lucky in that I had a really good experience with young womens. It was a fun place to go. And for me, like, looking back, it's interesting how much focus there was on preparing to get married and to be a mom. But I loved it at the time because I was like, this is all I want, this is all I care about. And so I thrived like there. But yeah, I.

Clare Adams [00:27:42] The majority of my memories from young women's were focused on preparing to be a mother and a wife and bettering yourself. The Christlike attributes, personal progress, you know, like just becoming a better person. The best person that you can be.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:59] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have one final question around the this kind of time period. And I think the reason why I'm asking this is because I do think, and Mormonism isn't the only religion, high demand religion this way. But because it's so behavior focused, it's so much about what it looks like as opposed to what it. It feels like. I'm curious, to me, it feels like you have this private kind of tortured experience. Right. Do you feel like the external what you showed to the world in high school and your friendships and the people who knew you, do you think they had a sense for what you were going through on the inside or were you quite isolated in that?

Clare Adams [00:28:51] That's a good question. I don't know if I've ever really thought about that. I think maybe aside from like I mentioned those, my really, really close friends, they might have known a little bit, but I'm not even sure really. I think they just knew me so well. They probably knew, like, my personality leaned more towards that, like, obsessiveness. But for the most part it was very internal, private thing that I dealt with. And looking back, I'm not even sure how much my parents knew. Like they knew that I struggled and they did things to help me. But yeah, nobody really knew. And that's Why I felt so free in those at school, around those people. Cause I felt like that was like the authentic part of me, the part that I wanted to feel all the time. That was so freeing.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:41] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] I'm always conflicted because I, you know, we come down hard on, I think, some of the harmful aspects of the church. But at the same time I have to remind people there are way worse ways to be raised than devout Mormon. And so even with my own kids, sometimes I think, well, sometimes standards put too much pressure, but sometimes they just keep people out of trouble and give them something to strive for.

John Dehlin [00:30:13] And I think we all probably feel like, you know, we turned out at least okay, at least many of us. Do you ever reflect back on, like, yeah, maybe it was hard, maybe it was stressful, but maybe overall it was better for you than the alternatives.

John Dehlin [00:30:33] And I think it's a different thing when somebody has OCD and scrupulosity, because the type of pressure that can just be constructive for some can become possibly damaging or even deadly for others. So I'm curious if you how you reflect on that looking back in terms of your adolescence.

Clare Adams [00:30:53] Yeah, I think I fall into the category of even though, like, there were hard things about the culture of the church and the church that helped accentuate things that maybe I was predisposed to for the most. Like, I can 100% say, like I had a good childhood. I. The church is, was built for somebody like me who thought the way that I thought and I really thrived and I enjoyed gaining a testimony. I loved studying the scriptures. I spent, literally, that's what I would do for fun, was read my scriptures and read like grown up adult books, like about the gospel. Like, I love that and I feel like I have a lot in my life to be grateful for because of the way that I was raised and.

John Dehlin [00:31:41] Yeah, yeah, Jackson, why were you laughing when she said she studied the scriptures? For fun?

Jackson Adams [00:31:46] It's who I married. You know, I married a girl that loved the gospel. She really did. And it's sweet, you know, I, you know, there's still that part of her. I'll come home and she's studying something, right? Reading a book or listening to a podcast. And I love that about her. She doesn't, she doesn't dabble, right. She goes into things and I don't know, it's really endearing to me. So I don't know that it was a laugh that it's funny. Like, haha, nerd reading the scriptures is. It's more of an endearing Laugh for me.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] Well, if it's okay, should we turn to Jackson's story a little bit?

Clare Adams [00:32:27] Let's please do.

Jackson's Mormon Upbringing and Childhood

John Dehlin [00:32:28] All right, Jackson, what was your Mormon upbringing like?

Jackson Adams [00:32:32] Yeah, very similar to Clare. I grew up in a very devout Mormon family.

John Dehlin [00:32:37] Were you in Ogden? North. North Davis County.

Jackson Adams [00:32:41] So I was born in Davis county, actually, but most of my childhood was spent in Highland, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:32:47] So that's Utah County? Yep, North Utah, near Alpine. And yeah, that's intense.

Jackson Adams [00:32:53] Yeah, some would say that's kind of the epicenter of Mormonism these these days especially. But even then, very. So I grew up in a neighborhood. It was probably three streets made up our ward and there was not a single inactive family on those three streets. Every single person in our work once notable, basically every Sunday.

John Dehlin [00:33:18] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:33:19] Which is crazy.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] You know, Alpine tends to be more affluent. Like Senator Mike Lee used to live there up until recently. The guy who wrote those Mormon history books. I always forget his name. What's his name? The way in the Glory. Oh, Gerald Lund.

Clare Adams [00:33:33] Gerald Lund.

Jackson Adams [00:33:34] He's from Alpine.

John Dehlin [00:33:35] He lives in Alpine, Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:33:36] Oh, I didn't know that because he's

John Dehlin [00:33:37] in my brother's ward. A lot of wealthy super righteous families are in Alpine for sure.

Jackson Adams [00:33:43] And Highland I don't think was necessarily that way when I was growing up. I grew up in a very normal neighborhood. But the church, to your point, it's more than a religion, it's a culture and it's a network. So business deals are done in the chapel almost. It's a very.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:06] Oh, really?

Jackson Adams [00:34:07] It's very, you know, for someone, for people that believe in an afterlife where you can't take money with you, money is a very, very big part of the church in Utah county. So really weird subculture. But yeah, that's where I grew up. So I'm the oldest of four.

Jackson Adams [00:34:28] I've got two younger brothers and then a baby sister. And of my family, I have left the church publicly, my sister has left the church publicly, and my dad has as well. So we're about. So six of us. Yeah, three of the six are not in the church and three of the six are. So.

Jackson Adams [00:34:49] Which is fairly fitting, I would say, because I grew up in a. In a pretty nuanced family. My grandma and grandpa on my mom's side are kind of in a mixed faith marriage situation. And then my grandpa on my dad's side is actually a convert to the church. So I grew up more in a.

Jackson Adams [00:35:13] I guess I was never necessarily taught that this is the one true church, which I think inoculated Me against a lot of the, like, truth claim things that really bothered Clare at first because I was like, this is just kind of what we do. You know, this is our culture, being

John Dehlin [00:35:35] Jewish for, like, a liberal Jew kind of thing.

Jackson Adams [00:35:39] And my dad grew up in Texas, in Houston, Texas. So he was always one of maybe two or three Mormons. Right. You know that, John. So it wasn't. He didn't grow up kind of with the same dogma that Clare's family, you know, when everyone is in and everyone's bought into it, had.

John Dehlin [00:36:00] Okay, so do we go to adolescence now and young men's.

Jackson Adams [00:36:07] Yeah, I think there's actually. There's one funny little experience when I was a kid that I wanted to share despite not necessarily thinking this is the one true church. I grew up where everyone was Mormon, so my experience was everyone was Mormon. Right. But I had a babysitter one time, and she never babysat again after this. She got in trouble, but we had peas for dinner while my parents were gone, and she grabbed one pea and showed it to me and said, this represents the amount of members in the church. If the plate that your dinner is on is the entire world, this little pea is the amount of members of the church that there are.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:46] That was a babysitter.

Jackson Adams [00:36:47] That was a babysitter.

Clare Adams [00:36:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] That's like a Mormon nightmare baby. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:36:51] And I would have been, like, I don't know, maybe 10 or something like that. I don't know.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:56] It was, like, alert, infiltrated into the bubble.

Jackson Adams [00:37:01] So my parents go home, like, is this true?

John Dehlin [00:37:02] Like.

Jackson Adams [00:37:04] And my.

John Dehlin [00:37:05] I want to meet this woman. Do you know her name?

Jackson Adams [00:37:08] I know her last name.

John Dehlin [00:37:10] We should know her. But, yeah, if you're watching, we want to meet you. That's interesting.

Jackson Adams [00:37:16] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:19] So she's trying to say y' all aren't so special.

Jackson Adams [00:37:22] Well, she was Mormon, too. I don't really know what she was trying to say.

Clare Adams [00:37:26] Okay.

Jackson Adams [00:37:26] I think she was just.

Clare Adams [00:37:27] Maybe in the middle.

Jackson Adams [00:37:28] She was, like, 13 or 14, maybe.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:30] She's grappling with.

Jackson Adams [00:37:31] And I think she just thought it was cool that she knew that maybe

John Dehlin [00:37:34] I had Those thoughts at 14.

Jackson Adams [00:37:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] I call it doing the math. You divide the number of Mormons by the total number of people in the world, and you get, like, less than one half of 1%. Right. Wait, this is God's one true chosen people.

Jackson Adams [00:37:48] Right. So that was kind of a disturbing thought to me. So I asked my parents, like, is this true? And, yeah, she got in trouble.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:54] How old were you? Do you remember?

Jackson Adams [00:37:56] I think I would have been like 8 to 10, old enough that I really distinctly remember. It's the first time I ever experienced cognitive dissonance, though I didn't have the word for it, obviously at the time. I remember how it made me feel.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:07] Right.

Jackson Adams [00:38:08] Which was disturbed mostly.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:12] So can I get a sense for you as a boy? We kind of did this with Clare, you know, what do you remember about yourself as a boy? What you enjoyed? Were you super obedient? Were you very rules oriented? Were you more kind of fun loving? How would you describe as a boy now, how you approached kind of your family system and life?

Jackson Adams [00:38:39] Yeah, I think I was more of the latter. Kind of a fun loving. Definitely a bender of rules. My childhood, I kind of compare it to like the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, you know, Like, I just like really loved being outside and running around and playing make believe and definitely got into some mischief too, you know, have a lot of scars from it. And. Yeah, I just was a. I was a fun loving kid. I didn't really have a care in the world. And I love my parents for giving me that childhood because I was able to explore, I was able to ask questions. I was very curious and I think it. My ability to be who I was as a child, I think has shaped who I am today. So I am very grateful for my childhood.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:32] Yeah, yeah, that's rarer.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] Okay. Adolescence.

Jackson Adams [00:39:38] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] Okay.

Jackson Adams [00:39:40] This is where it starts to get a little. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, so I don't think you're kidding. No, I'm not, unfortunately. Yeah. So kind of moving out of childhood and into adolescence, I took getting the priesthood very, very, very seriously. My dad instilled like a real respect for the priesthood in my mind at that age.

Jackson Adams [00:40:12] And so when I became a deacon and got the priesthood, it's something. It's the first thing I think I took seriously in my life. I didn't ever take school seriously as a kid. I just. I would read the scriptures, talking about the Aaronic priesthood and realize what a responsibility it was. Right. And in my mind I was becoming a man right at 12.

Jackson Adams [00:40:41] So it was a very serious thing to me. I remember distinctly, I got the priesthood and then my dad took me to General Conference. So my birthday is October 1st, so I turn 12, I get the priesthood. And you know, that priesthood session, whenever that would have been that year, that Saturday my dad took me.

Jackson Adams [00:41:02] And I remember like in the priesthood session, it was like every other talk was about pornography. I swear, you know, you've been to priesthood Sessions. They talk about it a lot. I had no idea what that was. So, like, the word kind of made me feel weird. I was like, what is that? It's a weird word, you know, but I didn't know what it was.

Jackson Adams [00:41:28] It was also during the time that personal priesthood interviews were a big thing. I don't know if you remember those, the PPIs. Yeah. You've probably done a PPI or two with your kids. Yeah, yeah. So.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Well, first of all, I was just going to say Mormon parents are kind of in a bind because you want to warn your kids not to look at pornography, but you don't want to give them the idea to look at it. So you can say, stay away from it, but then you don't actually explain what it is because then they'll be curious. So it's kind of weird, right? That dynamic.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:03] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:42:03] And that's just what I was about to say is I don't. I feel for my dad because he's having this PPI and the prophet's telling him, look, you got to talk to your 12 year old about this, you

John Dehlin [00:42:12] know, like, find out if your kids are looking up porn. Ask them if they masturbate, you know, in a little one on one, fatherly or father, daughter, father, son interview. Like being a mini bishop, basically.

Jackson Adams [00:42:23] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:42:23] In the home. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:42:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:25] Margi just groaned. Why did you groan?

Margi Dehlin [00:42:30] I feel like it's obvious. I don't know, it's just incredibly, if you don't have that type of relationship of speaking openly, it becomes just very uncomfortable. And as opposed to like educational and conversational, it's like this reporting all of a sudden, like you're, you're feeling worthiness, like parental. So much is on the line.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] Gospel worthiness.

Jackson's Adolescence and Sexual Shame

Jackson Adams [00:42:53] So anyway, sorry, no, that's, that's 100% it. And I had a great relationship with my dad, always, you know, it's never been bad. And I've always felt like I could really talk to him about anything. I think I'm lucky in that sense. But it was weird. And he sat me down in my room and was like, look, I'm the patriarch of the house, you know, and this is, it's all so silly.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Doctor is silently grody. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:43:23] Don't forget I'm the patriarch. Okay. But sits me down and kind of goes through some things. We talk about, I think, tithing, some other things. And then he goes, all right, son, I need to know, do you masturbate? Sorry, this isn't that funny. But now I'm laughing about it.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:42] Coping.

Jackson Adams [00:43:43] Yeah, that's right. And I didn't know what that meant. I was like, dad, I don't know what you're talking about, you know, And I think that finally like kind of snapped him out of the spell of like, I'm supposed to be doing this. And so he, I think he kind of tried to explain a little bit what it was and I was just like, what are you talking about? And so it just kind of ended at that. So I was introduced, you know, to the idea of this stuff in a pretty strange way. I would think that's a guaranteed way

John Dehlin [00:44:21] to get your kid going if they're not already going. Yeah. Just to like tell them what the word is and ask them if they're doing it. I try to explain it in an awkward way.

Jackson Adams [00:44:30] Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:31] They're doing it next week. You know what I mean?

Jackson Adams [00:44:34] Well. And all it gave me was weird words to talk about with my friends, you know, and so because I already kind of had that rebellious nature to me, now I'm going in at baseball practice, I'm like, hey, have you heard of this word?

John Dehlin [00:44:48] You know?

Jackson Adams [00:44:49] And then I'm learning about pornography and masturbation. Really learning about it from peers, not from people that would have a little bit of wisdom around it to share with me.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] 14 year old boys become your educators.

Jackson Adams [00:45:04] Yeah, yeah. And that's the blind leading the blind right there is what that is.

John Dehlin [00:45:09] Well, it does make you blind. So

Margi Dehlin [00:45:14] can I ask. So clearly. But I just want to be extra clear.

Jackson Adams [00:45:19] Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:19] Your first kind of experience with hearing about and learning about masturbation was. Would you say it was in a shame way? It was like this, this is a doozy. This can do you in. Right. Was it like that?

Jackson Adams [00:45:37] Absolutely. And that's a great call out. And I think I glossed over that. Is it was not talked about. And hey, this is something that you're probably going to want to do. Let's talk about was do not do this under any circumstances. And so you're left, you know, so this was when I was 12. I still didn't really understand it until I was exposed to like real pornography the first time at a friend's house when I was 14.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Mormon friend, right?

Jackson Adams [00:46:10] Mormon friend.

John Dehlin [00:46:11] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:46:11] Yep. He was a really good friend too. And it wasn't something that we were looking for. It was like a pop up on a computer. Right. We were playing computer games together and it was just like, you know, I don't even think I registered what it was. It was like very jarring.

Jackson Adams [00:46:31] So I didn't even necessarily have any experience with it until I was 14, but I just knew that it was really, really bad. Um, and. They don't give you, for lack of a better term, any other option. Like, it's. This is bad. Here's what you should do instead. Right. Like, there's no. You can't have sex and you can't look at pornography and you can't masturbate. And unfortunately, I think this is where the most damage occurs.

Jackson Adams [00:47:04] This is opinion. But pornography and masturbation are tied together. Right. They're both just as bad as the other, and you can't do one without the other. So I didn't know that you could just masturbate and that could be a fulfilling sexual experience that that's okay to have as an adolescent, you know, And I just didn't know that. I just thought it was bad. Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] So from the church's perspective, they're both forbidden, Right. They're both equally bad.

Jackson Adams [00:47:41] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:47:42] And again, they're all associated in. In the church's mind.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:45] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] They come together. So, yeah, there's no such thing as healthy masturbation, even if pornography is not involved, Right? Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:47:54] And so they. The church is never going to come out and say, hey, well, maybe they will. They change all sorts of stuff, it seems like. But up until now, they haven't come out and said, hey, you know, masturbation is actually no big deal. And actually it's kind of biologically necessary

John Dehlin [00:48:10] for you to do this, maybe even healthy.

Jackson Adams [00:48:12] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:13] Healthier than a lot of the other options that you could go to, you know?

Jackson Adams [00:48:18] Yeah, yeah. And so there's no education, there's no tools given to parents to talk about these things. So, like, I think that's why I was laughing about the thing with my dad, because I'm putting myself in his shoes. Like, what would I have said? Probably the exact same thing. There's no tools for parents around these things in the church. And again, then it means you're turning to pornography as a source of sex education and you're turning to peers as a source of sex education, and that is much less healthy than what it could be.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] So how did that progress for you into your.

Jackson Adams [00:48:59] Yeah, so I felt horrible about it, being exposed to it, but it was. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. And so I wanted more of it. And so I didn't have a smartphone until I turned 18, so it wasn't like this readily accessible thing for me. It was when I could get a few minutes alone on the family computer. It Was, you know, finding magazines, you know, in friends houses and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:49:25] And it's teaching you how to be sneaky.

Jackson Adams [00:49:27] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] And to hide and to lie. Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:29] And it reinforces shame. The shame of it. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:49:32] Well, yeah, I'm like, I am certainly the only one in my ward that's doing this. Maybe the only person in Utah that's doing this. You know, these are the thoughts that are going through my head and. I. I can't. I. I just gotta stop. Was my. It was always like, okay, that. That is the last time I do that. I cannot do this again. And then when you do it again, then it's like this death spiral, spiral of shame, and it never ends. And you just feel worse and worse and worse and worse and worse about yourself. It compounds. Right.

Jackson Adams [00:50:13] So, yeah, that went on for a little bit and then I got caught. I didn't know how to clear browser history on my family computer because literally, I just didn't know anything. I was a young kid and I got home from a mutual activity. We went to see the Orem Owls play for mutual. And again, I don't have a cell phone, so I'm just there, hunky dory, unbeknownst to me that I'm getting caught, you know, And I walk in the door and my mom's crying and my dad is mad, and he said, son, I need you to prepare your heart right now to tell me what you've been doing.

Jackson Adams [00:50:59] I'm gonna give you a couple minutes and meet me downstairs. And I knew exactly what it was about. So it was, yeah, a pretty shameful experience, for sure. From there, you know, I went and talked to my bishop, which was humiliating, but I felt good about, like, having the courage to go talk about it because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. So it was not necessarily a totally negative experience.

Jackson Adams [00:51:35] But then, of course, the very next opportunity I had to search out pornography again. I did it even though I had confessed it to the bishop. So now it's not. I'm the only person in my ward that does this. I'm the only person in Utah that probably does this. Now. I'm the only person that has ever, in the history of mankind, confessed to a bishop that I've done this and then got back to it, you know, and that was like a level of self hatred that I don't even know how to describe to someone that hasn't been there before. It's very deep and it's very painful.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:16] Did you ever feel during that time that because it's kind of occurring to me just, I don't know, a lack of privacy, a lack of this sense of having your own relationship with a part of yourself that's not for everyone to sort of comment about or you know, have it be now part of your character or identity that people kind of associate with you. Did you feel at that time any sense for like boundary like this feels really exposing, like something's wrong here. Why is everyone in on this really personal thing? Did you have a sense for that at the time at all?

Jackson Adams [00:53:05] I don't know that I consciously had a sense for that. I think it did feel wrong, right? But it, everyone around me, all the adults in my life were saying one thing about this and so I trusted that. Right?

Clare Adams [00:53:21] And

Jackson Adams [00:53:25] it again, there's so many more healthy ways to learn about these things and there's no reason a 14 year old boy should have to talk about that with a stranger. There's just no reason for it. And it was humiliating. And I got my privilege to take the sacrament revoked and prepare the sacrament because I was a teacher at the time for I think four weeks or something like that. So not only do I feel bad about it now, everyone knows basically, because what else would it be, right?

John Dehlin [00:54:05] Because the other boys know you're not passing or blessing the sacrament. Your leaders know. How does that feel?

Jackson Adams [00:54:12] Oh, it's humiliating. You know, I remember distinctly one Sunday getting called by our teachers quorum president, like, hey, I need you. We don't have a lot of guys this week. I need you to come not only prepare it, but we don't have enough deacons either. We need you to help pass it.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] And I just like 14 year old boy, 14, 15 year old boy, right?

Jackson Adams [00:54:30] He's one of my peers, you know, like he's a little bit older than me, so I think he's a God, first of all, you know, but second of all, you know, I don't want to tell my friends that I can't do that, you know, and so it was, it was humiliating. And I just froze. I didn't even say anything. I just handed the phone to my dad. My dad like explained he can't right now, you know, so it was, yeah,

Margi Dehlin [00:54:51] it was humiliating and so defining. It feels like also what I'm realizing, not necessarily an original thought, but is just how it reinforces at every turn that this thing is defining for you which then recreates the circle. Because if it is defining, if that then you become part of that thing. It's like, well, this is who I am, you know? And so it kind of reinforces that whole cycle of shame and puts you kind of back in that again. It's just exhausting.

Jackson Adams [00:55:26] Yeah. And it. I. You know, working, like, in therapy, one of the things that we've worked on is going back to our younger selves and having that conversation and just saying it's okay, you know?

Margi Dehlin [00:55:42] Yes.

Jackson Adams [00:55:43] And that was telling your child, your

Margi Dehlin [00:55:45] adolescent self, and almost what you wish you could have heard, what he deserved to hear in that moment.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] What would you have told yourself then?

Jackson Adams [00:55:55] I would have had the conversation that I wish my dad had the tools to give me at that age. Right. It's okay to masturbate. This is when and how. Right. It's not appropriate all the time. Right. But it is appropriate sometimes. And it's something personal and private to you. This is what pornography is. These are websites that you should really avoid because there's things on there that you don't understand right now that you don't need to be exposed to. Right. And just go through and have that conversation and then finally just say, it's okay. You're not broken. Actually, everyone's doing this. You're the only one that has been forced to be honest about this, including bishops, including the bishop that you told about it. Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] And your dad.

Jackson Adams [00:56:44] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:56:45] And now I think about that.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] I'm like, my poor mom, you know? Yeah.

Jackson Adams [00:56:48] You know, it's just. It's. It's so unhealthy for everyone involved, you know, because I know that that was so hard on my dad, too, because I know. I know how that would have made him feel, having to have that conversation with me.

John Dehlin [00:57:04] So I want to have you read. You have your outline, right, the one you gave us, the. Where you start by saying, I remember feeling. No, no, this continued. The part where it says this continued. Can you read from that point just for the next couple sentences? I just think it's really well written. So you say, this continued through all my teenage years.

Jackson Adams [00:57:30] Okay, sorry. It's like 26 pages long. Okay. Yep, got it.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] I'll tell you when to stop.

Jackson Adams [00:57:35] Yep. This continued through all my teenage years, into my twenties. My shame was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning, and it was the last thing I thought about before bed each night. Compound this with some very innocent sexual encounters with girlfriends during high school. And I pretty much considered myself to be a sexual deviant by the time I was old enough to go on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] So I thought that was. I'm not Stopping you, but like, I want you to keep going, but like calling yourself a sexual deviant, thinking of yourself that way as an adolescent. Clare, I'm noticing you're feeling something. Do you want to share?

Clare Adams [00:58:12] Yeah, I just feel a lot of empathy and pain for him. It's something that I didn't understand until we've gone on this whole journey to really like understand what that could possibly feel like. And I can relate in a different way to the self loathing and the shame and just the pain. So I just, it's just really horrific to me that so many people feel that kind of self loathing about themselves. And I just, I just feel bad that he had to carry that for so long.

Jackson Adams [00:58:53] It's. It's really cool that, that we can even sit here and talk about this. I'll just say that Clare's been through a lot with me. She's a. She's a good person.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:03] What's interesting about both your stories in different ways though, is that Clare you were talking about, you know, you're wracked with all these thoughts and quite tortured as a teen. Right. For different reasons. And you're in many ways at odds with your own body, saying you felt disconnected with it, in many ways, didn't trust it because it was sort of this symbol for men to have thoughts about you, sexual thoughts that you felt responsible. Right. And that's not completely unlike what you're describing as well. You're feeling this sense of like, I don't trust my own body, I don't trust my own desires, I don't trust. Right. And feeling this like on some level separation and then being racked as well. And that's something you have in common in just really different, you know, ways. Have you talked about that before and kind of realizing the similarity there?

Clare Adams [01:00:04] Yeah, that's a huge, kind of part of our journey together. Because as I'm sure you can imagine, the pornography thing caused a huge, huge issue. We don't fight about things, we don't even disagree about things. That's the only thing that ever caused a lot of pain for both of us. And I think we like fed into each other because I think we both were understanding where the other person was coming from. I'm having this obsession with being perfect and not making mistakes and being obedient. And then I'm feeling like he's not living up to that. And then I'm feeding into his shame and then I feel bad because I'm making him feel bad. It's just like this terrible cycle that we're going through, feeding into each other's insecurities.

John Dehlin [01:00:57] Did you want to say something, Jackson?

Jackson Adams [01:01:00] No, no, I think I. I think she said it.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:03] Well, yeah.

Preparing for Mission While Carrying Shame

John Dehlin [01:01:05] So then how does this, Jackson, for you, as you start thinking about a mission and you also think of yourself as a sexual deviant? How do you square that?

Jackson Adams [01:01:15] Yeah, I think. And Margi touched on this earlier. There's this side of you that you project out and there's your inner self. So the side that I was projecting, was confident, was excited to go on a mission, was worthy to go on a mission. Right. Because I think I used the fact that I had talked to some bishops as like a crutch. Like, look, I've put in the work, you know, to fix this, you know, wasn't true. But that's what I kind of projected out. And so I guess I kind of made a deal with God. Right. Like, look, I'm going to go out there and I'm.

John Dehlin [01:01:57] You.

Jackson Adams [01:01:58] You've never seen a missionary work as hard as I'm about to work. You know, that's what I told God. I'm about to go out there and I'm about to really give it all.

John Dehlin [01:02:07] As the musical says, I'm going to be the Mormon who changes all mankind.

Jackson Adams [01:02:11] That's right. I was totally elder price. I was 100% all their price.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:15] But do you feel like also part of that was to make up for this deep defiance?

Jackson Adams [01:02:22] That's exactly what it was for, was the deal was, I'm going to do this so that you will take this from me because I have really tried

Margi Dehlin [01:02:31] to stop on your own.

Jackson Adams [01:02:32] And I would really like for you to just take this from me because apparently that's a thing. You'll just take it. Not sure why you're not. I would really like you to, but. So that was the deal.

John Dehlin [01:02:43] We've talked about this so much on Mormon stories, and I know the church watches Mormon stories. They know it's a problem and they know they could change it. But I think they need. I really do think they need youth feeling like they're broken so that then they can feel like they need the church to make them whole. Because they know now, 20 years into Mormon stories, and we're not going to stop talking about this till the church changes, because it's a churchwide epidemic. It's very serious. It wrecks marriages. It wrecks, you know, people's mental health. There's suicidal ideation, there's even suicide associated with all this. So it's very serious. And they could change it. But I think if they. I think they worry that youth won't need the church or feel like they need the church if they. If they get rid of this sexual shame thing.

Jackson Adams [01:03:34] You know, I think it has to be one of the greatest evils committed by the church, One of the most evil doctrines that they have, because, like you said, they give you a disease and they are the only source of a cure. Right. They know their cure doesn't work. They know the disease is made up. And so it keeps people coming back. And I've seen myself trapped in that. I've seen people that I love trapped in that. I see people that I love that are still trapped in that. And if I could reach them and just say, you're okay, you're a good person.

John Dehlin [01:04:15] Everybody's doing.

Jackson Adams [01:04:17] Yeah. Like, I just. Yeah. That I'm. I'm mostly over my angry phase at the church. But that sends me back into it. Cause it's. It's not good.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Anything else you want to share about your adolescence, high school years, before we jump to Clare's mission? I guess.

Jackson Adams [01:04:41] No. I think the only other thing that I would say about my adolescence is, despite what I wrote there, that it was the first thing that I would think about when I woke up and the last thing that I would think about when I go to bed. That's very true. My entire experience as a Mormon adolescent was a positive one. The young men's program was pretty amazing still. When I was in it, we would go camping all the time. And I have lifelong friends from it. And so it's. Yeah. You know, it's just that mixed bag that is growing up Mormon, you know.

John Dehlin [01:05:22] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:05:22] Good and bad.

John Dehlin [01:05:23] It's amazing and terrible.

Jackson Adams [01:05:25] It's amazing and terrible.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:26] Paradox. Yeah. Paradox of the experience.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:30] Can I just to fill out your picture a little bit more?

Jackson Adams [01:05:34] Sure.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:34] You're outward facing a little bit. In high school. If we had dropped in and just seen you at high school or in your life. I think this is important because I think for many people, what they see is the truth as opposed to, you know, this is probably something we can assume about most humans is that what we see is actually just the tip of the iceberg. That's what we want people to see. We now know kind of the inner you a little bit. But what was your experience in the outward world? What were you doing? What did you enjoy in high school? Yeah. How would people have talked?

Jackson Adams [01:06:12] Yeah. I think I was just a fun, loving guy. And I think all my friends would have said that. That he just likes to have fun and he likes to do things, and he likes to outside and, you know, when Clare was talking about, you know, how music for her was a really healthy outlet, I had athletics and just doing things constantly outside with my friends. I just had a really, really, really good group of friends. Wow, that was great. When I was feeling at my worst, they often lifted me up and just by doing simple things, like, hey, let's go play volleyball. You know, let's go on a hike, you know? And those friends, to me, are priceless for that reason, because they. They got me through a couple really dark times internally. Um, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:06] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:07:06] Does that answer your question?

Margi Dehlin [01:07:08] Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] So. All right. Should we go on to Clare's mission?

Clare's Mission Experience

Clare Adams [01:07:14] Let's do it. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:16] So what year did you put in your papers?

Clare Adams [01:07:20] Let's see. I went on my mission June 2015, so it would have been, like, around my birthday. My birthday's in February, so beginning of 2015.

John Dehlin [01:07:30] So this would have been. After President Monson lowered the age for women and there was a tsunami of young women going on missions. Before it was 21, they lowered it to 19 and encouraged, instead of just those who want to, basically encouraged all Mormon young women to become missionaries, largely because the number of male missionaries was dropping and the missionary force was shrinking, so they needed to pull women in. So how did you experience that? Do you remember when you first learned that you probably should go on a mission?

Clare Adams [01:08:08] Yeah, I was definitely part of that wave of young women. I remember exactly where I was sitting, that moment of hearing him make that announcement, and I was like, oh, my gosh, like, I can do the wife thing and the mission thing. Like, there's enough time now that I can squeeze in both. And so ever. Ever since, like, after hearing that, I kind of had always planned, I think, on doing it, and I waited until I got my patriarchal blessing, hoping that that would give me some more insight into whether I should go or not. And not, shockingly, the blessing said, like, either path you take will be, like, good.

Clare Adams [01:08:50] Like, so it didn't really. It didn't really give me a specific answer like I wanted. And so anyway, that. It's kind of a longer story about how I ended up going, but I did end up deciding to follow through and go and left behind somebody and not me, not him. But, yeah, I was. It was hard to leave, but I was excited.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:22] You were excited? Where. Where did you go?

Clare Adams [01:09:25] Atlanta, Georgia.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:26] Georgia. Okay.

Clare Adams [01:09:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] So, yeah. So what was your mission like? And how did you experience it? Was it fun? Was it hard? Was it good for you? Unhealthy?

Clare Adams [01:09:39] All of the above. I think, overall, and I've said this even when I was a believing member, that the mission did more for me, just like, as developing me as a person who I am, teaching me about the world and culture. It did more for me that way than it ever did spiritually. And I said that since the day I came home for my mission.

Clare Adams [01:10:02] So in that sense, it was really incredible for me. I think I really kind of came into my own. But as far as mental health goes, it was really difficult, and it's kind of been an interesting thing for me to unpack because if you would have asked me a year ago, two years ago, I would have kept saying, like, oh, my gosh, my mission was amazing. And while there were amazing parts of it, I never let myself unpack. The difficulties that I felt and a lot of the. Yeah, the painful mental health issues that I was dealing with that I didn't even know I was dealing with.

Clare Adams [01:10:40] A lot of. I experienced, like, we talked about a lot of OCD and anxiety before my mission, but I never felt depressed ever in my life until my mission, had never struggled with depression until my mission, had never had an anxiety attack, like, to the level that I was having them on my mission. That was all new experience for me, and I didn't even know really what I was feeling. Lately, I've been going through some old mission journals, and I can see or I'm trying to talk about it, and I'm kind of like, what am I feeling? I. I don't feel good. I. Having a hard time working.

Clare Adams [01:11:15] Is this what it feels like to be depressed? Am I anxious? But then pushing that aside with, like, all the bubbly, like, this is who we're teaching. And it was a good mission, but it was hard. Like, we knocked doors all day long. Like, I found a mission journal entry lately that said, we knocked doors all day and only one person answered. Yeah, and that's what it was like the majority of the time, just apartment complexes. We went back to visit, and I was like, I've knocked on every single door from as far as you can see.

Clare Adams [01:11:50] And that was hard because the mission, at least when I was out, was a lot about the numbers, your district leaders calling you every night. Like, how many contacts did you get? And did you invite anybody to baptism? And so there was a lot of guilt and shame around not making the numbers, not meeting the goals, not inviting everyone you meet to baptism in the first conversation that you have with them, and I never felt good about that.

Jackson Adams [01:12:15] Yeah. That's wild.

John Dehlin [01:12:17] But you were told by your mission president to challenge people for baptism in the first place. The first time you said hello.

Clare Adams [01:12:23] Well, like, in the first lesson.

John Dehlin [01:12:25] Yeah.

Clare Adams [01:12:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:25] So you sit down. Today, we're going to teach you. Would you like to be baptized?

Clare Adams [01:12:30] Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Yeah. No, that's how my mission was.

Clare Adams [01:12:33] And that was a number. Like, we kept track of that. We, like, would draw it in. Like, in the mission planner, did they

John Dehlin [01:12:38] call the Golden Question? I don't remember what it was called.

Jackson Adams [01:12:41] It was the Golden Question.

Clare Adams [01:12:42] We had, like, a little symbol that we would draw with, like, baptism waters and stuff.

Jackson Adams [01:12:46] Oh, totally. We drew that, too, as, like, little bumps and then arrow. Yeah, yeah, we did that, too.

Clare Adams [01:12:50] So we use that to, like, identify that we've invited, like, this person to be baptized.

Jackson Adams [01:12:55] Funny.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:56] Do you remember. Do you remember kind of early on maybe when you did that initially, the first time, or how the person responded to you inviting them to be baptized? Because the South, I think the South. I mean, had you been to the South? South, by the way? Never before. Okay, so this is also the first time you're experiencing the South. Yeah. So how did they respond in that moment to you? Do you remember?

Clare Adams [01:13:24] Well, for one, I was never one to really. It felt just weird to say that to people. I never really did it. Sometimes, like, I think when I was being trained, maybe my trainer would, like, say it to a couple people, and it was just kind of like it was either like an awkward, like, I don't know, or well, maybe. But usually it was like, oh, I've already been baptized. That's just what you hear a lot down there. They're very obviously Christian people and very devout in their particular faith and the church that they go to. So most people would just say, oh, I've already been saved. And of course, then we would, you know.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:06] But have you?

Clare Adams [01:14:07] Yeah, but have you really. I don't know if you did it the right way.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:11] And how special that you feel like you have been saved. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:14:16] Did you have our special authority? Your authority kind of doesn't count.

Clare Adams [01:14:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:23] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] Okay. So that was awkward. It was hard. It was grueling. I mean, weirdly, we went through all that attracting, grueling stuff. The church has since come out and admitted that tracting is a poor use of time. And so they're. But. But we all went through it. And in some ways, I think the church has known for a long time that the Mission isn't so much about the converts, because so many converts fall away. It's about sealing your commitment. Kind of like the masturbation conversation. A mission is like a second opportunity for you to do something incredibly hard that's horrific in some ways, but then makes you feel extra committed to the organization. Right?

Clare Adams [01:15:08] Totally. It, like, almost felt to me like a second baptism. Almost like being like, cleansed by fire. Like in this sacrifice that I'm making. Like, as a missionary, you compare yourself to, like, Alma the Younger and like other Book of Mormon characters, like, having this defining moment in your life.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] And the more you sacrifice for an organization, the more committed you end up feeling to the organization.

Jackson Adams [01:15:34] There's a huge sunk cost, too. You're giving 18 months to two years of your life and then to say, eh, I don't know if this is for me after you've done that.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:43] Yeah, right.

Clare Adams [01:15:44] Scary.

Jackson Adams [01:15:44] What were those two years for? That's a scary thought.

Mental Health Struggles on Clare's Mission

Margi Dehlin [01:15:48] But back to your discussion around mental health on your mission, the panic attacks. And I remember reading in your outline, if you want to refer to it, feel free. The where you talk about on the floor, you're on the tile floor.

John Dehlin [01:16:06] Oh, yeah. Talk about that.

Clare Adams [01:16:08] Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I didn't have this realization. Like, I didn't define what that was until a couple months ago, actually.

John Dehlin [01:16:14] Paint the picture.

Clare Adams [01:16:15] Yeah. So it really, I feel like, started my second area. So just to give some context, for the majority of my mission, I trained my companions. I think I had two companions. If any of you are listening and I didn't train you, I'm sorry. But the majority of companions I trained, and that gave me a lot of pressure, a lot of stress.

Clare Adams [01:16:40] This in my second area, I didn't train this companion, but it was a really, really slow area. Nobody, it was like suburban area. Nobody was home because they were at work all day. And then they didn't want to talk to us at night. And so we were having no progress.

Clare Adams [01:17:00] I was homesick. And every morning during personal study, I would go to the bathroom and I would lay like, on the cold tile floor. And I remember just like sobbing and praying. And then it became like this ritual. Like, I can still see the floor and, like, the bath, the fuzzy shower mat that I would lay on. And I just couldn't even identify what I was feeling. I thought something was truly wrong with me. I thought that I had. I carried a lot of guilt from, like, some harmless sexual encounters with the boyfriend that I had had before I left on my mission.

Clare Adams [01:17:34] And I Felt like I hadn't, like, repented enough. And I felt like I'm preventing us from, like, the work moving forward. So. Yeah, so I would feel super depressed and do that every morning. And then another area. I was training and opening up a new area to the mission and had no idea we were just pretty much starting from scratch. And I can remember having a major panic attack in the middle of the night in that apartment and doing it all, like, feeling these things all alone. Because I have my new trainee who's been out in the mission for. For 48 hours. I can't wake her up and be like, I'm having a mental breakdown.

Clare Adams [01:18:18] Like, I don't know what I'm doing, because I didn't want to freak her out. And that happened pretty regularly. Yeah, it was a lot, but I didn't even realize what it was. I. I think I probably thought it was me. One, I'm broken. I'm not perfect enough.

Clare Adams [01:18:36] And, yeah, something must be wrong with me. Or it's Satan, and he's just working really, really hard on me so that we're not having success. Success.

John Dehlin [01:18:44] Yeah. Because when the church teaches you that if you don't baptize, it's because you're not worthy and you're a perfectionist with ocd, scrupulosity, religious, you know, ocd, then you're basically feeling like you're preventing people's eternal salvation through your wickedness. And that's a recipe for a panic attack right there, I think.

Clare Adams [01:19:05] Yeah, 100%.

Jackson Adams [01:19:06] And when you'd go take naps in the car, talk about that.

Clare Adams [01:19:12] Yeah, like, we would be so just. You're physically. It's physically, mentally, spiritually draining after knocking doors in Georgia Southern heat. You know what that's like. It's really hot, and you're wearing a million layers. And so we would go in the car to, like, cool down with the air conditioning, and then we'd be like, okay, we're just gonna rest for five minutes, and then we'll drive to this. To another complex and start knocking on those doors. And then we would fall asleep for, like, not that long. Like, probably 20 or 30 minutes, and then wake up and just feel, like, so incredibly guilty because that's God's time that we wasted and feeling like there was probably somebody who was home and we didn't knock on their door, and now they're not there, and it's a missed chance, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:19:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:59] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:01] Can I ask you for. You hadn't had panic attacks before your mission, is that right?

Clare Adams [01:20:06] I have no memory, at least not to that extent. Like, definitely feeling the anxiety, but never anything like that.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:13] So they're really terrifying. Yes. Panic attacks. So do you remember. Did you. How you approached having them? Were you. Did you try to hide the fact that you were having them? Did you try to reach out for help? Were you scared to have another one once you had one that it was going to come on? Like, what was your approach around panic attacks in particular and your mental health?

Clare Adams [01:20:41] I had no skills whatsoever for, like, how to deal with it or not knowing. Again, like, I keep saying, I didn't know what it was. And I. There was one companion that I was particularly close with who I think kind of knew. Not that I was having, like, anxiety attacks, but just that I was, like, more anxious. But I have no recollection of, like, bringing it up to my companions. It was, like, very internally dealt with, and I just sit there for hours, and it was just grueling. Just suffering mentally.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:14] And not your mission president?

Clare Adams [01:21:16] No.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:17] Okay.

Clare Adams [01:21:17] He didn't know. He knew about, like, other. Like, I feel so guilty because of this before my mission. And that's another thing. Like, I felt so much guilt that I went to my mission presidents and told him about, like, again, this, like, harmless encounters that I'd had with a boyfriend. And that was embarrassing and weird because he was awkward about it, and then I didn't feel any real dissolution from that.

John Dehlin [01:21:40] What do you mean he was awkward about it?

Clare Adams [01:21:41] Well, he. It was just like, I was telling him, like, well, this happened, and he just was like.

John Dehlin [01:21:45] Like, I made out with a boy kind of thing. Yeah.

Clare Adams [01:21:47] Like. And he was just like. Like, I don't want to know this, but, like, this sense of, like, I. He needed to hear me out because this is his duty.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:54] You're painting him. He's in pain.

Clare Adams [01:21:56] Like, that's what it felt like. Okay. And he's probably like, oh, great, Another one. Like, I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:22:02] And you, too.

Clare Adams [01:22:03] Yeah. Like, I thought you were really good. Sister Owl.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:09] Why did you do that? Yeah. And.

Clare Adams [01:22:12] And then afterwards, like, I don't even remember what he said. He was probably. I feel like he was just like, okay, thanks for telling me. Like, it's fine. You're good. But it wasn't like, what I was expecting. And so I still felt even.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] That's insidious. Because the structure is a man has to let you know that you're okay with God. And there's implications for that. Right. You can't know that yourself by your relationship with your deity. It Takes a man in authority, who you give money to, to let you know you're okay.

Clare Adams [01:22:47] Yeah. And even before I had made up my mind, like, okay, I'm gonna go confess to my. Confess to my mission president, I had spent, like, a whole day in my apartment praying to be forgiven, because it was just eating at me again, like, the scrupulosity and kind of that rumination. And, like, okay, if I pray for this many hours, like, I. Like, we didn't leave the house until, like, the afternoon that day, because I was just praying by the bed, and I was like, okay, if Enos could do this, like, I can do this. That's. It's.

John Dehlin [01:23:18] He prayed all day.

Clare Adams [01:23:19] Yeah. And then he was forgiven for his sins. And I was like, I'm gonna have this incredible, like, wave of relief rush over me. And then it didn't happen. And so I talked to my mission president.

John Dehlin [01:23:30] Anything else you want to say about your mission experience overall?

Clare Adams [01:23:34] I think just one other thing to touch on that kind of comes back into our story later. Is starting to have some, like, pokes in my bubble of, like, your testimony. My testimony. Like, the one. Is this the one true church? Because all of these people are really happy, and they really believe in God, and they're praying, and they feel like their prayers are getting answered. They want to pray or they want to pray for me. And.

John Dehlin [01:23:58] And I need help.

Clare Adams [01:23:59] And I need help, as it turns out, not okay. And one experience I'll share just really quickly. There was a food pantry in an one area I was in, and this sweet Methodist couple ran it, and it was very successful. And you could see people's lives being blessed, like, before your eyes, because they would come in, and we helped get their food and take it out to their cars. And I just kind of remember thinking, like, wow, we're really making a difference. And, like, our church is sitting empty. Like, we're not doing. We're not part of this work. Yeah. It was, like, very tangible feeling of, like, helping people, and I just didn't get that sense from the church.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:40] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:24:43] And then you. Like, we talked earlier about the church creating, like, an illness and then presenting itself as the solution. Eternal Families is another example of that, because I think you mentioned in your outline that everyone you talked to believed they had an eternal family. Is that right?

Margi Dehlin [01:25:00] Yeah.

Clare Adams [01:25:00] I was like, we're, like, leading with, like, this is so amazing. And to me, that was like, this is the most important thing to me.

John Dehlin [01:25:06] What. What was?

Clare Adams [01:25:07] Just that you can be with your family forever. When you die, you still get to be with your spouse and your kids.

John Dehlin [01:25:11] And they would say, what?

Clare Adams [01:25:12] And they were like, well, yeah, I already believe that. Like, what's so special about that?

John Dehlin [01:25:17] And then you have to go, well, your family is actually not.

Clare Adams [01:25:20] Yeah, well, not to scare you, but when you were baptized, they didn't have the right authority.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:27] I am here to, to take that away from you.

Clare Adams [01:25:30] So that I also knew. Insane to think about 19 year old child coming into your home telling you, coming to Georgia.

John Dehlin [01:25:39] Little Utah girl going to Georgia. Sorry. Your family is an eternal.

Clare Adams [01:25:43] And they didn't enjoy because I was from Utah. You know, they're like, oh, just another Mormon from Utah.

John Dehlin [01:25:49] Yeah, Bless your heart.

Clare Adams [01:25:51] Yep, Yep. Got told that many times.

John Dehlin [01:25:53] Aren't you?

Margi Dehlin [01:25:54] Well, aren't you cute?

Clare Adams [01:25:55] And I didn't realize what that really meant until much later.

John Dehlin [01:25:58] You think only your family gets to be in heaven. No, that's not. Okay. All right. Okay. And I bet you're going to say it was a year and a half of some of the best years of your life and you really grew and it strengthened you. And isn't that always the answer? It's like, it was horrible. And one of the best things that ever happened to me, absolutely cliche.

Clare Adams [01:26:20] One of maybe the best decision that I ever made besides marrying Jackson, was going on the mission. But also I would never do it again. You couldn't pay me enough money. And it was traumatizing

John Dehlin [01:26:34] because like, you know, you get to be away from home, you get to learn a different culture, you get to learn, you know, independence and confidence and communication skills and courage and how to do hard things. Like it's like summer sales, you know, like, but for two years or a year and a half, like, how could it not, you know, be helpful to you? Right?

Clare Adams [01:26:55] Yep, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:26:56] I think there's plenty of ex Mormons that wish that they could still send their kids on a mission equivalent. So it's just so brilliant. You know, both the porn masturbation thing and the mission thing really is genius on the part of the Mormon Church in terms of its own self interest, I mean, and the benefit of its members. Right.

Clare Adams [01:27:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:15] Weird.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:16] If it doesn't do a ton of undue harm.

Clare Adams [01:27:18] For sure. I understand there are some people that have really bad experiences on the mission. Those are totally valid. I'm lucky that I didn't have.

Jackson Adams [01:27:27] You didn't tell him about the guy that proposed to you?

Clare Adams [01:27:30] Oh, yeah. Just to touch on that. Weird things happen. That's. This is really the only the weirdest thing that happened to me. Is we were teaching a man and he was kind of weird and he proposed to me and wanted me to marry him and was like offering me all of these things and. And checking my sex chakra and weird things like that, which we. Didn't you get. You have those missionary goggles.

John Dehlin [01:27:51] Did he do Reiki?

Clare Adams [01:27:52] Yeah, something like that. And yeah, just missionary goggles because you're like, oh, it's not that serious. Like, he's not that much of a creep. And it's like, yeah, that's pretty creepy.

Jackson Adams [01:28:02] And what Was he, like, 50 something?

Clare Adams [01:28:04] He was old enough to be. He had a daughter my age.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:07] Oh, wow, that reminds me of heretic.

Jackson Adams [01:28:10] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:10] Thank you very much. You have some really interesting thoughts, I think.

Jackson Adams [01:28:16] Thank you for reading my sex chakra.

Clare Adams [01:28:19] Totally. I was. What's her name? Sister Paxton.

Jackson Adams [01:28:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:25] Well, Jackson, how was your mission?

Jackson Adams [01:28:28] Yeah, you know, same thing. It's gonna be the same story simultaneously, some of the deepest feelings of self hatred and shame of my life.

John Dehlin [01:28:39] Because you started feeling unworthy to even go, right?

Jackson Adams [01:28:42] Yeah, I. By. By the standards of the Mormon church, I wasn't worthy to go because. Because I was, you know, I had girlfriends that I was, you know, having sexual experiences with. Right. They were consensual, mutual. But they, you know, that's obviously not sanctioned. And then, you know, how could you not.

John Dehlin [01:29:04] You were a deviant.

Jackson Adams [01:29:04] And I said, right, yeah. And, you know, pornography and masturbation. I mean, I masturbated the day before I went on my mission, you know, And I mean, the things that.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:17] That.

Jackson Adams [01:29:17] That does to your psyche is just insane, you know, but.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] And you have to lie to your bishop and stake president. So they teach you to lie. They incentivize you to lie. Or if you were to be honest, what would have happened?

Jackson Adams [01:29:29] I would have. You probably had my admission delayed. I don't think it was anything serious enough that I wouldn't have been able to go at all, but. But certainly would have probably had to wait a year, I would think.

John Dehlin [01:29:40] And what's that like in Highland?

Jackson Adams [01:29:42] Well, yeah, all my friends had their mission calls, you know, and all of them were going after we graduated at 18.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] So you.

Jackson Adams [01:29:49] You don't want to be the guy that stays behind, you know, so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:53] So you lie. Right.

Jackson Adams [01:29:54] So you lie. Exactly. That's exactly what you do. Yeah, so I lied about it again. I kind of made that Elder Price, I'm going to blow God's fricking mind with my hard work ethic, you know, and. And maybe that'll be good enough for him, you know, and so, you know, went into the mtc, and for me, it was like, I am not going to masturbate. Like that is just not going to happen.

Jackson Adams [01:30:21] And so I didn't for six months, I think, which was like the most wild, white knuckle force of self will I think I've ever had in my life. But I didn't feel any better. I still felt bad about the things that I had done previously.

Jackson's Mission and Emerging Doubts

Jackson Adams [01:30:46] And so the shame followed me. It didn't matter how hard I worked. It didn't matter, you know, how many people we were baptizing. I went to Honduras, you know, so it was different from Clare's experience in that we had a lot of people to teach and we were baptizing people, but it didn't matter. Any outward amount of success that I had on my mission, the shame was still there. So had a bit of a rough patch with my second companion. We didn't really get along, and we weren't having a lot of success just because I think we were fighting all the time.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:28] But

Jackson Adams [01:31:30] I thought it was all me. I thought I was. I thought I was causing people to not want to accept the gospel because of not repenting from what I had done.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:41] Oh, I see.

Jackson Adams [01:31:44] So went to my mission president, and the pain of the guilt and shame was so great that I thought, you know, I better just go home because I'm hindering people's salvation and I'm torturing myself while I'm at it. So went to my mission president, and I thought the things that I had done were enough to get anyone sent home. Like, one of the hundred things that I had done in my mind was enough to get me sent home. So I was like, there's literally no chance I stay out of my mission. I didn't want to go home, but I thought I was going to get sent home.

Jackson Adams [01:32:24] So I went. I talked to him, and kind of the same thing. It was a little bit awkward. And he said, you know, because this stuff happened, a lot of this stuff happened before you left on your mission, I actually need you to call your stake president from home. And so my state president from home called me, and we talked about it, and he said, I think you're okay to stay out.

Jackson Adams [01:32:51] Kind of a. Kind of a harrowing experience. I thought I had worshiped my dad for his mission stories. My whole life, my dad was my hero. And so the idea that I would go out on my mission and then get sent home early was really scary to me, just because I wanted to have that same experience that my dad had.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] But you got to stay. You got to stay up.

Jackson Adams [01:33:17] Yeah, I got to stay out. So what was that?

Clare Adams [01:33:19] I was gonna say, I don't know if you want to share what your dad had said to you before you left on your mission.

Jackson Adams [01:33:23] Yeah. And again, just prefacing this. My dad is amazing person and still is my best friend to this day. But he told me before I left on my mission, he said the classic, basically, come home in a body bag or don't come home at all. You know, you're going out to stay.

John Dehlin [01:33:44] You know,

Margi Dehlin [01:33:49] that really adds to how scary then it would be for you to go in and think, wait, come

John Dehlin [01:33:55] home in a body bag or don't come home early. Is that what. What he said? Basically, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:00] Yeah. Wow.

Jackson Adams [01:34:01] That's all. That's the only. And it's hyperbole. I know he didn't mean it. You know, I would have a home if I came home. You know, that was. That was never in question. But, you know, it was very clear to me that when an Adams does something, an Adams doesn't quit. Right. You don't quit halfway through. So had I been sent home for something that I had done, not over quitting, I think it would have been a little bit of a different story, too.

John Dehlin [01:34:27] But my mission president shared the quote, it's better to come home in a pine box than come home early from a mission. Yep. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:34:39] So, yeah, so those are the pressures, the opposing forces working against you when you're a young man on a mission, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:34:48] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:34:48] Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it was. It was, you know, a really interesting experience. Honduras was the murder capital of the world when I was there. This city I was specifically in was the murder capital of the world. No, San Pedro Sula.

John Dehlin [01:35:05] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:06] Was that palpable?

Jackson Adams [01:35:07] Definitely. Yeah. And I shudder to think of some of the, like, situations that we were in, just, like, completely unaware that we were in danger, really.

John Dehlin [01:35:22] Well, you're kind of taught that the Lord will protect you.

Jackson Adams [01:35:24] Right.

John Dehlin [01:35:25] And you're wearing garments which are a protection, so you almost feel invincible sometimes

Jackson Adams [01:35:29] as a Mormon missionary, and it's. It's survivorship bias. Right. Nothing bad ever happens, so obviously, I'm protected, you know, and so we. You know, but it was every. Every day we heard gunshots. The gangs are always having, like, territory wars there, and the ward boundaries can't keep up. I think they try to be like, okay, people over there can't cross this street.

Jackson Adams [01:35:59] But then a couple years go by, and those things are constantly shifting and so we as missionaries had to be extremely street savvy to know what parts of the area that you couldn't just be going back and forth. Right. People would get suspicious because of gang territory, gang territories. And essentially how they operate is they charge what they call war tax on all the businesses in their area.

Jackson Adams [01:36:27] So they say, we're Ms. 13, we control this area, and we will protect you, your business, if you pay us 10% of your 15%, whatever it is, of your. Of your income. So they're constantly fighting over expanding their territories. They can expand their reach and their tax.

Jackson Adams [01:36:51] But there was like, one time on P day, I was carrying a baseball bat. We were going to go play baseball, and we got stopped by gang members. They took the bat from us and said, don't ever walk on the street again.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:03] Wow.

Jackson Adams [01:37:03] Because they perceived it as like a threat or something.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:06] Wow. Okay, so let me ask you this. So on your mission, that feels like survival. Like you're in a highly stressful survival kind of. Did you feel that or did you feel like you were protected? And so it wasn't that big a deal. Like, at the time, was your cortisol pumping a good deal at a time, or were you like, I'm good. I think it's all gonna work out.

Jackson Adams [01:37:35] I think over two years, that's 700 some odd days. I have a half dozen to a dozen experiences that made me kind of snap out of it and be like, oh, wow, this is real. And I actually need to be careful.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:50] Okay.

Jackson Adams [01:37:51] But the majority of the time, you're just kind of walking around and you don't really realize.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:55] Interesting where you are. Okay.

Clare Adams [01:37:56] Yeah, I think too, if I can jump in really quick, I don't want to take anything away from you. But he's. Maybe you'll touch on this. He's being very, like, modest in the degree of, like, kind of horror that he witnessed. He didn't tell me a lot of things that he saw on his mission till we had been married for a while. And he had PTSD from gunshots, like every 4th of July for the first couple years of our marriage.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:20] Exactly.

Clare Adams [01:38:22] Kind of freak out a little bit.

Jackson Adams [01:38:24] It was weird because I wasn't, like, conscious of why I was freaking out. It was just I would have, like, this biological response to the sound of fireworks because they sounded like gunshots. And I would have a panic attack. Like one time we were driving and I had to pull over, and she was like, what's going on? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what's happening right now. And so your body keeps score.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:47] That's right, yeah. Yeah.

Clare Adams [01:38:49] And we send, like, our children to these dangerous areas where their kids see dead bodies on the side of the street and get. I mean, he got robbed all the time at, like, knife point, right?

Jackson Adams [01:39:03] Yeah, not all the time, but.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:05] Yeah.

Clare Adams [01:39:07] More than a couple times.

Jackson Adams [01:39:08] More than a lot. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:10] No, I think the count. There's like 10 or 12 Mormon missionaries just in 2024 that have already died. Like, missionaries get robbed at gunpoint or knife point or assaulted or killed every year. Right. And I think the church. I think the church doesn't do a good enough job of protecting its missionaries. I think.

Jackson Adams [01:39:31] Well, San Pedro Sula is on the do not travel list.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:35] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:39:36] Do not travel. Like, why would you even live there, you know? Like.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:39] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:39:40] And that's not a disrespect to people that live there. I love the people that live there very deeply, and they're all very good people, but it's. It's. It's irresponsible.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:51] Yeah. Like, maybe not send missionaries to the number one murder.

Jackson Adams [01:39:56] Yeah. My brother got stuck in Nicaragua when their civil unrest started a few years ago ago, and it was two weeks of no contact.

John Dehlin [01:40:06] We.

Jackson Adams [01:40:06] We didn't know where he was. Planes weren't leaving the country, you know, and we just didn't sleep as a family for two weeks. We waited for our brother to. To get out, you know?

Margi Dehlin [01:40:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:19] Anything else you want to say about your mission?

Jackson Adams [01:40:22] I think the only other thing I'll say, just going back to how

Margi Dehlin [01:40:32] I

Jackson Adams [01:40:32] didn't grow up necessarily, like, super staunch, you know, these are the rules, and there's no other way. So there were, like, a few weird experiences that kind of got me to that point with my trainer. I went and bought some sweet tea. Like, me and my dad love sweet tea.

John Dehlin [01:40:50] Which is a sin.

Jackson Adams [01:40:51] Which is a sin. Yep. It's horrible. And my companion.

John Dehlin [01:40:57] Was it peach tea?

Jackson Adams [01:40:59] I think so, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:00] I think Clare mentioned in her outline that she. She was. She. Your family was sus.

Jackson Adams [01:41:05] My family's sus.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] Because there's some peach tea being consumed.

Jackson Adams [01:41:10] Peach tea is a staple at the Adams Household on a Sunday. It's pretty sus.

John Dehlin [01:41:14] Unconscionable.

Jackson Adams [01:41:15] Yeah, it is. So I went and bought a tea because it was really hot outside, and my companion is like, dude, what are you doing?

John Dehlin [01:41:23] Yeah, exactly. That's what I would have said.

Jackson Adams [01:41:25] Yeah, like what? And I was like, what are you talking about, man? I'm getting a drink. And so that Like, I think that's when I started being like. And then you teach the lessons. You know, this was the church that Christ set up, and then the great apostasy happened and then Joseph Smith restored the one true church. And I think that's when my idea that this had to be the only true church formed just by teaching that to people.

Jackson Adams [01:41:52] The, the thing it kind of set up in my mind though, is I was starting to. Where she was starting to see cracks in her testimony of the church. I was starting to see cracks in my testimony of God.

Jackson Adams [01:42:07] And the church was kind of an anchor to me to believe in God, because if I didn't believe in the church anymore, I wasn't so sure that I could believe in God. And a lot of that kind of started bubbling up on my mission.

John Dehlin [01:42:22] This is really important for the church. I mean, I know they watch and I hope they learn. Like, we know that the youth and the young adults are leaving in droves. And what you both are describing are church imposed dynamics that are challenging your testimonies at the very time you're supposed to be strengthening them. In your youth and on your mission. The church is doing things that are setting you guys up to want to lose your faith and leave later. Right?

Jackson Adams [01:42:53] Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, on my part, I don't know that there's anything that the church can do about it because they sent me to a country where I was faced with just like really startling levels of poverty and violence. And these were people that had really strong belief in God. And it didn't seem like God ever really wanted to throw him a bone, you know, and that was really hard for me to reconcile.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:22] I can imagine.

Jackson Adams [01:43:23] And then there's this idea that, well, people suffer so that we can learn to be like Christ. And that I think is an arrogant doctrine because you're saying that someone's suffering is for my benefit. Right, right. And I just, I never really. That never really clicked for me. And so it just seemed like a lot of meaningless suffering going on down there with people that had a lot of faith in God.

John Dehlin [01:43:49] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:50] Okay, so you're, you're starting to have questions, start to come up around your concept of God.

Jackson Adams [01:43:56] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:57] And how about can we touch base on this idea that you went into your mission with of just like, I'm going to, you know, work so hard, I'm just going to be cleansed, It'll be taken from me. No more of the sexual, like, no sex drive for me. How, as you kind of close out

John Dehlin [01:44:17] your mission, did you achieve sexual purity?

Jackson Adams [01:44:20] No, no, I think I mentioned, you know, I. I lasted like six months or something like that, you know, and then, you know.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:31] So how did you process that?

Jackson Adams [01:44:32] It was horrifying. You know, it was the first time I masturbated on my mission. It was. I thought I was going to hell. Right. And, you know, it wasn't something that I. I think it could have been so much healthier because I had no access to pornography. And so it could have kind of split up that unhealthy relationship between the two in my mind, but it didn't. Right. To me, it was just as bad. So.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:03] Okay.

Jackson Adams [01:45:04] So, yeah, I mean, it was. It was something that I dealt with for the rest of my mission.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:08] Okay. Yeah. Yep.

Jackson Adams [01:45:10] But I worked really hard my whole mission. That I did.

John Dehlin [01:45:13] Did you change all of mankind?

Jackson Adams [01:45:14] I did, yeah. Yeah. You might see it in the news later.

Clare Adams [01:45:18] It was mostly him, too.

John Dehlin [01:45:19] Yeah. My best friend.

Jackson Adams [01:45:25] Yeah. So. But one other, I think, experience just with the belief in God before I move on from my mission is my second companion was a Bible basher. I don't know if you had any companions like that. But he really liked proving people wrong with logic, you know?

Jackson Adams [01:45:47] And we got into it one day with a Catholic priest, and I barely spoke Spanish at this point, but he was making some pretty compelling points, in my opinion, about, like, priesthood lineage and things like that. And the most striking thing, I think, was he believed in his faith just as much as we believed in our faith. And it was really, really hard for us to. Or really, really hard for me to reconcile that, because you could make arguments for Mormonism or for Catholicism, but maybe the answer was, we actually don't have any idea and none of us know. Right.

Jackson Adams [01:46:26] Or maybe Catholicism is the true church. You know, that was the thought I had at the time, and I just. It kept me up all night. It was probably the first real strong sense of cognitive dissonance that I think I experienced in my life.

John Dehlin [01:46:44] All right.

Jackson Adams [01:46:45] In a second language.

John Dehlin [01:46:47] So when you come home from your mission, you're feeling what about yourself and the church and your faith and everything?

Jackson Adams [01:46:54] You know, I think mostly on fire about it, I think. You know, I thought, I'm never going to give this up. This is the most important thing in my life, and it's going to stay that way.

John Dehlin [01:47:07] Because you love what you sacrifice for.

Jackson Adams [01:47:09] Yep, Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:47:10] It's brilliant. Yep. Right. Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. So back to Clare.

Coming Home, Courtship, and Temple Marriage

Clare Adams [01:47:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:20] Yeah. So what do you do after your mission? Did you go to school before your mission?

Margi Dehlin [01:47:26] At all.

Clare Adams [01:47:26] I did a year. Where at? Utah State.

John Dehlin [01:47:28] Okay. Go Aggies.

Jackson Adams [01:47:30] Go Aggies.

Clare Adams [01:47:30] Go Aggies. So, yeah, I went back up to Utah State, like, a week, two weeks after I got home. And on the forefront of my mind was finding an eternal companion and going to school. And so, yeah, I dated a lot and a lot. Which is funny because we met. I got home in December. We met in March. So I dated a lot.

John Dehlin [01:47:58] A good three months.

Clare Adams [01:47:59] A good three months? Yeah, two and a half. But, yeah, I was 1,000% in. No doubts, just none of my roommates at the time were active or members. And so I would go to church every Sunday on my own and participate. And yeah, I. It was just. I was loving it.

John Dehlin [01:48:24] Okay. Do you remember meeting Jackson for the first time?

Clare Adams [01:48:28] Yes, I do, very clearly. We got set up on a blind date and really just kind of hit it off from there.

John Dehlin [01:48:35] And how long had you been home? Had you been home, Jackson?

Jackson Adams [01:48:42] Almost. Almost a year. So I got home in July. So March. Yeah, nine months.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:48] And what was that like, coming back and going to Utah State?

Jackson Adams [01:48:52] I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted college to be. It was a ton of fun. I think Utah State, for people that are experiencing the spectrum of faith and Mormonism, I think Utah State's a great place to go if you still want to stay in Utah.

John Dehlin [01:49:14] And so anything you want to say about dating and your ongoing battle with your sexual purity?

Jackson Adams [01:49:23] Yeah, this is something that I didn't write a ton about in the outline, but if you want to go on a tangent, we can go on a little bit of a tangent.

John Dehlin [01:49:30] Whatever's important to your story.

Jackson Adams [01:49:31] Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is. I think this is something I probably should have written about. So when I got home from my mission, I started dating around a little bit, but pretty quickly started dating this girl that I dated in high school exclusively.

Jackson Adams [01:49:50] And I kind of romanticized the idea of marrying someone that I dated in high school. That's how my parents, you know, met each other. And I don't know, it's just a romantic idea. In my mind. We were not compatible, really, in any sense of the word. She's a great person, you know, that's not to say that she's a bad person. We just weren't compatible, but we kind of tried to make it work.

Jackson Adams [01:50:17] Well, fast forward a few months into our dating, and we end up having sex a couple of times. And, you know, I felt horrible about it because I'm a returned missionary, you know, and I called my dad, and again, the no tools to deal with these things. He told me, well, you probably need to put a ring on her finger then, were his words. And.

John Dehlin [01:50:49] Because that fixes everything.

Jackson Adams [01:50:51] It does. Turns out it doesn't.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:56] It doesn't.

Jackson Adams [01:50:57] It doesn't. So we got engaged. I. I broke it off with her because it was really not good. It just was not a positive relationship. And that was scary, you know, So I think it kind of prepped me to do some other scary things down the road, like leaving the church and things like that. So it ended up being a little bit of a character building experience more than anything. But then it did result in a disciplinary council that was my pleasure to partake in.

John Dehlin [01:51:30] Because once you've been through the temple, have the Melchizedek priesthood served a mission, the church holds you, to, quote, a higher standard. Exactly. So since you have sex, what, your membership becomes threatened?

Jackson Adams [01:51:42] Exactly. Yep. So I went to my singles ward bishop at the time and told him what had happened and essentially was like, okay, we're done talking about it now. We're going to call a membership council,

John Dehlin [01:51:59] which is putting you on trial for potential excommunication.

Jackson Adams [01:52:03] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:52:03] It's very medieval.

Jackson Adams [01:52:05] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:05] So stressful.

Jackson Adams [01:52:06] Which I was like, what is happening? I couldn't believe it.

John Dehlin [01:52:11] You're like trying to get to college.

Jackson Adams [01:52:12] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [01:52:13] You had just spent two years of your life serving the church.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:16] That's right. And they're ready to control one murder capital.

John Dehlin [01:52:20] And there are just up you. Maybe you're done.

Jackson Adams [01:52:22] Yeah, yeah, I could. I couldn't believe it, to be frank.

John Dehlin [01:52:26] Oh, so you felt like this is ridiculous.

Jackson Adams [01:52:29] Not ridiculous. It felt surreal. It felt like, you know, when someone tells you bad news and just like the world crumbles, like that's how it felt. It just felt like my world fell apart. And so I was like, okay, you know, here we go again. Right. More confessing. And so I show up on my council day and the whole bishopric is there. This was a bishopric? 1. I don't know if it's always a stake presidency, but it was the bishopric and one of my peers that was also going to college because he was the ward clerk. So that was weird. And so they just said basically what happened? So I started telling them things. And then I think as a man, like a confident man, I think I was able to hold my own a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:53:34] Did you say in your outline? They asked some very graphic questions. Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:53:39] Like who was the aggressor, for example? Which makes no sense. It was.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] One had to assault the other.

Jackson Adams [01:53:48] I mean, right yeah, like who? I think they were trying to get a. Who initiated it, but the aggressor. That's. That's weird language, in my opinion. No one, you know, it was a consensual experience.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:01] And you were like, is this a crime? Are we in crime territory? Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:54:07] So, yeah, just some weird questions. They were graphic about just like the nature of what had happened. You know, they. I think the most graphic one that I can remember. Not safe for recording, I guess. Tag here. But they said, did you. Did you ejaculate inside or outside? You know, and I was like, why does that matter? You know, beyond, you know, the implications of that. But like, does it matter sin wise? You know, like, you know, what are you getting at here? Right?

Margi Dehlin [01:54:40] So when you say you felt like you held your own, what do you mean?

Jackson Adams [01:54:44] Well, I think I was. I think I was a confident enough person that I could be asked those questions and it not be terribly damaging, I guess, to my mental health. I think about, like, if a. Like a young woman had to go through that experience or like, if Clare had to go through that experience with a bunch of men asking really graphic sexual questions, I think that that would be a lot more traumatizing. Not that it wasn't traumatizing for me, but I think it would be more in different circumstances.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:20] Okay. Yeah, I see.

John Dehlin [01:55:23] So did you get the boot?

Jackson Adams [01:55:25] I got disfellowshipped, which is kind of the step below excommunication. You're not allowed to pray. You're not allowed to comment in Sunday school. You're not allowed to hold a calling temple recommend.

John Dehlin [01:55:35] Taken away.

Jackson Adams [01:55:36] Yeah, you can't have a temple recommend. You can, I think, depending on who your bishop is. I was still allowed to wear my garments. I don't know that that's always the case.

John Dehlin [01:55:48] Allowed to wear.

Jackson Adams [01:55:51] What a privilege.

Clare Adams [01:55:52] We'll choose your underwear for you.

John Dehlin [01:55:53] Yep.

Jackson Adams [01:55:55] Yeah. So. And I spent up until I was still disfellowshipped when Clare and I met, which is something I had to disclose to her.

John Dehlin [01:56:07] That's an awkward conversation.

Jackson Adams [01:56:09] Hey, by the way, when we go to church together next Sunday, I'm not going to take the sacrament.

John Dehlin [01:56:14] What was that like? Clare?

Clare Adams [01:56:16] To be completely honest, I don't have a lot of recollection. I think

John Dehlin [01:56:22] you were love zoned.

Clare Adams [01:56:24] Yeah, well, one, he's just an incredible person. He's so. There's nothing that he hides about himself. Like what you see is what you get. And I just was so enamored with him as a person. I just loved him so Much. I didn't really care, to be honest. Like, I didn't have any concerns about it. I definitely was like, a little weird as far as, like, okay, like, you'll come around. Like, well, we need to go to the temple together, like, kind of in that sense. But I didn't. That in no regard, like, kept me back in any way. I feel like. Is. Am I remembering that?

Jackson Adams [01:57:03] No.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:03] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [01:57:03] You were very kind to me. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:04] Wow, that's remarkable. And I guess in your mind you had made some mistakes before your mission two. So in your mind, you weren't perfect either.

Clare Adams [01:57:12] Yeah, it was definitely like, next level for me. But yeah, I wasn't concerned about it.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:18] Okay.

Clare Adams [01:57:19] Yeah, it was definitely a little weird though, because I was like, we need to go to the temple together. And he's like, I can't go to the temple.

John Dehlin [01:57:26] Yeah, well, again, it's sort of like in terms of the power dynamic, they're basically saying you step out of line, you're finished, and can either push you away or even pull you closer, I think, to the Church.

Jackson Adams [01:57:40] I think looking back on that time, that was, I think, the most engaged. I've maybe not more than my mission, but I think it's one of the most engaged times I've been with the Church. I didn't have any pressure with the Callings, and so I felt like I was really able to work on myself in the weird way that I thought about that at the time. But yeah, it does. It galvanizes you almost.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:05] Or.

Jackson Adams [01:58:06] Or it can ruin you. But it galvanized me.

John Dehlin [01:58:09] And from your outline, you were assigned to the addiction recovery program, is that right?

Jackson Adams [01:58:14] So that was part of it too.

John Dehlin [01:58:15] Do you want to. You're laughing. Why are you laughing?

Clare Adams [01:58:17] Well, we spent a lot of time going through that program together.

Jackson Adams [01:58:21] We're intimately familiar with the program.

Clare Adams [01:58:23] Oh, both of you, you've been through it many times. Well, as me, as a support. Because there's support groups for the addict, quote, unquote.

John Dehlin [01:58:30] Should we explain that whole program? Like, again, like, if someone's never been Mormon and they're like, wait, what? You had sex and you, like, occasionally masturbated? Addiction? What? And recovery. Like, that sounds like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jackson Adams [01:58:45] It's exactly like Alcoholics Anonymous. It's The Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program retrofitted for Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:58:53] That's exactly what it is for, quote, sexual deviants.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:57] So this to be clear, was this part of your disfellowsh, like that part of your contract or having to get back in?

Jackson Adams [01:59:05] It was.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:06] Oh, Got it.

Jackson Adams [01:59:07] Yep. Because as part of it, my mission president at one point had told me, if you're gonna confess something, confess it all, because you don't want to leave any cancer cells in there. Right.

John Dehlin [01:59:15] Oh, my God.

Jackson Adams [01:59:20] So, like, if confession is the surgery and it's painful, you might as well well get it all out while you're there. Right. So I was like, oh, and by the way, you know, I occasionally look at pornography and masturbate. And so I was deemed, because I had a history of it dating back to when I was 14 years old as an addict to pornography, which was weird to hear, but I guess I just kind of accepted it, and they sent me to the Addiction Recovery Program, which is basically just a group of men that meets once a week in, like, a seminary building, and they talk about or church, and they talk about their problems.

John Dehlin [02:00:09] So.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:11] And who leads these meetings?

Jackson Adams [02:00:13] Typically someone that's been through the program themselves and, quote, unquote, come out the other side successfully. Right. So they'll call missionaries that have had senior missionaries as leaders of these groups. And typically, it's someone that's been through the program themselves. Not always, but typically it is.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:34] Okay, and is it all pornography, masturbation, or are there different addictions?

Jackson Adams [02:00:41] They have, like, a general addiction, so they, like, lump meth and alcohol and heroin all together in one, you know, and then they have a pornography specific one. And that's the one that I went to.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:52] Okay. All right.

Jackson Adams [02:00:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:57] So did it fix you?

Jackson Adams [02:01:00] No, it actually made it way worse.

John Dehlin [02:01:01] Wait, what?

Jackson Adams [02:01:02] Yeah, I think you talk about the pink elephant thing all the time. Ironically, we would discuss that in Addiction Recovery Group, and it's like, well, then what are we doing doing here? You know, it's. When you think of. When you say, don't think of a pink elephant, the first thing you think of is pink elephant. Well, when you're talking about pornography all the time, that's all you think about. Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:22] So actually, the. The Mormon Church's addiction and recovery program intended to cure you of your masturbatory sexual deviance. Made it worse.

Jackson Adams [02:01:33] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:34] And that's under quotation.

John Dehlin [02:01:36] Yes, yes. Under quote, under quotes.

Jackson Adams [02:01:38] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:39] Made it worse. Did y' all hear that? Salt Lake, like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Jackson Adams [02:01:44] There are people that. I think, you know, there were people that would go. That would say that they had stopped. I believe some of them. I really do. I think

John Dehlin [02:02:00] all you know is what they say, but what you know is what it did for you.

Jackson Adams [02:02:03] Right, Exactly. Yep. And I also know that I was in there with Men. And this is not to shame people, but there was a guy I heard sharing one week that he couldn't even drive his car without looking at pornography on his phone. Right. Like he was that addicted to it. Right. I think at that point, addiction probably is the right word, but.

John Dehlin [02:02:30] But the point I want to make. And weirdly, I was at Utah State as a counselor in the Counseling center in 2015 while you were. You guys were at USU, and I had a client who was masturbating so many times in a day that he was injuring himself. And I asked him why, and he said it was because his bishop asked him to text him. So he asked the student to text the bishop every time he masturbated. And again, going back to the pink elephant, he was so freaked out about having to be honest with the scrupulosity, and then it was causing him to think about it all the time. All this pressure. Sometimes it's scrupulosity plus obsession and fixation that leads to this extreme behavior again that the church then holds itself out of as the cure when it's the obsession that's causing.

Margi Dehlin [02:03:34] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:03:34] The. The hyper behavior.

Jackson Adams [02:03:37] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I. So, yeah, there were. There were experiences and people that would share things like that. And I just remember thinking I'd. I don't feel like I belong here. This isn't. This isn't me. But I'm like, the more time I spend with these guys, the closer I get to those types of behaviors, you know?

Jackson Adams [02:04:00] So I told her we quit even before we quit the church, because I just said, this doesn't help me. It makes me feel bad about myself, and the problem doesn't get better, and I don't want to go anymore, you know, so. And we just stopped going.

Jackson Adams [02:04:16] But, yeah, it was an interesting experience. And we would say things like that in group. We were so engrossed in psychology and learning how to better ourselves in the best ways that we could. It was like, okay, we can't think about this all the time, so let's think about positive things. Let's try to fill our lives with positive things. And there were good guys in there. And it wasn't all negative for sure, but it was definitely an interesting experience.

John Dehlin [02:04:45] So y' all got married and engaged how quickly? From the time you met to the time you were met in March.

Clare Adams [02:04:52] Got engaged in June, got married in August.

Jackson Adams [02:04:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:56] Whoa.

Jackson Adams [02:04:56] Very fast.

John Dehlin [02:04:57] So that's five months between meeting and marriage. And that's pretty typical, I would say.

Clare Adams [02:05:04] So. I hear people a Little bit longer. My parents, I think it was like, three weeks after they met, they got engaged.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] But were y' all two aggies?

Clare Adams [02:05:13] Not together, no.

Jackson Adams [02:05:15] With other people.

John Dehlin [02:05:16] Okay. I had to ask, as an aggie. Okay. And was the temple marriage okay for y'?

Margi Dehlin [02:05:24] All?

John Dehlin [02:05:25] Not a big deal. Was it exciting? Was it wonderful? Was it scarred by this worthiness stuff? Did y' all have a hard time feeling like you were worthy to get married? You know? You know, any of that?

Jackson Adams [02:05:38] At that point, I was working so closely with bishops that, like, they were kind of like, yeah, you can do this. And so I felt okay about it.

Clare Adams [02:05:48] Yeah, I felt fine, too. I think you have the normal, like, jitters of getting married. Like, there's. Especially in the temple, there's this huge weight. Like, we were talking the other day about when the sealer, like, pulls. Pulls you aside into his office or whatever, and he's, like, giving you his little spiel before you go into the ceiling room. Like, I remember feeling, like, a ton of weight of, like, the decision, and not just the decision of, like, getting married, but, like, an eternal marriage.

Clare Adams [02:06:18] And I remember being a little freaked out by that. And then a little, if I'm being completely honest, actually, like, totally disenchanted with the sealing ceremony. And just, like, the wedding, it was not what I wanted. Like, I mean, I wanted to get married in the temple and sealed, but it wasn't like this.

Clare Adams [02:06:38] What I had pictured in my head, this romantic celebration of our love. It was just like. Yeah, just what it is like to get married in the temple. It was, frankly, disappointing.

Jackson Adams [02:06:49] Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:06:50] I feel I had never been to a ceiling before that, so I had no clue.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:54] Right.

Clare Adams [02:06:55] What was going to happen.

John Dehlin [02:06:55] And kind of ritualistic and a little bit creepy. What. How would you describe it?

Jackson Adams [02:07:00] The sealer was, you know, He was pretty. Yeah. We didn't know him. He was very old. Very old and not, I think, totally aware of everything. And, like, he stood. If we were sitting here, like, on the bench, because they usually talk to you before. He was standing, like, really close. And so we were, like, staring at his crotch the entire time he was talking to us, which was weird.

John Dehlin [02:07:30] While you're kneeling at the altar.

Jackson Adams [02:07:31] No, this was before. Just kind of like before you go up to the altar and he says a few words about marriage. And. Yeah, so that was interesting. And then he tried to say Dieter F uchtdorf, and he said, like, Peter M. Duke Nukedorf. So I'm trying not to laugh because those things are really funny to me. So, yeah, it was weird. It was definitely weird.

Clare Adams [02:07:54] Yeah. Just a typical wedding.

John Dehlin [02:07:57] Yeah. So, Clare, I'm surprised you already explained that you love Jackson so much and you were enamored with him. You said. But I'm surprised, given the church's alarmist language around pornography and. And premarital sex, that you weren't like, man, I'm marrying a guy that's already struggling with the commandments. He's been disfellowshipped, and this is going to haunt our marriage. His sexual deviance. And again, all that I say in quotes. I'm just surprised that you weren't alarmed by his behavior before. Right.

Early Marriage, Intimacy, and Ongoing Struggles

Clare Adams [02:08:34] Yeah, it's interesting. That's actually a large part of our story. As far as, like, I mentioned the disciplinary thing didn't really faze me, but the pornography thing was really, really heavy. Like the fact that we're like openly talking about this is like a complete 180 from where it started. We were engaged when I found out that Jackson struggled with pornography. And that's when we started going to the groups. That was really traumatizing and harmful to me as a woman going to the support group with other women who are.

John Dehlin [02:09:10] Do the women meet separately from the men?

Clare Adams [02:09:12] Yep, the women meet separately.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] Sounds like Jody Hildebrandt's connections.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:15] I know, that's really interesting.

Clare Adams [02:09:17] It was not healthy.

John Dehlin [02:09:18] Like, you're all sitting around talking about your husband.

Clare Adams [02:09:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] And did any of the women ever confess masturbation?

Clare Adams [02:09:25] No, never. It was always like just kind of bashing on their husbands. And I never did that about Jackson. Like, but it was hard to hear women talk like that about their husbands. And it just puts you in a bad head space. And it did a lot of damage to us in our relationship.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:43] So.

Clare Adams [02:09:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:44] Why?

Clare Adams [02:09:45] How? Every time? Well, then it's like, okay, we need to get software on the computer and you can't use your phone. And then I would get for like pornography.

John Dehlin [02:09:55] So talk about that. So like you would set it up and you would only have the password.

Clare Adams [02:10:00] So I would have to like log him in. And then that became a problem because when you're going to school, I was, I'm policing him. Which isn't a healthy thing.

John Dehlin [02:10:08] You're newly weds. He's a grown ass man, stressful. And you're like policing his Internet usage. What's that like?

Margi Dehlin [02:10:16] Like?

John Dehlin [02:10:16] No, what's that like?

Clare Adams [02:10:17] It's terrible because one, Jackson couldn't like access the Internet when he's on campus needing to. I'm in class getting a notification ding. This is a red website. Or like whatever is happening. And then we'd get in a fight and I'd have a mental breakdown. And then he'd feel. It's like the cycle that we talked about earlier.

John Dehlin [02:10:33] Wait, so it would. He would go to a website that he shouldn't quote and then it would tell you and Jackson didn't you know she was getting notified?

Jackson Adams [02:10:42] Yeah, it's a bad spirit.

Clare Adams [02:10:45] It's very unhealthy. And I had just. No, I think this, the thing that frustrates me so badly about this in the church is there's no education. It's so, so incredibly taboo hearing about pornography, especially as like a girl, as a woman. I didn't really even know what pornography was. Or more importantly, like, why would a man feel the need to engage with pornography? Like, I had no understanding of just any of that, the psychology around it. Like it was just a really unhealthy understanding. Yeah, it was a rough season for us with that.

John Dehlin [02:11:27] Yeah. So how does that work? You get notified that he's visiting a site that he shouldn't, and then what happens then?

Jackson Adams [02:11:37] I mean, I think that happened maybe once.

Clare Adams [02:11:40] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [02:11:40] Like I learned pretty quickly that was a good idea.

Clare Adams [02:11:43] He learned pretty quickly that was a bad idea. And so then from there it was, then he, he would come to me like. Cuz that was kind of like the thing in group, like, okay, you have to be accountable.

Clare Adams [02:11:55] So you need to tell your spouse like if you had a relapse that day is what they called it. Right. A slip up or a relapse. And he would do like okay with that. But it became less and less that he would tell me because I would have a breakdown every time he told me.

Clare Adams [02:12:13] And it was just, yeah, as you can imagine, just feeding into my insecurities like that. You have, we kind of touched on this about as a woman especially, I feel like, well, just women in general in the world, you have such a high, high standard of like what you should look like, how you should act. You need to be sexually attractive and desirable and then put that on top of the, your experiences with modesty in the church. Feeling like your body's not your own. I don't understand my body. I'm not enough for my husband. It's a very layered, unhealthy situation. And then I'm feeding into his shame and that hurts our relationship.

Margi Dehlin [02:12:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:55] So you're feeling like if he goes to porn, he must not find me attractive or my body attractive.

Clare Adams [02:13:01] 100.

John Dehlin [02:13:02] Yeah. And that makes you feel just inadequate and worse. And you know, did you ever say, look, we can have sex now? Why are you. Why would you ever do that if we can. If we're able to have sex? Right.

Clare Adams [02:13:18] I think in less words than that, I tried to communicate that, but like I said, I just didn't have an understanding of why.

John Dehlin [02:13:29] So y' all weren't able to have sort of explicit or candid conversations during this whole time?

Clare Adams [02:13:35] I think we had our first healthy conversation about it like a week ago.

John Dehlin [02:13:40] Like today.

Clare Adams [02:13:41] Yeah. Like, we've been in a healthy place about this for, what would you say?

Jackson Adams [02:13:46] A year or so.

Clare Adams [02:13:47] A year or so. And then we had a conversation maybe a week ago. Maybe less than that. Yeah, it was really healthy. It was really eye opening for me to get some understanding and healing for me, I think healing for both of us. And.

Margi Dehlin [02:14:04] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:08] You've been married how long?

Clare Adams [02:14:09] Almost eight years. Yeah, seven and a half years.

Margi Dehlin [02:14:13] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:14:13] Okay. So how did this cycle affect your ongoing relationship as newlyweds?

Jackson Adams [02:14:20] I think it was tough. I think we kind of experienced the inverse of what most newlyweds experience. There was really sweet memories from the beginning, for sure. You know, definitely that honeymoon phase, but we had to go through that together right away. And it was really, really difficult. And it was really hard, I would say, for the first couple years. And then we slowly, over these seven years, have moved into a healthier place with it.

Clare Adams [02:14:49] We both went to therapy. That helped.

Jackson Adams [02:14:51] Yeah, therapy was. It was a big deal for us. And. Yeah, I mean, it's an ongoing process. Right. A relationship is always something that you're working on. Right. But it's been fun. Instead of seeing kind of a degradation in our quality of our relationship over time, which I think is the stereotype, it's been the opposite for us. And that's.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:20] Yeah. It's making me just feel how you both were just holding such heaviness and honestly, trauma going into those early years, like your new budding your relationship with your own body, your relationship with him, and then you're. And your care and you're both carrying. I would imagine in those groups talking to women, there's a lot of, like, victimization. Feeling very victimized through it. I don't know if that's for sure. And how powerless, you know, the powerlessness for you in that situation and just all that to move into kind of a new. Especially in Mormonism, where you don't have a lot of knowledge or about your own body, about each other, about the.

Margi Dehlin [02:16:13] That you're going into it with like a ton of just weight and Trying to, like, what I'm kind of hearing is the further you've gotten away from the conditioning, how you were trained to kind of think about all these things about yourselves, what it means, or is that right, that it's lightened it and now you can actually see each other and yourselves more for who you are as opposed to like all the layers that you've been wearing for years and years around this thing.

Clare Adams [02:16:46] It's incredibly relieving. And it's pretty ironic because that was another kind of crack in my belief in God, was like, I would pray and pray and pray, like, please take this away, please take this away. And God never seemed to listen. Nothing ever got better. And then as we deconstructed the church, deconstructed our belief in God, that's when things got really good.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:13] Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:17:15] And kind of I got what I prayed for, but it was the further you got away. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:24] Okay, so should we go on to the childbearing part of your relationship?

Clare Adams [02:17:30] Sure, let's do it.

John Dehlin [02:17:32] So I guess, Clare, did you feel like your main purpose in life was to have babies? Is that. Is that fair to say?

Clare Adams [02:17:40] Yeah, my only purpose. Yeah, eternal purpose, to have babies.

John Dehlin [02:17:44] So y' all, like, within what, two years were having babies or what?

Clare Adams [02:17:49] It was three years. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:52] That's a little long. It's waiting a little long for my Mormon standards.

Clare Adams [02:17:55] Yeah. I was 24 when we had our son, almost 25. So that's. Yeah, a little bit older than. I think a lot of girls have babies in the church, I think.

Motherhood, Postpartum Depression, and Church Expectations

Margi Dehlin [02:18:07] So I wanted to ask you a question because this came up in the YSA panel that we did, and I was asking about, like, generationally, if there's a difference in messaging to women now or even your peer group at USU around motherhood, whether you're. There's language around having a job, whether there's language around, if it's different, say, from my generation where really it was having work was never really talked about. Really, the only option was being a stay at home mom. If you had an education, it wasn't to use it. It was in case of an emergency and really quite optional. Not really. How did you. What did you. How would I ask this? Like, what was your experience, I guess, with the messaging around having an education, being a mom?

Clare Adams [02:19:09] Well, I don't know. As far as your question goes, like, with my peer group at usu, I think it's better than it maybe has been in the past as far as, like, if you want a career, have a career, but There was definitely, like, talk of girls, especially, like, in my program, I studied education, who. We were getting a degree in education because it's a good mom job. And we were like, okay, we'll get our degree, and then we can have babies, and then we can go back to work. And I grew up, luckily, my parents really instilled in me the importance of an education and that I should

Margi Dehlin [02:19:44] get

Clare Adams [02:19:44] my degree, but that it would be. It felt to me like, okay, this will go on the back burner, like you said, in case of an emergency, and my main purpose will be a mom. And so I had every intention of graduating and not even, like, working at all. Just, like, get pregnant, have a baby.

John Dehlin [02:20:02] Yeah. So do you want to talk about what. How that ended up.

Clare Adams [02:20:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:08] With some surprises along the way.

Clare Adams [02:20:10] Yeah. It was the hardest and best thing that's ever happened to me and us. So we had our child, our first child, our son, and it was nothing at all like, I was prepared for. I think part of that is, to be fair, it's really hard to explain to someone what it's like to have a newborn who's never had a newborn, born 24 7.

Clare Adams [02:20:35] Combine that with all of the body and hormone changes that you go through as a mother after birth. And also combined with. I just feel like motherhood is very romanticized in the church. Like, nobody really talks about the hard parts of it, and maybe that's because they don't want to scare you. Maybe that's because you're too young. I'm not sure. But I fully wasn't prepared. And for me, distinctly, I can remember I had a really long, hard labor, and the second my son was born, it was like this complete wave went over my body of this feeling of, like, detachment from my child. And I'm not.

Clare Adams [02:21:17] I think there's a proper term for it. Again, it's a hard thing to explain if you haven't experienced it, but just felt completely detached to my child. I didn't want to hold him,

Margi Dehlin [02:21:32] didn't

Clare Adams [02:21:32] want to be around him. And I developed some postpartum depression, crippling anxiety. It was really hard to get out of bed, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Jackson really took the. The reins and took on a lot of the burden at that time, taking care of a newborn. And me and my mother, who I'm so grateful for, was there for me at that time and was so incredibly helpful.

Clare Adams [02:22:05] But, yeah, that, again, I hadn't really experienced those feelings since my mission of the depression. And then really intense anxiety. Anxiety Attacks again. So I was just completely miserable. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be. There were definitely moments where I felt joy and in my motherhood. And of course, I loved our son, but it really started to wear me down. Hours and hours a day, you're rocking a newborn in the dark and dealing with all of these hard emotions kind of brought me into a dark place as far as, like, starting to question things. And I became very annoyed and disenchanted with the church, and I kind of fell into a space of some interest in just, like, general Christianity.

Clare Adams [02:22:56] And I consumed a lot of Christian content like podcasts. And I really liked the emphasis around Christ that other churches seem to have that I felt like ours was lacking. Like, I really didn't enjoy going to sacrament meeting, and it was supposed to be about Jesus because we're taking the sacrament, remembering him, but people would get up and not talk about Jesus. And anyway, it really started to wear on me.

Clare Adams [02:23:24] My mental health was bad. Health anxiety was incredibly bad. It got so bad to the point where I finally. Jackson was like, you need to go to therapy. This is hurting our relationship. So I started therapy. It was incredibly helpful to me. I did some emotional mdr, which was very helpful.

Clare Adams [02:23:44] And it completely changed my world as far as my health anxiety went. And I do. I did have some conversations with her about, like, feeling spiritually detached. And she did try to help me with that a little bit. And so one thing she had suggested to me was, like, getting some more, like, connection with people around me. And so one day when our son was, like, a year old, I was rocking him for his nap, and I had the thought, I wonder, like.

Clare Adams [02:24:25] Like, I had heard some people talk about, like, tick tock. And that's really the most embarrassing part of my story is that TikTok was really my demise.

John Dehlin [02:24:34] Wait, your demise?

Clare Adams [02:24:35] What kind of demise was Tik Tok like?

John Dehlin [02:24:37] Your demise of what?

Clare Adams [02:24:38] Of my. Of my testimony and deconstructing.

John Dehlin [02:24:42] Okay, okay.

Clare Adams [02:24:43] Yeah. So I had. I was like, okay, like, I've heard, like, Tik Tok can be fun. Like, maybe there's some moms, like, you know, like, the mom content that's out there, like, moms film themselves, and you can relate. It's relatable. So I was like, I have. I'm sitting here for two hours with my child rocking them. I'm going to get on TikTok. And I knew nothing about TikTok at the time. I was like, okay, like, there's a search bar. So I just, like, my My idea was I'll find some moms, like, in my area and maybe, like, I can relate to them and they can relate on the postpartum depression and the anxiety.

Clare Adams [02:25:17] So I, in the search bar, just typed Utah. I think was. All I typed was Utah. And like, I think the first couple of videos were fine. And then I kept, like, swiping and it was like, ex Mormon content, anti Mormon content.

Clare Adams [02:25:32] And I was like, oh, like, this is weird. Kind of scary, really fast. Yeah, exactly. And then I started. The same lady kept popping up and popping up. And Alicia from Faith Unravel.

John Dehlin [02:25:44] Alicia Lee.

Clare Adams [02:25:45] Alicia Lee, yeah. Her videos kept popping up and I really liked listening to her because she had, like, such a background with young women in the church. And she would tell stories about her motherhood and her. I was like, she seems, like, really nice. Like, she's not wearing garments and she's saying some, like, crazy things about the church. I don't know if those are true. And she said something about the CES letter. And I was like, I had heard of it before, like, very briefly when it had come out, I think, but I knew it as like, anti Mormon content. Like, you do not read the CES letter.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:18] Right?

Clare Adams [02:26:19] And I was so depressed and anxious and I just really didn't care. So I looked it up and I read the entirety of the CES letter during my son's nap. And it was like an out of body experience. My entire world just came crashing down. It was like another panic attack. That feeling of like, am I having a heart attack? Am I dying right now? And my first thoughts were, this can not be true. Like, this is so false. They're making this stuff up. And that sent me down a rabbit hole of truth claims in the church. Church history. I didn't go back to the CES letter for a long time. I looked up, like, CES letter rebuttals and I read Jim Bennett's, there's some others out there, I think.

Encountering the CES Letter and Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [02:27:08] Do you remember what bugged you? What were maybe three of the biggest things that bugged you out of the CES letter that you thought were even of concern or credible? Because you could always just read that and go, it's anti Mormon lies and shut it off. But clearly that's not what happened.

Clare Adams [02:27:24] Yeah, the biggest things for me were even more than the Book of Mormon stuff was the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook plates. For some reason in my mind, I was like, okay, if this is true and this stuff is made up and he fabricated this, then that would make the Book of Mormon false.

John Dehlin [02:27:43] Because those are two examples of false translations where Joseph actually didn't translate what he said he did.

Clare Adams [02:27:50] So those two polygamy stuff, it really is hard to think back at what did I know before and what didn't I. I truly think I really didn't know the majority of the things in there. Like I don't think that I knew that Joseph Smith had polygamous wives. I certainly didn't know about polygamy and 14 year old girls and polyandry. Polya or yeah, sorry, polyandry. Which is what I meant, which is marrying women who are already married, already have a husband. And that was deeply disturbing to me.

John Dehlin [02:28:21] What year was this about?

Clare Adams [02:28:22] This was the end of 2022.

John Dehlin [02:28:26] So this is two years ago.

Clare Adams [02:28:28] Okay, like exactly two years ago.

John Dehlin [02:28:29] Okay.

Clare Adams [02:28:31] Yeah. So I spent the next year completely consumed by Mormon history and it was like my full time job. That and caring for my son. Every nap he had, I was researching, looking up Joseph Smith papers, like, and let me be clear, like all church material, like church history archive stuff that I was looking at went back to like the Jim Bennett thing that never. It would put a band aid on some of my concerns, but then I would sit and nitpick them and I was like, okay, this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense. Then I'd go back to the CES letter and I studied a lot of.

Clare Adams [02:29:14] Yeah, primary resources, all the things. Then I ran into Mormon stories. We talked about this last night. I. John's voice was just always in my house during the day when Jackson was at work. Jackson had no idea I would be listening to it and then hear him come home and turn off Mormon stories because I didn't want him to know that I was listening.

John Dehlin [02:29:37] How was that useful to you at the time?

Clare Adams [02:29:39] It was a complete lifeline. It was helpful in many ways. One, just feeling like, okay, I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one that's like bothered by these things, that's noticing these issues. Very informative. It was helpful because with the LDS discussion series, it's like all of the information in one place and everything is cited and those citations are church history documents and it's just really easy place to consume those things. And of course like I listen. It was so helpful to listen to other women's stories my age and feel some relation there and incredibly, incredibly helpful.

John Dehlin [02:30:24] Okay, so it's like your dirty little secret full time job.

Clare Adams [02:30:28] Absolutely. And I felt so much guilt about it.

John Dehlin [02:30:32] It's like your Equivalent of porn, literally.

Margi Dehlin [02:30:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:35] It's like church history porn.

Clare Adams [02:30:37] Yeah. The fact that I was listening to Mormon stories, reading the CS letter reading, just having questions about church things. And like I said, I went back and forth between reading all the faithful points of view and reading the critics, and really, I wanted to form my own opinion. I didn't talk to anybody about it.

John Dehlin [02:30:57] What kept you from just the very first day telling Jackson, explain that to our never Mormons. Why you wouldn't just tell him and then you guys would dig in together,

Clare Adams [02:31:05] you know, I was afraid that he would leave me. I was afraid of being judged like, that I wasn't strong. It wasn't embarrassing to me, to be honest, because I had been like the golden child. Like, serve the mission, don't do anything wrong, get married in the temple, have a baby, all the right things like that, that role that I was playing, it was embarrassing that I was.

Clare Adams [02:31:38] And disappointing to me that, like, I must not be that righteous. Like, I must not be that elect. And my patriarchal blessing says there will never be at a time in my life where I will lose my faith. And I'm losing my faith. And so what's wrong with me? Like, am I possessed? Like, I.

Clare Adams [02:31:56] There's so much shame and so much, like, taboo growing up in the church as far as, like, anti Mormon things go. And I found that, again, ironic because to me, it wasn't like, anti Mormon. It was just like, this is the history of the church. It's not like.

John Dehlin [02:32:13] But that was hid from you.

Clare Adams [02:32:15] Yeah, exactly. So I really was afraid that he would, like, leave me. And so I didn't tell him for probably six months maybe. I can't remember how long it was.

John Dehlin [02:32:26] That's so wild.

Clare Adams [02:32:27] And when I did tell him, the conversation was, hey, I'm struggling with my faith and my testimony. I just need you to know that literally, that was it. I didn't say anything. I was so afraid of him having a faith crisis that I didn't tell him all any of my concerns. He had no clue.

John Dehlin [02:32:45] Wow. What was that like for you, Jackson? You had no idea?

Jackson Adams [02:32:50] I had no idea. Yeah. It kind of blindsided me. I could tell she was a little bit disengaged at church, but I hate church, so I was like, sweet, this is great.

Clare Adams [02:33:00] He's always been very, very nuanced and about, like.

Jackson Adams [02:33:05] I think for me it was like, okay. And speaking of patriarchal blessings mindset, you know, I will study the life of Joseph Smith and pray about him. Yeah. Oops.

John Dehlin [02:33:17] Hey, patriarchs.

Jackson Adams [02:33:18] Take that Maybe you should have said teachings of Joseph Smith, although that's problematic too. But, yeah, the life and teachings of Joseph Smith, I think, is how it says it. And pray until I have an absolute certainty that he's the prophet of God. And so when she said. She came to me, and you did mention. Because I said, what's bothering you? And you said polygamy mostly.

Clare Adams [02:33:39] Cuz I knew that was a safe topic because who's not bugged by polygamy? And he already knew that I had issues with that.

John Dehlin [02:33:44] He's like, I'll solve that problem.

Clare Adams [02:33:45] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [02:33:46] Literally. Yeah. I think I told her something to the effect of, don't worry, I've. I've had struggles with my face.

Clare Adams [02:33:52] He literally said to me, everyone has to go through this. I've been through it. It'll be fine. And I was like, I don't think. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Margi Dehlin [02:34:02] I'm sorry. I mean, can we just take a moment, though, to honor the fact that you were taking care of a young human being on your own, which is incredibly immersive. Let's just say that experience alone is incredibly. It's an immersive, oftentimes isolating with postpartum depression with complications. Right. And you're also deconstructing this whole alone.

Clare Adams [02:34:38] Yeah. And then I got pregnant a second time. A second time?

John Dehlin [02:34:42] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:34:43] Yeah. I mean, that's just. It's one thing to have one of those things, but to have both and then to be alone, like, you're not telling anyone. That's a lot to hold for a human being. Yeah. Did it feel like a lot?

Clare Adams [02:35:03] Yeah, it was a lot. I had. It was so much that there were some people in my life, like, some. A couple friends, like my sister, who I had just briefly said, like, I'm kind of, like, struggling a little bit, like, not quite feeling it, but. And I remember specifically having a conversation with my sister saying, but I'll never leave the church, because that was really before I had completely, like, gone down the rabbit hole and deconstructed. So I ate my words. But. But that's all I ever said. Oh, I'm just struggling a little bit. No specifics. Nobody knew the extent we blindsided everybody in our life when we came out to people about it. But, yeah, it was extremely heavy.

John Dehlin [02:35:48] So you just use. He told Jackson, just very minimal. Jax is like, I'll solve the polygamy problem.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:54] So then you're off and running.

Jackson Adams [02:35:55] So I'm off and running at that point.

John Dehlin [02:35:57] And Then how'd that pursue for you?

Jackson Adams [02:35:59] Well, I think this is why I said at the beginning that Clare is the hero of the story. Because of what you just said, Margi, what she went through, the level of honesty and integrity that it takes. Sorry, I'm just. I'm blown away, you know, and that was really hard for her. And I was.

John Dehlin [02:36:29] Explain why. That's why that blows you away. Just for the never Mormons that don't understand.

Jackson Adams [02:36:36] The church is everything. It is the very fabric of your life. It's the meaning of your life. It's the meaning of the universe.

Clare Adams [02:36:43] That.

Jackson Adams [02:36:43] The courage that she. Gosh, I'm sorry.

Clare Adams [02:36:48] You're being really sweet.

Jackson Adams [02:36:52] The courage that it took for her to look at this stuff and be honest about it and come to me and talk to me about it and. Yeah, sorry. I'll always respect her for it. That's for sure. It's scary, you know, it's scary to look into it and to have that level of crisis of faith while she's going through all these other things was just monumental. It just took a monumental feat of strength. And it was just cool to witness, you know, cool to be standing by her side when it happened.

John Dehlin [02:37:40] Except wouldn't that be terrifying for you if that was the reason you got married, if that was the contract you were married under, if you had been fighting with worthiness this whole time? And now all of a sudden, your eternal companion is telling you she's doubting the thing that had defined your life up until that point.

Jackson Adams [02:37:59] You have to remember, John, at this point, I'm the patriarch, so I'm going to lead us to safety.

John Dehlin [02:38:05] So you got your, like, utility belt.

Jackson Adams [02:38:07] He's like, not to worry, not to worry.

John Dehlin [02:38:10] Here I come to save the day.

Jackson Adams [02:38:13] This will be our ensign story. Yeah. You know, so I didn't. I didn't. And she's been obvious through this podcast. She's been through a lot with me, too. So it does make me sad that she would think that something like that would make me leave her, you know, because it wouldn't, you know, there.

John Dehlin [02:38:35] Well, it would for so many.

Jackson Adams [02:38:37] Right.

Clare Adams [02:38:37] You think, too, like, your eternal marriage is, like, what is keeping you together? Like, even though we, like, connect in so many other ways, I think at the time, specifically because I was struggling. We were struggling with so many things that felt like if I let this go, I might be letting go of my relationship with you, but I couldn't stand that dissonance anymore in my life. And it became, like, more important to me to like live in truth than to live a lie. I couldn't do it. And if that meant losing everything, it was. I had to do it. Like, it's just such an important. And in the church too, they talk about how important integrity is. And I felt like I wouldn't have integrity if I just continued to pretend like I believed something that I didn't believe.

Jackson Adams [02:39:39] And I think we share that the truth is important to us. And so as soon as I started looking into it, it wasn't long before I saw that she was kind of onto something. Uh, and so that just increased the, the empathy and the understanding.

John Dehlin [02:39:57] And so you weren't able to fix the.

Clare Adams [02:40:00] You didn't tell me either.

Jackson Adams [02:40:01] I tried.

John Dehlin [02:40:02] Did you want to talk about that?

Clare Adams [02:40:04] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:04] So you had your own.

Jackson Adams [02:40:05] Yeah, I, I think I wanted to go away, shore up my testimony, come back and, and help her come back. And so that's what I tried to do. And it almost immediately fell apart on me just because there's so many issues and as soon as you start looking into. Gets harder and harder and harder to justify.

John Dehlin [02:40:36] What were your top three?

Jackson Adams [02:40:38] For me, the Book of Abraham. And because it actually, in deacon's quorum way back, I remember asking, this is amazing if this is a correct translation. This is like the greatest proof that Mormonism is true. And my leader said, well, don't look into that too much. So that was like big because it was kind of a decades long piece of item on the shelf. Right. So that was big for me. I think the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon were pretty damning.

John Dehlin [02:41:22] Like horses and steel.

Jackson Adams [02:41:23] Like horses and steel. And I'm a big history nerd. I read things about history, you know, like I really like American history and ancient American history and. But it's really obvious once you actually look at it that it's an 18th or 19th century piece of fiction.

John Dehlin [02:41:42] The Book of Mormon.

Jackson Adams [02:41:42] The Book of Mormon, Yep. So that was a big deal. And then for me, the SEC scandal was a huge deal.

John Dehlin [02:41:49] Tell us what that is.

Jackson Adams [02:41:51] So essentially the church got fined $5 million for concealing how much wealth they have. And the way that they did that is they set up 12 or 13 different shell companies, you know, and there's a myriad of reasons to do that. One, you don't want people to know how much money you have, you know, two, their tax, tax evasion strategies and things that they can employ. So it was a, for me, that had no business in being in the true church of Christ. That, in my opinion, was just unacceptable.

Clare Adams [02:42:32] Church that preaches. To be honest, yeah, I think I

Jackson Adams [02:42:36] could have gotten over that. Had Joseph Smith been who he said he was and the Book of Mormon what it claimed to be, I think I could have gotten over everything else. But you know, that on top of current day problems, made me not even want to be a cultural Mormon.

Processing Anger, Grief, and Disillusionment

John Dehlin [02:42:56] Can I just note that hearing your stories up to this point, the church had put you both through so much in terms of perfectionism and worthiness and standards and even punishment and addiction recovery programs and modesty, shaming.

Margi Dehlin [02:43:17] It's like personal torment.

John Dehlin [02:43:19] And then you find out they've been hiding and lying systemically in major ways and defrauding you. And the Joseph Smith was in effect, a charlatan. And what's it like to be tormented with such high standards and then find out the church is acting so systemically deceitful from its start to the current day. What's that like? I mean, that's got exacerbated, right? If you've been tormented for so long to find that out. I don't mean to inject that in your story, but.

Jackson Adams [02:43:51] No, first you get really sad about it because you have all this sunk cost into it. Right. Put so much into this. And then you quickly, quickly, quickly move to anger and you stay there for a while and then you go back and then you come out of it and then you go back and you

John Dehlin [02:44:07] want to talk about what, what makes the anger materialize. Maybe both of you, you can go first.

Jackson Adams [02:44:16] For me, it's the fact that I was lied to and that I gave so much to it, like you said, that makes me mad. But then when I get really upset is now I can see how I was being lied to. And there are people, a lot of people in my life that are experiencing the exact same kinds of damages that I've been talking about today. They're still experiencing it. And that. That makes me mad.

John Dehlin [02:44:49] Okay,

Clare Adams [02:44:52] yeah, very similar. I think it's just such an incredibly earth shattering experience. Your entire worldview disappears and there's so much pain and betrayal that you feel like this thing that I gave everything to has betrayed me. And. And it's something that people give absolutely everything to. Their time, their money, their heart, their belief. They say that they know these things. It's just, yeah, complete. Felt complete betrayal to me and disbelief that everything that I had ever thought was real was make believe.

John Dehlin [02:45:40] And Clare, what's it like for you if like on your mission you're like curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor having panic attacks and then having a baby and feeling detachment and severe depression and ptsd. And then you find out the source of all that driving. Source or force for those things you suffered is a church that now you find out isn't what it claimed to be. What's that? Like?

Clare Adams [02:46:07] It's hurtful. Really hurtful, but also relieving because finally it was like, I'm not insane. Like, I'm not the problem.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:19] Yeah, I'm not the problem. That's so powerful. Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:46:24] Like, yeah, I'm enough. Like, who I am. Like, I don't need. It's, like, blasphemous to some people to hear this, but having deconstructed the way that we did, like, I'm enough without Jesus. I'm enough without God. I'm enough just existing the way that I exist. And that's beautiful. And it's given me more confidence and love for myself, more awe in myself and humanity and the world in general than I've ever felt. More clarity. I mean, literally everything is better in my life because of that. Wow.

Jackson Adams [02:47:06] Yeah. It's been cool to see her, like, some things that she struggled with mentally. It's insane to watch something disappear overnight like it has with her and. And not come back, you know, it's. It's a miracle, really.

John Dehlin [02:47:25] Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:47:26] And it really was overnight.

Jackson Adams [02:47:27] Yeah.

Navigating the Marriage Through Doubt and Depression

John Dehlin [02:47:32] So where did that leave you guys in your marriage and in your life?

Jackson Adams [02:47:37] I was going through tough time, just in general. Like I said earlier, I think the church was the last thing that was holding the vestiges of my belief in God with it. And so as I stood on this precipice, looking over the edge, I sensed that there was no bottom to the abyss. And in a way, I was, I think, right about that. And so I went into a really, really, really dark place for about six months. Six months. And she would be like, what is going on with you? Like, can you please talk to me? And I just couldn't. I couldn't even find words to describe what I was going through because it just. It was so shocking to me. The, like, going into the depths of nihilism is the best way to describe it, you know, because I didn't believe all of a sudden that there was any meaning to anything.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:44] Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:48:44] And again, he was not communicating this to me at all. And so we were incredibly detached. I was pregnant with our second child. Feeling like I'm losing my marriage because I've ruined this because I confided in him, and, yeah, was not a good time.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:01] Are you familiar with the interview we did with Brett Hartley. And do you know Brett Hartley?

Jackson Adams [02:49:05] That's kind of when I started to climb out of it a little bit. I say climb out. I think Brett says this. You never really leave it behind. Right. But you start to reframe it and you start to play in the space that you have and create local meaning.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:24] Right.

Jackson Adams [02:49:26] But that sense of meaning, that there's order to the universe that I can understand and that is built around me and I'm going to be a part of said universe and creating said universe someday, it's all gone. Right, Right. But yeah, the. I think it was a two part series with Brit. I was like, okay, like she's been saying, I'm not crazy. You know, that's right. And there are other people that think this way. And we saw her at Thrive actually in American Fork a couple weeks ago or a month ago or whenever that was. And I probably freaked her out. I said, brit, can I please give you a hug? You know, I was like, who's this stranger? You know? But she, her book and her content has meant the world to me, you

Clare Adams [02:50:13] know, specifically, yeah, her podcast. Because before this, Jackson had finally come to me and said, the reason I've been depressed for six months is because one, I don't believe in the church, but more importantly, I don't even know that I can believe in God anymore. And at that point, I was not. I was totally there with the church thing, but not there with the God thing. And I. Brit's podcast really helped me kind of go through my deconstruction of that as well.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:45] Okay, so how. How did you experience Jackson during this six months where he's basically in this state of nihilism, questioning actually, is there meaning at all in living? Right. How did you experience him during that time? What did it look like? What did it feel like for you?

Clare Adams [02:51:12] He really just drew inwards, was very detached. We didn't have typically, we'll have like very deep philosophical conversations with each other that wasn't happening. Anytime that I would try, like, are you okay? Do you need to talk about something? He would shoot it down. He would just keep saying, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. And so then I'm wondering, oh boy, what Are you going to tell me what's coming? Yeah, yeah. Very detached.

John Dehlin [02:51:41] And how vulnerable are you at this point with 1 1/2 kids and hadn't really established a career?

Clare Adams [02:51:49] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:49] And also, what does this deconstruction mean for us?

Clare Adams [02:51:54] Yeah, it was.

Jackson Adams [02:51:57] Yeah, I felt bad because I really did want to connect with her, but I, like, almost physically couldn't do it. I was so in this void.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:11] It.

Jackson Adams [02:52:13] Yeah, it wasn't a lack of wanting. It was just a complete inability to understand how to even begin.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:21] Right, right. So I asked Britt this in her podcast. So for you going through it, that six months, what did that look like? Were you still going to work every day? Are you going through the motions but just sort of not home? Right. Not actually. Like, how would you describe your state during that time? Is it dreamlike? Is it dissociated? Is it.

Jackson Adams [02:52:53] It's mostly dissociation. I didn't have a hard time keeping up with my responsibilities. Externally, I think I could still go to work. You know, I was somewhat taking care of my body, but just, like, kind of on autopilot a little bit. It would bubble to the surface, though. Like, I'm in. I'm in sales. And so, like, we'd be at the end of the quarter, and my boss would say, or is that deal going to come in before the end of the quarter? And I would say things like, what is the end of the quarter? What does that mean? That's completely made up. We make these things up, you know? And then my boss would be like, what is real, exactly?

Margi Dehlin [02:53:37] What is reality?

Jackson Adams [02:53:39] My boss would be like, dude, what the hell? Like, I need you to snap out of this, you know? Like, it was really hard for me to, like, care about things, you know? So, like, I went through the motions, and I actually was performing fine at my job, but I didn't care at all.

Clare Adams [02:53:57] All.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:57] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [02:53:58] Like, nothing meant anything to me. And it was hard. It's hard because you go through these phases. Like, my life is meaningless. Okay? I'm gonna make sure that my life, my kids life have meaning. Oh, shit. My kid's life has no meaning.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:13] Right.

Jackson Adams [02:54:14] And their kids life has no. And you just keep going. And again, like I said, there's just no bottom to the abyss, you know?

Margi Dehlin [02:54:21] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [02:54:21] And it's really hard to, like, grasp onto something. And then when you do grasp onto something, you're like, this is meaningless. It's a construct, you know? Like, I don't have any way to even know what this even means, you know? And so you get in just this really weird, twisted knot, and then, like, she'll come to me and, like, try to break through the dreamlike state, you know?

Jackson Adams [02:54:48] And I don't even know how to explain to her where I am. I don't even understand it myself, you know? So it was. It's scary. And it never got to the point where I thought of, like, ending my life.

Jackson Adams [02:55:05] I felt like. Like what John said I had a van family that's in a pretty vulnerable position. And that would be pretty selfish of me, but I understood why people get to that point on a lot deeper of a level, I think, than I ever thought I would.

Margi Dehlin [02:55:21] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:24] So how'd y' all climb out? Or did you.

Jackson Adams [02:55:28] Do you want to try to tackle that?

Clare Adams [02:55:31] I feel like we have climbed. Are continuing to climb. I. I think once you kind of get to nihilism, it's something you have to continue to work with, with for the rest of your existence. But it's been really beautiful and rewarding for us.

John Dehlin [02:55:59] Paint a picture of that, because I can see a believing Mormon go, wait, you traded down. Like, you had certainty, you had confidence, you had eternity, you had belief and faith and hope, and now you got nothing. Like, no, thanks. How could something beautiful come out of that one?

Jackson Adams [02:56:18] They might be a little bit right about that. It might be a trade down. I'm still not even 100% sure about that. But kidding aside, I think for us, learning how other people have been through it. People like British, right. People with a lot better minds than mine, that was literally breaking at this.

Jackson Adams [02:56:45] I think we've tried to latch onto a sense of awe in our lives. Like, we really like the idea that whatever the universe came from, we are little bits of universe glued together that can then observe what is happening. And that's, like, really weird, but really cool.

Jackson Adams [02:57:06] And then you start to see everything in your life is like this really insane chance that we're lucid for for just a short span of time, cosmically speaking. So Clare and I met each other on a blind date at Utah State. You know, we could have gone to different colleges. You know, there's so many things that could have happened that we're not that make it so we're not together, but we are together with this insane amount of circumstantial happenings.

Jackson Adams [02:57:39] And we don't have to be together, but we choose to be together. And it's amazing. So we try to draw inspiration and awe from things like that. And we want to raise our children in an environment where they can ask questions and not feel bad about themselves and explore, you know, And I don't know what this life is. You know, I wish I could tell everyone listening to this, what. What life is and what meaning is. I don't have the answer to that. But for us, life is. Is a beautiful thing. That we get to observe. So that's kind of how we try to crawl out of it when we get in that dark place.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:23] Yeah. Yeah.

Clare Adams [02:58:25] I think for me, letting go of all of these things causing me pain has been so incredib, incredibly healing. And it's really crazy because you'd think somebody with my personality and my disposition would, like, be complete, like, SOS Right now. Like, I have. I don't believe in God. Yeah. Like. Yeah, like, I should be having anxiety attacks every second of every day, but they literally. I spent over two decades of my life with my nighttime ritual of pain and anxiety and letting go of all of this. I climb into bed at night and I roll over and I go to sleep, and it's been the most relieving feeling for me in my life to just be at peace and at rest and to be okay with not knowing and to let go of control, and it's been so incredibly freeing for me.

John Dehlin [02:59:26] And so it was the theology that was stressing you out.

Clare Adams [02:59:31] I think a lot of the theology was. Yeah, the perfectionism, the fear of the,

John Dehlin [02:59:37] you know, afterlife and not making it. And.

Clare Adams [02:59:40] Yeah. And, like, with the polygamy thing, like, and a lot of stress with our marriage. Like, okay, if I die and Jackson gets remarried and he gets sealed to this lady, then I'm gonna have a sister wife in heaven. And I don't like that. Like, I would rather say, okay, I'll back out. You can have her.

Margi Dehlin [02:59:59] I'll.

Clare Adams [02:59:59] I'll be an angel by myself. Or, like, that caused me a lot of pain, and I think it does. A lot of people. People, whether they really like to admit it or not, and I think they placate it by saying, like, oh, God will never have you be unhappy. He'll never want you to be uncomfortable. Things will get worked out, and it just doesn't make sense. And now I can just be at peace knowing, like, I want to be with you until the day that I die. And from there, whatever happens, happens. And it's hard to describe. There's just a lot of relief for me. I don't feel the need to control everything in my life. This need to control the future, this need to beg God to change his mind about something, even though he's all knowing and he's already made up his mind

Margi Dehlin [03:00:52] and you ended up with the glasses anyway.

Clare Adams [03:00:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:00:54] Okay.

Clare Adams [03:00:55] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:00:59] Is I think about what I learned about mental health, like, acceptance and release and detachment. Not detachment, like, not caring, but just, like, letting go of the illusion of control, whether it's Buddhism or Christianity or whatever, that's a big part of positive mental health. Mental health and wellness. Because the illusion of control, trying to chase everything out of your control, to try and lock it down really does drive you crazy.

Margi Dehlin [03:01:28] Does.

John Dehlin [03:01:29] But then just saying, you know what? I can't control it all, and then just saying, I'll just live in the moment and live each day, enjoy what I can from each day in the future, you know, we'll see. That can be a huge relief.

Jackson Adams [03:01:42] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:01:43] Yeah. I love what you said about awe, too, and I've said it this before on the podcast, but I do think, you know, when you live with a lens and we'll say Mormonism as like a lens that you. You see the world, you see yourself, you see reality through, and there's certainty. It's like the world dies a little. You're like, I know everything and I get everything, and so everything's stagnant. And what's the use of really engaging with it, you know? But when you take the lens of, like, I know everything and here are all the things I know and here are all the things I have to do or. And you just kind of take it away and then you're just, You're. It's literally like the world is new.

Jackson Adams [03:02:34] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:02:35] And odd does come into the picture because you don't know. You're honestly like, well, who knows? And how about that tree over, like, all of a sudden the world. World is alive again and, you know, there's mystery and awe and all those things. And I think awe has one of those. It's one of those, I think, things that when you experience it makes you actually more present, which is like the opposite of Mormonism. I think Mormonism is like you're trying

Jackson Adams [03:03:05] to think in the future all the time.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:06] Yes.

Jackson Adams [03:03:07] Right.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:08] And that's what I'm hearing from both of you. I think in some way is just much more, you know, in a being place as opposed to this incessant doing and overthinking and all the things. Would you say that so.

Clare Adams [03:03:24] Absolutely. I think we're definitely both more present. Certainly I am. And yeah, like you said this, the world is new. It's like you're seeing things for the first time and I can find joy. And on things that before I would have just been like, eh.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:37] Yeah.

Clare Adams [03:03:37] Like, I mean, I've always found awe in music, but I've never really been much of an art person. And suddenly I'm like, art is incredible. I love looking at art and thinking like, this is how I Perceive it? How would they? What was their intention? And everyone can view things differently. And still. And also something we've been working on, and Britt talks a lot about this is like creating those spiritual experiences for yourself or those feelings of awe. You can still connect with yourself in that way. And I've had some really cool experiences with that.

Clare Adams [03:04:15] Like, for example, I was doing yoga with my cousins out in nature, and just feeling my body in the grass was incredibly breathtaking to me. It made me emotional and. And it wasn't breathtaking because it was like, oh, this is the spirit giving me a spiritual confirmation that God created this earth. It was like this. Like, I am a human being, a part of this Earth, and I feel one with the Earth. And it was incredibly moving for me. And I've continued to have experiences like that where I just get to be and just experience being a human and not have to attribute or assign my feelings to a higher power.

Jackson Adams [03:04:59] It is super fun to learn about things and not have to try to cram them into my teeny, tiny worldview. I find a lot of joy in that. And similarly, a couple weeks ago, I came across Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. What would you call it? Speech monologue? Maybe. I don't know, but it's about a photo that was taken from a spacecraft many thousands of miles away from the Earth. And the Earth looks like this, you know, tiny. And he's talking about how everything we've ever known, every person we've ever known, lives on that pale blue dot. And listening to him talk about it, the best way to describe it is it's a spiritual experience, you know, connecting with reality like that.

John Dehlin [03:05:53] Yeah, yeah. There's a beauty of connectedness to life that doesn't require supernatural dogma, necessarily, or corporate, religiously imposed theology like quarters.

Jackson Adams [03:06:14] Wait, what do you mean corporate? Corporate theology. Sorry, that's where my mind went.

John Dehlin [03:06:19] What's quarters?

Jackson Adams [03:06:19] The court. Never mind. Yeah, yeah, My mind went with corporate theology. Yeah, Fiscal quarters. That's what I should have said.

John Dehlin [03:06:32] No, no, no. So, okay, and again, y' all are still in Utah county, right? And my guess is your family and friends all still remain believers for the most part. So the. Do you want to talk about whether you've come out to them, whether it's been awkward, whether they're going to be potentially troubled or disturbed by this episode? Any of that?

Coming Out as Non-Believers and Moving Forward

Clare Adams [03:06:56] Yeah, we've come out to everybody in our life about it. Like. Like I mentioned earlier, it was a. I think, a complete blindside to everyone in our life. And everyone has been very kind and loving. There have been maybe a few comments that have been hurtful for the most part. Everyone's been very gracious and good about respecting boundaries. We're incredibly blessed with the friends and the family that we have in our life. There will definitely be family members and some friends who will be uncomfortable that we're doing this and will hear things that they don't agree with. But like we expressed at the beginning, it's not our intention at all to hurt anyone, has nothing to do with anyone personally. We love everyone in our life and we're incredibly grateful for them and their love.

Jackson Adams [03:08:04] I think at first when we told everyone we deeply wanted everyone to look into it with us and we could all leave, you know, together in a mass exodus style. Right. And we quickly learned that that wasn't going to be the case. Right. So I wrote, it's so natural.

John Dehlin [03:08:24] You're just like, hey, you respect us, we're smart. You didn't know. We found some stuff. Surely you'll want to learn. And then when you do, you'll connect the dots and you'll see it just like us. I mean, it's the most natural chain of logic, and it pretty much almost never works out that way. Right.

Jackson Adams [03:08:43] Well, I think about my friend, one of my best friends from high school, he left the church and simultaneously came out as gay about six, six years ago, seven maybe. And, you know, I'm sure he went through the same thing. He's like, oh, I'm going to tell my friends this and they're going to understand and they're going to support me, you know, and unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Right. So, yeah, it just doesn't work that way. And so the lock is pretty tough.

Clare Adams [03:09:17] Tighter and tougher. Usually after people, people close to you come out and say, we don't believe this anymore, you tighten up and lock up tighter.

Jackson Adams [03:09:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wrote a letter, my version of the CES letter, and wanted my whole family to read it, you know, and all my friends and no one

John Dehlin [03:09:37] did, you know, and those letters almost never get read.

Jackson Adams [03:09:41] They don't work. Yeah, they just don't work.

John Dehlin [03:09:43] I try to work people, they just don't listen.

Margi Dehlin [03:09:46] But maybe the letter was for you. I mean, sometimes writing the letter. Yeah, it can be also.

Jackson Adams [03:09:52] Yeah, it is. It was super therapeutic. But I think kind of my biggest healing experience in this area was we went on a family vacation together to the Oregon coast and. And my brother, the one that younger than me, we're very, very Very, very, very close. And he's my best friend in the whole world. And this has been really painful for him. And for that, I'm sorry, you know, but we were out and we were walking on the beach at night and it was dark, and he turned to me out of the blue. We weren't even talking about this. And he said, jack, I don't understand what you're going through right now, but I just want you to know that I know your heart and I know that this is an authentic journey that you're going on.

Jackson Adams [03:10:51] And all my anger at him for not wanting to look at the truth melted away. And I just realized that you don't need people in your life that think the same thing as you do. You just need people in your life that care about you, you know, and so I don't think he knew how meaningful that was to me.

Jackson Adams [03:11:14] Yeah, but it was, you know, and so we try, you know, to, to just be respectful. And we're here when people are ready to talk about it because they will be, you know, not all of them and not all at once, but they aren't going to want to talk to us if we're taking pot shots at their belief all the time and, and making fun of their beliefs all the time.

John Dehlin [03:11:36] So. Amen to that, Clare.

Clare Adams [03:11:42] Yeah, I agree with everything he said.

John Dehlin [03:11:47] So any final thoughts or messages or learnings that you want to, you guys want to share as we're, as we're kind of nearing the end, anything you wanted to make sure and say, did

Margi Dehlin [03:12:02] you have anything to clarify? How long ago, like, how recent is this? You're just, you're being like public about it. Uh huh. You're. Shh.

Jackson Adams [03:12:12] A little over a year ago now.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:14] So it's been about.

Jackson Adams [03:12:15] Okay, it's been like 13 or 14 months.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:17] So you've been able. Well, so maybe we'll just take a minute and we'll do maybe rebuilding a little. Sure.

Healing, Identity, and Life After Mormonism

John Dehlin [03:12:27] Did y' all consider staying? I. I want to come right to you, Margi. Did y' all consider staying in the church as non believers? Just.

Jackson Adams [03:12:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:12:33] We call it pimos. Physically and mentally out and then. Right to you, Margi.

Jackson Adams [03:12:38] I think the biggest thing keeping us from being PMOs is we. So we appreciate all the cultural things about the church getting together around Christmas time, doing things for each other. And so, yeah, you go through that phase where it's like, I kind of still want to hang out with these people. You know, it's really hard to connect when you don't share the dogma of the doctrine, but then two. I think the biggest reason is we didn't want to confuse our kids.

Jackson Adams [03:13:07] You know, go to church and then come home and try to say, hey, you were taught this today. Here's the other side of that, you know, and just like, constantly be trying to deprogram. You've talked about that before, John.

Jackson Adams [03:13:25] And so I think it was mostly just a demonstration of love to our kids that we would kind of fall on this sword for them a little bit and take the heat for it and let them grow up in an environment where they get to believe what they want to believe, not just what mom and dad tell them they should believe.

Clare Adams [03:13:45] Believe.

John Dehlin [03:13:46] Or what the community social pressure exactly. Sort of puts on them. Right.

Jackson Adams [03:13:50] Yep. Anything to add to that?

Clare Adams [03:13:53] You said that perfectly.

Margi Dehlin [03:13:54] Okay. Okay, so maybe. Maybe I'll frame rebuilding like this. What are a few things that have been healing for you? It can be individually or together that you've let go of. So things that you feel like have been healing for you. It can be conditioning, beliefs, roles, identities that you have let go of recently since, you know, your. Your shift that have been healing for you.

Clare Adams [03:14:38] I think for me, I'm still working on the identity part, still trying to figure out who I am outside of Mormonism and my belief that I used to have of, like, my purpose as a woman. But letting go of the conditioning of, like, that my body is like a cause for sin or bad thoughts has been incredibly healing for me. Being able to wear what I want to wear, to just love my body how it is and appreciate my body has been incredibly helpful and freeing.

Clare Adams [03:15:25] Letting go of a lot of judgment that I feel is instilled in the church, even though I don't think anybody really wants to or tries to be judgmental, I feel that it's something that naturally comes with the culture.

Clare Adams [03:15:40] And it's been really nice to like, to be able to look at people and not have the first thought be, oh, are they Mormon? Are they wearing garments? Do they have tattoos? Do they have piercings? Like, to just look at a human being and appreciate them for who they are authentically and how they're expressing themselves has been really enjoyable for me.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:02] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [03:16:04] Yeah. I think for me, the idea that I can still be masculine and show emotion, which has obviously come out during this.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:19] Love it.

Jackson Adams [03:16:20] But, you know, I. I've. I've probably cried more this. These past two years than the rest of my other 27 years before this combined, you know, it.

John Dehlin [03:16:30] That sounds healthy.

Jackson Adams [03:16:32] Yeah. It's just been really. I Don't know. I don't have to pack it down anymore, you know, and it's been, that's been really healing for me.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:43] Yeah. How about. So let's go the opposite direction. Things maybe that you've added to your life that have been healing, enriching. Britt is a perfect example. Right. Of that in her book. Or it can be resources, it can be practices, it can be whatever you like. Something.

John Dehlin [03:17:05] And just so we're clear, the book is no nonsense spirituality by Brit Hartley. She also has a TikTok channel shout out to her. We're going to have her back on, but buy her book. It's amazing. Go ahead.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:15] It is amazing. So, yeah, things that you've added, tried. Yeah. Practices, whatever that you feel like have been healing, enriching. Yeah. Valuable in the healing process.

Clare Adams [03:17:31] In the last bit for me, it's been, I think, well, we can both relate on this is like taking care of myself for me and like my, my physical self. Like I've really enjoyed the past year or so getting more into working out, getting really interested in like how do I strengthen my body. I want a strong body and eating well and just enjoying like being healthy to live like the highest quality life that I can. I've really enjoyed learning more about science like evolution and the solar system and how things work. That's been really enjoyable for me. And philosophies become really interesting and learning, huh? Yeah, just learning and without having to cram it into a specific worldview and pick and choose things like, oh, this kind of works with the worldview, but to just be able to look at it for what it is has been really cool.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:39] Yeah,

Jackson Adams [03:18:41] yeah. Something that we've started doing recently is the Uplift Kids lessons.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:50] That is John Ogden.

John Dehlin [03:18:51] John Ogden, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:52] Yeah.

Jackson Adams [03:18:54] So it's a really cool program. It's secular where you can just teach and learn about different values and morals and belief systems and things like that. So we started doing that with our four year old. The one year old will pick it up too, and she's a little bit older.

Jackson Adams [03:19:11] But before we start, we put a candle in the middle of the table and we let our four year old help us light the candle. And that's like kind of a symbol of we're going to learn something. And so just trying to tap into that sense of like traditional and ritual and you know, give him that, you know, if we're going to take away, you know, all the, all the ritual and tradition in his community, you know, we feel like we owe that to him to Instill some other things. You know, I think the other thing is that we always get stuck on wanting, like, for, like, experiences.

Jackson Adams [03:19:51] You know, I served a mission, and it was amazing. I want my son to go out on a humanitarian trip, you know, and it's like a light for, like. For, like, experience, and it just isn't possible

Clare Adams [03:20:03] there.

Jackson Adams [03:20:03] Our kids are going to have their own upbringing that is going to be an amalgamation of good and bad as well, and just giving them experiences and opportunities to develop in the. Into the human beings that's. That they want to be. It's not going to look like our journey, you know, so letting go of that, that's kind of going back to the letting go thing again. But that's been helpful.

Margi Dehlin [03:20:28] Yeah, but it can show up as an ad because it can be, like, a practice. You notice it comes up, you have these expectations, or maybe you have, and then you remind yourself of. Yeah, yeah. Okay, how about this? Is there something that you feel proud of in this process of kind of becoming of yourself? It can also be of each other, but at least minimally, do yourself. Don't just do each other, if that's okay. Yeah, just something that you celebrate.

Clare Adams [03:21:07] I think for me, I've celebrated just. Feeling, like, more powerful than I ever gave myself credit for, like, standing up for myself, not letting someone or something define me, and just being authentic and, like, standing up for truth, which is what I was taught. And I'm really proud of myself for doing something really hard. And I'm proud of Jackson for handling it so incredibly well. He was so gracious to me. He never once made me feel bad at all. He never made me feel stupid or unworthy. And it's been really beautiful and rewarding to watch him be more his authentic self. When he was trying to fit his personality into the guidelines of the church, it really stifled him and dulled his light. And so it's been a joy to just see him shining bright and all of his authentic parts.

Margi Dehlin [03:22:22] Yes. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:22:27] And you'll feel like it's brought your marriage closer together.

Jackson Adams [03:22:32] Oh, yeah. Weirdly, way better.

Margi Dehlin [03:22:34] Yeah.

Clare Adams [03:22:35] We didn't have a bad marriage. It was a good marriage. But it's.

John Dehlin [03:22:39] How can that be? Like, we're taught wickedness never was happiness, and we're taught that leaving the church is the most. Literally the most wicked thing you can do. How could that quote, wickedness bring you closer?

Jackson Adams [03:22:52] I think the. The biggest thing for us is being together is now a choice, not an obligation. Before, you know, it's like we're Sealed. Oh, wow. There are kids in the mix. Yikes. You know, we got to make this work. And it's a little bit more forced. When we came out on the other side, I think both of us had that question, like, are we. Are we going to stay together? Should we be together? Right. And we both, like, kind of wanted to, like, talk about it, but didn't know how to, like, bring it up. But that's the conclusion that we came to, that right now we choose to be together, and it's just a much healthier place to be.

Margi Dehlin [03:23:32] Yeah. And I think that makes sense that that came up, because in many ways, if there is an antithesis to where we've been, it is choice. And so, yes, you were married, and let's just say with the language, with conditioned selves, you made the choice to be married. But many times it is important to go back to things where you can. It's not always possible, and give yourselves the choice with the present selves that you are. Right. And so that makes a lot of sense to me that we recognize that we have choice. Yeah. Now, I want to go back to you. You don't get to escape the question of something that maybe you feel proud of. And also maybe if there's anything that. That stands out about Clare, too.

Jackson Adams [03:24:25] Sure. Yeah.

Clare Adams [03:24:26] I think

Jackson Adams [03:24:30] for. For myself, I am. I'm proud that I was willing to look at this. There were many times, you know, especially early on in the deconstruction process, where you just kind of want to turn back and. And forget that it ever happened.

Jackson Adams [03:24:51] Take the blue pill or the red pill. I can't remember which one makes you forget everything. I think it's the blue pill. But, yeah, blue pill got a nod from John. So there were times where I wanted to take the blue pill.

Jackson Adams [03:25:05] But I'm proud of myself for valuing my authenticity and my integrity and my honesty to be here today, even though it was hard. And then for Clare. Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've expressed it, you know, but just so proud to call her my wife. You know, it's really. It's really been an incredible thing to watch, knowing her as well as I do, that she was willing to go through the same thing and look at these things. And it was. Yeah, it was. It was inspiring to me, and so I'm proud of her for it.

Margi Dehlin [03:25:47] Yeah.

Clare Adams [03:25:48] Thank you.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

Margi Dehlin [03:25:49] Thank you both.

John Dehlin [03:25:52] Well, we consider it, you know, no one, unless you're in a high demand religion like Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, ultra Orthodox Judaism, Islam, like, certain, you Know, like, no one's going to understand how courageous it is just to tell your story authentically. So we. We get it. So we want to just tell you both how lovely it has been to get to know you and also how courageous it is and how grateful we are that you would be vulnerable, but also willing to share your story. Generous to share your story.

Jackson Adams [03:26:29] Yeah, likewise. We appreciate you guys.

Clare Adams [03:26:32] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:26:33] And y' all been thinking about a podcast. Do you want to even talk about that yet, or is it too early?

Jackson Adams [03:26:38] It's pretty early, but we're. We're thinking about talking to some people that have more to say on that reconstruction side of things, kind of how we ended this podcast. So our emails will be part of this in the notes or whatever. And, you know, if you're interested in maybe being an interviewee on something like that, we'd love to talk to you.

John Dehlin [03:27:00] So you all might start a podcast around reconstruction, correct? You're thinking about that?

Jackson Adams [03:27:05] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:27:06] Okay.

Clare Adams [03:27:07] Considering.

Margi Dehlin [03:27:08] Considering.

John Dehlin [03:27:09] And not just for Mormons. Is that right?

Jackson Adams [03:27:11] Correct. Yeah. I think we'd find a lot of value in talking to really anyone that has been through something similar, you know, any sort of deconstruction process.

John Dehlin [03:27:22] Well, the more the merrier. That's what we think. Right, Marky? Maybe.

Margi Dehlin [03:27:25] Absolutely. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:27:27] Although it's a big decision. So, anyway, yeah, we appreciate.

Jackson Adams [03:27:31] Yeah, we appreciate.

John Dehlin [03:27:32] Do you all want to share your emails or do you.

Jackson Adams [03:27:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:27:34] Okay. Do you want to say them just for those who are viewing? Listening now?

Jackson Adams [03:27:37] Yeah, Mine's Jackson. That's spelled with a ck. M as in man. Adams.gmail.com.

John Dehlin [03:27:44] and who do you want to reach out? Just anyone.

Jackson Adams [03:27:47] Anyone that would be interested in talking about the reconstruction phase of, you know, post deconstruction.

John Dehlin [03:27:54] Okay.

Clare Adams [03:27:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:27:56] All right.

Clare Adams [03:27:56] Do you want to give your email, no pressure.

Margi Dehlin [03:27:58] You don't.

Clare Adams [03:28:00] Jackson will share with us. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:03] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:28:03] All right.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:04] That's great. We honor you both. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us.

Jackson Adams [03:28:08] Thank you.

Clare Adams [03:28:09] Thank you for having us.

John Dehlin [03:28:11] All right, well, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Margi, thanks for being co host.

Margi Dehlin [03:28:16] Yes, my pleasure, as always.

John Dehlin [03:28:19] Huge thanks to Julia and Maven and Gerardo and Brooklyn and all our staff, our board. We've had a great year in 2024. We've got great things for 2025. Couldn't do this without our donors. So thanks so much to everyone who donates. The bulk of our donations and our revenue comes from just people going to mormonstories.org signing up and becoming a monthly donor.

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John Dehlin [03:29:00] Yeah. You can also support us by subscribing to these channels. TikTok, Instagram, TikTok. For now, we don't know if in a month TikTok will still be there, but Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, subscribing, liking these episodes, sharing with others. We love your feedback either in the comments section of whatever platform you're on or emailing us@mormonstoriesmail.com and then finally, we renovated our application system to become a guest on Mormon Stories. Y' all filled out your application. That's how we learned about you. Did a little video together.

John Dehlin [03:29:34] And so if you want to be a guest on Mormon Stories, the way to do that is to go to MormonStories.org, click on the application, fill it out, make us a video, send it to us. We can't accept everyone, but, you know, in the right time, when it's right, when the universe aligns, we would love to have you on. And if not us, maybe we can get you on Jackson and Clare's podcast or. Or both or others. So anyway, thanks again for joining us. Happy, you know, happy holidays. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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