Welcome and Recap of Michele and Mike's Story

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John Dehlin. It is September 10, 2026 and today we're in part three of our three part series with I'm kind of code labeling it the perfect Mormon family. No one's perfect.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] But we are here in part three of our epic interview with Mike and Michele Siemens. In part one we talked about their idyllic Mormon upbringings. Michele in Salt Lake county and and Michael in the LA area. We call it the Disney Mormon dream. We talked about their lives up through high school admissions in part one and then they meet on their missions. And then in part two, we just spent two good hours talking about their idyllic Mormon families where they have six children and have lots of entrepreneurial rises and falls in Reno and in California and in Dublin, Ohio and eventually at Microsoft. And as we left them at the end of part two, they are, you know, he's working at the top levels of Microsoft.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] They not only had lived in Redmond, Washington but had graduated to a farm life like a Microsoft farm life in Duval where he's about to get called into the stake presidency. In the Redmond Stake, she's been serving young women's president, you know, stake callings, all the callings.

John Dehlin [00:01:33] It's looking like they're about to be called as mission presidents and eventually general authorities or temple presidents. That's the trajectory that this family's on with two small exceptions. We left off part two with Michele listening to Christian popular music and that's a little edgy. We're talking Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith here. It's a little sketchy. And then their second oldest child ends up coming home early from a mission to Houston of all places.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] But he's also about to get called in a state presidency. Will they. So will they or will they not become mission president, mission president's wife? Will they or will they not become general authorities, temple presidents? You know, we'll see. But, but you're in for part three and basically this is going to be how do the wheels come off the wagon of an idyllic orthodox in it to win it? Mormon family of eight.

John Dehlin [00:02:35] And you know, how do they deal with that and when the wheels come off the wagon, how do they reconstruct and what type of life do they reconstruct? So I'm here with my co host Margi. Hey Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:47] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] Thanks for joining us. If you haven't listened to parts one and two, please go back and watch part one, then part two and then you can enjoy fully part three really quickly. Please subscribe and like donate@more MormonStories.org donate and we love your feedback on the channel. So with any further ado. Without any further ado. Michele and Mike Siemens, welcome back to part three of your epic Mormon story.

Mike Seamons [00:03:15] Thank you for giving us A Part 3. It's an important part.

Michele Seamons [00:03:18] If you liked us before, you're gonna like us more now.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] I will say that this is giving kind of Donna Showalter, Leah and Cody young vibes. Like every once in a while we interview these golden Mormon famil that also have a deconstruction and a reconstruction part to their story. And this is like old school Mormon stories. Super long form with the family, the golden Mormon family, where something has a twist. So where do we go from here? Last we left. You're at a farm. Are you farming, Michele?

Michele Seamons [00:03:52] I'm farming, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Is it organic or not organic?

Michele Seamons [00:03:55] Organic.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] It is organic.

Michele Seamons [00:03:56] It is for sure organic.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Did you see the movie? What is it, the flu?

Michele Seamons [00:04:00] Cried. Do you not like cried? I sobbed because I wanted it. I mean, I wanted to. I did. I actually did. My farm was idyllic. And so you live in a bothel. The perfect Duval.

John Dehlin [00:04:15] Perfect Duval. You live in a Duval.

Michele Seamons [00:04:17] Perfect place to safely unravel.

John Dehlin [00:04:20] Okay, wait. So, yeah, last we left it, you were about to get called into a stake presidency. Your first son had a successful mission in Chile, and now your second son goes to Houston, of all places. What's not to live about? Houston comes home a couple. Only a couple months in. And the way we left it is y' all were very disappointed because that doesn't fit into the Mormon dream.

Michele Seamons [00:04:45] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:04:46] So let's pick up there. I'm sure that wasn't fun for him.

Michele Seamons [00:04:49] Talk about to have that reception to help ease that reception with the ward

John Dehlin [00:04:56] because the ward is invested.

Michele Seamons [00:04:59] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] In your family.

Michele Seamons [00:05:00] Yeah. Yeah. And we have a perception. So you bore your testimony. Do you remember?

John Dehlin [00:05:08] You'll have to tell a story. You'll have to carry it.

Michele Seamons [00:05:10] He bore his testimony about how much he loved our son and how he did not want our son to face what he had seen with other kids that had come home.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] Because. What was that? What did you see?

Michele Seamons [00:05:27] Kind of a Mormon shunning and just so much disappointment and an inability to trust this person because of their lack of, you know, conforming and adhering to the commitment they had made. And he basically begged the Lord to not do that, to be gentle with it, to be gentle and to love our son.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] And I'm already struck by that because in the last episode as we're ending, I was sensing a lot of disappointment on your end for him coming home early.

Michele Seamons [00:06:03] I think we had prepared ourselves to see things from two different perspectives that are both right. And initially we handled it completely wrong.

Mike Seamons [00:06:19] And I think we pretty quickly realized we would choose him always.

Michele Seamons [00:06:25] It wasn't an easy, it wasn't a quick. But I think he always felt we loved him.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] But he probably also felt like he was disappointing you on some level.

Michele Seamons [00:06:34] For sure. Because he has family and friends and a ward family and you have to go to church and they say, well, didn't you go on a mission? Yeah, that was a quick one. You know, and even to this day he'll say, yeah, I served a Mormon mission in Houston. Which I'm like, yes, you did. It was a short one, but you did it. You saw and you said, no way.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] When he came home, did he tell you why he came home early and what did he say? Or do you want to share?

Michele Seamons [00:07:07] He was dating someone that was not a member of the church and he loved her and he wasn't ready. He wasn't prepared and not in the way that other than through our family teachings. I mean, he had all of that knowledge. But personally, I don't think he was invested.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] He was in the mission for. Maybe for you guys and for social reasons.

Michele Seamons [00:07:31] For sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:32] Not because he really wanted to go.

Mike Seamons [00:07:33] No, for sure. That for sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:35] Okay. That's important because in Mormonism, it's not really an option to not go.

Mike Seamons [00:07:41] Not in our family. I mean, it's. He was. He's one of the first grand. He's the second grandchild on my parents side and he's the only grandchild, you know, second grandchild on her side. And it's like this is like you

John Dehlin [00:07:56] have a duty, what you do.

Mike Seamons [00:07:57] Yeah, duty. We learned at this time that duty is not an effective motivator for our kids. Somehow it was for us. And it kind of. Yeah, it kind of genned out. Like it's not an effective motivator.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:13] It gened out.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] I've never. It gened out.

Michele Seamons [00:08:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] So what year did he come home early?

Mike Seamons [00:08:19] 2015.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:19] 2015.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Okay.

Returning Home and Early Faith Doubts

Mike Seamons [00:08:21] So he'd come home and we would still have two years before I would be called in the state presidency in 2017.

John Dehlin [00:08:27] Okay.

Michele Seamons [00:08:28] Did we go to New Zealand before?

Mike Seamons [00:08:29] That was 2018. So it was. I was in the state presidency when we went there, so. And this is when Michele was already heavily evangelical Mormon. The farm was this place that she. It was a haven for her. Like, this is the first time also in our marriage that all six kids left the house for enough hours of the day that she had a life. So we have to also put that into. This is the first time we had all six in school. And here she had a farm. And we didn't just do a farm where we were, like. We like to look at it, like, within the first six months, we had four horses, we had three cows, we had 20 chickens, we had three goats, two pigs. Like, we were, like. We were all in, like, the same way. We were in it to win it. What were you farming, a family?

Michele Seamons [00:09:23] Yeah, we were farming. No, we started with vegetables, and I turned to flowers. Commercial flower farm.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:30] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:09:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:32] For the essential oil companies, basically.

Michele Seamons [00:09:34] No, just bouquets. We sold to Met Market.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:37] Yep.

Michele Seamons [00:09:38] So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Oh, fun.

Michele Seamons [00:09:40] Yeah. So at first, but that was a long time coming. It took us a long time. Farming is a. It's a trial by error.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] It's its own thing.

Discovering New Perspectives Beyond General Conference

Michele Seamons [00:09:49] But I had my next speaker on eight hours a day, and I was taking in, for the first time, different content. And it wasn't. It wasn't General conference.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] What was it?

Michele Seamons [00:10:03] And I was the young women's president at the time, and it was podcasts.

Mike Seamons [00:10:11] Were you doing Faith Matters at the time?

Michele Seamons [00:10:12] I was doing Faith Matters.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] Liberal Mormon podcasts.

Michele Seamons [00:10:16] Yeah, it was pretty edgy.

Mike Seamons [00:10:18] And Annie Downs.

Michele Seamons [00:10:19] Annie Downs, who is a Christian podcaster. Yeah, a lot. I just was very open.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] I don't think Faith Matters. Did it exist back then in 2018?

Mike Seamons [00:10:28] No, I think it started 2015.

John Dehlin [00:10:30] No, it didn't. Not that Morning Matters, maybe with Dan Witherspoon.

Mike Seamons [00:10:33] She didn't listen to that.

Michele Seamons [00:10:34] I just opened myself up.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] Okay.

Michele Seamons [00:10:37] And I filled my time with other thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] So was it Evangelical Christian podcasts?

Michele Seamons [00:10:44] Anything?

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Okay.

Michele Seamons [00:10:45] I literally opened myself to anything.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] Okay.

Mike Seamons [00:10:48] You started doing a lot of audiobooks, too.

Michele Seamons [00:10:50] Yeah, I started listening to books that, you know, I read along with my children as they were growing up. But the first time I felt like I'm reading for me, and I read Orson Scott Card, and boy, oh, boy, did he put a crack in that.

John Dehlin [00:11:05] Which book?

Michele Seamons [00:11:05] Oh, My Seventh Son.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] Oh.

Michele Seamons [00:11:08] It's a series that he literally writes about kind of Joseph Smith. Yeah, That's a series that all Mormons should read.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] Oh, okay. Did that challenge your testimony?

Michele Seamons [00:11:22] It did.

John Dehlin [00:11:22] Why?

Michele Seamons [00:11:23] Because he's a fantastic writer, and he wrote about something when I went, oh, interesting. This is a different way to look at this. And it wasn't negative or derogatory. It was just a Different way. So I had to change my lens and I took off the lens that I had kept for 40 plus years.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] You took off the orthodox lens?

Mike Seamons [00:11:46] Yeah, Just a very kind of orthodox narrative. I think it gave you the first time. You were like, maybe that narrative has some different twists and turns. Yes. Like, we hadn't gotten into the LDS essays, the gospel topic essays yet.

Michele Seamons [00:12:04] This is not great.

Mike Seamons [00:12:04] Saints wouldn't come out for a couple years. Like we were. We were still obviously in it to win it. But she was starting to.

Michele Seamons [00:12:12] I was feeling my way into, like,

John Dehlin [00:12:16] wow, your eyes were being opened.

Michele Seamons [00:12:18] They were. They were being opened and in fantastic ways. And I was feeling joy. I was joyful.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] And it wasn't all in the correlated Mormon no areas for the first time.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:30] Well, isn't it such a big aha to realize it's a lens?

Michele Seamons [00:12:34] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:35] Like there is. Because otherwise it's reality. A lens is just reality. So the minute you're talking about it, like really quick, I just put down the lens. But it's a big moment to realize

Michele Seamons [00:12:47] it's a big moment.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:48] Wow. This is something.

Michele Seamons [00:12:49] Because as a young women's president, it's the first time when my bishop says to me, wait, you and I are not on the same page. You should pray until you see it the way I do.

John Dehlin [00:13:00] Oh.

Michele Seamons [00:13:00] And I went.

John Dehlin [00:13:02] You had a difference with your bishop.

Michele Seamons [00:13:03] Yeah. The first time over.

John Dehlin [00:13:05] What do you want to say?

Michele Seamons [00:13:06] It was about service project. Service project. I mean, it was so non important and I was not used to being challenged because I was trusted. And this new lens said, no, no, no, no, no. I've got this. I'm capable of figuring out what. You've actually set me apart to be in charge of these young women. I can figure out the service project or it was a fundraiser or something. You don't need to get in the weeds of this. And he was a little taken back that I had such a. It was starting to give me a voice and. Yeah, yeah. Then it's all Mike.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] Okay.

Mike Seamons [00:13:51] It's all me.

Michele Seamons [00:13:52] Yeah, it's all you.

Mike Seamons [00:13:55] No, it was. I mean, then we were kind of getting into 2017, so we'd been on the farm for four years and, you know, we'd had it like our family was growing up on a farm. Like that was. The goal is how do we. And we. Like the farm. During this period of my life was how do I create the most awe and wonder on a piece of property that is humanly possible? And we got really good at curating experiences of wonder and awe. Like, really good at it. And we even got so good that we would bring in, like, my siblings and their kids would come every summer.

Mike Seamons [00:14:30] We'd call it the Seattle Summer. And they would come and experience all the things that we had created for our family. We shared it with all of our nieces and nephews and their families where, you know, we lived on a river. And every year I would use my bobcat to grade in, like, a massive beach experience on the river, the Snoqualmie River. And sometimes I get stuck and I'd have to, you know, pull myself out with heavy equipment. But the whole purpose of the. Of the grading it was so that I could put a water slide in, like a farm water slide in that was 300ft long and shot into the river.

Mike Seamons [00:15:06] And I was just looking. I made motorcycle tracks for the kids to ride their bikes and to jump and do things. Like getting the animals was. It was a huge thing because now we had all these lives to take care of. And we were like, well, we're not going to take care of them. Because the whole reason we bought the farm is to teach our kids to love the outdoors more than the indoors. Because we were. I mean, this was. They were all teenagers. They all wanted to be on. You know, I worked for Xbox previous to this. I had moved on into the commercial side by this time.

Mike Seamons [00:15:38] But they wanted screen time. And we're like, that is better than screen time. Go outside. It's way better. And we got them to believe it. Like, they would go out and they would saddle up the horses. They would be with the goats.

Mike Seamons [00:15:54] They were immersed in the nature of the farm. And the farm required a lot of work. So they were chopping BlackBerry bushes off the fence lines all the time and mowing pastures. We just watched our kids grow from these children into people that were taking care of things that were big, like, huge. And we did it. We broke our chores up into. One of our kids did Good Morning Farm every morning. And their job was to go and start the day all the animals.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:25] Oh, my gosh, I love that so much. Good Morning Farm.

Mike Seamons [00:16:27] And it was. They'd feed them, they would love them, they would turn them out. They would get the farm into daytime operations. And then somebody did Goodnight Farm, which was reversing it, putting all the animals to be bed, you know, giving them love, food and water. And. And there we had times where somebody forgot to do it or they didn't muck the stalls as part of Goodnight Farm. And it. But the fun, the amazing thing is, is everyone in the family felt it when somebody didn't do their part because somebody would come in the next morning and say, the stalls are not mucked. This is anarchy. Like, they would. They were really very passionate about. I'm not doing your job, you know, because I've got a job that I've got to do already.

Michele Seamons [00:17:11] Work as a team.

Mike Seamons [00:17:11] So they worked as a team. And it was like we. We just filled the farm with magical things. And, you know, and. And we. We would host a. Every Third of July, we'd host a farm fireworks that we'd invite all the. Mostly members of the church. We'd have 200 people on the farm, and we would put on the biggest extravaganza, Fourth of July, you know, love of the country, and a fireworks show that we learned over the years how to. How to buy and curate the best fireworks that we could. And we'd put on a big show on the farm. And it just was like. It was constant wonder. We really felt like people saw it

Identity as a Golden Mormon Family

Michele Seamons [00:17:48] and they thought we were pretty fantastic, and we thought we were too.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:52] Well, and this kind of ties back to the, ah, like, I feel like theme in your story.

Michele Seamons [00:17:59] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:00] And it also connects to where you're headed. Like, it's a taste. It's almost. I mean, I know it's been all the way through, but you're getting back to it. You're getting back to wanting these times and places in nature and providing it for not only your kids, but it also. So it's interesting because it's a little reconstructing, but you haven't actually deconstructed, but it is part of your reconstructing as well. So this is interesting.

Mike Seamons [00:18:29] Well, because we started like it was all about the feeling, like every. Everything we did on the farm was how will this. How will this create energy? And I call it the feeling. I'm not trying to be cryptic. I called it the gift of the Holy Ghost. My whole life, like, this was the Holy Ghost. The way it felt in my body is all of these moments where I would feel awe and wonder. I would feel the Holy Ghost in my body. It was the warmth in my chest, the feeling of total confirmation and contentment, the, you know, chills in my spine.

Mike Seamons [00:19:03] It was a feeling I was so familiar with. I had felt it my entire life, and I'd felt it constantly guiding me and leading me and bringing things to my remembrance. Like, I felt like I was very, very in tune with the Holy Ghost. And the farm made me even stronger. Like I could get the Holy Ghost to show up on the farm all the time. And I could bring people over and without. We didn't sit down. Like when I was a missionary and I didn't go through the identifying the spirit step, but I would just, I would expose them to. We, you know, harvested apples and we were all surrounding a apple cider press. That's an old fashioned press. And together as families, we would press apple cider.

John Dehlin [00:19:46] This is Margi porn.

Michele Seamons [00:19:47] This is what this is. It was pretty awesome.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:51] This is true.

Mike Seamons [00:19:52] Like, we, when we had people over, they ate food that she grew. Like, and all of the food that we ate, we grew, including the beef and the turkey and the chicken.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:02] Like, we, how long was this era? How long was the farm?

Mike Seamons [00:20:06] 2013 to 2021. So it was eight years.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:09] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:09] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:20:10] That we learned how to, how to do this thing and how to make magic and how to, how to make the Holy Ghost show up, like on command. Like in this space that we loved and that everyone that we brought to it, felt it and they walked away going, this is magical. Like, this feels so magical. And then they would go and we would then have to do all the work to make sure it was good the next day. Because it doesn't all happen by itself.

Michele Seamons [00:20:38] Yeah. But I think that's also where people had a view of us, that they wanted to hear more from you. And that's I think what led to the next.

Mike Seamons [00:20:48] Because I was very not normal. Now like I'm the farmer guy, you know, who takes kids, takes young women on high adventure to amazing places and gives them like the young men's high adventure experience. Plus and I'm a guy who, who teaches high school senior firesides every month. And the youth come to our house like constantly because we're now their confidence and their mentors and across the whole stake. And so when they were looking for a new stake presidency in 2017, like it was an easy shoe because I'd just given a talk previous. I was now, I was now edgy, but I was very, I'm going to change this from the inside edgy. Like I knew what we were getting wrong in the church and I knew how to fix it.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] Wait, so you haven't talked about that at all? So what did you from as you're getting called into a stake presidency? Having served as bishop in one of the most elite wards in the church, frankly, wealthiest, most elite. What are you noticing isn't right in the church? You haven't talked at all about that.

Mike Seamons [00:21:46] Yeah, it was because of all the exposure I had with the youth, they were not picking it up. Like, they, they were not feeling it. They were not. They were not impacted by it the way that it had impacted us. And we could feel it and see it. And we. We would then go and say, so what we're gonna like, let's leave all of the kind of the structural system and we're just gonna go create experiences to help them feel an intersection with this power that's bigger than them. And. And they would come and they would feel that, and then they would say, yeah, but why this or why that?

Mike Seamons [00:22:23] And they now trusted us because we had experiences of awe, wonder, and the Holy Ghost with these kids constantly. And so they trusted us because they had felt these things with us that they then told us what wasn't working and why it wasn't working and that their friends didn't believe. And as Joseph Smith, really, the Saints books were coming out at this time. This was now kind of in this, you know, 2017 timeframe.

Michele Seamons [00:22:50] They have access. They have access to way more information than we exposed ourselves to at that age, and definitely not our parents. And so we were adapting. And we probably gave the most epic law of chastity talks in the chapel of that Stake center to the youth. And we had them in stitches and cheering. And the Stake Presidency is like, bring it down. But they were like, no, these people up there, they are speaking our language. And we brought it home and we taught it in ways that didn't make them feel less than or not normal for having the feelings and the thoughts and the things, which is where the

John Dehlin [00:23:40] church is now in its messaging. This 2017, you were ahead of. You were ahead of the crew.

Michele Seamons [00:23:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:23:48] I gave a talk in. To the priesthood leadership, the Stake priesthood leadership in 2017. They'd seen all this work I'd done with the youth, and she wasn't allowed to join me because she was not in the priesthood leadership group. But I, I went and I. My talk was called the why Generation. And I, I went through all this data that I had done to research, you know, what was happening with the rising generation. And, and I said, look, you know, through the world, you know, one in three people between 18 and 20, you know, nine are, are not staying with the church that they were born into. And in Washington, it's one in two. Like, it's like we are losing half of the people that we want to retain. And this was already. The data was already starting to show itself in this time frame.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] You were noticing the hemorrhaging.

Michele Seamons [00:24:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] The Mormon Church was losing its.

Mike Seamons [00:24:36] I mean, these kids that we would do, these high school senior fire firesides, only half of them would go on missions.

John Dehlin [00:24:40] And again, you've already kind of said it, but if you had to say what it was, was it the Internet?

Mike Seamons [00:24:46] Yes. Yeah. I mean, they just. They had. They had too much information and no one answering questions.

John Dehlin [00:24:52] So, like CES letter?

Mike Seamons [00:24:53] No, they didn't get into that.

Michele Seamons [00:24:55] But I think there was enough that didn't. I think it just emotionally and socially didn't sit well with them. I don't think all of them went that deep.

John Dehlin [00:25:07] There's like a cultural ethos with the new generations that the Transformers, they weren't interested.

Mike Seamons [00:25:13] And my whole punchline in that talk was they are not motivated by duty. I'd done. I was also working in Microsoft on a kind of a Gen Z product that we were doing with Hololens. And we were trying to get them to, you know, we were focusing on kind of young people at this time. And so I'd done a lot of research, just in my job too, of what this generation is motivated by. And I said, they're motivated by cause. And the cause that we need to motivate them with is the cause of Jesus Christ, not the cause of all this other stuff that we keep throwing at them.

Mike Seamons [00:25:45] Just, let's teach them how to want to be like Jesus. And that was my whole talk. But it was enough to stir people to go. They saw the problem. Nobody was talking about the problem. This guy's talking about the problem. Maybe he can help. And so when the stake president was called, I was called as his first counselor, as. As the guy who would then kind of lead the stake with the youth and how to help our youth. And I wrote a manifesto that was kind of what the stake operated under for 2017-2021. When I was released, that was called Save the Rising Generation. And it was.

Mike Seamons [00:26:24] It was my words in our collective stake presidency mission of if we don't do something, we will lose them. We need to do something. And we kind of created a here's all the stuff that we want to do to make, to help these young people feel a connection to something bigger than them.

Mike Seamons [00:26:43] And it became kind of the rallying cry of our stake. It got a little annoying because people felt like, what about the adults? And it was like, no, we're focused on the rising generation, the adults. We'll figure it out. These are the ones that we need to really figure out, we need to pay attention to. And then it became Kind of the mission of the Redmond stake for that, you know, the youth is always important.

Michele Seamons [00:27:05] You even changed because he listened and they trek. It was trek year. And he's like, these kids do not want to do trek. I'm listening. This is the last thing on the planet they want to do. And so. And even though that stake, they took trek to the next level, we would be in the Cascades with horses, and they set up an amazing experience for our kids. But you heard them. And he did a global pioneer experience for the youth in that stake, where

Mike Seamons [00:27:40] every family was a different country, led by a couple who have an affinity to that country, either mission, or they were born there.

Michele Seamons [00:27:48] And that the pioneering is happening all over. It's not just the pioneers. In the days of 47, you know, he opened it up, and so you started pushing some boundaries.

Mike Seamons [00:28:00] And it was a very global. I mean, Redmond is one of the most global cities that we've ever lived in. It's full of so many different nationalities. And so it was a good place and a good time to have this very kind of global approach.

Michele Seamons [00:28:15] Yeah. And our daughter gets called to Melbourne, Australia, on a mission, speaking Mandarin Chinese.

Mike Seamons [00:28:24] She was the next that would go.

Michele Seamons [00:28:25] And then our next son was called to Colombia speaking Spanish.

Mike Seamons [00:28:29] Well, so this kind of.

Michele Seamons [00:28:32] Yes.

Mike Seamons [00:28:32] This part of the story is, yeah, I am thriving in a stake presidency where I am being given a lot of leeway to help this stake, you know, save the rising generation, and a lot of support and a lot of trust to put on things that we've never done before, make them do them differently in ways that we can really reach these kids, help them feel this connection to this bigger thing.

Michele Seamons [00:28:53] You also let the women come into the stake meetings. Remember the stake auxiliary women.

Mike Seamons [00:28:58] I was like, why are the women not here every week? Why do we have high council meeting where there's no women? And then state council once a month? And so we flipped it where we had the women in three weeks of the month and then not one of the weeks.

Mike Seamons [00:29:14] I got us to put women into the speaking circuit. Usually it's monthly high council speakers, and it's all men. And I was like, why are the women not speaking? So we'd have the primary president and the Relief Society president and the young women's president, and the stake, they were in the rotation with the high counselors, and they would be the keynote speaker on those Sundays where most people tune out anyways.

Mike Seamons [00:29:40] I mean, it's just we were trying to do things that were, how do we help? How do we do it different? And I just had this. I mean, here I still felt chosen. I still felt like I am God's noble and great one, and I can help this organization change and change in such beautiful ways. I only saw all the positive of change. I didn't see any of the, how does change actually really work? I just saw, we can do this better from the inside. And I just kept working at it and working at it.

Giving a Talk on the Covenant Path

Mike Seamons [00:30:14] And it was hard, though, because I gave this talk in state conference, kind of halfway in. It was called what is the Covenant Path? Because President Nelson had come and had coined a term that didn't exist before

Michele Seamons [00:30:28] he came to Mariners. Before he came, he filled the stadium.

Mike Seamons [00:30:32] And I was like, I don't think we've all talked about this well enough to look each other in the eye and know what we say when we say, are you on the Covenant Path? And so I created all these images of different paths and, like, the markers on the paths that I was like, is this the Covenant path? Is this the Covenant Path? And one of them was, you know, being Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and get your Eagle Scout and go on a mission and then, you know, go to byu, go on a mission, come home, get married, kind of the Mormon path. And so I was just being provocative.

Mike Seamons [00:31:05] I'm like, is this the Covenant Path? And then I did another one, like, is this the Covenant Path? And because I was just trying to say, do we even know what we're saying when we say these words? And what I. And the kind of the punchline of the talk was, the Covenant Path is real. If it's going to be helpful to any of us, it has to be a very simple set of things that lots of different paths can intersect with. And I just focused on, like, intersection points and said, there's a lot of ways in. There's a lot of ways to the next point.

Mike Seamons [00:31:38] The only points that matter are the points that the intersections happen. And I was just trying to create a lot of space for. There's lots of ways to do this. We can't try to put everyone on the path that I was trying to put my son on, that I broke him. And it's like, did your son lose

John Dehlin [00:31:57] his faith after coming home from his mission?

Michele Seamons [00:31:59] He never really went back to church.

Mike Seamons [00:32:01] No, he did because he loved us.

Michele Seamons [00:32:03] He came with us.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] But did he tell you he didn't believe anymore?

Michele Seamons [00:32:07] Sporadic periods of time, I think mostly to please his parents.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] Were you able to talk about that, or did he just keep it to his head?

Michele Seamons [00:32:14] No, Very, very open minded.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] So he said mom and Dad, I don't believe anymore.

Michele Seamons [00:32:16] Yeah, no. And we said it was very cultural for him. It was a community that he knew, he's comfortable with. It's a great place to meet friends. So he kind of just kept a cultural. I'd show up with my parents or when I wanted to and we gave him the room.

Mike Seamons [00:32:35] We had to.

Michele Seamons [00:32:36] Sometimes he needed them.

Mike Seamons [00:32:38] He demanded the room.

Michele Seamons [00:32:39] He demanded.

Mike Seamons [00:32:39] And if we didn't, if we didn't learn how to give him space. Yeah, we would have. We wouldn't be in relationship with him anymore.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:48] That is.

Michele Seamons [00:32:49] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:32:49] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:50] We've experienced. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:32:51] I mean, the amount of trust that you lose by trying to get someone to do it your way.

Michele Seamons [00:32:57] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:32:57] It just wasn't worth it for us. We just said, we, we need him more than we need our certainty. And somehow we got through it, you know, it was hard.

Michele Seamons [00:33:07] Yeah. But then would you say Logan getting his mission call?

Mike Seamons [00:33:12] Yeah. I mean then 2020 happens. And so this was all 2017 to 2020. Our daughter, she was on a mission and just returned. Just returned in 2019.

John Dehlin [00:33:21] And you're in a stake presidency.

Mike Seamons [00:33:22] I'm still in the state presidency.

John Dehlin [00:33:23] Are you attending disciplinary councils at stake level.

Mike Seamons [00:33:26] And I, again, the work would come

Michele Seamons [00:33:28] home crying from them. I was so sickened.

Mike Seamons [00:33:31] I participated in excommunication of multiple of my friends.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:35] Oh, God.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] For a process or for, for reasons

Mike Seamons [00:33:39] that would put you in front of a 15 person council. Like I just. And there were friends. Oh, yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:45] That would be so hard.

Mike Seamons [00:33:47] And to feel like we were.

John Dehlin [00:33:50] You got your judge in Israel prophecy. I don't mean to make light of it.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:55] It was.

Mike Seamons [00:33:55] I, it. I just kept feeling more and more distant from this thing that I felt was so good.

Michele Seamons [00:34:03] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:34:04] And the one there. There were a few things that just started me on this path of. I have to turn the volume up on being a change agent because this is getting crazy. We had. The presiding bishop came and he was. He was going to speak to the youth and he asked us to collect all the questions our youth had about, you know, the gospel. And he was going to answer them. And I took this as yes because I've been hearing all these questions and now I'm going to hand them to you. I collected 200 questions, categorized them into. These are all the different things they're interested in.

Mike Seamons [00:34:37] Sent it to him ahead of time, said, this is what we want you to talk about. He comes in our training meetings before he says, yeah, oh, thank you for giving me all Those questions, I'm not going to answer any of them. I'm just going to teach them the tools of how to find the answers themselves through scripture. And I'm like, that is not gonna work. They went through all this effort because

Losses and Struggles Within the Stake

Michele Seamons [00:35:00] they have real questions at a meeting before state, like before state conference, they had to get up early, right? Yeah, 8am in the morning on a Sunday morning and not be heard.

Mike Seamons [00:35:12] Proceeded. And he was a well spoken person who had good intention, but he left them all like wanting.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] The problem is they don't have answers.

Mike Seamons [00:35:23] And his answers to me, he didn't give. It was like I was then pushing on him saying, what about this one? What about this one? He goes, well, that's old prophets. Old prophets, Old prophets. And then I brought up, we were in the middle of the, you know, 2015 way we treated people of LGBT in the 2018. And we were in the middle of like that was happening.

John Dehlin [00:35:42] The November 15 policy had happened.

Mike Seamons [00:35:44] Yeah, yeah. And then the reversal of it had already happened. But I said to him, what about that? And he's like, we follow the prophet. The prophet said, that's what we do. We follow the prophet. I said, so if it's a prophet that's dead, it's optional and we can change. But if it's a prophet that's alive, that says it like we just do it.

Mike Seamons [00:36:07] And it was hard for me to hold because I was like, I had started seeing fallibility everywhere. And I had come to this place of, through all thousands of temple recommend interviews, sitting with people and them saying, I love the gospel. I'm struggling with the church. I heard that so many hundreds of times. And I would use my temple recommend interview just opportunity to say, tell me why, Tell me what is hurting you? And it was always this really difficult culture that you had to take in order for you to take the gospel. And I just was like, we can do this better. We can do this better.

Michele Seamons [00:36:48] No, your temple recommend interviews would be like an hour because you took the time.

Mike Seamons [00:36:54] I just.

Michele Seamons [00:36:55] People were hurting. No, I've never been an hour long temple recommend interview. It's usually just all he hears all the questions say is.

John Dehlin [00:37:01] But not because he's grilling people.

Michele Seamons [00:37:03] No, he's actually listening. He's listening. And I'm like, yes, we're going to change the church from the inside. Here we go, here we go.

Mike Seamons [00:37:13] And then 2020 happened.

Michele Seamons [00:37:15] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:37:16] And we were revved and going. And then Covid. And Covid started in Kirkland and yeah, Washington. And three things happened at the Same time that just like literally broke the world. And one was Covid, the second was our son. Our fourth son now got his mission call and he was going to go to Columbia, but he hadn't opened it yet. And the night that he got his mission call, the day he got his mission call, his BYU roommate took his own life. And previously a best friend in high school had taken his life. Now his roommate at BYU took his life and in the following first kid LDS. The first one was not LDS.

Michele Seamons [00:37:57] A basketball player on his second was LDS.

Mike Seamons [00:37:59] And then two of our other dear friends lost 18 year old boys in that same one year period.

John Dehlin [00:38:07] LDS.

Mike Seamons [00:38:09] Three were LDS, one was not.

John Dehlin [00:38:10] So you experienced three LDS deaths by suicide.

Mike Seamons [00:38:14] One suicide and two that were. But these 18 year olds, I mean, were just, they just were traumatizing to all of us because they were all our, our sons. Like, we, we loved these boys, like, and, and all these boys. These, these boys were like two of them were, they can't find themselves in a world that, that doesn't make room for them. And you know, just really terrible, tragic accidents that just broke everyone.

John Dehlin [00:38:44] Are you thinking the first two were lgbt?

Michele Seamons [00:38:48] No.

Mike Seamons [00:38:48] Yeah. Not that ever became a part of it, but yeah, but that just was. And so our 19, our then 18 year old, he like this. We didn't know how. I didn't have answers for this.

Michele Seamons [00:39:01] And he has a mission call on

Mike Seamons [00:39:02] his hand and he decides to go ahead and open it and get a call to Columbia and decides the faithful thing to do is to push and to go do a mission because that's how he's gonna show Ben, show his best friend how much he loved him because he was gonna serve a mission. And his life, you know, stopped because of him feeling like that he couldn't for some reason.

Michele Seamons [00:39:27] And he's the first group of kids that did the MTC online in their

Mike Seamons [00:39:32] home during COVID our fourth son. Yeah, and it was hard.

Michele Seamons [00:39:36] It was hard because we had all the kids that were at byu, a son in medical school, all in our home. So we had nine or something. It was crazy. All at the farm, trying to make sense of the world.

Mike Seamons [00:39:52] And I hit a point where I had earned a sabbatical at Microsoft years before.

John Dehlin [00:39:58] Seven years.

Mike Seamons [00:39:58] Yeah, seven years at a certain level. And you get three months or two months, plus you can use your vacation. And I said to Michele, I said, we need to get out of here. Like we just need to go and have a massive reset. We need to get Logan out of here. And she was like, okay, I'M in. And Covid had happened. All the kids were homeschooling, so. And I said, I want to see. I think I have a plan. The plan is we'll figure out how to get on a sailboat and let's get on a sailboat and disappear for three months. And at this point, I had never been on a sailboat. I'd never seen.

Michele Seamons [00:40:32] We were lake boaters.

Mike Seamons [00:40:34] I'd had a lake boat weekends on

Michele Seamons [00:40:36] Lake Sammamish and Lake Washington. We had no idea what a sailboat, even.

Mike Seamons [00:40:39] But I had this crazy idea, crazy dream. And she was crazy enough to say, sure, let's see. And so I went and I took a sailing class in the end of June, two days, 2020. In July of 2020, we rented a sailboat for a week in the San Juan Islands and brought an instructor on with our family, and he taught us how to manage the boat ourselves. And then in September, we flew all of our family to Raiate Tahiti, and we moved on to a sailboat, and we lived in Tahiti. September, October, November, December. And we just lived on the ocean. And we'd never done anything like this, but it was, like, for us. And I was still in the state presidency, and I was doing stake presidency meetings, you know, sunrise, you know, and sitting on the deck of my boat, virtually dialing in.

Michele Seamons [00:41:31] And, I mean, we're not letting our kids swim on Sundays. We live on a boat. Like, I would wear a dress on Sunday. Yeah, all Sunday.

Mike Seamons [00:41:42] Yeah, yeah. So it was a little. It was this hybrid thing where we were doing some of the same behaviors and we were introducing a whole new set of things. And I mean, talk about the awe and wonder. Like, we experienced our first moonrise together as a family the third night in and had no idea that the moon rises when it's full. It rises right after the sun goes down. And it's like a dual unbelievable event that happens every 28 days. And we had no idea. And the next night, we went out to watch it the second time, and it was an hour late, and then it was an hour later, and we're like, wait, what is happening?

Michele Seamons [00:42:21] We didn't realize the moon's on a

Mike Seamons [00:42:23] schedule, that the moon rises, like, at a different time, you know, 28 days, and then it comes back. And, I mean, it took us all of this for us to, like, look in the sky and not see just dots, but, like, find constellations and be able to track Andromeda. And we had binoculars that we would stargaze as a family. And I Mean, we jump in the ocean and swim with the most magical reefs you could ever see. It was like wonder at a level 10 for four months.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:55] Presence, presence and present to the world around you.

Michele Seamons [00:42:59] Leave the moment. We couldn't press the church the same way. So we opened up, we read the story of Jesus. It was like a novel. It was a novel, a narrative of the new New Testament because we have a 13 year old to a 22 year old on the boat at that time, up to a 25, 4 year old anyway. And we knew we needed to adapt and we did. The virtual church. But outside of that, we weren't.

Mike Seamons [00:43:39] There were no activities. There were no seminary.

Michele Seamons [00:43:41] We just were making up our own thing and it was pretty loose. And our kids felt freedom to ask questions. And when those questions started pouring in, I cracked on that trip. And then I started.

John Dehlin [00:43:58] Tell us more.

Michele Seamons [00:43:59] I started reading other. Heavily reading other churches like Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren. Brian McLaren.

Mike Seamons [00:44:09] Christian Oracles.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] But I am so liberal Christianity.

Michele Seamons [00:44:14] Yes. And I am feeling this mystical side of Christianity that is so in line with the experience I'm currently having on the sailboat. And this is what I want. And I don't want to go back and my kids don't want to go back. And we feel good and we feel whole as a family unit. And we're praying still and we're respecting that there's something bigger than us. But we're grappling with what are we gonna do when we go home.

Mike Seamons [00:44:53] And I. In the last month, there was a. They merged the Kirkland and the Redmond Stakes because both stakes had shrunk so much during COVID and previous. Oh, it bled out that we couldn't maintain two stakes. So we made one out of Kirkland and Redmond.

John Dehlin [00:45:10] They just sold the Kirtland Steak Center.

Michele Seamons [00:45:12] That area is not the same place we raised our kids post Covid. It's just not the same.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] It's been eviscerated just like California.

Mike Seamons [00:45:21] Because of that. I was heavily involved in how do we kind of build a new stake out of two because I was still in the Stake presidency.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] Your program wasn't working like you were trying to stop the hemorrhaging, but it was hemorrhaging anyway.

Michele Seamons [00:45:34] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:45:35] For all sorts of reasons.

Michele Seamons [00:45:36] We can't even meet.

Mike Seamons [00:45:37] Yeah. And then, I mean, Covid. Covid increased the hemorrhaging because of all those things.

John Dehlin [00:45:42] Like, if God wanted the church to grow, Covid wasn't the way to grow the church. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:45:47] It was really, really challenging there. And in a Lot of places. But I was still, like, really advocating, like I. In all of those boundary discussions with the two stakes and all the general authorities involved, because that's a pretty big deal to merge stakes. Church doesn't like to do that. And we were like, well, then let's have a principle that all the wards will be drawn on high school boundaries. Wards will not cross high schools because we are going to focus on making our kids connected, and that is a way that we can make it more connected. I was still advocating for all those things, but at the same time, I knew this idyllic Mormon, you know, kind of life.

Mike Seamons [00:46:29] I had seen enough of the administrative side to realize the feeling of awe and wonder in the spirit. And the mentorship was becoming less and less, and the administration and the. The judge side was becoming more and more. And I knew that if I kept going, I would get less of the stuff I wanted and more of the stuff I didn't. And I just felt. I could feel it because it was. It was just increasing one volume and decreasing the other.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] My. My memory is that Phil and Kathy Bussey, who were our bishops, at one point, they became area. He became an area authority at some point. Would you have worked with Phil?

Mike Seamons [00:47:07] Yeah, he did trainings for us. We weren't. We were in the Tacoma area or the sales. He was covering the Seattle area or something.

Michele Seamons [00:47:15] But, yeah, they split.

Mike Seamons [00:47:16] But we were in trainings all the time, you know, with him. And.

John Dehlin [00:47:19] Okay.

Mike Seamons [00:47:19] And yeah, I mean, they were great leaders, but. But still, I was like, we are missing a huge, huge mark. And I was so passionate about what we were missing that I just kind of said, look, if we aren't going to take what we're missing more seriously, number one, we were now deciding to leave Washington at this point. Microsoft had said Microsoft employees could live anywhere. Doesn't have to be in Redmond. I was now a partner at Microsoft, so I was a very senior leader there. I had teams in Redmond. Like, before I got on the boat. Leaving Redmond was not an option. While I was on the boat, leaving Redmond became an option. And our kids were starving for. You know, they. We loved the farm, but it was a farm. The farm was so, so much work. Like, we jump into these things and then we go, holy mackerel, this is

John Dehlin [00:48:14] a lot of work.

Mike Seamons [00:48:15] And. And then we start going, how do we make it not so much work? Yeah. And so we had.

Michele Seamons [00:48:20] We sold it all.

Mike Seamons [00:48:21] We had started in kind of the end of being on the boat. The kids were pushing it where if not Redmond, then where. And it was all these, like, Zillow presentations of places we could go live. And so I knew we were not going to come back to the same life. We were not going to come back to a place where I could resume, you know, being a member of a stake presidency or even the stake president. And so when I was interviewed virtually for this, we were sitting in Bora Bora, and we're on anchor in Bora Bora, and I'm talking to the general authority that's there to call the new stake presidency. And I said, yeah, I'm not your guy for.

John Dehlin [00:48:55] So you were being evaluated for state president.

Mike Seamons [00:48:57] Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:48:58] But I knew everyone.

Mike Seamons [00:48:59] I knew what I was. It was not gonna. I gave him the reasons. I'm like, I. I love the. I have so much passion still in this, but we have some decisions that we're making as a family that are potentially going to take us away from Washington. And. And so I gave. You'll diet this. I gave Stake conference. When they released the old stake presidency and put in the new one, I'm on Zoom. The background is the. Is Bora Bora Bora. And I'm in a shirt and tie with shorts on and flip flops that you can't see. And I give my closing address and talk about anchoring and how anchoring is so important in our life.

Mike Seamons [00:49:37] And I'm doing it from a state conference in Bora Bora. I got so much hate mail from our friends saying, this is November. It's like the worst time to be in Seattle. And you're telling us. It's like you're talking wanting them with

Margi Dehlin [00:49:54] COVID That's so true.

Mike Seamons [00:49:56] But it was, you know, we got off the boat and. And it became kind of now our mission of if not there, then where. And, you know, we were ready to kind of put the farm, you know, into somebody else's hands because we'd. We felt like we'd gotten what we needed to out of it. Our kids were still, like. All of them were just in such that. Our son, who, you know, he started the mtc, then got reassigned to Provo, where his roommate had taken his life. He said, I can't do that. So he then called off the mission. He did home. MTC didn't go any further.

Mike Seamons [00:50:31] But then he got off the boat because he was still listening to his parents that he loved, and he's like, I'm going to get off the boat, and I'm going to go right onto my mission. And our stake President had got him a reassignment to Phoenix, Arizona. And so he literally, a week after he got off the boat, he went to Phoenix, Arizona, directly. Didn't go through the mtc, and he ended up for, like, two months, quarantined in an apartment with two other elders who had no ability to help him with this emotional trauma. And he, two months later said, I can't keep doing this, and came home.

Mike Seamons [00:51:06] And his coming home was the beginning of the end for me because my first son coming home was, this is broken. Not working. My second son coming home was. Or no, he is broken. My second son coming home was, this is broken. And that is when I just was like, I will no longer push my kids into the mission field because it's too broken of an experience. It works for a lot of people. My son's experience was exceptional. With all this death in his life, it's not that. It's not for anyone, but I could no longer say, this is for everyone. Like, everyone should go. I couldn't do that anymore.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:47] Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:51:49] And now we only have two kids at home, and we're like, let's go. And they pick Florida.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:57] They picked Florida.

Michele Seamons [00:51:58] And we live on the ocean, and we bought a home on the ocean. So literally went from one coast to the other.

Mike Seamons [00:52:05] A hundred feet out our windows was the ocean, and we watched the sunset every night.

Moving Away and Stepping Back from the Church

Michele Seamons [00:52:10] But what did we do? We followed the pattern that we'd always done with moving, and we jumped right back in the ward, kind of, I think, thinking, for me, this is Florida. It's gotta be different. It has to be different. And we actually hadn't ward shopped or done any preparation on this one because we were different people. We didn't actually feel like we needed to have that perfect ward. And, yeah, this ward didn't feel the same.

Mike Seamons [00:52:45] They didn't like our edginess. We were too edgy for.

Michele Seamons [00:52:49] Yeah, we had experienced things in Washington that they weren't prepared for, and we had experienced things personally that they were not prepared for. And we were still kind of loud and still felt chosen. So we came in there with guns ablaze, and I got called into the Relief Society presidency, then the Young Women's presidency, and wasn't wearing my garments. I told them, I'm not going to the temple, but still I'm holding these callings, and I could see this is not going to work. This isn't going to work for me.

John Dehlin [00:53:31] Okay, I have to ask. There's this stage that many go through as they're going down this path. Where it can be kind of the Terrell Givens. Terrell and Fiona Givens. Patrick Mason, Faith Matters.

Michele Seamons [00:53:46] Kind of. Yeah, we read all of it. We listened.

John Dehlin [00:53:48] She did that.

Michele Seamons [00:53:49] All of it. I mean, restoration is that Patrick Mason, Restore. Restore. That book was like, oh, Restoration.

Mike Seamons [00:53:59] Is this book implanted?

Michele Seamons [00:54:00] Restoration was the first.

John Dehlin [00:54:02] Right. The yellow one.

Michele Seamons [00:54:02] It became my new scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:54:04] Your Bible? Yeah.

Michele Seamons [00:54:04] I mean, literally, I read Patrick Mason like it was scripture.

Mike Seamons [00:54:09] The givens.

Michele Seamons [00:54:09] We read the Givens. We read everything.

Mike Seamons [00:54:11] The God who Weeps was, like, life changing for us.

Michele Seamons [00:54:14] Faith matters. We were leaning in the podcast felt like we were hanging on with our fingernails because they kept trying to make all these accommodations, and it didn't sit with the rigidity and of the doctrine and the teachings that I knew that's what the church was. So how can we be both? It didn't make sense.

Mike Seamons [00:54:38] We couldn't hold the paradox.

Michele Seamons [00:54:40] No.

Mike Seamons [00:54:40] I was called as the Gospel doctrine teacher, and at this point, I had lots of things that I wanted to try to help as adults. Let's learn how to do this better. So I would teach lessons where I'd use the stages of faith, and, you know, where I'd talk about, there is such a thing.

Mike Seamons [00:55:02] Simplicity, complexity, perplexity and harmony. And I'll never forget I taught one of the last lessons I taught that got me fired from the Calling because I was just, you know, when I taught about the Amalekites in the Old Testament, I'm like, how can we all make sense of what is clearly genocide? Like, I mean, I just was like, this is not a group of people that are coming in and trying to make peace with their neighbors. They're saying, we are chosen. You are not. Therefore you die and we take your land.

Mike Seamons [00:55:31] I just was trying to create. Enough. Let's not think that this is all just a bunch of historical information. Let's at least make some moves as a people. That this is a complicated story of people trying to hold their view of God as long as humanly possible, at all costs. Like, and it was. I just. I was seeing it so. So significantly. And so when the stages of faith. I put that in a lesson where I was like, you know, we all might be at different stages, and therefore, we might answer questions a little differently based on what stage of faith we're in. And there was a guy at the back of the room who always liked to try to be the last comment of my lessons.

Mike Seamons [00:56:16] And he said, you know, he had a degree in philosophy and law, and he was like, this is all baloney. There is no such thing as stages of faith. There's only one. It's simplicity. And anybody that cannot see the world through that lens is wrong. And I said, if that's the case, then there's no room for me in this building.

Michele Seamons [00:56:36] He said it to the whole. I mean, a chapel full of. And a member of our Stake presidency was there, and it was like, drop the mic.

Mike Seamons [00:56:48] Yeah, that was it. And then we had a closing prayer, and I was like. I got released two weeks later because I was. You know. But then I got called as the young men's president, which didn't even exist, but the bishop was like, I can't do young men's. And he's like, can you do young men's? And I was like, yeah. I had two. Two boys in it. So I'm like, okay, I'll do. I'll take on the young men's program again. And I tried and I tried, but it, you know, then, you know, Michele was now in young women's, I was in young men's. We were now trying to redo. How do we create experiences of wonder for all these k. But when Michele would pray.

Michele Seamons [00:57:23] Yeah, I prayed to heavenly. Our heavenly parents. And that did not in church.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] Yeah, y' all are off the rails at this point.

Michele Seamons [00:57:35] Young women. I prayed to my parents.

Mike Seamons [00:57:37] We have the doctrine.

Michele Seamons [00:57:38] Why can't we. I just didn't use the. I just. I refused to use the pattern of prayer that I had been taught. I just said, this is how I pray and I'm going to be authentic if I'm going to be here. And we started to feel. And our youngest boys were being raised differently and given more freedom, and they were like, saying, no. And so we start doing seeker Sunday. We start saying, okay, guess what, kids? This is how it's going to look. We're going to go to church maybe three weeks a month.

Mike Seamons [00:58:12] No, twice. Twice.

Michele Seamons [00:58:13] Twice.

Mike Seamons [00:58:13] Whenever it was youth.

Michele Seamons [00:58:14] Oh, yeah, yeah, we go twice.

Mike Seamons [00:58:15] This is when youth church was every other Sunday.

Michele Seamons [00:58:17] Yeah, they did it.

Mike Seamons [00:58:18] So when it was youth church, we went to the elder, to the LDS building, young men and non youth Sunday, Sunday school. We went to the Buddhist temples, the Baha' I temples, the Hindu temples.

Michele Seamons [00:58:28] We could get our hands on.

Mike Seamons [00:58:29] Like, we. Because we believed, you know, general authority told us that. Not here. Then where? Like, where will you go?

Michele Seamons [00:58:36] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [00:58:36] And it's like, well, we better figure out where we're going to go before we decide not to be here.

Michele Seamons [00:58:41] And we had never exposed ourselves to other religions other than that lovely correlated manual that you see at byu, which is World religions. World religions.

John Dehlin [00:58:51] I took that class.

Michele Seamons [00:58:52] I did, too.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] You know, I love that class.

Michele Seamons [00:58:55] I love that class. But I felt like it had encapsulated it. Put everything so nice and neat. And then we were.

Mike Seamons [00:59:01] And all fingers pointed to the restoration.

Michele Seamons [00:59:03] We were actually attending other congregations. My son starts attending an evangelical congregation, and we're going to Baptist and Buddhist Baha' I and Baha'. I. And he's working with people from India, and we go to Varanasi in India, and we're like, teach us. Teach us. Which is, like their Vatican, all about Hinduism. And we're just being filled. And there is no turning back. There is no turning. This train is on the rails to a different location.

Mike Seamons [00:59:38] But it was all the feeling, though. We'd go to the Buddhist temple. We did a silent retreat at the Thai Buddhist temple in Titusville. And Michele and I just looked at each other and said, do you feel it? And I was like, yeah, do you feel it?

Mike Seamons [00:59:53] This is it. Like, we are feeling the spirit here. And then we're doing a walking meditation. And then the regional temple president, you know, is brought in to teach us at the end of this retreat, and he is treated like a stake president would be in a Mormon church. Like, all this, like, veneration and this, like, oh, you know, we need to listen to him because he has all the answers. And Michele and I, after that are like, wait a minute. We felt that. But now we're like, the triggers of a hierarchy back in action again. Then we went to the Vietnamese version of Buddhism because they're supposed to be different. While we loved their potlucks, the.

Michele Seamons [01:00:33] Their food was amazing.

Mike Seamons [01:00:34] It was the same. It's like, well, Buddhism's got interesting things, and we feel the spirit when we go to a Buddhist temple. So then we were like, but maybe it's probably not Buddhism. And then we went to the Baha' I temple, and they told us stories of how this. We embrace all religions. And then they start telling us, but we have somebody in 1800s who wrote scripture, and all of the right answers are in this person's version of scripture. And we're like, no, we can't do that. See you later.

Michele Seamons [01:01:02] This was nice, but we're hearing the same story. And we start, as we're exposing ourselves, seeing something very different.

A Brief Evangelical Christian Phase

John Dehlin [01:01:15] What happened to your megachurch Christian phase? You were the evangelical Christian.

Michele Seamons [01:01:20] I'm still going.

John Dehlin [01:01:21] In fact, did you try a megachurch like a non?

Michele Seamons [01:01:25] One of our sons was attending a megachurch in Orlando every January. It's called Rock the Universe. And all of the best Christian bands come. And for two days.

John Dehlin [01:01:37] Hillsong.

Michele Seamons [01:01:38] Yeah, all of them. And you go to the Universal theme park, and it's all concerts. And so I made my kids go. I mean, I was there.

Mike Seamons [01:01:48] We went three years in a row.

Michele Seamons [01:01:49] Yeah. The third year, it didn't hit. It just didn't hit.

Mike Seamons [01:01:55] Because now we brought in the Buddhist stories and the Hindu stories and the Taoist stories. We brought in narratives that we're like, isn't it interesting that these people are so content with their narrative? We have been so content with ours. None of us actually exchange narratives in a lifetime. It's like the one you're born with is the one you usually keep. Rarely does anybody do a narrative, a narrative swap out, but yet nobody feels like they are missing something. The way that, like, we'd spend our life thinking we need to bring the world as truth because they don't have it. Well, then you go out and you actually just ask them what they think they have, and they're like, well, we're not looking for anything else.

Mike Seamons [01:02:38] Like, we got what we need. And yet we were trying to bring the truth to everyone, and it just flipped on its head where we're like, like, you know what? There's. This is all just narrative. Like, all of it is narrative. And it's narrative that is answering the most. The biggest questions, the most pressing questions. And it's beautiful. Like, we loved the Hindu stories of Shiv and Brahma. And, you know, we went to the. To the holy river Ganga and watched people cremate their loved ones and put them in the river, and we ritualized it with them. Like, and we felt the spirit there. And then we went to the Buddhist temple and we felt the spirit there. Like. Like, we felt it everywhere we went.

Michele Seamons [01:03:16] Yes. And for the first time, we had had a lot of world travel, but most of our world travel involved visiting a temple, going to church, an LDS temple. Yes. And connecting with Mormon people in that area. Wherever we traveled, it was always that. And for the first time, we gave ourselves freedom to say, okay, we're here. Let's actually listen to what people are saying. Let's be open to what they think and feel. And we, in this short time frame, traveled pretty extensively to Africa and India and were exposed to some things that we went, wait. And these aren't even the most populated of places. I mean, there's China. Something's. We're in a 1%. Like, it all of a sudden hit us like, wait, we've been told we're the 1%.

Mike Seamons [01:04:17] The stone is rolling and gathering.

Michele Seamons [01:04:19] I'm like, wait. And we heard that teaching that we believe in one God, but that means basically, we're choosing not to worship the other 2,500. And I'm like, wait, there's 2,500? I mean, whatever. The possibilities are endless. And we're choosing one, and it's the only right one. My worldview was rocked, and my heart was too big to allow it to close. I wasn't gonna let it happen. And we called our bishop and said, please do not contact us again. We will not be attending. And it went from attending twice a month. We literally went for three months, four months. We went from full activity to attending twice a month to asking to not attending, please.

Mike Seamons [01:05:20] And that was June of 2023. We stopped attending, and we kind of were. Then we did still more seeker time because we were still trying to be

Michele Seamons [01:05:30] like, yeah, what do we. Wow.

Mike Seamons [01:05:32] Like, because. Because it's interesting. I mean, and we've heard a lot of people on. On here talk about, like, you go through these phases, you know, that you can feel very much like, hopelessness of, well, gosh, now there's not a, you know, a God that's chosen me watching out for me and making sure that my life is, you know, is perfectly unfolding based on his plan for me. Like, you would think that's a pretty impossible thing to try to put down, but we had to put it down here. You've heard two episodes of we felt seen, chosen, and powered by God for 50 years, and we walked away from it because what we were finding is actually the narrative didn't matter.

Years of Gradual Transition Out of Belief

Mike Seamons [01:06:20] There is a far more fundamental thing happening with the way that we interact with this power than the narrative of who are the people that brought us the truth, and what is the truth that they've brought us? And how do we all hold on to the truth as tightly as we can?

Mike Seamons [01:06:38] We were able to say, you're missing it. It's actually the feeling if you are no longer intersecting with the power, the energy, and the energy is fading because you're just going through motions and ritual. And it doesn't mean that everybody that stays in their same church for their life is not feeling it anymore. But for us, the constraints of a narrative that is placed over a thing, a person or an energy that you worship became a scarcity creator. It created scarcity of the feeling that we did it all in the first place for. And it even started to create scarcity in how much Mentoring we could do in trying to help people kind of find their way through.

Mike Seamons [01:07:25] And when we let it go in the most unexpected way, it started to fill with abundance. Like, we literally started to feel it more and more frequently in more ways. And it's the only. Like we have this very odd Mormon story that is we did it because of the feeling and we left it because of the feeling, which is not normal because, number one, you're taught the feeling is only available to those with the gift of the feeling.

Mike Seamons [01:07:58] Even the power of the Holy Ghost is not as good as the gift of the Holy Ghost. The gift of the Holy Ghost is only given to the baptized, worthy, living all of the commandments. And yet we had a lifetime of evidence that said that's actually not how it worked.

Mike Seamons [01:08:16] And that when we removed a lot of that scaffolding, the feeling stayed. And not only did it stay, but it became a more direct experience, that we were no longer trying to go through someone for it or something for it. We were just going direct to it.

Michele Seamons [01:08:32] And then we wanted to share it because we'd always been sharing it.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:36] I wonder where you got that from.

Michele Seamons [01:08:38] Yeah, I know. We were taught very well. All of a sudden we started hitting roadblocks. If we're like, wait, people aren't going to listen to us. They actually don't want to hear our perspective. And I realized right there and then that I'm going to need some psychological help. And we reach out to Valerie and Nathan Hamaker through latter day struggles.

John Dehlin [01:09:02] Had they been excommunicated?

Michele Seamons [01:09:04] No, we actually were part of their group during that process. So it was very enlightening. And we had already stopped attending, but we realized that was the easiest part. It was now the navigating our relationships with the thousands of people in our past, in our present and our family.

Michele Seamons [01:09:30] The work's gonna. It's just beginning. Yeah, it's just beginning because it doesn't make sense to them. But they didn't want to listen. They didn't want to hear it. So we were going to have to just live in this place that feels so uncomfortable.

Michele Seamons [01:09:48] And we were ready to do the work. We're like, this is not the end of our story. We're going to heal. We are going to come up again from the burning to the rising like a phoenix. And they definitely helped us with that. They helped us learn that we can listen to ourselves, we can create our own community.

Michele Seamons [01:10:10] And we did. We went outside that Mormon ward and we laid into that community. And we have friends that I never thought it was. I literally was taught it couldn't happen, and it is. And they support and love our kids just the same way we felt within the church.

Michele Seamons [01:10:40] And so now we have this loving community, and we're getting a voice, and we're actually learning to listen to ourselves. And we are hitting brick wall after brick wall after brick wall with our family. And it hurts.

Mike Seamons [01:10:59] And all of our past, all of our past.

John Dehlin [01:11:00] You don't mean your children. When you say your family, you don't mean your children.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:05] This is family of origin.

Mike Seamons [01:11:06] This is like, extended family.

Michele Seamons [01:11:08] Extended family.

Mike Seamons [01:11:08] Extended family.

Michele Seamons [01:11:10] There are two kids at BYU who are out, and they are just covering.

John Dehlin [01:11:16] They're not believing, but they're still, like, their senior year.

Michele Seamons [01:11:19] They're, like, holding on. Like, every bishop's interview is like. And my daughter even spoke at her graduation. I mean, they were struggling, not wearing their garments. Like, they were beyond. And that's where the truth claims. None of that ever was a part of. Like, we had no desire to ever prove the church wrong or get into the weeds of the past or the present. I didn't want to go there.

Mike Seamons [01:11:52] We felt like we had found something better, and it was like, well, let's just focus on the better thing. But it was hard because it's hard to have such a strong. Like, this is the only way to see it.

Michele Seamons [01:12:06] It was visceral.

Mike Seamons [01:12:07] The truth claims part for us was a very short. At the very end, right before we said, we're out, and it was really us having to go through this. Do we trust ourselves or do we trust the church? Like, we had to kind of go through this. Who do we. Do we trust? This thing that we've now built up inside of ourselves that. That is. Has steered us pretty well. Or do we trust the church? And. And that's where, you know, I mean, we. We had your LDS discussions, you know, were so pivotal for us for that brief period of time, that's where we were, because it just gave us this.

Mike Seamons [01:12:44] This way to hold those claims, at least in. Like, there is a wide range of ways to map the story. It's not one. The one that we had been taught, the one that I was a, you know, church history, you know, bachelor's degree, because of, like, it was. There wasn't one narrative. There were a lot of different narrative possibilities, but all of the possibilities gave us this permission to say, you know what, let's just put it down for a while and see what happens without dealing with all the narrative.

Finding a New Spiritual Community

Mike Seamons [01:13:19] But we also had to pick something else up and it was at that time that I read this book. That's the reason I use this word wonder a lot. Have you ever read the New Science of Everyday Wonder by Docker Keltner?

Michele Seamons [01:13:32] It's amazing.

Mike Seamons [01:13:33] It's a must read. It gave me language finally. And I read this in like 2023. Anyway, he's a Berkeley scientist, PhD, who has spent 25 years teaching happiness. That's been his focus. And he's come to this, like, as he was teaching how to find happiness, he's like, happiness doesn't seem like it's the right thing to focus on. Like, it's too fast.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:59] Burn.

Mike Seamons [01:13:59] It's too. It's. It's just too fragile. And so we started studying and an emotion that kind of sometimes gets confused with happiness, he calls awe. Or not he calls. It's awe. And awe is an emotion that has a physiological experience. And he studied how people felt awe. And they feel a burning in their chest. They feel the, you know, the chills on the back of their neck. They. They feel a contentment or a. Or a. Like he just.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] He.

Mike Seamons [01:14:26] All of the words that I've described my whole life. What it means to feel the Holy Ghost. Keltner says this is what it feels like to feel awe. And he. He actually puts monitors on people's brains to identify where in the body this is coming from, how the body reacts to this, what neurotransmitters and neurochemicals are actually happening in the body when you feel this.

Mike Seamons [01:14:48] And then. And he calls odd. Just the simple definition is anytime you are in the presence of something vast and mysterious and you feel it, it's that we've all had it. It's so universal. Hindus have it, Buddhists have it, daoists have it, Mormons have it. We all have these overwhelming experiences of awe.

Mike Seamons [01:15:08] And it's a feeling we can all talk about because it's a universal feeling. But then he takes it one step further and he breaks it into the eight ways people feel awe. The most commonly across 25 countries in the world. And he brings up things, and it's life and death. You know, when you are in. When you're with someone who's dying or with someone that's being born, or the experiences that surround that. Like, we've all felt that music. You know, from a Christian next speaker to whatever. Like, music moves us in that way. Nature, epiphany. When you hear something that is just this. Like, I've never heard that before.

Mike Seamons [01:15:51] And your mind lights up, you feel this mystic experiences Spiritual experiences, miracles, you know, collective effervescence. When you with a group are doing something ritualistic or like, you know, halftime of a. Of a sporting event, it's a group experience where you all feel this. I am in the presence, something vast and mysterious. He lays out this beautiful framework of. This is what this feeling is that I've been chasing my whole life. Here is what your body is doing to feel the feeling. And here is what.

Mike Seamons [01:16:30] What most people are doing when they engage with this feeling. And it changed. It gave me a whole new way to think about the whole way I've. I've tried to construct religion in my life and. And it gave it to me without any additional narrative.

Mike Seamons [01:16:48] Like, I didn't need a Brahma story or a Buddhist story or a Joseph Smith story. It doesn't require a narrative. It just says, pursue one of these different doors of awe with a softening of I am curious and I want to intersect with this.

Mike Seamons [01:17:07] And you'll feel it. And it's been a lifetime of now. It's like, well, that's everything that our story is. We were intersecting with awe and wonder. And here's the crazy thing is it hasn't made us any. Like my belief in a bigger power is more significant than it's ever been. I just don't care what his name is or her name is, what planet they live on, what star they're closest to on that planet. You know, I don't care about any of it because. Because it's such wasted energy that, like, I would much rather talk to people about what they're feeling and where they are when they feel it, because I can talk to anybody with any narrative about that.

Mike Seamons [01:17:51] But if we have to get into who's behind it and why they're doing it. Well, now I am not allowed to talk to you because, you know, your narrative is different than mine or my narrative offends you. And I just. I think we have complicated something that is so fundamentally human by putting all of these things on top of it. And I think we're losing touch with it more than we're gaining touch.

Michele Seamons [01:18:17] Yeah. So then we decided to call ourselves on our own mission, because now we have our own internal power and voice, and we can hear it.

Mike Seamons [01:18:28] And we prepared to be mission presidents and save our money so that we could retire in our 50s. And we were like, well, we still have all of that, and we still are on track to retire and go do good in the world.

John Dehlin [01:18:40] So what's the name of your new church?

Michele Seamons [01:18:42] It's Called Wonder Way.

Mike Seamons [01:18:44] That's not the church, that's the boat.

Michele Seamons [01:18:45] What's the name of the boat?

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Boat Church.

Michele Seamons [01:18:48] Boat Church. And through our boating, it's been about two years that we've spent on a boat since Tahiti, living on a boat. And we have intersected with wonder and people better than anything I ever imagined as a mission president or a missionary. It's like a collection of stories and people and love and community that I never imagined. It's so big, it's overwhelming and we can't get over it. It's there and the boat is. We've lived on it full time for the last year and a half. We can't contain. We can't contain the people that we've met. We can't contain the love and the stories and the support. And we're having to take a little detour because we now are expecting two grandchildren. So our. Our children are changing our life a little bit because we want to be involved. And so we're going to balance.

Mike Seamons [01:20:01] We have six kids, 35 to 2020, and we have no grandchildren until January and March of this next year.

Michele Seamons [01:20:10] So we're going to balance our land life and our boat life. But we are now passionate to create wonder opportunities for people. And we will. We're doing R and D in the next couple years to find ways to gather people and to allow them to recognize the access is for everyone.

Michele Seamons [01:20:39] And we shouldn't be isolating into communities. There's still room to believe how you want. There's still. There's so much room. My son always says, are we a contradiction, Mom? Because we were so Mormon, I'm like, no way. And we answer it back with no. We contain multitudes because we truly do.

Michele Seamons [01:21:05] And that multitude makes room for everyone. And if people need community, we are. We're going to be there. We're going to find ways to gather people and help them feel seen, heard, chosen, special, taken care of, growing, growing. They'll be allowed to navigate through their own emotional growth and not be stagnant because of a teaching that holds them back. It's now my mission. So forget needing to be called to be a mission president. This is so much better.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:44] So much better. I have a question. I feel like community is one of the hardest things we hear over and over for people who are kind of reconstructing. What does it look like? So you're talking about, hey, our relationships with people. People who've joined us on these adventures can't be contained. How do you find them? How have you Created. Is it around sailing? Is it around boating?

Michele Seamons [01:22:14] Is it everything? We talk to every person we come in contact with. We talk to everyone, and we ask them questions. We're so curious. It's like, tell me why you're here. What are you doing? What do you love? And people are like, wait, what? It's the old commitment pattern. It's just better because we're not going to actually hold them to some commitment. We're actually going to allow us to be together in this moment. I mean, we're not gonna try to come up with a prescribed narrative. There's an openness or gatekeep.

John Dehlin [01:22:51] Right, or gatekeep. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:22:53] Which we've done.

Michele Seamons [01:22:54] And we found it through. There's lots of ways we found it through playing sports.

Mike Seamons [01:22:59] Pickleball, practically pickleball.

Michele Seamons [01:23:00] We play pickleball.

Mike Seamons [01:23:02] Have you guys played pickleball yet?

Michele Seamons [01:23:03] Oh, my goodness. It's the best.

Mike Seamons [01:23:05] It's the greatest. Kind of. Of award has always been an interesting thing because there's 200 people and you're not. You don't have frequency matching with all 200. You have frequency matching with like 10. And, you know, our frequency matching was usually the people that were a lot like us and had the similar pursuits and. But every community we've ever looked at has a similar thing. It's like you get on a pickleball court, and we have 100 to 200 people that show up, you know, at least once a month and play pickleball on a court together. And. And, you know, it's this big kind of social experience.

Mike Seamons [01:23:39] But within that, we have found our 10 people that now kind of are a circle closer to that. And those 10 people are from Colombia and from France and from Illinois. From Illinois, Michigan. And they have such different stories.

Mike Seamons [01:23:58] And now when we get together with these 10 people, which we spent a lot of time with 10 people in a lot of places, like the things that we walk away and go, oh, I've never thought about it that way. I host this. I mean, it'll all sound so too familiar. Every Thursday night, I do a fireside chat, and I invite.

Mike Seamons [01:24:19] I have a WhatsApp group of 15 men. And I just say, I'll have the fire ready. Anybody wants to come over and just sit and talk. And, you know, but they know that it's not. This isn't let's talk sports and kind of politics. It's, we're going to go deep and we're going to help each other.

Mike Seamons [01:24:37] Sometimes we call it the Council of Dads, but it's like an elders quorum, but yet the parts that we've left out, the parts that weren't working and just made it into. How do we actually get a group of people together that have a motivation to grow? And when you sit around a campfire, somehow the wonder is volume up. Because the way that your body interacts with flame, the way that it's unpredictable, it softens you and allows you to open yourself up to people that you normally wouldn't.

Michele Seamons [01:25:10] And these men cry. It's a place where it's safe to be vulnerable.

John Dehlin [01:25:20] Is this in Florida?

Michele Seamons [01:25:21] This is in Florida.

Mike Seamons [01:25:22] Just in our backyard.

Michele Seamons [01:25:23] Yeah, we're just, I mean, we're not doing anything special other than we literally talk to every person we meet and we invite them in because I, you

John Dehlin [01:25:31] know, I could hear maybe there's some viewers or listeners out there who are, with reason gonna be skeptical and they're gonna be like, well, we're not wealthy. We don't live on a boat. You know, we can't travel the world. We're not in Bora Bora. You know, we didn't cash out of Microsoft with stock options. We're just living a middle class life somewhere, struggling to get by. So you're living some fantasy dream because you're wealthy and privileged. This isn't applicable to the rest of us. What would you say to that?

Michele Seamons [01:26:04] Yes, but our friends are not that. Our friends are none of those things.

Mike Seamons [01:26:09] And if you listen to the first two episodes, you know, none of that applied. Like we, we, we worked every second of our life to try to put ourselves in a better place than we were the day before. And we fell and fell and we're still going to fall again. Like we're not done falling, but yet.

Michele Seamons [01:26:29] Well, and we also sold like we sold the big house on the ocean. We now live in a 1800 square foot home and we don't care.

Mike Seamons [01:26:38] It's a little concrete beach bungalow.

Michele Seamons [01:26:40] I want the people, the experience matter more. All of that posturing and reaching for something that was expected are gone. They're gone.

Mike Seamons [01:26:55] We really resonated with, you know, all the writers that talk about first half and second half of life, you know, Richard Rohr and falling Upward and David Brooks and Second Mountain. Like there's so many great Carl Jung.

Michele Seamons [01:27:05] Yeah, exactly.

Mike Seamons [01:27:07] But you know, it's interesting because, I mean you've, I'm sure it's been set on Mormon stories before. Like the LDS Church is the greatest system for first half of life potentially on the planet. Even Richard Rohr says this, it is terrible at the second half of life because it's all about container and maintaining, you know, the container and. And yeah, there's tons of. There's tons of giving and service and. And that's what a lot of people equate second half of life is. But it always has cash back to the provider. Like, my service always has cash back, you know, to me. And so it's. It's still building me through my service.

Mike Seamons [01:27:46] And that's been the part, like, as we've hopefully, you know, kind of found our way to not needing all of that, you know, what we're really focused on. And yeah, we do have this. We got lucky at our timing in Microsoft. But more than that, we saved and saved so that we don't have to get up every day and think about how do we just keep food and clothing going, but we get up every day and go, how do we help the people we love experience wonder today? How do we experience it ourselves? What can we create to bring more of it into the world?

Mike Seamons [01:28:20] And it's not. There's no. It doesn't cost anything. All it is is an invitation, you know, the four of us, if we could have our dream date with you. It's, let's just take four beach chairs out to the sand and watch the sunset and just talk and take a picnic. Like, it's not complicated. There's no cost to it.

Michele Seamons [01:28:38] Yeah. And let's lay it there. Let's lay all the things there. What hurts? What do you need help with? Is there something we can do? It just takes one person just saying, hey, I'm willing to hear it and I'm willing to lift.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:56] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:28:57] And all of a sudden, when that ripple, you know, starts rolling and you start hearing everyone's doing it, like everyone can do it, and the fear falls away. All of my fear that held me so hostage for so many years is gone.

Releasing Fear and Embracing Wonder

Margi Dehlin [01:29:21] Tell me about that fear. What did the fear look like? What did it say to you?

Michele Seamons [01:29:25] Doing things correctly, doing it right. A fear of what I thought I knew, which is a heavenly father and mother and a hereafter that was already planned out. Where am I going to go in that situation? I'm knowing all of the things that I have to know. I'm going to go out and I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow. And my expansion has just pushed the fear right out the door.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:01] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:30:03] I don't feel it anymore. I really don't.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:07] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:30:08] And I am not afraid of other people. I mean, that's huge. I'm not afraid of my children. I'm not afraid of the choices that they're gonna make. I love them, and I have raised them to be capable individuals, and now they are capable adults.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:25] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:30:26] They can do it. I know they can. They're my. I'm their biggest cheerleader, and they are fantastic.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:33] Right.

Michele Seamons [01:30:34] And I'm seeing they don't also don't need the structure. They are learning the first half of life things that we thought only the church could teach in a million other ways. And it's working.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:47] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:30:48] Now, do they struggle? Yeah, because they also know there was this other thing called Mormonism that we lived in that made it so easy.

Mike Seamons [01:30:58] You just had to show up.

Michele Seamons [01:30:59] Yeah. Like, I can't say that. My kids have at times said, when they've moved to a new city, maybe I just go to the ward. Like, I'm having struggle meeting people. I'm like, hey, that's what you need. Go do it.

Mike Seamons [01:31:14] And then they find other ways to meet people that, you know, or it could have been that, or it could be a different way. And we, you know, have six kids. And our unique part of our story is in the time frame that we were going through the deconstruction and then reconstruction, all six of our kids have gone through their own journey at different times. Like, some ahead of us, some behind us, some with us, you know, so as a family of eight, we have.

Mike Seamons [01:31:43] Have all taken a journey from a very idyllic Mormon family to. We call ourselves wonder junkies. That's our pet name for the seekers of wonder. And we just are like, look, we're just gonna. We're gonna orient ourselves around this energy, and we're gonna make our family be seekers of energy and bring all of your ideas, like, where have you found it? What are you doing when you find it? What's.

Mike Seamons [01:32:13] Tell us about it. Like, we talk about everything because there is no. There isn't a. Well, that's not right. Or that's not right. There is all just. Now tell me about it. Because if you're making it up, like, I don't want to hear a fictitious story. I want to hear a real story. And so therefore.

Michele Seamons [01:32:33] And let's critically make sure it's real through it, us together. Let's be in committee. Teach me, and let's think about it together. I want to be taught. I want to learn more. Maybe there's something I'm missing.

Mike Seamons [01:32:44] Every Sunday night, we have family home evening on Facebook.

Michele Seamons [01:32:48] We still do it.

Mike Seamons [01:32:49] We still do it. And all six of our kids. And now they're many of their spouses and significant others. They all join and we talk about, what have you been doing this week? But then we get into books. Usually it's a book that we read and talk about together or a podcast. But it's just a way. I mean, these are all adults. Like, we're no longer raising them. We're trying to help them through our experience and through the life that we've been able to live. But we also fully respect their. You've got to figure it out your way.

Mike Seamons [01:33:25] We thought that the best way was to inherit it, to live it, to hold it, to never let it go. We don't think that's actually the best way anymore. We think it's to give you the freedom and the support and the love and maybe a little bit of wisdom because of the way that we've found our path and let you go and surprise us with the way that you figure it out. And we'll be there to catch you if you fall.

Mike Seamons [01:33:53] And we have done that a lot. But nothing is in the closet. And it's the most beautiful way to be a family because nobody puts on costumes when they come home. And we have a son who is non binary. And, you know, he feels like he has had a transformation in him that we love they. And we're trying to learn how to say right pronouns because we're learning with him.

Margi Dehlin [01:34:19] It was very new. It's very recent. Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:34:22] But, you know, we have kids that are making decisions that are across a beautiful set of dimensions, and we just look at it all as, wow, what is our life gonna look like five years from now, ten years from now? And like Michele said, and not having the fear that we're not doing it right.

Michele Seamons [01:34:41] And therefore there's gonna be empty chairs

Margi Dehlin [01:34:46] that.

Michele Seamons [01:34:46] No empty chairs like that. I have all of those Mormon things. I am in an emptying stage. I used to have probably 50% of the hymnal memorized. I prided myself in being able to sing at church without having to open the hymn because I had to facilitate six kids and I wanted to sing with the congregation. So I just said, well, then I need to learn all the songs. I mean, I have so much information embedded that to let it go is amazing because what's coming back is also amazing.

Michele Seamons [01:35:29] There's. It's a beautiful thing. And I guess I want for anyone that. Because I didn't feel like I had anyone to tell me. I had Mormon stories, I had people that I didn't know That I kind of clung to their stories that there can be light at this end of this tunnel of being Mormon and something different now. That was amazing. And now I have. I'm feeling it. I'm at peace. That's all I can say.

John Dehlin [01:36:05] It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I believe. Let me ask you another question that comes from me seeing tens of thousands of people venture into this. Similar waters, but different waters. The one set of traps I often see or sometimes see is, you know, you could call it, you could call it wonder, whatever. What do you call it? Wonder warriors?

Michele Seamons [01:36:37] Wondered and awe.

John Dehlin [01:36:38] Wonder Woman.

Michele Seamons [01:36:39] Wonder junkies.

John Dehlin [01:36:40] Yeah. But you can see people, let's just say, in a positive way, healthily educate themselves and. Or experiment with sexuality. And you can see people get lost and sometimes really harm themselves or others in unhealthy explorations in sexuality. You can see people find healthy ways to explore psychedelics that they say is really healing and transformative. And you can see people sort of chase that to the point where it almost becomes its own religion, but also sometimes its own addiction, you know, so you can see it. You can see people say, oh, I just love wine and I just love wine with dinner. And I don't.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] I only have one or two drinks. And then you can see people that become alcoholics. And so I want to, I'm trying to frame it positive and correct or, you know, people get into raves and they really love the music and they really love the friendships and. But then I've seen people end up in really, really dark places where they would have been saying everything you said up to some point about awe and wonder and self fulfillment and no control and no patriarchy. And then for some it goes really, really dark and their marriages blow up. And sometimes a marriage should end and it's. It should be a celebration.

John Dehlin [01:38:12] Other times they just, just blow up their lives and their marriages and not in a happy ways ways that. And I've had several friends, and I don't mean to put a real dark spin on this. I've had several friends who could have sang some of these praises very similarly as you who have died by suicide because these same paths you guys are talking about for them ended in very dark places. So there could be a negative way of framing this, of adrenaline junkies or dopamine junkies or risky behaviors or epicureanism or selfishness, where all these wonderful things you paint this beautiful vision can also for some.

John Dehlin [01:39:01] And I'm not trying to yuck your yum at all, like, I love your vision and I want to join this. Margi and I are both like, yeah, how do we sign up? I do want to say some of these things I've heard before, and for some people, I've seen it end very darkly.

Michele Seamons [01:39:17] Right.

John Dehlin [01:39:18] Do you have. Are you just new to this? And so you haven't seen the potential of some of these things to be very dark? Or do you have thoughts or guardrails? Because sometimes people aren't good at implementing their own guardrails. Any thoughts on any of that?

Michele Seamons [01:39:39] We have a hundred percent. I mean, you did an episode where

John Dehlin [01:39:46] Britt Hartley.

Michele Seamons [01:39:47] Yeah. Who I love, did, like, the eight things that Mormons are gonna do when they leave the church. And I'm like, eight things not to do or not to do.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:55] Well, she did both. Things to do and not to do.

Michele Seamons [01:39:58] And I seen it all. I mean, you know, and have I participated? Probably because guardrails are down. Have we seen people get hurt? Yeah. Loved ones. Yeah. But for me, I think it comes down to this fear again, and a belief in good humans and the goodness.

Michele Seamons [01:40:29] I think there's more good than there is bad. I had this one. I'm going to bring it back to a sailor that I met. His name was Craig White. We met him up in Port Washington. Port Washington, Long Island.

Michele Seamons [01:40:45] And I was asking him about. He sailed the world for 14 years. And before that, he was a cameraman for a major news source film, Tom Broca. All of the big ones. He's traveled the world. He's filmed the interviews of presidents and leaders.

Michele Seamons [01:41:07] And he would say during those times of filming, he saw only dark. He saw only the bad things that could happen. And in his 14 years of sailing around the world, he said 99% of the world is good and it's going to work out for every 99. He really believed in the number and that the other percent has a microphone.

Michele Seamons [01:41:37] And that's not to dismiss in any way the hurt and the pain of anyone that is going through something hard and they're navigating what is best for me and what is not. Because I will never proclaim to be their spiritual guide or teacher or moral authority. But I'm going to side with Craig White.

Mike Seamons [01:42:04] And.

Michele Seamons [01:42:04] Yeah. Do people have risky behavior and do they make mistakes and does it leave them down dark paths? Yeah. But I believe as humans, we can help people either come off that path, support them, love them. I also believe in them coming out of it. Does it happen for everyone? I don't think so. I'm a product of a dad and a Brother, that didn't work out for them. And I can't justify why those are those numbers. I don't like that there are numbers that get lost and hurt and it doesn't sometimes doesn't equate. But I like that fear. I'm not gonna let it stop me from believing what Craig said.

Mike Seamons [01:42:59] And I think there's guardrails just in like we have this experience of half of our kids grew up in abstain or Die. Like the Strength of Youth had all the answers and, and it gave us the list. I counted the number of do nots and dos and I spent a lot of time in the Strength of Youth in my life. And we raised our first four kids with that is every rule that we expect out of you is in that book. And then we've raised two boys where we said we're going to talk about everything.

Mike Seamons [01:43:31] Abstain is no longer the requirement. It's like figure out how to moderate and. And then we've extended that same thing to our older kids and what we're finding and to ourselves. It's like, I don't think it's a healthy experience to simply say all of these things are bad because I was told they're bad. Therefore I avoid everything and I live a life managing a list of avoidances versus like, we have a lot of friends who they have very healthy relationships with alcohol and healthy relationships with all. All of the things that have been on the abstain or die list.

Mike Seamons [01:44:07] And so we're far more motivated now to number one, not have anything be in a closet. Because it's like, look, the minute something goes in the closet, it's numbing and it's escaping a life I don't like. And therefore that is something we need to help pull out of it and say, let's talk about what is it that you're missing that's making you feel like you need to go into a closet and do that this thing or not. And we watch all of our friends and many of our very still participating Mormon friends, they are having a really hard time managing this because their kids are doing things that they're not talking about.

Mike Seamons [01:44:47] And it's all very hush hush and it's almost like if we don't talk about it, it didn't happen, but it did happen. And it's getting worse and you're not talking about it because it scares you to talk about it. And talking about it, it makes you afraid that it's going to make more of it.

Mike Seamons [01:45:03] We at least have. And you asked how long? Like, you know, we've been living kind of towards a different orientation for six years, since 2020. Like we, we started reorienting, then we stopped, you know, a way of doing it, you know, in 2023. But, you know, we're seeing that really open communication, total dedication to each other and how to orient yourself towards something bigger than you. Because the last thing we want is a bunch of narcissists in our family that think they know everything and selfish. Especially in a world where I spent the last few years of Microsoft building AI with Microsoft. And I think we're entering a phase where we have got to really figure out what it means to be human because we are going to those who are easily fooled by human just means I know things like no, human means I feel things.

Mike Seamons [01:45:59] Human means I experience things with emotion. And if we cannot get more in touch with our emotions and more in touch with this emotion, which I love, wine, therefore I drink wine is not awe. Awe has a very specific kind of rhythm to it, which is I feel small in something vast and massive. It's an energy that you find and it's not about me, it's not about my ego. Gets smaller in experiences of awe. And yeah, we can stretch it in all the places that we want and say, well, that's awe. Well, that's all. Well, that's all. But maybe if we start talking about it more and you tell me your experiences and I tell you mine, maybe we'll walk away going, I like yours more.

Mike Seamons [01:46:46] Like, I'm going to go after yours because yours are really interesting ones. And yeah, you could call it adrenaline or like, I've studied neurochemistry enough to have a, you know, a paper that somebody writes that said he knows something about neurochemistry. But I know nothing other than all the things that. Because I'm now. I'm now left with this. I have a lifetime of miracles and a lifetime of a God who chose me and who made my life magical. And yeah, it gave me a lot of trials that were really hard and now I don't.

Reorienting Toward a Non-Personal Spirituality

Mike Seamons [01:47:21] I'm no longer orienting myself towards a person. I'm orienting myself towards an energy. And now I have to answer the question of, if not a personal God who chose Mike and Michele and put us on paths to put us into every good thing, then what is going on in the universe?

Mike Seamons [01:47:41] And it's the most exciting way to wake up every day to go. I'm going to find out a little bit more about what is really happening because it's magic. I believe in magic.

Michele Seamons [01:47:51] We believe in magic, but it's not free of trial. I mean, you were diagnosed through a friend, kind of accidentally in 2024 of kidney cancer. And so he's gone through two surgeries at the Moffatt Cancer center in Tampa.

Michele Seamons [01:48:16] And how do you do that with a different philosophical, religious hat on? And I watched him understand his body, be in tune, pay attention to ways he was healing and ways he was not healing, which we would have avoided all of those things because a blessing would have fixed it.

Michele Seamons [01:48:41] And I watched it at that cancer center. I heard it in other rooms where they have their pastor and they're praying and they're fasting, and it's going to heal the cancer. And I'm like, what if it doesn't? And we didn't know what the outcome would be for him and for me.

Michele Seamons [01:49:05] He taught me in that I can do those hard things without relying on only spiritual outside power. There's something within me. I'm a part of this. I don't know if all the healing comes from me. I don't know if I have all that power, but I'm taking some personal accountability and responsibility in this process.

Michele Seamons [01:49:34] And whether it goes right or wrong, I'm in it. And I learned so much because prior to that, it was magical, thinking it was someone else. There's a plan. There's a plan for me, and if I die, then that was preordained.

John Dehlin [01:49:53] Heavenly Father needs you on the other side.

Michele Seamons [01:49:55] Right, Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:49:57] Versus, like, well, listen and pay attention to your body. See if you can be a part of your own healing.

Michele Seamons [01:50:03] And that's how we teach our kids. With all of those things that you said about the guardrails we're currently teaching them, do you know yourself? Do you ask yourself the questions, Is this good for me? Am I heading in a direction that leads me to peace, abundance, and goodwill toward men, or am I hurting myself? And all we can do is ask the questions, and they have to figure it out for themselves. And I've been pleasantly surprised at the conversations we have with our kids. And they're six very strong individuals. They do not think the same. They are not a uni mind.

Mike Seamons [01:50:48] They.

Michele Seamons [01:50:48] They've got this. So, yeah, we're not afraid. Whether it turns out, like I said, we could be a great example or a terrible warning. So you take your pick.

John Dehlin [01:51:03] But what I'm hearing is you feel alive.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:05] Oh, exactly.

Michele Seamons [01:51:07] If you liked me before, you're going to like me more, because I know how to love better. I Know how to live better, and I know how to do better for the right reasons.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:17] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:51:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:22] What a powerful testimony.

Michele Seamons [01:51:25] No one's letting me come to the pulpit.

Mike Seamons [01:51:27] Whose name do you say in the name of Michele.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:31] That's right, you own it.

John Dehlin [01:51:34] Well, we've got, like, five minutes left. Margi, any final questions?

Margi Dehlin [01:51:37] No, I've just really loved. I've really related to, I think, a lot of what you.

John Dehlin [01:51:44] Margi doesn't stay. This is the longest Margi's ever stayed for Mormon stories.

Michele Seamons [01:51:48] Hanging in there. Margi.

John Dehlin [01:51:49] She must really like what y' all are putting down.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:51] Stay. From time to time, she pieces out.

John Dehlin [01:51:53] After four hours, we invite you to

Michele Seamons [01:51:55] our commune when we get up and running.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:58] But. And I think, like, one thing that I just really celebrate is, you know, this shift to connecting with the actual experience of life. I think so much of Mormonism is the end. It's the result. It's always, like, future kind of things. And this shift to just how it feels to live, how it feels to experience, you know, each other or intimacy or what's hard, you know, that's. For me, the awe balances. It would be for me, going back to John's question, one thing. If you're using awe as an avoidant technique.

Michele Seamons [01:52:43] So it's hard.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:44] Right? I'm just gonna. Then, you know, I can see that. But as long as it's this partner to, like. No, I see it all.

Michele Seamons [01:52:53] I feel it all. We're having harder conversations than we've ever had because we now give ourselves freedom to actually say the things, express the feelings that we suppressed.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:07] Absolutely.

Michele Seamons [01:53:08] And we're not afraid of that.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:09] Yes.

Michele Seamons [01:53:10] We're not afraid that it's hard.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:11] It's connection to your experience. It's this connection to presence. It's connection to yourselves. And then that completely changes the experience of connecting to one another. Because if you're connecting to yourself and that gives you a whole I just feel, like, that fear aspect. When you fear things inside you, you fear things outside you. You can't hold another person's pain or suffering. You're too afraid. You have no tools. Right. And so I just see this shift in quality of the way you live and the way you connect with all things that are living.

Michele Seamons [01:53:55] It's true.

Mike Seamons [01:53:56] One of the biggest things we've learned is is this feeling that we both have been pursuing since children that we've talked about. All this is. It's. It's better together. Like, it's not. It is a shared experience. I mean, one of the things we've learned is like you don't, you don't get as much of it as frequently and at the intensity if you are by yourself.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:17] Right.

Mike Seamons [01:54:17] And it doesn't mean it's, you can't have an experience like that by yourself. But.

Michele Seamons [01:54:21] And it doesn't mean you have to be married to this person. Like, you know, it's expansive, it's like

Mike Seamons [01:54:26] a witness to it. You together experience something and that's what like we get up every day going, how do we intersect with people like John and Margi? Like we really genuinely, you have given us so much that we have not been able to give back to you. Because you tell us stories and help people tell stories that we sit on the other side of this screen going, oh, that feels familiar. Oh, that's different. I haven't thought of it that way. And you bring that out and then you share like those kind of insights where it's like, yeah, I mean you've spent years just trying to help people.

Michele Seamons [01:55:00] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:55:00] You've find something beyond where they are. Yeah. And what an amazing gift it is just to sit in a room with you. And we hope that someday we can have you on our boat or you know, sit on a beach in chairs and continue it because this is like, we hope this is just the beginning

Michele Seamons [01:55:19] and everyone listening just, just look us up and join us.

John Dehlin [01:55:24] Which city in near Miami? Near Boca?

Michele Seamons [01:55:27] No, we're just south of Cocoa beach and the best kept secret of Florida, Satellite Beach.

John Dehlin [01:55:34] What part of Florida?

Mike Seamons [01:55:36] East Coast.

Michele Seamons [01:55:36] East Central. Central East Coast.

John Dehlin [01:55:40] I was just in Palm Coast.

Michele Seamons [01:55:42] Oh yeah, that's south.

Mike Seamons [01:55:44] Yeah, that's where we're further north.

Michele Seamons [01:55:46] Yeah, like think of Orlando. We're on a diagonal line right out to the, I mean like just go straight out to the coast from Orlando.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:53] That's so good to know.

Mike Seamons [01:55:54] So it's close. We fly in and out of Orlando,

Michele Seamons [01:55:56] we watch all the rockets go off from Cape Canaveral.

John Dehlin [01:55:59] It's so you're right east of Orlando.

Mike Seamons [01:56:01] Just east. An hour away from Orlando.

Michele Seamons [01:56:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:03] It's like I thought about going straight east to see what was out there.

Michele Seamons [01:56:07] It's like walking back.

Mike Seamons [01:56:08] We watch rockets all the time because that's where they launch.

Michele Seamons [01:56:11] NASA's there, it's untouched special place in Florida.

John Dehlin [01:56:16] I was in Palm coast three days ago.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:17] Go.

Mike Seamons [01:56:17] Oh well, okay. Next time our boat's not there, our boats.

John Dehlin [01:56:21] I was in Orlando.

Michele Seamons [01:56:22] Orlando's pretty awesome too.

Mike Seamons [01:56:25] But we do hope like we. You've you Taco.

John Dehlin [01:56:27] Have you been to Bar Taco?

Mike Seamons [01:56:28] Bar Taco.

John Dehlin [01:56:29] It's A really good restaurant in Orlando.

Michele Seamons [01:56:32] Okay, we'll go. We'll go.

John Dehlin [01:56:34] They just have tacos.

Michele Seamons [01:56:35] Yeah, yeah. We're always up for tacos and amazing

Margi Dehlin [01:56:37] guacamole and chips and.

John Dehlin [01:56:39] And no hitos. We have no hitos. Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:56:42] No hos.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:43] They're delicious.

John Dehlin [01:56:44] We're still warm in that one.

Michele Seamons [01:56:45] Yeah, that's okay. That's okay.

Reflections and Closing Gratitude

John Dehlin [01:56:48] Well, today was beautiful and we've only got like two minutes left, so I just want to say to Mike and Michele Siemens, thank you for sharing a beautiful, six hour, epic, enormous story.

Michele Seamons [01:57:01] I hope our friends stick around. I mean, that's a really long time.

John Dehlin [01:57:07] The ones that are worth being around will stick around.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:09] That's right. This is a conversation.

John Dehlin [01:57:12] This can be. We call this filtering, a sifting.

Michele Seamons [01:57:14] I've only had one person ever ask my Mormon story. 1. A dear friend and I sadly tried to record a Mormon story for her and it cut off at one hour.

Mike Seamons [01:57:26] And you spoke for one hour and

Michele Seamons [01:57:27] I spoke for three.

John Dehlin [01:57:29] Well, now you got six.

Michele Seamons [01:57:30] Now I got six. Now she has some content that she won't.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:34] Well, it's beautiful.

John Dehlin [01:57:35] Thank you so much for coming and for sharing your story. If people want to get a hold of you guys, how do they get a hold of you?

Mike Seamons [01:57:41] We. I write a substack on Seek Wonderway. I love your substack. If you go to seekwonderway.com you'll see S-E-E K wonderway.com. it's. I started it when we moved onto the boat and, you know, it's really where we talk about wandering on.

John Dehlin [01:57:58] We'll put that in the show notes.

Michele Seamons [01:58:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:00] Okay. That's the way you want people to reach out.

Mike Seamons [01:58:02] Yeah.

Michele Seamons [01:58:03] Come if you're ready to seek and find it. We're always open. The door is always open.

John Dehlin [01:58:09] Fun.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:09] Or you could always go to Satellite beach and go to the local grocery store. You never know, maybe Michele will be there and start chatting you up, all sorts of questions.

Michele Seamons [01:58:19] Or the beach or anywhere.

Mike Seamons [01:58:21] Wherever you are, we'll find you.

John Dehlin [01:58:23] Or Mike's little fire.

Mike Seamons [01:58:24] That's right.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:25] You'll see a fire.

Michele Seamons [01:58:26] We're there. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:58:27] All right, excellent. Well, thanks so much again for joining us. Margi, thanks for being with us today.

Michele Seamons [01:58:33] Sticking it up.

John Dehlin [01:58:34] You always make our episodes better.

Michele Seamons [01:58:36] So much better.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:37] Thank you.

Michele Seamons [01:58:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:38] Yeah. And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I'll be quick if you donate. Thanks. We couldn't do it without you. If you want to support this type of content, mormonstories.org donate. Become a monthly donor. If you want to apply like these fine people did. MormonStories.org apply is how you apply. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com subscribe, like and share. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Find wonder. Seek wonder. You can do it.

Michele Seamons [01:59:05] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:05] It's everywhere.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] It's everywhere. It's rich, poor.

Michele Seamons [01:59:09] Yeah. It doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [01:59:10] It's everywhere. Any color doesn't matter. Young, old, sickness and in health, you can find wonder where you are.

Michele Seamons [01:59:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:59:18] Yeah.

Mike Seamons [01:59:18] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:19] It's beautiful. In the name of Mike and Michele.

Michele Seamons [01:59:22] Mike and Michele.

Mike Seamons [01:59:23] Amen.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] Amen. The three L's, Margi, Mike and Michele.

Michele Seamons [01:59:28] Yep. We all agree.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:29] Mmm.

Michele Seamons [01:59:29] Jane, I was going to say in the voice of three witnesses, all things will be established. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:37] Take care, everybody. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon. On another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

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