Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 2085

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's November 6, 2025 and today we have an epic, important, fascinating, riveting Mormon Stories interview. We're going to be covering themes like what happens when your dad's excommunicated in the Mormon Church? Or what happens when you're trying to date Mormon men and a bunch of them are gay? What's that like to date gay Mormon men? How does that work out?

John Dehlin [00:00:28] But even more interestingly, we're going to be talking about what when your spouse passes away and you're sealed to that spouse in an eternal Mormon marriage and you're a woman, and then you find another Mormon man that you want to get married to and it gets sealed to him. But you have to contemplate, do I try and get the sealing canceled or not? Will they let me cancel the sealing as a woman?

John Dehlin [00:00:54] Some of you may know that our current prophet and our previous prophet in the Mormon Church both were sealed to multiple women. And that's been not a problem in the Mormon Church for a long, long time. But there's some weird double standard in the church around men being able to be sealed to multiple women, but women needing to get a sealing canceled to a first spouse to then get sealed to the second. And we've got someone who went through the process to try and navigate all that and she's got some insight to share on that as well. Those are just some of the themes that we're gonna be covering today. I'm thrilled to be joined with my co host and partner, Margi. Hey, Margi. Hello. Are you excited for today?

Margi Dehlin [00:01:41] I am very excited for today, thanks for asking.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] I love that sweater.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:45] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] And today it's a hat day for me just cause I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:50] It's looking great, babe.

John Dehlin [00:01:51] I had a headache and Margi's like, you can wear a hat, it's okay. Wear a hat.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:55] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:01:56] I'm like, okay. So anyway, and most importantly, we're excited to have our guest who is also a professor in Texas, but Rebecca Lucero Jones, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Rebecca's Background and Mormon Upbringing

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:02:12] Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] Now, I probably didn't do your introduction justice, so how would you want to introduce yourself to your audience?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:02:21] Well, yeah, let me, I guess just do a really brief overview of who I am. I work as a professor in marriage and family therapy, so I train marriage and family therapists. I have a private practice as well, where I mainly work with adults at this point. So, yeah, I'm a practicing marriage and family therapist. I also supervise marriage and family therapists who are already in the field. And I do. I recently started a podcast with my husband. So, you know, I just keep adding jobs. It's called Keeping it up with the Joneses.

John Dehlin [00:02:54] And is it couples, but also relationship slash, even sexual health. Is that right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:03:00] So both of us, one of our shared research interests is sexual communication. And so it mainly covers our research that we've done on sexual communication. So right now only season one is out and that's on our research in sexual communication in heterosexual couples. We are currently. We've actually already collected all the data for sexual communication in, sorry, LGBTQ and polyamorous couples because the. Basically you need to ask different questions and things need to be a little bit different for different populations. And so pretty soon we'll be publishing on that and we'll have a season on that as well. Yeah. And then I think also other seasons will just focus on research based things that we can talk about in regards to relationships and in particular the sexual relationship.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] Excellent. Were there any major themes that you want to make sure we cover that I didn't mention in the teaser, or did I get them all or most of them?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:03:57] I think you got the major themes. I'm sure little things will seep out here and there. It might. I'm sure it'll come out. But like being a working woman, as someone who is raised Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:04:08] Yes. And trying to.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:09] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:10] As a single Mormon mom who's working. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:13] Yeah. And I actually have done research on working Mormon women and conflict in their families and published on that. So anyway, yeah, I'm happy to talk about that experience as well. I'm sure it'll just come out because it's literally how I exist, but.

John Dehlin [00:04:26] Okay, excellent. All right, well, Rebecca Lucerra Jones, where does your Mormon story begin? Is it Dr. Rebecca Lucerra Jones?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:34] Yeah, it's Dr. But even my students, I'm like, call me Rebecca. Some of them like to call me Dr. L.J. because they can't not call me doctor, but. Right. They.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:44] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:44] I don't know, they feel more personal.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] Where does your Mormon story begin?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:48] Yeah. So I am the middle of five children and I was born in Missouri. So I think that's important to know that, like, I'm not from Utah. My parents are originally from Idaho, so they grew up. And most of my relatives, like, we would always travel back to Utah, Idaho area. So most of our relatives grew up in kind of a Mormon saturated community.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:05:12] But we grew up in St. Louis, where there was quite a bit of diversity. My oldest brother, this is just kind of a side note, but I think it is interesting. My oldest brother was actually born with down syndrome. Well, so there are actually six children, but none of us ever lived when he did. He was born with down syndrome and died when he was 2 in surgery. Probably surgery that now would have been successful.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:05:35] So there was some grief early on, I think, for my parents with kind of the start of their family. Probably, I think the most important thing to start with is I. You know, probably my earliest memories of faith really are kind of grounded in the trauma that occurred in my family with my parents divorce. My dad ended up being excommunicated because he did fall in love with a woman that he worked with.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] You're like six, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:06:11] And I was like five or six. Yeah. And so I actually, in preparation for this interview, like, pulled out old journals and just to kind of like check, like, are were things the way I remembered them? And I actually found a paper that I wrote in my AP English class, and it was me reflecting on my parents divorce and them disclosing that to me and how they, like, gathered us and told us. And at the time, I really couldn't understand, right? Like, mom and dad aren't getting along. Dad's gonna move out, Mom's crying. My older sister was like 12 or 13, and so she understood kind of what was happening, but I didn't.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:06:51] And I remember we lived in a huge home. So my dad had just. My dad's a doctor. He just finished his residency. And we'd moved into this like, million dollar, beautiful French home in St. Louis. And it had a third story, and it had like a basement. It was really. It was a really large house. In fact, we had not filled it with furniture. Like, it was like we had this old furniture, like med school student furniture in this beautiful, gorgeous house.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:07:17] And I remember when they told us, like, we were on the second floor and like my oldest sister, like, runs down all the flights of stairs into our basement. And our basement had a dance room. Like, wood floors, lined wall with mirrors. Like just a little girl's fantasy, right? And we had these big, huge gymnastic mats, and they ran to the mats and they were sitting on those and they were crying. And I remember thinking, I want to cry too, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:07:45] But I didn't know why we were crying and I couldn't cry. But I knew something bad was happening. And now as a therapist, I will probably get emotional. Throughout all this, I, like, didn't understand what was happening, but I could understand that something really bad was happening to my family. And now as a therapist, I think I can see that, like, kids often don't have the story, but they do have all the feelings.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:10] And kids grieve in all sorts of ways. And as I reread that paper, I learned it was really interesting as a therapist to read it. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is. Even at, like, 17, I'm reflecting on this the way a child, like a child does, which is, I'm grieving, something's bad. This is bad. And now I just want to go play. Like, why are we crying on the gymnastics mats? Why aren't we doing a cartwheel?

Margi Dehlin [00:08:31] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:31] Just kind of this back and forth that children go through. And so that's kind of, I would say, the formation of me really, I think, coming to terms with, like, what is a family. And I do remember my mom losing quite a bit of weight. And I don't remember her, like, being depressed, although I imagine, like, how could you not be? She was suddenly becoming a single mother of five children.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:56] That had to be very overwhelming. I don't. My understanding is I don't think my mom could have ever conceived that divorce was an option. Like, I just don't. That's not how people. How families were where she grew up. It just was not in her realm, the realm of possibility for her. And so it was really tough on her to understand, I think, how my dad could leave, especially with a child that had been deceased. Right. Like, we were an eternal family. So how. How do you leave when one of our children, you know, is in the eternities? Right. Like, if we're not together, we won't all be together.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:09:33] So I think there was just, like, an overwhelming amount of grief. Obviously, they divorced and, you know, we did the, like, visits with dad and, you know, every other weekend, every Tuesday, we go out to dinner with dad.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:09:48] But honestly, that was, like, some of my first memories of my dad in the sense that, like, my dad had been really busy with medical school and residency. So as far as, like, really getting to know him, having this set aside time, that's, like, when I did get to know my dad. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:10:05] But in a lot of ways, I think my mom's grief and her experience formed how I also viewed my dad. My older siblings did not want to go with my dad. I also remember not wanting to go with my dad. I don't know how much of that's, like, As a child, like, here's your house, here's your toys. We don't want to go in to dad's, like, lame apartment, right. Or, like, that's not by our friends. Right. I'm not sure how much of it had to do with that, but there was quite a bit of conflict. And I do remember the police came to our house, would come.

Family Divorce and Childhood Disruption

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:10:41] My dad would call the police because my older siblings would be like, we're not going, right? So they were not complying with the court orders. So my dad would call the police. And like, I kid you not, like, only, like, a couple years ago, I was, like, talking to somebody and I was like, yeah, I guess that was really weird, right? Like, I guess that was really weird, right?

John Dehlin [00:11:01] I've never heard of that, but I'm not super experienced.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:04] But yeah, that. That's kind of a weird thing. And that may be traumatizing to a child that, like, the parents could not figure out how to support the divorce arrangement and that. Right. The kids are refusing to go, and now the police are being called.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:22] And I don't say that to place blame on any of them. Right. On either parent. But it is kind of just interesting, right, to think that, like, they must have not had the skills or the support to really figure out a better way than to have the police come to the house and say, like, hey, you probably need to go with your dad. And I actually don't remember if the police really forced or anything, but there were just a lot of tension. And so a highly acrimonious divorce. Highly acrimonious divorce. And eventually we did stop going with our dad on visits, and just the younger two were kind of obligated to keep going every other weekend.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:59] It's kind of like as you got older and you had more, you know, extracurriculars. I think my dad kind of at some point probably was just exhausted from trying to get us to go.

John Dehlin [00:12:10] And so that probably shaped how you viewed your mom versus your dad. Is that right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:12:15] Yes. I think in many ways, I always thought of my mom as very strong. I still think my mom a very strong woman. Yes. I think I clung to my mom a lot. I mean, I knew my mom. She was definitely a caretaker. She stayed home even after the divorce.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:12:30] She was able to get a really good divorce settlement where she was able to stay home and raise us, which is just unfathomable now. And so I do think that in a lot of ways, I aligned a lot with my mom.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:12:47] And I think as far as, like, the excommunication piece. Right. How does a six year old understand that? They don't. I do remember I have an older sister that was about eight at the time, which as a therapist, I think eight is a really young age, is a really rough age to have any sort of crisis happen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:06] It seems in my clinical perspective, trauma seems to be worsened when it happens around that age. And I think it has to do with developmentally that you're just beginning to determine what's real and what's not real. Just that's what's going on in the brain.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:19] And she seemed very sensitive to what was going on. She was the one that was probably leading the like, we're not gonna go with you. I also remember her asking, like, are you gonna get rebaptized? Like really longing for. Yeah, to him. Really longing for him to like come back in some sort of way. Not necessarily to the family. He did end up marrying the woman that he had had a relationship with while my parents were married, and they're still married and they have two grown children.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:50] I can't say. I can't speak to the health of the relationship in any way. But that's a long marriage, Right. Longer than my parents. So I imagine it's satisfying enough. Right. Which I think maybe the narrative had been like, right. If you step out on your family, that probably won't last long, but it has.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] And you mentioned the outline, like mom good, dad bad. Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:14:17] Yes, that's what I. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get to. Sorry. Yes. And so I think for a child, the way. And again, I can't say that this is actually how it was conveyed to me, but this is how I internalize it. Which I think is important to know is like, how do you explain to a child that dad is now going to be married to his nurse?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:14:39] Right. Like, it's not like at some point we're gonna put the pieces together of what happened. So ever since I can remember, I knew that there was an affair, which is a lot for a six year old to understand when they probably don't even understand sex.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:14:51] Right. So it's like everything was exposed. Right. Due to the level of conflict and understanding that too. And him leaving the church, like leaving. And again, the narrative was leaving the family. I don't know if that was my dad's intention to leave the family, but that was the narrat that he left all of us. Or at least that's how I internalize.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] Someone's gotta leave. Right? Someone's gotta leave. The house.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:15:16] Yes. And so I think the way. Because he did get excommunicated, it was understood to me. Dad made a choice. Like dad followed Satan.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:28] That's right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:15:29] And so I think in my mind it was dad. Is dad bad? Mom good? And not that I thought my dad was all bad, but I really didn't have the relationship with my dad I had. Not had. I mean, five kids, he's in residency. There's no relationship to contradict that he's making bad choices. Right. And that I should trust. Yeah. Or that I should trust him over my mother. Right. So. And I think this is true. Most kids in a divorce, especially if there's high conflict, they are gonna cling to a parent. Because your parents are one entity as a child only. Divorce exposes that they are separate. And once that breaks, you can be left, too.

John Dehlin [00:16:12] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:13] Right. So you align with whatever parent. It feels like it's going to be safest. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] It's reliable. Yeah. And then I. And you may know that I experienced Mormon divorce in my middle. Middle school years. And what did it. What message did it send to you about the importance of living the gospel? You know, following the rules, being obedient.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:37] Yes. Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:38] So.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:40] And I don't know. Right. It's hard to know what was, like, happening in real time versus, like, how it gets storied after. But I think definitely the story was vigilance. We need to be vigilant. That maybe there were things, like things we didn't see, things my dad had done that had maybe been ignored, that were signs. And so I grew up in a home that was very, very faithful. I wouldn't say it was completely rigid. Cause there's ways that my mom's really flexible and I think a really great parent. I think when it came to the gospel, though, I think some things were really intense. Like we couldn't watch PG13 movies even once we were 13. I have this wonderful story of how I'm 13. And Titanic was the movie.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] This has come up just this month.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:34] I will say. Really, it's a bit of a recovery.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] This is the second time. Second or third time. Tell us more. Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:17:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] So the question is who you were attracted to. Because sometimes it's different. Oh.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:45] Or both. That's the case.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] Who could be either one?

Margi Dehlin [00:17:49] Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:17:49] Yes. That's a great point. That's not where my story goes. So we had a movie theater at a mall, and I was 13. Right. So I was gonna be able to get in. And I knew my mom well, my mom didn't let us go to any PG13 movies. But I knew for sure, not that one. Cause right there were gonna be boobs. But I was like, I got boobs, right? Whatever.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:07] So it's like, not like I hadn' boobs before. I have a lot of sisters. I got a mom, right. Like, you know, you accidentally walking in a lot of people in my family and. But so my friend and I planned to go to the mall, and my mom dropped me off at her house, and they dropped us off there, and I was gonna return something to one of the stores at the mall when I went to the movie and I forgot it. So my mom calls the friend's mom and says, oh, Rebecca left the shirt.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:32] I need to get this to her at the mall. And she's like, well, they went to the movie. She goes, what movie? And my mom's friend was like, titanic. And my mom, she's not supposed to be seeing that. And she's like, well, I let my daughter see it. Cause you were letting your daughter see it. And my mom literally came in to the movie theater and got me out. And it was right as they were getting on the boat.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:54] Aw.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:55] And so I never saw Titanic. I literally saw it like a year ago. We showed it to our kids. And that was the first time I saw the full movie was just a year ago. I was like, by the time I was. Yeah, the full movie. It's a long movie. Yeah. But by the time I think I just was. So, like, the time had passed to see the movie, and then it was like, you know, three hours. And yeah, the moment had passed. In that moment, though, I actually did not process that as, like, my mom's ridiculous. I actually process that as, like, my mom's for real. Like, my mom really believes this.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] Stakes are high.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:19:31] Yeah. And not to me. It. In some ways, I think it did bring a level of security of, like, my mom will inconvenience herself to if she believes something. So in a lot of ways, I think it made me think, I gotta figure out what I think about this. Cause this woman is like, she's not messing around. You know what I mean? So in some ways, I think it built trust of, like, my mom's boundaries are her boundaries, you know? And I don't know that I was really embarrassed, but it is just like a funny story of, like, most people's parents would have just, you know, grounded them afterwards or something. But, like, no, my mom, she's like, coming in and being like Rebecca. And I don't remember getting in trouble. Just. She, like, intervened, you know. But that was kind of the level of commitment. Right.

Primary, Faith, and Family Ideals

John Dehlin [00:20:17] I have to ask, what was it like for you to sing Families can Be Together forever. In primary, knowing your family had been separated, or did that not register for you?

Margi Dehlin [00:20:27] That's something you were aware of.

John Dehlin [00:20:28] For me, it was like a childhood trauma. But maybe you didn't. You didn't experience it that way.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:20:33] I probably experienced sadness about that. I don't remember it being traumatic. I do remember Father's Day sometimes feeling, like, painful, but that might be it. Yeah.

Teen Years and Early Dating

John Dehlin [00:20:49] So should we talk about teen years and what that was like?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:20:53] Yeah, yeah, let's talk about dating.

John Dehlin [00:20:54] And that's next thing in your outline.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:20:56] Yeah, yeah. So dating in Missouri with the Mormon standards of, like, don't go on, you know, don't steady date was really rough.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] And don't date before you're 16.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:21:09] Because what it really meant was don't date at all. Right. And I think that's how it kind of ended up getting enforced. There was a boy I really liked. He had gotten, I guess, like, reactivated his family, and he came back, and so they were like the new boys in the ward. And he was really cute, and I remember having a crush and wanting to date him, but it was like, there were, like, three boys, and they were all really nice that were my age. But the other one of his friends, he liked me. And it was like, what, am I supposed to go out with the guy I like and then go out with his best friend that likes me, but I don't really like him? Like, am I supposed to rotate? Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] So you don't get too serious with one.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:21:49] Yeah, so you don't go serious.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:51] How does this work?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:21:51] Yeah, like, how would that even work? And so what ended up happening is that I didn't. I didn't end up dating. Right. Because it just wasn't possible. I actually need to back up a little bit because I think this is really important, too. When I was 12, the way our junior high is organized, you kind of fall into teams. And so I ended up being in classes, like, grouped on this team. And all those classes, you're with that same group of people on the team. None of them were from my elementary school. So I made new friends and I. And they were very popular.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:22:27] In fact, some of them were, like, smoking. Some of them were having sex. I had a sleepover, and I remember that one of them saying something about, like, oh, so. And so said, his penis is bigger since the last time I saw it. And I just Thought they were being kind of

Margi Dehlin [00:22:41] silly.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:22:42] Like, boys in sixth grade and seventh grade were kind of perverted. And they'd say things I didn't realize. I was like, oh, no. They had probably had. She'd probably given them oral sex. Is like, later what I. Later what I learned.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:22:55] So they were really doing things that weren't with. Obviously in the LDS norm. But that was what my friends. Some of my friends were doing. My mom was worried about these friends. I didn't really hang out with them outside of school. But I think it's important to note that, like, I really did fall into this popular crowd and that in many ways, I was enjoying popularity. I had quite a few, like, boyfriends. And obviously in sixth grade, it's like, do you have a crush on me? Do I have a crush on you? And there was. And so it's kind of stupid and it doesn't last very long.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:23:28] But there were a lot of times boys would ask me to be their girlfriend. I literally didn't even know who they were. And one time they were like, Charles, you know. Anyway, that's his name, Charles. I don't know if you're out there, but he had asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend. And I said, well, I don't know who he is. And I saw him and he was really cute. And so I was like, yeah, I do wanna be your girlfriend. Anyway, one day he was, like, leaving town. We were waiting for our parents. And he's like, can I have a kiss goodbye? And I was like, sure, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:23:56] Like, just, like, a peck. And my sister was watching because she was also getting picked up by her parents. Well, she told on me. And again, this wasn't, like, anything super serious on my part, but I got him. I don't know that I even got in big trouble. I should not say that because I don't think. I don't think I even. There was no punishment, but I think I felt, like, ashamed that, like, I'd kissed somebody. And I don't know why this made me emotional, but I think.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:24:23] I think it did feel like some sort of failure on my part. Like, I wasn't doing what I was supposed to. And when I was 16, there was a moment at a New Year's party where with all my friends and all my. All my Mormon friends knew I liked this boy and we were, like, really close friends and probably would have started dating. We weren't quite 16. Everybody, like, left the dance floor of my friend's basement so that we could kiss. But my parents, my Mom's upstairs.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:24:49] And. And I. I didn't obviously, like, I felt, like, so awkward, right, That I was in a room. And, like, it's not that I wouldn't have wanted to kiss him at, like, I'm almost 16. Of course, I'm very interested in that. But I think what happened for me is, like, I was like, I can't. And then I remember, like, going outside and, like, talking to him and saying, like, it's not that I don't want to kiss you. I was like, my mom's upstairs. Like, everybody's leaving the room. That's, like, so, like, so much pressure.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:25:14] And we did end up dating, and I felt like, in a way, we did end up dating. Well, one cause of the rules, but also because he felt so rejected by me. And I felt like, in a lot of ways, that was me trying to protect myself from this kind of like, you shouldn't be kissing boys. You shouldn't be dating. And so in a lot of ways, that was just, like, cut off from me. Like, it wasn't.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:37] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:25:37] Like, I wasn't allowed to be a young girl, and I was Superboy crazy. Like, I always had crushes on boys, and so that kind of. I don't really necessarily always think of that as super painful, but I feel like it was maybe just an experience where things kept, like, preventing me from developing relationships with young men in a way that I would say is really normal and developmentally appropriate.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:06] That's right. I'm noticing, like, you're. It's clear you have desire. You're experiencing, like, developmentally appropriate, like, desire and yearning and even wanting that connection. Here's my question for you. I'm curious if, in these moments, you've described a couple moments with your mom where your mom kind of comes in with regard to the standards of the church, and is this interrupter. Do you feel like, as a child, that maybe you conflated the idea of your obedience, you being obedient to some of these things, not doing, like, not seeing PG13 movies, not kissing boys as, like, caring for her, like, not letting her down in a way that she had been let down, and that you witnessed all this pain and fallout? Like, do you feel like that was confusing for you at all?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:08] Yeah, I mean, I think definitely part of it's that, like, there could definitely be a part of that of pleasing my mom or.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:15] Or taking care of her in that way, like, not wanting to disappoint. Or was the disappointment you were describing for yourself, like, I was disappointed in myself when I did those things.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:28] No, I really like when.

John Dehlin [00:27:30] With.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:30] With the kissing the boy. When I was 12, I really had, like, zero thoughts or regrets about it. Like, I understood it was a young age to kiss someone, but it was like a peck. So it was like, this isn't that

Margi Dehlin [00:27:40] big of a deal.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:41] I'm not making out. Right? Like, I kissed him goodbye. And I could understand the concern. I think it. I think sometimes there was a feeling of like, my mom's got eyes in the back of her head, right? Like that. I think that felt really real for me. And there's a lot of moments where, I mean, she was paying attention. And on some level, like, I think, think that's really awesome, right? A parent that's paying attention.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:05] I think probably a bigger theme for me is often feeling like I'm just doing me and like, finding out that other people are like, that that's not the right way to be. Like, there's some stories about, like, how I would mismatch clothes and how it's like, why are you mismatching clothes? And it's like, cause, well, why do I always have to wear that shirt with that bot.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:33] There's a story of me in a stocking getting a keychain that says I'm weird, not gifted. And I was like, mom, this is mean. And she's like, well, it's cause you were in the gifted program. And I was like, yeah, but it means I weird. And she didn't. I mean, she didn't mean it that way. But I do think I often feel that sometimes there's certain things about me that feel confusing to other. Maybe not to other people, but in my family, like, surprising.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:29:09] And so I think it fits into that other thing of getting this feedback of, like, I thought this was normal. I'm doing what other kids do, and then finding out like, oh, no, this is really. This is not appropriate. It's not okay.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] And also, one thing that came up for me just as curiosity, is just, if your dad blew up the family because of, like, mistakes he made, I don't know how you wouldn't feel like stakes are always really high in any small thing you might do. I'm not trying to impose that on your narrative, but that would. That would occur to me, you know?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:29:41] Yes. Yeah. No, I think that definitely was there, right? Is don't. Don't abandon the family. For sure. For sure. Right? Like, we've been left. We are all gonna stick together and we are gonna do whatever it. To be together. Right. I think that was very Real. I also did the sister.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:30:04] One of my sisters, I would say, is more rebellious in nature than I was. I would say I was more like, clueless. Right. Like, falling into crowds and kind of like, oh, this boy likes me. I'll kiss him. Like, I was more like, maybe fun loving or just kind of clueless. And I couldn't describe my sister's experience, but I do feel like in certain ways, when you have siblings that are older than you and they're causing grief for your parent in a lot of ways, like, you try to get out of the way. Right. And you are like, I don't wanna get in trouble like that. I don't wanna get grounded. I don't wanna get yelled at.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:43] And you don't wanna add to the stress that's already existing for that parent.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:30:48] Yes. So in many ways, I think I ended up being quite independent.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:52] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:30:54] And not like, independent like, I'm gonna do things on my own. Just, like, the energy is good. There's a lot of. There's conflict, and then there's other kids that are, like, testing boundaries. And so it's kind of like a lot of the energy in the room is being used somewhere else. So, like, don't ask for energy. I think that was the emotional message. I don't think anybody asked for me to not have needs, but I think that was just the reality.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:19] It totally makes sense.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:21] I could take care of myself, so I did in the ways I could.

John Dehlin [00:31:24] And that's also a middle child dynamic.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:26] Totally.

John Dehlin [00:31:27] Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:27] Yes, very much so.

Spiritual Experiences and High School Years

John Dehlin [00:31:29] So talk about this formative experience you had in Palmyra, New York.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:33] Yes. So we had a bishop when I was a teenager, and I loved this bishop. He was very charismatic. He. Yeah, just a wonderful person. Really invested in the youth. He had two young children himself. He was like the CEO of a company. And he was like, we need to give these young people spiritual experiences. And so one of the things he wanted to do was help us go to the sites. And we're in St. Louis, so we're, like, close, Right? Like, we're close to Nauvoo. We're close to Independence, Missouri. And so we did, like, rent things and went all the way to Palmyra. And it was kind of, like, encouraged for us to have, you know, this experience of, like, you know, finding out your own kind of testimony.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] Tell our nevermormons what significance Palmyra has.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:32:25] Yeah. So Palmyra is where Joseph Smith, I believe, was raised. And that's where he went into a sacred grove and had the first vision where he Saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. And so it was kind of like, have your own Sacred Grove experience.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:32:42] And prior to that, I really had. I mean, I had switched friend groups a couple of times, right. Because obviously I was not having sex in sixth grade. I was not interested in having sex in sixth grade. And so there were, like. I could see that some of my friends were, like, on a different path. Right. And so I had already switched friends quite a bit. But I do remember thinking, like, I could be popular, but if I do that, it's gonna be hard to keep the standards.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:10] But it's also gonna be hard to keep the standards if I don't really know if this is true. And so I really did look to that time to say, like, maybe this is my chance to figure out if this is really true for me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:24] And so I will say, up until that point, it's probably important to know, too. Like, my family, we're going to church every week. Even if we're on vacation, we're fasting, right. Like, 24 hours. We have little after church dresses.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:39] So we have church dresses, and we have more casual dresses to wear afterwards so that we keep the Sabbath. We have family home evening. Every week. We are reading scriptures daily. We are praying daily. Like, in terms of all the things, like, my mom was killing it and.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:54] Yeah. And, like, good on her. Right. Like, she really was doing all the things she could do as a mom to raise five children by herself and hoping that she gave them a really good chance. And I. Yeah. I mean, on some level, all of her kids have turned out really well, you know, so we did have a moment where we were able to go off into the grove. And I remember reading the scriptures. And I'm guessing. I'm guessing it was the dnc because it was the story of. Well, is that where he. That first vision account is?

John Dehlin [00:34:30] Is it in the dnc? It's in the Pearl of Great Price.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:34:32] Maybe it's in the Pearl of Great Price. One of those. And I read it.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] History.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:34:36] Yeah. So I did go and I read that, and I had, like, a very strong spiritual experience where, as I read the passage where he says, they call me by name, and I God and

John Dehlin [00:34:53] Jesus called Joseph by name.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:34:55] And I had, like, such a profound experience. Felt like, if they know his name, they know mine. And in that moment, for me, it was like, I can give up popularity. I can give up anything.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:09] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:35:09] If God knows me. And that felt really powerful for me. And, like, my spiritual formation. Right. That. Yeah. That if God really knows me, and knows me by name, like I can do anything for God. And I think that shows up quite a bit in my life. Right. This feeling of like, I can do hard things. Right. And so, yeah, that was kind of the formative experience. I don't know if you have more questions about that, but that's what it was.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] Yeah. And so that that meant to you. I mean, oftentimes Mormon youth or young adults have this experience that kind of seals them to church commitment. And it sounds like that was maybe one for you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:35:51] Yes, yes, I would say so. Yes. Yeah, I would say after that period of time, you know, I was one of those youth that would like, stand up and bear your testimony. Went to seminary, early morning seminary, no problem getting up, going and doing that. Yeah, all the things.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] Anything else super important about your high school years before we go to your BYU years, your relationship with your dad by the end of your high school? Is that even worth mentioning?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:36:23] No, I think the relationship was pretty. I mean, it was there, but it's.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] Did he get rebaptized?

Margi Dehlin [00:36:30] He did.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:36:30] He did get rebaptized, actually. He did get rebaptized and then he went with some. I think he tried. Yeah. My. If my recollection is correct, he came back. He was a Sunday school teacher. Sometimes he plays the organ. He's very good piano and organ player. My grandpa played the organ.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:36:48] He. I think the other thing. I don't know when this occurred, so I could be wrong. It might have happened later than high school, but my dad had come back and he was paying tithing. His wife is some denomination of Christian, I want to say, like Methodist or Presbyterian, I don't know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:06] So she didn't join the church or. And she tried to be supportive, I think of him, but he had paid tithing. Right. And that's a lot. I mean, you're a doctor, it's a lot of money from your household and you're also paying child support.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:18] And I think he tried to get his like temple blessings reinstated and he was denied. And I think she said, no, we're not giving any more money to that church. Because I think for her that didn't make any sense. Right. Like that you're going, you're committed, you're doing all the things, you're giving all this money and then there telling you no, I don't think she had any concept for that, which I don't blame her. Like, yeah, like, at what point, what do you have to do to get in? Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:50] So then I think at that point he. I Don't think he. I don't know if he. I don't get the impression that he attends a lot. I think that created some strain in the marriage, and I think he responded however he needed to for his marriage, is my understanding.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:04] I was gonna ask you really quickly when you were kind of talking about the Palmyra moment of, you know, this idea of your moment with the heavenly father who knows your name.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:38:18] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:19] Like, do you feel at all, like, the idea of heavenly father relationship with a heavenly father who knows you, who's constant, who. That. That served as a balm, maybe, in the loss of your earthly father? Like, was there an aspect of that that, like, was able to kind of fill this maybe yearning of being known by a father figure or. How would you describe that? Because I noticed you got quite emotional with it, so.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:38:50] Yeah, I think that's a great question.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:38:53] I think in a lot of ways I did look to, like, having a heavenly father as a way of, like. Yeah. Having some sort of, like, father daughter relationship where. Yeah. There's, like, a father that, like, can be there for me, can listen to me.

John Dehlin [00:39:16] Always.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:39:17] Yeah, always. And. And I don't know that my dad didn't want to be that, but.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:24] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:39:24] But it also didn't happen that way. Right. Like, whatever. Whether. I mean, he may say, your mom kept me from you. Right. Like, there might be a lot of ways to interpret that, but the result was that I didn't have an active. I definitely did not have an emotionally connected relationship with my father. And so I do think that's really. Probably part of it. Yeah.

BYU Years and College Life

John Dehlin [00:39:49] All right, well, so every Mormon kid who's faithful, who grows up outside of Utah has desires to consider byu, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:39:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Did you have BYU dreamed?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:05] Yeah, I don't. It's hard to know at what point I decided that BYU was it. Right. I mean, probably. Obviously that experience probably formed that. Yeah. My. Both of my older siblings went to byu Utah. I did have some interesting. I remember that at some point, maybe earlier on, one of me and my sisters wanted to go to. I don't know, we got in our heads out, like, we wanted to go to North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So that was something that was interesting to us. But I think. I think also, like, my family was like, we don't have money. We have five kids to put through college.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] And that's out of state, so.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:38] Yeah, and it's out of state.

John Dehlin [00:40:40] What'd you end up doing?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:41] So in high school, I knew that I loved history. I took an AP history class my junior year. And fell in love with history. But I was like, nobody wants to be a history teacher because that doesn't make a lot of money. And I was like, but what if I could get into politics and I could make history? So I was really excited about that. Before Hamilton was a thing, I was very into Alexander Hamilton in my junior year.

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Really? Yes. Why Alexander Hamilton?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:07] Cause he's the goat. Yeah, I mean, he's a federalist. I wish I had a better memory of things, but I. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I was a weird kid. I read a. Actually, I don't. This might have been more. In college, when I was reading my journals, I saw. I was, like, writing in my journal about reading the Teddy Roosevelt biography. So there's some interesting, like, history books that I read.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:31] Yeah. I just think he was really wise. So I did know I wanted to do poli sci going into college. And I ended up. I did end up going to byu, getting in there. And I majored in poli sci and stuck with that. Okay. And I did end up.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:50] Oh, I don't know if I had this in my outline. So at the end of my freshman year, I ended up going on a study abroad, and I went to Ukraine, which is really.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Whoa.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:00] Yeah. Which is really weird. But I had thought, like, there were, you know, there were different ones. And there was, like, one in France, and I was like, yeah, but if I go to France, it's probably gonna just be like a tourist. Like, it probably won't feel that different. And then there was one for Ukraine that was a lot cheaper. And I was like, that's an experience. Cause that, like, at the time, that was like, kind of a third world country. And I was like, well, maybe I should do that. And it was on religious freedom, actually, because, Right. With the communist wall falling now, there's, like, a lot of new religions going there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:28] And they're like, how do we cultivate religious freedom from no God to all these churches coming in? And so it was a cool experience. It was. I mean. But yeah, I mean, I was 19 and I left, you know, for six weeks to a country I didn't know the language.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] What year is that?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:45] It was. It would have been 2003. We visited Chernobyl. I don't know if you've watched that series.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] That's one of the best top 10 shows in all of television. Chernobyl. Check it out.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:58] Yes, it is an excellent show. Highly recommend. So me and my husband are watching that a few years ago, and at the end, it's like, this was successfully contained in, like, 2016. And I was like, we went and visited, like, you don't go in the actual plant, but outside. And this is the byu. The BYU Study Abroad just took us there. But we went through the classrooms. Like, all those classrooms with the little toys and everything. The Ferris wheel that's outside. We walked there, and I'm watching the show, and I. And I have an autoimmune disease. And now sometimes I'm, like, wondering, like, could.

John Dehlin [00:43:34] Oh, so you went there with BYU before the radiation was fully contained? Yes, yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:43:40] Like, a little exposure for date, Potentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember they told us to bring clothes we could throw away. Like, again, I'm 19. I don't get this thing. We brought clothes and shoes we could throw away. I kid you not. We got on this, like, scale that had, like, these, like. It was like bars of lights, and it, like, lit up and down and, like, was gonna tell you how much radiation you had. And even. Even as I'm doing this.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:02] Danger.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:03] Yeah, Danger. And I, like. I'm, like, looking at him. We're all like, oh, yeah, like, we believe this. But I was also like, I. I don't. I just had no clue about radiation. And who knows if they.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:12] That's why.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:14] But sometimes I'm like, oh, my gosh, I went to Chernobyl. So that's just a side note, but kind of a funny story.

John Dehlin [00:44:22] I mean, it does say something about you that you weren't like. And no harm for, like, the ones who wanted to go to Paris or, like, the Shakespeare thing in England or even Jerusalem center. Like, that. The fact that you chose Ukraine as your study abroad says something about kind of where your heart was or your values were at the time.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:41] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:41] Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Maybe that theme of, like, being a little different, like, open to a different adventure.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:47] Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:48] Yeah. An unusual adventure. But it was everybody else that was on it had served a mission in Ukraine or Russia. I was the only one, so I was definitely the youngest.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] How fast did you do Washington seminar?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:00] I did. Yeah. I did Washington seminar and worked for Congress.

John Dehlin [00:45:04] Okay, me too.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:05] Yeah. I thought I would stay. So that was another formative experience, I would say, at byu. I did. I actually planned it so that I would be in D.C. at the end and network to get a job. And, man, as an intern, I was bored out of my mind.

John Dehlin [00:45:19] Were those Bush years?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:21] No, May. It was 2005.

John Dehlin [00:45:25] Yeah. That was Bush.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:26] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:26] So maybe it was. Yeah. I just worked as an intern for a subcommittee, so they changed the name of the Subcommittee, but it was like regulatory affairs. And I remember having to do some things about the flat tax. I don't know if you remember that being a big deal. They wanted to do a flat tax. And yeah, I had to do some research on things, edit hearing transcripts. And so I was fully bored. And I was like, oh, no, what am I gonna do? This is a really boring job.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] And this is all gonna be pre law to then maybe become a public politician.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:58] Yeah, maybe with the thought. Well, that's what I realized. I was like, what? Well, maybe this is not the path. Because to be a staffer. And also, like, looking at the staffers, the staffers were either Nepo babies or they were introverts big time. And I was like, this is not the path to being a politician and being like, in the decisions. This is not that path for that. And I realized I need to do something more social. So then I actually thought, I'm gonna get an mba. So I actually thought I would go into business. I was like, I need to be with people. I can't just be at a computer.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] You want to be in the room where it happens.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:32] Yes, exactly. I do want to be in the room where it happens. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] I can't do an episode without a Broadway reference.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:38] So I'm curious about your experience culturally when you went to Yu.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:45] Oh, I'm so glad you asked. I'm so glad you asked because I definitely want to talk about this. So right when you grow up. And especially, like, right. Because I didn't date.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] So wait, explain that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:56] I didn't date and. Sorry. I didn't date in high school. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] Oh, okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:59] I didn't really get to date in high school like I would have wanted. So then you're going to byu and the. I will say I had such a strong ward growing up where it really did feel like all the adults are invested in all the youth, like, just a really good quality community. And so they're so excited for you, and they think the world of you. And they're like, you're gonna go and you're gonna have such a great time, and they'll like, you're gonna get snatched right up. You're gonna have so much fun dating. And so there is this, like, kind of idea of like, you're a wonderful person and therefore you will get married quickly.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:47:37] Right. That. That's what that means. And having never dated, obviously, I'm super eager. And it sounds like you just date and get married. And one of my sisters did get married at 19. Like, she went. And by February, she was engaged. By April, she was married right. Of her freshman year. Wow. Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:47:56] And I was close to that sister. So then when I got to byu, I was, like, super excited. I was gonna be in Heritage Halls, which is the apartment. So a lot of times you get paired with other boys in Heritage Halls, which means usually they're a little bit more responsible, a little more mature. Cause they're making their own meals.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:48:12] And so I was so excited to meet the Heritage boys, right? Like, I was like, I'm gonna get the, like the cream of the crop or whatever. And we got paired with DT boys. And DT boys were the boys that were only admitted to BYU because they came in the summer. So they kind of, like, had some sort of offer. Like, if you start in the summer, then you can come.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:48:34] That's who these DT boys were. Now, I don't know if all the boys in DT were this, but that was a lot of who I met. And these boys had lightsaber fights. They were playing video games. I mean, they were like kids.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:48:49] And they were nice. They were an FHA group. And it's not like I didn't like them as people, but that was not who I wanted to date. Right? Like, I. Right. In my mind, I'm ready to get married, right? I'm ready to date. I'm ready to get married. And, like, these boys are having lightsaber fights. And this is like pre Star wars being cool for everybody. You know what I mean? So it was like. It was not. It was surprising.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] First of all, Star wars was always cool for everybody. As someone who saw the original films. But also you were misled because we all know Gilaman Halls is where all the cool people that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:49:23] That might be true.

John Dehlin [00:49:23] Is that true, Margi? Is that true? Gilman Halls? Is that where the cool people.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:27] I see what you're doing here.

John Dehlin [00:49:28] Okay, I got it. Anyway, sorry.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:49:30] You might be right. One of my sisters did live in Gilaman Halls. I don't know. There could have been some fear around that because she, like. There was. I will say this is kind of a sidetrack.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:40] It's a yes. And John, I'm kidding.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] They were silly.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:49:45] I can assure you she had a great time. But I will say there was probably my first awareness of weight was when she had put on some weight when she first went to college. And that was my first awareness that, like, it's shameful to gain weight. So I don't know if me and my other sister chose not to go there in some ways because it was like you eat the cafeteria food and you have no control over your body, which we will also get to body at BYU.

John Dehlin [00:50:11] We call that the freshman 15 at BYU.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:50:13] Yeah, the freshman 15. So that was one thing that was really disappointing. And in some of my classes, I did meet some guys at heritage halls, and they were the kind of guys I wanted to date. I was like, I met a guy named Chad, which. Chad is kind of a funny name now, but I do remember, I was like, this guy, like, he's into poli sci. Like, he was getting good grades. He wasn't failing out of class like the kids in our ward. So, I mean, there were boys, but they were not, like, in our social circles as much. So I was like, that's the experience I wanted to.

Struggles with Identity and Culture at BYU

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:50:40] I think in a lot of ways, you think you're gonna go find your people, right? And that, like, I've been. I've never fully understood in kind of the world. And you're kind of sold. You're gonna go to byu, you're gonna go to, like, the Mecca, and you're gonna date and you're gonna have fun and you're gonna be understood, and then you find out that you don't fit in there either.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:51:01] I think the dating wasn't as much as I had anticipated. And again, I mean, part of that's like, I didn't wanna date necessarily some of the boys in our ward. But at that time, not just that year, but subsequent years, I really started to notice some patterns that were kind of disturbing to me. And I guess I should note I did have some disordered eating in high school, where I really started to control my food intake. I never met the criteria for an eating disorder. I never stopped eating. I never purged. But I was, like, counting calories, working out.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:51:37] And a lot of that was in response to my sister that had gained weight. She had lost some weight right before she went on a mission. And I remember her saying something. She's like, oh, I'm almost as thin as you. Or she's like, I think I'm as thin as you now. And there was something that, like, went off in my brain that was like, do not be the fat one. Which is interesting because I had never really thought about weight before that point.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:52:00] But that was. There was a lot of perfectionism that happened for me, I would say, in high school. And. And then I did kind of work my way a little bit out of that at the end of high school.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:52:16] And I would say I was definitely much healthier in college. I wouldn't say I was doing any, like, bad. Like, I don't know. I shouldn't say bad behaviors, but restrictive behaviors necessarily. But I had two roommates at different times that were anorexic, and one of them had been my childhood friend. So we had been friends for quite a bit of time. And so I saw her become anorexic.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:52:40] And what was really fascinating to me was how disturbing it was to see that the two roommates I had that were blonde and anorexic were going on dates every single day and being asked to not go on missions, like, in such high demand in a way that I was like, what is this? Because I had other thin roommates that. And sometimes they were blonde, too, or they were thin and they had brown hair and nobody was desired like an anorexic blonde woman. And I even saw this later when I was in my master's program in Texas, how boys would be like, we can't date people on the board.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:22] And then a new anorexic blonde girl moved in. And I knew she was anorexic because she lived with one of my best friends. And she's like, she has some eating disorder stuff. And all of a sudden the dating rules slipped away. And so I remember thinking at that time, like, I am not too fat.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:39] I remember thinking, like, I'm not skinny. Like I was. But, like, I knew what it take. It took. I was sick. And it was really disturbing to me that, like, men preferred a sick woman. And like, they literally, like my friend that had become anorexic, they preferred her when she was sick as to when she wasn't. Right. And that was. And I don't.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:58] Part of me thinks some of that is the pressure on marriage, that if a girl has anorexia, she is emotionally suppressed. If you can't eat, you don't feel as much. So emotionally, that looks like avoidant and Mormon boys are very afraid of girls wanting marriage. So they are very paranoid that if they ask you out too close together that you will think that they now need to propose to you. So I don't know if it's kind of the indifference that an anorexic girl has because she's so controlling of everything that's going on for her that she kind of doesn't care. But it was very disturbing to me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:54:39] And I was like, I don't want to have to be sick to be loved, you know? And so that, again, I think, was a hard moment for me and feeling like I'm going to go Here I'm going to. Going to find people, find a partner and then finding that, like, I am not what they want. Even though, like, we had looked at all those checklists and I've been developing my character to be a really good partner. And I have all these talents.

John Dehlin [00:55:02] Testimony.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:03] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:55:04] I, like, I'm smart, I can cook, I can do this, I can do that. Like, I have all these talents and. But I'm not blonde and I'm not anorexic, so probably not going to get asked out a lot. And so that was really weird. So a lot of things like that I would notice in the culture. And I'm like, this is fucked up. This is really fucked up.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry that happened. And can I. Do you mind if I add to it?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:55:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] If I channel my BYU brain. And we've talked about this in its inflection a million times on Mormon stories, that the path for so many Mormon young women is to study elementary education or maybe psychology, but. Or family studies. And it's all about prepping to become a mommy, a mom. Sorry. And, you know, and then to have some sort of less driven by the world's standards, backup plan for only if a husband dies. You know what I mean? And you have to have a job to support your kids. But, like, if I'm in my BYU man's brain, a smart, sort of a confident woman who is into history, who's studying political science, who's going to Ukraine because she wants to, because she loves history and loves political science and is going to Washington seminar. That's not coding for me as what I would have been conditioned to consider as marriage material.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:56:44] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] And there might even have been like, I'm supposed to be the patriarch. I'm supposed to preside. I want. And by the way, none of this ends up fitting Margi, so I don't want to. You know what I mean? Like, Margi's an English major and so. So. And she's strong. So. But I'm just there. I am able to channel that type of conditioning that might have said, yeah, she's a little bit too confident, a little bit too brainy, a little bit too into history, a little bit too ambitious. How's that gonna work in our home where I'm the priesthood leader and she's having babies. You know what I mean?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:57:26] Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. And I don't know know that I would have ever, like, communicated. I don't know that I had thought I would do more than get a degree. Right. Like, because I did assume that I would get married and have kids, but I knew I was certainly going to finish my degree and I did have interests. But I think you're right. I did get a lot of feedback, and I even got some feedback in high school about being really opinionated. People saying, I'm intimidating, that kind of thing. So. And I don't. I probably didn't get to know people. I mean, at byu, sometimes they're getting to know you and they may be making those estimations, but they probably don't know you intimately enough to tell you, like, you're super intimidating. But yeah, yeah, I'm sure that that could have been a factor.

John Dehlin [00:58:13] Heather Gay had a very similar experience at BYU where she wanted to be a businesswoman and be an entrepreneur. And she basically didn't date at byu, you know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:58:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, but it's confusing, right? Because as I went back and looked at journals and scrapbooks, I did see that, like, they were literally printed out templates of, like, attributes that you have attributes you should work on. And I was like, oh, those were given to us in high school.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:40] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:58:40] I do remember, like, some of my friends telling me, like, you seem like you really want to get married. And I was like, well, yeah. And I think. Do think that maybe I was more marriage hungry. And that may have come off in a certain way because I did feel, like, mature. And I think part of that was, like, wanting to date, not wanting to just, like, mess around, you know what I mean? Like, I think I was serious about a relationship, and I think that probably came from, like, not like a Mormon. Be. Be a good Mormon, get married young.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:59:15] It came from, I think, an attachment place, which was like, I didn't have a dad. I would like to have a healthy marriage. So I think it came from that. But I do think people probably did pick up on that. I mean, some of my friends were like, you seem more interested in marriage than you know me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:59:34] So I think there was some of that too. But I was, like, looking at those journals and looking at those checklists, and I thought, well, sure, like trauma mixed with checklists when you're a teenager, when you're literally kind of told to form your character to be a good partner by the time you're 16 versus, like, what do you want to sign up for next semester? Or where do you want to go to college? I'm like, yes, of course I was thinking about marriage. But it is confusing because those lists, right. They Tell you to be the person you want to marry. But guess what? So I want to be smart. I want to be successful. I'm ambitious.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:08] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:00:09] And it's like, well, be like that person, but don't step on a man's toes, right? Like, kind of like what you're saying, don't step on a man's toes. But that's really hard because as a. As a good girl, you get the message to just literally be the best you can be. So be a good student. Be this. And if you're smart, then you're too smart. Right. You almost need to hide it. And so that's what I think I learned, is that, like, all of, like, Some of the, like, best things about me, like, some of my biggest strengths.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:43] Yes. Were.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:00:45] Were, like, resented by Mormon men.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:48] Absolutely.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:00:49] There was no space for a woman that's intellectual. And it's interesting now because in my current marriage, I, like, I connect so much intellectually with my husband. Like, it is, like, one of my favorite ways to connect with him. And I think it's probably one of his. His favorite ways to connect.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:06] And.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:01:09] And that, like, yeah, for so long, I got so much feedback that that was not lovable.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:14] And.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:01:16] And so that's so hard because, like, you can't change your brain. Not that much. You know what I mean? Like, you can't do that to make someone else comfortable. Like, it's. It's the way it works well.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:26] And like, being able to see in yourself those things are, like, really valuable strengths that you had, like, just objectively and realizing, actually, especially if it's coded in any way, that there's something wrong with you, which I'm really interested in how this translated to you feeling valued, like, if it changed. And we can get to that in a minute. But, like, I think that's part of reflecting and processing. Sometimes you were just in an environment that told you those things, like, through your experience, of course, of relationship, that those things weren't valuable, but they were awesome. Like, they were objectively amazing parts of you. And there's a bit of a process. Have you had that we're kind of in reclaiming yourself and realizing, oh, wait,

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:02:18] yes, I do think that, like, in the latter half of my. Well, maybe going back to school, I think some of that's been really. When I went back for my PhD. I guess we'll get to that. I think that has really affirmed a lot of things for me. But I will say in my 30s, there really has been a process of, like, I am not going to apologize for being smart anymore. I'm not going to be. Apologize for being opinionated. I'm not going to apologize anymore.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] Yeah, and you said it way better than I was trying to. But, like, to summarize, it's like Mormon men sometimes are conditioned to want their women to be both physically anorexic and maybe intellectually anorexic.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:02:58] That's interesting.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:00] And emotionally, I think, oftentimes as well.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:03:03] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] The overriding message here is get in the box, Rebecca. Get in the box. Stay in the box. Get in the box.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:03:13] Yeah. Yeah. And I think one thing that was really, maybe protective about it is I did grow up in an area where. Where there was a lot of diversity. There's a huge Jewish population where I grew up. And so I think in a lot of ways, I had seen people of all, like, ethnicities in my school as, like, being attractive. Right. Like, that wasn't weird. Like, there were lots of attractive black people in my school, some different ethnicities, and then people, like, it was not as common to have blue eyes and blonde hair where I grew up. And also in my community, I would say.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:04:00] And you see this in different communities, like, in D.C. what you do is who you are. Right. It's not necessarily the way you look. It's who do you work for? Right. And in St. Louis, it was also a little bit that way, where kids. Like, there were the theater kids and there were these kids. And so there was a lot of both in the church, and I would say outside the church, people were valued for different things.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:04:22] But then when I went to Utah, it's like, you're valued for one thing. And so there was this, like, as I kept getting this feedback in the environment, even though I think it hurt, it felt like rejection, but it didn't feel like I thought I was bad. Kind of. Like I said, I have thoughts. I'm like, I am. I am not too fat. I am not. I am not unattractive. Like, I. There is nothing so wrong with me that would explain this.

John Dehlin [01:04:53] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:04:54] So I had a pretty firm understanding that I had a lot to offer. But it was so puzzling, like, to me, like, because I think the biggest problem was that I was sold that Mormon men were the best men. And I think that was part of the problem, is that I was trying to get a good man. And I could not understand how I. I firmly knew I was a good woman. But why do good men not want a good woman? I was told if I become the best version of myself, I can be that A good man would love me. But why isn't that panning out?

Margi Dehlin [01:05:26] So that's a bit of deconstruction, honestly, you're doing right there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:31] Yeah, that's a great point.

John Dehlin [01:05:32] Yeah. And I just think there's good and bad in all different approaches to life. And it's often said that religion works until it doesn't, you know, And I'm sure there are people for whom these boxes fit very well, and we want to be affirming of that. They're Instagram influencers who are like, I'm a Mormon, mom, and I love it. And stop telling me I'm oppressed. And, yes, that is totally valid. And there's going to be people for whom those boxes just don't end up working. And it sounds like it wasn't. You were trying to figure out why things weren't working at byu. Yeah. And I imagine that the reasons why you chose to go on a mission and then also what you experienced in mission leadership just exacerbates maybe some of these feelings. Is that right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:06:24] Yeah, I've got some. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:26] Should we go there?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:06:27] Let's move to the mission. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:29] Because you went before women were really encouraged to go, correct?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:06:34] Yes. Yes, it was before then. So I actually had no intention to go on a mission. I had an intention that I was, like, gonna go do the Washington seminar, write things. I hadn't found anybody didn't think I was necess. I mean, I had date. I did have some serious, semi serious relationships that didn't pan out at byu. But I think I knew by the time I was, like, scheduling Washington seminar, that I thought, well, I'll go to D.C. there's a pretty good Mormon scene there. And I was like, maybe I'll find my people there. Right. Because these people are ambitious. They're into it, too. Like, those are maybe gonna be my people. Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:12] So Colonial Ward, Is that what it was?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:07:14] Oh, I can't remember. But they're. Yeah. But, yeah, we were staying at the place they have there in Georgetown. So, anyway, I loved Washington. D.C. is a great city. I loved it. I run by the Vietnam Memorial. And the More. Oh, gosh. It was absolutely. It was so great. And while I was there, I was gonna apply. I told you that things shifted for me, and I was like, I'm gonna apply to business school.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:39] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:07:39] And so I had kind of reached out to the MBA school at BYU to find out, like, what do I need to do? They're like, you need work experience. And I was like, okay, basically, I could go In a year and a half. And then that year and a half time and they're like, they did say something like a mission could count for work experience.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:07:56] And I thought like, okay, maybe I'll find a job. But something about them saying year and a half and I. All the girls, there were a lot of girls with us there at the Washington seminar and they were going on missions and some of them were deciding like they wanted to go, but they weren't sure. And I was like, what the hell? Like, if you want to go, go. If you don't want to go, don't go. I just remember like having that kind of attitude, like, this doesn't have to be rocket science, like, do you want to go? Do you not want to go? But when that 18 month time period, like, like something about that something clicked and it was like, would you want to go on a mission?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:27] And I was like, I don't know. And so I like prayed about it and then I got the prompting that like, this has been so meaningful for you, why wouldn't you want to share it? Right? And I was like, yeah, this is everything to me. I'm gonna go share it. So. So all these girls were like talking about their missions, getting ready. I literally like. And this is like how I operate is I decide something and like, I make it happen. And by February, I was leaving for my mission and some of these people hadn't even turned in their papers. And like, I'm making the decision, getting all the doctor's appointments and like, I am off.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:09:05] And I got called to Russia. And so I felt really excited about that. And so I was actually 22, I was actually a little bit older. And so that was an interesting experience to be a college graduate. It as a missionary.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:19] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:09:20] And I do remember like feeling more connected to my teachers in the MTC than the young men, cuz they're like 19. And I do remember some of them saying, like, Rebecca, you have to remember, like, you've finished college. And we're talking like, I didn't have a 4.0 in college, but like, I only got a couple Bs. So like you're talking about somebody with a really, really high GPA at BYU now learning a second language with 19 year olds. Right. So in a lot of ways I had a lot of great life skills. So the mission was a great adventure for me because I had the maturity. I'd been away from my parents. Right. I had a lot.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:58] I also traveled.

John Dehlin [01:09:59] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:00] And I traveled to other people.

Margi Dehlin [01:10:01] Yes. Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:02] So I'd been exposed to the culture on some level. It's very similar. And I was in Rostov, which is southern. It borders Ukraine, Right? So Rostov, that mission is Sochi's. In that mission. I didn't serve in Sochi, but that's where the Olympics were. So it's in that. That kind of region.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:17] And so I went on my mission. There's a lot of things I loved about my mission. My mission president, I really adored my mission president. He was really great. And there was one time he's like, if we could call women to be district leaders, I would have you be a leader. But that was also hard, right, Because I. I was more mature. I probably had more skills than a lot of the people that are over me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:41] I feel like I got along pretty well with a lot of the elders, though. Like, we joke around. Like, I feel like I had a pretty good time. There was one. There's one story from a mission that I did want to share because I thought, again, this can be some of the frustration, I think, of being a woman in the church.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:59] There was. We had a. A church member who was a beautiful young woman, probably in her 20s, and her mom became interested, and so she should have been an investigator that came to the sisters. But somehow the elders were seeing her. And we're like, well, why are you guys seeing her? And then it became obvious that one of the missionaries liked her. He was not American. He was Ukrainian. And I was like, this is like, he's doing this to get to her. He leaves the mission.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:11:32] Like, I had actually. Hold on, let me back up. I had voiced concern, right, that they were. That this was inappropriate to the mission president. Obviously, it's, like, not mine to handle. But nothing changes in terms of. They continue to give lessons to the mom, and the daughter has to be present, Right. Because you have to have so many people there or whatever. He ends up leaving the mission

John Dehlin [01:11:54] and

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:11:57] coming back and marrying her.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:59] Oh.

Mission Experiences and Return Home

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:12:00] So he quits his mission early, comes back, marries her. By the time my mission is over, he's divorced her because he was super depressed. And I think he fell in love with her on the mission. I think that was what he thought was, like, gonna make him better, was to get married to her. But in reality, I think his depression. It was like a band aid on his depression, and I think it destroyed the marriage, too. I don't know enough details, but, like, it really sad because I'd been friends with her, and then. Right. She's no longer going to church afterwards. And so there were Things like that that would happen on the mission that would be frustrating where, like, you see it and you voice it and you say something to priesthood leaders and it kind of feels like you get like poo pooed.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:39] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:12:40] Like, no, don't worry about this. And then I'm like, But now look what happened.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:44] She was valid. Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:12:45] Now she has the trauma of a divorce and now she's no longer active.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:48] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:12:49] So there were things like sometimes that would happen on the mission. But I think the mission was a very big deconstruction place because until that point, I didn't know what happened on missions. And oh, I forgot to mention this. I had not wanted to go on a mission because I heard how shitty Mormon men talked about returned missionaries and I thought, why the hell would I go sacrifice a year and a half of my life to preach the gospel so you can treat me like I'm garbage? Because, like, I'm. I had to go on a mission because I didn't get snatched. So I actually had not wanted to go on a mission because I felt like women got treated like it was like a ding on them. Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:13:26] True. The perception was you go on a mission if you're a woman. You know, Pre Thomas Monson, if you couldn't find a spouse by the time you're a junior or senior at BYU and you want to kind of draw out the clock, then you go on a mission.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:13:40] Yes. Yeah. You're like labeled undesirable.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:43] That's right. You weren't chosen.

John Dehlin [01:13:44] So it's a ding instead of like an ass. It's a liability.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:13:47] Yeah. So I forgot to mention that earlier that I. That was also one of the reasons when I was at BYU where I was like, that didn't. Being at BYU did not make me want to go on a mission because I saw the way people talked about return missionaries that were women, and I was like, why would I ever want to do that? Like, I wasn't interested and I'm definitely not interested now. But anyway, so then I did serve the mission. Now I lost my train of thought.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] But you're saying also you saw how the mission mission was.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:10] Oh, okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:14:10] Yes. This is what it is.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:11] So

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:14:14] as a missionary, Right. Before you're a missionary, there's all these things that, like, boys will tell you as a district leader, a zone leader, as an ap, whatever, and you're like, oh, that's like, that's like something. Right. That means. That means that you have mission president

John Dehlin [01:14:28] approval at the president.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:14:30] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] Very elite.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:14:32] Yes. It's the top position. There's only two. And they're basically like the little advisors to the mission president. And we did have one that actually ended up being like a third cousin. And he was of mine that I found out later. But he was wonderful, like a heart of gold, wonderful person. And the other one was like an asshole. And I remember thinking, he's almost like treating this like sales, very dehumanizing. And I thought, oh, okay, got it. So if you have leadership, you actually could be one of the best. Or you could actually be like counterfeit. Right. Like, you actually are not here for the right reasons and you are actually not a safe person.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:15:22] And so to me, that was really eye opening for me to see as a woman to say, I like, oh, I should not. I need to discern past labels or past endorsements. So that was a big eye opener on the mission where I was like, do not buy the labels. They are not always accurate. So it was kind of like seeing behind the curtain. So that really changed, I think, a little bit, the way I dated and looked at Mormon men because I was interacting with so many of them. So that was, I think, a big part in expanding beyond kind of what the church sells you of. Look for this checklist. It was like, look beyond the checklist.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] And that is a real challenge to Mormon culture. Even on Mormon stories, it's like, he's a former bishop. She was a former relief study president. Oh, they were a mission to president. Like, we're so title and status conscious in the church.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:16:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:10] So that is a major deconstruction.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:16:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:14] Okay. So what'd you. Yeah, what'd you take away from your mission? Or were there. Was there a story you wanted to tell other than the. The one you already told? Just about. Like, was your testimony stronger, weaker by the end of your mission? Was it a good experience, a bad experience?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:16:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] Were you traumatized? Did you love it?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:16:31] Like, I loved my mission. I did. I do remember midway, like, talking to my mom, and that was the first time I was like, oh, my gosh, I've been gone for a long time and there's a long time. And so I do remember in the midway point, kind of feeling really missing my family. But beyond that, for the most part, it was really positive.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] Did you have a sense for tension between Russia and Ukraine at that point or not? Had that not really emerged yet?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:16:58] No, no, that's all Putin. No Ukrainians and Russians intermarry all the time. Granted, I was in Rostov, which is right on the border. So, like this, to me, that war. Well, one, we actually studied the future of Ukraine.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:17:15] When I went to Ukraine, and it was like, what's going to happen to Ukraine? Will they join the eu? Will they join Russia? Will they join Turkey? And we really talked about how Ukraine has a history of gaining independence and being taken over.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:17:27] And the thing that's really sad to me is it would be like us taking over Canada and saying, Canada's really bad. And you're like. A lot of us would say, what the hell are you talking about? I know Canadians. None of them have it out for us. They're not terrorists against us. That's exactly what it's like for us. Them, they share culture in a lot of ways.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:17:46] Most of Ukrainians speak Russian. Some of them are Russian nationals. So technically they're of Russian descent, not Ukrainian descent. So the conflict, it's heartbreaking to me because I think the control is so strong that people can't speak out about it. But I really highly doubt anybody's for it unless they're buying the propaganda. There's no. There's just. It would be so unbelievable because they're

John Dehlin [01:18:12] just, again, like, Ukraine's done something to deserve Russia's offensive.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:17] Yes, yes. And I mean, I'm not familiar enough with, like, special interest groups there at this point, that there couldn't be some sort of, like, I don't know, like, gang slash terrorist little group, but as a whole. The whole country. No, no, I don't think anybody would buy that.

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Russia's Canada, basically.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:37] And I think one of the things that really is heartbreaking for me is at least when I was there, all Russians served. One Russian male served one year in the army. And to me, the thing that's so sad about that war is Russians are dying, too. So, like, it's awful what they're doing to Ukrainian. But, like, this is the motherland, Russia, and you're sending our sons to die, killing our relatives, our cousins. Right. So to me, Russians are unnecessary dying. So it almost feels like a betrayal of the Russian people in my mind, that we would sacrifice them for such a superficial war. Right. That's unnecessary.

John Dehlin [01:19:15] Hundreds of thousands of Russian deaths. I'm pretty sure.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:17] Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I. Yeah, it's awful to me.

John Dehlin [01:19:22] But you saw none of that while you were there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:24] No, no, because I was there in. I got back at, like, I think 2006.

John Dehlin [01:19:30] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:31] Yeah. So I didn't see any of that. So everything was fine. Yeah, it was peaceful. I think that coming home from my mission is an important part. But the mission was a great experience. When I came home, I obviously was gonna have to find a job. I'd already graduated, so I didn't come home straight to anything. And I was looking for. So I came home to St. Louis, and I was looking for a job in various places. I was looking at D.C. i was looking at Boston. I did look at some jobs in St. Louis, but I was thinking I was gonna move East Coast.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:05] And what I noticed was, on the mission, the scriptures become so alive for you, because it is. Everything is about eternal salvation. So, like, everything in the scriptures becomes relevant. And so for me, that was like this. Like, aha. Like, total fulfillment, total purpose. And then you come home, and for me, I'd read the scriptures, and it would be, like, depressing because it was like, I am looking for a job. I'm not saving people's eternal lives. For me, it really felt.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:39] I relate it to being, like, military, where everything's life and death. You're defending your country, you're defending freedom. And then you come home and it's

John Dehlin [01:20:47] like, get a job flipping burgers.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:50] So you're saving souls as a missionary, and then you're in the secular world trying to schlep a job.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:56] Yes. And that level of purpose, unity in that group. Right. When you're abroad, I mean, veterans talk about it all the time. Right. Like, the brotherhood, that level of connection and purpose is really rare. And it doesn't. It's not the same in, like, civilian life. And so I felt. But it was weird because, again, it felt like kind of like depression, but not exactly.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:21:20] And I wrote an article to the Ensign about it, and I kind of. I'd read something in Moses where he was like, I wish I could remember the Scripture now, but I don't read scriptures very much anymore. But it was like, something about, like, I don't know, the will of God, but, like, essentially, like, I trust him. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:21:41] And so I wrote an article about that. Like, this has been hard. This has been really hard. And I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm gonna trust God. And so it wasn't like, I got through this. It was like, coming home from the mission is actually harder than people say it is. They didn't publish it, which is fine. They don't have to publish it. And then, like, five years later, guess what? They're publishing it. Somebody else's story. Not my story. Someone else's story.

Post-Mission Dating and Questions About Sexuality

John Dehlin [01:22:03] Interesting, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:04] Probably because more and more people are getting depressed too soon. Yes. So There's a lot of things like that for me, that feel like a. Like a too soon. Like, oh, don't. Like, we don't want to deal with that until it's a pervasive problem. You know, maybe like the garments, like, now they're changing them, but how many women have suffered yeast infections and problems for years, but it's too soon.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] Make the change after the tipping point when the damage is going to be. The cost is going to be too high to not change, or. Yeah, the damage will be. Deal too. Great. Yeah, there's not enough suffering.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:35] Yeah, there's not enough suffering. We don't have to own this yet. We don't have to. We don't have to name it yet. Right.

John Dehlin [01:22:40] This is probably human, normal stuff. I mean, I don't know. But you expect more when they're saying God's at the moment.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] So what'd you do? Did you find a job?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:52] Oh, well, okay. So this leads to me, to dating gay men.

John Dehlin [01:22:56] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:57] So when I left on my mission, I gathered emails, right? To send the mass emails of, like, what I'm doing on my mission. And one of my roommates, she worked for byu, so I just pulled her name off the roster because I hadn't gotten it. And I was like, oh, I'll just look it up and I'll add her. Well, it turns out I added a mother who worked at BYU who happened to be the mother of a young man who was getting his master's in St. Louis in occupational therapy.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:23:25] And so some. I was already in Russia when I got an email. And she's like, I have to tell you. So she's a BYU employee. She's like, I have to tell you something. I think I've accidentally gone on your mission email list, but I love reading your letters.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:23:39] They're so entertaining. I hope it's okay that I've been reading these. She's like, but I think you accidentally added me. And, you know, this is my name. And then I saw, oh, my gosh, it's the exact same name as my roommate. That's how I added this person. And she's like, but it's ironic. She's like, because I have a son getting a master's in St. Louis, where you're from. And she's like, maybe at some point you guys could connect later on.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:24:02] And so then when I did get home, I did end up meeting him. And he again, he's in graduate school. He very accomplished person, very nice. And we kind of hit it off. Returned missionary yeah, he's a return. Returned missionary. I can't remember where he served his mission. Very musically talented.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:24:23] We would, like, play duets on the piano. But we dated and. And so, yeah, he was really cool. And I think it felt like a. Like, it was like serendipitous. Like, how did I accidentally email your mom? And you just happened to be going. You're like, from. I think he's from Utah. You just happen to be going to grad school in St. Louis when I'm getting home from admission. So it felt very similar. Serendipitous. Like, you know, like you would write a movie or something.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:24:48] And so we dated for probably about four months. And I think at that point is when I started to feel like I think I really love this guy and

Margi Dehlin [01:24:57] could

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:25:00] maybe marry him. And I think we did say I love you. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about. There's a couple things that were interesting about the relationship. Our very first date, he asked me what I thought about if someone was bisexual.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:25:16] And I thought, well, what about it? Right? That's like my. That's like my answer. I was like, what about it? And he's like, well, what about a bisexual person getting married? And I was like, well, if they're getting married and they're choosing to be with a person, I don't know that it really matters. Like, if the goal is to, you know, be loyal to one person, you just got to choose which person it is, right? Like, to me, it doesn't matter if you're. You're. You also find other men, men or women attractive.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:25:39] It's like your loyalty. And I did not. I don't know, maybe that was me being naive. I did not want for one second think that that was him telling me he's bisexual. It felt like, again, I can be very intellectual. And again, my thing is like, oh, this guy is talking about, like, thinking about interesting things, right? Like thinking outside the box. And I think maybe that was how it was for him too. Like, he's struggling with his sexuality and this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:26:03] This girl is like, has room for it. Like, isn't scared of it, isn't rigid around it. Well, at some point, he did come out to me and he said he was bisexual. And so I ended up having a lot of questions for him about what does that mean? Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:26:23] And at first I didn't really know what to do with the information. Obviously, that earlier interaction then became. Became more clear, right? Oh, what is that? But as we talked more, I realized I don't think he was going to therapy, but I was thinking. I don't. I remember feeling like I loved him.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:26:46] I think he definitely was very clear that I was a woman that he felt attracted to in multiple facets, like, intellectually, physically, spiritually, all those things. And he had usually not been able to find that. But at the same time, it felt like, are you really bi? How do you know that? In the context of our relationship of maybe wanting to make this work.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:27:10] And we did end up. We didn't end up breaking up. We, like, broke up and got back together and then broke up. Because I think it was kind of shocking at first. And we're like. But I. But I. So we did get back together. I don't feel like it was for very long. It might have been a week or two. And then decided like, yeah, this. I think you need to figure out what this means for you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:27:33] But I didn't feel like I could tell anyone what was going on because I felt like they would be spooked. I did go to my leaders, and they kind of treated it like, you know, it's just like any. I don't know, they might even use the word addiction. Right. Like, you just gotta manage it or choose the right.

John Dehlin [01:27:53] We all have our cross to bear.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:27:55] Yes. I ended up being referred to, I think, like a bishop or some leader who also was gay in a straight marriage. And he kind of shared about his experience a little bit. And I remember thinking, I have to think about how this is gonna work for me because I have a lot of trauma around infidelity, and am I the right person? I remember thinking about it this way. Am I the right person to support him in this, or am I gonna be paranoid and living in fear because of my trauma? And I don't know that I can. I don't know that that won't make it worse.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:28:35] Right. Or that his. Him being bisexual would make my anxiety worse about him cheat. Like, possibly cheating. Right. So it felt. I think ultimately it felt like a mismatch in terms of if that. If he really is bi and he's choosing to be in a hetero marriage, that still could be difficult.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:28:55] And I just was like, I don't think I'm. I don't think I'm one, But I did. I remember feeling like when I broke up for a time, and I didn't want to tell my parents, remember my parents being really anxious. I think they thought it was like, porn or something.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:29:09] And I was like. I just felt like nobody would understand, and I wanted to make the decision on my own. And maybe I knew kind of what I was gonna make. But I do remember feeling like it has to be mine, right? Like, it has to be my decision.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:29:26] And so. But in that process, there were things I looked back on, and I was like, yeah, it was weird. Kind of like how he wouldn't spend money on me. That sounds really stupid, but I. I was like, we never even went to, like, Olive Garden. Like, he couldn't even take me to, like, a $15 dinner. Like, we'd cook at the house. And I knew he was a poor graduate student, but there was something that did feel off sometimes. Like, he's so cheap. And then I was like, well, yeah, because he didn't desire me sexually.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] Okay, but you said he was physically attracted to you. Did I. Did I misunderstand say that?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:29:54] But I think. I think that. I mean, who knows what that means?

Margi Dehlin [01:29:57] And I don't know what more aesthetically, like, physically attracted. Like, aesthetically, but not sexually. But not sexually, but not things.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:30:07] Well, and I think it's different to have some sexual attraction or sexual connection versus being deeply sexually attracted to somebody, Right? I think it's very different.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:18] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:30:19] So I think that's. To me, it was, like, a level of depth or desire that, like, because we made out, it did seem like he was interested. Right. Like, I mean, we were, you know, I don't know, in our 20s. So, like, we made out and stuff. And I. I didn't feel like he was, like, weird. It felt like we did have, like, a physical sexual connection. But I don't think. Yeah, there. There. Yeah. I don't know. It's just kind of the way, you know how, like, men, like, maybe not all of them, but it's like the worry, his ability to be that anxious about money while also wanting a woman. Like, usually when you're in that in love stage, you kind of get dumber.

John Dehlin [01:30:58] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:30:58] About those things. And it was, like, so rigid. Right. And I think that was the weird part. Like, this is really rigid for someone you are in love with that you, like, never want to take me out. And it's not like we wouldn't go out anywhere. It wasn't about being seen. It was like, I will not spend money on you. I will not ever be irresponsible. And I just don't think when you're in love, you're that responsible.

John Dehlin [01:31:20] You were wondering how into you he was.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:31:23] Yes, it was. I don't know if it was that. It wasn't that. I didn't Feel he was into me. It's like later reflecting on it, I'm like, maybe that's what that was. I thought it was like, man, you're cheap. Yeah, yeah. Like it felt like that. Like, gosh, this is crazy how cheap you are.

John Dehlin [01:31:38] Not that you want money per se, it's that you want a sign that he's really like head over heels maybe.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:31:45] No, yeah, it was more. I never had a man do that. Oh. And it's like if his friends went out to dinner, he would go out and pay for himself. To me it was just a weird level of financial restriction. And granted I come from like a decent amount of money, but I just had never seen where you would never take your girlfriend out to like a sit down restaurant. That was we. And he actually later, I did Facebook stalk him many years later. And he married a man.

John Dehlin [01:32:15] Yeah. And in a Mormon context, sometimes bisexuality is a gay man's bargaining that he does until he ends up accepting that he's actually fully gay. It can be both. But in this case you're saying maybe it was more the latter.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:32:32] Yes, that's what I wonder. And I don't know where he's landed. But he, he did eventually marry a man, which would incline me to say that he probably was more attracted to men than women.

John Dehlin [01:32:42] Closer to six than the zero on the Kinsey scene.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:32:44] Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay, so when after that all that happened and I was processing that.

John Dehlin [01:32:50] Oh, really quick, I have a weird question. Probably for you or for many, and I'll just say woman versus man. Can a woman, a straight woman, be attracted to a gay man? I know that sounds crazy to ask that question, like sexually attracted to a gay man.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:33:04] Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing about gay men. They are attractive. Jonathan Bailey was just voted sexiest man alive. He is so attractive. Yes. Gay men, I think are like a lot of gay men are very attractive. In fact, sometimes when I see that a man's very attractive, I'm like, he's probably gay. Right. A lot of times.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] And I wanna distinguish between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:33:33] It can be both. I just wanna distinguish.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:33:35] I think they're intertwined. But also gay men sometimes are emotionally a little bit different than straight men.

John Dehlin [01:33:42] More emotionally mature or.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:45] And fully embodied, don't you think? When it comes to like feelings and characteristics about themselves. Right. Holding more polarity strong but soft. Right. And that is a very attractive thing. Someone who's actually fully in the experience of being human as opposed to, let's say, leaning more Toward a masculine presenting experience.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:34:12] Yes. I think a lot of times there's a sensitivity to them that's really attractive, especially in, like, a romantic partner. I think also that part of that could be that they can access it because they're not attracted to you. Right. They may be able to emotionally engage with you because they are not afraid of falling in love with you or you falling in love with them. Is where straight men, I feel like a lot of times they are very. Especially Mormon men, I think, are like, if I let you in too much, you're gonna wanna marry me. And I have gotta regulate the distance between me and you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:34:47] And so I think in a lot of ways, gay men are more emotionally available. So the, like, the physical plus the emotional, I mean, that is. That's sex, right? Being able to emotionally, physically connect at the same time, that is sex. So I think, yes, I think the women are sexually attracted. Now, the problem with that is.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:35:08] And obviously people have their choices. But I also do think, having been married to men who are heterosexual, I do feel. I do wonder about women who marry men who are gay. Because I will say being wanted, like, fully wanted by a man, physically, emotionally, is like, to me, every woman deserves that experience. And I think sometimes that's why you can see marriages between gay men or bi men and women not work out. And I think sometimes the women don't know what they're missing because they. Again, in a lot of ways, he's more available. But until they're with a man that really sexually wants them, I don't know that they can know that that is missing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:35:57] Kind of like, some of the things like that he was, like, cheap or rigid. I did not know what it was. It was something that bothered me. But it wasn't until he was gay that I was like, oh, that might be that. There's no wanting, so there's no sacrifice.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:36:14] There's no, like, willing to say, like, I'll splurge. Right. He can't do that because he can't give in to the want for me because he doesn't experience it.

John Dehlin [01:36:23] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:36:23] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:24] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:36:25] So did you end up with this guy? No.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:36:28] So we broke up. I ended up moving a few months later out to Utah because I ended up getting a job in Utah with Enterprise. Might have picked you up if you live in Utah. But in my processing of that relationship, I realized that I had dated another gay man. And that's when, like, things kind of came crashing a little bit for me.

John Dehlin [01:36:51] You didn't tell us about him, though.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:36:53] No, I Haven't told you about him. It was not very long. I dated him. So I was a TA for Poli Sci 200, which if you are in Poly Sci 200, you know, that's a big deal. Yeah, you know, it's a big deal.

John Dehlin [01:37:06] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:37:07] I was really hardcore and tried to be a Poli Sci 200 TA. And so that was. I was a TA and he was also in Poli Sci. He was very handsome. Like, movie star handsome. He's from California. Like, tan, dark hair. I think he had brown eyes. Anyway, very handsome. And I was actually shocked that he liked me. He felt, like, too hot for me, to be honest. Like, model hot. I was like, how does he like me? And. But I was like, I will go with it, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:37:36] And he was a friend of a friend. He's, like, from San Diego. And my. My roommate was from San Diego. She's like, yeah, like, I think you really like him. And we went out, and I remember our first date, he spent, like, over $100 on my meal. And I remember thinking, like, whoa, that feels in Provo. I think we went up to Salt Lake and, like, saw the show or something. It felt like a lot. It felt like a lot. But he was, like, from kids California. But I think I didn't know how to feel about that because obviously I didn't feel like it was his money. Right. The dinner was good. It was my first trying of butternut squash. Highly recommend.

John Dehlin [01:38:07] But

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:38:09] he was really nice, and I really enjoyed being with him. I do remember one time us being in a hot tub at his place and him trying to make out with me. And me feeling really restricted in my body, feeling like he wanted to make out out more than me. Not that I didn't want to make out with him, but I think still at that time, like, I've talked to you about my, like, teenage years feeling really almost, like, scared of physicality. So this was earlier at BYU, and yeah, between 12 and 20. I actually didn't kiss someone again until I was 21.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:38:44] So I dated a little bit at BYU, but didn't really kiss until I was in some of these, like, relationships for, like, a month or two or two. And so one of the things I broke up with him. And the reason I broke up with him was because I noticed him canceling plans on me to, like, go out with his friends. And, like, his friends were, like, going to Wyoming and he was gonna go. And I was like, this is so weird. And I remember us breaking up and him crying. And I was like, why Are you crying? I was like. And I remember explaining it to him this way.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:11] I said, I feel like when we're together, we're like best friends and we have the best time. I was like, but when we're apart, I feel like we're dating other people. And, like, you choose to go out with your friends, like, you cancel plans with me again, this, like, lack of want, lack of. Like, this. Like, I'll prioritize. You screw the friends, right? Like that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:31] And I remember being really surprised, and he was crying, and I thought, like, you're the one that's half out in this relationship. So that's kind of how that had ended. And I felt. Yeah, I just kind of, like, couldn't keep emotionally being, like, the only one in it. Like, it just felt too disjointed. But that's when after this second boyfriend, the one that had come out to me, I was like, oh, my gosh, was the other one gay?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:58] And so at some point, I did reconnect with my roommate that hadn't grown up with him. And I said, is he gay now? Cause this is years, right? This is like four or five years. And she's like, he is. She's like, I didn't want to tell you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:10] I was like, well, why? And she's like, well, I didn't know if it would be. No, she didn't know beforehand. Sorry. She found out later. Later he came out. Later he came out. Sorry, that was kind of confusing. Later he came out. But I think she just didn't think, like, I'm gonna call and tell you, like, hey, I found out he was gay.

John Dehlin [01:40:22] Which makes sense. You up with the gay guy?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:24] Yeah. Yeah. It felt like, why aren't straight men attracted to me? Why are straight Mormon men not attracted to me? Am I not desirable? I think it really made me wonder about my level of desirability. And that put me in a funky place. And I think I did not know how to sort through that. And I remember going to my bishop and saying, like, something feels really off about this. Like, this happened to me. I'm feeling. I don't know, like, maybe I need to sore through it. He's like, you want to go to therapy? And I was like, yeah, maybe. Maybe that would be helpful. And we went to therapy as kids because of my parents divorce.

John Dehlin [01:40:59] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:59] We had gone to therapy a little bit with my dad and. But that was really the only therapy I would say I'd gotten up to that point was like, therapy as a child with my family. So I Went to therapy, and they referred me to LDS services. And I remember I went three times, and they would have me fill out. It was probably like a phq, which is like a depression screener, maybe. They had me. They had me fill out a screener every time I went. And I remember looking through it and being like, yeah, none of these things are problems. Like, I don't have a mood problem problem.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:41:29] I have a I've been dating gay men problem, and I don't know how to sort through it. So I met with her, like, three times. And maybe because the church was sponsoring it, right? I don't know if she feels pressured or not. Like, I don't know, like, if the person's fine, right? To not, like, keep receiving money for the bishop for services or whatever. I think he was helping. I can't remember. I really don't remember about payment. I mean, I was working, but maybe they offered to help and I just took it. I don't know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:42:00] Or I might have paid a certain portion on my own. But she, like, dismissed me after, like, three sessions. And we're like, you're fine. And I was like, okay. Like. But I was not gonna argue with her. She wasn't being helpful. She wasn't helping me get to the bottom of it.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:16] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:42:16] I was like, okay, I guess I'll just chug along. Right? But I knew something was off, right? Like, emotionally for me. And then at some point, I started to develop a friendship with somebody at work. And, like, it, like, the texting became flirty, and then it became a little bit more sexual in nature. And then we began to hang out, and then we did begin to, like, have physical interactions. Right. He was not Mormon. He's very charismatic, attractive, and I don't know what I thought about, like, where that was gonna go, but it felt good. It felt really good to be desired. Yeah. And by somebody who was like, probably, right. Like, I think he, like, he was like one of those guys, like, like, tall, handsome, cool, collected. You know what I mean? Like, probably like a popular kid, Straight. Very straight.

John Dehlin [01:43:22] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:43:23] So in a lot of ways, he's like your, like, maybe kind of playboy a little bit. I don't know that. I did not know that he was, like, he had gotten out of, like, a serious relationship. And in a way, it felt like our friendship maybe in some ways it was kind of like, oh, well, we're not, like, quite dating because he's still kind of getting over this other serious relationship. So I didn't think he was a playboy in that Sense it kind of had felt like, oh, we're keeping this kind of quiet because you're getting out of something and we work together, that kind of thing, you know, at least that's how I interpreted it. But I think it felt good and I think I went along too, because it did feel so good to be desired. And it was fun and it was flirty.

John Dehlin [01:44:05] When you were getting emotional just now, what was, was what was under that? When you were starting, you started to show some emotions. You were talking about maybe him desiring you or you know, that sort of thing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:44:18] Yeah, I think my brain got to another place. I just think it was like really good to feel desired. Right. Like that, that was like it like fed something.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:28] Yeah, absolutely.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:44:31] Had so many times just been like rejected. Right. Like, and maybe like confirmed. And I will say it was really interesting to work at Enterprise, rent a car, because there's a lot of young people there. And sometimes the men were married, sometimes they weren't. Some of them, there was a lot more non members. And a lot of times even the married guys would be like, you're so cool. I'm so surprised you're not married. Which is like kind of a. Like, is an awful thing to hear as a Mormon woman. But also, like, there was this, like, even culturally, I was like, yeah, why can some men see me and others can't?

Margi Dehlin [01:45:06] You know?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:45:07] And like, married men seem to like, see that, like, I'm funny or I'm fun or like, whatever it is like that I. And I didn't feel like they had a crush on me. I think they were just genuinely like, you're a cool person. I'm surprised you haven't found anybody yet. Right. Like, I didn't feel like they were hitting on me in any way. And so I think like that with. There was this kind of. Yeah, I mean, it's this feeling of like. Yeah. Almost like being malnourished.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:35] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:45:36] And then like having something and thinking it's like thinking it's nourishment. And then later finding out maybe, maybe it was like candy. Maybe it was like a little empty calories. But so we, up to that point, I really had not crossed any sexual lines. Like, I'm like 26, so like, that's a big deal. Like to not do anything other than make out with somebody. Like, to get to that point in my mind. In my mind. Most people don't.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:08] And so we did cross some lines. What was really interesting to reflect back on that time was the clarity of mind I had was like Okay, I don't wanna do this. Cause I think I might regret that I'm willing to do these things, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:24] And also, like, I'm reading my scriptures, I'm praying, I'm doing all the things. And there's a part of me that's like, I don't. Like, I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't do that. And, like, desperate for, like, some sort of, like, divine intervention or something to keep me from maybe go going further than I otherwise would and feeling like this is not, like, a knowledge problem.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:50] Like, I know the standards. I've been able to keep the standards. Something's different. I don't know what this is. And I mean, I guess I could have. Well, I'd already gone to the bishop and gone to therapy, right? And that hadn't worked anyway, so things did happen. Eventually I did go confess, confess to my bishop. And things did fall out with him. And part of that was that I found out that he had been texting other girls, some of my friends, and making out with them.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:47:18] And so I was like, oh, my gosh. In some ways, this guy is kind of predatory. And I don't pretend to know his story, but that felt bad. I think it empowered me to say I have been vulnerable. That did feel good. And he also is not a safe person for me. So I did confess to the bishop.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:47:42] And, you know, now I have thoughts about that. Like, grosses me out to think about how bishops of young singles wards, how much they find out about women in their 20s and what sexually they're doing that grosses me out. It feels voyeuristic and they're not trained as therapy.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:48:01] And I think. I don't know. To me, you're, like, setting. You're putting bishops actually in a vulnerable position, I think. But he wasn't inappropriate. I mean, he may have asked me some inappropriate, invasive questions, but I didn't feel like. I don't remember feeling creeped out. I remember feeling like, this man's disappointed in me. And, you know, he like, recommended, like, read these scriptures. Read the souls and sacrament or whatever. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I know sex is sacred. I know it's special. Like, I know all this. And I was like, this is not a knowledge problem.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:48:35] But, like, cool, I'll skip the sacrament. I'll read your articles. But this is not that. Like, I knew very clearly that is not my problem. Like, and so for me, it. I think it. Maybe part of the deconstruction was, like, this repentance process is bullshit.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:48:54] I'm literally. I've been reading this stuff before, during, after my sin, and this is punishment. So I do think it led to me being in a place where. When I moved for graduate school, I thought, I've been looking for that checklist. Right. Of all the things.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:49:20] And I feel like I got down to a place where I was like, there are not that many things on the checklist. Like, I just need to find a good man. Like, that's it. One criteria. A good person. That's it. Right. And so for me, in a way, it was healing. And it did help clarify my values of what I really wanted in a partner, because it stripped away all this extra stuff that we, like, you know, when we encourage young women to, like, I guess, identify exactly what they want in a partner. So often we're creating these long lists. And what it does is it de.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:49:59] Centers the most essential characteristics to a healthy, intimate relationship. And so I do feel like that when I moved to Texas for graduate school, I felt like I was really, really, really clear on what was essential in a partner.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:15] And so it kind of stripped away all the extras and all the bullshit that can, I think, like, steer us wrong. So in that way, it was healing and that. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:27] And it feels like you kind of walked away with some. A real tangible shift for the better. Honestly.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:37] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:37] For the better level of discernment of, like, what matters. What truly matters. That's pretty big.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:44] Yes. Yeah. So I don't have regrets. Like, I don't know that I have, like, regrets about it, because again, in my mind, I was like, I reached out for help. I reached out for help in the way a Mormon should, and I didn't get the help. And that's fine. Right? Maybe mistakes were made, and that's fine. You learn from them. You grow from them.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:51:08] And I did get to where I was going, so I don't have a lot of regrets about it. But it makes me sad because I realized that in that system, I'm not the only girl that feels that way.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:51:19] And I've seen girls that are 16 years old in that same place, and sometimes they get labeled as sluts and they kind of get ostracized for having sex at 16. So I'm very aware of the implications of what happens when a girl internalizes that mistake as her own failing, as opposed to a systematic failure to teach her how to hold boundaries.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:45] That's right. Yeah. And even maybe we'll add a little bit of a side of innocence.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:51:51] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:52] And how it can make you. When you're experientially, when you don't have the experience, the sexual experiences, it can leave you vulnerable.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:52:03] Yeah, yeah. That can also, like, very underdeveloped.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:06] That's right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:07] And for me, we've been talking about you feeling like you're not fitting in the Mormon woman box. And this is a milestone of you exploring, stepping out of the box a little bit and actually learning some important things about yourself. That's what's significant to me.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:25] Yeah, it's almost like a moment of conditioned. A conditioned. Like you have a new emerging self that's a little bit. It's coming out in this moment, in the same time as that conditioned self. You have a conditioned self. You have this new emerging self that comes out that desires. That really has. Needs to feel cherished and wanted sexually and emotionally. And it's kind of a moment of that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:52:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

First Serious Relationship and Its Complications

John Dehlin [01:52:55] So should we talk about your first marriage?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:52:58] Yes, let's do.

John Dehlin [01:52:59] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:53:00] Yeah. So at some point I decided to. Well, I guess I should back up because how. How I got to Texas. Basically, the 2008 recession happened, and my very fun job at Enterprise Rent a Car became a lot less fun when gas prices skyrocketed. They really tightened on a lot of things like sales incentives and a. As you can see, I'm kind of ambitious, so I like to, like, you know, have things to motivate me. And so the fun working place wasn't so fun anymore. And I thought about doing the MBA again.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:53:33] And then I was talking to one of my best friends who's going to social work, and she's talking about that. And I thought, oh, my gosh, should I be a therapist? Like, one of my favorite parts of this job is picking people up, and they just tell me their stories and I just listen to.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:53:47] I was like, maybe I should do that, because then it's just people. I don't have to worry about sales and things like that. And so I looked into it and I decided, like, yeah, I think I'd be a good therapist. I think I love to talk to people. I love to hear the stories, so maybe I will do that. So I applied and then ended up relocating to Texas and going to grad school. I went to Texas Tech. I applied to a few other schools, but I went to Texas Tech. At their interview process, my interview. One of my sisters happened to be living there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:14] Her husband was going to law school there, and BYU had recommended their program. And so I was like, okay. I, like, called BYU And I said, what other programs should I apply to? And they told me a few. And so I applied to that. And when I went there, I just remember feeling like I was home. It felt so collaborative. It felt like, we're going to help you become the best therapist you can be. It didn't feel competitive. It just. It felt very nurturing, like a very, very, like, good environment. And so when they made the offer, I was like, I'm skipping the unlv. I'm not even.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:45] Or in the Seattle Pacific interviews. I'm not even gonna go. I'm just gonna go to Tech. So I started Texas Tech. Loved my program. Loved it.

Margi Dehlin [01:54:57] Loved.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:58] Lubbock is like a really. I mean, it is flat for days, but it is a really nice place because a lot of transplants come. They have, like, a billboard that says, we're the friendliest city, and there is nothing else to do but be with people. So you do find a lot of new friendships and investment in friendships, which is really nice when you're a transplant. So I really liked it there. So I actually met my first husband at a food bank. So he is.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:55:27] He was raised Mormon, but I never actually saw him at the ward. I don't know how I didn't see him at the singles ward. He was getting his undergraduate degree hungry, but the ward had done some activity at a food bank. And that's where I met him as we were both volunteering at the food bank. And I remember talking to him, and I was really surprised. He had kind of this, like, west Texas twang, but he was born in Mexico, so I kind of didn't expect that accent coming from that body.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:55:55] And then he was telling us about how his family had cattle and how he would, like, how they'd killed the cattle and prepared the cattle. And I just, like. I was just endlessly fascinated with this man. Like, who is this person? Like, he is so full of surprises. Like, it just felt like you're, you know, like those. Those little YouTube videos where they unwrap the presents for the kids. It was like that, but in a relationship, like, where you're just, like, unwrapping this person and endlessly fascinated by them. And so we became friends.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:56:26] I know don't actually kind of been interested in one of his roommates, but as I interacted with him more, I was like, this guy is really interesting. We went to a football game one time, and we were, like, bantering. And I remember, like, noticing a little bit him a little bit more physically like, oh, this guy knows how to dress. And anyway, we were, like, joking around, and then one time at maybe, like, church or an event, we were talking about, like, good places to eat, and I was like, well, now that I'm in Texas, there's gotta be some good Mexican restaurants. Like, yeah, where's good?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:02] And he's like, how about I take you to one? And I said, oh, yeah, that'd be great. And I didn't know if it was a date or not, but when he showed up, he looked like he was dressed for a date. And then when I got in the car and I saw how clean the car was, I was like, oh, this is a date. And it was. And it did end up being a date, but I wasn't sure.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:17] But anyway, he was. Yeah, he just endlessly fascinated me. And he was such a. Yeah. Such a good person. Focused on family. And I do remember he would. So we would date. And I was surprised, like, how he didn't physically touch me. Like, he didn't physically interact with me. I was probably more craving physical interaction quicker. And then one day, he biked over, and I remember feeling like he biked from his house over to my apartment. He knocks on my door. It was like, before church, we had, like, afternoon church. And he's like, hey, I just decided to bike over. And it felt very like Napoleon Dynamite, like, taking his little bike, coming over.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:56] And he's like, I just wanted to tell you that I've really enjoyed going on dates with you, and I wondered if you want to be my girlfriend. Like, we're in our 20s, so it kind of. It feels, like, kind of, like, silly. And at the same time, there was something about it that was, like, so confident and so clear, and I was like, yeah, yeah. Like, that he could own. I'm having a really good time with you. I actually want to make this something. And.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:58:22] And so then we, like, started, you know, more seriously dating. And I can't remember how long it took before, like, we kind of knew we wanted to marry. But, yeah, he. He was majoring in communication, so in that way, he could, like, I guess, kind of got some of the marriage and family therapy stuff. I remember one time he was reading, like. I think it's called, like, Stone Butch Blues. He took, like, a gender class in communication, and I was like, again, you'll see. You'll see me. And I'm like, this guy's reading a book, like, an autobiography by a transgender person. Like, again, just, like, really open mind.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:59:00] Like, not. And to me, I feel like there's something about that. That feels very, like, empowering. But also it is like a form of masculinity I'm attracted to. I'm not saying it's only masculine. I think, like, it can be feminine to do that. But there's something that feels like this man is not afraid of new things, and that's super attractive to me. Like a man who can intellectually talk about things and not be threatened to shut them down. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:33] And as far as the heterosexuality, sort of dynamic. And you feeling desired, Was that resolved?

Margi Dehlin [01:59:41] Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:59:42] So he had a very interesting way.

John Dehlin [01:59:46] So.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:59:46] Because he ended up working as a cowboy after he graduated, he loves horses, and he would train horses as well on the side. And he loved. He worked at a feedlot early in our marriage, so he loves that stuff. But he. So he would. I remember one time, he's like, your body is so fertile looking. And I was like, what? But he would. Like, it sounded like. It almost sounded like a farmer.

John Dehlin [02:00:13] Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:00:13] Like, what in the world? But there was, like, a way that he would say it that did it. It might sound stupid to other people, but it was like, what an interesting way to. But, like, you could, like, feel it. Like, he's like. Like there's, like, you. Like, it's almost like you're like. I don't know. Am I the goddess of fertility? Like, what does this even mean? But, like, it was just, like, an interesting way. It didn't feel like demeaning. It was just like, you. I don't know. It kind of felt like, you're so woman. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:00:38] But you heifer me, bull.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:41] I don't know. So. Yeah, it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:00:44] So interesting. Yeah, it was kind of weird, but at the same time, it was, like, validating, right? Because it wasn't like, you're so hot. It was like. It did feel very much like, validating my femininity. I also think I felt like I lost weight over the course of our courtship. And I do remember thinking that that was also healing feeling like no matter what my body was, that he. Like, whether it was thinner or thicker, that he. Like, he was here for it.

John Dehlin [02:01:19] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:01:19] And so I think that also felt. There was something about that that felt like it stripped away this expectation of, like, the fertile part. Like, maybe like, using that. Some of those weird terms. But it almost felt like it wasn't about some of these standards we have.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:36] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:01:36] For women. Like, you should be thinner. You should be this. It was like. Like, it was more, like, centered in, like, me being a woman than, like, me fitting some like standard, beauty standard we have of today. So I think that felt really validating and made me feel like I could be more present in my body for sure.

Marriage, Family Life, and Cultural Tensions

John Dehlin [02:01:58] So y' all got married?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:01:59] Yeah, so we got married. That was not an easy road. I, I was pretty surprised when I first, I guess got some feedback from people that felt like it was a little racist. Like what about you two being from different cultures, questions like that, or like, are you worried people will be racist against your kids? And I'm like, well now I am.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:02:35] Because you said that like you, someone who loves me said that. Like I didn't think about that before because I don't feel that way about other people's children. Right. So that was kind of hard. But my in laws are such lovely people. And they at that time had a mixed faith marriage.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:02:58] My father in law was out of the church and she was. Isaac and his mom were actually the only ones that were active. And at the time when we married and so seeing them being best friends I think was a great example of just like a marriage based on real friendship and respect and family later on, you know. Yeah, there had been this question of like different cultures and I had seen things written in Mormon books and things like that that kind of had said things about like, intercultural marriage can be problematic. Right. So those were real teachings. So I understand that those of older generations, that, that, that was instilled in them, that fear.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:03:40] So I, I do understand where that comes from. It still was deeply painful to be 27 as a Mormon woman, finding someone who I loved, who loved me, who I felt like I could build a life with, and like people couldn't rejoice with me. Nobody could be happy for me. My friends could, but my family couldn't. And I feel like certain people's fears about that bled into everybody else's. And so I think even people who wanted to maybe support had other people that had so much anxiety, so much fear about this marriage that they too, it was like they, they were like frozen by it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:04:28] Right? By me saying, no, this is right, this is wrong. And I do remember asking some family members, like, did you get a revelation that I shouldn't marry him? Like, like, say it, say it if you did. You know, like, tell me, tell me what you know that I don't know. Because unless you do, I'm not intaking this information. I'm not considering it in my decision.

John Dehlin [02:04:51] Because you felt that it was inspired. You felt good about it?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:04:55] Yeah, I felt good about it. Yeah. I felt unwavering. In it. Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:05:00] And in the Mormon mind, there are a couple. Let's say there's a pie chart and each one has a percentage. There's like, he's a dark skinned Lamanite, he comes from a cursed lineage. Let's just say that's one possible pie slice of concern. Another is just the general instruction that Mormon leaders have taught, which is we advise people to not marry outside their race. And along with that quote that's been there forever is we also encourage people not to marry outside of their socioeconomic level. Like those two came together. So let's say that's a second. I just saw a facial reaction there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:05:36] Yes, yes, I'm glad you brought that up because I forget about that. Yeah, but that was something. The socioeconomic level. Isaac grew up in a trailer home. His parents are immigrants. They moved here. His dad built a business by himself and yeah, I mean, they're the American dream. His sister went into the Air force, His brother's a teacher, his sister was a police officer. Right. I mean they, they came and they built a life here and.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:06:09] But they did start off in a trailer home. Right. Because there aren't, contrary to popular belief, there are not handouts. Right. When you talk to people who are immigrants, they have scars on their body because they didn't go to the doctor. You don't go to the doctor unless you have to and you pay cash. Right. So his childhood was.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:06:31] I don't know that they would have said they were poor. I think a lot of times white Americans have a lot of stereotypes about you should have a house that is more expensive than your car. Right. Things like that is where a lot of cultures don't need a big house.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:06:48] They don't need a big house. So they will be fine to live in a small house and they will get the car they want. And it's not that they're getting a nice car at the expense the of the house. They just don't need a big house. And he at the time was a green card holder. I don't know if he would have been eligible for citizenship. But also like his family, like back then, being a green card holder, also like you don't need to get citizenship, you have legal residency here. If you don't have any plan to do anything illegal, why give up your citizenship in Mexico?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:07:21] Especially for like people like his parents that could get health benefits so they could go down there for dental work or, or health care. Right. That is like free or very low cost. So it doesn't make sense for a lot of permanent residents to get citizenship in the U.S.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:07:35] unless leaders are like taking away their rights or they feel like they're going to get in some sort of trouble and they would need citizenship to stay. But if you're a good resident, why give up your citizenship? It doesn't make sense.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:07:53] Yeah, actually, when I was talking to my husband a little bit about coming over the seas, he said something. Because I said something. I said, I feel like in my family there often is a lot of pushback against males who enter the family. A lot of. And I think a lot of that is like, are you going to be a safe man? Like, men have historically harmed people in this family. I have one brother, so most of us are women. And so I think that is true. But my husband did say something to me where he was like, yeah, but you gotta understand that, like, for Isaac, that was probably really different than even when I came in the family.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:08:28] He's like, because he was questioned not just about being a man entering, are you gonna take care of the woman in this family? But like, what about your citizenship? What about, are you gonna provide for her? And that was directly stated to him. Something about like, like, Rebecca comes for money. Rebecca likes nice things and her sisters are gonna eventually have money.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:08:55] You know, are you gonna be able to provide that life? And I don't, I don't know what Isaac said. I mean, Isaac can hold his own for sure. But I do think he. I don't. He probably wouldn't have. He probably wouldn't have been like, I'm gonna make a lot of money for her. He probably would have responded. We don't. That's not our values. Like, and that's the truth. It's like, I am not, look, I mean, I am looking to share a life with a man. I'm not looking for a man to take care of me. That has never been. I've never needed that.

John Dehlin [02:09:29] Which is the least Mormon thing anyone's ever said on his face. Sorry, just kidding. I'm exaggerating. Let me ask you. So just, just so you know, clearly the LDS church has had a history of problems with racism, but having grown up in Texas, I think any white middle to upper middle class girl marrying Hispanic immigrant in Texas would have raised eyebrows, probably in any family across almost any religious tradition. So is there any way for you to even tease out how much of that disappointing reaction from your family was Mormon versus just human or, you know, normal American stuff?

Margi Dehlin [02:10:11] Cultural.

John Dehlin [02:10:12] Cultural. There's probably no way for you to know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:10:17] Yeah, That's a good question, I think so. I didn't grow up in Texas. I actually feel like had I grown up in Texas, there probably would have been less pushback. Cause there are, there's, there's so many Hispanic people people in Texas. I remember us having one friend that was from Mexico and my mom did befriend her and she was somebody in our ward and she came over a lot and cooked with us and we went to her house. And my mom has, I think maintained contact with her over the years. But that was like one, that was like the one Hispanic person we knew. So they're just like. There just wasn't a big population. So I think it was, was a lot of stereotypes about Mexican culture. So I think it was not having interface with that culture. And then probably the fears perpetuated Mormonism, which is, you know, mixing other cultures is bad.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:17] And American culture itself, I think has it, it feels like there are a lot of layers of support for what you experience.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:11:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I was a little surprised because some of my siblings served missions in Spanish speaking areas. And so I think in that way, like I have a sister that like her husband speaks only Spanish to the kids. Like they're raising their kids bilingual. They both serve Spanish speaking missions.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:11:45] And I think those who had had interaction with the culture didn't have those same things, those same concerns. But I don't think they, I don't know that they. I don't know that they were in a great position to defend me. Right. Or speak reason.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:12:06] I think in a lot of ways I just think sometimes when those fears are unlocked in my family because of the trauma, I think a lot of times people are like. And I can say this for myself because this has happened when a sibling of mine got married where I felt like there was a lot of anxiety and fear and the way certain behaviors of a man were interpreted were in a very negative light. And I think on some.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:12:34] And I was like, wait, is this that right? So you get kind of scared of like, maybe this person isn't good. And you know, it's like in these Mormon relationships, you're not, it's not like we've met this person and interacted with them for two years. Right. You've dated them for a couple months, a couple people in the family have met him and now they're going to get married. So I think also the lack of interaction with, you know, within the courtship and when somebody's engaged also perpetuates this. If there is Some sort of fear or misinterpretation or, like, a projection onto someone. I've seen even myself, where I have in some ways been like that, frozen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:13:12] Like, I don't know that I can step in and support my sister, because what if they're right? What if he is that right? So you kind of. Of just let the other people who think they know what's happening handle it, but what it does is resulted in really low support.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:13:31] And, you know, we showed my kids the wedding video a little while ago one time for, like, a family activity. And it's. It's painful to watch the video because there's. The videographer, like, had family members sit down and, like, say well wishes, and you can see the difference in his family being, in my friends being, like, so excited.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:13:54] And you can see my family members and how they, like, kind of don't know what to say. You can see the restriction in their bodies. And also at the wedding, we had a very fun wedding, and we did it in Texas. That was also a thing. There were some.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:11] There was some pushback on doing it in Texas, but I was like, I can't plan a wedding where I don't live. So that was kind of crazy, too, but I don't want to get too much into that. But that was also even just, like, where the wedding was held.

John Dehlin [02:14:23] It was a temple marriage, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:24] It was a temple marriage.

John Dehlin [02:14:25] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:25] Yeah, it was a temple marriage.

John Dehlin [02:14:26] Which temple?

Margi Dehlin [02:14:27] Lubbock.

John Dehlin [02:14:28] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:28] Lubbock has a small temple.

John Dehlin [02:14:29] Okay. Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:31] But we did it in Lubbock because that's where we're both living. We're going to school. I'm in grad school planning a wedding. And we had, like, a long dance. We had a mariachi band. It was a fun wedding. And I do remember afterwards, family members being like, that was so fun. And also, like, they saw our love, and I think they knew they had been wrong. And so that also is really painful because it's like you're not believed, and you should never have to prove your love. And. Yeah, it's like, we could have enjoyed that together. But, like, the fears, the. That. That. That drove distance.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:31] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:15:33] I'm sorry for the. Well, I'm happy that you found love, because it sounds like you found love.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:15:39] Yes, I did.

John Dehlin [02:15:40] And you found a partner that you. That was good for you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:15:43] Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:45] And I'm sad that some of those cultural aspects maybe soured a little bit. Some of.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:52] Some of the support.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:52] Some racism. Yeah. Some, you know, real tangible fear that, you know, created Separation.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:16:01] Yeah. Yeah. And later on I remember like thinking about it and thinking about their, you know, like, is the cultural problem. And I remember thinking like, over time I learned I'm the cultural. The culture isn't a problem. It's. The cultural differences are actually why I'm attracted to Isaac.

Margi Dehlin [02:16:23] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:16:23] Isaac's family has so much wanted. I remember being surprised how I saw money work, like in a circular way where in my family worked top down. And at first I was like, oh, that's kind of different. And then thinking like seeing like how you could be supported by anybody at any time, somebody would come in and help you is where I probably never would feel like I could ask a sibling for help. And so there were a lot of things that I learned over time that like, this culture is really. And that culture inside of Isaac is what attracts me to him. It is not a problem for me. It's exactly why I'm attracted to him.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:04] That is so beautiful. So beautifully said.

The Unraveling of Her First Marriage

John Dehlin [02:17:11] So for the sake of time, how do you want to describe, you know, those married years with Isaac and how it.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:22] How it unfortunately, I guess, ended?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:17:24] Yeah. So we. We got pregnant pretty fast. We. I was about to turn 28, so I was like, maybe we don't do birth control because we both want a family. And I don't know if I have fertility issues. So we didn't use any protection and of course it only took a month.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:17:44] So I was pregnant at the end of my master's degree and I had our first child in September of 2012 and we had a son. His name's Wyatt. And then I started a private practice after I graduated and Isaac worked at a feedlot. And so that was kind of like what we were doing. He was doing the cowboy thing, training horses on the side and. And then I was doing my private practice. And then we had another child. That's a girl, her name is Rose. And so, yeah, we were really enjoying family life. I will say after Rose.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:18:30] I do remember feeling really anxious about our finances. Right. Which in some ways maybe confirmed my parents fears because I was seeing that light. The way Isaac was doing the cowboy thing and doing the horses on the side. It did feel like there's no. Like this is how it's always gonna be. Right? Like it's never. There's no growth.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:18:56] And so things felt kind of tight with me working part time. And it was like, do we need to consider me working full time? Like, what do we need to do? And I think part of it was being really. I was really Anxious because I just had a second child. And then it felt, oh, no, now we have two and we don't have this figured out yet.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:19:12] And so that felt really difficult. And so that was a difficult time in our marriage. And it was hard because I'd had family come out to help and they could kind of see it. Right. And so that also felt hard because I didn't want to talk to my family about it because in many ways they were like, you will be unhappy if you can. You can't if you're not rich.

John Dehlin [02:19:35] Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:19:35] Here's something and it's kind of like, are you going to be helpful or you know what I mean? Like, how are. Like, can you support me as we work through this? Isaac is a very talented artist. He was actually going to do architecture, but then when he went to school, there were some things that got messed up with the mission because like, you have to like take certain prereqs and then get in the program at a certain time. So. But also he realized the architecture was more like on computers than drawing. And anyway, he's an excellent artist. And so he started doing leather work actually, like where you make the chaps and the different, like you could build saddles, boots, whatever.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:16] And so I felt like we actually had worked through that and I was like, I think you need to focus on this and do the other thing part time, like switch your part time and your full time. And so it did feel like we had gotten to a place where we could kind of agree on something that if he was going to be the main provider, that it. That maybe that would be better.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:39] And so we had kind of just worked through that. But he was at the time his last job was working at a ranch. Like this guy owned like a bunch of Dairy Queens. So he was like really rich and bought this beautiful ranch and all these beautiful black Angus cows there.

John Dehlin [02:20:56] Was it called Yellow?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:57] No, it wasn't called Yellowstone. But I've been to the four sixes ranch. I've been to a horse auction there.

John Dehlin [02:21:04] I just watched a couple seasons of Yellowstone head to ask.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:21:08] Yeah, but so he worked there and so one day he was going to work. This is so interesting is 2015, September. We had just gone and visited my family a couple weeks ago, a couple weeks before. And so that was fun and that was a good vacation. And I feel like in those last few years, it kind of felt like my family had relaxed around Isaac and could like enjoy him and really get to know him.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:21:38] And so that had been really nice. And we came Back into town, and there was something he was gonna do, move around his schedule. And I remember this. I mean, this day is so vivid for me, for obviously many reasons. And I remember our son, I think, had woken us up early.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:21:56] And I had decided to make breakfast for Isaac, which is not something I always did, but I was like, hey, let's make breakfast. And I remember him, like, eating it in bed. And he. Isaac would watch Fox News sometimes. He wasn't necessarily conservative, but he was watching it probably maybe for ironic reasons, I don't know. And I remember I was like. I said this to him. I said, they are gonna give that election to Donald Trump. They need to stop talking about him.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:28] Because it was like he was getting so much attention from the news. They were just focusing on everything he said. And I remember, like, that was the conversation we had over breakfast. And then he's like, well, he's like, you know, I don't think there's much to do today. What are you doing today with the kids? Cause I work Tuesday, so. And this was a Wednesday. And I said, I think I'm gonna take him to the park. And he's like, well, I think I'll go in. I'll, like, feed the cows. I'll talk to him. And I might take today off, and I'll come, like, meet you at the park.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:53] And I said, okay, cool. And so I, like, loaded the kids. So he left. And I actually, like, didn't even check my phone. Didn't even think about him. Like, I didn't really think more about him meeting up with us. Cause I wasn't sure if he was gonna be able to take off the day to be with us or not. Like, I wasn't sure what else they might need at. At the ranch. And so I remember throwing the trash in the back of the car to take it to the dumpster. And I put the kids in the car, and I see two cops walk up, and I think, oh, no, I'm being served papers.

The Sudden Death of Her Husband

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:23:24] I'm being sued. This is my thought. And I'm thinking, did a client die? Right? This is my thought. It's like, I'm being served papers, and, like, I'm being sued for, like, something. Because I. I just couldn't conceive of why two cops would be there. They come in and they ask me to sit down, or they ask if they can talk to me. And I said, yeah, come in, whatever. I said, well, let me get my kids. And so I put them.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:23:49] Actually, I'm trying to remember the exact timeline Events, I can't remember everything exactly. But at some point I did take the kids and I put them down, but I might have already gotten the news. But they said, you husband's been in a car accident.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:23:59] And like in that moment the mind, like your mind starts racing and I begin to realize, like, why are they, if they're here, why hasn't he called me? Right? Like, it becomes very clear that like it's really bad. And they did, he died on impact. And yeah, I like fell to the ground.

John Dehlin [02:24:33] And

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:36] they, They like recommended I have someone come. They like ask who can come and call people with you? And I was like, no, it's fine, I, I'll call. I'm the wife. That's what I'm thinking. Like, like, like why would I have somebody else call? Like I'm his wife, I gotta call and tell everybody, right? This is how my mind is working.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:00] And then

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:03] at some point they leave and I start to make the calls.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:10] And

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:14] I mean they, they obviously had, I, I, they knew that I, that I would need help. I mean they, they tried to recommend that I do that, that, but I, I don't know that they necessarily explained or may. And maybe it wouldn't have helped, I don't know. But I did not know what it would be like to be on the other side of a mother's grief.

John Dehlin [02:25:36] And

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:39] like the wailing, like the sounds that come out of other people's bodies when someone has died is, it's not a sound you hear.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:51] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:52] Like some movies get it. Right. But it's a very particular sound. And it was just. Yeah, some people were like, are you serious? Are you joking? And again, obviously they're experiencing shock, but sometimes like, even questions like that like, felt like, that felt so overwhelming to be like, no, I'm not joking. Why would I joke about this? Right? So like, I don't think that was ill intentioned, but it was, it was too much. So I ended up calling.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:26:29] I don't know if I called friends, but I think one of the people that ended up helping me was actually my branch president's wife. We were in the Spanish branch at the time. And her, her son actually had died at like 28 and he had been a veteran, he was in the army. I think he, I don't think he died in combat. I wanna say he like got an illness while he was abroad or something. But anyway, he, her, their son had passed away and so she really knew and I am so grateful for her because she knew exactly like what we needed and she came over and she's like, we need your babysitter to come.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:07] The person who washed my kids when I was working, she had a babysitter. She's like, we need a babysitter to come, and we're gonna call people. And she just knew exactly what to do. And she's like, the church will help with whatever we need to help with.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:20] And she. We wanted. Anyway, her and her husband, we were close to them. Isaac was really. Isaac was in the branch presidency, so he was very close to the branch president. The branch president had actually been raised in Chihuahua in the. My hus. Isaac.

John Dehlin [02:27:37] The colonies.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:38] Yeah, in the colonies. His family was from there, and so he's fluent in Spanish. And his. Isaac's family's from Chihuahua. The city. The. The city and the state. His dad's family's more from the mountains, but his mom's from the city. But they. Anyway, they were. They were godsons and really helped because family was coming up from Mexico. We wanted to do it on a Sunday. I guess doing a funeral on a Sunday is not kosher in the LDS Church, but the branch president was like, we'll do it on a Sunday. You know, he just. He made. He made the things happen. We did the funeral, and he allowed for us to have, like, a period of time afterwards where people just came up and shared memories of Isaac. It was so beautiful. So really, a lot of good support from that branch president and his wife. Yeah. Anyway, so they. They really stepped in.

John Dehlin [02:28:44] And what is it. What is the. What was your perspective as a Mormon wife and woman with children in a temple? Eternal marriage. To have your eternal companion die while you have young kids and you're in your 30s. What's that like? Especially theologically, but also emotionally, psychologically, Practically all the lease.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:09] Basically, yeah. I think psychologically, one of my first thoughts was like, of course this happens to me because it was so hard

John Dehlin [02:29:21] to get in the first place. Or.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:23] No. So I feel like. Because my parents, like, divorced when I was really young.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:27] This was your.

John Dehlin [02:29:28] Oh, cursed or.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:30] No, not a curse. It felt like I. Like I had from a very young age. I had no expectations that life owed me something. Right. And I think that's maybe why. Also kind of earlier I said, I never expected a man to take care of me. I knew things didn't always go as planned. Life was not a fairy tale. Good people get hurt, Good people get left, and that things happen.

John Dehlin [02:29:57] That's. Of course, this happened. Not, of course this happened to me. I guess I'm wondering about the to me. Because the to me suggests that you felt like you had a curse or death wish or, you know, deserved it or something like that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:12] It wasn't a deserving thing. I think it's a feeling of. Of like. It actually comes from probably a more prideful place of like, kind of like, you can handle it.

John Dehlin [02:30:29] Oh, yeah. Oh, Like I'm strong, I'm chosen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:33] And I get the harder stuff.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:35] Yeah. And it wasn't that I felt chosen or I felt prideful. It was this kind of thing of, like. And it wasn't, like, deserving, but it's like, you can do hard things.

Margi Dehlin [02:30:47] You've done hard things.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:48] You've done hard things. And so a cushy life is not for you. And it's not about deserving, but it's like, you'll get through it kind of type thing. Like you're stronger. Yeah. Like, sometimes I hear people say, like, I can't watch the news. It's too hard for me. And that's like, so foreign to me to feel like I could be entitled to be. Like, I shouldn't be bothered.

John Dehlin [02:31:11] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:31:12] Like, so there's this feeling of like, so I think when it happened, it's like, of course it happened to me because I won't be destroyed by this. Like, I will find a way through it.

John Dehlin [02:31:24] There's this Mormon teaching that God won't give you any opposition that's greater than what you can handle. I was taught that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:31:31] Yeah. So it might be kind of connected to that. It's not like one for one, but kind of that, like, if this happens to me, it is this confirmation of, like, yes, like, you can handle this. You can do it. And of course it happened to you, not the next person, because the next person would have just crumbled. Right. That type of thing. But, like, you'll find a way through it. So that's where. I don't know if that's like a prideful thing, but it doesn't come from a. Like, you deserve it so much as, like, you can handle it.

John Dehlin [02:32:01] Well, I mean, the implications of the Mormon plan of salvation is, are that we're here to experience adversity and to become strong. And so if that's true, then the more adversity you have, in theory, the stronger you get. So there is a Mormon privileging of adversity and the whole pioneer heritage and discriminated people where, like, if we're in our. If we're our strongest, most Mormon, Mormon, obedient, healthy self, we're like, bring it on. And the more challenges we have are a sign that God thinks we can handle more adversity because we'll become even stronger once we overcome it. I don't know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:32:43] That's.

John Dehlin [02:32:44] Psychologically, that's.

Margi Dehlin [02:32:45] Yeah. I just think it's ironic, though, because within Mormonism, there's always, like, the foil. Because the foil to that is like. And if you do all the things and if you do the list and if you'll be admitted, you'll be blessed. You'll be. So it is. It's like this. Yeah. It's a tricky.

John Dehlin [02:33:01] Well, there's. The house always wins. You know what I mean? If you don't have adversity, it's because you're righteous and you are blessed. And if you do have adversity, it's because you were wicked and didn't do the right thing. There's a million different ways where the church always comes out looking the best. Right. But in your mind, you were like, oh, this is a sign that I can do this. Right.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:20] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:33:21] I don't know that I. I don't know that I had that exact thought, but it was more like, of course this would happen to me. I think that was one of the. That was, like, the only thought I can think of that I had about me. The other piece that I think is really unique to my situation is that Isaac had talked about dying early.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:33:44] Isaac had often would say things like, I'm gonna die before you. And he wasn't, like, suicidal or depressed or. But he had this like. He's like, I just don't feel like I'm going to live a long life. He's like, I don't. He didn't say, like, he was going to. He made it sound like he's going to die at 60. Right. Like, he was not going to live to 80 or 90. Like, he was going to be the first person to die. But he did. It was. I did not think, you know, when he died that he would die in his 20s. But.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:34:14] But there was this thing, and I had even. I don't know if it was before or after, but I saw in some of his journals, like, he even said he's like, I've done everything I need to do in my life. I, like, found, like, I found a partner. I've made a family. I'm. I am, like, at peace. So he had, like. And, like, the fact that he. A lot of people would tell him they were jealous of him for working as, like, a cowboy because they're like, oh, I Want to do that when I retire. And, like, he was like, I don't want to wait to live my life.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:34:44] So in a lot of ways, he lived for now and. And really did everything in alignment with his values. So there's several pieces of writing from him where you see he's very much at peace with the choices he made in his life. And what's interesting, too, is I think that allowed for so much acceptance about this being the path. Even though, like, I never would have wanted to lose Isaac, his dad also said something about how he had said something to him and how his dad said, yeah, like, I felt like Isaac thought he was gonna die before me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:35:23] And so that even helped his parents. I think that they're this, like, peace that, like, Isaac knew that some. That Isaac felt at peace, that Isaac somehow knew his life was short and he made choices accordingly. I think brought all of us a lot of peace. Peace because. And it wasn't peace, like, because we're gonna live together forever, but it was like he lived an honorable life and he did everything he wanted to do.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:35:54] So I think that helped a lot of us to let go. We also all knew he wanted to be cremated. Like, we knew how he. We knew how to handle the funeral. Like, we knew everything. And so, again, that's really unique. Like. And again, I don't. It's not like. Like he was planning it, but somehow we had had those conversations and we had known that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:36:11] And again, in his writing, there's no, like, I'm going to die soon. There's. There's nothing like that straightforward. But it. It really was, I think, a huge part of all of us being able to accept that this was the path. This is where his life ended.

John Dehlin [02:36:31] It was just an accident.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:36:32] Yeah, it was just an accident. Yeah. I mean, and it is sad. Like, the person did, like, turn into him. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt. It was an old car. There's a chance it could have been avoided. I don't know. They didn't check the person's phone. There's a lot of. But again, I think none of us, like, chased after that because, again, it was like. It was like a knowing for all of us that, like, even as painful as it was to lose him, like, none of that was going to bring him back and he was okay to go. I think that that more than anything, I think, like, I don't know, that that was everything, to know that he was okay, going, kind of.

Grief, Theology, and Life as a Widow

John Dehlin [02:37:22] And then what does that do for you theologically, with your religious Beliefs about. About eternal companion, eternal marriage, eternal family. As a Latter Day Saint.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:37:33] Yeah. So that. Yeah, I was 32 and I've got a three year old and a one and a half year old. Like my, My family life is just getting started. I didn't think I was done having kids, so a lot of it felt like life interrupted. Like, what? I lost my partner. I don't think I'm done. Done having children. Like, what in the world? What in the world?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:37:59] So, and then with the ceiling, that was really hard too, because what is eternal marriage when it ends at 32 or like you have a break? I don't know until what, I'm 90, like 60 years. It just didn't feel realistic that I would live the rest of my life alone.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:38:18] And I didn't. I didn't feel any need to prove my love to Isaac by being alone. I really enjoyed being married to Isaac. We were best friends. I think I. I had people tell me, like, your guys's marriage is different. Like, you can see that you guys really like each other.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:38:36] So I. I think I didn't feel any sort of like, I'm gonna prove my love by being alone or whatever. But it did make me. I just thought, well, I probably will remarry. So that felt like, really, like, this is strange because I don't. I just had never thought about any of it before. But like, yeah, I'm 32. I'll probably remarry. How soon? I don't know. I don't know. Like, I'm not thinking about that, but like, I imagine that would just be really crazy if I didn't, you know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:39:06] So it did lead me to question and I heard a few things. I joined some widow, widower groups. You know, there you hear people asking questions and things about the sealing practices. So all of that gets. You kind of get like pieces of that. And it probably doesn't become relevant until you do start really dating someone and considering getting serious with someone. I think another piece, I think to think about is just the. I want to get more into the ceiling because there's a lot to my story with that. But the theology, I think is really important too, as far as death, right? This, like, we're gonna be together forever.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:39:46] And this, like, somehow allows you to circumvent grief. And it doesn't. And so I immediately knew that, like, grief is not about knowing what happens after. But if you really love someone and genuinely enjoyed being with them in your life, their absence, now that's painful.

Margi Dehlin [02:40:11] That's right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:40:12] And like, for me, it was like, cellular, you know? I mean, we, like, bear testimony. Like, what is it that. That phrase that everybody says in their testimony?

John Dehlin [02:40:26] In my every fiber.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:40:27] Every fiber of my being. Right. Like, there's. There's these phrases and does. It feels like every cell in your body, like, it will feel like this? Your brain knows that happened, and your body's like, but where are they?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:40:51] And so it's like this. Like, it almost does feel like your brain has to tell, like, your every little cell and you're like. Has to call every cell in your body and be like, by the way, he's gone. Like, he's not gonna be here when we wake up. You need to remember. And I do remember, like, waking up being really painful until I had a dream where he was dead.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:41:11] And that when I had a dream that he was dead and he came to, like, he was in the dream talking to me. And I don't know that it necessarily felt, like, deeply spiritual, like he, like, really appeared to me, but in a dream where I had. Where he was dead, that was. That. That was really impactful in, I think, the psychological turn of not having to wake up and reminding myself and my body like, he's gone.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:38] I can imagine.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:41:39] Yeah. So that was hard. And I think. I mean, the funny thing is, I'm a therapist, so there's a lot of things I know how to do, how to cope. And I think only about a year later, I was like, oh, that was probably traumatic, Which. Right. Like, I should know that it's traumatic.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:41:57] But I think because I had a lot of support and a lot of coping skills in a lot of ways, I don't think I really quite knew how traumatizing it was to my body. It was hard to sleep at night. I really procrastinate sleep. That was a big thing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:42:14] I feel like I still can have sleep issues from it. Like. Like, I don't. It's not this. It's not the same. But I do think it's like, it feels residual, right? This kind of, like. Yeah, it. There's just like, a residual of it that I feel sometimes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:42:40] And I think for me, that felt like a big part of my grieving process. I wrote a blog. It is still out there on the Internet, where I just blogged sometimes about my process of grief. And I think that felt really important because I don't know that it felt like there was a lot of space in the church to tell the story as it really was.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:43:01] Right. Because you're always trying to. It's Almost like people. I tell my friend, there's grief whores. And I mean like W H O R E S. So when someone dies, it's really weird, but people want to be your friend.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:43:18] They don't know you and they want to be your friend. And you're like, why? Because I had someone die. What a weird reason to be your friend. I call them grief wars, but. And I had one person do it. And like I was like, sure, we can talk. And then it was like all of a sudden they were telling me all about their addiction. I was like, am I supposed to be your therapist right now? Like, I'm grieving. Like, you seem genuinely interested in me, maybe like being there for me. And now I feel like I'm turning into your therapist. So it was so weird.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:43:47] But what I think happens sometimes is people want to be inspired by you. They also want you to confirm their faith. They want to see that the faith works for you, that it protects you from the worst nightmare, right? People say, I can never, oh, I can never imagine that happening to me. And I'm like, well, you actually could because you just did. And you said you didn't want it. Right? Like of course. And of course you don't. Of course you don't want this to happen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:44:15] I didn't want it to happen. But that's a big piece is like this feeling of people looking to you to validate their belief system. And that feels, that feels bad. But also it feels like it didn't bring me comfort.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:44:34] It didn't bring me comfort that we were married forever because he was gone now. My children lost their father. I lost my husband and my best friend. My in laws lost a son and a brother. And the theology doesn't change that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:44:58] And that isn't to be like dark. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't fix that. Can't take away the. It can't take away like the sting of death. It doesn't. And if it did, I wouldn't want it, right? Because to me, grief, the pain in grief is inextricably linked to the love we shared and the memories that we hold. And you can't. That if you would fully embrace something, there's no way you can be okay or not feel totally disrupted by its absence. There's just no way.

John Dehlin [02:45:48] You know, people who haven't really processed something like this might say, why would you want the pain? But like if you go and lift weights and you really work hard, right? It'd be weird if there was no soreness afterwards. I've heard people who are really into weightlifting say, I like the soreness. You know what I mean? Cause it's a sign that I worked hard. And you're saying a sign that you loved is that you're grieving.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:46:17] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:18] Is that right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:46:19] Yeah. Yeah. It is the direct result. Result of having, like, been present for it all. Right. To have really lived. Right. I. I remember in my grief reading, C.S. lewis has some writings on grief.

John Dehlin [02:46:38] Grief observed.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:46:39] Yeah, grief observed. And there's this beautiful part where he talks about, like, sometimes the grief is about not knowing who you would have been. Like, the. Like, the. Like. Yeah. Missing the arguments, the things like the conflict that means there's tomorrow.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:47:00] The. How you would have interacted or responded to this new thing. Like, the way you're constantly revealing yourself to me. Like, that is when you know someone really deeply, it is painful to not know, to not get to see them evolve, grow. How they would have processed things. How he would be like a father to our children now, like the oldest, who are, like, 13 and 11. And the other day, my son, he had, like, to do a little TED Talk for his assignment, and he gave it to me. And, you know, I'm seeing him move, and he moves just like his father. And because it's a speech, there's ways I see him moving his hands that are.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:47:48] I mean, it's just like Isaac. And he does look a lot like Isaac. Like, even the Apple ID once paired them together as the same person. And. Yeah. And so there's like, the facial recognition. Yeah, the facial recognition.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:48:01] And there's just, you know, like, I see Isaac in my son, and. Yeah. It's hard to know that, like, Wyatt will never quite know how much he's like his father or that Isaac won't get to see that. And same with Rose. I mean, those are the things where you're like. It feels like, yeah, it's such a loss that he didn't get to experience that. And I don't know. I guess I don't feel. And maybe because I've grown up in pain. Pain, you know, like, it was always there in my family. And people say this about grief.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:42] You.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:48:43] It doesn't go away. You just learn to live with it. And maybe that's just a reality for me, right. Where it's like, this isn't so aversive because it's been around in different forms, but I've just learned to live around it and process through it, you know, and find a way to find meaning in my life and love in my life, even though I carry this memory of what. What was and what could have been.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:14] Right. We actually, we. I'm just gonna share something briefly. We just read a memoir in our book club called Lost and Found. And I think the. It's split up in different sections, but the lost part is about her losing her dad. And one of the things you just said reminded me of a part where she's talking about grief, in particular after her dad has died. And it's this idea of a 180, how visceral grief will grab you. And for a moment, she's in the past and she's grieving. These memories of her dad, she's thrust into the past, and then the next moment she's thrust back to the future as well as in the present.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:56] And it's just this. You're grieving it all. You're grieving the future. You're grieving. She gets married and she's thinking about her dad not being there. She's thinking and just, you know, how grief, you know, is just all encompassing, past, present, future.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:15] And. Yeah. That visceral. The visceral kind of nature of it. And you were. When you were talking, just one last thing. It was reminding me also of a memoir. When breath becomes air. I don't know if you've heard of it.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:30] Yeah, a memoir. And it's written by. I think he's a neuroscientist. It's a doctor who ends up having stage 4 cancer writing about it. He writes about it as he goes through. And eventually he and his wife writes the afterword. But in that novel, this just. You were talking and it reminded. There's this quote that I wrote down by Ms. Merwin, and it's about grief. And it says, your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:02] Everything I do is stitched with its color. And I just. I love that. I love how integrated that is, how grief becomes something that is absolutely. You know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:51:16] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:17] Everything you do is stitched. You know, it's the color of that loss. It's just. It's changed.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:51:24] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:51:24] You know how you live and how you see things. Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:51:27] Yeah. It really. Yeah. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Because I think that does. That's a beautiful imagery of, like, the experience, which is it. It changes. Changes how you see the whole world, how you see life. It gives you such a different.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:51:44] Yeah. Like a different perspective on everything. You cannot see things the same as you once did. You can't unsee it. And. And it does. It Changes how you show up in everything. There was something you said where you said it's like all encompassing. And I think one of the things too that when Isaac died, when I was thinking about our marriage and what that meant, right. Like that our marriage is eternal. And I thought about like the meaning of like eternal. And, and how maybe, I think what I started to think was maybe we think of eternal as like time, but maybe it's not time.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:52:28] Right. Maybe eternal is actually kind of like this infinite, all encompassing thing. Like our love is eternal because it's godly. And I don't know that that necessarily means it has to be like of Heavenly Father. I mean, there's something really holy about the love we shared that's really eternal. And I don't know that it has to be about time.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:52:51] I just think that is true. And so I think it changed the way that I looked at our love as not time bound or even defying time, but as being godly and holy unto it. Like worthy in and of itself, like not up for debate. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:53:11] Godly, sort of. Yeah. I've heard it said, and I've maybe witnessed it a bit, that Mormons can be impatient with other people's grief life. Did you experience that or did you not experience that? The people would get uncomfortable with anything other than I'm great things are, great plan of salvation, it'll all be taken care of in the next life. Or did you find your Mormon ward members, family were. Were okay with your grieving and sitting with you in your grief?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:53:46] I think for the most part I have people in my life that are really good at sitting with me. I had a Mormon professor who was also my stake president. And he's like, let's meet. I don't know if we met weekly or bi weekly. He's like, but let's just meet to chat for like the next six months.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:54:03] So I just want to check, you know, be able to like be there for you. And that was really meaningful. And so he's a therapist. So like he. So I think in that way I had a spiritual leader who was very. And again, my. I didn't continue to go to the Spanish branch because I don't actually speak Spanish, but the Spanish branch president, I feel like. Yeah. So I feel like my direct leaders. Lubbock is a really unique place in terms of leadership where you have a lot of leaders who are therapists. So they're progressive in ways other Mormon leaders are not.

John Dehlin [02:54:36] Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:54:36] And trained and trained. And so I would say it's a Very, like, it ends up being progressive in maybe unexpected way. But so I felt like in my leadership, I definitely had people who got it right, like, and did not, that could sit with pain.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:54:58] I had a friend that was like, I'm gonna call you every day. Like, and she did. She called me every single day just to, like, say hi. Cause she's like, you've lost a life partner. I'm gonna call you every day. And so that was really meaningful.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:55:12] So I think I did have people. I don't necessarily feel like my family was impatient. I think just overall, every now and then, both. Sometimes there's comments where it's like, when you're over this. Or like, I. I don't know, maybe they don't say it that way. There can be comments or like, oh my gosh, that sounds so hard. Or I could never imagine that there's ways that people distance themselves.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:55:39] Like, little comments like that. And that feels. It can feel. I think that can feel like a little impatient or avoidant maybe. But also, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. There's also, I think a part of me as a therapist was like, I don't need to be offended by that. Like, I don't need you to get it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:56:04] So I think there's also a part of me that just is, like, that's your own immaturity or your own fear of that. But it is my reality. So I don't. I don't know, it just kind of felt like I could. I feel like I, for the most part, could let that go. And I. It didn't really interfere.

John Dehlin [02:56:21] Nice. And then before we go to the second ceiling, whole issue, what did you experience about being a single working mom in Mormon church culture that you think is worth sharing?

Navigating Widowhood in the Mormon Community

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:56:38] Yeah. No. So this prompted actually a research study that I did that I've published on. On LDS women in conflict over their paid employment. And what I noticed is because I was a widow, everybody was supportive of me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:56:57] And so I got a lot of great support from my church leaders, from my community people. So right after. So Isaac died in September. And I had already had some feelings that I wanted to go back to school, but I had a one and a half year old and a three year old. So I was like, when am I gonna do a Ph.D. right? And so I thought, well, I want to go back to school. But I don't know that now is the right time. I don't think we have the money to do it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:57:28] But when he died, I was like, there's no way I can do 40 hours a week of therapy. While grieving, I was like, I do part time right now. I just knew, like, that's a lot of emotional stress. I just didn't feel like I could do that. And my plan had always kind of been to do private practice part time and then do adjunct teaching is what I thought I would do once my kids were in school.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:57:53] So that's how I would kind of work full time later on. And so I thought I should just go get my PhD now and become a professor, and then I'll be on the same schedule as my kids and I can be a single parent and provide for them, and I also won't have to see clients. And that actually did end up being a really good decision.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:58:14] I did feel like I was starting to kind of slip into depression right before I started school. And when I went there and I was with other adults and really intellectually stimulated, I was like, oh, this. This is so good for me. And I think part of it was the year after Isaac died. I was living in the shadow of our life.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:33] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:58:33] I was doing the same job. It was every. It was our. It was our life. But without him.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:39] Yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:58:39] And when I went back to school, it was like I was figuring out what life was going to look like for me as a widow. And so it was more, I think, think embracing the reality and working with the reality versus. Yeah. Kind of living in the shadow of our old life. And so I think I forgot your question.

Pursuing a PhD and Rebuilding Life After Loss

John Dehlin [02:59:05] Is it fair to say that you might not have pursued a PhD if he hadn't have died?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:59:11] I don't think I would have pursued it that soon.

John Dehlin [02:59:13] Isn't that just like. We seek to avoid pain and difficulty? And I'm. I'm sure I would never ask you whether or not, I mean, you would trade. But, I mean, so often we want to avoid difficulty, but so often difficulty creates.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:59:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:59:33] You know, good. Good things can come.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:59:35] Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It is interesting because it was such a good fit. I don't know that it. I can't say that it would have felt that way had he not died. Right. Like, I don't know, but that is a que. That is a good question.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:59:53] It could have been different. I didn't know that the PhD was also, like, a. Paid or funded. It wasn't fully funded, but, like, mostly funded. I think I would have considered going back if had I known it would have been funded, but I didn't. I was never told that. So I think I could have gone Back sooner. It may have just took more effort or it probably would have taken more desire on my part to have more conversations to find out the information I would have needed. Because to me it was financial.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:00:21] Right. Like, how do I financially do that? But I think I, I think we could have. But I think I probably would have done it at some point. It just would have been, you know, a different point.

Margi Dehlin [03:00:30] That's right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:00:31] But yeah, it is, it is a good question. Yeah. But I think with the working thing, so I was gonna have to put my kids in daycare, right. And there was some like, you're gonna have to put them in daycare. And it's like, yeah, how do you think I'm. How do you think I'm gonna.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:00:46] How am I gonna go to school? I can't pay a babysitter every day. I'm literally going to school. I don't make that much money. I mean, I see some clients, but I can't see a lot of clients while I'm going to school. And it was funded, but it's not, it's like 20,000 a year. Right. It's not a full time payment or salary. And so. But people were really excited for me that I was going to do a PhD. I think in a lot of ways that probably was interpreted as like, oh, that's really resilient. That's really inspiring. Like, her husband died and now she's going to do this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:01:17] So I think a lot of people felt happy and excited and supportive. I also like, knew like I was living where my academic community was, right. So like my stake president had been my professor. So I also had a lot of, I would say, like, career support. I was in the community. I was like the first lds.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:01:39] Sorry, lds. The first female LDS therapist in practice there in Lubbock. So I got a lot of referrals. So in that way I think I was well respected in the community. I think there was space in my family on my dad's side of the family. There's actually, actually quite a few doctors and PhDs.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:01:58] So quite educated on my dad's side of the family. So, yeah, I think there's space for education in my family. Everybody has a bachelor's in my family. My mom has a bachelor's. So I think education wise, it didn't feel so far off.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:02:12] I do. I am the only girl to have a master's and a PhD in my family, but I have a cousin that has a PhD, so, like, there are some other women in the family. So I actually felt A lot of support and. But there were those daycare comments, things like that kind of concerns. But that's what led me to do that study because I knew that I was being treated differently.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:02:38] Right. That because I was forced into this, I had people praising me for balancing all this as a single mom, because it wasn't. Because it wasn't my choice. And as I enrolled my kids in daycare, I saw that my kids had more people to love them and that daycare wasn't so scary. And I also saw that I was not a different mom.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:04] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:03:05] I was the same me. I mean, obviously I was grieving and I had more on my plate, but I was like, oh, I. I am the same mom whether I work or I don't, because I only worked like one or two days a week. Like, I was like a stay at home mom in many ways, making lots of home cooked meals and cleaning the house myself. Like, things like that. When I only worked two days a week in private practice, I was like, oh, I'm the same. This literally is not different. People treat it like it's different, but it's not. Because motherhood's a relationship.

Margi Dehlin [03:03:37] Right.

John Dehlin [03:03:37] And so some women become better moms when they're working out.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:03:41] Yes, some women do, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:03:43] Which I think some Mormons can't even imagine that being possible.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:03:47] But they need to ask their children. Yeah, they need to ask their children. Because I think sometimes when you're home a lot, you think of more things to do at home and while you're there, you aren't always present. Right. I think it's a matter of presence. And every person probably has to do have a balance of responsibilities that allows them to be most present in their relationships. And some people will never be present regardless of if they work or they don't.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:14] That's right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:15] So.

John Dehlin [03:04:15] And also some people derive joy and meaning out of a professional life.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:20] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:04:20] And that's important to them.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:22] Or even essential for some.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:24] Yes, yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:04:26] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:27] Okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:28] So, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:30] So excellent. Yeah. It sounds like in some ways you hit the church leader lottery in a positive way.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:37] Yes, very much so.

John Dehlin [03:04:38] You know, in Denton. So go, Go Denton.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:41] No, it wasn't. It was Lubbock.

John Dehlin [03:04:42] Lubbock. Go Lubbock. Mormons.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:45] Mormon leaders. Yay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [03:04:46] Yeah.

Wrap-Up and Where to Find More

John Dehlin [03:04:48] Hi, everyone, this is John. I hope you've enjoyed part one of our epic interview with Rebecca Lucero where she talks about becoming a Mormon widow after having two children and what it was like to have her husband pass away after she had fought so hard to have her eternal marriage. Margi and I really loved this interview and it was such a good interview that it went quite a bit longer than we were planning. And once it hit five, five and a half hours, we decided that it made most sense to split this episode into two parts.

John Dehlin [03:05:25] So obviously, you just listen to part one. We just want to make sure that you return for part two because that's the main reason we did this interview. In part two, we're going to be discussing kind of more of the fallout in Rebecca's life after her Mormon husband passes away. And then we're going to be talking about how she falls in love and finds a second Mormon husband. And then the dilemma that she faces being sealed to her first husband, who passes away, but still being young and wanting to build a new life with her new husband, who she also wants to have children with.

John Dehlin [03:06:01] And then her dilemma of if she builds the rest of her life with her new husband, will she be sealed to her first husband in the afterlife? Can she be sealed to her second husband? What happens when she tries to apply for what's called a ceiling clearance, which would potentially allow her to to be sealed to two men?

John Dehlin [03:06:22] Just like Mormon men by default are able because of, you know, polygamy, Mormon men by default are able to be sealed to multiple women. What happens when a woman in the Mormon faith tries to get the same type of ceiling clearance that men get by default? And then, you know, she peels that all the way up to, you know, the first presidency of the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [03:06:46] And then we'll find out what that decision was and then what the impact was and how that influenced her faith and her husband's faith and the rest of her life. So again, hope you enjoyed today's episode. We want to thank all of our donors that make Mormon Stories possible. We couldn't do this without you, so thank you, donors. Please like and subscribe this channel. This episode, please share it if you want. We love your feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com and please comment. And then finally, if you value this type of content and you want to see it continue and you're not currently a donor to the Open Stories foundation, we would invite you to become a donor super easy.

John Dehlin [03:07:26] You just go to MormonStories.org donate or go to MormonStories.org and click on the donate button at the top of the page. Sign up to become a monthly donor and we'll continue providing this type of content for as long as there's support for for it. But again, thanks for joining us today. And please come right back for part two. I promise you, you won't want to miss Rebecca Lucero's experience trying to get sealed to her second husband and trying to get a ceiling clearance. Thanks, everybody. See you again soon.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 2086

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. I want to let you know you're joining us for part two of a two part series with Rebecca Lucero. This episode is all about what happens when you become a widow in the Mormon Church. As a woman, you are sealed to your first husband and he dies. And then you find a new partner while you're young and have children with your first husband. Then you decide that after grieving the death of your first spouse, you want to get married and build a new life with your second Mormon spouse. What do you do?

John Dehlin [00:00:42] Who are you sealed to in the afterlife? Can you get temple married to a second husband? If you're a woman, what happens to, you know, your eternal sealing to your first husband? Who are your children with your first husband sealed to? And then more importantly, do you build a life with the second husband, whom you're not going to be sealed to in the afterlife? If you have kids with the second husband, who are those kids sealed to in the afterlife? And basically what this episode is about is kind of how eternal Mormon families or eternal Mormon ceilings in the Mormon Temple or marriages can become a nightmare.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] Please go back and watch part one with Rebecca Lucero. If you haven't, I'll give you a brief summary. In part one, we talked about Rebecca growing up in the church, having her family divorce, her parents divorced at a very young age, and then having her double down and decide she's going to do everything to get her eternal marriage and to keep her family intact. And so she goes to byu, isn't able to find a husband there, tries because she's very business minded and career minded, she feels like the Mormon men at BYU aren't as interested in her. She ends up dating a few gay men and she wonders why only gay Mormon men are attracted to her.

John Dehlin [00:02:02] Long story short, she ends up finding an eternal companion when she's in graduate school in Texas. She marries him, they have two kids together, and then he tragically dies in a car crash. And so we left last episode with her as a widow contemplating graduate school, but also realizing that she's young and she probably wants to find a new husband, a new Mormon husband. And then the questions are going to arise. You know, a Mormon man can just get sealed to multiple women. So if his first wife dies, like President Dallin H. Oaks, like former President Russell M. Nelson, they just get sealed to their second spouse automatically.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] They don't need to get permission. And in the afterlife, they're sealed to two Women for eternity in, you know what I think we all agree is a polygamous celestial marriage. Well, in Mormonism, it's not that simple for a woman. If a woman was sealed to her first husband and he dies, it's not just as simple as getting sealed to her second husband. And you'll find out what happens today.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] What you're going to learn is that Rebecca doesn't want to have to choose between her dead first Mormon husband and her living second Mormon husband in the afterlife. So she just wants a ceiling clearance, which would just allow them to kind of defer a final decision on who she gets sealed to in the afterlife. But Mormon women, unlike Mormon men, don't just get to get sealed to a second spouse. They have to apply ultimately to the LDS Church first presidency to get a ceiling clearance. So today's episode is going to be all about Rebecca finding her new love, wanting to get married, sealed to him in the Mormon Temple, and then applying for what's called a ceiling clearance.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] And what it's going to shed light on is the disparity of treatment between Mormon men and Mormon women, which ultimately is a legacy of Joseph Smith's polygamy and what's written in Doctrine and covenants section 132, the new and everlasting covenant. So thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories today. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. Please like and subscribe. Please share this with other people. Please give us your feedback. And without any further ado, here is part two of our interview with Rebecca Lucero. Thanks, everyone. Okay, should we get to the. To the ceiling thing?

Meeting Her Second Husband and the Sealing Question

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:34] Yes, let's get to the ceiling thing. So, um, so I. When I went back for my PhD, I met my husband, and he had done his master's at Utah State University and was doing a PhD at Tech. And I actually met him during interview, but, like, obviously I had.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:04:54] That was only probably, I don't know, five. Five months after Isaac had passed away. And so he noticed me at the interview. I. I knew who he was, but I didn't interact with him very much. And my impression of him wasn't very great. I thought, like, this guy seems kind of coc. But my husband noticed me because I was a tech master student coming back for an interview with PhD, so people would ask me questions because I'd been there for my master's. And so his recollection was like, he was like, oh, this girl's kind of cool. And then when we actually started classes and he was there, I was like, who was that guy?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:05:28] Because he was like. To me, I noticed him as being physically attractive when I started school. I did not notice him as that when we had interviewed. I just had been like, who's this guy? He's kind of like cocky and I don't know about him. He was very serious.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:05:42] And he later shares that he had been kind of his fun loving self at a different interview and then didn't get an offer. And so then he put on his serious, like, I'm a great student face and that like. So my small interaction was not notable. But when we. I saw him in class, I was like, who is this guy? Like, I don't remember this guy being this good looking. And he was like tan and any. He seemed very friendly, which he had not seen that before. I was like, this is like a different guy anyway. But I had bought a, like a meal pass because I was like, I gotta simplify my life as a widow.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:06:19] So I was like, I'm gonna eat on campus and buy this pass. And he would be. He's kind of like the person that will like extend, like, let's all go to lunch. And so he would invite our whole cohort out to go to lunch. And I could go because I was already planning to eat on campus. And over time, sometimes people would join us, but it was always us and sometimes it was only us. And so we became fast friends. And then it was pretty apparent that like, there was a little bit more there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:06:46] But I think he didn't really know what to do because I'm a grieving widow and he knows this about me, but he doesn't know, like, he doesn't know where I would be on this. He's also six years younger than me, which is quite a bit younger than me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:07:03] And while I could tell that, like we had a connection, I didn't know what that would mean. And we were also going to school together. But anyway, somehow we had like a bet. He lost the bet. He was supposed to buy me ice cream. We both are avid ice cream lovers and we're also both Mormon. We're both Mormon?

Guest [00:07:22] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:07:23] And that makes us even. We're like triple Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:07:26] Cause we love ice cream. And he. But when he. So he owed me ice cream for something. And so when he came to pick me up, he actually hadn't eaten and I hadn't eaten. And then we like, it kind of ended up feeling like a date. And then from there, I don't know, somehow we ended up like sharing with one another that we were interested in, like, what did we think about dating? And we decided to try it, which was a big risk, going to school together. But I also think that, like, when someone dies and you lose someone in such a profound way, there's also this, like, this life is all you got, you know?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:06] And so it feels like, take a chance for something to be good because it may not be here for very long. So true. And so. And so we dated and we. Yeah, we really liked each other and really enjoyed one another and really connected.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:27] And. And then at some point, right. I remember, like, feeling like I need to be. I need to tell him what I know about this widow stuff, you know? And so I told him. He's like, okay. You know what I mean? I don't know. But then as we decided or got closer to, like, actually considering marriage. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:08:45] Like, more sure about how we felt about each other and more sure that, like, he felt okay about marrying someone who had children. Right. I mean, that's a lot for him to sign on for, just dressed in life. He's never been married, doesn't have children of his own.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:09:02] And so I was like. So there's probably some weird stuff with the sealing stuff. I don't know. Like, we can't get sealed is my understanding.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] So can we back up really quick? Let's just for never Mormons, which is over half our audience. Let's slow this down, if it's okay. Really quick. So the Mormon Church would, you know, send out missionaries to the world, saying, the best feature of Mormonism is that if you get married as Mormons in a Mormon temple with the right priesthood authority, you and your spouse will be sealed forever and live in heaven forever and become God someday as a Mormon married couple. And your kids will be sealed to you if they're righteous, so that all of you won't be separated in heaven, you'll get to be together. And we all process it as, like, the biggest feature of Mormonism is eternal families.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:09:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:58] And it's taken me forever, and I'm still unraveling the fact that there are some real dark sides to what seems to be the best thing about Mormonism. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:10:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:09] And so immediately, hopefully, people are understanding that if your current husband, you know, he's dating you, and he's never been sealed to anyone but you, your late husband, you're sealed to him. So in heaven, you are going to be with your first husband and the children you had together. So if he chooses to marry you, number one, he can't marry you because you're a woman and you're already sealed to be eternally with somebody else. So he's going to choose to spend his entire mortal life married to a woman that he won't be with in the afterlife. And so, like, living with that dissonance of, like, I'm supposed to be with my eternal companion.

Eternal Companion Doctrine and Widowhood

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Everything you hear in a Mormon sacrament meeting and Sunday school lesson and priesthood lesson is all about having an eternal companion and being with them forever and becoming God someday. Whoa, what does that mean for me? That I'm gonna spend my life with this woman, and then when we die, she's gonna go be with Isaac.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] And I'm gonna have to, what, Find somebody else. So, like, right there. I don't even know. I haven't lived it. But, like, does that sound like something that might have gone through your current husband's mind?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:25] Yes. Yeah. Well, and I think the thought probably is sometimes. Okay, you can be sealed after you both die. So a woman can be sealed to multiple people after she's dead, but she does have to choose. So I can be sealed to Adam after we're both dead, our children can seal us to one another. And then when we get to the afterlife altogether, I will go, eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Guest [00:11:50] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:51] But I will choose between Adam and Isaac. And Adam just has to have the confidence that because we've spent more time, that I would obviously choose him.

Guest [00:11:58] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:11:58] I think that's what men would think. Right. But then that also.

John Dehlin [00:12:02] So he's thinking, okay, maybe I'll marry her and I'll just be the better husband that Isaac was so that in the afterlife, she'll choose me. And. But then that sucks for Isaac that he had his eternal companion, but he lost her because another guy beat him out. And then Isaac's gonna have to go find somebody else, a new wife. And what happens to your kids? Because you and Isaac have a couple biological kids together. And if it's all about being together with your nuclear family, who gets the custody of the children in the celestial kingdom? Is it Isaac with some future wife he's able to find, which he may not love as much as you?

John Dehlin [00:12:41] Or will you get the custody and your kids will be eternally raised by someone who's not their dad? And Isaac's out of the picture. Like, these are all the complications where the beauty can become either confusing in the best case or a nightmare in the worst case, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:12:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:12:57] It became really apparent really fast that if you're the right kind of family, the ceiling is deeply meaningful and adds meaning to Your family. And if there's death, divorce, any sort of anomaly totally unravels and the meaning is gone. And so.

John Dehlin [00:13:18] And tragic. Not just gone, but like, tragic.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:21] Yes, tragic.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:22] And so I don't. I actually can't recall exactly. I mean, I think both Adam and I were both like, that's like. I think we both knew that all of it was like, doesn't make sense, right? Like, you're telling me God works this way? Like, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. So I think in a lot of ways Adam and I were just like, okay, it's fine, we'll get sealed afterwards and we'll worry about that in the afterlife, right? Like, that's a problem for future me, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:13:50] Because it doesn't even sound real, you know, like, it's like, okay, you guys are making this up as you go along. But I think. But yes, there is the real. For people in Adam's position, they are often told to dump the widow.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:14:08] And this, like, for me is so confusing because I grew up with Thomas S. Monson, loving widows. You read in the Bible all the things that they do for the widows. And then you have a policy that really sets up widows to only be married to non members. Because what active Mormon man would want to marry a widow? He would have to be a widower himself, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:14:38] And so again, that's slim pickings. It's unlikely. And that, that does happen where widows and widowers meet and they marry. But really you, you can't. A widow is very undesirable, which doesn't make sense because in the Bible you see men who have never been married marrying the widow of their brother, right? So it doesn't even fit, fit with other scriptural accounts we have.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:15:03] And I think the bigger part of the story is not just like that, like while we're dating, we're having to navigate this, but that we felt really sure about our marriage, right? Like, we felt really sure that we were the right people for one another. So that's also. I think this interesting thing about Mormonism is in a lot of ways you practice whether you call it the spirit or something, maybe it's your intuition. However you wanna think about it, you practice understanding how you know something, how you make decisions, right? So whether you still ascribe to it's the spirit or not, there is, I would say a lot of Mormons do practice this, like personal revelation, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:15:48] And so there's this, there can be this personal certainty of like, this is, this is a. This is something Special. Right. This is something really special. This relationship we have, this connection we have. This is not typical. Right. Like, I think Adam and I knew that. Like, that are. Yeah. I mean, like, people always say, like, how did you find somebody to marry in Lubbock twice? Like, you found two men, good men in Lubbock.

John Dehlin [00:16:14] Mormon men.

Guest [00:16:14] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:14] Mormon men.

Guest [00:16:15] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:15] Like, what are the odds? Yeah, what are the odds? And literally, both of them, like, have been my best friend. Right. Like, I don't feel like. Yeah. I'm just. You know, sometimes people talk about marriage, and they're like, oh, does every marriage get this way? I'm like, I could talk to my husband forever and never be bored. Like, we work together, and I'm never bored. Right. Like, I never. Not that we. Like, it's not like it's all perfect, but, like, I deeply love, admire, and respect this person.

Sealing Cancellation Rules and Their Inequity

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:16:46] So I. I don't know. Like. So, again, like, when you find something like that, rules seem really ridiculous, right? To say, like, oh, I'm gonna listen to those rules. Over. Over. Like, I just struck gold. Like, I'm not gonna throw away the gold because you told me it's not gonna fit in the backpack. I know it's gonna fit in the backpack. You know, like, so there's just things like that that don't make sense. But we did. I mean, but we were curious, like, what are our options? So we did meet with leaders about it, and a lot of times we got a different answer every time.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:17:25] A different answer every single time. So a lot of times. I don't know. I've never thought about this before. I'm gonna have to look at that. Temple recorders, stake presidents, bishops. Who else? We ended up interviewing at BYU for academic positions. So we got a meet with 70s and we both asked about it at 70s. So, I mean, it doesn't.

John Dehlin [00:17:52] What'd they say?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:17:54] Well, they kind. Mine, I think, reiterated the policy and was like, yeah, that is the policy.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] Well, explain. So explain the policy, because there's a gender discrepancy. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:05] So if you're a man and your wife dies, you can get what's called a ceiling clearance. Ceiling clearance is permission to marry another person, to get sealed to another person,

John Dehlin [00:18:16] for a man to consider another woman, normally. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] And second wife.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:20] Yeah. And men can do this as divorced as well. So I can get a sealing clearance to get married to another woman. I can get sealed to my new wife if I've divorced my old one, and I can still stay sealed to my old one.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:34] Right. Sealing cancellation Actually does cancel the ceiling. So some people may want to cancel their ceiling if there's been abuse in the marriage and they want to remarry and they only want to be seal to one person or something.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:18:46] And so actually, if you want to get. So sometimes people in my position will cancel their sealing with their first partner. What we found when we went to go ask everybody questions is that there's a lot of different moving parts with this meaning.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:19:06] They'll say like, well, you could cancel your sealing with Isaac. Which when that was first proposed to me, I think that for me was like one of the biggest points of deconstruction for me. Because I was like, you just admitted that the ceiling is bullshit when you are telling me to cancel

Guest [00:19:30] what I

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:19:31] worked for, what I saved myself for, right? Who you love, who I love. Father of my children, Father of my children. I worked, I did everything to have a forever family. And you're telling me I can end it like that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:19:49] So to me, what that did is it showed me. It exposed to me that marriage was not made holy by the ceiling. It was made holy by us. Our sacrifices, our devotion. The temple didn't do it. We did it. And so for me, I was not going to let them tell me to cancel it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:20:11] Right? I didn't do all that to throw it away. And that can't be the answer to just throw it away. And on some level I can be like, well, I don't buy into it anymore, so why not just cancel it? But it almost feels like the principle of the thing of like you've just admitted it doesn't mean anything that I can just throw it away. And I will not divorce a dead man.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:20:35] That's fucked up. I will not divorce a dead man who you love, who I love, who's the father of my children. And I will not marry someone who asks me to divorce a dead man because I would not do it to him either.

John Dehlin [00:20:47] And please forgive me, I want to put a fine point on it just because I want to make sure everyone gets this. Tell me if I'm wrong. Historically, if you're a Mormon man, whether your first wife dies and you want to remarry a second wife who is not sealed to somebody, or if you just divorce your first wife, have an affair, but then want to marry a second wife or even a third or a fourth or a fifth wife, you pretty much just get sealed to the next wife. Now, sometimes you have to fill out some paperwork, you know, but generally speaking, historically, a Mormon man can get sealed to as many new wives as he wants to, as situations allow.

John Dehlin [00:21:34] And you will probably note in your story that it's particularly poignant because our previous Mormon prophet, Russell M. Nelson, after his first wife died, he famously got sealed to a second wife, which for people who don't understand why that's significant, that means that our former prophet, Russell Nelson, believed that he would be sealed to two women in eternity. Which means that Mormons are still polygamists. They still believe in eternal polygamy because Russell Nelson, our former prophet, was sealed to two women for eternity. So we're polygamists still in heaven, even if we've paused the practice here on earth. And it gets better or worse because our current prophet, Dallin H.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] Oaks, also lost his first wife, and so he's sealed to a second wife for eternity. So we've had two consecutive Mormon prophets in the 2000 and 20s who are celestial polygamists. So there's that and there's the discrepancy of gender discrepancy. But it's not that way for women. So can you explain how it's different for women?

Men Sealed to Multiple Women While Living

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:22:46] Well, so I think it's also important to note that not only can a man be sealed to multiple women while he's living, so he gets to go get married and in the temple, to each of these women, whether he divorces them or they die. Right. He can have that ordinance done for him and his wives and he never has to choose in the next life as where a woman can only be married once in the temple.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:23:15] She cannot even be married for time, not even for right now. She cannot be married for this life. The only people, my understanding is that can be married for just like just time, just till death, is to a widower and a widow, where they don't wanna be sealed to one another, they both already have sealings that they can get married for time in the temple, but you can't get married for time. So you can get married one time in the temple. You got one shot. So don't marry someone who's gonna die. I guess know that in advance.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:23:45] And then, and then if you do wanna get sealed posthumously, is that right? Posthumously, then you, I think your descendants have to be the ones to do it. And then you have to choose. So either way, you get one husband in the afterlife, which again, I don't know that. Like, that's not the problem. The problem is the equity. And that like in this culture, a temple marriage is deeply meaningful and you can be worthy to go to the temple. And because your husband Died, a tragedy happened to you, you are now put in like a basket of undesirables. And I think it's very important to understand that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:24:35] I mean, as I've sorted through this and thought a lot about this, this, it is not the doctrine. Because women can be sealed posthumously, which means women can be sealed to more than one man. And if we gotta choose an afterlife, fine, whatever. But there's no reason why Adam and I shouldn't be able to be sealed while we're living. And I can still choose. So that policy is stricter than it needs to be, even with the doctrine as it stands today. So that part is pretty messed up. But what it does do. So sometimes I think to understand the function of something or the reason behind something, you need to know, I guess, how it actually functions.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:25:13] Like what is actual product. And what this does is, is it does drive Mormon men to unsealed women. And so what that means is that they do want you to marry someone who's like a virgin or who hasn't been sealed. And so it does seem to be more of this. Like, we don't want to take care of the widows. No, we don't. We want you to have fresh meat.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] You want to be married. You want to spend your life with someone you're going to be with in the afterlife. Yes. So you're gonna avoid the widows as a marital option so that whoever you spend your life with, you'll have them in the afterlife.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:25:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:55] So that just makes it worse for widows. It's an anti widow policy.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:25:59] It is. It's very anti widow. And I think people are not aware of it. And so you do. Like, I think when you're in this position, you're like, do they know? Do they know? Because how would you know until this happens to you? Again, my leaders didn't know. So they're interfacing with more people than I am in terms of these decisions about Seal. Who knows? So then you think maybe they don't know how this harms widows. Right. Cause I listen to Thomas S. Monson talk about the widows for years of my life. So. Right. You wonder, do they know? Cause my local leaders don't really know. Right. In the 70s, like when my husband talked to the 70, he seemed surprised.

John Dehlin [00:26:40] In the 70s, like a general authority, not an apostle.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:26:43] Not the top, but.

John Dehlin [00:26:43] Yeah, but like under the apostles. And they didn't seem to know.

Guest [00:26:47] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:26:47] And they seemed really puzzled. And my husband had kind of. I don't know how they got on the topic of like gay marriage. But my husband had kind of talked about that. He's like, there's no plan of salvation for people who are gay there. And, like, even me and my wife, we're hetero, and we're both worthy, and there's no plan for us either. And so the guy was kind of stumped, to be honest. Like, again, I think that when you have that perfect nuclear family, this is deeply meaningful for you. You cannot see. A lot of times, I mean, in some ways, that's kind of sad.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:19] Because they really can't see outside of their experience. They really can't. And it takes quite a bit of, like, you know, look at it this way, look at it that way. Right. A lot of mental energy on the other person to say, like, do you see how this doesn't make sense? But you can't see it because your family is so special. Cause they're together forever. But you. It's really hard for them to put their feet in the shoes of someone else. Cause they're like, well, I'm not gay, so I don't know what that's like. I don't know what that's like to have a marriage that can't be in the temple.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:27:48] They, like, cannot go there in their minds. And so I think a scenario like me and Adams in some ways is a little bit more relatable to people. Because everybody has usually at some point, had a death. And we're. In a lot of ways. I mean. Right. We're a hetero couple. So then they can see, what if my wife died? What if this. They can relate more to it. And so I think it stumps people a little bit more.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:17] I've never had a person say to me, it's equitable. You're wrong. No one's ever said that. Everybody does see that. It's an unjust policy.

John Dehlin [00:28:28] This is the problem.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:29] Yeah, everybody sees that. Yeah. It doesn't take much to see it. So, yeah. So we asked a bunch of different people, got a bunch of different answers. I think the thing that was most troubling was they.

John Dehlin [00:28:44] Some said, just divorce your dead husband.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] So that's where, you know. So you didn't love that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:28:52] So I think somebody said. I think it might have been Adam's bishop that said, I think maybe she could cancel that. Maybe she could just cancel that. Like a haircut reservation or something. But I can't remember if it was him, but it was somebody. So somebody said, I think she can cancel it. But then I talked to somebody else, and they go, oh, no. They're not like, I was like, I don't want to do that. But I've been told that that's what we would need to do if we wanted to get married in the temple. And somebody goes, no, they won't let you do that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:29:26] And they said the reason they probably won't let you do that is what they don't want is for me to cancel my ceiling with my husband and my right. My two children are under that ceiling. Adam backs out, Adam dies. Something happens to Adam before we actually get married, and then now I'm not sealed.

John Dehlin [00:29:46] Or the marriage just doesn't work out.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:29:47] Yeah, or the marriage doesn't work out. So what they did say is you would probably have to marry Adam outside the temple. And then after some period of time of the marriage working, then you could ask to cancel the sealing and they'd let you. And they'd let you get sealed to Adam. So that's fun. But if we didn't get sealed in time, our daughter would be born under the ceiling with Isaac. And our daughter, I guess under Mormon lore or doctrine, is sealed to Isaac, our third child.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] I mean. Yeah. So if the widow and the never married get married, have a biological kid, but the widow is going to be forever with her dead husband and their kids, then if there's a biological kid, this begs the question of which parent does the biological kid go to? And it's been your understanding in mine as well.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:30:45] I mean, I'm sorry, it's Isaac.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] That the biological kid, for whatever reason goes with the husband in that scenario. So your kid will not have their mom in the eternities in this scenario.

Guest [00:30:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:58] So I guess for whatever reason goes to the husband.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:00] Yeah. If you play it out. If you play it out, it could go one of two ways. In the eternities, I choose Isaac and Isaac and our two oldest and our Adam and Mies child are with me and Isaac, the three kids of me and Isaac and the eternities. Or I choose Adam and the three kids are sealed to Isaac and Worth Isaac.

Guest [00:31:22] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:31:22] I mean, that's how. I mean again, once you play it out again. But nobody plays this out because why would you when it's deeply meaningful for your family to be together forever? You don't need to do like, who would, like, sort through this? You wouldn't. You wouldn't. And also, it took quite a bit of interviews, Right. With different leaders to find any of these answers. But. But so obviously, clearly given those options, we're like, we're gonna get married. And we'll just get sealed afterwards because we know what our marriage means to us and we don't need to worry about that.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] Yeah. And just. Cause I wanna play out a couple more scenarios before we actually get back to your story. There's the scenario where the Mormon woman gets married. Well, first of all, we should say that all of this is happening because Joseph Smith was a polygamist. And in Doctrine and covenants section 132, which is still Mormon scripture, a man, a Mormon man is allowed to have multiple women in the afterlife. And those are eternal marriages. And that's called the new and everlasting covenant. But there's nothing about women having multiple men. And so, like, all of this is a byproduct of Joseph Smith's polygamy that weirdly, in 2025, the church no longer practices as a lived practice, but still believes in it as an eternal doctrine. So there's that. We have to throw that out there. That's why all this mess is.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:32:48] Oh, I'm gonna talk more about that a little later in your story.

John Dehlin [00:32:51] Okay. And then the other thing I just wanna say is, and you can read a book called the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, or you can listen to an interview I did with Carolyn Pearson about her book, the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. There's another entire nightmare scenario where a Mormon woman marries a man, but she lives, terrified that she might die. And then her husband, under full church permission, will marry a second wife that he will be sealed to, and then without her consent, she'll be an eternal polygamous spouse. And this may sound all like, superstitious and ethereal and not real, but the reports are, many a Mormon woman, young woman, middle aged woman, has been terrorized by the fear that they'll, without consent, become a polygamous, eternal, polygamous spouse to one husband with multiple wives. Okay, Did I get those? Is that all real in your experience?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:52] Yeah, yeah. And I'll go into a little more depth on some of that and how that relates to my story.

John Dehlin [00:33:57] Okay. So I just. Yeah, I just wanted to get that out there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:33:59] But yeah, no, that's good background. So we got married, had a beautiful wedding. My uncle married us. He's a Stake President. And it was, honestly, it was so. It was so beautiful to be married by someone who knows me. It was so beautiful. And it was so nice to have everyone there. Like, again, these things get deconstructed. Like, also, like Mormon Church, not a good idea. Because, like, now people are getting married outside of the Church. And you can see that this was in some ways a more special ceremony than some of the sealers.

Guest [00:34:31] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:34:32] Give. Right. So, like, maybe you don't want that people to understand that the marriage could be just as special. Not in the temple or when it's outside of the temple or more special. Yeah. Or even more so. Again, a lot of recognition that like the value of something is not.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:34:53] Is not defined by the church. Right. Or the temple or whatnot. So we got married and just proceeded on and we were still going to church and everything. And we just kind of. I think it bothered me, but I also. You right. There was also just this, like, I know that the policy doesn't align with the doctrine, so some point this is gonna change. Kind of like they did that policy against the polygamous kids and what is it? Polygamous parents and gay parents, how kids couldn't get baptized and they repealed it a few years later. Like, I know that, like, sometimes these things fade away with time.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:35:32] Right. The new garments. Right. Sometimes these are archaic or policies that don't align with doctrine. And I do think doctrine changes. I know that sometimes argument people have. But a lot of times some of these things do get called out and they do eventually change.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:35:48] And so I kind of just felt like this will probably change at some point and I'm not gonna worry about it. But I'm definitely not gonna mold myself or make my decisions based on their policy that I know isn't right. Like that that would be betraying myself to fit their rules. And also it felt like there wasn't really an answer. Like they said I could do it, but they said I couldn't. And I was just like, no. I mean, that's how. Like, why would you do anything when they're so wishy washy? It doesn't make any sense.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:36:17] So we proceeded. We were asked to give a talk. I can't even remember what the talk was about. Faith maybe. And so we shared our story. We shared our story about how we were not sealed and how we have faith anyway. Right. That was kind of the gist of our sacrament talks. And a lot of people like the talks. And afterwards the bishop asked to meet with me at some point and he said, hey, I noticed that you guys talked about this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:36:54] I guess Adam maybe had talked a little bit more about like his faith for doing it and what that meant for him. Right. Like that he didn't know if he was gonna be chosen and how he just proceeded with faith anyway. And so. So he kind of. Which I really appreciate this. Bishop is a therapist by profession. I get all these great therapist bishops. But he did bring me in, and it felt like he wanted to check with me first. Cause I was like, why don't you meet with the both of us? But it felt like he wanted to make sure me as a woman, I wasn't gonna, like, feel pressure from Adam to cancel the ceiling, but that I was going to.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:27] That if he was gonna ask me about this, that, like, he could have me there saying what I really want, which I really did appreciate from this bishop.

John Dehlin [00:37:34] And.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:34] But I did say, like, no, we feel the same way. And I said, but I don't want a cancellation. I want a clearance. And he's like. I said, I'm not divorcing Isaac. I want a clearance. And he's like, oh. He's like, yeah.

Seeking Permission to Be Sealed to Two Men

John Dehlin [00:37:44] In other words, you want to be sealed to two men?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:37:46] Yes, I want to be sealed to two men, not one. And if I have to choose, whatever, that's fine. But I want clearance to be sealed to Adam in this life. I don't want to have to wait to be dead. But also, I was not pursuing this in any way. I was just living my life. Right. Existing. And he was like, okay, well, let me find out what that would look like. Let me talk to the stake president. If this is something you want, maybe we could help you apply for a ceiling clearance. And I said, okay, right. Well, he came back. He said the stake president was on board, and this my bishop.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:38:25] He. One of his uncles is a 70. One of his uncles was like, the MTC president. This is a very prominent family where I live, where they have a lot of prominent positions in the church, both in that area and also. Right. They're in the 70s. President of the MTC. And so I think he had even, like, maybe spoken with some of his relatives, and they were like, yeah, you'll have to apply for a clearance. Like, this is what it would be. I don't think they had any sort of insight. I mean, but maybe they didn't say, no, don't do that. So he never got any, to my knowledge.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:38:58] And he's like, red lights. So I met with the sick president. He also checked with me, like, is this what you want? Okay. And so they basically had me and Adam write letters and that they would write letters of support when they went into the online system. There is no way for a woman to apply in the online system for ceiling clearance. You can only apply for ceiling cancellation.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:39:20] So we had to go the paper route, which Is fine. But that was really interesting too, right? Because here I have local leaders saying, we're gonna go paper. We're gonna support you. Like, they didn't say, like, oh, this means we can't do this, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:39:35] They are supporting us. My bishop approached me, right? Like, so this is insane, right? To me, in the Mormon mind, right? Like, if you understand the hierarchy and the patriarchy in the Mormon Church, you know that you feedback does not go up, right? It comes down, right? And so to me, and again, I don't. Like, there is part of me that's like, I don't know, is this kind of some sort of, like, ego?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:05] But in that moment in time when my bishop approached me, like, I had proceeded in faith with what I knew to be true, which was that I should marry Adam. And I was like, I'll worry about the rest later, right? And then my bishop's approaching me saying, we're gonna help you do this for me. This was like, oh, my gosh.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:26] It's like, esther, am I meant for this time and place? Right? And maybe there's a level of, like, ego in that. But it felt like, I don't know, maybe I'm a therapist. Adam and I have a unique story.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:40:42] We have a bishop that'll support us. I'm a professor. I guess in that moment, I was like, maybe I am meant for this, that maybe I could write a letter that would be received at this time to change things for widows. So again, that may sound, like, fantastical, but in the moment, it wasn't me pushing it. It was coming to me. And so for me, like, with kind of that, the ideas of revelation and inspiration, it felt like the puzzle pieces were coming together.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:17] And I really thought that, like, maybe I was gonna be part of some sort of change. Now, I did realize that they decide these things on a case by case basis. And with that, I did. Adam and I talked about this, like, do we just talk about our story and get special permission? And it was hard to find out there. It's hard to find out how often people in my position are sealed. There are sometimes stories that, like, children of authorities can get this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:49] And some people are saying, no, it never happens for anybody. And then other people say no. If you have connections, maybe you could get sealed in this Life.

John Dehlin [00:41:57] And that's 100% true.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:41:58] Okay? It is, okay. I don't know anybody that happens to be.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] That's 100% true. That if you know the right people, if your dad is wealthy enough or a family member connected, you can get all sorts. It's their rules. They can do whatever they want and they do well. Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:13] Cause they make the approval.

Guest [00:42:14] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:15] And that's what made me wonder, too, is that he has relatives that are high up. And the fact that he didn't get a stop sign and he decided to push it through, that made me wonder if there. That it was possible. Right. Cause he didn't get a no. No.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:42:31] So I. But I felt really strongly that while I do think me and my husband's relationship is special, I imagine every couple feels that way. That, like, I mean, maybe not every couple, but a lot of couples probably feel like we were led together and that something's very special about our marriage and that our marriage is deserving to be in the temple just as much as anybody else's. And so I was like, I can't ask for my marriage to be in the temple without saying this. I'm not unique. I'm not the only widow in this position. And this causes immense pain to widows. There are widows who are not marrying the loves of their life because of this rule.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:43:16] And even when I was. When Adam and I were dating, I even had somebody from the widower group call me up and say, I just really. I think I wanna warn you. You just need to know that he will probably leave you. Which felt really bad.

Guest [00:43:34] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:43:35] But he was like, I've seen this happen with so many people in this group. And he was a remarried widower, and, like, he was local to our Texas group. We had, like, met up for lunch one time or something. But he was like, I'm really worried that, like this.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] Why does that happen?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:43:51] Because people in Adam's position, my husband's position, their bishops and their families will say, don't marry someone you don't know.

John Dehlin [00:43:57] So just don't even marry him.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:43:58] Don't marry. So a lot of the men back out. So widows in my position, the men will be like, yeah, we'll be faithful. We'll get sealed afterwards. And then they usually get convinced to back out. Honestly, I think that would have. Could have happened to us. But because we were in Lubbock and I was so well respected in my community there, I think my husband got different counsel than you would get in a place like Utah. I really highly doubt that your average Mormon woman in Utah would have. That the leaders would have been as optimistic for Adam. They would have told him, you could find someone else. They just would have.

Writing to the First Presidency

John Dehlin [00:44:36] So you're trying to decide the letter that you're writing?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:40] The letter, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Okay. To General authorities. Is that right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:42] Yeah. So in the letter, and I did bring it.

John Dehlin [00:44:44] So you have to write a letter to justify your application, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:47] Yeah, Basic.

Guest [00:44:48] Well, yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:48] You basically have to say why you think you should get a clearance.

Guest [00:44:51] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:44:52] Or, I mean, you have to do this for cancellation, too. Like if you were abused in your marriage. I mean, so anytime the First Presidency is reviewing the cancellation or clearance of a ceiling, they. You have to give some sort of context. So I did. I don't want to read all of it, but I did bring the letter because I did think it's important to read at least some of it because I kind of share our story, but I think it shares in a fairly succinct way that how we. I guess how. I also wanted to advocate for other widowers. And I think the reason I feel strongly about sharing this has to do with the fact that, like, I'm actually reading a book right now called When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows. And I think that part of me reading this is because as a widow.

Guest [00:45:47] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:45:48] One of the big things in my mind was, does the First Presidency know? Do they know the pain of widows? Do they know how this policy harms people who have already had something really horrific happen to them? And also, like children. Right. That good men are disincentivized from marrying women they love and taking care of children who have lost a father. Right. Like, that is insane to me. But I want people to know that they've been put on notice. They know, and I'm gonna tell you how they responded. Okay. So I don't need to necessarily go over our whole story again, but I will kind of talk about.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:31] So in my letter, I first kind of share our story of how we meet and kind of outline that. And then I talked a little bit. I already talked about this here, about how we went to different leaders and got different answers and how that was really confusing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:46:46] And then I'll kind of pick up on the second half of the letter. I said all of these things added another layer of grief to the loss I had previously experienced. As I heard priesthood leaders not know or understand policy, and as I heard priesthood leaders suggest that it would be okay to cancel my sealing with Isaac, I knew that something was not right. I learned more about the policies and discovered that women can be sealed to more than one man. But this occurs only post mortem. When I married Isaac, I intended to be with him and only him for eternity. However, events in my life have confirmed to me that I am not the only author to my life My heavenly parents have guided and directed my life in distinct ways that are undeniable.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:47:23] It is now that I find myself at a crossroads with church policy and the life that God has designed for me. I highly value marriage, I highly value my covenants, and I would never want to cancel any covenant that I have made with God. I recognize that church teachings currently propose that a woman will choose between her husbands. I have a hard time understanding this teaching as there is little written or revealed on the subject. It is also difficult to understand considering my personal experience with love and especially the love of our heavenly parents. Eternal love does not divide. It does not choose one over another.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:47:54] If there is anything that death has taught me, it is that love multiplies. It has been painful to hear leaders or friends insinuate which husband I might choose to remain with in the next life. People often see these issues in a linear fashion. However, this contrasts with my personal relationship with God that has taught me that his ways are higher than my ways and that there is no end to his glory, blessings, and love. While I don't presume to know how events will transpire in the next life, the present policy lacks a doctrinal explanation for why I cannot be sealed to my current spouse in this life and choose which husband will be remain with me for eternity after this life when I am in the presence of my makers and will have greater understanding to make an eternal decision.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:48:30] I want to remain sealed to my first husband, Isaac Lucero, but I also wish to be sealed to my current husband. Adam and I are experiencing our own by are expecting our own biological child who we would like to be sealed to us. So that's another factor too. I forgot to mention is I am also pregnant at this time. Yeah, I realize that this letter is specifically to address my request of a sealing clearance and that these things are decided on a case by case basis. Nevertheless, I implore that you consider the plight of the widow. The pain of this situation is not unique to me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:49:01] Frankly, it is uncomfortable for me to consider that I would be granted a sealing clearance that others might not have the same opportunity. I believe there is a scriptural mandate to take care of the widows. In the Old Testament, families took great care for widows. In fact, when a man died, the nearest of kin would marry or assume care for the widow. What happens currently among LDS populations is quite different. When widows date, they are often asked about their sealing status. Church leaders and family members encourage men to break up with widows. This is due to the fact that the current policy implicates widows as a damning obstacle to exaltation unless the widow cancels her previous sealing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:49:37] This dishonors the righteous choice of the widow and faithful first husband who chose to be married in the temple. It also discourages righteous men who would otherwise want to care for and love a widow and her children. Extant research supports the church's teachings concerning the importance of having a father in the home. Yet the current policy limits a widow's ability to marry a righteous church member. This is surely not how God would have us care for the vulnerable among us.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:50:05] I feel blessed that my husband is a man of faith and that we acted according to personal revelation. While each person is able to exercise this same faith, members of the church seriously consider the counsel of their leaders who often interpret the current policy to mean that widows are not viable companions for never married women. My leaders were encouraging and supportive of my marriage, but I sometimes wonder how they might have responded if I had not been well respected in my warden stake. The story of my husband's death and how I met my current husband is often viewed as an inspirational story because of the serendipitous nature of the details.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:50:36] I wonder, what if I had met him in an average way? Would people still see the divine, the divine design of our marriage? I know that each widow, every woman, every man has divine worth. I hope that you will consider how this policy can better reflect both the doctrine of eternal marriage and the doctrine of the worth of a soul. It is my hope that you will prayerfully consider not only my situation, but also the current policy and how this negatively impacts widows and those in their lives. I can't tell you how much my marriage has blessed my life and my children. I mourn for others in my situation who were counseled to make a different choice based on a policy.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:51:14] While I believe our heavenly parents will provide for them, I believe there is more we can do to recognize their struggle and improve their station in the church.

John Dehlin [00:51:23] Beautiful. Yeah, totally beautiful. And I'm dying to know what happened.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:51:29] Yeah, yeah, sorry. I mean, I think I get emotional because I.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] Don't apologize, please.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:51:34] Just at those moments I'm reading this, it is so heartbreaking because I feel lucky that I felt empowered to make the right decision for me. And I just am so aware of how not everybody feels the permission to do that and that. Anyway, my heart just breaks. So I wish I knew when we sent that in. It feels like it took some time. And then at some point my stake president called us in and we knew the letter had come. So the letter was sent to the stake president and he would let us read it. It was very short, and it felt like a form letter.

How the First Presidency Communicates Decisions

John Dehlin [00:52:26] First of all, this reminds me, when I appealed my excommunication, the first presidency made a decision, and they wrote a letter and they sent it to my stake president, but he wouldn't let me see it or read it. It's so weird when you write a letter and you get a response, but they won't give it to you or let you own it. It's weird.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:52:45] Yeah, it is weird.

John Dehlin [00:52:46] It's gotta be a PR thing where they just don't want it getting leaked out. They have a problem with documents being passed around, and it's embarrassing. But what was it like for you to not be able to even. You couldn't see it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:52:57] No, he read it to us and then he let us see it, but we couldn't keep it.

John Dehlin [00:53:01] Okay. Or, like, take a copy of it

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:03] or anything like that, which, on some level, it doesn't matter. There was not much said.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:09] Like, yeah. Like, it was definitely a form letter.

John Dehlin [00:53:13] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:14] I mean, that's what it felt like. It felt like they. I write recommendation letters for students. There's probably parts you, like, copy and paste, you know, and then you make it your own. I mean, it felt like this came from a template and maybe wasn't even altered except to say it was to us, you know.

John Dehlin [00:53:28] But the congressional staff are responding on behalf of the.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:32] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:53:32] Congressman.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:33] Yes. And I've gotten some of those. And they. Yeah. Very similar. Very similar. I'm gonna do what we want to do. Anyway, thanks for letting us know your opinion. We will not consider it. That. That's kind of what it felt like. I think. I think that when I think about us going into that meeting, I was nervous because I didn't know what was going to happen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:53:57] And obviously, this had been weighing on me. All of it had been weighing on me. Right. But when he read the letter and I could tell that it was a form letter, that felt so bad. Like, so bad because this is my marriage.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:54:20] This is the ceiling. Right. They say this is the pinnacle. Right. These are our eternal families. And you couldn't be bothered to write a personal letter. You could not be bothered for the most important ceiling. Again, this is like. It's like a telling. Right, Right. That when you. When you say, I can cancel the ceiling, it doesn't meaning. It doesn't have meaning. When you don't write a personal letter to a very personal plea for what you say is the most important Ordinance, it's a tell that, like, this isn't real, right? This doesn't have the meaning. Like, you don't hold the meeting. You don't give the meaning.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:55:01] So that was the first part of the blow, I think, to me was just how deep, like unpersonal. I don't know if that's right, impersonal, how impersonal it was, was like the first blow to me. And again, I think with what I. My understanding of God, again, that feels so foreign from my relationship with God. You can't tell me you're a prophet, and then I can't have that experience in the sacred grove where God knows my name. And then you send me a form letter that it doesn't line up. It doesn't line up. So that's one like, one for me. And basically what the letter said was something like, we regret to inform you, we're not going to grant you a clearance.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:55:48] We don't know why this is the policy. We don't know why it is the way it is, but we trust the Lord, blah, blah, blah. And I then sat there, right? I'm like, kind of in shock, right, that it's so, so formulaic that they're denying. They know why the policy is that way. They're denying me the most important ordinance. They're denying Adam the most important ordinance, but they don't know why.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:56:17] But you speak for God. You speak for God. This is the most important thing. I need this to get exalted. But we don't know why. Again, it doesn't make any sense. But then my stake president proceeded. So this is interesting too, because my bishop was supportive, My stake president was supportive. And then I sit there and I hear my stake president. He, I, I think about this as though he really wanted to give me a way to get sealed to Adam. Like he thought this woman really wants to be sealed to her husband, and she's looking for a way to do that without feeling bad about canceling or sealing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:56:54] So he, like, starts to tell me that I'm. I could cancel with Isaac and that Isaac will be okay, blah, blah, blah. Like, we could cancel it. I could get sealed to Adam. And that he also says some things that, like, basically he's framing it as though I can give Adam exaltation by canceling my sealing and getting married to Adam. And I thought, oh, really?

John Dehlin [00:57:19] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:57:20] When did a woman in the Mormon doctrine ever give exaltation to a man? So now all of a sudden, I'm all powerful, right? And I can give. I am the holder of Adam's exaltation.

John Dehlin [00:57:33] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:57:34] If I don't want to cancel my sealing with Isaac. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I do not. I just. In that moment, I just felt like every feminist bone in my body was like, hell, no. You cannot tell me I now have power.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:57:55] Like, no. And the power I do have, I'm going to exercise it. And I will not cancel a ceiling to comply with a policy that is not necessary. Like, and I will not. I will not be shamed and told I'm accountable for Adam's exaltation. I will not. And they even told me to, like, think of my daughter that was in my belly. Like, I literally have a life forming inside my body.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:58:23] And I'm like, how I could not live with myself telling my daughter that men told me to make myself smaller to fit into their rules. That I know. I guarantee you this will be changed probably within 15 years. I don't know when, but I wouldn't be surprised within 15 years if this has changed. Because women aren't even wearing the garments. They got them to change the garments,

John Dehlin [00:58:48] you know, and the temple ceremony has changed dramatically.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:58:51] Yes. Yeah. Gen Z has been voting with their feet, and they are scared. And so. And they should change. They can. And they should change the policy. And I. And I would be so happy if they did. I'd be so happy if they did. But I am not going to belittle my marriages in any way to fit your narrow rules. And I would not. I was like, what kind of mother would I be if I told my daughters that I conformed to fit these rules when I knew they were wrong? And so it was just really interesting that they were almost, like, trying to use my child, like, to, like, make me feel like I could do this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [00:59:30] And I think also it was really striking to me as well, because my stake president holds a marginalized identity. And I felt like there's part of me that's like, you also advocated for this, but when they told you to get in line, you got in line, you know? And part of me felt like. I don't know, like, maybe I'd hoped that his lived experience would have allowed him to. I don't know. I mean, maybe that's asking for too much, But I think I also just felt like you just switched on a dime. And I don't know. I'm just not willing to do that anymore.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:00:09] I respect myself too much. I respect my family. I respect my marriage too much to let it be dictated by others. Any longer. And so I don't know exactly. Well, that would have happened. It must have been. My daughter was born in 2020, so it must have been before that. So I think after that, things really shifted for me in a more profound way, because I remember feeling a lot of relief when Covid happened that I wouldn't have to go to church.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:00:42] And so that's really when I wasn't quite sure about what it all meant for me. I don't know. It wasn't like an immediate, like, stop going to church thing. But what I do remember in the aftermath of that was when they said they didn't know why. I thought, you do. You do know why. I don't know why, but I am willing to find out. And so in that, I think somewhere in that time period, I said, I'm going to research polygamy. And I had never really done that before, but I said, I'm going to research polygamy because this is a polygamous practice. It's connected to that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:01:24] And there's no way that the answer isn't in history. Right. The history will tell me something. And so as I began to do that, I remember at some point telling myself, whatever I find, I have to be willing to find truth. And I have to be willing, like, can I be willing to respond to the truth that I find and not have an agenda.

Guest [01:01:49] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:01:49] Just have an agenda to find the truth. And so in that period of time, I did look at the. The church essays. I think that's the first one with polygamy that I looked at. And again, if you're. If you're analytical like me, you're researching, there's a lot of things, you can see what's written, and you can also see what they chose they choose not to write. And so things become apparent even in faithful writings. Right. You don't need to go find anti Mormon anything to find the answers. They're right in front of your face.

John Dehlin [01:02:23] You're reading the LDS Church's Gospel topics essay on polygamy and you learn, what are you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:02:31] Yeah, I mean, it's obvious that he's marrying younger women, that Joseph was doing polygamy, which I don't think think I knew. I don't think that was obvious. And yeah, I don't feel like I knew that. I don't have the same experience of feeling betrayed like some people do, like, oh, my gosh, Joseph was a polygamist. I just feel like that got left out because Brigham had all these wives and all these children. So it's very obvious that Brigham is like, the center of that. Right. But with Joseph. Right. Because there were no children, it's kind of like, oh, I guess. I don't know. I didn't really think about that. Or that just wasn't the stories that were told about Joseph and Emma, so those become apparent. I think somehow I heard about the Year of Polygamy podcast. Yeah, the podcast. And I started listening to that.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] And

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:03:22] she, I mean, I think as a faithful Mormon, and honestly, I think she, you know, some people may feel differently because of where she landed, but I feel like she was so respectful. I don't think she was anti Mormon in any way. I think she honored women's stories. And I think it gave me actually a more compassionate view of polygamy in the sense that, like, people can do the wrong thing and maybe not always have 100% bad intent or, like, I think it just, maybe I should say this. And as a therapist, I think I do this all the time. Right. As understanding the explanation is not the same as forgiveness.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:04:07] Right. But like, understanding the explanation sometimes is a form of compassion, of saying, like, yeah, there's a why to this, and I can give space for how this happened, and I also don't have to forgive it, and I don't have to live my life in a way that's bound by this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:04:27] So as I learned more about polygamy, obviously it confirmed all the things that I think I already knew. Like, I think, you know, sometimes when I talk to people about this, you know, it can be like, well, how did you not know polygamy? The thing is, all of us, I think every single Mormon knows polygamy is bad because we don't talk about it. And there's always the same narrative, oh, it was to marry the widows. Well, look at me now, right? Nobody. Nobody wanted to marry me. Right. In the sense that I couldn't be sealed. Right. So.

John Dehlin [01:05:00] But also, most polygamous marriages in the 1800s in the Mormon church were like 30, 40, 50, 60 year old men marrying young women.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:08] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Who were not widows.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:10] Who were not widows.

John Dehlin [01:05:11] It was not about the widows.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:12] Yes, again, yeah, yeah. So we know that the narratives don't match the facts. So I think that was helpful to learn that the facts of the marriages, it didn't produce more children. I think that was interesting to learn.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:26] So I think that really exposed a lot of things as far as what happened and I think my understanding. So what I learned in that process was, oh, these rules are based on Brigham's Understanding of the ceiling, which was Brigham married all of Joseph's wives and he had children with them, and he wanted those children to be sealed to Joseph in the afterlife.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:05:57] And so I don't know if that was a justification so Brigham could marry all of Joseph's wives and have sex with them, or if he really did have some sort of belief that he really wanted to give progeny to Joseph in the eternities. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:06:11] But I realized I was like, that is very much rooted in this thing between him and Joseph of feeling some sort of obligation to give Joseph more progeny. That's where that comes from.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] And I would say there's also. There was probably Joseph. Lots of things with Joseph. He probably obviously had a large libido. I think also he had. Had family members die that weren't baptized. And he believed on the one hand that the Bible said that if you weren't.

John Dehlin [01:06:42] His interpretation of the Bible was, if you're not baptized with the right authority, you can't go to heaven. But with that came this idea of who goes and who doesn't, and can everyone be together in heaven? And so Joseph comes up with this idea of sealing eventually as a way to say, hey, no, there doesn't need to be a sad heaven. Christianity, our church, the Mormon Church, can provide a way for everyone to be sealed together. So for Joseph, there was a high libido. There was also this grieving of dead loved ones who weren't saved through the right ordinances. So there was a desire to come up with an ordinance that would allow everyone to be sealed together in one big happy celestial family that then, along with his reading of the Old Testament and his high libido, somehow got munged into this meat grinder of Joseph gets to have 30 wives, many of them married to other men, many of them teenagers.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] So that's a mess. And I think anyone objectively is just gonna say that was a disaster. Joseph Smith's disaster, polygamy was a disaster, culminating in his own death. Like his own lynching.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:07:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] But also, it wasn't great for the women and the men who Joseph married, their wives wasn't great for them either.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:07:57] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] So it's just a cluster. I hate to swear, but it's kind of a clusterfuck.

Guest [01:08:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Like, maybe even literally.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:04] Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was like, clusterfuck is a good explanation. Well, that's interesting when you say he has a.

John Dehlin [01:08:11] And then we're all dealing with the residual. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:13] So go ahead. Sorry.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:14] Yeah, I think. Well, it's interesting when you say he has a high libido, because you can have a high libido and still stay

John Dehlin [01:08:21] with one woman or a high desire to have lots of sexual partners.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:25] Yeah. So to me, there's some entitlement with that or. Or grandiosity. Right. Because I think there was a Mormon stories that I listened to at some point where they talked about how they kind of thought of maybe Joseph feeling things for other women and then reading about David and then trying to find a way to explain how do I believe I'm God's mouthpiece? How does this make sense if it's against the rules and then changing the rules? And that makes more sense to me.

John Dehlin [01:08:58] That almost certainly was part of it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:08:59] Yeah. So to me, it's his own grandiosity that, like, my lust is somehow holy because I'm holy. But I mean, the consent, all the ways that women were approached are evidence that it wasn't holy or of God. This is a little side note, but I think it's interesting. There's a band called Bastille and they just wrote us.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:09:23] I think it's called Bathsheba and Him or something like that. I'm forgetting the name of it, but it's like a hot take on David. And it's like you just came and you took what you wanted. You're the kind of motherfucker who always gets his way. And I love that song. I was like, this is the take we needed in Sunday school. But that is kind of, I guess, this.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:09:45] There's this way that we do this in religious settings where we extend excuse people in the scriptures or like Joseph or Brigham because they were prophets. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because we don't always make the same excuses for people nowadays. But, like, you can't tell me he's a prophet and then he's marrying people without telling his wife and then doing a fake, like doing a ceremony afterwards. Like, you can't be bothered. You can't be one of the. Have, like, larger sins than most of your members and then also be the mouthpiece of God. Like, it doesn't make sense. But I think more than that, right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:30] There's that reality of, like discovering, like, the why and the policies that it was history. Right. That this is leftover from history. And that's fine. They could have said that it's been this way and we haven't really considered changing it yet. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:44] But again, that doesn't work. If this is the most important ceiling and you Talk to God, then you should be able to get those answers. God should care enough about this. And if God doesn't care enough about this, then it probably isn't that important.

Polygamy, Sealings, and Ongoing Deconstruction

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:10:57] Another aspect of my deconstruction I wanna talk about with polygamy and just the experience with the letter is I think when you have the first presidency saying they don't know, and then you have your own experiences and all these leaders, like, so I've had all these leaders, they didn't know. Then you get to the first presidency, they don't know, and they're the mouthpiece of God. So at that point, it's like I have to ask myself, is there anybody behind the curtain?

John Dehlin [01:11:24] Can I check in with you? There's a. Elder Holland, Q and A video out there where he addresses the widows. Have you seen it?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:11:32] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] I'm going to. I'm going to. I think I found it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:11:35] Okay. Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] So I'm going to play it and I'm going to have you live react to it. And I would just want to see if it makes you feel better or worse or. Or nothing at all. So this is President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Jeffrey R. Holland in an informal Q and A addressing, I think, some of the issues we've been discussing.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:11:55] Oh, okay. Interesting.

John Dehlin [01:11:56] Okay, so I'll play it.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [01:11:59] You asked about divorce and sealings. And what happens if we've been to the temple? And what happens if someone isn't true to their temple covenants? And what does that mean for our marriage? What does it mean for our children? This is kind of a complicated subject, and I'm going to be brief, but here's a principle I want you to remember. If you are faithful personally, no one, no one can block your exaltation. A husband can't. A child can't. An enemy can't. Nobody can. One of the great blessings of the gospel is we are assured through our agency, our own exaltation, if we are faithful. Inherent in those questions are the idea that, well, if my husband isn't faithful, has he stopped my salvation?

Video Clip 1 [01:12:51] Has he stopped my exaltation? He cannot do that. It's not possible. It's not in the plan of God. It would be terribly unfair if I could stop your progress or you could stop mine. So if that's the basic principle, then let's talk about the details. One of the questions was my husband. We were divorced and he passed away. We were sealed. And so I'm still sealed. And yet some of the men in the church are uneasy about dating me or considering marriage because I'm sealed to someone else. Okay, that marriage, if you were divorced and there was that lack of unity, that lack of a marriage covenant, that sealing can be canceled.

Video Clip 1 [01:13:39] All of this is done by the first presidency of the church. They alone handle cancellation of sealings. But that would be understandable where there was already a divorce. But let's say now, I'll add to the question, what if there wasn't a divorce? What if the husband was faithful, but he still passed away and the woman is alone and the men are uneasy about marrying a sealed woman? I would encourage those men and that woman to marry and to not worry about the sealing, because we even have a policy in the church that when everyone is deceased, when everyone's dead, the first husband, the second husband, and the wife in between, when they're all deceased, she can be sealed to a second husband also.

Video Clip 1 [01:14:30] And you say, well, who's she going to be with in eternity? I don't have the slightest idea, but God does. Same kind of question you could ask. I'm a wife, I'm faithful, I keep my covenants, but my husband doesn't.

Video Clip 1 [01:14:51] Well, what happens to him? I don't know. But he probably is not going to be sealed to her if she's faithful and he's not. And so you can ask the same question. To whom is she going to be sealed? And I do not have the slightest idea. But God has all of these things to work out. Let me give you an example. It'll help you understand this doctrine. My childhood friend Anna Laura marries my childhood friend Burton. They are married for nine months. She's six months pregnant, and he dies on the operating table of a defective heart. She's left a widow at 23 and three months later has a baby.

Video Clip 1 [01:15:34] She lives alone for two or three years. Along comes my other friend, Bill. Bill dates Anna Laura. They fall in love, they get married. But Anna Lara is sealed to Burton, and she doesn't want to break the ceiling. She doesn't want a cancellation. He was faithful. He's the father of her first child. She doesn't want to be unfair to him. But what does Bill do?

Video Clip 1 [01:15:59] They're not dead, so he can't be sealed to her yet. But like I told you, I tell them, get married. Trust in the Lord. They did get married. They had six children. And Bill raised those six of his children and Burton's child, all seven. But my friends, my Hermannas. To whom are those children sealed? The first one and the other six they are all sealed to Burton because that's where the sealing exists. Bill is not sealed to Amalara. Imagine the faith that he's had to use to say, my own children are sealed to someone else. Well, you know what you do in a case like that?

Video Clip 1 [01:16:46] You do what obviously you would do, what you should do. You trust in God's goodness. When there are questions to which we do not know the answer, then you trust in what you do know. And what you do know is that God is good and fair and just and merciful. He is not going to deny those children with their father or that father with his own children. How he works it out, it doesn't matter. It's not your problem. God will figure it out.

Video Clip 1 [01:17:19] Look, he has to bring the flowers up every spring. He has to keep the planets in their orbit and the solar system working. If he can do that, he can take care of your family, he can take care of a father and some children. Trust in God and know that these sealing arrangements can all be worked out and that no one's action can block your exaltation. All of this is handled, as I say, by the First Presidency of the church. And what you do, if there's a question, is you visit with your bishop and stake president. They write directly to the First Presidency, and the First Presidency gives counsel.

Video Clip 1 [01:17:55] But don't be fearful. Don't be afraid something's going to be wrong. Don't be afraid that you're going to be tricked or fooled or disappointed. There's an answer to all of these unusual arrangements with a ceiling or a divorce or a death.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] Okay, so that's the first time you've seen the clip.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:16] When was that?

John Dehlin [01:18:18] Several years ago. Because I remember hearing it and thinking, whoa. But I apologize that I didn't warn you ahead of time.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:26] No, that's fine.

John Dehlin [01:18:27] I would love to hear your reactions. I was gonna ask you about that clip. So.

Leadership Responses and Painful Church Policies

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:31] Well, it's interesting because he says, like, if you know God, he can take care of this. And also, if the apostles and the prophet talk to God, why can't God change a policy or give you an answer on that? It's really simple.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:18:49] It would be a very simple policy change to allow that lady to have married her second husband, Bill, in the temple so that they could be under their ceiling and she could just choose who she stays with later. But each of those children are under the ceiling of their father.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:05] Right. So there's something in the church that bothers me holistically, and it's that the marginalized are always asked to have faith and to be uncomfortable. Like with the blacks in the priesthood. Just wait, have faith. But to me, if a God is omnipotent and is all knowing and all loving, he would ask the privileged and those with more to be uncomfortable. He would not ask the least of these to be more uncomfortable. So, again, I just. I think that's nice. Like, some of those things are probably really comforting to some people. Do you know where he shared that? Was that at a.

John Dehlin [01:19:47] It was like a stake conference of just Latin women. Oh, yeah. Like, they were all Latinas in there.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:55] Oh, okay. Interesting.

Guest [01:19:56] Well.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:19:57] Cause they do have widow and widower conferences, so I didn't know. But here's the thing is he's also an apostle. He's not the prophet. He's saying this, like you said at one meeting.

John Dehlin [01:20:08] Not in general conference.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:10] Not in general conference.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] And by the way, this. I went on Reddit. This clip at one point was shared on Reddit, on YouTube, and it was taken down. And I'm assuming that the church maybe did a copyright strike or asked it to be taken down.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:25] Yeah. Because it's not a televised meeting.

John Dehlin [01:20:27] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:27] They probably haven't PR approved it. So that's the thing is, like, you don't know if the church actually backs what he's saying. I mean.

John Dehlin [01:20:33] Or if he's going rogue.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:34] Yeah, if he's going rogue.

John Dehlin [01:20:35] But I mean, he's not really saying anything. It's just like the letter.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:38] Yeah, it's similar.

John Dehlin [01:20:39] What he's really saying is we don't know. But don't worry, God's just. He'll make it all right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:20:43] Yeah. He is saying. I think he is describing a God, like the God I know. Right. Like, in terms of my own processing. Like, God wouldn't do that. Like, so in some ways he's validating that God isn't like that. Right. So he is kind of validating this idea of, like, that love does multiply and God would never put us in a position that we don't want to be in. And so the question is, then why does the Church maintain the restraints?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:21:08] And then I think the question is, how do I personally navigate that, knowing that these restraints are in conflict with the nature of God. So that could bring a lot of comfort to somebody. I also think without that being widespread knowledge and supported in several places, like in writing, by an actual prophet or first presidency member in a conference proceeding, young men will continue to dump widows and they will not marry them.

John Dehlin [01:21:39] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:21:40] I think only people like me and Adam like that couple he talked about, there will be some couples who have a really deep connection. And again, like, I guess you could say we proceeded forth in faith. But then that also makes it sound like those other people didn't have faith. And I don't know that that's true. I think other people didn't know that they could give themselves permission. So I think that also, I don't know, like, in some ways, it is shaming of the man who said, I don't know, I really want to get sealed, and I can't get sealed to you. And his bishop tells him, yeah, I think you could find someone else.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:13] Do you have faith that you could find someone? You could be sealed? You know what I mean? Like, so what? Faith is the right faith. So to me, in some ways, it kind of minimizes the faith of those who have followed their counsel.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:28] I think this is a wider issue, and it's come up in, like, a women's group I'm part of. So I'm trying to remember her name. Camille. She's one of. Is she the leader of the Relief Society? Camille Jensen?

John Dehlin [01:22:41] I'm not sure.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:22:42] She's a lawyer anyway, but she's in one of those presidency, one of the leadership presidency roles. And I'm in, like, a working Mormon women Facebook group. And women, like, really wrestled when she became in that position because she's a successful lawyer, and now she's one of the top leaders, female leaders in the church. And they're like, I didn't know I could be a lawyer and that I could get, like, one of the highest female positions in the church. I thought I was evil for wanting to work. Right. And so you have these different.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:23:18] So you can praise her and say she had the faith to go her own path and listen to her personal revelation. But the women who stayed home and raised their babies, they weren't less faithful than her. Right. And now maybe they're divorced and they're struggling financially and they didn't live out their dreams, and now they see that they sacrificed everything to be a good Mormon woman. And apparently it wasn't the right choice. So I don't. Yeah, I just. I kind of get frustrated with this idea of, like, you should know what the right kind of faith is or what it looks like to have the right kind of faith. Because it's kind of like you said earlier, it's kind of like this talking out of both sides of your mouth.

John Dehlin [01:24:00] Yeah. I mean, as I was trying to put myself in your shoes, I was imagining possibly feeling really angry that you didn't get to hear that. That, like, oh, no, you were. You were. That didn't bug you?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:24:15] No, no. I feel like now if my family hears that, they're going to be like, see, you could have chosen faith. My family members that are not happy that I no longer go to church, I think they could see, like, see, there was a way you could see this. But that's the thing that I think is so hard for people to understand is like, you weren't physically there asking men in these positions about this and you weren't seeing the confusion on their face.

John Dehlin [01:24:41] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:24:42] You weren't like, I compare my experience in some ways to the wizard of Oz. It's like, you get there and Oz is not real. There's a man behind the curtain. And that's fine. For a time I was like, okay, this church is not led by God. This is not the only. The only true church. And do I want to stay in this community? It doesn't have to be that. But I cannot believe that when I can't see God in it. I mean, even he is admitting, have faith that God is different than the policy.

Guest [01:25:18] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:25:18] I mean, that's what he was asking. So I don't feel any regret about it. I understand that other people will see a path forward, and if they need that to make the decisions they wanna make, more power to them. But I feel pretty grounded in my decisions.

John Dehlin [01:25:33] Yeah. And that seems healthy. There's this dynamic we're experiencing in the 2000s when where finally, probably because of the Internet mostly and because so many people are finally leaving the church that the church is making changes. And sometimes it's changes to doctrine or policy, and sometimes, you know, it's other types of. Sometimes it's just like theology or doctrine, and sometimes it's actual policy.

John Dehlin [01:26:07] But like with the Gospel Topics essay on blacks, on black people and the priesthood, the priesthood ban, the basic answer was very similar. It's, we don't know why God did this. So it's sort of, on the one hand, they're prophets, on the other hand, they don't know. And on the other hand, it's God's fault. Because at the end of the day, when they say it's God's wisdom, basically what they're saying is God doesn't feel like it's important to tell us.

John Dehlin [01:26:34] And that's weird. Or that God's the author of this cluster. And that's weird. Yeah. So, I mean, so that's weird that, like, when they make a theological or a policy change they just put it on God instead of taking responsibility and saying, we're not the prophets you thought we were. We don't have the power to find out from God. Like we told you, we're just kind of making stuff up. Yeah, really making stuff up and telling you that it's from God. But really we kind of don't. We're just making stuff up and we don't really know what we're doing. They don't say that. Yeah, that's probably. I mean, Occam's razor says that's probably the most likely.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:27:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] Even if there's some way divinely inspired or called by God, they're still creating painful policies that cause a lot of minority groups a lot of pain and difficulty.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:27:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:27:25] So that's a problem with all of this. But then there's two other problems that I know. One is they always have two solutions. One is they don't make the change. And this would be black people before the priesthood change. And they would just say, don't worry about it. It's all going to be fixed in the afterlife. And that feels problematic. Is that problematic? Because like you said, it's just basically saying, suffer needlessly and, you know, God will make it all right in the end. And they think that's an okay answer.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:28:04] Well, here's the thing that people of privilege don't get is your marriage was in the temple. You didn't have to pay for a place to do your marriage. You didn't have to find someone else to do your marriage. You got to do your marriage in the right of your community. So when you ask like a black person to get over the priesthood thing or to worry about that in the afterlife, you are also denying them the experiences in the here and now that you get.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:28:34] You're not ever experiencing what that's like to not be fully part of your community or fully participating in the rites and ordinances. So I think it's an ask they know nothing about personally. So, yeah, it's easy for you to ask that because you've never had to contemplate being part of a community where you don't have full access to the rights and privileges and blessings of that community. So I think that is. It's a big ask. And I don't think they get feels like it's from a very privileged position.

John Dehlin [01:29:09] Yeah. And on the one hand, if I'm trying to have sympathy for them, it's like, well, they've got millions of members. They're not going to manage to the exceptions they're going to manage to the masses, to the general rule, and just deal with the exceptions as best as they can. That's my attempt to be sympathetic with them. What it ignores and where it falls on deaf ears for less empathetic people is the just intense, significant suffering caused to Native Americans or Black Africans in the Mormon Church, or women or widows or whatever. Like, we're just like, oh yeah, too bad for them, but like the rest of us are fine.

John Dehlin [01:29:52] Or aren't they special because they had faith when they had to suffer extra. There's something that doesn't sit well with that. Right. Obviously. And that's what you're saying. But then there's the. But that's a problem. If it's just like have faith also, if the answer is just have faith, then why do they have any of this to begin with?

John Dehlin [01:30:13] Right? Like, yes. Yeah. Like when my, my parents got divorced and I was in middle school and then later I'm at BYU and my mom gets her sealing canceled to my dad so that then she can get sealed to her third husband. Then I'm like literally dropping out of classes at BYU thinking, who am I sealed to by eternal faith? I don't know, am I sealed to my mom and then I'm not with my dad, am I with my mom and then my dad? You know, and it's like, it was traumatic for me. Yeah. But then when I got the answer, don't worry, you know, don't worry about it.

John Dehlin [01:30:48] You'll be with your wife or don't worry about it, you'll be with your wife and kids and like, well then why are we teaching eternal families to begin with if it could be dismissed so quickly? But then also if it all can be hand waved away as like, don't worry, it'll all be made right in the end. Then don't have any of the rules. Just let's all get married, buried in heaven. Let's all get sealed into heaven to whoever we end up with. Like, can Heavenly Father perform ceilings in heaven and won't they be immediate and blessed by God and there won't be any error?

John Dehlin [01:31:22] And, and then you read the New Testament and Jesus is like, there won't be given in heaven and there won't be taken away. There'll be no marriage in heaven, basically. And then you find out that marriage isn't even Christ based.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:31:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:34] New Testament says there's no marriage in heaven.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:31:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:37] So like none of this makes sense. So then it's like what Joseph started thinking he was solving a problem.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:31:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:45] Creates a problem for so many people. And then. And then let's just really zoom out. Let's really zoom out. What about all the gazillions of people that never had a Mormon temple ceiling at all? Now, instead of feeding the hungry, getting water to Africans, curing diseases, freaking Mormons are dressing up in their white clothes, going to temples and getting sealed over and, oh, you know, we talk about baptisms for the dead all the time. Did you, dear viewer and listener, know that hundreds of thousands of hours each year spent by wealthy, faithful Mormon couples going to Mormon temples to get what, married or sealed to dead people?

John Dehlin [01:32:31] So there's not just baptism for the dead, there's temple ceilings for the dead, where instead of serving humanity or spending time with their kids, we're getting married for dead people. And supposedly the millennium, which is going to be a thousand years, we're taught as Mormons that all we're going to do for a thousand years is temple work for dead people, which means temple ceilings for dead people, billions of them, to then make it all right so that we can all have, you know, people who are never Mormon can still have temple ceilings in heaven if they accept it. So there's not even a guarantee they're going to accept those ceilings.

John Dehlin [01:33:12] Those ceilings may have been done over the millennium and over our lives in this life, and they're not even actually valid. So it's just, It's a. When you scratch an inch down, it's preposterous and inefficient, unnecessary suffering and, And. And a huge waste of time and energy and money. Am I wrong? I just ranted. I'm sorry.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:33:39] No, you're fine. No, I think it is. I think it is interesting how. Yeah, it is this, like, selling point of the doctrine of the church. And I think when you actually talk to other people who are outside the church, they're like, wait, why wouldn't I be with my family? Right. When you talk to people that don't have these constraints, they actually talk quite a bit about how they're like, I never assumed I wouldn't be with my family in heaven.

Manufactured Scarcity and Minority Experiences in the Church

John Dehlin [01:34:10] And so it's a manufacturer, manufactured scarcity.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:34:12] Yes, yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:34:13] You ask of Christians, like, of course I'm going to be with my family in heaven. Who said I wasn't going to be. So then you realize that we just created the illness, the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. Not, maybe not intentionally created the scarcity, created the illness. So then they could sell Mormonism as the cure to something that Most Christians or even people don't even think is a problem.

Guest [01:34:37] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:34:37] And yeah, like you said earlier, like, that may have come out of his own trauma and grief of, like, losing family members. It maybe never had the intention of what it is now. But, yeah, you said something a little earlier, and I just wanted to say this one thing. You had said something about, like, you were kind of like trying to say, like, well, you know, this is a, you know, a small group of people. Maybe they don't need to have policy on it. But then again, you look at the Old Testament and the Jewish people had a policy on widows. So it also isn't.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:35:11] It isn't like this is a new fringe group. Religions have been thinking about how to care for widows for a long time. And while I realize, you know, people die a lot less than they used to, it wouldn't. I mean, this would not be a new practice. This would not be a new population to think of how to care for for. So to me, it just is. It's one of those things where the church gets exposed for its incongruity with its practice and its claimed values. So if the value is family and caring for family, then when, you know, there's holes, why don't you plug them? So, I don't know. That's my take on it.

John Dehlin [01:35:58] Yeah. And then I just have to mention one more thing, and that's what we're seeing with the temple garments now all of a sudden in 2025, for Mormon women's temple garments. They basically have sleeveless garments now, which meant that for 150, almost 200 years, Mormon women could never wear dresses, you know, sundresses or dresses that showed their shoulders. And there's so many faithful Mormon women that are furious that they had to wear garments and frumpy clothing and unelegant or not, you know, wedding dresses. And you might say, oh, first world problems, or, you know, crocodile tears. But there's this idea that if they almost can't win, because if the church does change, and let's just say they allow men and women to seal whoever they want, like, yay. But then it begs the question, why for 200 years did all those people have to suffer?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:37:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:02] So it's almost like they can't win. But also it really does expose. Are they just making stuff up? And is this just the wizard of Oz behind a curtain where they're not. This isn't really divinely led. I think that's the question that maybe you had to finally ask is. Yeah, is this Cluster F, actually divinely led.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:37:28] Yes. I think. Well, and I think it's. I think I can give them. And even like Joseph Smith and Brigham. I don't know about Brigham. I'll reserve that for maybe not. I don't know. I don't even make a decision on him. But I think I can assume that these leaders do believe they're inspired and are trying their best.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:37:51] I can give them that. That they believe they are called of God, that they are trying. Because when I was in the church and I got callings and things, I really did try and I really did believe in a lot of those things. So I do believe people have good intent.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:38:07] But I think what for me was really important to realize is that God is not the one that's in charge making all these calls. Men are a pretty serious filter, even if. Yeah, they're a pretty serious filter. And that ultimately they decide, right. Like, God is not the one driving the ship. And so I think, why would I abdicate my own decision, making my own knowing to men who know as much as me? So I think it's more about that. That to me, it's exposed that it is a man behind the curtain. It isn't the great Oz. It isn't God. So I will trust my own knowing over a man's.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:00] Especially when it doesn't. It doesn't make sense. Like, there's no reason for me to abdicate. And I think a big part of my deconstruction has been this feeling of, like, radical agency saying, like, I am free to do what I want to do. And guess what? I also have radical accountability. I can make a mistake. I can actually make that right. I can repair something. If I make a wrong choice. I don't need to be so afraid of getting it wrong because I know how to repair. And maybe I didn't know that. I feel like in a lot of ways, you're raised in the church to, like, never make mistakes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:36] And it's like, if I'm wrong about this, I'm happy to be wrong about this. And here's the thing, though. If God is real and I'm his daughter, and I'm her daughter, and I'm wrong about this, then when I get to heaven, they're gonna say, rebecca, you got it wrong.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:39:55] What do we need to do right? A loving parent would work with you. I would never do that to my children. Right? Like, when would I ever say to my children, like, you got it wrong? We can't have any more conversations. Guess you gotta go Live with Satan? Like, no. What parent loves their child that way? Not me. So I just.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:17] Even if I have it wrong, I cannot sign off on a God that treats their children that way. If I love my own children and am kinder to my. My own children than my God is to me, then this is not a God I need, and this is not a God I will worship. So I. I don't know. That's just.

John Dehlin [01:40:35] Amen.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] Snaps. That's powerful. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, that really is what it comes down to is graduating from ex. Giving. Handing over our authority.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:40:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:40:49] To other people, and in your case, specifically to men, to claiming your own authority as a woman to know what's right for you and to do that.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:41:00] Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of that. I listened to the interview you did with Laurel Hell, and she talked about that concept of bounded choice, and I had not heard that term. And I was like, oh, that is so helpful to think about bounded choice, because I think that's what really this process did, is it made me realize that the ceiling was a bounded choice that I was being offered, and that if I could think outside of the bounded choices, I could actually find a lot of meaning. And I didn't. I wasn't limited to those choices. And so that's something I've thought about quite a bit, is just how the church kind of makes us be in this position of, you know, it's like, do you want X or Z?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:41:47] Yeah. X, Y, or Z? And so you think you have to choose X, Y, or Z. But the truth is, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. They're all available. Right. So for me, I feel like I'm gonna live my life in a way that I don't limit myself to what would be meaningful for me.

John Dehlin [01:42:07] Yeah, that's beautiful. And I asked this question. I asked. I interviewed this physician, Joe Gautia, who joined the church in Kenya, Africa, wasn't told about the priesthood ban. Came to. Came to the United states, went to BYU's, became a doctor, and then eventually lost his faith because of all the priesthood ban stuff and other things. But I asked him, are you happy or sad to know that Africans are converting to Mormonism by the gazillions?

John Dehlin [01:42:39] And he said, in spite of, you know, my experience, I'm still glad because it's good for them. And so, in other words, it's good for the Africans to have community and learn a language and have financial support and literacy and, you know, they can leave it later if it doesn't work out for them. But right now, the Mormon Church is still doing good. I would ask you, like, for all the Mormon families that don't have to deal with divorce and don't have to deal with.

John Dehlin [01:43:07] With the death of a spouse, how do you feel about the idea that, you know, yeah, it sucks for those of us for whom it doesn't work out, but I'm still glad it's all there for the typical Mormon family that gets married, gets sealed, has the four or six kids, and lives together until they're old and die. Like, is there a part of you that's still glad Mormonism's there for the people for whom it does work, or do you feel like it's more problematic than that?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:43:37] Well, so there's two things that come up for me with you sharing that. The first is having served a mission in a foreign country. There's a part of me that feels really icky about that because part of it feels like white supremacist to come over and say, our culture is better.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:43:59] We have a faith for you that is better than whatever faith has come from your fathers. So there's an element of that that is really hard for me to just take at face value. I think younger and during younger years, I did think that, that maybe.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:44:18] Right, the church is helping people. And there are ways that I've seen even people from Russia, from my mission, where they were able to go to the school in the United States because of their connections with the Mormon Church, and they probably did get a better education.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:44:33] So I'm not saying that there would be no benefits. And that could be true in Africa. Side note, I listened. I actually accidentally listened to something like a playlist. Accidentally came. A podcast came on after I listened to another podcast and it ended up talking about conference, general conference, like a breakdown about how there were more black speakers. And I thought, oh, that's great that there were more. And they said something like, yeah, there are even more black speakers than women. And at first I was like, oh, well, that's great. I'm so happy for the progress. And then I thought, oh, my gosh, what if that's not progress? What if they're doing that because the only place they're growing is Africa? And my heart just, like, sunk.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Well, that's for sure true.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:45:09] Yeah. Because it's not. It's not like a we learned and we're going to do better.

John Dehlin [01:45:14] Yeah. No, it's what's best for us now. Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:45:17] So the self servingness of that feels really bad versus like the maybe kind of the knowing that you're like, oh, I know better. I can do better. So that feels bad in the church. I think holistically, though, for people who.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:45:35] I never want to dictate anybody else's faith journey. I've been really intentional about, like, not even trying to, like, dictate that for my husband. Right. When we had kind of different f views about things. I've been. You know, sometimes I feel like people even in my family will be like, well, we don't really talk about spiritual things anymore. And I'm like, yeah, because I don't know, like, I'm not trying to influence you out of the church. I never would have wanted somebody. I mean, I had pretty open conversations with friends who were in or out of the church or inactive.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:08] But I don't have a lot of intention to try to persuade anybody to feel the way I do, because I do think faith is so personal, and so I respect kind of everybody's. I don't know everybody's path to choose that if they want it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:24] Do I think the church does a lot of harm? Yes, I do. I do think there's a lot of harm. And I think you're right there. If you have certain identities, the harm will be minimal, and the benefit will be great.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:46:42] But I think that for a lot of people, you don't know the harm until it's there. So, like, when I think about my own childhood and my mom's choice to raise us in kind of, I would say, you know, very, like, orthodox way, in some ways, I can look back on that and say, that was hard for me. And then there's also this realization that, like, we were a divorced family. We were the only divorced family at first in our ward. And in a lot of ways, her religiosity, her commitment, we were, like, one of the popular families. And I think about the way that we got support in our community by being, like, really good.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:47:23] And I think I can't tell her she made the wrong decision. I cannot tell her that probably blessed my life in a lot of ways without having father. There are a lot of kids that sometimes met me, and they're like, your parents are divorced. They're really surprised because they had stereotypes about what a divorced kid would be like. Right. So I can't say that it's always the wrong choice for families.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:47:42] But, you know, I see families where they have a gay child and the way the gay child has internalized those messages. The parent can't know because they're not gay. So they're not clued in to every microaggression, macro aggression, and it's only until your child is unwell. But that the seeds of self hate, right, of internalized homophobia, those have been sown. So I know that for me, when we were my. My husband and I were kind of navigating like different levels of faith and commitment to the church.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:48:17] We had kind of talked quite a bit about our worries about our children being going to church during their teenage years because of the level of sexual shame and how we did not want our kids to internalize that. So I think, I don't know, I mean, I think every parent's gotta make those choices for their family. I respect the choices. And I also recognize that for some, some kids will grow up and will be able to honestly tell their parents that them being raised in the church was very harmful. And other kids may be like me and say, you know what? I think you probably made the right call.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:48:52] Even with some of the harmful things, you probably made the right call. But the truth is I had a lot of privileged identities until adulthood. So my experience may be very different from someone else's. So I can't endorse or like hate on it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:49:09] But one of the reasons I'm here is because I do want the church to do better. And guess what? They don't accept feedback in the church. So I voted with my feet.

John Dehlin [01:49:20] Where did this take you? In the church? Church wise. This just all this? Yeah. How did you.

Leaving the Church and Finding Peace

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:49:24] It took me out.

John Dehlin [01:49:26] So you just took me, eventually walked away. Left church?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:49:29] Yes, I eventually voted with my feet because I think. When. Yeah, I think there's this feeling of they can't take feedback inside. And I remember one time going to church and saying like, okay, I don't believe this is the only one true church, but maybe this can still be my community. Right. I don't have to believe in everything. I can. Maybe I can, you know, do this as it works for me. Like, can I give myself the space? I was very intentional about giving myself all the space to make my decision to be somewhere in the middle, to do whatever felt congruent for me. And I went and I tried to go to.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:12] I'm somebody who will talk in class and will answer questions and I would raise my hand when I thought the lesson was going off the rails or in some other direction and I'd share my perspective or whatever. And there was one time after church and so it was after this. So obviously things were heavier for me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:30] But I was like, I'm just Gonna try and be 100% authentically myself. Going to church and see how that feels. Like, can I believe what I believe and go to church and be myself and just say, I'm gonna create a space for myself here? So I did that. And what I noticed is after I would say something in class, people would come up to me and they'd be like, oh, I love that you said that. Thank you for saying that. But nobody else was saying was just me. And it felt really lonely.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:50:56] And I also. I just had this feeling of, like, why am I trying to turn the tide back? Why am I coming and investing my time and energy and money in an organization whose values no longer align with mine? Right. Like, there's so many things, and I think the more time has progressed and maybe the more I've matured. Right. Like, for a long time, the LGBTQ stance has not aligned for me. And so it's just. And then every opportunity they get to take a step forward, they usually take two steps back.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:51:30] And so at some point, I think I had to say, can you accept that your values are no longer in alignment with this institution? And I decided to accept that and say, I don't. It doesn't make sense for me as a woman to try to change this institution. It's not changing. And there are people who want to stay and want to advocate for change inside and more power to them.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:51:54] But I think another piece of that is I work at a women's university, and that experience of having mostly women in leadership, and then when you have women and men working there, all of them are two income households, so everybody's got a balanced family and work.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:52:18] And I think, like, being in that sort of institution where I see women leading, it's contrasted right to the patriarchy in the church. And I think it's more democratic. The way my voice was valued from the time I'm a brand new professor. It's not like an untenured professor. So I can't say what I think. That kind of freedom in an environment to be seen and heard, the fact that I've experienced that means it exists. It can exist.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:52:49] And so that also, I think, is another big part, is that, like, if God's running this, then why does it exist in my work but not in my spiritual practice? Like, not in my spiritual community? It does not exist here. It exists more in my work.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:53:08] And so I think that's where I'm like, there are other places for me to invest my time in, whether that's mentoring students or doing Therapy, helping young professionals. So I just feel like there's so many other places I can uplift, like humans, and it doesn't make sense for me to do it in the church. I don't think that's where I'm contributing the most. Good.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:53:36] And honestly, I think I've moved on from that to doing a little bit more like political advocacy and trying to find ways to kind of advocate for marginalized populations rather than just going and worshiping with people who feel like they're the chosen people. I mean, that's been really hard too. I think with the church is just this feeling of conferences telling, let's talk about what everybody else is doing wrong and what we're doing right. That's not a spiritual practice that stretches me.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:09] But when I engage, I think in like the realms I do where I'm deconstructing whiteness, deconstructing misogyny, and all the other things, I'm actually self confronting in a way the church usually didn't ask me to. So as far as, like a spiritual practice, I feel like if I'm not self confronting, then I'm. I'm just patting myself on the back.

John Dehlin [01:54:38] Yeah. I do think it can often come down to, where am I going to make the biggest difference?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:43] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:44] And you can stay in the church and bang your head against the wall with a men led organization that really doesn't want feedback and certainly doesn't want it from a woman.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:55] At least that can be. That might have been your experience and maybe many others.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:54:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:00] Or you could go at a university setting or in a community setting where you're valued and you can't make a difference. And that probably speaks to why in 2025, I think for the first time ever, there's more active Mormon men in the United States than active Mormon women. And I think in Christianity, broader in the United States, there are more active Christian men than Christian women. Does that, some people say that makes no sense. Does that make sense to you?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:55:30] Yeah, I think it does. Yeah. I think women, I think women my age have in a lot of ways been raised to think that they were capable. Like, you can be the president, you can be anything. Right. And then you go to church and you're like, oh, this is weird. I can be anything anywhere except for here.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:55:51] Right. And I think a lot of millennial mothers, they're raising their girls and they're seeing their girls are asking questions, why don't I pass the sacrament? Why can't I do this? And so millennial women have no good answers to give their daughters. And I don't think they want to pass it on to their daughters. Right. And that might have been different for our mothers. Right. Like, they. There may have been things. Benevolent patriarchy is better than not benevolent patriarchy, I guess. Right. In some ways. So in some ways there might have been more.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:56:23] There might have been a better situation for women in the church. Right. The men aren't drinking, so maybe there's probably less violence. Right. There can be less. There can be some problems that the church fixes. But now I don't know that that's the case. I think there's a lot of answers outside of the church. So.

John Dehlin [01:56:40] Yeah, well, this has been. So I'm like, every three minutes, I'm like, brooklyn, that would be a great TikTok. Brooklyn, that would be a great Instagram reel. Like, so much value and learning and vulnerability, but also insight in this story. You've got a whole part of your outline on reconstruction, but we're five. Almost five and a half hours in, so.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:10] Okay. What do you think? Yeah. Anything else?

John Dehlin [01:57:15] So, I mean, maybe just. Let's just do quickly where. So you and your husband were. You weren't ever sealed in the temple?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:22] No. Yeah, we were. So we were never sealed in the temple. And so I think more, I guess a little bit about our story after all this is. And I've talked a little bit about my process, but I at some point said, like, I can no longer go. This is not good for me.

John Dehlin [01:57:41] You refuse to sort of divorce your first husband Celestially, yes.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:45] And my husband never wanted me to do that.

John Dehlin [01:57:48] And you were just not satisfied with the way the church handled all that?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:51] I think my husband has shared with me that he's like, I was actually really afraid they were gonna let us.

John Dehlin [01:57:58] He was or you were?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:57:59] He was.

John Dehlin [01:58:00] Oh, okay.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:58:00] Because I think for him, it was like it already had lost the meaning.

John Dehlin [01:58:06] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:58:06] Right. And so for him, it wasn't as, like, earth shattering, but I think I, in a lot of ways had maybe, I don't know, like, had more of a. I think just generally, like, my husband's a person who can be, like, a little bit more private. He's probably not going to talk in class as much. Right. Like, I'm more like, active. And so in certain ways, I think Mayan. I don't want to say his investment was less, but, like, it was different and we express it differently. So I think his letdown was very different than my kind of like, maybe zealousness. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:58:43] So for Me, it hurt more. And so he attended church for quite a while and we kind of navigated a mixed faith marriage for a little bit. He's not currently attending and I don't, um, I've been really intentional about like, his journey's. His journey. And if he decided he wanted to go back tomorrow, I'd be like, okay, cool, right? Like, go back.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:59:06] He's. I, I joked with him. I said, well, I am gonna say that you're kind of still in. Cause you are going to that BYU game and you are cheering for byu. So he's still a BYU fan. I said, so he's still kind of in. So I was teasing him about that.

John Dehlin [01:59:19] But.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [01:59:20] But I think we, I think the we. So much of the experience with the church has been shared. Right. So in terms of like, some of the deconstruction, I think we experienced it very similarly and have similar values. And sometimes the ways we, the expectations we have of an institution or interact with the institution are very different. So I'm more like all in. Which means if you're like, if I'm out of alignment, I can't be all in. Right. Is where he may not have like, felt that same level of. Yeah, he's just. I don't want to say he's like as intense as I am in that way, but. So now, yeah, as far as like reconstruction, one of the things.

Reflections on Marriage, Love, and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [02:00:04] Can I ask you a question? So your parents Mormon dream ended when you were very young. You fought so hard to have the eternal Mormon marriage. You got it. But then your husband passed away and then, you know, you met your. Your second husband.

John Dehlin [02:00:24] Like some would say, wait a minute, you're abandoning your first husband. You're giving. You got the Mormon dream. Of course you won't fully live it until you die, but like you, you could. He might still be waiting for you, and you could still have that Mormon dream in the afterlife, which so many people want, which is one of the reasons why we came to this earth in the first place. So going back to this idea that wickedness from a Mormon perspective never was happiness.

John Dehlin [02:00:52] You're abandoning your first husband, you're killing that eternal marriage, and then you're not choosing an eternal marriage here. Some would say you're trading down on every level. What would you say to that? I know those are intense words.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:01:05] Well, I think that ignores the fact that to me, the church has already exposed it's meaningless when they said, you can cancel it. So to me, I no longer give the church credit for the holiness of my marriages. For the specialness of those relationships. I no longer give the church credit for those things.

John Dehlin [02:01:32] Power over defining, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:01:33] Defining power, exactly. I think also maybe part of that is not hard because my Isaac's family, no one in his family is like going to church anymore. Part of that is he has a gay brother. So that was like one that like really influenced. He came out. So he came out not very long before Isaac died. And in fact his husband now they had just started dating and he drove the family to the funeral.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:02:04] So he had just kind of started dating my brother in law and drove the family to the funeral. And so that was kind of a new thing for the family. Right. That was his first boyfriend and they married and they're very happily married and they.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:02:19] So I think their family had to grapple with the church and that. And I think that's also one of those things. We're seeing their marriage and again the serendipity nature of their meeting and the alignment they have. It's like you see that and you're like what the church says about gay marriage is not true. Like these two people found each other. Like what are the odds that they have these things in common? Like they're both were raised Mormon. His husband lived in Mexico, so he's fluent in Spanish. Like there's all these like things I think that have happened in some of the marriages that feel so like divine. Like, I mean like divine design. I, you know, it feels like that.

John Dehlin [02:02:58] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:02:59] So I think because Isaac's family has also like deconstructed in a way that feels different. I think it would probably feel different if they felt like I was abandoning Isaac. That would maybe be harder. But I think because we all have been kind of on like a similar spiritual path, maybe, maybe it has more to do with that. That, that feels totally irrelevant.

John Dehlin [02:03:25] How do you deal with the conditioning that a non Mormon temple marriage is inferior? That's, that's the wiring in your brain, right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:03:36] Yeah, I don't think that really bothered me because I think people when they would. Yeah, I never felt like less than when I was going to church because people just would assume that we probably were sealed. So I don't think people looked down on us.

John Dehlin [02:03:50] I mean now though.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:03:52] Oh well, I mean it, the ceiling, I mean to me, to me like it broke the specialness of the ceiling. So this is a metaphor I've used and I, I don't mean this. I hope this doesn't sound demeaning, but it's kind of like when you find out about Santa Claus.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:04:12] So when Santa Claus is real, it's really magical, super magical. And when you find out Santa is your parents, it's a different. It's less magical, it's less magical. But I think once you get some space from it, there can still be the magic of Christmas, even though, you know. So there is a grief for me with kind of losing religion, right? Losing that faith.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:04:40] And there's also. I can appreciate the beauty it has for others that it holds magic for. And I also cannot believe in Santa again. And I think that's the sticking point for me. It feels like people are asking me to believe in Santa again. And it's like. But I know it's my parents, so I can't. And I can honor that it's super magical for you and you believe in Santa, And I don't need to try to convince you that Santa is your parents. I'm not gonna say anything. Mum's the word, right? Like, I'm not gonna try and be. Ruin that for you. Christmas is magical and I will enjoy it in the way I can, but I can't unknow that. Yeah, that's how. That's how it feels to me.

John Dehlin [02:05:17] Powerful. And I think there's at least two truths here. One is the answer is love the one you're with. Right?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:05:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] Like, that is the answer. Love whoever you're with for as long as you have the ability to be able to love them in a healthy way, because that's all you really know for sure. And that's all you really have for sure. Is that true? Is it okay that we say that's true?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:05:41] Yeah. Yeah, that's okay.

John Dehlin [02:05:43] And then the second thing that I think is just absolutely true is there's probably no such thing as an eternal Mormon family. And I'll tell you why. It requires that both in the couple are sealed in the temple and are both faithful and never get divorced. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] And that's. We already know 50% of marriages end in divorce, so that's half of them right there. But then all the children that are had, they all have to stay faithful, right? And they all have to be Mormon and keep their covenants. None of them can be gay. Any of the ones that are gay or lesbian, they're cut off. Any of the ones that leave the church, they're cut off. Any of the ones you know. And then if they marry people, same sort of dynamic. And then you've got your parents. Parents, like, it's guaranteed to be sad heaven, because there's always going to be in every family, go just with the parents.

John Dehlin [02:06:45] And if not the parents, just the children. Or for sure, once you get to the grandchildren or the parents of the parents, you're gonna have sad heaven because people are missing because they don't meet all the requirements or they don't want to.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:07:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:01] So at the end of the day, like, it's. It's a huge manufactured mirage that makes some people feel superior or better. But like you said, it's like. It's kind of like Santa Claus. It's not real. And then how insulting is it to the rest of humanity to tell them that their marriages don't count in heaven? And that Mormonism, we say that authority is great, that Joseph Smith got the authority from Peter, James and John and John the Baptist. And now the priesthood authority has the keys to do ordinances. Great. Except for the fact that the implications of that is that all baptisms in the world who aren't Mormon baptisms don't count. How offensive is that to humanity? And it's the same with marriages and weddings. None of your weddings count. They're all disappearing in heaven, according to the Mormons.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:07:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:59] Except for the faithful Mormons. And even them. How many of them actually make it.

Guest [02:08:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:08:03] So it is. It's this, like, this thing that's packaged as beauty, but in the end, it can be so insulting or. Or rotten or inefficient or corrupt. And that's what's so difficult, is the rock looks beautiful and you pick it up and there's worms underneath it. And for the people who are enjoying it, it works great. But the problem is for everybody else.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:08:28] Yeah. I think religion sometimes. I mean, it offers answers. It offers the idea of if you do X, Y, Z, you'll be safe. And I think that's a really attractive thing. Right. I think a lot of us are looking to feel safe in our relationships, safe in our families. Like our families will be forever. I mean, I do think on some level, like, yeah. I mean, imagine a church that can offer that your husband won't drink. Right. I mean, alcoholism used to be. I mean, it still is a problem. But, like, if you. There. There are some ways that benevolent patriarchy, I think, does offer some restrictions.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:09:05] Like, oh, he's not gonna cheat on you. Cause that's adultery. So it's this idea of, I think you trade your authority to someone higher to keep your husband accountable. Right. Or to keep your children accountable. But what I do, what I think it does. And so some families can survive that and form the emotional, relational skills in spite of that. But I think what it does is, in a lot of ways, it gives you a really clear path of, like, if I do xyz, then I'll. Then I'll be happy. And then when it doesn't work out, it's really harmful. Because guess what? That's why so many people are like, I did everything right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:09:46] Why did he cheat on me? I did everything right. How did my kid end up on drugs? Right. And it's because they didn't learn the emotional or relational skills they needed to. But the church sold them. If you do these little things, you'll get that blessing. And it doesn't work that way. And I think that's why. That's why I have a job as a therapist. Because the truth is, religion, I think, was therapy before therapy existed. It was a way to organize society. It was a way to answer some of life's uncertainties.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:10:14] But I don't think it. The problem is there's a lot of uncertainties in life and you have to sit with them. A lot of times there aren't answers. You don't get to control your child. You don't get to choose if your partner cheats on you. Guess what? You don't. You only get to choose what you do in response. So I think the church often does make false promises about what it can offer for families.

John Dehlin [02:10:35] You kind of trade reality for a fantasy that in the end doesn't deliver what it promises. I think. And, you know, a little bit of reassurance and the perception of safety and of security and of superiority. But if you scratch it, it's. It's a mirage.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:10:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:59] And then you. And if you didn't do that knowingly, then you've been deceived. You didn't have informed consent and you thought it was real.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:11:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:07] When it was. When it. When it wasn't real, you know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:11:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:11] And you give your life to a fraud or a deception. And it's sad to say that, because I'm glad that I'm not an alcoholic and I'm grateful for my Mormon upbringing, but I'll never wish that I could go back and take the blue pill and believe what isn't true. I'll never want to choose that. No matter how hard life gets, I'm never going to want to live under a known false reality just for the perception of some sort of psychological reassurance. And if I think about my children and nieces and nephews, so my parents are still active and believing in the church. Two of my Three siblings remain faithful. Pretty much none of the grandparents are in the church.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:12:01] Grandchildren.

John Dehlin [02:12:02] Yeah. Of my children or my nieces and nephews, almost none are still in the church. So for my believing siblings.

Guest [02:12:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:13] Well, for my non believing sibling, he was led into a lie and he got married and had all these kids under false pretenses. And for my believing siblings, they failed because they're not gonna have an eternal family. And they were faithful to the end.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:12:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:29] So everybody kind of ends up losing and they. They exchange reality for a myth that couldn't deliver what it promised, you know, and probably added to the suffering. At the end of the day, you think you might be avoiding suffering, but so oftentimes you're actually compounding the suffering.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:12:50] Yeah, I think. Yeah. When I think about me stepping away from the church, one of the things that has been really painful has been that some of my family members see me as spiritually dead and that that is an unnecessary pain.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:13:11] And I think in a lot of ways there is this. There is this kind of reality that when you step away from the church, your family might love you less and. And they distance and they don't have to. And so I think in a lot of ways, as the one who stepped away, I get blamed, Right. For any distance that me leaving the church has created. But, like, I'm right here.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:13:52] Like, I didn't go anywhere. I'm alive. And so in a lot of ways I see. Some families, I think, can take the opportunity to create intimacy and have hard conversations. And I think other families don't know maybe how to have hard conversations or they just want to preach or change you.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:14] And so I think that that is a really difficult thing for families too, is like that, that the doctrine creates a loss when your family members are here. So you're literally giving up years of being with your loved ones because you are concerned about their eternal welfare. Or maybe you're even concerned that they're going to start getting on drugs or something. You know, they probably thought my life would implode. I don't know, but it hasn't.

Life and Happiness Beyond Mormonism

John Dehlin [02:14:50] Do you feel happy, healthy, and do you feel like you're in a happy, healthy marriage without Mormonism?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:14:58] Yes. Yes, yes. I don't know why I had to say that three times, but Mormons will

John Dehlin [02:15:06] say that's not possible. I think.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:15:08] Yeah, I do feel like, you know, I have thought about it. I definitely feel happy in my marriage. I. Yeah, I don't have any hesitations with that, that I have a really satisfying marriage. I did have a Family member. Like, I said something. I was like, I understand that you are worried that this is a real loss, that I lost my faith. Like, that makes sense that that would cause. I never thought it would happen to me either. I said, so I understand that you're worried about that, but I'm telling you, this is what's best for me. She's like, well, I don't know if you're happy. And I was like, what? But then I was like, do I seem not happy?

John Dehlin [02:15:43] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:15:44] And I was thinking about this, and I don't know that I really think of myself as, like, happy or not happy, if that makes sense. But I was thinking about that. I was like, you know, maybe that is good feedback in the sense that, like, I don't know that I would necessarily appear to my family or other friends as like, wow, a weight was lifted off this woman.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:16:08] Like, she's a new woman. I don't know that that's how they would describe me. But it may be hard to untangle from, like, the death. Right. Like, that I lost my husband and had trauma. And from that. And then I've also had. I've also had, in some ways, lost family relations. Like, I don't have as strong of family relationships as I used to. Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:16:37] Some of those relationships are strained, and so there is a level of sadness and grief I still carry. But am I happy with my family? Yes, absolutely. Do I feel sure about my choices? Absolutely. I have a great job. I enjoy. I feel like I can be creative. I feel like I'm living my life in the way that I want.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:17:03] There's a lot of things that are stressful in the world right now that make me really concerned that infringe on my happiness. But I don't. I don't know that my happiness is really probably that different than what it was in the church because I don't know. I don't know that the church. I don't know that I've seen anybody that. I was like, the church changed whether or not you struggled with depression. Like, I don't know that church works that way. I think I have a different way of dealing with problems in the church, and I think it's working for me.

John Dehlin [02:17:40] Beautiful. Well, I want to keep going. I think we could definitely do another eight hours, but for the sake of humanity, you've gone five and a half hours straight without a break. And I'm ashamed to admit that. But let's end. Margi has this idea if she wants to end with a few final questions and you were kind enough to think about this before. So we enjoy the Azra Klein Show. It's a podcast with the New York Times. And he always asks his guests at the end, what three books do you recommend? But we tweaked it a bit. This is Margi's idea. So we're going to start ending all episodes, other than thanking you for this amazing story.

Recommendations, Closing Thoughts, and Gratitude

John Dehlin [02:18:23] And maybe let's figure out a way to have you back. What is a book, podcast or TV show, or all of them that you have enjoyed lately that you recommend? And I'm reading them, so if you need me to cue you, I can.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:18:36] Okay.

Guest [02:18:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:37] So let's go with book. You said When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows by Steven Beaker. What do you like about that?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:18:44] Yeah, it's just been really interesting, this idea of common knowledge that things really change when we know that someone else knows that we know and they know. So it's this idea of, like. But a lot of times.

Guest [02:18:59] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:18:59] That certain things can happen. And I won't reveal that I know. Like, you know, like, I could fart right now and I could pretend like it didn't happen. And so you may not react the same way because you're like, did she not know that she did that? But if I knew and drew attention to it, and then I know. And then, you know, I might get embarrassed that you. You know what I mean? So it's kind of this interesting thought experiment, but it's really interesting, I think, for the political implications and just technology and how we get fed different information now.

John Dehlin [02:19:29] And so, yeah, two things come to mind, like when you see that documentary that many of the executives of social media companies don't let their kids use social media. Like that kind of crazy stuff. And then there's also, like, the. The most common question I get is, do the brethren really believe? Oh, and, you know, there's a chance that some or all the brethren don't believe. I think that's relatively small. It's almost a guarantee that they know that things work very differently than how they lead us to believe.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:20:01] But that idea of even you saying, well, maybe they don't know gives you a lot of compassion for them that maybe they don't deserve.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:20:10] So that's just one example. You know, a couple examples that come to my mind.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:14] Yeah. Yeah. It relates a lot to my story of, like, now I know that they know, and that changes a lot for me.

John Dehlin [02:20:21] It does. It does. And with the Internet, it's hard for them to ever claim they don't know stuff these days because everyone else knows, so how can they not know?

Guest [02:20:29] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:30] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:20:31] I think that's caused a lot of people to leave the church because in 2025, how can the brethren not know all this stuff? They know.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:38] Yes, you know, and I know that you know. And so if you don't talk about it or fix it, it erodes trust. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:44] Or fix. Okay. Podcast

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:49] A woman that faked cancer and then got all these people to donate. Yeah, so it was interesting.

John Dehlin [02:20:55] So you recommend it?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:20:56] Yeah, I really recommend it. Yeah, it's interesting.

John Dehlin [02:20:58] And then TV show you've got. We Were the Lucky Ones.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:21:01] Yeah. So that one is about Holocaust survivors. And I love World War II. Like, I've watched World War II in color. It's an interesting. The stories are always interesting. But this one is about. It's based on a real family, but you watch how the family navigates the war. So it just really exposes it from not so much like a war soldier, but from the survivors. Like, how did Jews actually navigate as people started to persecute them and exterminate them? Really? It's a tough watch, but it's very timely right now, I think.

John Dehlin [02:21:41] Beautiful. What's Chad Powers?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:21:43] Oh, and Chad Powers. I definitely wanna put a plug in for Chad Powers' cause I want it to get a season two. Chad Powers is a new comedy show. It's about a disgraced football player that basically disguises to play. Disguises himself to play football again. And so he has to take on this kind of ridiculous Persona to pretend he's not.

Guest [02:22:03] Who.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:04] Like a fucking former disgraced one. But he wants a shot. And anyway, it's got. What is his name? He's like a heartthrob right now. Oh, I'm trying to remember. It has Steve Zahn in it and what is his name?

John Dehlin [02:22:17] Glen Powell.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:18] Glenn Powell. Glen Powell's in it and he. Yeah, he's great. It's really funny. It's some of the better comedy I've watched in recent years.

John Dehlin [02:22:28] Okay, beautiful. All right. And then I think the last thing we're asking if you want to share is someone you admire.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:36] Yeah, so I, I answered that. My in laws, Isaac's parents, I think I talked a little bit about that earlier, but they've been a really great example, I think, of like a mixed faith marriage, but just like being best friends, giving each other space. And you know, they've.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:22:58] They immigrated, they built a business, they raised three children here who all have very different interests. One's a music, a choir, high school Choir teacher. One went into the air force and police, and Isaac was a cowboy. And I just think, to me, that's really admirable that your kids would choose professions that are so different. Like, that indicates a level of freedom, I think, for.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:23:24] And just the way they, like, love our children and show up. I think for me and Adam, and we're just kind of. It feels like when we get together, we're like this modern family where we have, like, two veterans, a gay couple, and then, like, the widow of their son and her husband. And it feels very much like a modern family, but really based on a lot of love and respect. And so I've just really admired the way that, like, even though I think it was really hard for them when I met Adam and was gonna remarry, that they've worked through that. And. Yeah, just the way they prioritize family is so beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:24:01] I mean, it really contrasts with the. I mean, so many people we've had on the show have had the traditional nuclear Mormon family, and it's been extremely toxic or damaging. And you just described something that's kind of like the opposite.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:17] And I'm not saying all Mormon families are toxic. I'm not. There are plenty of, I'm sure, super healthy, good Mormon families. But the type of family that the Mormon Church would say is inferior or broken, which is the one you just described, can actually be super healthy and beautiful and powerful.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:34] Isn't that interesting?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:35] Yeah, Yeah. I think it's this idea of, like, the Mormon Church kind of sells that, like, a happy family comes in this box, and it can actually come in all shapes and sizes, and there's like. Yeah. So kind of operates by different principles, and sometimes we're advertised.

John Dehlin [02:24:52] Yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:53] Yeah. Can I share one more thing?

John Dehlin [02:24:56] Yeah. Other than cheese. You gotta talk about cheese.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:24:57] Oh, I will talk about cheese. I just. I wanted. Because there had been something about reconstruction. And I just wanted to say this because I think sometimes people talk about this differently in Mormon stories than I would. And I don't need to get into this very long, but a lot of times people are like, ask, like, what I've replaced this with, you know, in a lot of ways. And that doesn't really resonate with me. Like, I don't go to a new church. I haven't tried new churches. I don't necessarily, you know, do something else instead of reading the Scriptures.

Guest [02:25:31] Right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:31] There aren't this. I have really felt that the loss of my faith has been a loss. Loss. It has been loss.

John Dehlin [02:25:38] Back to grieving.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:25:39] It, it has been like grief and I, like a part of my heart died, you know, like, that's really, that's really real for me. And, but it doesn't make sense to me to replace it because it is, it's like a death for me. And, and I guess I just don't see the solution as like replacing it.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:26:06] And I find purpose where I can. And I try to be a good human and try to do what's right in my relationships that are close to me and also in just my relationships with humankind. But for me, I don't know that there's been a huge reconstruction and I don't know if part of that's that in a lot of ways who I am pre post Mormon is pretty much the same. Like on some level I've always been developing who I was.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:26:36] So it's not like I'm like, oh, I need to go try everything. I don't know that I. Yeah. Necessarily. Like, I didn't get married young, right. And marry someone I didn't like. Like those things aren't, those aren't really true for me. Like in a lot of ways I did carve out my own path, so maybe there's less for me to like deconstruct, reconstruct, but just in a lot of ways it's just been a letting go and an unlearning and it, it hasn't necessarily been a rebuilding, but an unlearning and a letting go.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:09] And I just wanted to share that because I don't, I don't know that there's always a lot of space that like you could just let go. Right. And that there might not be something to fill it.

John Dehlin [02:27:20] I mean, that reminds me of our grief conversation. Like, it's just healthy. Yeah. Losing a high demand religion is very much a death.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:30] Yeah. I have not found a community to compare to it. And I don't know that I will, but I do know that I can't take the trade offs. Right. I couldn't stay in the community with what, with this. I would be betraying myself to stay in the community. So then the community wouldn't be so helpful.

John Dehlin [02:27:48] So. So yeah.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:51] And cheese.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:52] And cheese. Yes. What was the question?

John Dehlin [02:27:54] The question was like, what's lighting you up lately?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:27:56] What's lighting me up lately? And I did say cheese. So anyone who knows me knows I'm like the queen of queso. I'm a big queso connoisseur. But when I was in France this summer, right. I saw they had all these Cheese shops. I was like, I guess I'm probably a little bit French, but I really got into cheese. And then I found a cheese shop in where I live and they are. They have these wonderful cheeses. And a really well aged cheese has these like little tyrosine crystals that are just like a party in your mouth. They're excellent. So I buy that cheese and it's great.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:28:32] And I buy French butter and it's so delicious. And they told me they are going to. I guess it's hard to get these cheeses. Like, they only can get them at certain times. They. And they told me in November they're gonna get a large really aged comp day, which is one of my faves. And they said they were even gonna have shirts that said straight outta comp day. And so I'm determined to get that shirt and to get a big block of that cheese. But, yeah, cheese has been fun for me lately.

John Dehlin [02:28:56] What are three cheeses you recommend to somebody wanting to branch out?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:28:59] Ooh, I like a really aged Comte and it's gonna be hard to find because the 18 month is not as good as like a 36 month. I do also like Gruyere is really great. I tried some other ones, but I actually don't know if I will remember all their names because we just like bought them at the supermarket. Gouda's fun. Like, I don't dislike Gouda, but I don't buy Gouda just to eat.

John Dehlin [02:29:25] Usually Camel bear.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:27] There's this. Okay, this brie.

John Dehlin [02:29:29] No, Venezuelan beaver cheese. That's the Monty Python skin. I have to throw that in.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:35] No, there is this one I've been buying, but I don't know what kind of cheese it is. It's called Prairie Breeze and it's made in America, but it's one of those ones with the salt crystals. But I think. I don't know what kind Prairie Breeze is. Not like, I don't know what that means. But anyway, I guess if you can find it in your local grocery store.

John Dehlin [02:29:50] We're almost at six hours. I've been a terrible host.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:54] Oh, you're fine.

John Dehlin [02:29:55] You have had no break in almost six hours.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:29:57] I'm surprised my bladder has held, but it did.

John Dehlin [02:30:00] Yeah, I'm surprised. Yeah. Margi is going to be so mad at me. Margi taps out at 4. So anyway.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:06] Yeah, no, that's fine. I figured she had to probably get somewhere.

John Dehlin [02:30:10] Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for an amazing episode. I really want to write a book on the dark side of, you know, eternal marriage and ceilings in Mormonism because it's. I believe my sister died prematurely because of these sorts of issues. And I don't think I've even really begun to analyze how it's affected me with my parents, divorce and all that. So this is just a real issue. And I'm glad we spent six hours because it deserves it. And much, much more so than. Thank you for being willing to share your wisdom.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:30:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:58] And your experience with us.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:31:01] Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate me having a place to tell my story. I've. Yeah. It's been a lot. And I, I, Yeah, I want a lot of. I want widows to know that they're not alone and that people have spoken up on their behalf. And I think a lot more people, if they knew, would advocate for them. And anyway, I just think it is a tough road and I'm sorry that it's tougher. And I hope they can find the freedom I found.

John Dehlin [02:31:30] And if people want to hire you or your husband or both of you as therapists or whatever, do they have to live in Texas?

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:31:36] Yeah, you got to live in Texas. Yeah, we're licensed in Texas only. Our practices are kind of small. Not that you couldn't reach out, but I mean. Cause we're both professors, but they could. Cause sometimes we do have openings also we have a podcast. So you can listen to the podcast if you want advice on sexual communication.

John Dehlin [02:31:58] Keeping it up with the Joneses.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:31:59] Yeah, keeping it up with the Joneses. And sometimes I do put out like a call for questions, so we answer listeners questions. So that might be a place too. But people could reach out to me personally as well. Like they can message me through the podcast page on Facebook or Instagram too, if they want to reach out any sort of way and connect.

John Dehlin [02:32:21] All right, well, Rebecca Lucero Jones, thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Stay in touch. We'd love to have you back.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:32:28] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:32:29] All right.

Guest [02:32:30] All right.

Rebecca Lucero Jones [02:32:30] I'd be glad to come back.

John Dehlin [02:32:31] All right. And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Brooklyn and Julia for all they do behind the scenes. Thanks to Margi, my co host. She's amazing and makes all this possible. We couldn't do this without our donors. So if you're a donor, thank you for making all this possible. If you're not a donor, but you value this type of content, we have people cancel every month, and if we don't get new donors to replace the old ones, we have to start cutting back. So if you value this content, you're not a donor. And you want to see continue. We don't do product placement, we don't do sponsorships, we don't do red ads and we really don't make a lot from our YouTube or Spotify ads.

John Dehlin [02:33:11] Honestly, we rely on donations. So if you value this type of content, please become a monthly donor. You can also like and subscribe. Click on The Bell on YouTube. Follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you can. That always helps. Comments are great. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with your feedback, questions or input. And we found out about Rebecca because she applied.

John Dehlin [02:33:39] So please apply. You can go to mormonstories.org apply fill out the application 3 minute video plus filling out the form. The thing we're looking for are really good storytellers with really good stories. Don't get intimidated, but that's how we ultimately make our decision decisions. And you know, please apply if you think you've got a good story. And the three minute video that we record is going to be the most important part. So if you don't submit a 3 minute video, we will not accept you. So please record that three minute video. Let us know that you are a follower, a listener of Mormon stories and that you have a sense for why your story will be interesting to our viewers particularly.

John Dehlin [02:34:24] That's going to be your best bet. So anyway, apply. Support us if you can. Give us feedback, reach out, be good to each other, be kind to each other, be a peacemaker, be a bridge builder and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody.

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