Introducing Mel and Stu Brown

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 828

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John de Lynn. This November 16, 2017, we are recording from a secret location in downtown Salt Lake City. And I have to say, and I say this often, but this is one of the most exciting interviews for me in a long, long time. Oftentimes we try and kind of mix things up and find novel or even celebrity kind of interviews because we want to make sure that the people stay engaged and stay interested and enjoy these interviews. But we regularly get feedback that listeners sometimes just like hearing from, say, average members, average, you know, Mormons or post Mormons, and just kind of better understand people's individual journeys. Now, I'm not gonna claim that the people that I'm about to interview, Mel and Stu, are average. They're phenomenal people. They're some of my favorite people on the planet. They're actually dear, close friends and in some ways they've been alongside my journey in sort of deep and meaningful ways. But I met them in Cache Valley years ago as I was going through my stuff with the disciplinary councils and the excommunication. That's kind of when, for me, Stu and Mel kind of burst onto the scenes. But they have a really cool story, in some ways a very traditional Mormon story. For many, many years, kind of born and raised in the church, orthodox, active, devout members return, you know, return mission for Stu and many other kind of cool, normal sorts of Mormon things. But a way that it's a little bit, you know, interesting or novel is that, you know, Stu kind of was living in Cache Valley when I was there. He was very supportive of what I was going through. And something that is also probably pretty interesting, irrelevant is that Stu's faith journey sort of began before Mel's did. And so in that sense, in that sense, they had to deal with a mixed faith marriage and a mixed faith marriage while Mel was pregnant, which was its own complicating factor, and with kind of young kids. And so we're going to be talking about them as orthodox members. We're going to be talking about Stu's faith crisis. We're going to be talking about what that was like for Mel as she remained a believer and he wasn't. And we're going to talk about kind of how they navigated that and then kind of what. What allowed Mel to kind of become more sympathetic and supportive of Stu's concerns. And then we can get to the really interesting and compelling stuff, which is kind of how they navigated mutually, a faith transition, and then finally kind of how they've rebuilt a life after. And these are two really special people. They're both entrepreneurs. Stu runs a moving company. Mel sells jewelry online, and they also have young kids. So a lot here. A lot that's really interesting. And I'm just super excited to welcome Mel and Stu to Mormon Stories podcast. So. Hey, guys.

Stu Brown [00:04:16] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Thanks for. Thanks for joining us.

Stu Brown [00:04:18] Oh, thanks for inviting us.

John Dehlin [00:04:20] Yeah. All the way down from Cache Valley.

Stu Brown [00:04:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:22] Do you want to make a shout out to Cache Valley Aggies?

Stu Brown [00:04:28] Maybe next year?

John Dehlin [00:04:29] Yeah. Well, still basketball, right? Yeah. All right, so the way I usually like to start is just by having you guys each kind of talk a little bit about your Mormon ancestry and then talk about your early years in the church and kind of what the church meant to you. So, Mel, why don't we start with you, talk just a little bit about if you even know a little about your Mormon ancestry and kind of how that informed your upbringing in the church.

Mel's Family Background and Mormon Heritage

Mel Brown [00:04:57] Yeah. So my dad, he's always been really strong and faithful in the church, and his parents and grandparents and great grandparents, so. So just a long line of just all being in the church. My mom, she converted when she was 22.

John Dehlin [00:05:14] So where was she living?

Mel Brown [00:05:18] Colorado.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Okay, and where'd they meet?

Mel Brown [00:05:22] They met at a singles ward.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Where?

Mel Brown [00:05:26] In Utah.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] In Utah?

Mel Brown [00:05:28] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] Okay.

Mel Brown [00:05:30] And yeah, ended up getting married.

John Dehlin [00:05:34] So you were raised. You were born in the Covenant?

Mel Brown [00:05:37] Yep.

Stu Brown [00:05:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:38] How many siblings?

Mel Brown [00:05:39] I've got two older sisters and an older brother.

John Dehlin [00:05:41] So you're the youngest of four?

Mel Brown [00:05:43] Yep. I actually have another brother, Ryan, that would have been two years older than me, but he died when he was four months old, so I never met him. So there would have been, you know, I've living about four.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] And so you were raised where?

Mel Brown [00:05:53] Primarily in Orem. I was born and raised there.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] Is that Mountain View? What high school? Orem High School.

Mel Brown [00:06:00] My sisters went to Mountain View and then they build Timpanogos, the new school. But then I actually went to Orem High because a bunch of my friends went there. So I Went to Orem High School.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] Okay, so that's like BYU ground zero, right? Kind of. Right.

Mel Brown [00:06:13] Happy Valley.

John Dehlin [00:06:14] Happy Valley. That's intense. Utah county is intense, right?

Mel Brown [00:06:17] Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] So talk about what the church meant to you growing up both in your family, but also your identity and your spirituality.

Mel Brown [00:06:24] Yeah, I was always happy in the church. Didn't know anything different. Never had questions, never had doubts. Always just straight arrow kid. I mean, I was pretty much the poster child for Mormonism, you know, Never touched alcohol, never tried drugs, never, like, didn't mess around too much with guys. Like, just really good, solid kid. If there was a rule, I was gonna follow it. So I was kind of more black and white, but I was happy in it. I had really good friends. I didn't really know anyone that was. You know, they would talk about doing missionary work and trying to be missionary for other people. Like, I didn't really know anybody that wasn't Mormon from where I live. All my neighbors, my family, my friends. Like, everyone was just Mormon in the church, so.

Stu Brown [00:07:09] Yeah.

Mel Brown [00:07:09] But I was happy with it.

John Dehlin [00:07:11] What were some of the Mormon rituals that your family would engage in? To what extent was Mormonism informing your family life?

Mel Brown [00:07:20] I mean, you know, like, we would do our family home evening, and we'd do. We'd go to church every Sunday. Like, if we went camping, we'd go camping a lot. We had a little trailer and we'd go down to Mount Pleasant and, you know, we'd go to Sacrament on Sunday. So we'd drive into town, we'd go to whatever random ward that was there, and then we'd go to Sacrament and we'd come back and go camping for the rest of the time. So, you know, my family was really in, and I was always made sure that I went to church. So, like, if I stayed up late the night before on Saturday, I would feel guilty if I didn't go to church. So, like, if I was exhausted and church was at 9 o' clock and I stayed up super late the night before, I was like, well, Melinda, you know, if you have an excuse not to go to church because you're tired, well, then maybe you shouldn't have stayed out the night before. So it's like I kind of had this. And I just kind of governed over myself like that too. Like, I was always just really strong, strong, solid testimony and just was all in. You know, my family was all in.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Did you get the sense that your parents were orthodox believers?

Mel Brown [00:08:22] Mm, yeah. Yep. And my mom, you know, the church was really good for her, because she kind of had a hard childhood, and that was the first time she ever, like, felt love, was she'd got invited by some Relief Society sisters to go to church, Mormon church, and that was the first time she felt loved in her entire life. And that's when she was 22. So I know, you know, the church means a lot to her because that provided her peace and, you know, she's got a strong relationship with God and has a good relationship with him and feels like she can get answers from him. So it was a good thing for her, for sure. And my dad, you know, that's just kind of all he knew.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] Did they serve in callings in the Lord, leadership callings?

Mel Brown [00:09:03] Yeah. Like, my dad would be like, you know, first counselor in the bishopric, and he would be one of the clerks. So. So on Sunday, he'd spend a bunch of hours there doing the finances and stuff like that. My dad's a civil engineer for byu. He was. He retired several years ago, but went to school at byu, got a job there, worked there until he retired. And. Yeah, just all the typical, you know, callings that they'd have.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Okay, what about your personal spiritual life as a child and adolescent? Did you. Did you kind of ever kind of say, I want to really know that this is true. I want to make sure that it's right for me and have those moments where you would pray or study or really try to get your own testimony versus rely on the light of your parents?

Mel Brown [00:09:49] No, I just. Not really. I never had some big wow moment. It was just like, I always believed it. I just always was like, oh, I was taught that this is true. I believe that it's true. I've had good experiences. I'm happy here. I feel that it's true. So I always just, you know, and then I'd have different lessons or things that would like. I remember lessons in seminary that would say, oh, if you have any music that has bad words in it or swear words in it, you know, maybe throw those away. I'm like, okay. So I'd throw them away. Like, I would just listen to what they said, like, oh, that's a good idea. And I mean, I was strong. Like, if people had suggestions to be better, I went for it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] So self improvement, growth, mindset.

Mel Brown [00:10:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Were you. What extracurricular activities did you do in high school?

Mel Brown [00:10:31] Soccer, dance and gymnastics. So I kind of just like, switched around. My parents would let us do, like, one sport at a time. So I would do dance since I was younger, for several years and Then I was like, I'll take a break from that. And then I did gymnastics for several years. Then I got into soccer. Did that for four years. I just kind of bounced around. I never got, like, hardcore into it. Like, never played any sports, like, in high school. I did dance in high school, but it wasn't like the drill team for me. I really like balance in my life and. And I could have gone far in gymnastics. My mom had a friend that would teach people gymnastics, like, could go to Olympics and stuff like that. She taught at a really good studio that really pushes people. And I did that for, like, a week. And it was just intense. And I would have to take a bus. I was like, 13 or 14. I'd have to take a bus to go there, be there for hours, take a bus home. Took all day. So I just didn't want to commit everything. So I'm like, I need time to play, but I want time to have a sport and develop a talent. I want to have time for friends. When I was older, I wanted time to have a job so I could make money, so I could go shopping and buy things I wanted. So I always try to have a balance in all things. I don't want one thing to consume all of my time.

John Dehlin [00:11:40] Were there ever any points in your teenage years where you had doubts about the church or questions?

Mel Brown [00:11:45] No, never.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] Or bad experiences in the church?

Mel Brown [00:11:49] Nope. Nope, I loved it.

John Dehlin [00:11:50] What were your favorite experiences? Being a teenage Mormon?

Mel Brown [00:11:55] Like, girls camp. I have so many great experiences from girls camp.

John Dehlin [00:11:58] Like, what?

Mel Brown [00:12:00] Just, like, really got along with the leaders and, like, we would just have fun. And, like, I always got along with adults, too, and, like, just have fun. I don't know, just going to the. Just doing the fun, different things that we would do at girls camp. And we'd laugh and we'd sneak girl, like, donuts and, you know, just random things. Like, we would just. I don't know, just overall, everything was just fun. I was just a happy kid. Happy, positive kid. Just went along with the flow with everything. I remember when, like, Hinkley came out with, you know, to have just one earring for women, men, whatever, just have, like, one ear pierced. And I recently, probably a year before, had gotten a second one just to have, like, a stud in my ear and then have another one, you know, and as soon as he mentioned to take it out, like, I took it right out. I didn't question it at all. I was like, okay, you know, I believed in, you gotta follow the prophet and whatever's taught and the small things, so then we could follow and be obedient in the big things and never questioned anything.

Life Goals and Identity as Young Mormons

John Dehlin [00:13:00] What were your goals as a teenage Mormon? What were you fighting for, like, your life goals?

Mel Brown [00:13:06] I just wanted to be a good, good kid and not have any regrets. So I made sure not to cross any. Like, you know what, for the drinking alcohol thing, I never even tried a sip of it. Because for me, I'm like, even if I just had a sip of it, then if somebody asked me, have you had alcohol before? I would have to say yes. But then I'd feel like I'd have to justify, well, I only had a sip. I'm like, But I still would have to say yes. So I was adamant about, like, I'm not gonna cross any line. I'm not gonna touch it. And I didn't allow myself because I knew that would be a regret. So I was really good about. I've always been good about looking into the future and seeing what is the future going to look like? Am I going to regret this for my kids? So every decision I made, it was like, could this possibly be something that I don't want to have to explain later on? So when I have kids, I don't want to have pictures of me wearing tank tops or something or whatever was against the rules, because how am I going to explain that to my kid? Like, I need to be the example for myself and for other people around me. So I was always like, I want to be a good example to my family, my friends, my future family, friends, whatever. So I was hardcore.

John Dehlin [00:14:15] Okay, and what were your big life goals? Like, when you're 90 and you wanted to check off the boxes for a life well lived? What were the big boxes?

Mel Brown [00:14:25] Just being clean and pure and following the roles that the church kind of.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] What were those big ones?

Mel Brown [00:14:31] Like, not having sex before I was married. Just all the. Like, I wouldn't watch rated R movies because they said not, you know, the rules not to watch them. Same thing. Not drinking, not doing drugs, like, any of that stuff. But even when I had friends, like, I.

John Dehlin [00:14:46] But what about, like, the life decisions? Not just the things you didn't. You wanted to make sure you did in life?

Mel Brown [00:14:55] Yeah, like, just. I wanted to go to college. That was important to me. So I guess my goal in life was I always wanted to be young and successful. Like, that just, like, got me motivated and excited. And for me, like, I wanted to have a really good job. I wanted to make good money, and I wanted to be like, I earned that. I. That was my hard work that I did for that. So wanted to get married, have a family, have children.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] Married how? Married, how and where?

Mel Brown [00:15:18] I wanted to make sure I married return missionary in the temple. And not just, you know, I wasn't. I didn't want just a returned missionary. Like, he needed to be, like, a faithful one that went for the right reasons. Like, I don't want to marry missionary just because he went, but then find out he was a troublemaker and his heart wasn't in it. So, like, I wanted someone that was, like, really into it. I wanted to raise a family in the church, and I wanted me and my husband to be on the same page. That was very important to me. So, like, I wouldn't even date people or guys that I feel like couldn't take me to the temple. So that's the thing. If I would look at someone, if they, like, were breaking the rules in any way, it was like, okay, I can't ever be serious with this guy. Like, if I saw someone, like, they had tattoos or they were. Seemed like a troublemaker, like, I'm like, okay, we can hang out, but I'm not gonna let myself date you or get serious with you because I don't want to risk falling in love with this person and then wanting to marry them. Like, I wasn't gonna put myself in that position, you know, So I was really careful about just dating really, really good, solid guys that had the same values and morals as me. And. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] So temple marriage to a devout Mormon guy, kids, and to be kind of entrepreneurial yourself, you know, I never.

Mel Brown [00:16:39] I wasn't. I didn't know anything about that when I was younger. So that's something that's just shifted within the past few years.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] But you said you wanted to be financially successful.

Mel Brown [00:16:48] Yeah, like, I figured just get a job. Like, get a good career working for somebody else, getting paid good money.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] Got it.

Mel Brown [00:16:54] Like, that was important.

John Dehlin [00:16:55] Now, that's a little bit of a departure from the traditional Mormon path in the sense that maybe especially when you were growing up, Mormon women were raised to be homemakers. So for you to have ambitions around actually a career and making money, did you feel different in that way? Did you ever notice that that maybe wasn't the path that most women aspired to within the church?

Mel Brown [00:17:18] A little bit. Yeah. But I figured, you know, I don't know how long it's gonna take me to get married. I know I want to get married. I'm gonna raise kids and be in the church, and I want to raise my kids. So I knew I wasn't gonna be working forever. I never planned on working while I had kids. I. But I just figured, hey, you know, if I graduate and if I. I want to be young when I graduate. So, you know, graduated when I was 22 from college and then want to make sure I had a career lined up and making good money. Like, who knows when I'm gonna get married? It could be a couple years. And then if it takes us a couple years to have kids, at least I've got a good maybe four years or so. Who knows where I can be making good money and, you know, be able to get a nice house, buy those things that I want and feel good about being, like, successful and, like, I earned that and I worked for that and just always was excited about that stuff, like thinking a little bit above the box and not just, I don't know, nice.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Other happy memories other than girls camp as a Mormon teen or young adult, youth conference, temple trips, dance festivals.

Mel Brown [00:18:22] I love going to the. I love going to the state dances. I love dancing. That was my passion in life. Like, that was my stress reliever. That was my exercise. That was with my friends, listening to the music loud. Just like, love, love it. That made me happy. So I went dancing a lot. So I had my little dance classes in school that I would do, but then we'd go to, like, once a week, I'd try to go to whatever dances were going on. So had really, really good, solid friends that were just strong in the church, too. So, like, we could talk about deep things or have fun together and keep it real. But they were good examples. So there was no way I was gonna get in trouble with these friends.

John Dehlin [00:19:01] So any seminary?

Mel Brown [00:19:03] Yep, went to seminary. I was class. Was it seminary or maybe it was just. Yeah, maybe it was seminary. I was a class president in high school. Not of like, just of that class, like the class I was in, but

John Dehlin [00:19:19] four years of seminary.

Mel Brown [00:19:20] Yep, four years of seminary.

John Dehlin [00:19:21] Did you enjoy that?

Mel Brown [00:19:22] Yeah, and it was nice. You know, when you enter in Orem, at least we didn't have to do the early morning stuff, like, just pretty much everyone's Mormon, so they. It was just in the middle of the day, like, you could choose when you went. So that was nice to not have to get up. I hear some people would have to get up super early before school and go. So I didn't have to do that. But yeah, I liked it. It was fine. Had no problems with it and didn't know any different.

John Dehlin [00:19:45] Did you have a personal relationship With God, like, in your prayers and stuff?

Mel Brown [00:19:49] Not really.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] Why not?

Mel Brown [00:19:52] I don't know. For me, like, when I would pray, it would just be like, okay, dear Heavenly Father, like, thank you for this day. Thank you for, you know, give thanks for the things that I had. And then just basically asking, like, for things that I wanted, I guess. Like, and then it was like, okay, I kind of made the decision in my mind of what I wanted to do. So it was like, this is what I want to do. This is the school I want to go to. Just, if that's not what I'm supposed to do, just throw a roadblock in my way or change it. But it was basically, thank you, and this is what I'm going to do. Stop me if that's not the right way.

John Dehlin [00:20:26] What about getting direction or answers? You never had that expectation?

Mel Brown [00:20:31] No, I never really. No, I never really did that. And I was a little envious of my mom because I felt like she had a close relationship with God. And I think she had to. You know, she worked really hard for that. And maybe I just wasn't willing to work that hard or I didn't know exactly what to do, you know. But for her in her hard times, that's all she had was. She had nobody else. The only place she could go was to God to find peace. And she worked hard for that. So she'd have a journal and she'd write to God and she'd wait and listen, and he'd respond back, and she would write things down. So she would tell me all the time, like, God wants me to do this, and he wants me to write this book and he wants me to do this. And I was, like, blown away with. I've never had God tell me stuff to do like that, you know, So I don't know if I was just doing it wrong or I didn't listen. I'm a goer, too, so I'm never really good at, like, the whole just sitting back and just listening, just chilling like, I'm a mover and a shaker.

Stu Brown [00:21:26] You are.

Mel Brown [00:21:26] I'm just wired that way. You are, you know, so, you know, you save me, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:32] So any guilt and shame as a teen?

Mel Brown [00:21:34] Nope. I didn't do anything that would give me any reason to have that.

Stu Brown [00:21:38] Love it.

John Dehlin [00:21:39] Love it. Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:21:40] All right.

Mel Brown [00:21:40] Like I said, poster child.

John Dehlin [00:21:42] All right.

Mel Brown [00:21:43] Don't have any awesome stories for you.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Mormon dream stuff. I did Leave it to Beaver.

Mel Brown [00:21:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] In the 90s, right?

Mel Brown [00:21:49] Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:21:50] Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] Is that high school in the 90s?

Mel Brown [00:21:51] Basically, yeah. Born in 82.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] So high school in the late 90s.

Mel Brown [00:21:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] All right. Anything else about your upbringing that you want to mention before we move to Stu?

Mel Brown [00:22:02] Did I miss anything? That's pretty much it.

Stu's Upbringing and Personal Spiritual Life

John Dehlin [00:22:05] All right. All right, Stu, your turn.

Stu Brown [00:22:08] All right, tell us your. Yeah. Our parents are really similar in that my dad, born and raised in the church. Our famous Mormon ancestry would be. We could trace back to one of Parley P. Pratt's wives. I think his third wife. I can't remember her name, but my dad was always really proud of that, of, you know, one of the first apostles. And that's something he talked about a lot. But my mom was a convert, just like Melinda's mom. And our parents. My parents met in church also up in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. My dad had gone on a mission, went to byu and was working in Coeur d'. Alene. My mom went to Johns Hopkins University.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] That's a big deal.

Stu Brown [00:22:57] That's a big deal. My mom's super smart, and she taught nursing. She started a few nursing programs, or at least one nursing program at another university. And so she was working in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, and had been going to just a family ward every week. And my dad got transferred there, and he showed up and sat on my mom's pew, the one she always sat on. And my mom said, well, I'm gonna sit there, too. So she went and sat next to my dad, and they ended up talking, and they got married in the Ogden Temple. And then my dad was transferred to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and that's where I was born. And shortly after that, moved to Ogden. So I grew up in Ogden. That's pretty much all I can remember because I was really little. I have an older brother and a younger brother. We all grew up in the church. It was everything growing up. Always active, always seemed like there was always something at the church going on, whether it was a roadshow or, you know, going with my mom for Relief Society. I don't know what they used to call it. Activity days or enrichment or remember hanging out on the gym floor underneath the quilt, and my mom was doing the quilting. And that was our life growing up.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] Was your family pretty devout?

Stu Brown [00:24:33] Yeah, I would say super orthodox. If I had to define it, I'd kind of say we were McConkey Mormons. Mormon Doctrine that was. Everything was black and white.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] Any examples?

Stu Brown [00:24:49] Yeah. So this was when we were married. One thing my dad was really big on, because it says in Mormon doctrine not to play with face cards, because Bruce R. McConkie said they were of the devil or whatever his reasoning was. And I was uncomfortable with her wanting to play Go Fish or whatever. Like, it just was part of my upbringing that I'm like, no, we don't. We don't touch those. And she didn't have that little quirky rule in her family and thought I was weird. Like, I'm just trying to follow the rules. But so, yeah, so I think we were pretty. Pretty orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] When you were a kid and a teen, did you take it all really seriously? Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:25:39] So growing up in Ogden wasn't like growing up in Utah County.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] Ogden's got more diversity.

Stu Brown [00:25:46] It has more diversity. Yeah. Which I loved. But I always had two groups of friends. I had my Mormon friends that I went to church with, and then I had my non Mormon friend that, frankly, I related to more. So I kind of always felt like I was in two worlds. And I never really felt like I needed to try to be a missionary to my non Mormon friends. But that's especially in high school. That's really who I hung out with. And then on Sundays and at church activities and Scouts, I'd hang out with my Mormon friends. So.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] And then what about just following the rules as a teen? Kids can go crazy. Sure.

Stu Brown [00:26:30] They can fall astray.

John Dehlin [00:26:31] They can have. Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:26:32] Growing up, I really did feel like I had a good testimony, and I believed it. I just wasn't necessarily great at following the rules. And so in high school, I got into a little trouble, would drink a little bit and fool around with girls a little bit, but I'd always feel really guilty about it because I, you know, during the week I'd go and just do my thing and on the weekend, go to church and feel guilty. So I know lately you're interviewing lots of people that have had, you know, bad experiences with bishops. Probing interviews. I didn't have any of that. I think my bishops were sick of me coming in and confessing masturbation and, you know, being too open. And I honestly think they were like, just stop. Just stop.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] So kind of scrupulosity, a little bit, like, hyper conscious.

Stu Brown [00:27:33] Yeah. So I kind of did what I wanted, but then I felt really bad about it. And so it was just that cycle of shame and repent and feel clean, but then repeat because.

John Dehlin [00:27:47] And, you know, some might say that's just the religious experience of an adolescent. Others might say, well, that stuff can be really damaging. What was it for you? Was it just. Yeah, it was sad sometimes and shame, but I got through it. Or was it do you feel like that stuff actually had some damage?

Stu Brown [00:28:04] I think it did have some damage. I think I was always felt like I was good in school and I was relatively smart, but when I got to high school, I suffered with depression. And I think a lot of that came from just the guilt. You know, we're taught that sexual sins are just under murder. So there's murder and then there's sexual sins. And it's like, well, if I'm already masturbating, like drinking isn't any worse than that. And I didn't drink a lot in high school. Later on I did, but we can get to that. So, yeah, I really did. I didn't have a lot of self esteem in high school and it kind of all started right around that sophomore year. Ish. And so I didn't have much ambition. I was a horrible student in high school. I did run track and cross country, and I got really into ceramics because that was the one high school class I liked. And so I spent a lot of time making pots. And I ended up actually getting a scholarship to Utah State for ceramics, which was the only reason I went to college at all. But, yeah, I think it kind of messed with me growing up a bit.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] That's hard stuff because, like, once you feel like you're broken, right. You're damaged goods for something that's so normal. Right, Right. Then you just. There's no. What's the point in trying to be too good? Right? Because you're kind of.

Stu Brown [00:29:46] That's exactly how I felt. I really felt that I was not gonna make it to the celestial kingdom. And so when you already feel like you don't have a shot, why try? I felt like that quite a bit. But during high school, you know, I always had older friends and I have an older brother and he served a mission. And this was before they raised the missionary bar. And you'd see kids that you'd know and they'd kind of all do the same thing. And then they'd do the quick repentance right before the mission and go. So it was always in the back of my head that, you know, I'm gonna. I'll probably end up going on a mission. It was always one of the, you know, I'm gonna go. Because I did believe I had the indoctrination. And I'd say growing up as a little kid, I felt the spirit. I'd, you know, go. And I can remember in primary singing the Spirit of God like a fire is burning. And I feel it. So, yeah, I was a conflicted teenager for sure. My senior year of high school, I started dating a non Mormon girl. And I still had in the back of my head that, you know, I'm going to end up going on a mission. But then things started getting serious with this girl and so I actually decided I wasn't going to go. And I told everybody, I told my mom and they cried. And I went up to Utah State and that was my plan, was just to go to school. And I kind of thought I was going to end up marrying this girl. And when things didn't work out, then. I had kind of thought I had shut the door on that. And so I was pretty just floating around trying to figure out what I was going to do. And I decided, you know, maybe I should give this church and mission thing another shot. And so I hadn't gone to church the whole time. I had moved up to Logan and was going to school up there. So I started driving down on Sunday to ogden, it's just 45 minutes, and going to my family ward at home and started reading the Book of Mormon. And, you know, I started to feel better, I started to feel good. And my parents were super happy to see me at church and I was getting a lot of positive feedback and it felt great. And I read the Book of Mormon in a couple weeks and I said, you know, I feel really good, so I'm going to go on a mission. And I always, kind of throughout my whole mission, I used that as kind of my alma, the younger experience that I had strayed. Then I had come back and I had felt so good that it's got to be the Holy Ghost telling me that this is for sure true. And I used that as my testimony for up until my faith crisis, like the next 10 years of my life. I used that experience of, you know, that was me gaining my sure testimony.

John Dehlin [00:33:09] Did you feel like you had a relationship with God? Did you try to have one growing up?

Stu Brown [00:33:14] Not so much prayers and stuff? Yeah, I wasn't big on praying. Wouldn't say I really started praying until I started going through the repentance process to be able to go on a mission.

John Dehlin [00:33:29] You had transgressed?

Stu Brown [00:33:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] So did you have to talk to a general authority to be able to go on a mission?

Stu Brown [00:33:33] No, I wasn't that bad. Okay. No. But, you know, I luckily I had a really good bishop. You know, you talk about the ecclesiastical roulette and mine was, you know, he made me jump through some hoops, but he was pretty good at just listening. And I My number one goal was to be clean when I went out on my mission. And so I again, I probably, I remember showing up at my bishop's house because I'm like, hey, I forgot to tell you about this one thing I did. And I'm sure he got so sick of me, just. But I was hell bent on being clean when I went out on my mission. And so every little mistake I could ever think of, I wanted to make sure I confessed and was forgiven. And so that's to your question about a relationship with God. That's when I really started to pray and started to feel like the atonement became active in my life. So by the time I left, I felt pretty good.

Missions, Meeting, and Getting Married

John Dehlin [00:34:47] How was your mission?

Stu Brown [00:34:49] Well, it was good. I went to Oklahoma. So it wasn't exciting, it wasn't an exotic place. And I was really never in Oklahoma. I served in Missouri and Arkansas most of the time. And for the first 20 months of my mission, I took that fire and zeal that I had from going through that coming back to the church process. And that is what carried me. I did get burnt out the last couple months. I got drunky and I was ready to come home and get on with life. But I was, I thought, a pretty good missionary. I worked hard and I played hard, but I tried to keep the rules and I was engaged and I felt like I was there because I wanted to be there. Not because anybody, not because I, you know, I had already broke my parents heart and told them I wasn't going to go. So when I went, it was because that's what I wanted to do.

John Dehlin [00:35:48] You met Mel's criteria?

Stu Brown [00:35:50] I did.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] You have any baptisms, any success?

Stu Brown [00:35:57] Yeah, yeah. Teens maybe. I don't think it was a super high baptizing mission, but over 10. Over 10? Yeah. I knew at one time, but I don't, I didn't keep. I didn't keep in contact with any of them. I was a lot closer with the members. I really tried to activate people because that's who I related to.

John Dehlin [00:36:21] Having been inactive.

Stu Brown [00:36:22] Having been inactive. And so I share my conversion story. Kind of like a badge of honor, like, you know, like, no, I know I'm not here just because daddy's gonna buy me a truck for going. Because I had companions like that, you know, I was there because I knew that the Book of Mormon was true and that's where I needed to be.

John Dehlin [00:36:49] So how in the world did you come off your mission and snag Mel?

Stu Brown [00:36:55] I'm sneaky. I'm sneaky. So I got home, and the plan was for me to go back to Utah State, but I didn't have any money, so I just moved back to Logan, started working, and I kind of worked throughout that winter. And so it was only I hadn't been home four or five months before we met. But, you know, part of getting home was excited to start dating again. And, you know, so I looked up girls I knew from high school and from before and had kind of exhausted all those possibilities. But I wasn't in school, and there were no girls where I worked, so it was hard to get out and meet girls. And we finally had a really nice day in Logan. You know how the winters can be. It was a rough winter, lots of snow. And so we finally had a nice spring day. And I was thinking, where are the girls gonna be?

John Dehlin [00:37:56] I know the story.

Stu Brown [00:37:57] You know the story I told you in Vegas.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] Was it a dog involved?

Stu Brown [00:38:00] Yeah. Don't give it away. I'm sorry. No, it's. So I tried to get my buddy to go be a wingman, and I'm like, you know, I guarantee there's gonna be some girls at the park at 1:00am right down the hill from Utah State before you head up Logan Canyon, there's a nice little park. And I'm like, I guarantee there's gonna be girls there today. Cause it's finally a nice day. My buddy wouldn't come with me, so I grabbed the shop dog from work, a little puppy. And I took the puppy to the park, and the puppy ran right up to Mel's blanket. I had to chase the puppy. And that's how we met.

John Dehlin [00:38:38] Mel, what was it like when you first saw Stu?

Mel Brown [00:38:40] Such a sucker. Fell for the puppy. Kick myself all the time. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. So for me, I had an entrepreneurship class I was supposed to go to. And normally I'm like, I don't ever miss school, never miss classes. But I remember about to walk through that door, and there was this big glass window. And I looked through the window, and it was like the sun was shining. It was nice outside. He said, after a long, cold, dreary winter, I'm like, I just want sunshine. I had a marketing job after school, so I'd have to book it after class, go to my job. And I never saw the sun because I'd get out when it was dark. So I just remember looking out the window. And this was a class that he just did, like, random pop quizzes. So there was no test. You just had to show up. And then he'd randomly do a quiz for whatever we talked about that day. So if you just showed up, it'd be easy. Like, you'd get an A there, but if you didn't show up, it'd drop you down half a step. So you'd go from an A to an A minus just for missing one day. So it was a big jump, you know, risk not to go. But I remember being like, I graduate in, like, two months. I already have a good gpa. I already had my career lined up with the Mervyns when they were in business as an assistant store manager making good money and all that. So I'm like, who cares if my GPA drops a little bit? Like, I'm going to go get some sunshine. So that was unlike me to do that, to, like, miss class. I always went, you know, so I didn't go. I, like, went and got a blanket, went to 1st am, put my blanket down on this grass, like, looked at the water, took my shoes off. I'm, like, doing gymnastics on the ground, just playing around, having fun, enjoying the sunshine. And then, yeah, I was just sitting on my blanket for a little bit, looking at the little pond there. And then this little dog went up to the water not too far from my blanket. And I just made a comment to Stu, the cute boy that was standing there, oh, looks like your dog wants to go in the water, wants to go play. And he's like, yeah, too bad he's a wussy and too afraid to get in. And anyway, so we started small talking after that. And, yeah, and then I was like, okay, I've got to. We chatted for a little bit, and then I'm like, okay, I need to pack my stuff up and got to go to my marketing job. So he helped me get my blanket and everything and put it in the back of my trunk. And so we were just still chatting. He's like, yeah, we should hang out sometime. I'm like, okay. So we exchanged phone numbers, and we hung out the next night and the next night and the next night. And pretty much every night since we met, we just hung out. And it was weird. It was like, my friends would ask me, oh, what are you doing tonight? And I wouldn't even have to have, like, talked to Stu. I just. It was assumed, like, I'll be hanging out with Stu, and it was kind of like, him the same thing. It was just. We just knew we were gonna hang out with each other, and I wasn't usually like that with other people. Like, we just Hit it off.

John Dehlin [00:41:13] And anyway, so from meeting to engagement to marriage, how many months?

Mel Brown [00:41:18] Oh, this is embarrassing.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] Or is it Mormon?

Stu Brown [00:41:21] It worked out. It's super Mormon.

Mel Brown [00:41:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] Is it embarrassing or normal?

Mel Brown [00:41:25] No, I guess it's normal. It's just funny I have to preface, because I was like the anti boyfriend type. Like, didn't want to be in a relationship. I'd get sick of guys after a month. Cause I hated being tied down and I was a big flirt. I liked to date and I like to go dancing and just have fun and be free. Like, I don't want anyone caging me up and feeling like I like, you know, have to be controlled. And so. Yeah, so after. Yeah, so I was in no hurry to get married. I didn't want it. I thought I was going to be graduating, like and moving out of state. So I didn't want to meet anybody. I was going to have my career, making good money, wanted to have my own apartment. Like, had all these dreams of what I was going to do. So that being said, two months after we met, we were engaged. Two months after that we were married. So four months from meeting and got married. Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:42:16] It was crazy. But the whole time we were dating and Logan, we knew she was going to move away at the end of the semester because she was going to graduate and already had a job. And so I figured that, okay, we'll date and then when she leaves, I'll go find something else to date because it was just too soon.

Mel Brown [00:42:35] Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:42:36] But when she actually moved away, I went, oh, crap, I don't want to date anybody else.

Mel Brown [00:42:41] Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:42:42] And so that's really when we got serious.

Mel Brown [00:42:46] That's when we realized how much we liked, loved each other.

Stu Brown [00:42:49] Yeah.

Mel Brown [00:42:50] And that was like, for me too. I'm like, I meet cute, fun guys all the time. This is just another cute, fun guy. Like, cool. It was fun hanging out with him, but peace out, you know. So I didn't think anything of it. I moved back to Orem. Was gonna be living there just for a few weeks before my training started with Mervyn's management program. But when I was home that week, I remember every day I was like. And we'd talk on the phone, but like, I was just starting to get like, almost sick to my stomach. Like, oh my gosh, I miss this guy like crazy. And when we'd end our phone calls, like, I like you. Like, that just doesn't sound right. It was like, oh my gosh, like, I love him. Like, I like you is too weak of a word. I Need to tell him I love him. And so I, like, wrote this poem and, like, ended up saying that I love you at the end of the poem. And then we ended up, like, hanging out and getting together. And five or six days later, week later, I don't know, and then we were at a park, and then he ended up telling me he loved me. I was like, oh, wait a minute. And then I, like, read my poem and said, I loved you. So we both were on the same page of, like, we need to tell each other we love each other. But, yeah, so it happened way quicker than I realized, but it was just right, you know?

John Dehlin [00:43:51] How did you. How did you know that he met your kind of Mormon standard? Because you had high standards, right?

Mel Brown [00:43:59] Yes, I did.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] How did you know he met your Mormon standards?

Mel Brown [00:44:02] Yeah, it's a good question. Well, I remember, first of all, when he had told me, like, you know what, Mel? Like, I feel like you're the right one for me. I've gotten my, like, revelation or whatever that I want to marry you and that you're the person for me to marry. I was like, okay. And he's like, you need to get your own answer, you know, which was good. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, how do I know? And I was always afraid of marriage because I got sick of guys so quickly. And I always dated really good guys, guys that treated me really good. I never. I always had good confidence in myself. I never put up with crap like, I didn't need a guy. I was fine not having one. So I wasn't a needy person that needed somebody to love and love me. I didn't care about that, you know? But, yeah, I remember, like, driving through the canyon and being like, oh, my gosh. Like, this is scary. Like, I don't want to marry someone because I'm like, when I get married, I'm going to be married forever. I'm not going to get a divorce. I need to make sure this is the right person and that we can work through things together. And I remember driving through the canyon thinking, okay, Melinda, like, if you break up with this guy, what does he not have that you're looking for in an eternal companion? You know? What is it that he doesn't have of why you'd break up with him? I'm like, nothing. He has everything. You know, He's a returned missionary. He's a sweetheart. Like, he's so good to me. He cares about my needs. He can apologize. He's sensitive. He's just a sweetheart. You know? And so I'm like, nothing. Like, he has everything. So, like, why would I let him go? Because I thought that too. Like, hey, this has been a short time. My goal originally was date a guy at least a year. I want to see him through holidays. I want to get past the honeymoon phase. Dating, because I know there's. You know, I was realistic. I knew there was that where, like, oh, anyone can be good and perfect and seem amazing and check all the boxes the first few months and fake it. So I had all these rules for myself. I wanted to date someone a long time, so I was fine with doing that. But it was just got. I don't know. It was just like, I just wanted to be with this guy. And being away from him that week, I'm like, I can't be away from him. Like, it makes me sick not being around him. Like, I just love him and I just want to be with this guy. So he just. He had everything.

John Dehlin [00:46:14] Did you know, about his waywardness in high school, about his girlfriends, about his occasional drinking. Did you guys not bring that up or.

Mel Brown [00:46:23] Yeah, we talked about that a bit. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] And that wasn't a big red flag for you?

Mel Brown [00:46:28] I never cared about that throbbing sin. No, that never fazed me, like, if I dated guys like that, because I really believe in the atonement and forgiveness. Like, I don't care what people did before. What I care about is, where are you now? Where are you headed? I don't care about you.

John Dehlin [00:46:42] Where was he? Where was he at the point you were married?

Mel Brown [00:46:44] He was good. Like, you know, he had cleaned up his life. I know he had done stuff in the past, but I'm like, he cleaned up his life. He had his conversion process of coming back to the church and serving a mission, and so I don't really care what he did before the fact that he was over that. Like, kids can screw around in high school and do different things. I'm like, whatever. Just as long as you move past that. Sometimes it's a phase. You gotta work it out of your system. Like, I didn't really make it a big deal. Just as long as you've really changed, though, if you didn't really change, then byee.

Faith and Marriage in the Early Years

John Dehlin [00:47:14] So what did the church mean to you guys in the early years of your marriage?

Stu Brown [00:47:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] And did you make commitments to each other, covenants with each other as a part of your marriage, as it related to the church? In other words, were God, Christ, the Church a part of your agreement?

Stu Brown [00:47:32] Yeah. I don't know if we sat down and said, okay, I promise I'm gonna always be in the church. But we did talk about our goals, and I think that's one thing that I was attracted to her is we. It felt like we had similar goals. We talked about wanting to, you know, be young, successful, and have time and money so we could serve in the church.

Mel Brown [00:47:57] Yeah, I remember him mentioning wanting to serve a mission together, like, when we got older. And he would make that comment a lot. Like, he thought that'd be really cool. And for me, like, I was like, I didn't really care. I'm like, I don't feel like I need to do that, you know? But I was like, oh, maybe it would be cool, but.

Stu Brown [00:48:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] And was it just sort of understood that you would both stay committed to the church and that you would raise your kids in the church? And was that.

Stu Brown [00:48:21] Yeah. And that was definitely part of the deal.

Mel Brown [00:48:23] Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:48:24] Yeah, that was definitely part of the plan, because we did. We talked about, you know, I kind of had this idea that, you know, the Lord can't use you if you're not able to be used. You know, if you don't have time, if you don't have resources, the Lord can't call you to stuff. And so that was kind of the goal, was just to spend our life raising our family and serving in the church.

John Dehlin [00:48:54] So when did things start? Like, how many years was it before the plan started to take the curveball?

Stu Brown [00:49:06] You know, we got married. We moved to Salt Lake for a while. We were involved in a family ward there. I don't think we had any super special callings, but we were active, and we're doing our thing. We always wanted to move back to Logan, and so I bought my brother out of the moving company, and that's what moved us back to Cache Valley. And so we moved back, decided we wanted to start having kids. Struggled with that. We struggled with infertility for about seven years. Actually tried to go through adoption through LES Family Services. But through the whole time, we were active. But if I'm being really honest, I started getting just bored with church, and it started to feel more like just a obligation to go. I never felt like I was really getting anything out of it, but I felt like, well, that's where I need to be. So I'd feel guilty because I didn't want to go. I'd go, But I'm like, man, I just don't have that same fire and burning. And it's just the same lessons over and over again. The correlated mind Numbing. It just got boring and I felt bad about that. But we were still active, still hadn't made any changes. And so it was four or five years ago.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] So you were what age?

Stu Brown [00:50:49] I was 30. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:51] This is around 2002.

Stu Brown [00:50:52] About.

Mel Brown [00:50:53] Okay, no, that'd be 2000.

John Dehlin [00:50:56] Sorry, 2012.

Stu Brown [00:50:57] 2012. 2012.

John Dehlin [00:50:58] Okay. Sorry.

Stu Brown [00:50:59] Yeah. So I had a buddy from my mission, Robin Day. Hey, Robin.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] He.

Stu Brown [00:51:10] One thing I love about Robin is he is super outspoken. Like, you know where this guy stands. He will. I don't think he doesn't anymore, but he would get on Facebook and he would, if you're wrong, or he would argue his opinion all day long. And so. But he was always super strong in the church. And one day he posted a New York Times article about a man named Hans Mattson who was a general authority in Sweden, who was questioning his faith over historical issues.

John Dehlin [00:51:42] And I remember Mormon, high level Mormon leader.

Stu Brown [00:51:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:45] And we've interviewed Hans in Mormon stories.

Stu Brown [00:51:47] Yeah, right. So he posted that article and he didn't comment at all. And I read the article, but his comment section just started blowing up. People were defending the church and other people were starting to say, oh, well, what about this? What about Joseph's wives? And I was reading these comments going, I'd never heard any of these things. And I was like, I couldn't understand why a high level leader would question the church over historical stuff. That I was born and raised in the church. I went on a mission. I read the mission library again and again and again because you could only read the five books. And there was that tiny little book on church history in the mission library. And so I thought, I know church history. I couldn't understand why this guy would be questioning over historical stuff. And still my buddy Robin hadn't commented. And I probably wouldn't have even read anything if I realized that he had left. But what he did is he posted that article and then he went to work and didn't check Facebook all day. So by the time he got off work, there were 80 to 100 comments from believers and unbelievers going back and forth. And I had read all of them and finally I saw that Robin had commented and I fully expected him to come in and defend the church. And he's like, yeah, like I've left. And I was blown away and I was a little scared. Like, man, that's. Maybe there's something actually to this, but I put it on the shelf and I tried not to think about it, but it was back there in my head. And again, I. This time I was going to church, but I just wasn't super enthused about it. I finally got to a point saying, okay, I need to look into some of this information, but I'm going to do it from a faithful source. And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is going to reinvigorate my testimony. And so I picked up Rough Stone Rolling, written by a member of the church, bought a Deseret book. This will answer all my questions and it will strengthen my testimony and maybe I'll get some of that zeal back that I had on my mission. And so I started reading that and I travel for work. I own this moving company. I don't do a lot of moving, but I do some of the long distance jobs. And so I had a job from Logan to Phoenix. And I was. Wasn't very far into Rough Stone Rolling, but I started driving and was trying to find something that I could listen to as I, as I drove. And so I googled to see if there was any audiobooks from Richard Bushman, who wrote Rough Stone Rolling. And I found, oh, he did this several hour interview with this podcast called Mormon Stories. And so I downloaded that and I listened to that while I was driving. And in between Vegas and Phoenix, I had to pull over on the side of the road and I just started bawling because I knew that I had crossed some line, that my simple, naive testimony was gone and I could never go back to the way it was before. And I knew that I didn't know then that the church wasn't true, but I knew that I wasn't going to be the same and that this is going to be a turning point in my life. And I cried because I didn't know what it was going to do to my marriage. We had one little boy at the time, and, you know, everything came through like, if I find out this isn't true, how is this gonna affect my family? How is this gonna affect my kids? Where we live now in Cache Valley, all of our neighbors are Mormon. Who's gonna want to play with the, you know, kid of the apostate? And I was devastated because I knew the narrative that I grew up, that I taught on my mission just wasn't true. And on that podcast, Richard Bushman did his best to, you know, defend it, but I knew I was going to need to do a lot more investigating at that point.

Stu Begins Questioning Church History

John Dehlin [00:56:37] What was it about the podcast that wasn't convincing that, oh, everything's okay because a patriarch and a stake president and the church's foremost Joseph Smith scholar was still in it and believing. Why wasn't Richard Bushman's testimony convincing to you at the time? Were there holes or cracks in it?

Stu Brown [00:56:57] Yeah, I just think because he was verifying that all of those horrible things that people had said on Robin's thread, like what were true, that, yeah, Joseph had teenage brides, he married other men's wives. There were problems with the Book of Abraham, all of it. It just every little piece that I thought I knew there was another side to that story. And he was verifying that, yeah, this is factual information. It wasn't just evil anti Mormon lies. I mean, I served in the Bible Belt. We encountered anti Mormon stuff all the time, but it was always of the God Maker variety where they just put a weird twist on stuff. I remember being in a Christian bookstore on my mission and there was a book on the Mormons and I was thumbing through it and it was talking about the temple. It was talking about these weird penalties that they did in there. And I went through the temple after those were taken out. So I was like, this is garbage. This isn't true. And so I just, I considered all anti Mormon stuff just twisted lies. And so I really wasn't afraid to look into the actual history because I was sure I was going to find out. Okay, it's okay. And I was going to have a foundation on a shore testimony on a sure foundation not built on, you know, these half truths that I had grown up, you know, and on the mission too. I spent two years of my life defending Joseph Smith. You know, people would come with accusations and I vigorously defended him. And when I found out that, man, I was wrong. I didn't know the whole story. It really was devastating to me.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] What's devastating about defending Joseph Smith?

Stu Brown [00:59:03] I loved singing the song Praise to the Man I Love. You know, you sing it with vigor, you sing it with conviction. And when you sing praises to a guy that in my opinion, used his position to prey on people, to take advantage of them, and we can get into it later, but I mean, I really think that guy was a con man.

John Dehlin [00:59:35] And

Stu Brown [00:59:37] when you defend a convent, a con man, you spend two years of your life going out and sacrificing and being ridiculed for, you know, we had stuff thrown at us like we weren't persecuted, but, you know, people would yell, people would throw stuff out the window at us. And yeah, it's when you find out you really were on the wrong side, it's a kick to the gut.

John Dehlin [01:00:04] So you come home from this trip feeling like you were never gonna be the same. What was your trajectory after that?

Stu Brown [01:00:12] My plan was just to.

John Dehlin [01:00:14] And we're still 2012ish.

Stu Brown [01:00:16] 2012ish.

John Dehlin [01:00:16] Yeah.

Stu Brown [01:00:17] My plan was just to get to the bottom of it. I remember calling and talking to Robin and saying, what is up with this? And he's like, yeah, you know, like he was really good at just saying, you got to figure this out yourself. He pointed me to some resources and said, no, I'm going to finish rough stone rolling. I'm going to read only church approved stuff. But I knew I had to get to the bottom of it. And I talked to some family members that had gone through a faith crisis and they gave me horrible advice. And that was, don't tell your wife, she'll leave you. Just figure it out and then talk to her. And so that was my plan, was just to study, to read. We hadn't really talked about it. I know when I had first read that comment on Robin, I. I just mentioned to her, I'm like. Because she had met Robin before she knew him, we'd gone to dinner with them a few times and said, you know, Robin left the church. She said, oh, that's horrible. Like, that's, you know, just. You don't ever do that. I'm like, oh, I would never. I couldn't. I don't think I could handle it if you did that. And so I was scared to talk to her about it. So my plan was to not. But I dove in. Being self employed, I have a lot of time and I stayed up late and I studied and I read everything I could get my hands on. And I remember one day reading about some of the changes that were made to the Book of Mormon from the original to what we have now. And I remembered that on one of my moves, I was out in Palmyra, New York, and I had picked up from the Granite Bookstore there, original duplicate copy of the Book of Mormon. And I bought it just because I thought it would be cool to put on my shelf. And I was like, I still have that. I wonder if it shows the changes. And so I went downstairs, Melinda was gone, and I got out my mission Book of Mormon and I got out the Book of Mormon I had bought. And I was looking up and sure enough there were some. Quite a few changes in.

John Dehlin [01:02:47] There was just grammatical changes or, you

Stu Brown [01:02:49] know, that's what I had always heard. Oh, yeah, it was just grammatical stuff, but you know, stuff like changing when Nephi sees in a vision in the original, he sees God, and then

John Dehlin [01:03:06] it's

Stu Brown [01:03:06] changed to the Son of God. You know, to a Mormon, that's a big difference, because we believe in God the Father and God the Son. And that's one thing on the mission is, you know, oh, you guys aren't really Christians because you don't believe in the Trinity. And so we defend the Mormon view of the Godhead that, no, they're totally separate people. The Holy Ghost is different. And, you know, one of the things I was. I probably had been reading Grant Palmer's book at that time, Insider's View of Mormon Origins. And, you know, he talks about Joseph's changing view of the Godhead. And sure enough, I'm like, man, that sure seems like he's talking about a different person. So in that context, it seemed like a really big change. And as I'm reading that Melinda comes home and comes downstairs, and it was worse than if she would have caught me looking at porn, because porn's a big deal to Mormons. And I was, you know, and what are you doing? I'm like, I'm just reading my scriptures. Don't worry about it. And that was like me to, you know, have all my scriptures out and just, you know, looking at stuff. And so that's when I decided to go against my buddy's advice. And I just told her. Everything just spewed. Okay, well, I found out this information, and I don't know what to do, but I'm really scared.

John Dehlin [01:04:35] What do you remember him telling you, Mel?

Mel Brown [01:04:38] I don't know if I remember exactly. Just all the stuff that he had studied. And I remember being like, well, I don't know if this before, but just frustrated. Like, at first, I was, like, kind of mad at Robin for doing that post because, like, because of him doing that post. He's the one that, like, if he didn't do that post, and my husband wouldn't be, like, doubting and having all these questions and doing all this. I remember, like, kind of being mad at him at first, but then I was like, okay, Melinda, get real. Like, don't shoot the messenger. It's not him. It's the information that you're mad at, you know, So I was able to, like, separate from it, but I don't know, he just shared, you know, he had showed me some of the stuff and, like, the scriptures, I think, the differences. And by me, I was like, all in. This was new. This was, like, dropping a bomb on me. So you got this strong believer, 100% faithful, like, even if there was stuff I wasn't going to internalize it. It was like, oh, we just don't know. There's changes, like, just justify everything. So I don't remember all the details. I just remember him sharing. We talked for a good couple hours. It was like 10:30 at night, so it was late when we started this conversation. But I remember just being in a really good place of just listening to him. So I didn't really say anything. And it helped. I just got done from this training that had gave me really good tools. I just finished this training, like two weeks ago.

John Dehlin [01:05:51] What was it called?

Mel Brown [01:05:53] Impact training in Bluffdale. So I went through these trainings and it's an experiential one, so there's no taking notes or anything. It's all day long for three days. And you just. You work through everything just there. So when you leave, like, I don't know, it was amazing. It was life changing for me.

John Dehlin [01:06:08] Why were you going through training?

Mel Brown [01:06:10] I had just hit a point in my life where I couldn't find happiness and it didn't make sense to me.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] So the gospel wasn't bringing you happiness?

Mel Brown [01:06:17] Yeah. And I wouldn't have like, pinned it on that, like, oh, it's the church, you know, the gospel. But I just. We had our boy, which we had struggled for, you know, eight years from when we had our boy, you know, and that was a hard thing to go through. That infertility process was really hard, seeing everyone else get pregnant. His younger brother had three kids before us. He's four years younger. And they just kept having him. I was just like, oh, my gosh. So that was hard. But we got through that. We had our cute boy. You know, he was one or two years old. We were okay financially. We lived in a great neighborhood. We had friends. Like, there was no reason not to be happy. And Stu's like, I just remember him being sincere with me one time. And like Melinda, like, I just feel like I can never make you happy. And that just kind of broke my heart.

John Dehlin [01:06:56] I see you as a really happy person.

Mel Brown [01:06:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:58] So is it just you presented happy, but inside you weren't feeling what you felt?

Mel Brown [01:07:02] Maybe. Yeah. And it didn't make sense to me because I'm like, on paper, logically, like, I should be happy. Like, this is. I'm living the dream life right now, basically. You know, we can travel, we can do fun things. We're not stressed about money. We've got good jobs. Like, what is the problem? And so I was like, I've got to Figure this out. And so I remember his, one of his buddies that he had known had told me two years before that that he had gone to this training. And he said he went to it like 20 years ago and, and he used the tools every day of his life from that training. I'm like, wow, that's impressive. He did this training 20 years ago and he's still using the tools from it. I've gone to motivational seminars and it's like you're pumped for a week or two and then you just go back to doing whatever. That's just typically how it is with everything that I've experienced. So he had given me that information like, oh, that sounds cool. I've always been a self improvement person. If I'm going to read a book in high school or college on the side, it's going to be in like, you know, like one that's going to make me a better person or make more money or mechanic to millionaires, like all these different books or whatever. I don't want to just waste my time reading a novel. For me, that was a waste. If I'm going to spend time doing something, I want to improve myself. I've just been wired like that. So anyways, I kind of put that on the shelf. Oh, cool. That training sounds cool, but I don't care to put my time and money into that right now. So anyways, the two years later is when I was realizing I was in this funk. He was just super sweet and sincere and made that comment like, I don't, I don't know if I can ever make you happy. And he had teared up and like, what is my problem? Why can't I find happiness? Like, what is wrong with me? You know? So I was like, I don't care what it's going to take. I said, stu, give me this number of your friend. I got the number. I texted him, I said, what was the name of that training you went to? So I got that and I went to it and I called them and I asked him a bunch of questions because I had no clue what it was about. And then I went to that.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] What were some of the breakthroughs? Can you even name a few breakthroughs from that training?

Mel Brown [01:08:59] Yeah, for sure. You know, it was interesting when I went through that training because like in Mormonism they teach you like, forgive, be loving, like all these great things. That sounds awesome. But when it comes to like being practical and using it, like, how do I actually do that when someone really offends me or hurts Me or my child, how do I really forgive them in that? Like, I need some tools or steps. But I feel like that's where Mormonism was lacking is they'd say, like, oh, be an amazing person. Just forgive people a thousand times over and over. And all these things. They'd say, hey, go be perfect. Good luck. You know, like, okay, like, I really want to know how to do that. Like, I have questions of like, let's process through this. And that was never I felt given. It was like, go read your scriptures. And I tried to do that, but it just, you know, I don't know, it just wouldn't work for specific things. Like, okay, I read my scriptures, but do I respond this way or this way to this person? Like, it just didn't have all the answers. And so it was just amazing coming out of this training because I was like, oh, my heck. Like, they actually. It was amazing. Like, that was. I had experiences there that was like, this feels like heaven. Pieces of it. I was like, I've never felt that much love in my entire life by so many people. Like, you just feel 100%, like, accepted and loved and. And it just completely changed my outlook.

John Dehlin [01:10:19] Were there experiences that started tweaking your religious worldview?

Mel Brown [01:10:22] I think so, yeah, actually, because, you know, Mormon, like, the LDS Church is supposed to be one, God's one and only true church. And I felt like it's not really helping me where I need it. And I go to this training that's not an LDS church. Like, I think the church even suggests not to go to it. And I'm like, that changed my life more than anything I've ever experienced my whole life of Mormonism. And that actually gave me tools to be a better person. It inspired me where the church, although I love the church and I had happy experiences with it, I feel like a lot of it was like kind of fear based. Like, Melinda, you don't want to break the rule. Because God, like, I always wanted to make my God happy. So I was like, I don't ever want to let him down. I want to go to him with pure and clean hands.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] I just want to note that I had to ask you like 5 times what your life goals were. And every time I asked you, you mentioned things you weren't supposed to be doing. And for me, that. I don't know if you remember earlier I did.

Mel Brown [01:11:23] You're like, melinda, get with me.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] I'm like, what about your life goals? And you're like, well, let's see, no drinking, no premarital sex.

Mel Brown [01:11:28] Yeah. That's not really life goal.

John Dehlin [01:11:29] Five times. And I think it just shows that so much of your religious worldview was about what you weren't gonna do.

Mel Brown [01:11:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] The sins you weren't gonna commit. And that's not necessarily a recipe for joy.

Mel Brown [01:11:40] Yeah. Right.

John Dehlin [01:11:41] Don't do this, that, or the other. Does that bring joy? Not doing things? So you were looking for actually things to help you have joy.

Mel Brown [01:11:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:49] Right?

Mel Brown [01:11:50] Yep. And it was amazing going through this training. It was like, oh, my gosh, like, finally, like, it's not fear, guilt, shame, basting me into being good. And I was like, oh, my heck. I started realizing, like, that's what the church was doing. I had never really realized or thought about that before because I was happy, like, or thought I was. I don't know. And then I go to this training and I'm like, oh, my heck. Like, it's all just be, loving, respect the other person. Even though we're married. What I got out of that is, like, we're not the same person. And he can change and he can have different views and beliefs, and that's okay. And I don't get to come out of fear, and I don't get to guilt him or shame him for how he's feeling. Like. And since it was experiential, it, like, it was. It was just. I don't know, it was powerful and it was impactful of, like, no, like, I. It just gave me huge. Just tools and resources to get through this. So, like, the timing couldn't have been better. And I really, honestly feel like if I hadn't gone through that training, the timing was just amazing because it was two weeks after I'd finished that, that he had dropped this bomb on me, basically. And I would have been in tears. I would have been devastated. I would have been crying. I would have been freaking out. I would have been in so much, like, you know, but this had told me, like, no, it's okay. Like, it just. I don't know. And so that's why I was able. Just when he shared that with me that night, I just sat there and I just listened to him. I just barely got done from this training. I learned everything I needed to do, and I'm like, I'm just gonna love him. I'm gonna be here for him and support him, and I'm just gonna listen to him. And he just shared everything.

John Dehlin [01:13:16] In some ways, that's so not Mormon. Because the message you get in Mormonism often is there's one truth and husband and wife need to be on the same page about that truth. There's no deviation. And this whole. Accept them for who they are and what they're experiencing. No, no, no. It's, you know, play by the plan, stay on plan. Right?

Mel Brown [01:13:38] Yeah.

Stu Brown [01:13:38] Well, I think the next day that fear kind of sunk in, right?

Mel Brown [01:13:43] Yeah. So in the morning, I woke up and I like. So, yeah, then all that, because me, I go to my future. That's just what I do. Like, I start thinking, what is the future gonna look like? We have this child, and I just want to be on the same page for my kid. That was a big ultimate goal of, like, that's why I wanted to marry someone strong in the church, is because it's like, our kids that we have need to see us being strong together and just being positive about being all in the church or whatever we're doing. Like, it's very important for a kid to see that. Otherwise, it's confusing for them. One parent's doing one thing or saying one thing, the other parent's saying or doing another. It messes with the kid. And I didn't want that for my child. I wanted to raise them with just solid confidence and be grounded. And so that's why it was important to be on the same page. So that was a big deal. So the fear started coming in and of like, oh, no. Like, and then I'm starting to picture, like, oh, my. Heck, if he leaves the church, then he's, you know, he's gonna be at home. I'm gonna want to go to church. I'm gonna want to take the kids. And then the kids will be like, I want to stay home with dad. Of course they don't want to go to three hours of boring church. So I'm like, I'm gonna have to fight a lot harder. So I'm thinking about all of this, like, being a single mom, taking my kids, trying, you know, he's not going to care about doing home evening or reading scripture, so I'm going to have to take that on. So I'm seeing more work for myself and, like, starting to freak out a little bit. But I didn't. I wanted to be strong for him. And so I, like, just put my head in the pillow and didn't want him to hear me crying. I was in the room, I shut the door, and I'm just, like, crying in the pillow, just, like, thinking about all this and just.

John Dehlin [01:15:10] Why were you crying?

Mel Brown [01:15:11] Because I was afraid. I was afraid of what that looked like. And just like, oh, My gosh. I don't know if I can handle it, but I have to handle it because I'm not gonna leave my husband. It wasn't like, okay, I would leave him over this. It was like, we're gonna just have to figure it out.

John Dehlin [01:15:23] So some Mormons do conclude I gotta leave my spouse.

Mel Brown [01:15:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] Why weren't. Why didn't you go there?

Mel Brown [01:15:28] Because I loved and adored him. And I knew, like, his heart is. He's a good person and I would never, like, wanna lose that. And I had committed. If I'm gonna marry someone, I'm gonna be with him forever. I mean, unless it gets too abusive or something like that, I'm not gonna put up with crap. I would leave, but that's not what it was. And so that means just because this is a hard thing we're going through, I'm not gonna leave him over that. You know, he's still the same amazing, incredible person and I love him. It's just, we've gotta figure this out. And I know it's gonna be hard for me, but I have always known that he's my forever guy and nothing would ever change that, you know? So I'm like, we will work through anything. It may be hard, but, like, we'll figure it out together. So I never once thought about leaving him over. I was just. I just knew it was gonna be hard. And it's gonna be hard for me. And that's what the fear and the crying was about. And our kids, like, if it was just us and we didn't have kids, I'd be like, cool, whatever. I'm fine going to church by myself. I don't need you to hold my hand and go there. If I believed in it and he didn't. But it was our kids just thinking about, like, we're not on the same page. This is going to be confusing for them. I don't want them to have a harder life, you know? So it was. All of that just built up and I just kind of broke down. And so he came in, he heard me crying, and he was really sweet. And he's like, now, like, don't jump to the, like, worst case scenario. Like, I'll tend to do that. Like, I'll. As soon as I think about something, I'll go, here, here, here, here, here, here, here. And then I get to the end and I start freaking out about the end. He's like, okay, we're not there yet. That may not even happen. So he helped kind of calm me down a bit. And he's like, you know what? Like, maybe this will be better. Maybe this will actually strengthen my testimony of Joseph Smith. Like, he's like, all I know is I need to figure this out. But he's like, just don't freak out about it. Don't go to the worst, because we don't know what it's gonna look like or how this is gonna end up. It could actually be better. Things were getting kind of dull for me, so this could help just, like, strengthen my testimony. So after we had that little talk, it was like, okay, I got out of my little fear place and was like, I gotta respect him and just let him figure it out, and then we'll see.

John Dehlin [01:17:29] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 829

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. So how'd you proceed?

Stu Brown [00:00:42] Yeah, so that was kind of the deal we made was that, look, I don't know where this is going to end up, but I couldn't sit on the fence. I had to know. And if I studied and came to the conclusion and strengthened my testimony that, yeah, the church is true, I was going to be the best freaking Mormon I could be. And if it wasn't, I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I just knew I had to find out. And so I dove head in and you're warned so much about anti Mormon lies and oh, the anti Mormons, they twist stuff and they take it out of context. And so if I read a quote, I was going to make sure I read that in context so I'd get the book and I'd read the entire freaking book. And especially because I promised mail, I wanted to make sure I turned over every rock that I did things the right way. And so that next Sunday I went and I talked to my bishop and said, look, I'm, I have these questions and I don't know what to do. And my bishop, he was a nice guy, he was a tire salesman and he didn't have a clue what I talked about. Like he, I just floored him.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] And he, what types of things did you bring up?

Stu Brown [00:02:11] I felt like I brought over, brought up everything. But the one thing that really stuck in his mind was Joseph Smith's polygamy. When we were dealing with infertility stuff, we were just all by ourselves. We had a house and she had met somebody at her work that was involved in proctor care. So it's kind of like foster care, but it's usually teenage kids and it's just for six months to a year sort of thing. And so we had a dozen or so teenagers come live with us for various amounts of time.

Mel Brown [00:02:48] And they're usually like troubled teens that, yeah, they just want to get them out of their environment and their.

Stu Brown [00:02:53] We thought, hey, you know, we could be good examples for these kids. And, and so most of them were boys. And I didn't want to have any girls in the house because I didn't want to deal with any. Just. I just didn't want to have any girls in the house. But they called up and said, you know, we've got this girl. We think they'd be a really good fit for your house. And so the program and Mel ended up talking me into saying, okay, we can try having a girl. And so some of them came out to be the ones that stayed with us the longest. And I think we got closest to. One of the things I was nervous about was just, I don't want a teenage girl in the house that's ever going to accuse me of anything. So I was never in the same room with them alone. I don't think I ever hugged them or shook their head. Like, I never touched them at all, just because that was one thing I was petrified about. But through that experience, you know, I knew what it was like to have, you know, a teenage girl in the house that's you feel responsible for. Like, one of them ran away once, and I, like, the police weren't doing a lot, and I went and got the security footage from the bus stop she was at, saw the guy she was with and started showing it around. And I tracked her down and I found her because I felt responsible for this person that was staying in our house. And so when I started learning about Joseph Smith's polygamy and him marrying some of his foster daughters or his maid, it was so repulsive to me because I had a proctor daughter and I would never. And it was just. It made me so ill. And, you know, so I shared that with my bishop. And I did share a lot of my concerns, but I know that's the one that really stuck in his head. And that first meeting I had, he, you know, stu, we're going to get to the bottom of this. There's going to be answers. Come back and we'll talk about it. And so for a couple weeks, we'd come and we'd have our little chats, and he figured out pretty quick that he didn't have any answers for me. And I remember coming in one week, it was probably just the third or the fourth week, and he said, I feel inspired to ask you, have you looked at pornography?

John Dehlin [00:05:26] Of course.

Stu Brown [00:05:27] Well, yeah, I have seen pornography in the past, and for him, that just closed the box. He knew it.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] That.

Stu Brown [00:05:37] That's it. Satan's got you. Because for some reason, had I never seen pornography, I'd be fine. With Joseph Smith marrying 14 year olds. But if you've looked at pornography, I guess you're just.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] You discredited yourself.

Stu Brown [00:05:53] Yeah. And so he, the meeting stopped with the bishop. He said, well, maybe you can meet with the stake president. Maybe he'll have answers with you. So I met with him. He knew even less about the things. And this was pre church essays. I knew they were coming out, but they hadn't come out yet. And so there was no place for me to simply say, look, no, these are real issues. They're like, no. I remember my stake president said, I've been quoted in the newspaper before. And they got it so wrong that I just don't believe any of that stuff. I just stick to the scriptures. I don't worry about that. So they were no help. But one day my bishop did come over to the house. He was so excited. He said, stu, I got it. I called my mission president because I didn't know what to do for you. And he told me about a guy and he's gonna answer all your questions. He wrote some books on polygamy. His name is Brian Hales. And so I was like, yeah, I'll meet with him, you know.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] And I sings for the Marmore Tabernacle choir.

Stu Brown [00:07:00] Sings for. Right, yeah. And he had done a four part interview with me. With you. I hadn't listened to that one. That was part of my studying was I, I drive so much that I just, I was ripping through those but I wasn't listening to them in order. I just pull up and find one that I thought would be interesting. So I hadn't actually noticed that he had done an interview with you, but he got me in touch with Brian Hales. He was gracious. I came to his house and he was going to answer all my questions and he did not.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] So what did you ask and what was he not able to answer?

Stu's Faith Crisis Deepens

Stu Brown [00:07:42] I wanted to talk about everything because at this point I had questions about every single foundational question. I had questions about the first vision. I had questions about the acronyms in the Book of Mormon. I had questions about the book of Abraham and polygamy and the priesthood restoration and all of it. And he's like, there's answers for those. But my specialty is polygamy. So that's all we talked about. And I'm going to paraphrase what he said and he'll not think that I said it right. But I came away from that meeting with Brian Hels basically saying, yeah, you know, it's just anti Mormon lies when people Say that Joseph Smith sent men on missions and married their wives because he only did that like once or twice. And, you know, it's just those anti Mormons, they say he, you know, was having sex with his teenage brides, but I only think he was doing it with a few of them. And I'm like, you're not helping. Like it doesn't matter. Like it just. It didn't help at all. And my bishop was devastated when that didn't answer all my questions. But I kept at it. I kept studying. One of the things that was really helpful is I reached out to anybody I possibly could that I thought could relate, that knew what I was going through, and some of those backfired. I reached out to mission companions that I thought would be a sympathetic ear, and that didn't work out. I tried to talk to my family and they did not want to even discuss it at all. But one day I had finished Grant Palmer's book and I saw that he was going to be doing a lecture at the Salt Lake Library. And it was the first non Mormon approved anything I'd gone to. And I was petrified to go, but I'm like, I'm gonna come by myself. And I drove down and I was like, I'm just gonna sit in the back and I'm not gonna talk to anybody. And I went up on the balcony and I looked down and the bishop who sent me on my mission, who I confessed all my sins to, he was sitting there. And my first reaction was to hide because I'm like, I don't want anyone to know I'm here. There was so much shame about just doubting that. I didn't want anyone to know what I was going through. But I saw him sitting there and I quickly was like, wait, if he's here, maybe he's safe to talk to us. I really went down on a. I talked to him and that ended up being great because he, turns out, had left. He moved away from my parents ward.

John Dehlin [00:10:34] So your former bishop had left the church?

Stu Brown [00:10:35] Former bishop had left the church. And that was one of the first people that I had known that had left that I didn't judge because I had known people that left and I judged the hell out of them. I thought they just didn't have a strong enough testimony or they got into sinning. And that was part of the shame, is because I'd been that tbm. I know the way they talk about people that leave. You know, I've heard the milk stripping story a hundred times, you know, Apostates, they just. They left over stupid stuff. And so this was the first person, man, this was my bishop. I looked up to him so much. He helped me so much when I was trying to get ready to go on a mission. And here he was in the same boat. And so we had tons of conversations with him and his wife was still going, and so we went and had dinner with him and Melinda and his wife were able to relate and I was able to relate to my bishop. So there were so many of those people that along the journey that helped out so much because for so long I just felt so like the only one going through it, that everyone around you is Mormon and believing. And if I don't understand this, there's got to be something wrong with me. Not that there's something wrong with the church or there's something wrong with Joseph, that it's me. I internalized all of that. And so reaching out, meeting with people that were in the same boat was the best thing.

Navigating a Mixed-Faith Marriage

John Dehlin [00:12:12] So when did things. Did things kind of just proceed smoothly or were there some moments of real tension and stress in your marriage as you started becoming more comfortable with non belief?

Stu Brown [00:12:27] Yeah, I. I knew she didn't want to dive in headfirst and study stuff, and I knew she didn't want. She wasn't ready for that.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Were you ever tempted, Mel, to study?

Mel Brown [00:12:41] Not at all.

John Dehlin [00:12:42] Why not?

Mel Brown [00:12:44] I had no desire. And I was so busy with my life, with my kids and my business. Like that literally took all of my time. And I saw how many hours he put into it to understand everything and know what happened.

John Dehlin [00:12:54] How many hours? Days, weeks, months. How long did this go on?

Mel Brown [00:12:57] Yeah, like he would be up till three in the morning, and then he'd wake up in the morning and as soon as he got up, he'd do it all day long because his movers go do the moves for his moving

John Dehlin [00:13:04] company for just a week or for how long was that?

Stu Brown [00:13:06] A year and a half?

Mel Brown [00:13:07] Months.

Stu Brown [00:13:09] A year to a year and a half? I think I was.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] That level of intensity, that's intense.

Stu Brown [00:13:15] It was.

Mel Brown [00:13:16] Yeah. He'd study everything. Like he said, if he read something and there was just a little quote or like he'd read something and there's little eclipses or whatever. He's like, I don't want to get it out of context. So he'd go and get the whole book. So he would buy books. He'd read books at the library. And I'm just. I've never really been a big book reader. Takes a Lot of time, and I'm just more of a doer, get things done, and I just didn't have the time for it. And plus, I was all in the church. Like, he would share things with me and I would just justify it as, oh, well, you know, we just have to have more faith or we'll know in the afterlife. Or, you know, just that I'm like, I just didn't really care and I just didn't really internalize stuff he was saying for the most part. So it's just like, whatever. Like, the church is true. What's like, it'll work itself out later. I don't care. Let me go on with my life. You figure out what you need to do. I gotta focus on my busy life, you know?

John Dehlin [00:14:04] So when did that change?

Stu Brown [00:14:08] I wish there was some definite time. I think it gradually came to my. I desperately wanted to find out the church was true. And after finding so much, so many skeletons in the closet, some point reached a level where I hope I don't find out it's true. Because it would feel icky if it was true. Like, if this really is God's one true church and this is Joseph Smith was the guy he chose to. With just the nasty things he did. Like, I would have been pissed if I would have come to the conclusion that, well, no, it's true after all.

Mel Brown [00:14:56] And you're like, this is the best

Stu Brown [00:14:57] God has for me, really, you know, so. But, you know, I'd share one of the great things. Melinda. She was always willing to listen, and I tried not to dump too much on her, but if I just read something that I thought was really interesting, I'd share it with her. I remember listening to Michael Coe, the archaeologist. I listened to him and I remember, like, no, there wasn't even gold here in America, like, to make gold plates to have coins. And I just thought it was a super interesting fact. And I remember sharing it with her and she started crying and I went, oh, crap, I shouldn't have done that. Because the last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt her or hurt her feelings. But.

Mel Brown [00:15:52] And I think the reason there were moments like that, I think the reason that I cried too, is like, because I would listen to him and he'd share things with me. And there were some things I could just easily just justify of like, oh, just let it roll off my back. Oh, we'll know later. But there were some things where it was like, oh, you have a really good point. That is disturbing. I don't know. You Know, like, when he started sharing Joseph Smith polygamy with me, I was like, yeah, there is no way any loving God is going to tell a man that you have to get with these women. And like, just with over 36 wives, like, I'm just picturing like, that's less time for each woman. That's basically like a single wife having to take care of her kids. Like, in what world is that a better scenario than having one man taking care of his family? Like, it just doesn't make sense, the whole thing of polygamy. I'm like, that's just damaging. It's hurtful. It hurts feelings. Women get jealous of other women. Like, does he like her more? Is he spending more time with her? It just is gonna hurt feelings. It's just gonna cause all these issues. So I remember internalizing, really thinking, like, I've always been good about putting myself in other people's shoes of just thinking how would I feel if that was me or people that I know and to base my life decisions and being good or. And I'm like, yeah, there's no way a loving God would have any part of that. So I was like, I still feel like Joseph Smith is a true prophet. I just feel like he screwed up with that one and he's gonna be held accountable to it with that. Like, God is gonna definitely, like, he'll get his payback or whatever in the afterlife. Because I definitely know that that's not a God plan. God did not do that. And I'm not gonna throw God under the bus to protect Joseph Smith. I'm not gonna do that. So that when I was able to justify of like, I still believe it's the one true church, still believe Joseph Smith is the true prophet, he just screwed up and he'll be accountable. So that's how I justified that big one away. I didn't have everything come crashing down with that, but, you know, so he'd share things with me and I was like, okay, so the Joseph Smith thing, I'm like, eh, that's messed up. And then he just kept sharing things with me and some things would stick a little bit more. And yeah, it just didn't make sense and I couldn't justify it away. So I had never had a shelf at all. Like. Like people talk about their shelves when it finally broke. Like, everyone kind of has that. I literally didn't even have a shelf on the wall when I was growing up until we started going through this. He kind of created my shelf and gave me some books to Put on the shelf to weigh it down, you know. Anyway, so it started weighing me down, I guess, and like my strength was getting weakened because he'd share stuff and I'm like, yeah, that doesn't make sense. And then when he's sharing things of like, yeah, there's no way there could have been this war, this battle, because there was no metal at the time. There was no horses on the continent at that time. So the story that Joseph told the scriptures or whatever, like it couldn't have happened because it didn't exist back then, it wasn't there or whatever. So it's like, so when he had mentioned like, oh, he just thought it was an interesting fact. But for me I started crying because it's like, oh my gosh, like weakening my testimony. I'm like planting that seed of maybe there isn't this one and true church, this one true church isn't all that I thought it was or that, oh crap, maybe there is issues with it. So it just started, you know, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] So talk us through because so many couples are in that mixed faith scenario where one believes and one doesn't. And that can go on for years. So for you, talk us through how you went from being the believing spouse. What, what flipped, what flipped the switch for you?

Stu Brown [00:19:18] I think maybe before that.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] Yeah,

Stu Brown [00:19:21] because we do need to get to that. But I kept going with her to church during that kind of intense study period. And one day she was like, you're just not happy here. I'd come home and I mentioned I used to love hearing singing praise to the man. And I swear there was like a couple month period where in priesthood opening exercises every single week they'd sing praise to the man. And I just, it would make my skin crawl sitting there hearing him sing this song that I used to love. And I'd come home and I just, ah, just taught so much stuff that just I knew wasn't true. And I didn't feel like I could really be open or share in elders quorum or in church. And so I'd come home really frustrated every week and she finally was like, just don't come if it's not making you happy. And so that was kind of a big shift. But I'd still, every week I'd get online and say, okay, what lesson are they going to teach in Sunday school today? And I'd read the entire lesson and I can't go to that. So I'd think about going every week. It was right about the time that the essays started coming out, and I was still holding out hope that maybe they're going to be able to come out with something that's going to make this all better. And they didn't. And when they finally came out with a essay on Joseph Smith and Kirtland and Nauvoo polygamy, and, I mean, they just threw God under the bus in that essay.

John Dehlin [00:21:12] They basically said God commanded it.

Stu Brown [00:21:13] Yeah. Like, he didn't want to marry all these girls, but God made him. He sent an angel with a sword. He had to.

Mel Brown [00:21:19] What a good guy.

Stu Brown [00:21:20] So, you know, they made Joseph out to be this reluctant polygamist that just, you know, and that was it for me. I was like, I'm done. We just found out we were going to have a daughter. So Mel was pregnant again. And I cannot raise my daughter in this sexist, racist, homophobic church. I just can't do it. And so it was my birthday three years ago. My birthday's in October. And I said, you know what? For my birthday, I'm gonna resign. And so on my birthday, I sent in my resignation letter.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] 2014.

Stu Brown [00:22:01] Yeah. And we talked about it. You can share. Cause she wasn't thrilled with me resigning.

Mel Brown [00:22:08] Yeah. So I'll start a little bit before about my experience, you know, going to church when he wasn't going. So, yeah, it was about. Or like he was saying, you know, we'd go to. When he was going to church with me, we'd be in gospel doctrine. I remember I would just, like, look at him and I would just. Literally, he looked like he was almost gonna tear up. Like, I could just see, like, the pain in his eyes of, like, this isn't true. They're just sitting there, like, lying. And then we'd get home from church and then he'd be like, blah, like, share everything. Like, let me show you this. And he'd pull up articles and be like, well, see it. Actually, this is what happened. Not this. And. Oh, they just covered over this part and skipped that part. And it's like, that's a big part of the story. And they just skipped it because it wasn't faith promoting. And so, yeah, so that's when, like, for me, if anyone's gonna be a part of, like, a church or religion, I. I really feel like the purpose of that should be to inspire you to be a better person. If it helps you get closer to God, to be better to people, to be the best you that you can be. That's what it's about. So, although I was like, a rule follower, I really felt strongly about the spirit of the law. And if I did visiting, teaching or anything, I'm not going to do it and just drop off some cookies and leave. I'm going to put my heart into it because I believe the purpose. If people did it right and full in, it would be a very beneficial program. Looking out for other people, making sure everybody's taken care of and accountable for. And if they have a need, you're there for them. But you have to have a relationship to do that. You can't just be like, oh, sorry, we're in a hurry. We'll just be here for five minutes and then we won't waste your time. Then it's just a duty and a calling, and it's just pointless and annoying. I don't like it when I feel like people are just stopping by because they feel like they have to just don't come. So I put my heart into everything. But, yeah, if you're not being inspired and helping you, then I feel like. And if it's doing the opposite. So for him, I could see it where it was just causing him more pain and he'd come home stressed and upset, and it would just ruin his day, basically. Then I'm like, there's no point of it. Like, that's sweet of you for wanting to come with me. So I'm not alone, which was really sweet of him. But I'm like, I'm also a big girl and I can go to church by myself, you know, and so it was fine. So I went a year by myself, and I was totally fine with it. And I remember thinking too, like, okay, Melinda, during sacrament, though, he'd have our little boy at home with him. So then I could just have enjoy a quiet sacrament because our kid's a busy body, you know, two years old, he would just climb over the seats and run around everywhere. And so I'm like, okay, there's no point bringing him. So I could go to my sacrament and I could just listen in peace and I'd sit by myself or I'd sit by friends and just would enjoy it, you know, do whatever. And. And then I would go, we'd meet. He'd meet me outside and I'd grab our little boy, and then I would take him to the two classes, and then Stu would be at home, and it was great because then I'd come home and he'd be happy and he had the house maybe cleaned or he had some dinner made, and it was great and he was happy and that's what really mattered. So for me, it worked out okay, or worked out good. And he was in a happy place. I was where I wanted to be, he was where he wanted to be. But I remember thinking to myself, I. I'm never going to like blame him for not going to church with me or like hold over his head like, oh, I had to battle Gavin at church and you were at home. And like, I just never wanted to play the pity card, I guess, because I was going and blame him for not going. I realized, Melinda, like, if you are going to pull that card and be mad that you went and you had a hard day because you were battling the kid or whatever, then you don't have to go. So anyway, so it was good about just keeping that positive attitude, I guess, of like, Melinda, if you're gonna go, you're gonna go. Cause you wanna go. And you're not gonna guilt and shame or pity anybody else or blame them for any issues that might arise. If you don't wanna go, you don't have to go. So I was good about thinking stuff through.

Mel Holds On While Stu Steps Away

John Dehlin [00:25:46] But the church is so family centered. So many people in that situation start feeling self pity, even shame, social kind of judgment. Cause it's like, oh, Mel, I'm so sorry your husband doesn't come.

Mel Brown [00:26:00] I got that a lot. That bothered me because I didn't feel that way. So yeah, I could tell. People would look at me or they'd be like, are you okay? Are you doing okay? And I'm like, I'm great. How are you? I think it threw people off a little bit because they expected me to have be reacting a certain way. And I just didn't even feel that way at all. Like I was literally fine with it, you know, because it's like we had worked through stuff together. I knew this was a better place. So I would rather have him be at home where he's happy than somewhere where he's just getting disturbed and upset and frustrating and frustrated. And I heard enough of his concerns where I'm like, I get it. Like, I can see, you know, like how this could be painful for you to be here. So it's okay. So, yeah, so I did that for about a year and then he.

John Dehlin [00:26:47] That's a tough decision to resign because, you know, parents can find out, siblings, you know, it's sort of a crossing the Rubicon moment.

Stu Brown [00:26:57] It was.

John Dehlin [00:26:57] It's the equivalent of being excommunicated.

Stu Brown [00:26:59] Right, right, right. One of the decisions I made is I had gone through that such intense study and I Was so obsessed that for me the decision was, I know I don't want to be associated with this organization anymore. And hopefully maybe mentally, when I resign, I can just let it go and stop obsessing over it.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] You wanted peace.

Stu Brown [00:27:26] I wanted peace. And for the most part, it did. That's kind of when I stopped buying and reading and staying up all night. I just said, you know what? It's not true. I'm gonna go live my life. But I was worried about my parents finding out. And so I tried to not advertise it, but I do stupid things all the time. And somebody had borrowed my car. They were down in Ogden and they got pulled over because I didn't have the sticker on there for the registration. I had it. I just had to put the sticker on. And so they were worried to drive back from Ogden to Logan without the registration. I said, look, you're like two blocks from my parents house. I'll email my dad a copy of my registration. He can print it out. You can have that in the car. And then if you get pulled over again, you can show the cop that, yeah, the car's registered. So I called up my dad, he's like, yeah, I'll print it out. That's no problem. So I got on the computer and I pulled up my email and I started typing in reg and I saw a file pull up and I clicked on it and I sent it and my dad said, emailed back, that's not your registration. Because I had emailed my dad a copy of my resignation letter where I ranted and raved about all the reasons why I was leaving the church and I felt like the biggest ass. And the Brown don't talk about their feelings. We're passive aggressive. And we literally have never talked about it. I just, even after seeing, even after that, I responded, sorry, here's the real registration. Sorry about that.

Mel Brown [00:29:10] That was it.

Stu Brown [00:29:11] And so I doubt my parents were ever gonna watch this. But dad, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to find out like that. But yeah, so yeah, I felt like an ass. But.

John Dehlin [00:29:23] But isn't that kind of mind blowing that you wouldn't even want to like, ask you about it or talk to

Stu Brown [00:29:30] you about it or. Yeah, I mean, he, he tried once. Said, you know, Sterling, you really. My name's actually Sterling, but everyone calls me Stu. His name's Sterling. And that's when people started calling me Stu. Is just. They'd call the house and say, is Sterling there? And then be like, which one? So I don't know. Somebody started calling me Stu and it stuck. But he sat me down once and said, sterling, you know, you really need to be involved in the church for you and your family. You know, Satan's going to get you if you don't have the Holy Ghost. And that was about as much as we talked about it. And I said, yeah, I don't think it is, dad. And I tried to talk about some of the issues, and he didn't seem really wanting to. But it's crazy because if I change jobs or something else, he'd want to know what happened. He'd want to know all about it. But this is just one of those things that we choose not to talk about, I guess. And it was awkward for a while, but I think we're past that. What about your mom's good now or siblings? My mom has literally gone la, la, la. I don't want to hear it. So we don't talk about it. And that's the worst part about going through this is that's why I felt so good going on my mission, because I knew living my crazy lifestyle at the time was hurting my parents. And so when I came back and I was the prodigal son and they were so proud of me, I felt good. Because who doesn't want to make their parents proud? And so then when I turned around and leave the church and break their heart all over again, you know, that was rough. And, you know, I wouldn't hear from my parents, but I'd hear from my brothers. Like, man, mom's been crying over you for a week. And so that's been the hardest part about the whole thing is hurting my family. I don't know what you do about that, but it sucks.

Mel Brown [00:31:45] That registration thing or resignation, now I'm all confused. That one did freak me out because I was all in then. Like, he had shared stuff with me, so I was like, getting. I was starting to see cracks for the first time in my life where I'd never seen cracks before. But I still believed and would still justify him. I just was one of those, just gotta have faith. We'll know in the afterlife and it'll be fine. But that I like resigning, that takes it to a whole other level, you know, because then I start picturing what this looks like for me and my family and the future. And that's scary when you're taught, like, you're, you know, you get sealed together and it's like we're gonna be with each other forever, like, for the eternities like with our family, and he just cut that off. So, like, I. We're not sealed together anymore. Our kids aren't sealed to us. Like, we're not gonna be together. It's now. It's till death to us part. Like, I don't get him for the eternities. And this is the short life, the forever is later. So that's kind of freaky. So I remember telling him, like, Even if it's just.0001% chance that it's true, can you just, like, not cut it off? Like, if you don't think it's true anyways, like, just leave it then. And you think, you know, Mel, for me, it feels like kind of a bad, like, abusive relationship. You know, if you're married to someone and it's an abusive, bad relationship and like, maybe you get separated so you're not living together, you still live your own lives, but you still have that piece of paper tying you together. He just felt like to get his piece, like he just needed to completely cut all ties to feel like I'm done so I don't have to keep reading, studying, thinking about it. And I'm like, okay, if you feel like that's what you need to do, because I love him and I want him to be happy. And if he feels like that will give him peace to go through this, then I was like, okay. But it freaked me out. And I realized that's something I just have to process myself, not put it on him and just be the bigger person, be strong and just be okay with it. But, yeah, that's a scary thought, though.

John Dehlin [00:33:44] So what led to you changing from confident single Mormon mom, so to speak?

Stu Brown [00:33:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] You know, supportive of your husband. What shifted you from that to something else?

Mel Brown [00:33:57] Yeah, and that's the thing. When I was in that phase, I would realize, like, okay, like, I'm going to be example. Like, wherever I am, I want to be like a good example. So I'm like, okay, this is. This will be good. Maybe this was part of what I'm supposed to go through in life is to show people that you can still have a good, happy, strong marriage and family by having one in the church and one out of the church. So I was like, okay, this was always supposed to happen. So I get to make the best of it, have a good attitude and just own it. And I could tell people's faces and responses when I'd go to church and I'd be feeling sorry for me, and I'm like, no, it's fine. And I want other people to see it's okay. It doesn't have to be the end of the world. Those people that are in those mixed faith relationships, like, I get that it's hard, and I get it messes with your head. And there's all of that fear of, what is this gonna look like? But it's like, you know what? God loves us. Let's just take a deep breath, calm down, try to. It's hard and just realize God loves. Like, it'll work out, you know? So, yeah. So I just kind of owned it in that phase. But it finally got to a point, like with Stu, he's like, you know, I just feel like this church is more damaging than good. And me, even when I started to see more and more cracks, I'm like, you know, I still feel like, yeah, everything doesn't make sense. It doesn't line up from everything we've been taught. But I feel like it's more good than bad. So even if it's. I got to the point where I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm getting to the point where I don't even know if it's all true or if it's even true. I'm like, I don't really care. I still want to be a part of it. I still like the community. I like the people I. I like. I don't know. I just like a lot of the stuff that it has. I like the good parts of it. So I'm like, even if it's not true, I still would want to be a part of it. And he was the opposite. He's like, no, if it's not true, I don't want to be any part of it. I don't want to give any more of my time or money for that. So I see where he was coming from, and I'm like, okay. Like, we're all wired differently. We think differently, we feel differently. And I'm like, I just definitely don't believe in a one size fits all thing. I just don't think that can work for anyone. You can't say, you will be happy doing what I do. It's not how it works. So anyways, it just got to a point where it kind of shifted. I remember I had to teach a lesson on Joseph Smith. And this was after he had shared with me way more information than I ever needed to know about Joseph Smith. And I had lesser feelings of him. And so I remember reading that lesson, like, five or six times. So I would teach relief, study once a month and I'd have my lesson, you know, and he or I read through it like five times thinking like, okay, I can't say that. I can't say that trying to have integrity of like what I could say that I felt like was actually true. There's good parts of it. And then when it was all said and done, it was like, okay, this would be like a two minute talk. I can't really spread this out over two minutes. There's nothing else I can get from this lesson that I don't, that it's making me sick over, you know, that it's not true. And anyway, so a big part of it was in the manual. I remember it saying, and this was, the essays had come out not too long before, but it said Joseph Smith was faithful to his wife Emma. And I remember reading that, I'm like, single wife, right?

John Dehlin [00:37:06] Yeah.

Mel Brown [00:37:07] And then they went out of their way to use the word faithful when I'm like, wait a minute, like. And then you go on into lds.org it's not an anti Mormon site. It's the church's site, the one true church of God. I have their manual and I have their website. And the manual's not lining up with the website because the essays clearly say he was married to 36 plus wives, some as young as, you know, almost 15, and then married to other men's wives. And they figured out a way to twist it and justify it and that

John Dehlin [00:37:36] he didn't always tell Emma the truth, that he kept it from Emma.

Mel Brown [00:37:40] Yeah, right. Yeah. So like all that stuff and I'm like, so wait a minute, wait a minute. So one of them is lying. Is their website lying from the one true church or is their manual that are like they came out the same year? It's not like, you know, they'll try to use that card of, well, like past prophets, how it contradicts what new prophets will say. They'll just say, oh well, we just, they don't care about that. We just listen to what the new prophets say because it's new revelation or new whatever. So like they justify that and they don't even care. I'm like, this is literally like the same date. It's just a different online, their website or the book. So like that was, you know, it was disturbing for me. So I'm like, so they're asking me because in the manual is the lie. We already have proven that he had way more wives. So I can't share to these 20 plus women that are there in Relief Society that Joseph Smith was faithful to his wife Emma, because what does that make you think? He had one wife. He didn't have one wife. So they're asking me to lie to these women. These women are gonna teach their kids and family this, and then they're gonna share this information. So, like, because of me, I'm gonna be the root of, like, this lie that spread. That's not even true. And we have facts against it. Like, I don't feel okay with that. You know? And so for me, I'm like, out of integrity and honesty, like, I can't teach this lesson. So I called the really sighty president. She came over, we talked a little bit, and she said, that's fine. I can get someone else to teach it. And she said, melinda, like, if there's any other lessons in the future that you don't feel comfortable teaching, just let me know. We'll get somebody else, no problem. But then I'm thinking, okay, so I don't teach it. But what if I'm there at church that day and I hear that? So I hear someone else share a lie. I can't raise my hand and be like, actually, he had this, and go off all this other information. Why? Because I'd have a target on my back. People would be afraid of me. Church is not the place to cause contention or have questions. Like, if you're gonna go to church, you need to basically smile and nod. And if you're gonna have a comment, it needs to be faith promoting and go along with it. So I'm like, there's not even a place for me here. And it made me sad because I was like, you know, Uchtdorf had said in one of his talks, like, there's a place for everyone here. No matter where you're at, you're welcome here, and there's a place for you here. And it's just sad when it's like, yeah, he said that. And that felt really good. Made me feel warm and fuzzy, like, oh, awesome. This gives me hope that I can make this work. But then the reality hits. I'm like, no, there's not a place for me. Because out of integrity, I can't sit here and keep my mouth shut and know this teacher is spreading lies to all of these people. And yet I also can't raise my hand and say anything about it. So I'm like, oh, you know. So it was starting to get to a point where I'm like, I don't even think I can be a part of this. And Then. So that was a big. That was a big thing for me. And then him resigning, I remember thinking about that and thinking, okay, so what is it? So I'm thinking, okay, so he left. So that just divided up our family. So I'm like, okay, if I want to have the highest degree, live in the highest degree of glory, because I'm like, I've worked really hard to be a good girl. Like, I want all the sky cake I can get or all the glory I can get. Like, I've worked hard. I don't want to screw it up now, you know? And I'm like, I deserve this. I worked really hard to be a good kid and, like, say no to things, to make my God happy and proud of me, you know, so. But then I'm thinking, like, okay, so this means if he's not going to be going to church anymore, and if I want to, like, jump through all the hoops and be like, okay, I'm going to do daily scripture study with my kids. I'm going to do prayer with them, family prayer. I'm going to take over his priesthood responsibilities, and I'm going to do family home evening. And it was, like, a lot of weight and a pressure on me of being like, oh, my gosh, like, sometimes I get weak. And I was all excited. I was excited having a husband that, like, had served a mission. And, like, he's the smart one. He knows all the facts. He knows the scriptures. I get the facts mixed up and confused. And I was like, okay, he's gonna be the one that's gonna teach our kids the gospel. And knowing, like, oh, my gosh, like, I'm so insignificant. Like, I always had a strong testimony, but I didn't really care about history and all the facts and all that. I didn't need that. It was just like, I just knew. And I love the good from it, and I'm just gonna be good, you know? So I realized I didn't have him anymore. So it's going to be a harder life for me. It's going to be hard for me, like, having to, like, be on my A game all the time so my kids have a chance. And then knowing, why are they going to want to go to church with me when they can be at home with dad watching football or hanging out? So I'm like, this is going to be a hard battle. So I'm like, okay, jump through all the hoops. And then I'm picturing, okay, then we die. And then I'm at the highest level of degree of, you know, the celestial kingdom. And I'm like, he's lower because he doesn't, you know? And then my kids, who knows where they'll be? I hope I can pull them up with me. I don't know. So I'm picturing myself all alone here. My husband's somewhere else. I don't know where my kids are. I'm like, why would I work so hard and jump through all these hoops to be alone and not even be with my family? Like, we work really hard to have a good relationship, you know, and to have like a loving family and like to work through communication and work through those hard things about life and marriage. And I'm like, I don't want to just give that up. Like, we're working hard to get there. Like, I want to carry that for as long as I can, you know? But then. So that, like, wasn't really inspiring or motivating for me to be a better person. I almost was like, I want to just sin just enough to be at whatever level he's at, you know, that's how I felt about it. And then I'm thinking, okay, that's messed up God plan. Like, if God created this, like, I'm sorry, God, I am not going to be a better person because I want to be with him. You should have created a more inspiring plan because this isn't working for me, you know, like, it just kind of messed with my head. But then he's like. And then he like, makes reality or whatever, gets the truth, the facts of how it actually going to work. And he's like, well, Melinda, like, you can't be at the highest degree of glory, even if you were the most amazing person in the world, jump through all the hoops. You're not married. You're not sealed to a man, so you don't get to go there anyways. Wow.

Mel's Own Doubts Begin to Surface

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Okay.

Mel Brown [00:43:42] This gets better and better.

Stu Brown [00:43:44] Yeah, we joke. We have a someone on our ward who's super, like Ned Flandery.

Mel Brown [00:43:51] Super tedium to the highest level.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] I joke.

Stu Brown [00:43:54] And I'm like, hey, you're just going to be reincited to brother. So and so who's reassigned?

Mel Brown [00:43:58] Yeah, like, I'll be a polygamous wife.

John Dehlin [00:43:59] You'll get reassigned to some other worthy man who probably already has a wife

Stu Brown [00:44:03] because he's super brother. So.

Mel Brown [00:44:06] And so I get Peter Priesthood.

Stu Brown [00:44:07] Yep. And she's like, ah, you didn't want that.

Mel Brown [00:44:11] No.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] You didn't want to be someone's second or third wife.

Mel Brown [00:44:13] And here's what I'm thinking. I'm like, yeah, there's no way. No. Make that clear. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:44:22] But just the idea that your eternal destiny isn't in your own hands.

Mel Brown [00:44:26] No, that is super disturbing. Where I'm like, because of his choice, I don't get to go there or

John Dehlin [00:44:32] I have to be with my kids and family.

Mel Brown [00:44:34] Yeah, with my family. And it's like, it doesn't matter how amazing I am. Like, that's just wrong. There's no way. And then I have to be like, there's no way God would have any part of that. The God I know, that's not his plan. So I'm like, there's something wrong with some of this church or what they're teaching. But, yeah. Trying to think what.

Stu Brown [00:44:52] Yeah, well, I know, like, Elena's like, one of the most loving and kind hearted people you'll ever meet. And growing up in the church, I'd never say we were homophobic, but we never really thought about LGBT issues that much. But when we started going through our faith crisis, that is something that we'd start talking about is. Man, it just doesn't seem right, the church's stance. And so I know for you, like, your tender bleeding heart, that kind of started to be a big issue.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] You started connecting to LGBT Mormons.

Mel Brown [00:45:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] How'd that happen? Why'd you start caring about them?

Mel Brown [00:45:38] Just that.

John Dehlin [00:45:38] Did you have someone you knew or.

Mel Brown [00:45:40] I mean, just hearing different people's stories, I think maybe hearing some of your stuff that you've done talking to other people or. There was a group that was in the Valley that we wanted to support an lg, tb, whatever group up here. So we wanted to, like, bring food for them over Thanksgiving and bring some fun stuff for them and play it like a movie or whatever, their big outdoor movie screen stuff. And, I don't know, started getting involved and like, once you learn more about it, it's like, oh, and like, hearing their stories. And I'd heard stories online and just. I never really thought about hearing them or listening to them, so. And again, I put myself in other people's shoes and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I would never want my kids to be treated that way. Or me or my spouse or anybody, anyone. I don't care if I don't even know them. So I don't have any necessarily really personal experiences. But just knowing, like, that's just not fair for those other people. I hate seeing people in pain and sad. Like, I will do anything to like, just help them not feel some of that pain, you know? So I don't know.

Stu Brown [00:46:38] Honestly, I think your TED Talk is interview with Clark Johnson, things like that. I had a. Yeah, I had some friends that, you know, I was able to reconnect with and talk to and just listen to their story. And they were gay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] Yeah.

Stu Brown [00:46:57] So it's.

John Dehlin [00:46:58] What'd you learn something?

Stu Brown [00:47:00] Well, I. I used to think that people chose to be gay or, you know, Spencer W. Kimball, they masturbated too much and it made him gay.

Mel Brown [00:47:10] So they.

Stu Brown [00:47:12] I thought that, like, it's horrible. It is horrible. And so. A couple examples, a family from my mission, a guy super faithful, super active in the bishopric. You know, I was catching up with somebody and saying, oh, hey, what's, you know, the so and so's up to? Like, oh, like, brother. So and so he left his family, he came out of the closet, and he turned gay. I used to think people turned gay. So I remember thinking, like, what would possibly make this guy, like, leave his family? Like, did he just get into porn and then start watching gay porn? Like, how does somebody just turn gay? So that's what I learned when I actually sat down and talk to somebody that's gay. They never chose to be gay. And that had not crossed my mind before. And so when I think back to all the homophobic things that the church teaches and then sharing that with Mel, we were both on the same page. It's like, that's just wrong. And when you study race in the priesthood and the church came out with that essay, and, yeah, Brigham was just a racist old dude, and he was wrong. And so what are they wrong about now? And so the confidence in your leaders just goes away. And so you see him, you know, just pounding the pulpit and fighting, you know, Prop 8 and just fighting against equality the same way they fought against civil rights. And they've just never been on the right side of any social justice issue ever. And so we'd have these conversations and we talk about that. And I think that's one of the. Maybe this is getting ahead, but the biggest gifts of the faith crisis is being able to say, well, how do you feel about this? Not how are we supposed to feel about it. How are we supposed to think about issues we can actually make up our own minds and how we actually feel. And so that's been amazing.

Mel Brown [00:49:31] Yeah. And I just remember, like, using, like, I like to have little, like, examples or things to, like, really process that and have it, like, click for me. So I'm thinking Like, okay, my sister, she has her five kids. You know, she's married. The three oldest kids are baptized. So I'm like, if her husband was like, all right, we're gonna get a divorce. I'm gay. I'm gonna be with this other person. So I'm like, okay, what would that look like for the family? Because this is what happens in real life of what's going on with this new policy that had come out. And so the new policy is, you know, you can't. Kids of a parent that's gay can't get baptized until they're 18. So only until they're 18. And then they have to disavow their. The relationship. Basically be very clear that, no, I disavow this. I don't agree with it. This is wrong about their parent. And then they can be baptized. So they. It's pretty big thing for them to go through. So I'm like, put myself in someone else's shoes. Even though I don't have family in this instance, you know, I like to think of, what would Jesus do? Like, what? I don't know. So, like, my sister, she's got the three kids that are baptized, so that means the other two wouldn't be able to get baptized even if they only go to their dad, you know, every other weekend. So they're really there only a couple times a month. And because of that, they don't get to get baptized because of their dad's choice. And I'm like, oh, my heck. And so then I've had, like, we had the sister missionaries come over to our house, like, just a few months ago, and I had kind of just brought this up, and they're like, well, it's out of love. And I've heard a lot of people say that. That's what they say. Like, it's out of love. Because think of how confused, how confusing it is for them to, like, you know, to realize. Like, at the church, they say that it's wrong to practice that, but then. And then they're able to get baptized, like. And I'm like, okay, so you shut down when you think out of love, and it's like, oh, okay, great. But once you open your mind just a tiny bit further, you realize, like, okay, wait a minute. So you're saying this kid still gets to go to church every Sunday, and they get to hear the lessons of how important it is to get baptized and that they get to get the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the best thing that you can get. And Such a gift of being a part of this church. So you know, when they're seven, they're going to learn these lessons like crazy. And like, oh, you're going to be eight soon. You get to get baptized. So they get to be taught all the lessons and all their friends get to get baptized. And like my sister goes big for her baptism. It's like cake presents. People come from out of state, all the family comes, it's a big party. So the two little kids that aren't baptized get to realize, oh, all my other siblings had a big party. I believe in the church 100%. They don't, you know, know anything else they want to. And it's like, sorry, you know, you can't because of your dad's choice. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, that's out of love. That sounds like the most damaging thing that you could actually do. And then, so it's like, and then when they get older, when they're 12 and they pass the sacrament, all their friends get to pass the sacrament. And they just have to sit there and watch their friends. So they don't get to be a part of the group. They don't get to be a part of their friends. I'm like, that just breaks my heart for the people that are really dealing with that. And then I'm picturing how mad my sister would be at her ex husband. Like she would be so resentful and mad. Look at what you're doing. And now our kids are getting bullied because the other kids think that the reason they're not passing the sacrament is because they're sinning because why else would you not pass the sacrament? Or maybe the kid doesn't want to share with his friends that he only sees at Sunday every now and again that his dad was gay because there's still bullying that goes on and there's still hurtful, hard, hard things. So then they have to share that and be honest and get risk being bullied or have their friends assume they're sinning. Like, it's not a good place for those people to be in. So I'll think about this stuff when I make my decisions. And I'm like, there is no way any good loving God would have any part of that that is destructive and, and damaging and hurtful and that destroys families. The kids that could mess up their life because of that. And it was inspired of God. I'm like, well, if that's the case, then I don't like that God and I don't want any part of it. I start getting, like, feisty.

John Dehlin [00:53:35] Yeah.

Mel Brown [00:53:36] Because I'm like, I believe in love and I believe what matters is building people up. Like, I would never do anything that's going to, like, bring somebody down. If I'm going to say something to someone, I want to build them up. I want them to, like, feel better about themself. I'm not even gonna joke to someone that might hurt their feelings or they might have issues with, like, not even tease. If I'm gonna joke, it's gonna be like calling them hot stuff or something. That's gonna, like, make them laugh and build them up, you know? So anyway, so those were some big points. Was one that lesson for me, like, starting to get where I'm like, I don't think I can do this anymore. Not only was it the past and the history of that was not true, and it was very clear and it wasn't anti Mormon lies. It's just not true. And like, it just didn't line up from what we were taught. You know, all these pictures that they taught me as a kid that they would share with kids, it was like, yeah, it wasn't really the Urim and Thummim, it was the rock and how it was translated. You know, like all the stuff that's just. It's not accurate. And I'm like, even if my kid goes now, they're gonna see these old school pictures and be taught something that's a lie. And yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:37] You were saying it wasn't just the history. It was also.

Mel Brown [00:54:40] Yeah, so it wasn't just the history of, like, things not lining up. It's like the treatment and what the new prophets are saying and how Uchtdorf said there was a place for me and I felt really good about that. And when it comes down to it, there's not a place for me because I can't. And that's the thing that started shifting is like, I'm not feeling peace when I go to church anymore. Just like with Stu. And that kind of made me sad because I used to be able to go and I did feel peace. And I would get the warm and fuzzies and I would feel that and then I would start going and I just wasn't feeling that anymore. But for me, I'm like, I still wanted to go, even knowing, like, it wasn't all true just because I felt like that's a place I'll probably gonna feel closer to God or have a time to think about, I don't know, just get closer than being at home at my house. So I really wanted to keep going and just get whatever tiny piece of good was there. And it just got to a point where I felt like I just, I couldn't find peace there anymore, you know? And I know I've heard all the lessons. I've been there 33, whatever years of my life, hardcore, believed every word out of it. And I know that they would teach like people that leave the church, it's because they're sinning, they never had a strong testimony, they weren't faithful enough, they're weak. And I can tell you right now that's not the case.

The Policies That Pushed Mel Toward the Door

John Dehlin [00:55:53] Which of those applied to you?

Mel Brown [00:55:55] None of them.

John Dehlin [00:55:57] Why not?

Mel Brown [00:55:58] None. None of them. Like go through each one like having a weak testimony. I never had a weak testimony. I believed it 100%, never doubted a bit of it, didn't have a shelf, never thought like, oh, that's weird, I have an issue with that and put it on my shelf. No, just. I just believed it and I went for it and I went all in and I was happy and I only looked at the positive.

John Dehlin [00:56:19] How about wanted to sin, not want?

Mel Brown [00:56:21] Yeah, like I didn't leave to want to sin. I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not a druggie. Like I don't care about that stuff. Like can't even drink coffee. I think coffee's fine.

John Dehlin [00:56:28] But what about the porn? Was it the porn?

Mel Brown [00:56:31] Probably. It must have been that, that was it.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] No.

Mel Brown [00:56:35] So that's the thing where like none of that stuff, like I'm still the same person. I'm still the same loving person. I happen to just be even more, even more loving, more accepting, more. I can genuinely just like listen to people where they're at and not feel like I have a motive to try to like, because I was taught so much about missionary work and like you know, every member a missionary. So even though I didn't serve a mission, I was like, I gotta be a good example and do my missionary work for if I do ever happen to have a non member neighbor that I never had growing up or whatever. But yeah, like, just.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] What about you? You stopped reading the scriptures and praying and that's why you fell away?

Mel Brown [00:57:16] No.

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Why not? I don't know.

Mel Brown [00:57:20] I guess that could be it.

Stu Brown [00:57:22] We found it.

John Dehlin [00:57:23] We found the reason.

Mel Brown [00:57:24] Yeah, there's got to be a reason.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] How about you, Stu? Did you stop reading the scriptures and that's what made you?

Stu Brown [00:57:28] No, I mean, I read them more.

Mel Brown [00:57:30] I mean I. Yeah, he did.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] Reading the scriptures becomes the problem, right?

Stu Brown [00:57:34] Yeah, it definitely becomes the problem. I dove in and I can see people from the outside. We have a neighbor that we get together every now and again with and have dinner. And I remember in the midst of

Mel Brown [00:57:49] it,

Stu Brown [00:57:51] I probably looked dark and unhappy. Like I carried around this heavy weight all the time because I so desperately wanted to find out. And I did everything possible I knew to do. So. I guess the point is that I turned over every rock I met with my leaders. I studied and prayed and cried and begged to find out that it was true. And when I finally realized slowly that it just isn't, and I finally laughed. We had dinner with him again. And she commented to Mel, our neighbor, man, I remember a year ago, Stu looked so sad and unhappy, but now he looks so happy and he's, you know, and so looking on the outside like you might have seen me. And, oh, he must be sinning. Look how, you know, that's what happens when you leave the church. Because he's so just. He looks down, he doesn't look happy.

Mel Brown [00:59:06] He doesn't have the light of Christ in him anymore. Satan's got ahold of him.

Stu Brown [00:59:08] So they were right. I didn't. I was. I was sad. I'm not anymore. So that's good. So the.

Mel's Final Decision to Leave the Church

John Dehlin [00:59:19] Was there a moment where you came to Stu and said, I'm done. Talk us to kind of that moment where you shifted that final shift. And then we'll talk about the life after Mormonism.

Stu Brown [00:59:32] Cool.

Mel Brown [00:59:32] Okay. So I was pregnant with our daughter. So we got our little boy and then our little girl. So first I got little girl pregnant with her and, you know, still going to church, but it was about like a month before. So like I said, during that time of that year, I had taught that lesson. He had resigned, started thinking about, you know, like just the gay thing and how that would. Just relating myself to other people and seeing how hard and painful that would be to go through that. Just starting to see like things aren't lining up. It's not like I feel like, you know, those wristbands that. What would Jesus do? Wwt that one? Yeah, that one. I feel like it actually needs to be two different wristbands. You need to have what would Jesus do? And then what would the church do? And I feel like they've just been dividing and I feel like every day that goes on, every year that goes on, they're getting further and further apart and I'm like, I'm going to stick with what Jesus would do, you know, And I feel like it's completely opposite what the church would do, the church organization would do. I feel like they're separate. And so for me, if I'm following my heart and integrity and honesty, what would Jesus do? It would be to loving, be loving and be accepting and to not turn away the black sheep because they're the hard one. Like, just love them and accept them and just let them figure out their life on their journey and their path. It can be so much more simple than it really is. So that's why it got to a point where I was like, I can't be a part of this. And when I would go to church, I wouldn't get that peace anymore. And same thing, reading my scriptures. Like, I would read the scriptures and it was like, now that I saw all the errors in it and changing literally the name of God to the Son of God and then changing like, what was the one? King Benjamin?

Stu Brown [01:01:12] Yeah, they just switched names because the

Mel Brown [01:01:14] guy had, the guy had actually died. And in one of the scriptures they kept telling a story about him. And then someone actually who read it and realized, like, oh, this person had died, we better put another name in there. Like, it's not just like the. And like, and you can actually see this, this is an anti Mormon lie. Like, it's actually, you can see the original ones and see these changes. So you'd be reading it and you'd be like, okay, wait a minute. I, I used to bear my testimony that I love this person. And it's like, but that's not even the person. They changed the name. So what am I bearing my testimony about? Like, it just loses. You just can't get that back, you know, And I know people probably use this analogy a lot about the Santa Claus. Like, as soon as you know that Santa Claus isn't real and it's your parents giving the gifts, not Santa Claus, then you can't ever go back to believing in Santa Claus. And I've had people say that, like, of course you can go back to believing in the church. Just get your testimony back. Read the Book of Mormon, you can go back to believing and get your testimony back. No, you can't. I will never believe in Santa Claus again. I can't. I already know the truth. It's not a real thing. So it's the same thing with the church. Like, I can never go back. I can't change what I know. I can't undo any of that. And so it just got to the point where I would go and it was like the same thing I'D start having the pain in my eyes because I would realize what they were saying. And when these little tiny kids would go up and say, I know the church is too true, and the parents are whispering it in their ear, the six year old gets up and he says, I know that it's true. And it's like, that's not really possible to know because one, you haven't studied anything and it's just, that's not true. You can say you believe in it, you hope it's true. That's more of a truth telling and accurate. So stuff like that, every testimony meeting, it's like, try not to let that bother you, Melinda. Try to just get the good about what they're saying. You know, it was just. It got really hard to filter through the garbage with the good things. And then hearing these lessons when I'm like, then we'd go back and you know, read the stuff after.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] So what was the breaking point? So just when were you done? Do you remember?

Stu Brown [01:03:13] I don't know if you had a huge breaking point, but I know when our daughter was born, she said that's my excuse to stop going.

Mel Brown [01:03:23] Yeah, it was kind of the buildup of all of this when it started to get where. So it wasn't like one last thing. It was kind of like this and this and this where started weighing, weighing and weighing. And I'm like starting to feel suffocated with just like, I don't even want to do this anymore. And I'm realizing like the stuff that he's told me is true and like, yeah, it's just I'm not believing it. And the stuff that the church would kept coming out with and saying, it was just harmful, it was hurtful and it was like negative and it was fear based and control based. And I'm like, I don't want any part of this. I don't believe in a loving God. This is an inspiring church. And then I'd gone to that training that I'm like, that training that has nothing to do with the church inspired me. And the fact that God can't figure out how to put some of those pieces of the training into the church to inspire people to be better. I just don't want any part of it. So it was a month before she was born and I was like, I could have been done right then, but I'm like, I'm just gonna go these last few weeks and then it's gonna be perfect transition for me. Because people, when you have your baby, you don't go to church for a few months, you know? So I'm like, this is a perfect transition, so I can just, like, have my baby. And I'm like, and I can just. I don't plan on going back. And then I got released from my calling, said, I don't want to teach because I don't know how, you know, I don't want to have the obligation of having to hurry and come back with my baby. So they all thought it was just, I'm having my baby. So I got released from my calling. Yeah. Stopped doing visiting, teaching. I just cut it off. And I was like, well, and I'll see how I feel. And I like that I can keep the door open. If I don't go for a while and I feel like I'm just depressed and I'm missing something, then I can go back. But at least this is a good way. I can test without having anybody be weird and, like, make a big deal out of it. Because this way, if I do go back, there's no one being like, melinda, what happened? It's just, like, natural, you know? And so I'm sure I got to a point where after five, six, seven months of me not going back, people are probably like, melinda's baby's probably seven, eight months now. She's still not here, you know? And then I'm sure all the rumors floated around, but I wasn't there, and I didn't care. So I'm done. Haven't been back since she's two and a half.

Stu Brown [01:05:19] So.

John Dehlin [01:05:20] Last question before we switch to the final part. Every single Mormon ward in the world right now has people who arrived at the same conclusions you've arrived at. They're like, yeah, it's not true. Yeah, Joseph was either a fallen prophet or he never was a prophet. The Book of Mormon isn't historical. The polygamy stuff is garbage. All the racism is garbage. All the homophobia is garbage. But either there's enough good to stay, or the risk or the cost of leaving is just way too high. And so I don't want to disappoint my parents. I don't want to disappoint my siblings. I don't want to be viewed by the neighbors as the bad person. I don't want to. You know, I don't know what to replace it with. You know, I don't want to be alone or be ostracized. And so I'm just gonna quietly stay and just stick it out and make it work versus disappoint. Everyone disrupt my life and cause all this damage. You've already explained what. What led up to these decisions. But if each of you had to summarize why, you know, what's the reason you chose to leave when so many others choose to stay? What was it for each of you?

Stu Brown [01:06:45] For me, it simply is not true, and it's damaging. And I didn't want to be associated with that. So I was. I know that the cool new thing is to be nuanced, but I didn't grow up nuanced. The church was never nuanced. For me, it was black and white. I believe Gordon B. Hinckley when he said it. Joseph Smith either saw what he said he saw or he didn't. And when I found out he didn't, that was it. I was done. Yeah.

Mel Brown [01:07:18] Yeah. So for me, like, I still wanted to keep one foot in the door for a while, because I'm thinking, for my kids, for me, I didn't need it. I have no problem finding other new friends. So I don't need to have that community. I can find another community. But for my kids, I'm just thinking, you know, what? Like, I know what people are like. If they don't know us, they're not seeing us around. They don't know if we're a safe place. They don't know if, you know, because I was always raised, you hang out with people and kids that have similar morals and values. Well, if I'm not going to church, they don't know if I have similar morals or values. And that's just frightening for people that are in the church because they think people leave for all the reasons they will tell you because we're sinning, we're alcoholics, going to have drugs. We're going to teach their kids that, you know, all these horrible things. Like, I think there's all those fears that aren't really true come into play. And so I was like, you know what? I want to stay in and go. Even if I miss a Sunday every now and again, I won't feel that guilt and shame like I normally would, but I want to keep a foot in just so people know I'm a safe person. They see me there all the time. They know I'm the same good person. I wanted to stay for my kids, for that, even though I wasn't believing it. I would have been finding out. And then Stu and I kind of talked, and he's like, you know, like, Melinda, it's changing. There's so many people that are leaving now. More than ever before. I don't. You know, and same thing with our kids dating and all of that. Like, I want them to have a good opportunity and not be the outcast ones. Or he's like, things are shifting so much. Don't stay in just for that. Don't just stay in out of fear that they're not gonna have friends or that people, you know, be afraid of them. And I was like, you know what? That's true. I need to be authentic to me, and if I'm not feeling it, I'm not feeling it, and it will be okay. That's what's so hard about it. Every decision, I feel like, is based out of fear, and I'm done with that. I don't like that, you know, And I don't think life needs to be run that way Again with that training, like, that motivated me to want to change the world and be an incredible person and, like, make a huge difference. That short little training that I went to the church didn't do that. It's just fear and guilt and shame. I don't want my kid raised in that. I don't want to be in it. And so I'm done. So, yeah, that's why I'm like, I could never go back because. And for me, too, like, I don't half ass anything. Like, I go all in. I'm either all in or I'm all out. So I can't half be in the church. And so I've had no desire, Like, I don't want to go to activities. I don't even want to go to anything just because I don't want the weirdness of, like, oh, we've missed you, and, oh, you know, like, I still live in the same house. I'm two doors down from you. If you miss me, come on over. I'm always here. I'm like, I just don't even want to risk hearing that and be, like, rolling my eyes. So I'm like, I just want to completely stay away. So even though I'm like, activities can be fun every now and again, I just. Whatever. I'm fine just being completely done. So that works better for me. And I get that everyone's on different pages and things work different for them, and I say, go for it. If you can stay in it and you want to make a difference and you feel good about that and you're happy there, do it. I would never try to convince people that because I'm happier now than I've ever been in my entire life, which we are. I would never want to convince other people to do the same thing because I don't know if they'd be happy. I don't know how their relationship is with their spouse, with their children, with their families. It could maybe be really hard or damaging for them. I don't know. So that's the thing I've got from this is I definitely don't believe in a one size fits all. You know, just if the goal is to get to the top of the mountain, it doesn't matter which path you go. If you have bad legs and you want to go around the slow way and have a scenic route, go that way. If you want to go straight up the mountain, go that way. Like, so the church professing that they're the one and only, it just doesn't work for me. It just. It can't be. It's not. It doesn't work. It's not reality. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:10] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Processing the Emotional Weight of Leaving

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 830

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Welcome back to Part three of this epic interview with with Melinda and and Sterling or Stu Brown. We have covered in the first two parts their amazing time as Mormons, how much they love the church, how orthodox they were, how much the Church meant to them. And then we went into depth about what caused Sterling first to kind of start losing interest in questioning his faith and how they navigated that and the mixed faith marriage. And then ultimately what caused Melinda to second guess her decision to kind of stay in and be that kind of Mormon single mom, so to speak, and what ended up leading to both of them, both Stuart resigning and then Melinda deciding to no longer continue attending and raising your kids in the church. So I feel like it was just a really beautiful, classic, epic faith journey that I know is going to help a lot of people, but we're not going to end there. What I think is one of the most important things we can do is kind of model life after the faith crisis. And so often this, you know, some people don't even like using the term faith crisis because it's sort of negative framing. Many people say, hey, it's not a crisis, it's like a faith enlightening. It's actually this moment of awakening. And a lot of people don't even like that framing at all. But at the time you experience it, it certainly does feel like a crisis for most people. And so for me, as I've started thinking about and as I've traveled around the world trying to support Mormons and liberal Mormons and post Mormons navigating a faith crisis, I've come up with this idea of a new framing. And the new framing that I've come up with is this idea of the gift of the faith crisis. In other words, yes, it's hard, yes, it's different, yes, it's going to be painful at times. Yes, sometimes it will even be terrifying and excruciating. But this is a gift for many, if not most, if not all of the tens of thousands of people that I've interacted with over the past 15 plus years. Again, it's painful, it's terrifying. Sometimes it's life threatening, sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's deeply depressing. Sometimes it causes a lot of anxiety. But then the sun comes up. And over time, what you can realize is that this can not only be something that you weather and something that you endure and something that you get through, but this experience. And I'll have to say, whether you stay in the church or leave the church, this faith crisis, what can become born out of it, is sort of a born again experience where you literally get a new lease on life for the first time in your life. And so many exciting, wonderful things can grow from that huge stinking turd that was originally feeling like a faith crisis. And so it can be a better marriage, it can be healthy relationships with kids, it can be extended family relationships that were once lost, now get rekindled. It can be feeling more authentic, feeling more true. Losing 100 pounds or losing your depression or your anxiety. All these amazing gifts can come from that faith crisis moment. And so what we're gonna do for the third part of this interview is we're gonna ask Stu and Mel two questions, really? Question number one is, what were the super hard things about the faith crisis? You know, what were the hardest parts? What were the parts that seemed insurmountable or devastating or just tragic or depressing? Because we want to acknowledge the hard stuff. So question number one for both of them will be, what was the hard parts? And how did you navigate the hard things? And then the second part is, what was the awesomeness? What was the power, the beauty, the enlightenment, the blessings, the gifts that came as a result of the faith crisis? And this can be a 5, 10 minute conversation or it can be more, because what we want to do is let people know. You don't have to live in fear. You don't have to live in sadness and desperation. You don't have to live in silence. Yes, there will be hard things, but you can make it through the hard things. And most importantly, you can emerge as an authentic, happy, healthy human in or out of the church. And you can find more joy, more happiness, more meaning, more authenticity, and more emotional intimacy with yourself and with others than you would have ever thought possible. And so that's what we're going to talk about for the remaining part of the interview. What do you think?

Stu Brown [00:05:43] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] Can you guys do it?

Mel Brown [00:05:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:45] All right, so. And maybe you've already talked about it, and we don't have to spend even a ton of time on this Stuff we just want people to sort of feel like there's hope. So let's start with the hard stuff. Let's start with you, Stu. What have been the hardest parts about this transition for you? The stuff you're not going to, you know, diminish or try to put a shine on. What have been the hardest parts for you?

Stu Brown [00:06:09] Yeah. So I mentioned my parents, disappointing them, making my mom cry. I think I've always been the favorite child and I'm not anymore.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] I call that Nephi complex. Yeah, you had Nephi complex, Right. You loved being the golden boy, right.

Stu Brown [00:06:32] I don't know if I'd necessarily say I was the golden boy, but growing up, if you asked my mom, I was her spiritual child. I was the most sensitive to the spirit and you know, in my adult life. Like she called me to come give her a blessing. So I was really close to my mom and we could talk about anything. And so that's been one of the hardest things. Not being able to talk to my mom, who I love about everything and knowing that I hurt her. And in my parents eyes, being the one that destroys their eternal family. You know, they're older, they're empty nesters. That's kind of what they have to look forward to is heaven together with their family. And that's what they want more than anything. And I just went and effed it all up. So knowing that to them, I destroyed that as rough, you know, I don't want to hurt anybody.

Mel Brown [00:07:49] His mom loved doing temple days and stuff. He could get all the daughters and daughter in laws and we'd all go to the temple with her. That made her so happy because she never had daughters of her own, she only had sons. And so like she just loved like us all going together and

Stu Brown [00:08:05] all the relationship.

Mel Brown [00:08:06] And now I'm like, not a. Not a part of that. And I think that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] You can't go to those temple moments.

Stu Brown [00:08:11] Yeah. So that's one of the things. It's hard. I wish I could do something about that. Going through it. The hardest thing is just the fear because you don't know where it's going to end up. I'd heard all the horror stories of people's spouses leaving them. And I was honestly, I didn't know what Mel was gonna do if I told her that. I was starting to have questions. I was hopeful that she'd stick with me, but I didn't know. And you know, the fear of. I didn't ever think she'd leave with me. I was hopeful that she would, because being on the same page is better than not. But I was afraid. I was afraid to have my kids go to church and hear how important it is to have a righteous priesthood holder father and then not be that and have my own children think less of me. I was afraid, and I still kind of am, of the kids in the neighborhood not wanting to play with our kids. It's weird. You know, we've been in our house for 11 years, so the first 7ish of those, we were there every Sunday. We were part of the in group, and now we're not.

John Dehlin [00:09:46] And Cache Valley is kind of like Happy Valley, right? It is kind of like Utah county, right?

Mel Brown [00:09:52] Yeah. With that little, small, little world.

Stu Brown [00:09:54] Yeah. I mean, I wasn't excommunicated publicly.

John Dehlin [00:09:58] Oh, right.

Stu Brown [00:09:59] So I didn't have that shame to go through or, you know, that scarlet letter on my back. But I feel it a little bit. You know, people know. And I know how people used to talk about their so and so. He doesn't come anymore. Look at him, you know, So I know how they talked about others, so I can assume how I'm viewed. And I know, you know, I left first, so I pulled Melinda down to hell with me. So I guess that's rough. You know,

Navigating a Moral Compass After Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:10:35] just you mentioned there was some point with alcohol where you were drinking more. Did you struggle with sort of a moral compass and trying things that you had avoided and trying to find pace or a set point with that kind of stuff?

Stu Brown [00:10:54] Okay, so,

John Dehlin [00:10:57] like, were there moments of depression?

Stu Brown [00:11:00] Yeah, yeah, just again, I think it was just a fear. Like, as far as the alcohol, when I, when I said I started drinking more, that was kind of in college. I. Okay, a lot of binge drinking and I drink a little bit now, and it hasn't been.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] So you haven't gone crazy with alcohol. So for you, that hasn't been.

Stu Brown [00:11:25] It hasn't been. But that was, you know, navigating those things, you know, because I had resigned. I didn't believe in the church and I don't believe in the word of wisdom. And so I wanted to be able to get together with buddies and have a beer. And I know she was super worried about that. So those were things we had to navigate and I made mistakes. And just drinking behind her back is like, I'm an adult, I can drink. But she wasn't comfortable with that. So we had some hard things there that we had to work through. But I don't think anything really major that.

John Dehlin [00:11:57] But that's some of the hard stuff. To navigate, right, is you've had your moral compass set for all this time, you've sort of outsourced your moral authority and all of a sudden you're in charge of your moral decisions. And a lot of people screwed up. A lot of people screwed up so bad they probably would have been better never leaving the church. Right? Sure.

Stu Brown [00:12:18] I think maybe I'm lucky in that I partied and you know. Got it out of your system, whatever. Got it out of my system, you know, at 20 rather than at 30. Because nobody wants to see a mid 30 year old going out and partying up for the first time. It's just, it's not cool.

Mel Brown [00:12:39] Yeah, that one did freak me out though, the alcohol thing. Cause I have like a brother that's an alcoholic and that's kinda, kinda lost some of his kids and family over it. And so I had a lot of fears with that one. That one freaked me out. So that one took some time to navigate through. But again I realized like, okay, like he really wants to do this. Like at first it was kind of forcing him, like, no, you're not gonna do this, you know. And then so he had to feel like he had to do it like behind my back. And then I got mad about that when I found it, which I shouldn't have done, but yeah, which that's the part that's not okay, you know. But anyways, we worked through that. But then it was like, okay, it got to a point where he's just like, you know, I'm an adult, like I want to be able to make adult choices. And so then it was like, okay, let's put boundaries on this. So it's like, okay, just when we have the social. Because he gets social anxiety. So it's like, okay, just have one or two before a little hangout with your friends, but I don't want you drinking alone. And so it was like putting rules on it and stuff. But at least he could do that. So that helped. And anyways, I just was afraid that it was going to change him. That like, I've just only seen horror stories from my experience with my family and cousins and stuff like that, where I was just freaked out. Like I just don't want to go there. But then I realized like, he's like, well, no, I'm just the same person. I might have one just to chill out a little bit. And that's it. And so it's like all those fears that I had, it's like they just, I didn't really, I guess need them or wasn't necessarily, like, he's still the same awesome person. He doesn't feel like he needs to get drunk and go be crazy. He. He just like. So it's been chill. So it's like, okay, you know? And yeah. So it's like, all right, he's the same awesome person. So I can let those fears go, and it's not a big deal. When I thought it was a big deal, I made it a huge, huge deal. And it didn't really need to be that big of a deal. So it's like, it is what it is. It's fine. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:18] What about for a lot of people, they have this moment of like, oh, my gosh, if I. If I hadn't been taught this, I would have believed differently. I would have married differently. I would have made different life choices. I would have done all these different things. Have you had to deal with sort of the anger or the resentment or the frustration of having been fooled or deceived or however you would describe it? Right.

Stu Brown [00:14:44] And I don't know, people feel like, oh, if it wasn't for the church, I wouldn't have married this person.

Mel Brown [00:14:50] Or I wouldn't have had this many kids.

Stu Brown [00:14:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] Or career or whatever.

Stu Brown [00:14:55] Yeah. I probably wouldn't went on a mission if I could do it all over again. I regret the money I gave to the church.

Mel Brown [00:15:05] A lot of money in tithing.

Stu Brown [00:15:07] But overall, it is what it is. And, you know, I had really good experiences, too. Scout camp growing up was awesome. The church we grew up in had one of the cool full gyms, not the little carpeted things that are horrible now. And my dad had a key, so we'd just go play basketball whenever we wanted all the time. It was great. So, like, yeah, there's bad things, but I don't have. I'm not bitter, I guess, is what I'm getting at.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] You're pretty happy with where your life is.

Stu Brown [00:15:45] Yeah. Yeah. So it's hard to be like, oh, you know, I love our kids, and we're done. We're not gonna have any more. But. And I love my spouse. And so things turned out fine. So. Yeah. And maybe again, I was able to party and, you know, do that before, so I don't feel gypped, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Okay. How about you, Mel? You had to deal with regret or anger?

Mel Brown [00:16:16] No, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:16:18] Because that's common.

Mel Brown [00:16:19] I know.

John Dehlin [00:16:20] Regret and anger.

Mel Brown [00:16:21] The thing with me, like, I'm not one that I never go into the past for pretty much anything. I don't Care about the past, it's done, whatever. Like, I am all about, like, what's my future, where am I going now? And look at the positive and where I'm going, so I'm not gonna just regret because I can't change it anyway, so what's the point of going there? So, honestly, I just. It's, you know, I had a good childhood being raised. I went, you know, went to college, graduated college, met him. Like, I love him. I would have never picked anybody else. I. Even if I wasn't in the church, this is the guy that I would want to be with. And I feel lucky and grateful to have him as my spouse. And I've honestly, like, just fallen so much more in love with him. Going through this journey together. That's what was cool is, like, when he was out and I was still in, totally in. Like, it just brought us closer together. Seeing, like, how he would be so sweet with me and, like, letting me, like, just respecting me to go to church, knowing that I knew his views of, like, I just don't want our little kid to hear. Think less of me hearing these things about my kid, you know, like, the priesthood dad, the faithful priesthood dad. And that's like, not me. And then the kid come home and be frustrated. And so I knew, like, he wanted me to be out, but I was in. And I respected him for him being out on his journey, and he respected me, and it just brought us closer together. So I know there's a lot of people that can drive a big wedge between their relationship and can cause a lot of problems. But for us, the fact that we just said no, like, I'm gonna love this person no matter what, and we're gonna work through this together, and I get to respect the other person where they're at. It, like, just brought us so much closer together, and it was awesome. So even in the middle of it, even when we were on two completely separate pages, we were happier than we had ever been during that time. Where a lot of people can say, this is just horrible. This is the worst. I would just say just love the other person and let them be where they're at on their time. Let them figure it out and try to let those fears go. I know that's hard. You've got to figure out a way to just take a deep breath and just not let those fears overcome you and then have you get resentful and hurtful towards your spouse. You can make it work and you're really, really happy and actually be better than you Ever thought you could.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] So, yeah, I don't want to hold you up as a role model in terms of the outcome, because at the Open Stories foundation, we really feel strongly that we don't care whether people stay or leave in the church. We don't care if they believe or not. Like, sure. But what we do want is to avoid marriages dissolving that are otherwise healthy marriages. Right. And people getting sad and depressed and anxious when they don't necessarily have to. So the way I do want to hold you up as a role model is, Mel, is how gracefully you were able to handle his disbelief and disaffection and how, like, there's so many people who are suffering in marriages where they've just grown apart. They view each other as a disappointment. They view each other as being fooled and as deceived, and they lose respect for each other. And then it becomes this marriage where you're just hiding who you are and you're not talking to each other, you're judging the other person. Growing farther apart, building up this resentment, living these separate lives, and it just gets super ugly and desperate, and you're sitting here telling us that it actually brought your relationship closer. So how in the world, if there's a non believer and a believer that are listening in that desperate state of. Of separation and anxiety and sadness? What tips can you give Stu, the non believer? And Mel, what tips can you give the believer to help them move from a place of isolation, desperation, and sadness to a place where actually their marriage is stronger than ever? That seems. I'm sure there's people listening who are saying, that's never. Yeah, that's never going to happen. So, Stu, what are the tips you'd give the non believer?

Rebuilding the Marriage Outside the Church

Stu Brown [00:20:20] Don't hide from your spouse, because that's never gonna help be vulnerable. And that's something that I always had a hard time with. But luckily Mel was willing to listen to me. And again, I try not to, like, badmouth the church or badmouth Joseph Smith, but I was just vulnerable and honest and, like, this is where I'm at, and this is what scares me. And we were able to have deep, meaningful conversations. You know, instead of laying in bed at night just going, good night. Like, we'd stay up super late just talking about things that were important to us.

Mel Brown [00:21:12] Where.

Stu Brown [00:21:13] When you're in the church and you both feel like you're on the same page, like, you don't need to talk

John Dehlin [00:21:18] about that because you're on plan, you're on program.

Stu Brown [00:21:22] Yeah. You're just. You're on autopilot, you're checking off the boxes. And so. Yeah, yeah, don't. My original plan was to study, study, study, study, then tellable into what I come up with. And that was the best thing that happened is her catching me.

Mel Brown [00:21:40] Like at the beginning, seeing him go through the process, I could see the tears. I could see him just be broken hearted. I can see him so much tears of just like, oh my gosh, look at this. Like, he was so just like kind of broken hearted with it and devastated and like, I could see that. But like other people that go through it and hide that from their spouse and then once they get past that vulnerable phase, then you get to like the bitter phase. And then when you're in the bitter phase and then you share that with your spouse, it's ugly. Or then you get past that and you're just like, I don't care anymore, I'm done. And that's like all or nothing for this other spouse. You gotta realize that's really scary for that person. And they don't even have a chance. So like everyone doubles down. This person doubles down where they're at. This person does and it just doesn't work. So I, at least in our experience, I feel like it was very beneficial early on for him to be honest with me so then he could share things. And that's the thing for me is like, or one of the spouses, like, just. And both of them just listen, just listen to the other person. Don't try to defend the church. Like, I know you want to do that because it's everything, it's your world. Like, I married him because of his beliefs. That's why I married him. If he didn't believe in the church and he couldn't take me to the temple, I wouldn't have married him. So I understand when people are going through a hard time and they're like, no, this person's different. They changed. I married him for his beliefs. He changed his beliefs. That's why I need to divorce them. I get their thinking of why they feel like they're going to go there, but that's just damaging. And don't throw away a beautiful, wonderful marriage and family and spouse because of that. Like, and then I just think of what example are you setting for those kids? If you have kids, like, oh, all of a sudden one spouse doesn't believe anymore and so you just get rid of them and divorce them. What do you think the kid's gonna think? Kids? Like, man, if I don't believe what mom believes because she kicked dad to the curb. Like, I better make sure I believe. Or let my mom at least think that we believe the same things or she's gonna throw me away as her child. You know, I just think that sets a horrible example and causes a lot of fear in children that doesn't need to be there. So I think if you can, if you want to be a good example and have a strong family, then you show your children how to have a beautiful marriage and family. And even when someone else doesn't believe the same thing, because you don't need to throw away a marriage. I get that it's big. I get that I had all of these same feelings. I went through my head and processed all of this. But I'm like, what example would I set for my kids? You know, if I stay with him? Then they see, oh, look at mom and dad don't believe the same things, and that's okay. They still love each other and they're gonna work through hard things together. And then I'm thinking, what if Stephen ended up coming back to the church 15 years from now? I threw him away and divorced him and took my kids. And then all of a sudden, he came back to the church and been like, oh, maybe I should have just stayed with him. Like, it just. I think the whole thing of leaving a spouse just over this. And I get why people do it. They'll say, well, I need to choose God. And that's what they think they're doing, and they think they're doing it for the right reason, is I've got to, you know, God is first and then family second. But when I believe strongly in the church, when they talk about families are most important, I honestly believe that. And I'm not going to go over some organization or whatever. Like, my family is the most important. And I just think to have a good, healthy society, if everyone could have a good marriage and take care of their children, it's going to be a beautiful world. But how are we going to have a good world when I'm throwing away my husband? Because we don't believe the same thing, you know, like, it's just not necessary. You don't need to do that. And so, like, now we can teach our kids. And even if when I was in it, it's like, okay, he could tell our kids what he thought and what he believed, why he didn't believe things were true. And I could say, well, I believe it's true for this, or I go for church for this reason. What do you think, little guy? You know, like, let them have their own thoughts because we can't control the outcome anyways, no matter what we believe. I can't control who God is, if God even exists, what the afterlife looks like. None of us have control of that anyway. So why am I trying so hard to convince this other person to believe what I believe? Like, why am I so hell bent on I will leave you if you don't believe in a God and an afterlife and go to church? Like, that seems a little crazy and extreme to me and not necessary. And I think it's devastating when marriages and families split up simply over this reason.

John Dehlin [00:25:55] What about stopping short of splitting up, but instead just each looking down on the other, seeing each other as a continual disappointment? What would you say about that scenario?

Stu Brown [00:26:08] That's super sad. It sucks. I. Yeah. Because I know people on both sides where the believing spouse, you know, is super disappointed in their disaffected spouse and the disaffected spouse. It's like, oh, you're so dumb because you believe in this dumb church.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] And they're disrespectful, and they're disrespectful to

Stu Brown [00:26:32] each other, and that's just. There's no place for that. So I wish I had a magic formula, but I just feel super lucky that she was willing to listen. And again, I never thought she was gonna join me on the dark side, but I'm just grateful that she was willing to listen because when you're going through that, it sucks so bad. You feel so alone and so isolated, and if you can't even talk to your own spouse about it. God, that sounds awful.

Mel Brown [00:27:03] So there's a lot of people that. That's how it is.

Stu Brown [00:27:06] Yeah. So we were able to just be open more than we ever have.

Mel Brown [00:27:13] Yeah. Like, just be loving, you know, and practice unconditional love. I know that it's hard. It's really hard. So you gotta, like, if you need to listen to positive podcasts or books or something to help you, to remind you to just have hope, be loving, unconditional love, no strings attached. You know, like, when we committed to be married, I committed to be with him through the thick and thin, you know, through the good times and the bad times, you know, and so we get to work together and we get to figure it out. So in no place am I ever, like, unless it gets to abuse where it's. You know, that takes it to another level. We're gonna work it out together, and we're gonna figure it out and we're not going to attack each other. We're not going to be mean. We're just going to be loving and we're going to listen to one another. Just try to keep your mouth shut. Put duct tape on if you have to, and just listen to the other person out of love and respect and let them figure it out without trying to control their view or their thoughts or how they're feeling. Let them just be. So just be. Be authentic. Be real, listen, be loving. Like, just practice it. You just got to do it.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] Sounds too simple. And yet it sounds exactly true. Any other super hard parts before we talk about the good parts?

Mel Brown [00:28:27] Oh, yeah, I guess just mine. I didn't really share my part.

Stu Brown [00:28:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] What were yours?

Mel Brown [00:28:31] You know, just the family thing, of course. Not wanting to hurt the family. Friends. That was hard. I've got friends.

John Dehlin [00:28:37] You lost friends.

Mel Brown [00:28:38] I didn't lose friends. I haven't told them. And these are like, hi.

John Dehlin [00:28:43] What's that? Like, to just be enough. Not be able to be fully authentic with close friends.

Mel Brown [00:28:47] That's the thing is I've actually. I started like. And these friends, we've been friends for over 20, 25 years.

John Dehlin [00:28:53] You could sit these people down and say, hey, here's. Here's my letter. Here's what happened. You decided not to do that. Why?

Mel Brown [00:28:58] Well, I started to. I think I tested the waters and said a few. Like, I think I brought some stuff up because I'm really strong with the just loving and accepting, like, gay community out there, you know? And so I had brought something up thinking I, like, could explain it enough where they would get it, but then they would justify it. And then it just came back to Melinda. I challenge you to read the Book of Mormon. This was one of my returned missionary friends. And it just got into, like, just kind of a downer of, like, it got to, like, bearing their testimony to me. And, like, they just didn't get it. And so I shut it down pretty quick. So that was just bringing up a few topics when I think. I mean, I was even still in then. He had shared a lot of stuff with me, and I was starting to have my own concerns and wanted someone to share with because I didn't have, you know, I wanted family or friends or someone that I could, like, figure this out with, not feel like, alone. I mean, I had him, which was great, but I still wanted to reach out to other people. So I tested that a little bit and realized, like, it kind of just strained it a little. It just made it weird and awkward. And I realized, like, you know what? I only see these friends once or twice a year. We'll go out for a couple days, go to St. George and do an overnighter and have some fun with the six of us girls. We'll do dinner. So I'm like, there's no point bringing this up, making it weird and awkward. Them feeling like they've got to be missionaries to me and bear their testimony to me. Them be awkward and feel like, can we say a prayer with you? Like, I didn't. I just want them to be themselves. So it's kind of more like, I don't like people taking pity on me. So I'm like, I'd rather just avoid that. And I don't want them to feel sorry for me or not be themselves is all. So I just. That's the thing. I've gone back and forth. I'm like, and these are good friends. I really could share with them and they would love me no matter what. So I'm not afraid with losing them. But it's just, again, I don't want them to feel like, we know you're out. Can we say a prayer? Can we still do this? Like I say once a year, let's just avoid that. What's the point? They don't need to know. Let's just have fun when we get together.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] And that's worked out for you.

Mel Brown [00:30:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] Interesting.

Mel Brown [00:30:54] And I like it better that way. And same thing with family. I've shared a little bit with my mom, but then I just realized, like, people just. They get. And I tried sharing with my sister a little bit, and she would just end up getting defensive because I just wanted her to understand what I'm saying and she would want to defend everything. Like, but that's crazy. You're really, like, defending Joseph Smith and him doing all these horrible things. And they're like, but, but, but. And it's just like, I don't want myself to get defensive and heated and argue with my sister, because it doesn't matter. So for me, I do better just like, you know what? I'd rather just like, not talk about it, not get into it. So we just live our lives, and it just doesn't come up with his family or my family, with our friends. My business partner, like, we talked about it a little bit at the beginning, and then I just realized, like, she doesn't want to hear about it. She doesn't want to know.

Stu Brown [00:31:39] Most don't want to know.

Mel Brown [00:31:40] They don't. They just don't want to know. Because they just don't, they're afraid of. They don't want to go down that path. So it's rather just stay away from it, you know, so. And I can get that. I can understand that. And it's okay. Like that's okay. And I'm like, it's actually easier. I don't have to get into it. And I'm trying to get out of that phase where I don't feel like I need to talk about it. I don't need to go to different groups or gatherings. Like I'm past that. The needing other people, the bitter phase. Like all of that stuff. I worked through it all pretty quick and I'm just, I like to just have a happy life. I want to focus on the good and being a good person and being there for others. And I don't need to have any of this be a part of it anymore. So it takes time to get through that process though.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] That's useful. Any other super hard parts for you, Mel?

Mel Brown [00:32:26] You know, just like neighbors and like, just not, I don't know, not being able to feel like I can really talk to people about it. Knowing that I'm kind of the outcast of the neighborhood and not knowing what they think or whatever. But I guess I'm kind of like, eh, whatever. I don't really care anymore. People that I'm close to and friends with in the neighborhood, that's all I care about anyways. The other ones, they can think or talk whatever they want. So yeah, just hurting family or friends and people not understanding me. That type of stuff is hard to go through. But you can get through it where you don't care as much anymore. Like it's okay, let be, you know, that's it.

John Dehlin [00:32:57] So your old selves or any believer that's watching now would sort of say, wow, you've really traded down. You know, you've really, you've lost the light, you've lost the spirit, and you've lost your entire framework. You've lost the church. Like now you don't have a way to raise your kids now you don't have a foundation for your marriage now you don't have a sense of morality or spirituality or afterlife or hope. Like you've traded down on basically every level. So what I'm going to do is walk you through all the different areas that you, as former believers or believers themselves would sort of say you've traded down. And I'm going to give you a chance to sort of respond, to redeem ourselves. No, just you know, because there's a lot of people in fear, like, well, it's only sadness and misery that I have to look forward to. There's nothing good. There's no upside. Right. So is there upside? And I'm going to ask you. Stick with these questions I ask, and I'll take you through probably most of the things that we're going to talk about. Is that all right?

Mel Brown [00:34:01] I like it.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Okay. All right, here we go. So first question. Mormons know where they came from. They know that they lived with a loving heavenly Father before they were born and that they were sent to this earth to be tested, to be given a body. They had this sense of purpose of where they came from. You don't have that anymore. So is that an area where you've traded down?

Stu Brown [00:34:27] That was comforting.

John Dehlin [00:34:28] Why?

Stu Brown [00:34:29] Knowing where. Yeah, Knowing the whole plan, thinking you're saved for the last days feel super special and awesome. I don't have that anymore. Now I'm just Stu. I'm just me.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] That sounds like all downside for that one. Is that downside, or is there upside to that? To being just Stu?

Stu Brown [00:34:50] Being Stu is kind of awesome, though, you know? I mean, having that whole big eternal perspective, I think can have a downside also, in that you're always living for the sky cake. You're serving your butt off in the church so that hopefully you can get a reward down the road. And I don't know what there is before and what there is after. All I know is I'm here now and I'm gonna love my family and my friends and be the best Stu Brown I can be, and that's it. And so it's given me a bigger sense of purpose because this is all I know I'm gonna get, and I'm not gonna waste it on nonsense. So I think that's an upside.

Mel Brown [00:35:44] Yeah, like just the time with our family, like, we get to focus on our family and not spend time, like, on these tedious callings that I'm all about serving people. I'm a generous person. I'm all about finding a need and serving. But I want it to be authentic, and I want to be somewhere where I feel like it's a strong need. So when I'm tied up with the calling, that's cleaning or cleaning the church and then doing, visiting, teaching to people that are so busy that I don't even feel like they want me there anyways, you know, But I've still got to go, you know, temple work and genealogy. Yeah, all those things that they say is service, service, service. When I'm like. And then temple work, you know, like, serving the dead. Like, I don't want to serve dead people. I want to serve the living. There are people that are hungry and starving and need food and clothing and all these things that I could be spending time making blankets and creating an organization or just spending my time, like, helping other people that there's really a need. Like, yeah, like, I like to put my time into, like, where I feel like there's a need and not feel guilty that I'm not doing the church stuff. Where it's like, well, we need to clean the church or we need to do this. It's like. Just feels like a burden. And it's just. I don't feel like it's the real need, that there's greater needs out there that I can put my time. So I like that. I, like, I don't have to feel any of that guilt about that. And because we don't know, like you said, there might be an afterlife. I can't control it either way. I like to still believe that there's something after. I don't know, though. But that's okay because really, I can't do anything about it anyways. So I can't change it or control it. And so now it's like, now I get to spend time on Sundays, like, with my family. And, like, we can just curl up and cuddle together. Like, we'll sleep in and we'll make a big breakfast and so nice having that day to just really just relax and enjoy. We'll go on a ride in the razor up in the mountains that are so close to us. We'll just, like, hang out and take it easy, jump on our tramp like, it's a beautiful day. And at first I thought I had to, like, replace it. And we tried that. We tried replacing, you know, going to the Mormon Church to. We went to the Alpine Church up here. And one of the times we went, it was like, it was a really good message. It was about being authentic and how God doesn't have to, like, if you came to his house, he wouldn't have to, like, hurry and shut the closet and hide anything in the closet that's dirty or any messes. It's just. It is what it is. It's clean and nothing to hide. And that was nice. And then the second time we went, it was something that we didn't really jive with. It didn't really feel right or good to us. We're like, you know, we just didn't. I don't know. So we kind of just decided, you know what? We don't want to replace it with something else. We don't need something else. I don't need something else to tell me what to do and how to be. I love being free to just talk about whatever we want and be free to just decide what feels good to us without someone telling us what's right and wrong. Like, we don't need that. We're good, solid people with good hearts, and I feel like we know how to make right choices and raise our kids with really good things without having guilt and shame hovering over them. So it's been good quality time now

Stu Brown [00:38:31] with the family thinking about the original question, like, knowing where you came from, you know, And Mormons believe that, man, if you're born white and in Utah, you must have been super awesome before you came here. And so you. You're a little arrogant. Like, it's good being humbled a little bit that I'm not special. I'm just. I was born here and, like, I'm not better than anybody. And that's a good thing.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] Why is that a good thing? To lose your belief that you're better than everybody?

Stu Brown [00:39:06] Because then you're not an ass.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] You're right. It's a burden.

Stu Brown [00:39:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:13] Yeah. Thinking you're superior. Yeah.

Mel Brown [00:39:15] And have to live up to those expectations and. Or pretend like you are and fake it if you aren't. Or just. You should never feel like you're better than anybody else. You can be special and good and whatever, but not any more than anybody else.

John Dehlin [00:39:28] What. What about an idea of a heavenly father that is watching you and loves you and cares about you when all else is sad and hard? Maybe you've lost that a little bit. How's that not trading down

Stu Brown [00:39:44] again? That can be a comforting thing, but it can also be a crutch that you rely on that things happen not because of anything you do, but because you're either being punished or blessed. And that's not really the way the world actually works. If you want to make something happen, you got to get out and work your ass off and make it happen. And I think knowing that whether we succeed or fail, some of it's luck, but some of it is just working your butt off and letting go of that crutch that if I'm happy, it's because I'm being blessed, or if I'm not happy, it's because God gave me a trial. It is what it is, and it's up to me to make the best of it, not some bearded guy on a cloud.

Mel Brown [00:40:40] Yeah, I think it's good taking responsibility and accountability for your own life. And if something happens, not just having, oh, just blame it on something else. Like, I used to use the word trials. Like, oh, this trial and all this. Like, I don't even use those words anymore. I don't believe in trials that someone's punishing me or. Because that's a lot of pressure. That was actually a heavy pressure feeling. Like the reason this happened is because I didn't pay the full tithing this month or I didn't read my scriptures every day. And it was like all it was was a burden, a heavy burden of like, I wasn't good enough. And so to realize, like, that's never the case. It's like this happened just because sometimes stuff happens. Sometimes someone down the street is gonna drink when they drive and I'm gonna get in an accident. And it's not because God had control over that. It's so easy to put everything on God. Like everything happened for a reason. And maybe it does, but, like, I don't think God's the one playing this puppet thing or it's just it happened and so it's like it was an experience that happened. This is the journey of life and, you know, I get to choose how I'm gonna be and react. And it's just, it is what it is. So it actually kind of relieves a burden of putting responsibility and accountability, like, on ourselves, which I think we should have, rather than just like, oh, well, it's gonna happen anyways.

Stu Brown [00:41:49] Yeah, I think it's empowering to take control of your own life.

Mel Brown [00:41:52] So there's the upside.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] Alright, so the belief in Jesus helps a lot of people feel bad about the mistakes they make.

Stu Brown [00:42:00] Right?

John Dehlin [00:42:01] But yeah, you make mistakes and sin. But there's this loving Jesus who's there who atoned for your sins, who's there to make it all right. And that way all your sins can be wiped clean before God. You've lost that now.

Stu Brown [00:42:18] Yeah, I mean, but I've also lost the idea that there's some balance sheet in the sky that how many good things did he do versus how many bad things did he do? So don't worry about that. But repentance is also. It can be used as a, you know, it's okay if I treat somebody poorly because I can always repent. The reality is you can't take things back if you're a dick to somebody like if you say something hurtful, you can't take it back. And so I think it's made me more mindful of how I treat people. And I don't believe in sin. Like, if I drink a coffee, I don't think that's a sin. But I do still believe in being a good person. And so I try to just treat people the best I can because I don't think I, you know, can just have a, oh, I can take the sacrament on Sunday. And now I'm clean and it doesn't matter that I was a jerk.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] A lot of believers will say, well, why even bother being a good person? You don't believe in God or Jesus anymore in our afterlife. Why would you even bother? You just go out and do whatever you want. No, they're like, oh, you're just going to lose. You have no reason to be good anymore. What would you say?

Stu Brown [00:43:43] Yeah, I mean, I do as much sinning and murdering and raping and killing that I want to do, which is

Mel Brown [00:43:51] none, and that he did when he was in the church.

Stu Brown [00:43:53] Yeah. And I mean, morality is more than just being obedient to a set of rules. It's just, if that's what you need to tell you not to kill somebody is you've got a problem with empathy. And I think, yeah, you need more help. I think I have empathy. And so that's what makes me not want to be a bad person to other people. That's what I care about now is how do I treat other people? I can not love the sinner or hate the sin. I can just love people. And it is beautiful to not care where they're at, just to love them. And that is an amazing thing.

Mel Brown [00:44:43] Yeah, I just. I just feel like, honestly, like, people try to use the used like the church or gospel religion or whatever of like, to use that for a reason, why people are good. And I just don't like that. And I don't sign up for that can of crap at all. Like, I really feel like people want to be good. They were born that way. They're born with good hearts. They want to be good people. They want to see people happy. They want to make people proud of them. They want to do a good job with their job. They want to impress the boss. They want to do, like, for their own. Like, I just feel like that's how people just are. And religion tries to take that and act like the reason these people are good is because they gave them these rules to follow. Like, if I wasn't, I've got some cousins that weren't born in the church. And they're amazing people. Like, they're good people. They do good things. They put their selves out there, they're generous with their money. Like, you know, like cousins on my mom's side or whatever. Like, that wasn't ever a part of the church. Like, anyway. So there's. I've known personal people that it's like they're not part of religion. They never were. And these are amazing, incredible people. So I've seen the proof of like, and just knowing people. People have good hearts, at least the people that I know and in or out of the church. And once you start hearing people's stories of why they've left religion, you realize like, oh, they're not a bad, horrible person. They actually are amazing, strong people that left from integrity and honesty and they want to be better people. But most people that are in the church won't take the time to look at that or believe that because they automatically just judge it and say it's because they want to sin. They're bad people because that's what the church teaches, because it's a fear based church. So I don't sign up for any of that. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:22] So a lot of people are like, why? You know, my marriage is going to fall apart if we don't have this gospel to bind us together. If we don't have the law of chastity to keep us from sleeping around, if we don't have the church, then it's just going to be debauchery and infidelity and why even bother? Why not just go out and sleep with whoever, Be with whoever. So have you traded down in your marriage?

Mel Brown [00:46:52] We, like, upgraded so much.

John Dehlin [00:46:55] How. How's that possible?

Stu Brown [00:46:56] Because we love each other. I mean, it's simple. If you love your spouse, you're not gonna want to go sleep around and you're not going to want to do anything that's going to hurt them. And through this process, we grew so much closer. And my love for Melinda grew so much because I was able to feel that, I mean, she really cares about me. She's willing to listen to these hard things that I'm telling her. And, you know, she chose me over this organization when other people don't. And that's a beautiful thing. So I wouldn't want to do anything that's going to hurt her because we've been able to build this beautiful marriage. We have this great family, we got these beautiful little kids. And I'm not Going to mess that up just because I don't believe in that. Joseph Smith was a prophet. That's just stupid.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] So you're closer?

Stu Brown [00:48:06] Definitely.

Mel Brown [00:48:06] We've been able to talk about so much more stuff on a deeper level. I felt like when we were in the church, it's like, it tells you. It gives you all your answers. So what's the point of talking about anything now? It's like, what do you think about the afterlife? What do you think about. Do you believe in God? Do you not? And, like, I love that I can just listen and I don't feel like I have to convince him of what I believe, because I don't know and it doesn't matter. And we can just talk about anything and everything. And it's just. It's awesome. We talk about the deepest things that we haven't before. And it's like, that's amazing. And I don't think we would have ever gotten to this point and experienced that if we were still part of the church. So I feel like, thank goodness we were able to leave. And so now, like, we can talk about anything. And it's so fun. Like, any subject, nothing's off limits. So even talking about, like, sexual stuff, it's like, oh, what do you think about this? Or this? Like, do you want to try this? Like, we can talk about it and just say, no, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. Or might be fun. Let's try it, you know, like, so we can talk. And it's like, together, like, whatever we want to try. Like, together. And so it's like, it's brought that, like, way closer, intimately. Like, that is completely got, like, better sex.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Is that what you say?

Mel Brown [00:49:16] Tons better sex. Yeah, More often better. Like, everything. It's just fun. It's exciting, and it's like, I don't have to feel fear, guilt, or shame of, oh, can't, can't look at that. Oh, can't talk about that. Oh, can't say that. Oh, can't. Because there's all these rules. It's like, no, if we're okay with it, we're married. We get it, you know? And it's awesome. It's really good.

Raising Children Without Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:49:39] So, yeah, probably one of the biggest scary things for people is this idea of how do you raise healthy, happy children without Mormonism? Like, they'll become prostitutes and drug dealers for sure. So have you just sold out your children for your own happiness without a real framework to raise happy, healthy kids and to be good parents?

Mel Brown [00:50:05] No. I think we can take the Good things that we've learned from Mormonism, whatever parts we feel like, okay, that's a good thing that I believe is truth to me. And there's stuff that I like, okay, that's not truth to me, that doesn't feel good. I don't want to teach them that. So we can. And it's not, you know, that's the thing. Like anywhere I've learned any good information from books, anything that I feel like, okay, I want my kids to know this, we're going to teach that to them. And I love that we can take the best of the best and teach them that without having like, you know, the bad that comes with it. Because there is negative stuff that can come. Like being raised, like I was lucky and didn't have any of issues. But I know some people that have some kids that have heard talks that like literally that's messed with them their entire life of feeling they're not good enough or they've messed around sexually before they were married or they got raped or something. And then they feel like they can't ever get their chastity back. And so it's like this cloud hovering over them and like how depressing. I don't want my kids to hear those lessons at all.

Stu Brown [00:51:02] Our kids will never hear the chewed gum. They will never feel guilt or shame over something natural and healthy like masturbation. Instead we can just teach them empathy and to be kind and caring and hopefully still try to be examples of people that are charitable and giving. I feel like our home is always open to anybody, anytime and hopefully they can see that, that hey, our parents are nice to other people, they don't try to screw people over. We're both self employed in our business and we don't have this cutthroat, in order for me to get ahead, I gotta step on you mentality. And so that's our goal and our is just raise them by example to be kind people. And I think they're gonna do great,

Mel Brown [00:52:02] have empathy, be loving, be generous. And we're doing that. We're out of the church and we're doing that.

John Dehlin [00:52:07] You know, some would say that's not enough. They'll have sex as teenagers, they'll try alcohol, they'll try drugs.

Mel Brown [00:52:13] Well, so does half the Mormons. I know. What's your point?

John Dehlin [00:52:16] Well, that's terrifying for a lot of people. I don't want my kids trying alcohol like you. And you, you did try it and

Mel Brown [00:52:23] you didn't like, but the outcome is the same. It all turned out Just fine.

Stu Brown [00:52:27] Right.

Mel Brown [00:52:28] So these fears are just, these fears that people have and it's just they don't need to have.

John Dehlin [00:52:32] What if they have sex before marriage?

Mel Brown [00:52:34] Ask what percentage of Mormons do that before they're married? Probably most of them. It happens.

Stu Brown [00:52:39] And I think we can teach them, you know, because there are real world consequences to sti, you know, having sex. Yeah. And so we can teach them, hey, you know, you need to be smart and safe and wait until you're ready. Not because you're gonna lose some invisible virtue, but because there are real world consequences. So we can teach them about that. And just like whether they were in the church or out of the church, it's ultimately up to them. We're not going to have any control over that. And so the best you can do in either situation is teach them the best. But I think we can, you know, teach them not out of just guilt and fear, but just more practical, you know.

Mel Brown [00:53:33] Yeah. And have open communication. I want my kids to, to be able, able to talk to us. If they do mess around and try something or experiment with something. Like I want them to be able to talk to me because I didn't have that growing up. I never had the sex talk with my parents. We didn't talk about anything. Like I just had to figure out things on my own, talk to my friends. Like he knew more about my body than I did when we got married. We just didn't talk about it and talk about my friends, my parents, nothing. So it's like it doesn't matter if you're in the church or out of the church. Like we can. Just because we're not in the church and they don't go three hours on Sunday, we can still teach them good things. And just because we left the church doesn't mean all of a sudden we don't want to be good people. Or now we're like, alright, it's cool to get drunk all the time and have drugs all the time. Of course we're still going to teach our kids that's not going to be good and the damaging effects of it, but at least I'm going to talk to my kids about it. Even though my parents were straight arrow Mormons, they didn't talk to that. I think it's more important and our kids are going to get more out of it. Being able to have open communication with their parents and feel safe to talk to them. If they do mess up or whatever, it's like it's okay and I'm not gonna guilt and shame and be like, you did what? Like, gonna be calm about it and be like, okay, well, do you think that was a good idea? Like, we're gonna talk about it and it's gonna be calm and I'm not gonna freak out about it.

Stu Brown [00:54:47] So I grew up with a because I told you so, that's why mentality. And you know, the church is the authority. You don't question. My dad's a patriarch of the home. You do what he says. And so I'm hoping to be able to, you know, son, this is why I don't want you to do drugs. And what do you want for your life? And you know, is this gonna help you get there? And just to have more conversations like that instead of just don't do that because you'll go to hell. I think the same way we were able to have better and deeper conversations, that's what I hope with our kids, is we'll be able to, you know, actually be open instead of like me just at 18, be handed the for young men only pamphlet from Boyd K. Packer. That was my sex talk, so I don't think that's healthy.

John Dehlin [00:55:42] So if your kids make unhealthy choices or even harm themselves, your Mormon brain or your believing family or friends will say, see?

Stu Brown [00:55:52] Oh, I guarantee that.

John Dehlin [00:55:53] See, look, you left the church and now your kids have hurt themselves.

Mel Brown [00:55:58] Can't control that. There's nothing I can do.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] What would you say? Like, you could, you could just stay in the church, like, yeah, that has

Mel Brown [00:56:04] nothing to do with it.

John Dehlin [00:56:05] What do you mean?

Mel Brown [00:56:07] What about your kid that went through the same thing and you're in the church?

Stu Brown [00:56:10] Yeah, there's. People will say that and we can't control it.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] Yeah, but what would you tell yourself when your Mormon brain says, well, maybe I shouldn't have left.

Mel Brown [00:56:19] I know it's not because I know too much. I would never go back.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] What do you know?

Mel Brown [00:56:23] I know the truth about how hurtful

John Dehlin [00:56:26] it is, but what would you say to yourself about, well, my kid made bad choices. Maybe they wouldn't have made those choices if I had stayed in.

Stu Brown [00:56:34] That's just still fear based. And we're choosing to not be live our life based on what ifs and fear and I don't know what my kids are gonna end up doing. I think that is a natural, you know, you know, maybe this led to that, but you never know.

Mel Brown [00:56:56] So I just. Yeah, I don't.

Stu Brown [00:56:57] I don't know. I don't have a great answer on that one, but I'm Gonna not worry about it.

Mel Brown [00:57:01] I don't look at the church positively anymore, so I feel like I wouldn't even go there because it's like, I think it would probably be worse off if we were back in the church because they would have heard all these hurtful messages and felt like how me, I live my life on fear, guilt and shame. So maybe they messed up on this one thing, but at least they're probably way better off in all these other things. It has nothing to do with the church or not, has to do with what I taught them and took responsibility for in teaching my kid.

Stu Brown [00:57:28] And hopefully their self esteem isn't tied into their worthiness like mine was in high school. And so I still think they're going to be better off.

John Dehlin [00:57:42] Yeah. And like you said, Mel Utah is full of depressed Mormon women, you know, porn addicted young men and women, people living in shame. Suicide rates are super high here in many demographics. There's plenty of, you know, prescription drug abuse and drinking. And like there's. It's not like that's not happening inside the church. It's just that's what our brains and the believers pull out when they want to sort of stick it to you for something going wrong. Right.

Mel Brown [00:58:16] But that stuff's gonna happen anyways. But I'm like more appreciative that we're out of it because at least they're not gonna have guilt, filthy, whatever fear and shame hovering over them to. Not only did they make this sin or whatever you want to call it, they did that, but then they have all of this heaviness on them that's really hard to be inspired and to like live your full who you are and who you're meant to be and be authentic when you have that weight on top of it. I would rather my kid not be taught that this is horrible, horrible, horrible. And then they do it. Like if they weren't taught that, then it's just the act, whatever they did and then we can just talk about it, just learning. But to try to clear also instead

John Dehlin [00:58:55] of transgressions, it's just learning and it

Mel Brown [00:58:59] just creates more levels and weight on top of it that I'm like, my kids aren't gonna have that and I'm grateful for that. So no, they wouldn't have been better off in the church. It would have been worse if they would have gone through this.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] One of the benefits of being Mormon is just this amazing ward community of like all these neighbors that'll bring you casseroles and visit you when you're sick and visit teach and home teach you, and they're looking out for you. And if you need someone to mow your lawn, they'll do it. And you've lost all that, so you've traded down in community. Right.

Stu Brown [00:59:30] At first, it felt like that, because you do, you. You lose that sense of belonging and. But we reached out and through Facebook, we found groups of people that have gone through the same thing, and we've made closer friendships than we ever have. We've been in our house 10, 11 years. We're friendly with all the neighbors, but there aren't any that, like, I feel super close to. And you'd see them every week at church, but I think just in the last couple years, we've made friends that are so much closer, and it makes you realize that, oh, those relationships and that community is superficial and shallow in some ways.

Mel Brown [01:00:25] Yeah.

Stu Brown [01:00:26] So, again, I feel like as far as friendship, we've traded up.

Mel Brown [01:00:30] Yeah. And we found other people that we could relate to that have gone through the similar thing that we've gone through with. Because it's. It's hard. It's big. When religion and being part of the Mormon Church, especially in Utah, it's everything, you know, that is everything. That's your world, that's your friends, that's your family, that's your activities. Just everything revolves around that. So it's hard to go through that. But once you shift out of it and meeting friends that have also gone through a similar journey as us of leaving the church, you just have that closeness of like, oh, my gosh, you get me. And we've gone through hard things, and you just bond and are closer to people, automatically you have to talk too much, and you're just like, you've been through this. And it's the same thing for the church, though, when you find people that go out of state or somewhere else and they move in, and you're instantly like, oh, here's your people in your community. So anything that you're a part of, just find a group that you can relate to, and it's out there. There's so many awesome groups. So, yeah, we met some amazing friends that we hang out with all the time, and we have karaoke parties, and we have dinners together, and we laugh, and we can be real. And I love that we can talk about anything. Just, like, with me and Stu, like, we can get into all sorts of crazy conversations, and, like, it doesn't matter what people think. I don't feel like I have to, like, try to steer them to believe a certain way. It's just like, I can just listen. And some of the stuff that my friends do, I'm like, okay, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that, but that's cool. But it's so fun just talking and hearing what people are doing and what they think and what they believe, rather than more of this robotic world of what's the point of even asking you what you think? Because we all think the same thing. We all do the same thing, you know, like, it's beautiful. It is so refreshing.

Stu Brown [01:02:09] Yeah, go to.

Mel Brown [01:02:10] Yeah, so much better.

Stu Brown [01:02:12] Go to any ward activity. And you have the prayer, you have the little activity, you have the dinner, then everyone goes home and it's a small talk.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Yeah.

Stu Brown [01:02:22] And now we have, you know, get togethers. We can talk about Oasis if you want, which I think is great, but I also love my Sundays, so.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] But you get together.

Stu Brown [01:02:33] You get together. It's different because, like, we'll have a, you know, a pizza party at our house and people stay till midnight because you have, like, deep, meaningful conversations that aren't shallow and people want to stay and hang out. It's not. People come and eat and chat.

Mel Brown [01:02:51] Yeah. It was never like that with any of our church. And we plan activities. We're social people. We plan get togethers. We'll do outdoor movie nights at our house. But it would just be the. I mean, the stuff we would talk about is our callings. How old's your kid? What grade are they in? Like, this is how visiting, teaching, small talk would be. And then we'd give the message and leave. Like, that's just how it is with people in that. And it's like, oh, can't talk about any sex stuff or ask anything because that's sacred or whatever. And so like, how am I ever learning about this stuff when it's like you can't talk about anything ever. It's just crazy world. Why can't we talk about it? Like, we can have different views on it, but can we at least talk about it? I feel like there's so many things that you can't talk about, or if you're going to talk about it, you have to make sure you're going to line up with what the other person believes or other going to be an issue. It's just weirdness. It's so nice not having that weirdness at all and just keeping it real and talking about anything and like, just like, I don't have these heavy weights.

Stu Brown [01:03:43] That's refreshing.

Mel Brown [01:03:44] It is refreshing. It's really nice. So you can find community and friends. And our friends still. We have a baby. You'll get gifts, someone's. We're gonna make you food. Like, they're gonna do that with that community. So even though we don't have the LDS community, we create a new community and we get all those great things that we used to get out of the LDS Church. So you don't have to be left alone. It helps to reach out a little bit and find the activities. Like, we had some friends that moved from Colorado and they put something on this little Oasis Facebook group that's up in Logan that they were gonna do a waffle party. Cause they're like, we gotta meet some friends. So they did that and we were like, these guys are awesome. So now they're in our little friend group and we hang out with them all the time.

Stu Brown [01:04:22] Yeah. So it takes some work. You can't just show up and have an instant community like you do in the church.

John Dehlin [01:04:28] But

Stu Brown [01:04:31] if you put in a little time, put in a little work, you'll find a community and in our experience, have deeper, more meaningful friendships.

John Dehlin [01:04:42] What if someone were to say, you've become worldly now it's just all about making money and buying toys, but you've lost that deep sense of spirituality.

Stu Brown [01:04:51] Yeah, we've actually heard that. I think.

Mel Brown [01:04:55] Well, it's just funny, though, the timing, like, is my business started really taking off after I left. Like, it started getting, like, really successful.

John Dehlin [01:05:02] Satan has blessed you.

Mel Brown [01:05:03] Yes, I know, right? So I'm sure people look at that. We started buying toys and. And, like, lots of fun stuff and having fun. But I'm like, even if I was in the church, it would have been the same thing. Well, like, I still would have. My business would have been successful. I still would have brought in the same amount of money. There would have been no difference.

John Dehlin [01:05:21] But what about spirituality, though? Like, what if someone says, you've lost the spirit? Yeah, you've got all this friends and money, but you've lost the spirit. So what's it for?

Stu Brown [01:05:33] What's their definition of the spirit? I guess.

John Dehlin [01:05:36] I don't know. I don't know.

Stu Brown [01:05:39] Right. I mean, I think you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

John Dehlin [01:05:44] Are you still spiritual?

Stu Brown [01:05:46] I don't believe in a God or a Holy Ghost. So in that sense, no. I try to be contemplative and. Yeah, not really, I guess you'd say. But I do try to just be a good person and focus on the here and now and so if that's just being worldly, and if wanting to spend time with my family up in the mountains, having fun is worldly rather than being in church, then, yep, I'm worldly. But this is all I know I'm gonna get, and so I'm gonna make the best of it. And if that's having fun, that's playing

Mel Brown [01:06:28] on toys and bringing our family closer together and spending time together as a family, then I say we trade it up.

Life, Spirituality, and Happiness Post-Mormon

John Dehlin [01:06:37] All right, so it sounds like you're trying to convince us that you're stronger in your personal mental health, you're stronger in your marriage, you're stronger as parents, you got better friends. It sounds like you're trying to make the case that you're pretty much happier in every way. Yeah. Mel, is that what you're trying to tell us?

Mel Brown [01:06:56] And it honestly is like. It really is. Like, I feel like I was, like, carrying. It's weird because I was happy in the church. It was great. I never doubted or questioned anything. But now, being out of it, I was taught this lesson. I've heard it a couple times, like, when I was a teenager that, like, sin. You have a backpack, and anytime you'd sin and they'd get rocks. They had rocks, and you put a rock in your backpack, and if you didn't repent and you sinned again, you'd add another rock to it and get heavier and heavier. Being out of it now, seeing both sides, I feel like I had always been carrying around this backpack with rocks and didn't even know it. So I always had this weight of, like, you know, just their lessons are like, you're never good enough. Even if you, you know, God will always. Even if you do something good of service or something, like, God's going to bless you, and so you're going to owe him. You're always going to owe him. We're nothing like some of these stuff. It's like, it just wasn't inspiring. It's just like, you're not good enough.

John Dehlin [01:07:52] And there's always more you're never doing.

Mel Brown [01:07:53] There's always more you should be doing.

John Dehlin [01:07:55] Even if you obey everything, you can't do it. Yeah, right.

Mel Brown [01:07:57] So even though I was a good person and I did most all that stuff, you know, in college, me and my girlfriend would go once a week to the temple and do baptisms for the dead. Like, once a week, we'd get up early before a job, and we'd go and do that. Like, I had solid friends. Like, that's what we would do you know? So even with all of that, I just still feel like there's just this weight that you're carrying all the time. And so to let that go and be like, oh my gosh, I'm free. I can just be. I can make my choices. They're still pretty much the same choices that I'm making that I would have made if I was in the church. And the ones that aren't exactly the same, I don't have to feel guilt and shame over it because it's like me and my husband are on the same page. We get to decide what we want to do for our life. We love our children. Children. We are teaching them, you know, good things for them to be a good kid. So your kids don't have to be afraid to be friends with our kid. Like, we're not, you know, you don't have to be afraid of us and like good, solid people that are going to treat you good.

John Dehlin [01:08:56] So your backpack's lighter?

Mel Brown [01:08:57] Yeah, it's lighter.

Stu Brown [01:08:58] You don't feel broken anymore because the church convinces you that you're broken and only through them can you get the cure. And now I don't have to feel that anymore. And you know, as far as our marriage. Before the faith crisis, I know Mel would resent me for not being the perfect Peter Priesthood, even if I try to be. And I 100% don't blame her for that because that's the. No matter how good I was, I could never live up to that perfect, idealistic priesthood holder. And so if I wasn't, you know, if I'd rather watch Monday Night Football than hold family home evening, you know, she'd resent me and

John Dehlin [01:09:52] she wouldn't come

Stu Brown [01:09:53] out and say it, but I'd feel it. And now I think I don't have to be perfect anymore. I can just be good. I can just be a good husband and a good father and that is enough. And that is amazing feeling to know that you can finally be enough. Because in the church, I don't care who you are, you're never going to be enough. And so that's an upside.

John Dehlin [01:10:22] And so what if a believer says, but you're not really happy?

Mel Brown [01:10:26] That's my favorite. Don't get me started on that one, John.

John Dehlin [01:10:29] No, I want to. What's your answer?

Mel Brown [01:10:30] I like it feisty.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] What's your answer? You're not really happy.

Mel Brown [01:10:33] That's the thing that's just so funny. Like, first of all, like one. I am, you know, and that's the thing. Like, I'VE been there in the church. Like, I know what their idea of happiness is, but, like, being out of it, I'm at a whole nother level of happiness, you know? And the second thing is, how in the world can they get away with even saying that comment? Because do they have superpowers where they can jump inside somebody's body and really figure out, like, how they feel and how they think? Like, it's just not possible. So to say someone's pretend happy or not really happy because they don't have the fullness of the gospel, it's just bs. And then when you see the statistics of Utah and how many people are depressed and going to therapists and all this, these are people in the church. So. So obviously the church doesn't figure out how to make people happy. I feel like it's doing the opposite. So it's just a story that they tell themselves to make themselves feel better. But no, I'm honestly happier. And you can't tell me that I'm pretend happy because I've been there. Maybe you can try to fool that card.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] You've done pretend happy?

Mel Brown [01:11:34] Yeah, I've done pretend happy. That was pretend happy.

Stu Brown [01:11:38] Yeah. We have a perspective. We've been on both sides, and so they haven't been on this side. So they should try it out because then they can actually say if they're happier or not. The idea in the church of enduring to the end, and to me,

John Dehlin [01:12:01] that

Stu Brown [01:12:01] doesn't spark feelings of joy and happiness. It feels like a slog that you just have to get through life by just trudging through it. And that is unhappiness to me. And so now we get to just enjoy it for what it is and

Mel Brown [01:12:21] try to be good people with no extra pressure.

Stu Brown [01:12:24] Yeah. And so, yeah, I've been on both sides, and I know they'll say that, but it sure feels a lot better.

John Dehlin [01:12:34] Better.

Mel Brown [01:12:35] And until you're in other shoes, like, you just really can't say anything. And I feel like even if you are in both shoes, you still got to be careful because you didn't have the same experience as this person. So, I don't know. Like I said, there's not a one size that fits all for anything in this world. For religion, for schooling, for happiness, for music, for anything. That's why it's so beautiful that there's so much variety. I, like, think about, like, oh, my gosh, you know, like, oh. Like some people would say, oh, how amazing would it be if everyone was able to get converted to the Church and everyone was Mormon. Wow. It'd be such an amazing, beautiful world.

John Dehlin [01:13:10] And I'm like, except for the gays.

Mel Brown [01:13:12] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm like, I'm just picturing, like, white shirts and ties and dresses and just like these robots just all doing the same thing. Go to church, come out. We're sitting there, family home, evening. It's like, all looks exactly the same. I'm like, that's not a beautiful world. What's the point of going to another culture and seeing another country? And all the churches look the same and the buildings and the people, like, everything looks the same. That kind of sounds like my idea of hell, you know? So I'm like, no, I love the diversity. I love people's different thoughts. I love people dance around the fire and that's how they get their spirituality. Or they do meditation. That's what they do on their Sunday. Like, all the variety. Like, find what works for you and just. It's nice to be able to have a chance to actually be able to figure that out. When I was in the church, there's no way. There was no space for that. Like. No. This is where you feel good. This is where you feel the spirit. This is what you do. Okay. Okay. You know, just. They give me all my answers. Like, when you really think about it and step outside of it, like, it just sounds crazy to me and doesn't sound like happiness to me. So. Yeah.

Stu Brown [01:14:15] All right.

John Dehlin [01:14:16] Any final words of wisdom for our audience before we close this wonderful interview?

Mel Brown [01:14:22] I've got some nuggets.

Stu Brown [01:14:23] You got a few nuggets.

Mel Brown [01:14:24] Do you have any. Where'd I put my hand?

Stu Brown [01:14:25] You can pull out your phone and get your nuggets.

Mel Brown [01:14:26] Yeah, these are.

Stu Brown [01:14:27] Yeah, just. Life's short and so do what you need to do to be happy. Try to be a good person, have empathy, and I think things will work out. That's. I don't have any testimony that Stu's testimony is just. Just be cuz that's all you got.

John Dehlin [01:14:52] Mel, final thoughts.

Final Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Mel Brown [01:14:55] All right, let's see. Oh, so one of my, like, fears was, like, not paying tithing. I was really afraid. I held on to that for a long time because I feel like I had experiences that would happen. Like, you know, a day before our mortgage was due, like, a check would come in that I wasn't expecting and we'd be able to pay it and different things. So it's just interesting now, like, after. So I was really afraid not to. I felt like all blessings that we had was because we paid our tithing because that's what I've been told and I'm taught. So then leaving. I still have those same experiences happen where I'll magically get something the day before when I needed it. And before I would have, like I said, tied that to. Because I paid my tithing and I haven't paid my tithing in years. And so either God loves me or the universe loves me. Me, or things just work out and it's good. So I just know I had a big fear of that. So if other people are in that, you don't have to fear, like, things are going to fall apart. Because there was times where it worked out, but there was also times where we bounced checks when we paid tithing. We had to pay a $25 fee because we paid our tithing. So sometimes things worked out and sometimes it didn't. But I'd give it all the credit for when it did. So anyway, it just works out anyway. See? Oh, I think everyone on their journey, like, there's a place for everyone. So if people are feeling good, like, you know, in the church and they want to make a difference within the church, then I say stay there. Stay there and do that. Because I think it would be really kind of a scary world if all the people that started doubting completely left and it was all black and white. And you have the people that left that are either all out or all in. I think that's kind of scary for the kids that are in to be taught that. So it's good to have people that can be in it and help teach these new youth that, like, it's okay. Don't need to get so worked up if you don't believe everything, it's okay. Like, so I think there's a place for everybody. So that's why I would never push anybody to, like, even though we're extremely happy where we're at, like I said, I couldn't have been this happy in the middle of it. Like, I needed to go through my journey on my timeline. I was able to go through pretty quick. I feel like. Like a year of being in and then being out. Some people go through years and years and years, but everyone's timing is different and they just have to fill it out. But just own where you're at. Be authentic, Be you. Make a difference where you're at. Or just be. Just be you without guilt, shame, or fear. And just, you know.

Stu Brown [01:17:13] I guess one more thing I'd add is just if anyone's just starting to Go through this or they're in the middle of it. Just, you're not alone. Reach out. Anyone that knows me can reach out to me or reach out to people in your community or whoever, or on Facebook, but you're not alone. There's so many people. And because I know that made a huge difference for me, finding people that I could relate to that were going through this. And so maybe 20, 30 years ago, before the Internet, maybe you really were more alone, but now you're not. And find people to, you know, share it with because that will make a huge difference. So reach out.

John Dehlin [01:18:03] Mormonspectrum.org, the community maps. There is a great place to find face to face communities in whatever city you live on the planet. So check out mormonspectrum.org Mel, any other final.

Mel Brown [01:18:15] Yeah, just really, like, just be loving whatever space that you're in, wherever you're at, just take a deep breath. Get the resources that you need to help you. Like, I know that it's hard to shift past. This is big, big, deep stuff. I get it. Being taught 33 years of your life, something is, this is the way it is. And trying to shift that, it takes time. So be patient with yourself. You might go through those phases of sadness and anger and it's okay. You don't have to push through it. Like, just get through it. Just be careful not to put that anger on the other people that you love around you. But just practice having unconditional love with no strings attached. No matter wherever your spouse is or friends or wherever, just be okay listening to them and just love them and realize there's a lot to it. It's complicated, but you can find happiness. That's the biggest thing you can find happiness outside of Mormonism. It doesn't have to be freaky. You can still be good people. You can raise your kids with good morals and values. They can still have friends. You don't have to stay from the fear. And it can be a beautiful, happy, enriching life. And that's what we found. So we know that it can happen. So that's good.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Mel and Stu Brown, everybody. Thank you guys so much for your willingness to share your stories with us. Thanks to everyone who's tuned in. We hope you found this to be useful. We really appreciate it. Everyone who makes this possible. To all the donors to the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories, thank you so much for your support. If you believe in what we do, if you benefit from it, and if you want to see it continue and you're not already a supporter, please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org $10 a month, $25 a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. It's all tax deductible in the US it goes towards our mission, towards our staff, and it allows us to keep providing podcasts, events, communities of support for those who need it. So we hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please tell your friends, please like us on Facebook, please give us positive reviews on itunes, check us out on Instagram or on Twitter. But you know, please do continue supporting us. Share this with others. As you know, it was, as Stu said, it was a friend of his that was willing to share openly on the Internet. That sort of allowed him to see the world in a different way. And that means that many of you, when and if you're ready, please do share this story, other stories, how you feel. Talk openly. Not with any desire to take people out or take away people's belief, but just to be authentic. Share. Just realize that by sharing your story, by sharing these Mormon stories, you can give people new opportunities for love, for better relationships, for better community, for being better parents, whatever it is. Somehow be kind, be empathetic, be open, be authentic, be vulnerable. And good things are going to come from it, in or out of the church. So we love all you guys. Thanks so much for your support. Please stay tuned at Mormon Stories and please keep supporting us and we'll see you guys again really soon. Take care everybody. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

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