Welcome and Episode Introduction

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1761

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is April 4, 2023, and we are here today to hear an amazing story from an amazing couple. To answer the question, what happens when your adult Mormon children lose their faith when you're kind of in your golden years or even your retirement years? And joining us in studio is my partner in truth and righteousness, Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:28] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:00:29] Thanks for being here.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:30] Yeah, happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:31] And the couple of the day or of the hour is Rod and Nan Osborne. Hey, guys.

Nan Osborne [00:00:37] Hey, John.

Rod Osborne [00:00:37] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] Thanks for joining us in the studio.

Rod Osborne [00:00:40] Glad to be here.

Nan Osborne [00:00:41] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:00:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] So, you know, we often get requests for just kind of faith journey stories of normal, everyday Mormons. And while there's no such thing as a average, normal everyday Mormon, everyone's story is unique. We really do feel like today fits that. Bill Rod's a convert to the church or his parents were. We'll talk about that. Nan was a lifelong Mormon, but they've got a really powerful and typical, in some ways, Mormon story up until the point where some of their children as adults start losing their faith. And so that's going to be what we're covering. Some of you may recognize Nan and Rod, or especially Nan, because in addition to being an amazing couple worthy of a Mormon Stories interview, I think both of you, or at least Nan, appeared briefly on the Hulu documentary Mormon no More.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] Their daughter Sal, along with Lena, have been on Mormon Stories as a couple, but they also were featured on the Hulu Mormon no More documentary. Did I get that right?

Nan Osborne [00:01:43] Yeah, you did. We're both on every episode.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] Oh, you're on every.

Nan Osborne [00:01:46] So there's, there's a lot of us.

Rod Osborne [00:01:48] She's more prominent than me, thankfully. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] And Sal and Lena's story is going to play in to your story overall.

Rod Osborne [00:01:56] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] Yeah. But it's not going to be about that. It's going to be about your story today. And Hi, Sal, Len, I love you guys and everyone else. So any disclaimers or intentions you all want to set for why you're doing this interview before we jump right in?

Nan Osborne [00:02:13] For me, I'm doing this interview, even though it's a little bit scary, in the hopes that what I have experienced and what I have been through in the last, just maybe even the last three years, that I can use that experience to help other people who are perhaps struggling with some of the same things I did for the last few years. And I feel like I am in such a good place right now, that or a happy place is what I should say, that I can maybe share some of that with other people. And I hope it does help somebody.

John Dehlin [00:02:58] And just to be clear, you guys, at least you. Nan, were an orthodox, faithful Mormon for how many years?

Nan Osborne [00:03:04] My entire Life. I am 61. I've probably been to church every single Sunday since I was six weeks old.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] So like 59 years Mormon orthodoxy.

Nan Osborne [00:03:13] Oh, yes. 60.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] Yeah. Oh, 60. So your faith, Christ is just one or two years old?

Nan Osborne [00:03:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:19] You guys are baby relative babies in the faith?

Nan Osborne [00:03:22] Yes, we are. And we feel like that. At least I do. I should speak for myself.

John Dehlin [00:03:25] So this is fresh for Nan and Rod. And Rod. Any intention you want to add?

Rod Osborne [00:03:30] Well, I echo what Nan said. She said it really well about our intentions. Yeah. I would just like to be able to help someone with my story, and hopefully that'll happen.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] Yeah, for sure it will.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] Excellent. Okay, so now there's also a question of who goes first. I think we decided to have Nan go first because Nan actually has a traditional, more traditional Mormon story. And then. And then Rod will have you talk about yours, and then your lives will merge at some point. Okay, so, Nan, where does your Mormon story begin?

Nan's Childhood and Family Background

Nan Osborne [00:04:06] I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, raised in Ogden, Utah. I'm the oldest of three kids. I have a sister who's just a year younger than me and then a brother seven years after that. My sister and I were best friends from the time we were little and even and forever. I was raised in Ogden. My parents were both descendants of pioneers. Jedediah Grant was my great great grandpa. Heber J. Grant is my great great uncle.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] Whoa. Did you know him at all growing up?

Nan Osborne [00:04:50] No.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] No. He would have passed.

Nan Osborne [00:04:51] No, but I knew my great grandma. I knew her growing up, and she was his niece, and so I heard stories about him and what he had done for the family my whole life growing up, and my dad's side as well. There were pioneers all throughout his genealogy as well. And as a child, when we had family home evening, a lot of the lessons we're about are revered and honored pioneer ancestors. And as a little girl, I remember those lessons and feeling so proud to be part of the line that came from those brave people and all they did. And I was encouraged by my parents to carry on the torch that they have so valiantly started and that that had an impact on me growing up. My childhood was great. My parents were awesome.

John Dehlin [00:06:01] What did your parents do work wise?

Nan Osborne [00:06:03] My mom stayed home with us. My dad sold Rossignol skis. For most of the time. And then he got sick. When I was about 12 or 13, he. He got sick. My dad was my best friend. He was the person I went to with any concern, any problems.

Nan Osborne [00:06:27] The first time, a boy didn't want to go out with me, and I thought he did. Then I went to my dad and talked to him. Any troubles I had. My dad was a good listener. He was fun, he was super cool. All my friends loved him because he was the Rossignol guy. He taught my sister and I how to ski when we were about 10. And then he taught some of my friends so that they could come with us skiing. And he was the coolest guy on the block, the coolest guy at church.

Nan Osborne [00:07:05] And he made me feel like he would help me no matter what he would say to me, no matter what you do wrong, no matter what choice you make, if you land in jail, I will be the one to come and get you.

Nan Osborne [00:07:22] When I was about 12, my dad got sick and the doctors couldn't figure it out. They took out his gallbladder and his appendix and everything else, and he was still sick. And after a couple years, they finally diagnosed him with liver cancer.

Nan Osborne [00:07:39] We were in Ogden. They suggested that he see a doctor at the UCLA hospital. So my parents flew down. They expected to be there a month or two. My grandparents stayed with me and my siblings. And when they opened my dad up to do surgery to take out the part with cancer, they saw that the cancer had already spread to his entire body. It was in his organs and his lungs and everywhere else. So they just closed him back up. And the surgery lasted 15 minutes instead of several hours.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:12] Wow.

Nan Osborne [00:08:13] They told my mom, you'll be lucky to have him for three more months. So they came home after only a few days instead of what we thought. And my dad was already in the stake presidency. He was probably 35, and everyone loved him. And our house became a non stop line of people coming through our house to say goodbye to him. Night after night, people would come and cry and, you know, tell him how sorry they were as a 12, 13, 14 year old by that time,

Margi Dehlin [00:08:58] it was

Nan Osborne [00:09:00] scary. But I had so much faith and my dad had so much faith that we thought, let's wait and see what really does happen. Whatever my dad taught, I believed 100%. And he said, we are going to outlive this thing and we are going to fix this. And the doctors are all going to be surprised. So of course, he had several blessings given to him, some of which said that he would be okay. And some just said, we hope you feel better.

Nan Osborne [00:09:40] My sister and I one night gathered all the money that we had that we'd saved from babysitting and brought it in to mom and dad and said, you know, we want to give this to you. Maybe this will help pay for medical bills.

Nan Osborne [00:09:54] It was a rough time. And to see all the people who loved my dad come through made it even more. I just understood even more what an impact he had on our whole community and how it wasn't just me losing him, it was everyone.

Nan Osborne [00:10:15] So when during that time, my dad didn't get worse, and over the next month or so, he gained 10 pounds, and we were so surprised and happy. And after a couple of maybe three months, he kind of got worse again, and he had to go back in the hospital, and they tried some more things, and he was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and then he came home and we all tried to help him, and he got a little bit better. And this time he was better for maybe four or five months, and he got a little bit better and a little bit.

Nan Osborne [00:10:49] And then something happened and he couldn't breathe very well. And we went back, and the cancer had spread in his lungs, and it went back and forth, back and forth for 15 years.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] Wow.

Nan Osborne [00:11:00] So never did they say, oh, he's cured. He's going to be alive forever. That wasn't part of it. It was, is tomorrow the day? Is next week the day? Once I asked my mom, I was in junior high, and I came home and said, our awesome field trip that we've been planning forever is going to get canceled because one of the moms can't come. Can you come be a chaperone?

Nan Osborne [00:11:26] And she said, man, that is three weeks away. I could be a widow in three weeks. I cannot sign up for that. And it was another. Another indication that I needed to take care of myself. And. And I couldn't be asking my mom things like that. You couldn't say, what are we going to do for Christmas this year? Because that's too far away to think about, even if it's only three weeks.

Growing Up With a Seriously Ill Father

Nan Osborne [00:11:57] And. And I also learned a lot to keep my fears to myself because it was an indication of a lack of faith if you were overly worried that he was going to die any. Any minute.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:14] So

Nan Osborne [00:12:17] I had had faith since I was a little girl. Some of my earliest memories are of praying and being 100% confident that heavenly Father was listening. When I was in Sunday school, a teacher asked us. When I was young, a teacher asked us to go home and pray, to know that God is really there listening. And boy, I followed her assignment and I went home and got on my knees and I started to pray.

Nan Osborne [00:12:50] And I said, well, this is silly. I already know that. I know that as well as if my dad is real. My dad's in the other room. I can't see him. It's the same thing. And I was probably 8 at the time, and I just had 100% faith that everything I'd been taught was accurate and worthy of me basing all my actions on that.

Nan Osborne [00:13:16] So, I mean, as an eight year old, I was all in, you know, and my whole life has been that. My dad, his illness was the focus of our home. From then on, everything we did was on, can dad do that with us? Is he okay? Will that work?

Nan Osborne [00:13:40] He got better on occasion, long enough to participate with us to ski. And we would have a ski day with him and he would do well. And then that ski day wore him out. And a week later he was back in the hospital and needed to be pumped up with whatever new medicine.

Nan Osborne [00:14:00] He and my mom had a really great marriage. They were super in love forever the whole time, and they didn't want to be apart. And my dad had to quit work before too long. And they bought a La Z Boy chair for every room in the house. So there was one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, one in the office. There was even one right outside the bathroom door of where my mom would get ready in the morning and curl her hair and do all her stuff because my dad wanted to be with her. And every minute that he had left, he remained in the Stake presidency, even though a lot of the time he couldn't attend the meetings.

Nan Osborne [00:14:48] So what happened was that the stake president and the other counselor took care of all that kind of administrative stuff a lot of the time. And my dad became the counselor of anyone who needed help. Counseling. So he was in his Lazy Boy in the office, and the door would be closed and we knew somebody from the stake was in there. And my dad was listening and talking and he, as he got worse, you know, more sick, he.

Nan Osborne [00:15:27] He just became softer and more in tune with the spirit. And he helped so many people. I heard a man come in who was just sobbing and said, I would trade my troubles for your troubles. And my dad said, okay, tell me all about it. And he had all kinds of marriage problems and infidelity and all of that. And I heard him cry for a long time in my dad's Office. And eventually he left and said, I can never thank you enough. And he came back a lot of times, but it was very frequent. Several times a week, somebody was in our house just to talk to my dad because he was so good at that.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:16] Wow.

Nan Osborne [00:16:17] Yeah. And I was so proud of him.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:24] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:16:24] In my eyes, he could do no wrong. I wasn't born with a desire to rebel. I just wasn't. So generally speaking, I wasn't in trouble at home. We didn't have a curfew. I didn't ever get grounded. There were no talks like that. It was always, oh, we're so proud of you. You know, you're just what we hoped for in a daughter kind of thing. So it was all good.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Did you relate to Nephi in the scriptures a little bit as, like, the faithful child?

Nan Osborne [00:17:07] Well, my brother and sister weren't rotten kids, so it's not like I was the.

John Dehlin [00:17:12] I didn't say. Were they Laman and Lemuel?

Nan Osborne [00:17:14] No, no, not at all. That. That didn't cross my mind. But I just most of all wanted to make my dad proud above all else. I spent my high school years sitting on the side of his bed, either at home or in the hospital. I. Every day after school, if he was in the hospital, I drove straight to the hospital and spent an hour or two there. If he was home, I came home and sat on the side of his bed for a little while. That's where a lot of our talks happened as I was a teenager. That's why I became a nurse.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:56] I can so see that.

Nan Osborne [00:17:57] Yeah. One day I was at the hospital and he was in. When I showed up after high school, he was in so much pain. And I said, dad, haven't you asked for more pain medicine? And he said, yeah, I pressed the buzzer, but she's really busy, so it'll probably be a while. And I said, all right, I'm going out there and I'm going to ask her. And he said, oh, no, you're not. Those nurses are working so hard. They're working harder than they should have to work already. And I appreciate whatever they do for me, and we're not going to go out and demand anything.

Nan Osborne [00:18:32] So I sat there with him, and finally 20 minutes later, a nurse came in and put some medicine in his iv and he just calmed down. I could just see the effects. And I was so grateful for that nurse. I wanted to just hug her and hug her and say, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:55] Ah.

Nan Osborne [00:18:56] When I got home, I thought about writing a thank you note to her. But then every time I went, I just started noticing how the nurses were so good and were so kind and my dad was kind back and I felt like I would need to write 10 thank you notes every shift. And I just said, someday I want to be that nurse and I want to do for somebody else's dad what she does for my dad.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] So

Nan Osborne [00:19:30] I finished high school and applied to the nursing program at Weber State College in Ogden. My parents, I said, I think I'd like to go to byu. And they said, oh no honey, if you go to byu, you'll meet somebody from somewhere else and he'll want to take you somewhere else. And we want you right here, close to us. That was my mom's talk to me.

Nan Osborne [00:19:59] And so I said, oh, good idea Mom. And I never asked about it again. And the nursing program was three years, but a few of us that were doing well in high school were allowed to take all the prerequisites while we were in the nursing school part. So I finished in two years and I was only 17 when I graduated high school. So by the time I was 19, I was a registered nurse and I started working.

Nan Osborne [00:20:34] And I've loved being a nurse. That's the basic synopsis of my childhood was great. Both of my parents were great. I've always felt responsible. I think that was another thing I was born with is feeling responsible to make sure everybody else was okay.

Nan Osborne [00:21:01] So if I had to ask, my very earliest memory of forever would probably be when I went to kindergarten and I was worried about leaving my sister who was a year younger. And I remember telling her, you're going to be okay, mom will take care of you while I'm gone.

Nan Osborne [00:21:21] I won't be gone that long. It's okay in whatever five year old way I could convey that to her. I remember a couple of years later me getting my tonsils out and spending the night in the hospital. And when we took my sister to my grandparents house before I got my tonsils out, I said the same thing. You're going to be okay. I promise I'll get better fast as I can so that I can come back to you fast. But. But grandma and grandpa will take care of you.

Nan Osborne [00:21:47] So those kind of feelings were just in me when I was born. And I felt while my dad was sick that I wanted to do everything I could to make sure my mom was okay and that she wasn't overburdened to make sure whatever I could do for my dad I would do.

Nan Osborne [00:22:15] You know, if I was Having issues with girlfriends or with school or something. I didn't come home and say, oh, what am I going to do about this? Because I knew my dad might die next week. My problems were minuscule compared to this. And so I didn't ever say that. My sister and I, even still today can't remember one time when we had an argument, not about clothes, not about anything, our whole lives, because we both knew that wasn't worth, you know, bringing up.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:51] Yeah. The thing that's so interesting to me about that is how long, you know, I think for those developmental years, you're a child, you're, you know, kind of going into your teen years. It sounds like when it really hits that for a couple years, that would be one thing, like, oh, you know, to have that as the center. And then you kind of are always checking your needs, like, oh, but compared to that, I probably shouldn't have this need or, you know, having that as a focal point. The fact that it went on through your whole development, that, to me is such, wow, a major, major player in how you got to know yourself.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:38] And like you say, how you literally showed up in that system to really assuage suffering, to take care of, to create, to eliminate any suffering from you, like, to add. And that, to me, I just feel like, is so, so insightful.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:00] And also I feel like it's interrupting another self that might have emerged during that time that would have been, you know, truly, like, free you, authentic you, because, you know, you were kind of born in that place of real pain and loss, always looking you in the face, you know. Yeah. I have so much, like, love for the younger, young you. And what was it like? Do you. Do you remember what you would do with your feelings as you were witnessing your dad suffer in some of those harder times? Was that. Do you remember any of that?

John Dehlin [00:24:44] Your own needs that you probably were packing down and stuffing?

Margi Dehlin [00:24:48] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] Because you were always attending to everyone else's needs or worried about disrupting the

Margi Dehlin [00:24:53] peace, which you've spoken to already.

Nan Osborne [00:24:56] But it took me many, many years, decades before I realized that that probably wasn't a very healthy way to grow into an adult. At the time, it did not cross my mind because I was thinking about my dad.

Nan Osborne [00:25:22] I didn't think of it as a sacrifice. I didn't think of it as, oh, I have to do this because I'm the daughter and I'm the eldest and I should do this. Not at all. It was an honor to look after my dad or to, you know, be concerned about my mom. And a lot of the things I'm describing, you know, my two siblings will probably say what we don't remember Nan taking care of everybody. It's not like I was 15 and, you know, running the house at all. A lot of it was what I was feeling inside in my heart of that I was worried and that I.

Nan Osborne [00:26:00] I would come home on the school bus and think, okay, I'm not going to bring this up. My issue that I had today at school, you know, I don't need to, or I'll talk to my sister about it, just because I knew they didn't have the bandwidth for that, and that was okay. I knew that if things were, you know, quote, normal, that, sure, they would be open to talking to me, but I knew that I needed to take care of myself, and so I did.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] Maybe we'll circle back to that theme as you deconstruct it and process that later on.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:34] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:26:35] But those are great insights. Thanks for helping.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:37] Yeah. Because there inherently, there's a disconnect that happens when we're showing up for others that it kind of interrupts that process of us actually connecting with ourselves. Right. And what our needs might look like and what they would be, let alone being able to vocalize them.

Nan Osborne [00:26:54] Yes, that's exactly how it was. But I was so unaware of that. And, you know, every church meeting, every sacrament meeting we would go to, somebody would make a comment about my mom and they would say, oh, look at her, look at her. She's here with her kids. She's smiling. We went over to visit her last night with her husband, and we thought we were bringing them, you know, cheer and good wishes, but we were the ones that left feeling buoyed up and that everything's going to be okay. So my mom was praised for her stoic way of handling this. In all of those years, 15 years, I didn't see my mom cry, not once.

Nan Osborne [00:27:49] She kept it together. And she was proud of that. Very proud. And she made it known to me that that was the way we should be handling this, that we can take care of this. We don't open up to discuss how we really feel inside with everybody else. My mom didn't do that with anyone anyway, about anything. And so this was even more that. That's what I learned.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:19] That reminds me of just survival. Right. That if you kind of lean in and you kind of go more toward grief and reflection, and we may not be able to wake up tomorrow morning and do what needs to be done or so, which makes a lot of sense. Coping.

Nan Osborne [00:28:36] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] Really quickly. Before we jump to Rod, can you talk in your, let's just say mid to late teen years what the role of the church was doctrinally, theologically in your life. So prayer, scripture study, your beliefs, your relationship with God in the church. I can assume that, but I'd just like to hear you speak to it.

Faith, Church, and Family Identity

Nan Osborne [00:29:01] Yes. The church was everything for our family and for me. I prayed every single night before I went to bed, mostly on my knees. I believed every word out of the prophet's mouth. I, you know, we weren't a family who at stake conference. We just didn't go or general conference. We didn't listen. No way. It was, everybody get ready, we're going to watch general conference.

Nan Osborne [00:29:32] I was happy to have the church in my life and so grateful that they made so many of the decisions for me and I didn't have to decide should I try alcohol, should I date this boy? Those decisions were already made for me and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Like I had the greatest life hack that all those decisions were already made so I didn't have to. And I knew they were the right decisions and that they would bring me the most happiness.

Nan Osborne [00:30:07] Now as a teenager and later, I wasn't a kid who squirmed around in primary and Sunday school. No way. I was there. I was young women's talking to the teacher afterwards about what the lesson was just on and all of that. Very willing to participate in every single thing the church offered.

Nan Osborne [00:30:31] Youth conference, girls camp, all those things were just wonderful and I was really happy. I didn't dread going to girls camp. I just was so excited. And this is going to be the greatest thing ever. And we're going to help those young beehives build their testimonies and all of that. So I was all in. I was a seminary vice president of our school in Ogden where there's everybody take seminary and I got to, you know, lead the early morning testimony meetings, things like that. I was faithful without any desire to know anything else, flat out. So yeah, it was great.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:18] I can only imagine, particularly for just even the stabilizing force of that. I can only imagine. I do have a quick question. You know, at any time during those years while your dad was sick, did it ever affect your testimony or make you question around? You know, I think some of the messaging or conditioning can be if you do all the things then you'll be happy or if you do all the things you will be protected, but you actually are living an experience young where someone you love, who is so inspiring and such a beautiful human, an example of doing all the good and right things. Did that ever strike you in a way that felt confronting?

Nan Osborne [00:32:13] Not one single bit. My dad was really careful that he didn't talk like that. He and my mom didn't talk like, oh, the blessing you got tonight, honey, that really gives me confidence that you're gonna get cured and you're gonna be all better. That kind of talk didn't happen in our house. We talked about how much faith we had that heavenly Father knew what we were going through. He was aware of us, each one of us, and that he knew what he was doing.

Nan Osborne [00:32:55] My dad talked to me about like, I came home from seminary one time, I was 16. I came home and I said, dad, why? You're the greatest person I've ever known. Why are you the one to get cancer?

Nan Osborne [00:33:12] Why are you the one to suffer for so long and then worry about leaving your wife and kids and all of that? And he got out the scriptures. He asked me, bring me my scriptures, because he was in bed, he wasn't doing well at that particular time.

Nan Osborne [00:33:33] And he opened up to the men who build his house on a rock. And he read those scriptures to me, just a few verses. And he said, we have built this family on a rock and I have built my life on a rock. He said, and true, it's raining and the winds are howling and it's coming down really hard right now. It feels like the worst rainstorm we could ever have. But bai dang, we are built on a rock and we will not fall.

Nan Osborne [00:34:07] And I remember, you know, everything about that day. And I believed it 100%. I didn't. I don't think that I or anyone in our family ever prayed, oh, make dad better all the way better and all that. We just said, we are so grateful for the good doctors. We are grateful for this new medicine they're trying to. We're grateful for the ward that fasted for him again, things like that. And I'm sure that was on purpose on my parents part that we didn't expect everything to get better. And I don't think that was discussed very much. So, no, it didn't cause me any concern. Well, I don't know how to describe it, but my faith did not falter because of this.

Nan Osborne [00:35:04] On the contrary, my faith just got stronger. If my dad can be this strong, if he can be that kind to the nurses when they're so late bringing him pain medicine, if he can suffer through this and never ever Utter a complaint ever, not one time.

Nan Osborne [00:35:22] Then no matter what happens to me, I'm not going to complain no matter what. So that was the vibe in our home. And yeah,

John Dehlin [00:35:40] beautiful, powerful.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:41] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:35:42] I mean, this helps me understand you a lot in all the good ways, so.

Nan Osborne [00:35:48] Thanks.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:49] I will say it's really interesting for me to hear you describe both your mom in this major caretaker role for years and years, and describing her as like, just unfaltering, like, unfailing, stoic, not really seeing her cry. And then it sounds like your dad also, on the other hand, that your experience of him was very, you know, just committed and optimal altruism. And it leads like, so that what you saw was so.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:30] Like, certain emotions and certain behaviors were so optimized. Right. Like that sacrifice or hard work from your mom. The otherness and caretaking being so ideal. That's so idealized in the church. She's getting that every Sunday. And then your dad doing the same thing where it's like, you don't see him maybe reflect about life or sadness or why this is happening or some of those emotions. It's only like, affirming kind of stalwartness and obedience and optimal perspective.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:10] And I think there's so much to be gained from that that should be honored from that. And it also leaves out a whole other side to human experience, to, like, the whole experience of what it means to be alive with loss and grief and feeling angry sometimes or feeling. So it's so interesting to hear you describe that life and that experience of kind of growing up, because there's such a almost perfectionism, like this optimization of what things should look like, even under extreme stress, uncertainty and duress.

Nan Osborne [00:37:55] Yes, that was exactly how it was. My mom expected herself to be perfect. She kept a perfect house. She kept herself looking perfect and even through all of that. So I grew up just knowing that that's what's expected of a mom and of a wife.

Nan Osborne [00:38:25] And, you know, she taught it well by example. The phrase was often said in our home, like, heavenly Father has a plan. We may not know what it is right now. This isn't the plan we thought he would have for us, but he's got a plan. And our job is to have faith in him and what he's going to do with us.

Nan Osborne [00:38:53] And as my dad got to the end of his life and he was counseling people, somebody would leave the house after telling him all their troubles and him gently talking them through it, he would come out and say, we are so lucky. Our family is so lucky that we don't have any of that.

Nan Osborne [00:39:17] That we all love each other and are here for each other. And so it was reinforced all the time that what we were doing by having faith and by being strong and not complaining and not bringing up anything else was the right thing to do. That was reinforced a lot.

John Dehlin [00:39:37] Yeah. Okay. And before we jump to Rod, one last quick question. We've talked a lot about your dad, even though it's kind of your story, and I think your story is framed by your dad's health and your family's system organized around your Dad's health. Spend 30 seconds talking about what Nan things Nan loved to do, grow, you know, her passions or pursuits, just so we can get a flavor for a few other things about, like, sports or whatever. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:40:11] I was not born an athlete, and it didn't interest me. And I'm not super coordinated and not athletic, so that wasn't a big part of my life. But because my dad worked for Rossignol Ski Company, he taught us to ski when I was 10 and in fifth grade, and, oh, man, that was so much fun. And in the beginning, it was a family activity. Every weekend we'd go up and he'd teach us more or help my sister learn and then my brother learn.

Nan Osborne [00:40:47] And as I became a teenager growing up in Ogden, all of my friends skied. Most of us had season passes, and we lived for ski season. So, you know, Halloween would come, and we would. If it could just snow by Halloween, then the ski resort could be open by Thanksgiving, and we could be on the slopes.

Nan Osborne [00:41:09] Half the guys I dated probably asked me out just because they thought my dad was so cool and they wanted to date his daughter so that someday they could be in my dad's family. So a lot of the boys I dated were skiers. We went skiing on dates.

Nan Osborne [00:41:27] It was a really big part of my junior high and high school life. I. I was in the choir at school, things like that. I got great grades. I, you know, was involved in all the seminary and youth activities.

Nan Osborne [00:41:46] But skiing, if I had to say one thing that I enjoyed, that was a big part of who I was. I had an old beat up station wagon when I was a teenager. So the deal was, if I was getting A's, my parents said, you can skip school to go skiing. So after first period, of course, there were no cell phones. I would go to the attendance office and sign myself out and then go if we saw it was a blue sky day. And then I would go and get my, like, five friends and go talk to Them, hey, let's go skiing. Hey, let's go.

Nan Osborne [00:42:18] And they would all come, sign themselves out. We would all pile into my station wagon. I would go drop them at each one of their houses, go to my house, get my ski gear, put it in, then go pick the five of them up, put their gear in, and we could be on the mountain in an hour from when we all signed out of school and ski all day. And I did that a lot my junior and senior year. That was what I did. And that was super fun. So my life was a lot about skiing when I wanted to do something.

John Dehlin [00:42:50] And you guys are still skiing, what, weekly to this day. So that's.

Nan Osborne [00:42:55] Now that we're back in Utah, we're skiing a lot. It's been really fun.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] Okay, well, Nan, that's been. I think that's a really important foundation that we laid. And Margi, your questions were amazing too. So thanks for sharing, Nan, those early years.

Nan Osborne [00:43:11] You're welcome. Thanks, Rod.

Rod's Introduction and Early Life

John Dehlin [00:43:13] You ready to go?

Rod Osborne [00:43:14] I'm ready. Let's do this.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Your morm story is a little different.

Rod Osborne [00:43:17] It is, it is.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Let's have you.

Rod Osborne [00:43:21] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Tell a bit about yours.

Rod Osborne [00:43:23] Yeah, mine's quite different. My parents grew up in a coal town in southeastern West Virginia. One of my grand. My dad's dad was a coal miner, and my mom's dad had polio as a child and had a brace on his leg and walked with a limp, and therefore he couldn't work in the mine. So he was. He ran the local furniture and appliance store. My parents were high school sweethearts. My mom got married at 17 to my dad while she was still in high school. And he took off, joined the Air Force so he didn't have to work in the coal mines. And that got them out of West Virginia. West Virginia is not a great place. But dad wanted to get out.

John Dehlin [00:44:22] So

Rod Osborne [00:44:25] in a period of nine years, they had five kids and I was number two of the five. I was born in Ohio and we lived in a single wide trailer there. I can remember that. And I remember being on my dad's shoulders while he went pheasant hunting. Just right out in the field next to our. Our trailer.

Rod Osborne [00:44:51] And my life as a child was. I have great memories of my childhood. Both of my grandfathers were religious guys, and they went to the local Methodist church in. In Analt, West Virginia, which is a ghost town now pretty much.

Rod Osborne [00:45:18] But I remember as a kid, we didn't go to church. I remember going to church a couple times while my dad, who was in the Air Force was in Thailand during the Vietnam War. My mom took us to church a couple times.

Rod Osborne [00:45:33] I think, you know, obvious reasons, but I remember my grandpa one time on my dad's side, my dad said, yeah, we went hunting last Sunday. And my grandpa said, you should watch what you do on Sundays. Manuel. My dad's name is Manuel, and I was 12 at the time. And somehow I still remember that.

Rod Osborne [00:45:59] It just hit home to me. This is a real religious guy if he's talking to us about Sunday. And I really had no concept of church. I went to church a few times, but we were not a religious family.

Rod Osborne [00:46:14] But anyway, the five of us grew up on Air Force bases. Three years in Spain as a little kid. I have great memories of that. And then North Carolina, where most of my early years were spent. We were a sports family.

Rod Osborne [00:46:39] I started playing football when I was 8. Baseball, I think was 17. I was 7. And pretty much our lives revolved around what we did in sports as kids. I loved that. I also was really interested in school.

Rod Osborne [00:47:00] I had a curious mind. When I wasn't doing anything at school or I finished my assignments, I would just go get an encyclopedia and start reading it. I was a curious kid. But we moved around. We moved from North Carolina to the Upper peninsula of Michigan. Very few people have ever lived there.

Rod Osborne [00:47:26] Yeah, we were Yoopers for a while. That was fun. And then we were at Clark Air Base in the Philippines for a couple years during the height of the Vietnam War there. It was the biggest military installation in the world at that time.

Rod Osborne [00:47:44] Then we moved to Utah. Summer my sophomore year, summer before my sophomore year. I had no idea what Utah was like. When dad got the assignment. We just said, oh, Hill Air Force Base. Hill Air Force Base, Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:48:00] So you weren't LDS when you moved?

Rod Osborne [00:48:02] We were not. Nope. Not at all. I remember. Pardon me. When. When I told my friend about our assignment when we were in the Philippines. I was in the ninth grade at the time. So we're going to Utah. He said, oh, my gosh, really? I said, what? He says, you better watch out for the Mormons. And I had no idea what a Mormon was.

John Dehlin [00:48:31] Really.

Rod Osborne [00:48:31] I had no idea. None whatsoever. I just knew we were going to a desert because I remember traveling across the states to go to San Francisco in order to catch the plane to the Philippines. We crossed through Utah and Utah was a desert. That's the only memory I had. But.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:47] But

Rod Osborne [00:48:51] we moved there as a family. My brother was a senior at the time, which is really hard for him to leave during that time. But for me it was a great time. Right before my high school years. I remember the first day of school as a sophomore. I was, you know, I was probably 5, 7 and you know, packing 115 pounds and I was holding a tackling dummy.

Rod Osborne [00:49:22] We were at football practice, I was holding a tackling dummy and little old me and this senior came and hit the tackling dummy. And I knew as soon as I got hit something was wrong. And I. And I woke up and my, my wrist was hanging down in kind of a V shape and yeah, it just snapped both the bones in my wrist. So my introduction to high school was not so great. So I broke my arm.

Rod Osborne [00:49:51] My first year in Utah was. I had no friends other than the friends that I had on the Air Force base. Even at school, I remember. Until, well, again, once my arm healed, then I got into baseball. I'd played a lot of baseball and so was.

Rod Osborne [00:50:19] I made the varsity team as a sophomore. My involvement in sports was a lot of my self esteem probably. But anyway, I didn't have any Mormon friends. I didn't know any Mormon friends until the latter part of my junior year when there was this girl that took some interest in me and I was pretty much introverted and she made the first move and then eventually we became to like each other and.

Rod Osborne [00:50:56] And I remember the summer before my senior year, we did a lot of stuff together. And right after football season as a senior, I was at Layton High School. Her name was Lark Harris. Great person. I was baptized. I took the missionary discussions from her brother. At that time they didn't have missionaries in Utah. It was all stake missionaries. So this was 1973.

Rod Osborne [00:51:30] So I took the missionary discussions and I'm sure the question is why did you take the missionary discussions? And you know, as I look back, I took them for probably a couple of reasons. One is that she paid a lot of attention to me and it was. Her family was great.

Rod Osborne [00:51:56] You know, I went over there, had Sunday dinner with them almost every week. Lark and I were really close and they were really kind family. They had, you know, they were again, you know, a pioneer family. They'd been there forever.

Rod Osborne [00:52:16] So it was that part of it. And then I think I had a desire to connect with something spiritual. I remember I went to church on my own with a friend of mine. His name was Diz Reese. When I was at Hill Air Force Base, when we were still living on the base while I was in high school, Diz and I would, on a Sunday morning we'd go up to the base and go to the chapel and, you know, it was an hour service. It was just a basic Protestant service in the Air Force. You have Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services on the base. And you have to fit into one of those three categories.

John Dehlin [00:52:57] Not lds?

Rod Osborne [00:52:58] No.

John Dehlin [00:52:58] Interesting.

Rod Osborne [00:52:58] No, not at all. So I did that. So I did have some desire to connect with deity or something spiritual. And then. So it wasn't really out of outer space for me to say, okay, I'll listen to the missionaries, because I wasn't.

Rod Osborne [00:53:23] I wasn't indoctrinated against the Mormons so much, except for my friend in the Philippines. And when I got here, I said, hey, these guys are, you know, Lark's certainly nice and her family's great. And I didn't know much about the Mormons, but when I took the missionary discussions, it felt good and I said, okay. And I was baptized November 17, 1973.

Rod Osborne [00:53:52] And. There was never a time after that until within the last two years that I wasn't a true believing Mormon. I was always active. Even though the years between the time I was baptized and the time I went on a mission at age 21, there were some rocky times where I had no idea what I wanted to do in college, yada, yada, and Lark and I had broken up, we'd get back together, that kind of thing.

Rod Osborne [00:54:34] There was never a time that I wasn't going to church and fully engaged in what I thought I was supposed to do. As a convert, I really believed that I should do what I was told. So in a nutshell, that's my childhood and my teenage years.

Rod Osborne [00:54:59] I love my childhood. My parents, I think we weren't a perfect family. There were plenty of flaws, but my parents did the best they could. My siblings, we still communicate. Nobody hates anybody. My dad is still alive. He's going to be 92 this year.

Rod Osborne [00:55:28] He lives up in Hooper, Utah. I have two sisters and a brother that are still local and one brother that lives up in the Seattle area. So,

John Dehlin [00:55:41] yes, did. How did your parents feel about you converting to Mormonism?

Rod's Mission and Return Home

Rod Osborne [00:55:47] You know, they, they didn't say much. Yeah, they were fine with it. They didn't say yes or no, and they just pretty well let me do what I wanted. Now, when I said I was going to go on a mission, I think there was some. A little bit of hesitancy, but they didn't put up any resistance when I did. I went when I was 21, not when I was 19. So I was 21 and a half when I left. Where'd you go to Texas. Dallas Mission. Yeah. In those days there were only three missions in Texas.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] And what years were you in Dallas?

Rod Osborne [00:56:37] I was there 77 to 79.

John Dehlin [00:56:40] Would you believe I lived in Dallas in 77?

Rod Osborne [00:56:42] No. Did you really?

John Dehlin [00:56:44] In the Richardson area?

Rod Osborne [00:56:45] Oh, I was in the Richardson Ward for the last. Well, a big. I was. I was the Mission. I called myself the Mission Gopher. For a while I was called the supply manager in the Richardson Ward. That's where the mission home was. But it was 1978. Pardon me.

John Dehlin [00:57:04] We were there around the same time.

Rod Osborne [00:57:05] Really? Yeah. Cool.

John Dehlin [00:57:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:57:09] Texas.

John Dehlin [00:57:09] Remember the acs?

Rod Osborne [00:57:10] I do.

John Dehlin [00:57:11] So we were in. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:57:12] No kidding.

John Dehlin [00:57:13] They were close.

Rod Osborne [00:57:14] You know, President Benson's son was also in the Richardson Ward while we were there. And yeah, he had a couple of cute daughters that. That were in the ward. We noticed.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Such a small Mormon world.

Rod Osborne [00:57:25] Yeah, it is. You're a Mormon. It is a small world. Yeah. So in a nutshell, that's my childhood. Lots of sports.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] What was it like being a missionary as a convert?

Rod Osborne [00:57:41] You know, I was. I resisted a mission. It was that, you know, when you're a 19 year old kid and this is the way I thought in my mind two years, I said to myself, that's my junior and senior year in high school. That's a long time. I can't imagine just going and knocking on doors for two years and giving up. I wanted to play sports. I wanted to play baseball in, in college. And I thought giving that up would be just like, I don't, I can't do that. You know, it was. However, you know, eventually I was, I was playing. Well, I skipped that part. After I graduated, I went to Utah Tech at Provo, which was a little tiny school across the street from byu. It was a junior college.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] Is that UVSC predecessor?

Rod Osborne [00:58:49] It is. And I walked on as a, you know, as a freshman in baseball. My buddy and I, Brian Graham, who eventually went to Utah and played. But we walked on. I was starting at second base. I played through the fall season. And then my girlfriend Lark was at BYU at the time.

Rod Osborne [00:59:15] She left to go back to Weber State and she left me there at Utah Tech. And I just couldn't handle it. Even though I was starting the season was going to start in two weeks. I quit baseball. You know, that just shows you my mental maturity at the time. I had really no direction. And, you know, I gave baseball up saying that I was going to go home and go on a mission.

Rod Osborne [00:59:43] And I went back home and I actually did say, okay, I want to Go on a mission. But at that time, you know, if you'd done anything wrong, I don't want to go into any details, but you

John Dehlin [01:00:00] had to talk to a general authority.

Rod Osborne [01:00:02] I did.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] No, I'm not saying you did. I'm saying I did, though.

Rod Osborne [01:00:06] Okay, you were right on, we're on the same wavelength here, John.

John Dehlin [01:00:08] Just saying. Yeah, back in the day, if you had done some things wrong, you had to talk interview with the general authority prior to serving him.

Rod Osborne [01:00:15] Exactly. And, and I don't think, I don't

John Dehlin [01:00:18] think they do that anymore.

Rod Osborne [01:00:20] I, I, yeah, I don't think they do either. But at that time, they said, okay, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to ask the general authority if you can go. So they talked to the general authority, came back and said, well, you need to wait until the fall. So this was in the spring, and again fall for me, I mean, that was like six months later. That was forever.

Rod Osborne [01:00:42] And what it did was, got me really discouraged and I floundered around. I went to school, I quit school. I withdrew from a whole quarter at Weber State, which is still on my transcripts. You know, all the W's on, you know, like 18 hours, 18 credit hours. It doesn't look good.

Rod Osborne [01:01:03] But I was up and down until, you know, for a couple of years I didn't know what I wanted to do. Even though I was still going to church, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know how I was going to get on a mission until finally I just decided, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to go.

Rod Osborne [01:01:24] So at 21, I decided to put in my papers. That's when I had to go see the general authority. I remember I had a full time job as a painter while I was going to school for the Davis school district.

Rod Osborne [01:01:37] And I put my suit in my car and at lunchtime I asked my boss if I could take a couple hours off. Actually, it was pretty much the rest of the day. And I took my paint clothes off in my car, put my suit on and traveled down to the church office building and met with a guy named Henry D. Taylor, who was a 70 at the time. You know, went up to his office, he asked me all the questions and he didn't tell me anything at the time. He says, well, we'll get back to you.

Rod Osborne [01:02:09] And I got back and then the next day, stake president called, said, hey, you're okay to go. And so in those days, I got my call in two weeks and I was gone. Within six weeks. So, yeah, in my mission experience, I don't know if you want me to talk about that yet.

John Dehlin [01:02:30] Just summarize. Like, was it powerful? Was it formative for you?

Rod Osborne [01:02:37] It was. You know, I thought at the time it was a great accomplishment for me because I thought I would never do it. You know, it was very scary to think, oh, crap, I'm going to be gone for two years. And that was a long time.

Rod Osborne [01:02:59] I had a good mission. I was obedient. I did everything that I was supposed to do. Knocked on doors all day, every day for about two years. One thing that really bothered me when I got on my mission was that when you get off the plane on a hot August day in Dallas, oh, so stuffy and hot, you have your interview with the mission president. That's the first thing you do. I remember going, sitting in front of this guy, and he was an admiral in the Navy. He retired because they asked him to come on a mission. Great guy. Love the man.

Rod Osborne [01:03:45] C. Monro Hart was his name. But anyway, I sat down with him, and the first thing he did was chastise me about what I had done before my mission. And I thought to myself, wait a minute here. All this stuff, stuff that I've gone through to get here, I thought it was over with, you know, repentance.

Rod Osborne [01:04:06] What I had been taught was, number one, things are confidential. And number two, once you've repented, it's done and it's over with. And I was really disappointed that I get there and that's the first thing I hear. But from him, I can understand.

Rod Osborne [01:04:31] He was used to working with these young Navy sailors who were wild and crazy, and he just didn't want any of that kind of stuff to happen on his watch. And I got over that, and I was fine. And I learned to love the guy. He had a big heart as a mission president, he was a great guy.

Rod Osborne [01:04:50] He was a moral, wonderful man. He was not the kind of mission president that we hear about who's trying to get numbers by baptizing kids who are in bad ways. He. He wasn't that kind of guy.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Do you feel like the mission was good for your kind of work ethic and character, that sort of thing?

Rod Osborne [01:05:15] Yeah, yeah, I think it was. It was. You know, you learn a lot of valuable lessons. I think I grew up, I learned how to work. You know, I was always a good student. And I did work. You know, I had a job at age 16, you know, and I juggled work, school, and sports my whole life.

John Dehlin [01:05:38] And, you Know, so you had that. You had a lot of that going on.

Rod Osborne [01:05:40] I did. And I thought, you know, the mission for me was. It was hard. It was really hard just to be gone that long and be away from friends and family and, you know, in those days, you couldn't call, even though I. I broke the rules. And this was my philosophy as a missionary. I can't make phone calls, but if I get a phone call, nobody told me that I can't take that phone call. So, you know, I held onto that. So my girlfriend called a few times, and my parents would call occasionally, you know, but, yeah, for the most part, it was a good experience. But there's some later trauma that we can talk about later that reared its head. Actually, just a few years ago, a major event in my life with my mission.

John Dehlin [01:06:38] Dan and Margi, let's make sure you guys help us remember to remind Rod.

Nan Osborne [01:06:41] Okay?

John Dehlin [01:06:42] Is that all right?

Rod Osborne [01:06:43] Okay, sure.

John Dehlin [01:06:44] Really quickly, Rod, you talk about being studious as a kid and reading encyclopedias and stuff.

Rod Osborne [01:06:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:51] And, you know, we've had Sandra Tanner on quite a bit. You know, by the 70s, she would have been. She and Gerald would have been going full force.

Rod Osborne [01:07:00] Yes.

Rod's Perspective on Mormon History and Doctrine

John Dehlin [01:07:01] So I'm curious how Mormon history and doctrine of theology struck you as a. As a convert and as an outsider that tried to be studious. So golden plates, Joseph Smith, polygamy.

Rod Osborne [01:07:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:14] Just all the crazy stuff about Mormon history. Did that. Did you even think of, you know, the claim that the Native Americans were Lamanites? Like, did you ever think about any of that stuff? As a convert, as a missionary? Did you ever. Were you ever confronted by the, quote, anti Mormon stuff of the Tanners? Even the Southern evangelical, you know, anti Mormon stuff you might have gotten just from Baptists in Texas.

Rod Osborne [01:07:40] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] Was there any confrontation with weird Mormon history or doctrine or theology or. No.

Rod Osborne [01:07:46] Pardon me. You know, I told you, I did what they told me to do.

John Dehlin [01:07:51] So.

Rod Osborne [01:07:52] One of the things that I was told back then is never to read anti Mormon stuff. So I didn't. Gerald and Sandra Tanner were swear words back then. And so I never did read anything. I was aware, of course, of the ban. The priesthood ban against the blacks because, you know, some of my best friends were dis. Reese, my friend I went to church with. It was black is black. You know, dear friends. Some of my dear friends are, you know, African Americans. And that bothered me, but it didn't bother me enough not to join the church. And I, you know, I feel bad about that, but. And okay, where was I? John helped me out here.

John Dehlin [01:08:49] Mormon literature.

Rod Osborne [01:08:50] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:54] We stayed away from.

Rod Osborne [01:08:55] We were taught not to do that. And, you know, Mormonism, shadow reality was like, no, you. That is evil. If you touch that book or you look at that, you look at the COVID then you're going to, you know, you're going to get struck down. No, I didn't do anything like that. I did, though, on my mission, I read a lot. I read, you know, Jesus the Christ. I read, you know, all of the books that they gave us. Marvelous Work and a Wonder and the

John Dehlin [01:09:22] Great Apostasy, Talmage and Woodstow.

Rod Osborne [01:09:25] Yes. And it was, you know, it was the library they gave you. So, you know, I read all those, but I did. We had a member who had, in those days, a Deseret book library at their house. So this is a little Texas town. I was serving in Abilene at the time, and one of the members of the church had a Deseret book shop in her house. They used to do that, where they would sell to the local members books from Deseret Book. And you could go in there, and it was like a little store.

Rod Osborne [01:09:57] So I bought a biography of Joseph Smith and I read it. We weren't supposed to read outside books, but I said, this is Joseph Smith. You know, how bad can it be? I don't feel like I'm breaking the rules. And in that book, I think it was the first biography that had been published by a Mormon that mentioned that he had a.

Rod Osborne [01:10:20] It said that in one part of the story, it's very brief, that Joseph had married his first plural wife. And it didn't go into any more detail than that in the book, but that was the first time I ever knew that Joseph had a plural wife, and was surprising. But I didn't have any way of following up on that because I wasn't supposed to read anything else, and so I never did.

John Dehlin [01:10:56] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:10:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] Okay, cool.

Rod Osborne [01:10:59] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:00] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] So anything else about mission or post mission prior to meeting Nan that. That's really important to your story? I'm assuming you met her pretty soon after getting home on your mission.

Rod Osborne [01:11:16] It was post mission, huh?

John Dehlin [01:11:18] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:11:19] Is there anything important? Is there anything important, Hunter?

John Dehlin [01:11:23] What's more important than meeting Nan?

Rod Osborne [01:11:24] What does that mean? No, there's nothing more important than that, but her version of how we met is more interesting than mine. Let her handle that.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] Let me just maybe just summarize your section. Rob, do you feel like up until the point you meet Nan, do you feel like your introduction to Mormonism, the Mormon Church, the Mormon Community. Your mission experience was a net positive influence on your life?

Rod Osborne [01:11:53] Yes. Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, it gave me direction. You know, I didn't really have any after high school and yeah, it gave me direction.

John Dehlin [01:12:07] Sounds like it gave you community, friendships.

Rod Osborne [01:12:09] Oh, community, Yeah. I mean, in the Mormon Church, I mean, frankly, that's something they do better than anybody I know is create community. Right. If you're, if you fit in, you fit in real well.

John Dehlin [01:12:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent. Okay, now you want anything? You're good. Okay. All right, so I guess we want to hear the story of how you guys met.

How Rod and Nan Met and Married

Rod Osborne [01:12:38] Okay, go for it.

Nan Osborne [01:12:42] I was in nursing school at Weber State. My mom was attending an institute class with a friend of hers at the school and she said, there's this really cute boy in my institute class, you should come over and meet him. I was only 18. I went over the next day that she was an institute and the boy wasn't there.

Nan Osborne [01:13:05] And I said, drat. And some boy in the class said, you let your mom find you dates? And I said, hey, I'm open to anything, you know. And he said, well, I've got a friend who needs a date. Maybe you should go out with him. And I said, send him my way, you know. And so he got our house address from my mom.

Nan Osborne [01:13:27] And a few nights later, I came home from a date with a boy I thought was really cute. And my dad said, hey, a boy came looking for you tonight. And I said, really? And what did he look like? And he said, he made that boy you were out with tonight look like a mud fence post. Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] And I said, he's not watching now.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:52] Wow, mud fence post. Yes.

Nan Osborne [01:13:55] And I thought, wow, okay, then I better go back and see if I can't find him at institute or wherever. So I went back. I don't know if we met at institute. I don't think we did, did we?

Rod Osborne [01:14:10] We did.

Nan Osborne [01:14:10] Even before we went on our first trip.

Rod Osborne [01:14:12] That was the first time we saw

John Dehlin [01:14:13] you and explain to our non Mormon viewers and listeners what institute is.

Nan Osborne [01:14:17] Institute is religion classes for college students and community members if they want to come. It was on campus.

John Dehlin [01:14:27] This is at Weber.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:28] Uh huh.

Nan Osborne [01:14:29] At Weber in Ogden. And it was, it also had a cafeteria and a place we could have dances and fun times and activities. So it was definitely a place where a lot of young kids hung out to meet, meet people and all that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [01:14:50] So on the campus. Let me, let me make sure I get this right. On the campus of a public university. Weber State University, the Mormon Church builds An institute building. Building on campus that's kind of like a student life center for faith and Education, religious education. Center for Faithful Believing Mormons. Is that right?

Nan Osborne [01:15:10] Is that right, Rod?

Rod Osborne [01:15:13] As far as being on campus, I can't tell you. It's just. Here's the road. Here was where most of the campus is, and here's the institute. The institute was.

Nan Osborne [01:15:22] It might not have been adjacent.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] It would be indistinguishable from an indistinguishable.

Rod Osborne [01:15:27] But it may not be literally, you know, literally a part of the campus.

Nan Osborne [01:15:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:32] But it feels like it's.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:33] Oh, yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:15:34] I mean.

Nan Osborne [01:15:34] Oh, for sure.

Rod Osborne [01:15:34] They do that.

John Dehlin [01:15:35] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:15:35] Everywhere.

John Dehlin [01:15:36] Yeah. Okay.

Rod Osborne [01:15:37] I mean, the institute at the University of Utah.

John Dehlin [01:15:40] Yeah. Was right there.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:41] Yep.

Rod Osborne [01:15:42] I mean, it's huge. And it. You can't distinguish it from the rest of the campus.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:46] USU is like that.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] Yeah, it is. It's just a weird. Both seminary buildings on high school honor adjacent to high school campuses in Utah and Idaho and Arizona, and then institute buildings on or adjacent to campus of universities. It's this real marriage of public education and religious education indoctrination.

Rod Osborne [01:16:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] It's kind of a really powerful and some would say questionable merging of church and state.

Rod Osborne [01:16:15] Yeah. I don't know if the ACLU has ever taken that one off.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:17] It's kind of blurry.

Rod Osborne [01:16:19] Yeah. A little bit. A gray area.

John Dehlin [01:16:22] But when you're in it, it's amazing.

Rod Osborne [01:16:23] Right.

Nan Osborne [01:16:24] When you're in it, you're like, well, of course. Because this is what my life's about. So if it were somewhere else that I had to drive to, well, then that wouldn't work, because this is what life is. And it just was a way for us to keep the church as the center of life, not only spiritually, but for fun.

John Dehlin [01:16:46] Yeah. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:48] Okay.

Nan Osborne [01:16:48] Yeah. So we met. I don't remember very much about that.

Rod Osborne [01:16:54] You want me to tell you how we met?

Nan Osborne [01:16:56] Sure.

Rod Osborne [01:16:56] Okay. I was supposed to come, and she was supposed to be at the institute building. And my buddy said, hey, come, because she said she was going to be there that day at class with her mom. And he said, come see her. And so I remember pulling up into the parking lot, and Nan and one of her best friends named Denise Tyner were standing in the door. And I remember the first time I saw her, she was. I didn't know it was her, but I thought, okay, that's probably the girl that I'm supposed to meet. That's the description. And I can tell you what she had on.

Nan Osborne [01:17:35] Oh, really?

Rod Osborne [01:17:36] Yeah. She had.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:36] Let Us have it.

Rod Osborne [01:17:37] She had. She had boots on, these brown boots, and she had these stovepipe Levi's on. And then she had.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:44] Come on, Nan.

Rod Osborne [01:17:45] She had a waist. A jacket that went down to her waist, kind of like a bomber jacket.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:53] Oh, yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:17:53] With kind of a fuzzy collar on her right here. And she looked really cute.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:00] Nan, you were styling even then.

Nan Osborne [01:18:03] That's questionable.

Rod Osborne [01:18:04] And she was standing at the door. She and Denise were standing at the door, and I think they were looking for me to find out, okay, is this guy going to come or not? And I pulled up, and I remember opening the door and said, hi. And they said, hi. And they didn't. I don't think they knew it was me, but I walked into the. Into the institute, and there was my buddy there. And then she walked in later, and sure enough, it was her. So that was my. That was the first time that we met.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:30] Okay, good.

Rod Osborne [01:18:32] And I was happy with what I saw.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:33] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:18:34] And so he asked me out. And when it came time for our date, he didn't tell me what we were going to do or where to go or how to dress. So, I mean, I was 18. He was. I didn't know how old he was. He looked like he was, you know, 18.

John Dehlin [01:18:51] He was 23. Right. He would have been 23.

Rod Osborne [01:18:55] I was a few days from being 24, but I told her I was 23.

Nan Osborne [01:19:00] And so we were home, and he knocks on the door, and I send my sister out there, go see, you know, what is he wearing? So that I even know am I dressed right? Or whatever. And I had on jeans and whatever. And she came back in and she said, well, first of all, he's really cute, but you should probably change out of those jeans and put on something nicer, because he's dressed, you know, like he's going somewhere. So I hurry and changed into something else. And when I came out, he was wearing.

Nan Osborne [01:19:33] We used to call them angel flight pants, but they were polyester pants that were bell bottoms. And then he had on a polyester shirt that had palm trees all over it with big, long, pointed collars and a little braided belt that had palm trees on it to match his shirt, like Oshkosh Brown.

Nan Osborne [01:19:53] And I just thought, coordinating, okay. And, you know, I didn't know he was older than me. I didn't know that he just got back from a mission and was still wearing clothes from way back when. I didn't know any of that. I just thought, well, okay, he is really cute. So here we go.

Rod Osborne [01:20:11] She was not impressed with my wardrobe,

Nan Osborne [01:20:14] and after about four dates, and I thought I was going to end up going out with them for a while, I bought a pair of those Levi's we had back in the day called Shrink to Fit. And you would buy them and they were huge, and then you would shrink them and then they would fit you. So you could not return them then because they were shrunk. So I bought a pair that I thought would fit him and I washed them and shrunk them so you couldn't take them back. And then I put them in the backseat of his car one day when he wasn't watching. And I didn't say anything about it and he didn't say anything, but the next time he came to get me, he was wearing those and he looked even more cute.

Rod Osborne [01:20:56] Fashion wasn't my strong suit, I guess.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:59] Yeah. So that initial outfit that you wore, was it out of style?

Rod Osborne [01:21:05] I wore, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:06] Oh, definitely out of style. Got it. Okay, so you gave him a little update. Oh, that's so humane. Such a humane way.

John Dehlin [01:21:17] Really quickly in Mormonism, there's kind of a pecking order. It would be like, you know, young men of pioneer ancestry, you know, or related to important Mormons as kind of like top on the pecking order. And then like, at least born in the covenant, returned missionaries, a convert maybe would be without pioneer ancestry, would probably be lower on the pecking order. Now, I don't know if I'm imposing this or if I'm making that up, but I'm curious whether that pecking order was in any way conscious for you.

Nan Osborne [01:21:51] Not really. I would have never considered marrying anybody who wasn't a returned missionary. That was out of the question. I dated a few kids like that, but I certainly knew that wasn't who I was going to marry. And I looked at it, you know, I'd just been taught to see the good in everything and to trust God. So I looked at it like, wow, what faith he must have to have not known anything about the church and then seen the truthfulness of the gospel at a young age and knew it was true and joined in. And I thought, you know, he's really brave and intelligent to have done that, coming from a family that wasn't religious in any way.

Nan Osborne [01:22:38] So I thought, wow. And he presented himself when we were dating and forever after, not like just when we were dating as a very straight toe the line, do not step one toe off the line kind of guy, which was my kind of guy, you know, when it came to getting married. Yeah, yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:23:01] And her dad liked me a lot. So if her dad hadn't liked me, I would have been out the door in a heartbeat from her, by her. Oh, yeah. But somehow I made a good impression on her dad.

Nan Osborne [01:23:14] Yeah. Right from the get go.

Rod Osborne [01:23:15] And we got along great and he liked me. So I really believe that that's most of the reason she married me, frankly.

Nan Osborne [01:23:22] Oh, come on.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:26] Seal of approval.

Rod Osborne [01:23:27] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:23:27] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:23:28] That was, you know, that was 90%. That was 90% of it for me.

Nan Osborne [01:23:33] It wasn't

John Dehlin [01:23:36] anything you guys want to say about your engagement or wedding or the temple, you know, going through the temple or any of that stuff?

Rod Osborne [01:23:43] Oh, I can tell you about my first temple experience, but, yeah, I don't know if we want to go there.

John Dehlin [01:23:49] Go ahead, if it's important to your story.

Rod Osborne [01:23:51] I think it is. Just. And I'll try to be brief. Nobody told me about the temple. I'm this kid who, you know, didn't grow up with Mormons, and I'm getting ready to go on a mission and I go in for my interview and. Okay, you're going to go on the temple. Great. And I went through with Nan's family. Not Nan's family, but Lark's family, my girlfriend's family at the time. And I didn't really know what to expect, but I did not expect what I ran into when I went there. The washing and anointing was traumatizing. You have to get naked, and then you put on this shield, they call it, which is basically a poncho that's opened on both sides of you. And then I have these guys, you know, touching me under the poncho. And then they put on the garment. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:03] With oil.

Rod Osborne [01:25:04] With oil. You know, and then they. They touch me, you know, inside my chest. And then. Then down by my groin, which was weird. And then my knee. And, you know, I. I just said, what is going on here? You know, I'm just. I'm a kid who, you know, I didn't know any of this stuff. What is this?

Rod Osborne [01:25:26] I just thought, okay, we have this great church where we want people to be happy and believe in Jesus and do good things. And then I walk into this. It was like a buzzsaw. And then after that, we had the endowment.

Rod Osborne [01:25:42] During the endowment in those days. I mean, I'm standing and then we're doing this stuff, and I'm acting like I'm cutting my throat with my hand. And then I'm disemboweling myself at my chest, and then again down at my waist and I'm going, what in the heck is going on here?

Rod Osborne [01:26:03] And then we're raising our hands and chanting in this weird language. Oh, and it's going down and everybody's doing it, and we're wearing these weird clothes. It's just like, what the heck am I doing here? And, you know, everybody told me the temple is so great. And I said, oh my gosh.

Rod Osborne [01:26:30] And I remember just hoping this gets over soon. And I remember going home after that. And I was so mentally exhausted, I couldn't get out of bed for the rest of the day. I didn't know what to do.

Rod Osborne [01:26:48] It was one of the most difficult mental experiences of my life. I can compare it to being on the witness stand as an FBI agent. The mental energy of that day is comparable to the mental energy you spend when you're getting interrogated by defense attorneys trying to trip you up.

Rod Osborne [01:27:24] It was just awful. And that was supposed to be this great experience. And I never recovered from that, frankly. I never did. Even though I was faithful and I went to the temple, I never did enjoy the temple, you know, in my days.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:49] So

Rod Osborne [01:27:51] I tried, you know, I tried to get everything I could out of it. And sometimes, you know, mostly in the celestial room when it's all finished and it's, you know, you sit in this peaceful room where it's really quiet. You know, I have some good memories there, but not a lot.

John Dehlin [01:28:09] And I see this on the Internet all the time. Mormons today will go, well, that's not how the temple is. And it's like, yeah, they changed it, but that's how it was when we went through it.

Rod Osborne [01:28:17] Oh my gosh.

John Dehlin [01:28:18] And, and since we were taught it was given to the church by revelation from God, it's a non trivial thing that we had to go through it and that we were told it was from God. So why'd they change it? Why'd we have to go through it? And then what are they doing? Changing God's sacred revelatory ordinance. You know what I mean?

Rod Osborne [01:28:37] Amen. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:38] That's why I'll never stop having people tell that story. Until the church somehow accounts for what we all had to go through.

Rod Osborne [01:28:46] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:47] Because it was, I don't know, at best culty and weird and at worst violent and abusive. Right?

Rod Osborne [01:28:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:54] Is that overstating?

Nan Osborne [01:28:55] Well, no, that's not overstating it. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:28:58] It was our first born son, our first child was born 11 months after we were married because they told us birth control was a bad thing, you know, and so we didn't do it.

Nan Osborne [01:29:12] So we talked about it before we were married.

Rod Osborne [01:29:14] We did our best. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:17] Wow.

Rod Osborne [01:29:17] But, you know, we.

Nan Osborne [01:29:19] So we had three kids about as fast as you could have three kids.

Rod Osborne [01:29:22] Yeah. And that was, you know, and nobody ever said, okay, it's. You know, it was. It was bad until it wasn't bad anymore. You know, where was that transition? You know, we really could have used somebody saying, you know, it's okay. You can. It's all up to you. But when we were married, it wasn't up to us. It was a bad thing to practice birth control.

Nan Osborne [01:29:46] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:29:46] So, yeah.

Temple Marriage and Covenant Expectations

Margi Dehlin [01:29:48] So it sounds like you had. You went through the temple with your mission. So you had been through the temple by the time you. Before you were married. Now, had you been to the temple?

Nan Osborne [01:29:59] No.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:00] Okay. So no. How did that go for you?

Nan Osborne [01:30:03] So well. My mom had prepared me extremely well, and I had grown up learning how to iron by ironing her temple clothes. And I thought they were beautiful and so special. And she told me, you know, and my dad's temple clothes, too, so I knew all of that. She told me about some of the stuff that would happen in the temple. She said, you're going to feel like it's strange and not what you're used to, but don't worry about remembering it all, because they'll tell you what you need to know. So there's no need for you to be worried at all about this experience because it's going to be nice and it's.

Nan Osborne [01:30:45] You'll get used to it over time, so don't worry. And that's exactly how I felt. Huh. This is. This is not any. Like anything I've ever done before. She was right. And I didn't think everybody looked weird. I'd seen all the clothes before, and there was Rod to pull me through the veil and take me into the celestial room, and all was well.

John Dehlin [01:31:08] Such different experiences, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:31:09] Absolutely the same.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] The same experience, but different reactions to it.

Nan Osborne [01:31:14] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:31:14] Did you like the chef hat, though? I mean, was that.

Nan Osborne [01:31:17] Well, I can't say I really liked all what the guys were wearing, but it didn't faze me because I was 12 years old, pressing my mom's apron and all the things you had been

Margi Dehlin [01:31:27] kind of prepped, it sounds like. Honestly.

Nan Osborne [01:31:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:30] Okay. What about seeing Gordon jump from WKRP in Cincinnati in the temple ceremony as Peter. Wasn't he Peter?

Margi Dehlin [01:31:37] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:31:37] Yes, he was.

Nan Osborne [01:31:38] Right.

Rod Osborne [01:31:38] That was fun.

Nan Osborne [01:31:39] That was good.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:40] Now, that's not a memory everyone has of the temple.

Nan Osborne [01:31:44] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:45] Shows what I did as a young

Rod Osborne [01:31:46] Kid, really quick memory from the Temple.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] Temple.

Rod Osborne [01:31:48] I was a tax collector. First job out of, out of college in Ogden. In Ogden, I worked for the Utah Tax Commission.

John Dehlin [01:31:56] IRS has a thing there.

Rod Osborne [01:31:57] Yeah. I went to work for Utah Tax Commission, but it was Utah. And one of the people I met, for some reason, I don't think I was collecting taxes from him, but he was there. He came into the office and I recognized him. He was the guy in the, he was Adam in the Temple. The temple film. The very first Adam in the, in the temple film. And I said, I know you. And he said, yeah, you probably do. And do you know what his name was? Adamson. Oh, his last name was Adamson.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:32] Wow.

Rod Osborne [01:32:33] I don't know if that's a coincidence or not, but he was a really nice guy. Anyways, little aside.

John Dehlin [01:32:40] All right. Well, I guess I like to make sure and really solidify kind of what the covenant or commitment was between you marriage wise in terms of what you were agreeing to. In terms of, you know, we. Because, because Nan, when you were talking about your, what you loved about the church, you said it simplified things. And what I think you meant by that is it just, it gave you the plan. I call it getting on the Mormon train. Because you don't have to worry about where you're going or how you're going to get there. You just get on the train and you end up where the train's going.

Nan Osborne [01:33:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:33:15] And that's kind of what Mormonism can offer. A simple pre thought out plan that's going to get you from A to Z without you even have to worry about it.

Nan Osborne [01:33:27] And sadly, that's what I thought it would continue to do. Well, when I say sadly, what I mean is I thought that's all you needed in life was to have faith. If you had faith that Heavenly Father was directing your life, that's all you needed to have a good life.

Nan Osborne [01:33:51] So, you know, my mom didn't prepare me for marriage for, you know, he's going to think one way and you're going to think another. I mean, I was 19 when we got married and, and I had never lived anywhere but Ogden, Utah. And I stayed living at home. Of course, we were only 10 minutes from the college, so I had never lived on my own. So I got married thinking, well, this is the right way to do everything.

Nan Osborne [01:34:19] So of course we're going to do it the right way. And if he, if Rod had a different idea, I'd be like, what do you mean that, you know, we don't wash dishes? That Way or we don't. Whatever it was.

Nan Osborne [01:34:34] And I knew he didn't have a ton of direction at the time we got married. He was finishing up his bachelor's degree. He didn't know what he wanted to do. He didn't have a serious job by then, and I did. And I knew I was going to be a nurse. And then I graduated, and I was a nurse. And so it gave me even more reason to think, well, the way I grew up and the things I learned are the right way. And this is where it gets you. And let me show you the way, dear husband. And that, you know, that only works for a little bit.

Nan Osborne [01:35:11] And then. So, yeah. So it didn't take long for us to start. Or for me, I should say, to start seeing. Wait a minute. I have all the faith in the world, and I'm doing everything. What has heavenly Father God in mind with this? Because this is kind of hard.

Rod Osborne [01:35:34] You mean our marriage?

Nan Osborne [01:35:35] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:37] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:38] I thought everything was great. It sounds like you're kind of saying, too, that you really felt like you had the right way.

Nan Osborne [01:35:44] Oh, yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:46] So I have faith and I have the right way.

Nan Osborne [01:35:50] Yes. So how can I get him to see the right way? That was it more than, oh, we need to sit down and talk about how we view money, for example. And my parents were super careful with money because my dad was sick all the time, and we didn't know if he was going to be able to work or whatever. Where Rod grew up in the military, they didn't have a ton of money, and they handled it differently. So I just thought, here, let me show you how the right way is to do it. Things like that.

John Dehlin [01:36:28] So you're saying marriage was more difficult and maybe not, as always, joyful as you thought it would be.

Nan Osborne [01:36:37] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:36:38] Rod, are you saying you didn't notice you were loving?

Rod Osborne [01:36:41] I was in heaven. It was bliss for me.

John Dehlin [01:36:45] I mean, I guess the.

Rod Osborne [01:36:46] Obviously that means that I was pretty stupid because I didn't realize that she was thinking something else.

John Dehlin [01:36:53] And maybe the patriarchy is suited to the male's happiness more than the woman's.

Rod Osborne [01:36:59] No question about that. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:37:02] And also, I had learned to keep my needs down. And so I didn't see. Say, I really need this from you. I need an occasional validating comment or, you know, I had a baby, this baby. I was barely 20, didn't know what the heck I was doing. And I was like, you know, how about. And I didn't say this, but in my mind, I thought, he thinks I am a Terrible mother. He thinks I don't know what I'm doing. And I didn't know how to say, oh, I need you to be supportive of me. I'm doing the best. Best I can. I didn't know how to say that. So instead, inside, I struggled a lot. Pretty much, you know, within a year or two after our marriage.

Rod Osborne [01:37:59] You build up some resentment when you

Nan Osborne [01:38:01] do that over time.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] Was it anxiety? Was it depression?

Nan Osborne [01:38:05] No.

John Dehlin [01:38:05] Resentment?

Nan Osborne [01:38:06] No.

John Dehlin [01:38:06] Resentment?

Rod Osborne [01:38:07] No.

Nan Osborne [01:38:07] Yeah. And I can't say I was resentful until many years. Many years in, I just felt like, wow, I don't know how to do this marriage thing very well. It's the first thing in my life that having a lot of faith isn't getting me through.

John Dehlin [01:38:25] Margi, is this reminding you of Stephanie Brinkerhoff's interview? A little bit, yeah. Just. Just like women have this wonderful life before, and then they start doing the Mormon mom role with kids really quickly, and the joy doesn't always come like they think it's going to come.

Nan Osborne [01:38:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:45] Especially if they had accomplishments before. And then all of a sudden.

Nan Osborne [01:38:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:38:50] Taken away and the kids start coming really quickly. A lot of Mormon women, as I understand it, experience depression and anxiety or just unfulfillment.

Nan Osborne [01:38:58] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:38:59] And isn't it true, hon, that you didn't say much to me? I mean, you didn't complain?

Nan Osborne [01:39:06] No, I didn't complain. I learned really well that childhood I'm

Rod Osborne [01:39:12] going along thinking, oh, this is great. You know, life is great. You know, everything's wonderful. And,

Nan Osborne [01:39:19] oh, and I never would have said, I'm not happy. That's terrible. I need to learn how to be happy. I just saw it on me, like, I gotta figure this out. And no, it's not his fault that he didn't understand that I was struggling. And I loved being a mom and loved having those kids. It was the marriage that was hard.

Rod Osborne [01:39:44] And I might add to that, her love language is. What do they call it? Affirmation.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:52] Words.

Rod Osborne [01:39:52] Words of affirmation. And

Nan Osborne [01:39:57] we didn't know.

Rod Osborne [01:39:58] I didn't do a very good job at that. I'm sure I didn't. And, you know, we didn't know any of that, but I don't think I was great at that anyway, you know, probably as a young man.

Nan Osborne [01:40:08] You weren't modeled that.

Rod Osborne [01:40:09] No. And she, you know, she probably could have used a lot more of that that I didn't give her. So, yeah, we.

Nan Osborne [01:40:20] We're still on a journey.

Rod Osborne [01:40:21] You know, we were just blind. We went into this blind because any Any worthy man can marry any worthy woman and be blissful. Right?

Margi Dehlin [01:40:29] That's right.

Rod Osborne [01:40:31] I believed that.

Nan Osborne [01:40:32] So did I. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:40:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:35] Wow.

Nan Osborne [01:40:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:35] Powerful. Okay, okay.

Early Marriage, Career, and Raising a Family

Margi Dehlin [01:40:38] So

John Dehlin [01:40:40] you end up having how many kids total?

Nan Osborne [01:40:43] Well, we had three kids, and then I said, okay, I gotta have a break.

John Dehlin [01:40:47] Oh, wow.

Nan Osborne [01:40:48] The third one had a seizure disorder as a baby, which was Sally, and they put her on seizure medicine, which made her super hyperactive. So that just made everything even more difficult. And Rod got an MBA from Utah State while I was having those three kids. And then he got hired by the FBI as an FBI agent. And we moved from Utah to Kansas City when that third child was five weeks old. So we left Utah, the only place I'd ever lived. We left being 10 minutes away from my parents, all of that, and all the Mormon community, and went to Kansas City, and I had this super fussy baby and these two tiny toddlers who were 1 and 3, and a marriage that I was trying to figure out how to do.

John Dehlin [01:41:47] That'd be a big adjustment.

Nan Osborne [01:41:48] That was a big adjustment for me.

John Dehlin [01:41:50] Oh, and you hadn't been on a mission?

Nan Osborne [01:41:52] No, no.

John Dehlin [01:41:54] Yeah. Leaving Utah with young kids.

Nan Osborne [01:41:57] Yeah. Yeah. And we hadn't done much traveling when I was growing up. You know, we probably would have done more if my dad was sick, wasn't sick. So I hadn't ever seen. You know, we'd been to Disneyland once and to Yellowstone most summers, and that was that. So I didn't know. I remember Kansas City had different kind of trees than Utah had and a different kind of climate. And when it rained, it came down so differently than the rain in Utah. And I took my camera out and took pictures. Like, what is happening here?

Margi Dehlin [01:42:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:29] And your whole family, your dad would have still been alive when he moved to Kansas City, and your whole family system would have been built around caring for him.

Nan Osborne [01:42:38] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:42:39] So leaving your dad behind must have been really hard.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:42] Yes.

Nan Osborne [01:42:42] And he was getting worse. He was getting worse. By then, it was getting to where we thought inside ourselves. We were like, okay, he's never going to get all the way better. This is going to be the end of him. And that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [01:43:00] You die while you're away.

Nan Osborne [01:43:01] Yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:04] Sounds like Kansas City might have been kind of hard.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:06] It was.

Nan Osborne [01:43:07] It was.

Rod Osborne [01:43:08] I was at work a lot, too.

Nan Osborne [01:43:10] Yeah. It was his first, you know, time as an FBI agent. He wanted to do his best, and he had one of the biggest cases of his career right from the get go.

John Dehlin [01:43:20] Did you trade at Quantico? I Did in Virginia.

Rod Osborne [01:43:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:23] Is that what it's called?

Rod Osborne [01:43:24] Yeah, Quantico.

John Dehlin [01:43:25] Okay.

Rod Osborne [01:43:25] It's on a Marine base. It's the FBI Academy at Quantico.

John Dehlin [01:43:28] And Hoover would have been gone by.

Rod Osborne [01:43:30] Hoover was gone. Hoover died in 72. And so, yeah, we had a different director. His name was Webster at the time.

John Dehlin [01:43:38] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:39] So was life feeling intense for you, too, in a different way, or were you just kind of loving it? Like, what was your experience in your role right now?

Rod Osborne [01:43:50] You know, I was happy. I was thinking, oh, you know, we got the world by the tail and, you know, I got this job, now I'm an FBI agent. I'm loving this. You know, for me, it was a great career. It was perfect for me.

Rod Osborne [01:44:08] Everybody tell. I've never been diagnosed as add, but my kids and my wife tell me I'm adding. For me, it was a great career because, you know, it wasn't a process. You had a case. You had several cases that you could work. If you got tired of one on your own, you could go do something else. You know, you could choose what you did at work. And for me, that was great.

Rod Osborne [01:44:33] And I was happy. And we were working a lot. FBI agents have a 10 hour workday by design. And so I was, you know, started early and came home, you know, rather late, especially if we had a long commute. So Nan was home pretty much on her own until I got home.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:57] Yeah. So kind of parallel lives, separate, but going on. And it's so interesting because as you were talking Nan about saying that you didn't voice to him in particular, kind of the needs that you or what you were experiencing. It's just hitting me, the disconnect, because you're like, it felt fine to me. And then you're having this other experience is. That's what happens. Like, that's what happens when we don't share and we don't speak our needs is that we're never known.

Nan Osborne [01:45:32] It keeps us. That's exactly what happened.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:33] Invisible, you know. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:45:37] And I. My mom was my role model. I remember telling that ward when I stood up to introduce myself for the first time in that Kansas City ward, I said, hi, I'm Nan Osborne. I'm the daughter of Duane Bryan. And then I went, none of these people know who my dad is. And I had only introduced myself as that from the tiny child. And then I was like, wait. And I went home that day after church thinking, I have to be the reason why people like me. Because before, all I had to do was say I was his daughter. And everybody loved me and thought well of me and knew kind of who I was instantly.

Nan Osborne [01:46:23] Whereas now in Kansas City City, I didn't even hardly know where that was on a map at that age. And I had to be the reason why people wanted to be my friend. And that was a new experience for me and not for Rod. So we had. We had very different experiences like that.

Nan Osborne [01:46:43] Rod's big case gave. He was so excited about that case, and it was really big and on the news and all of that. And he got a lot of props at work, which makes you want to work harder and spend more time there with all the guys who think you're great and getting all the accolades for this big case that he got and then broke off a piece of it to somebody else who got a career making case and somebody else.

Nan Osborne [01:47:12] And that was exciting and fun. And I had three little kids. The littlest one wasn't allowed in the ward co op babysitting thing because she was so hyperactive. And we didn't have money for a babysitter. So, yeah, it was me and the kids. Rod was an amazing father, Such a good father. And the minute he came home, he was all about the kids, 100% with the kids. Like, I don't even know if I ever changed a diaper once he got in the door.

Nan Osborne [01:47:42] So that was super nice. But as this age, looking back on that, I see that once again, I just. It wasn't. He wasn't coming home so much to see me as the kids. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. But of course, I didn't recognize that at the time, and I didn't say anything about that.

John Dehlin [01:48:06] This is the plight.

Rod Osborne [01:48:07] But I loved you with all my heart.

Nan Osborne [01:48:09] I know that. I know that this is the plight

John Dehlin [01:48:13] of many, many, many Mormon women.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:15] Yes. And many, many early Mormon marriages, divorces.

Nan Osborne [01:48:23] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:48:24] And you can. I mean, I can see that. That, you know, women just like Nan, you think, okay, I am supposed to be submissive. I'm supposed to do what he says. His. You know, the decisions are his. And she can tell you this. She thought her role was a peacemaker, 100% always to be that. And, you know, you just keep that in forever. And then finally you say, I can't do this anymore. And the husband is going, like, what? What's wrong? You know, that everything's great. And she's going, it hasn't been great for a long time. I can't do this anymore. Goodbye.

Nan Osborne [01:49:04] Yeah. Yeah. So after three kids, I put a kibosh on having more kids. And after A couple years, Rod said, okay, let's have another one. And I'm like. I said, no, we are done. And then a couple years later, oh, come on. They keep us young. It's so much fun. I don't care if you have to sleep on the couch for the rest of our lives. I'm not having any more kids. And that went on. And then he'd give up for a while, and then he'd ask me. And after 10 years, life wasn't going so perfectly. Our three kids were getting to the age where they could get into some pretty serious mischief. And I felt like I still hadn't figured out the marriage. And I remember praying one day, heavenly Father, I don't know how to do this. I don't know. I have.

John Dehlin [01:50:01] Did you reach a breaking point?

Nan Osborne [01:50:02] Yeah. Well, I just said, I. I need you to take over. And the thought came to me, you should have another baby. And I was like, what in the world? That is the last thing I need. But it was loud and clear.

Nan Osborne [01:50:22] And I went to Rod and said, I think maybe we should have another baby. And he was just. I remember him at the breakfast table, and he was trying not to act super excited. And he said, oh, okay. Well, that's really great. You know, maybe you should go to the doctor and get checked out before we go any farther. And he tried so hard to be calm. And two months later, we were pregnant. So the older kids were 10, 12, and 14 when we had this little guy named Sam. And then two years later, we had a little one named Joe. And the kids by that time were 13, 15, and 17. And those two boys are one of the greatest decisions of our lives, Wouldn't you say, Rod? Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:51:11] Sam was born in Houston, by the way.

Nan Osborne [01:51:14] Yeah. They changed the atmosphere of our home. And instead of me being so worried about what our kids were up to. What our teenagers. Because by then they were teenagers and in high school, and the oldest couple were. Two of them were kind of getting into some mischief. And I was so worried about them and worried about our marriage and all the stuff. And a baby is in the present. It brings you straight back to the here and now. The baby is crying. He needs care. You gotta feed him. You gotta change it up. And all my attention went to him. And then. And suddenly all those things that I was worried about our marriage, worried about the kids, all of that suddenly took a back seat to, this baby needs to get up every two hours, and I need to feed him and take care of him and all that.

Nan Osborne [01:52:06] And then we need to get pregnant again and have another one so that this one isn't an only child. And then I got two tiny ones trying to. And it really did help me because then I was just blissful for a while again with two cute, tiny babies. And our three older kids adored these boys, like, worshiped them. And I want to take them with me to do this, and it's mutual tonight, but can I take Sam with me? Because everybody loves Sam. And the two older teenage boys would say he's a chick magnet. And so they would take this cute 2 year old with them to youth conference that was in our stake center or whatever.

Nan Osborne [01:52:49] And it, it toned down some of the energy that was in our home for having these teenage boys that were, you know, full of wanting to get out and press them, you know, push the envelope and push boundaries and do all these things that made me nervous. Suddenly I would see that happening in her home and I would say, here's hold this baby for a while. I gotta run to the grocery store. And the energy would just come right down. And I feel like that saved me. And we had that for a while.

John Dehlin [01:53:27] So, Margi, I don't know if you're feeling the same thing or thinking the same thing. I am, but that seems so counterintuitive. It's like three kids, way too many. No more kids feeling at the end of your rope. The answer have two more kids.

Nan Osborne [01:53:41] Yeah, right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:42] Did you think the same thing?

Nan Osborne [01:53:43] Counterintuitive?

John Dehlin [01:53:46] The answer to being overwhelmed as a

Rod Osborne [01:53:48] Mormon mom with multiply and replenish the earth?

Nan Osborne [01:53:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:53:53] But that's how it worked for me.

Nan Osborne [01:53:54] I knew everybody thought we were crazy, and it just gave me another reason to have faith and to say, we know what we're doing is right. This is what we're supposed to do. So I pressed forward and we had those two little boys.

Nan Osborne [01:54:13] And our oldest son left on a mission, Our second son left on a mission, and then Rod got assigned to Beijing, China. So just as our third kid, Sally, was getting ready to head off to college, we moved to China. So I went from having all of that commotion for so many years and the boys that were hard and all that, and we moved across the world. We just had two cute little blonde boys who were 6 and 8 when we got there. And my life, we had wanted to go overseas for a long time. And the FBI had sent Rod to school for a couple years to learn Chinese.

Nan Osborne [01:54:55] So we were happy to be in China. I had a full time housekeeper slash nanny, cook, slash laundry person. She did everything, and my life was so good. So, again, I didn't come to a point where I said, I'm at the end of my rope. I'm done. You know, I can't do this thing. Our marriage was still tricky, but now we were in China, and it was an adventure, and I was so happy to be there. And I just had these two cute little boys who would do anything, anything, you know, okay, kids, we're going to go see some more ancient temples today, okay?

Margi Dehlin [01:55:35] And you had support.

Nan Osborne [01:55:37] So much support. Working for the embassy gives you a lot of support as it is. And then China had a huge embassy, so all these Americans working at the Embassy. We had 17 Mormon families just in our little neighborhood who went to our ward, and that's just part of it. And they were all super strong and faithful, and our ward became the center of our lives there, and I had tons of support for that. So Rod, again, worked long hours there and had a lot of responsibility, but I was supported by everybody. And I had these two cute boys who never said, you know, never complained, never said, no, Mom, I don't want to do that. And so life got way easier. And so there I was, keeping everything inside still.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:31] Okay, so it felt a lot easier because a lot of external circumstances and kind of had changed. But actually, on the inside, you're, you know, nothing. It's not that you were doing something different.

Nan Osborne [01:56:45] No.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:45] Okay.

Nan Osborne [01:56:46] No, it was. The external life changed so much in one fell swoop from having teenagers and worrying about, you know, this one's gonna get sent to juvenile hall if he doesn't straighten up, and this one's gonna get kicked out of school if he doesn't straighten up. All those teenager angst that I'd had for years, they're gone. They went on missions. Sally's off at college, and I just had these obedient little kids and all these women who were in the same place. I was overseas, not having any family there. We became each other's family. And, yeah, so the external things changed inside.

Nan Osborne [01:57:28] I berated myself by that point for not being able to figure out other things, you know, like our marriage. I was still like, wow, Nan, you've been married a long time, and you are still not good at this. How long is it going to take you to get good at this? That was tricky.

John Dehlin [01:57:53] You didn't feel happy and fulfilled in the marriage.

Nan Osborne [01:57:56] Well, I don't want you to get me wrong. We had so, so many good times. So many.

John Dehlin [01:58:05] I think it's about expectations.

Nan Osborne [01:58:06] Yeah. I think that's it.

Rod Osborne [01:58:09] I thought everything was great.

Nan Osborne [01:58:10] Yeah. Yeah. Rod grew up in a family where I did.

Rod Osborne [01:58:14] I had no clue that she was going through this.

Nan Osborne [01:58:17] Yeah. And no one in our home growing up, we didn't argue, we didn't get upset, because at all times, my dad's life was looming in the balance. Where Rod grew up in more typical home where if you get mad, you yell at each other, you might even, you know, throw a pan at him. If you got really mad, that would be you or whatever. And so we. I had different expectations than what I was having, than what reality was.

John Dehlin [01:58:48] And when you say your parents never fought in front of you or whatever, like, that's. That's exceptional.

Nan Osborne [01:58:54] Yeah, but I thought it was. I thought it was normal.

John Dehlin [01:58:57] And your dad, like, having a La Z boy chair in every room so he could never not be with your mom.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:03] Like, that's beautiful and, like, unheard of.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:06] And your dad is, like, suffering from this debilitating illness and, like, bolstering all those who come to him so that they. Also not typical.

Nan Osborne [01:59:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:59:18] Yeah. So in many ways, it's a beautiful and a super atypical upbringing that sets you up for expectations in a marriage where Rod's. I'll say fat, denim and happy, like, loosely. And you're just saying, what's wrong with me? And you're internalizing it.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:59:35] It's always you because you can't voice it.

Nan Osborne [01:59:37] And the first time we had a serious argument, we'd been married, you know, maybe just under a year, and I thought for sure we would get divorced because I'd never witnessed an argument like that. I didn't know people did that. Only in a terrible movie that I wouldn't watch anyway, so. Oh, yeah, it was exhortation.

Rod Osborne [02:00:00] You know, it was normal.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:02] Your perception of conflict or, you know, even differentiation or disagreeing was so skewed. So skewed. Yes.

Nan Osborne [02:00:13] Yeah. And having seen my mom and dad be so close and so tight, physically, emotionally, in every way, spiritually, and then for me to just assume that's what everybody did and that that's what I would have. And then to have these times on occasion where I didn't feel that. And I'm probably misrepresenting our marriage.

Rod Osborne [02:00:38] Can we make a couple of things clear? Was I really mean? No.

Nan Osborne [02:00:44] No.

Rod Osborne [02:00:46] Did I hit you? Did I abuse you?

Nan Osborne [02:00:49] Never, ever, ever, never. No, he was. And I am misrepresenting it.

John Dehlin [02:00:56] That's why I zero it in expectations.

Nan Osborne [02:00:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:01:01] Life can be framed by what expectations

Margi Dehlin [02:01:03] we bring 100% and it's sounding like at least some of your pain is actually your relationship with yourself too. Your expectations for how it should feel for you.

Nan Osborne [02:01:16] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:17] As you're kind of. Is that right?

Nan Osborne [02:01:19] Yes. Yes. How I should feel. I needed to keep a perfect house. I needed to keep thin. I needed to do all the things like my mom taught me that were important. I needed to take care of everybody. And if there were kids or husbands that weren't all the way happy, then I needed to fix that. And that was my job. I.

Nan Osborne [02:01:42] Again, I didn't think it out exactly like that in real life, but that's exactly how I felt. And so I just. When there was an issue in anything, I felt like, oh, I'm not doing this right. I gotta figure something else out. And this was before the days of the Internet or anything. One time I went to the library to see if I could find a book that would help me.

Nan Osborne [02:02:08] And I didn't know if I should get a book by Freud or what I should do because I didn't know where to turn. And of course, I never said one single word about any of that to anyone ever.

John Dehlin [02:02:20] And again, part of this is just traditional gender roles within Mormonism, very much where women stay at home, have lots of kids and don't have a career, don't have personal interests, serve your husband, serve your kids. Maybe not a lot of self discovery or activities that are intrinsically uplifting or rewarding on their own, separate from your kids and husband.

Nan Osborne [02:02:49] 100%. Yeah. And you go to church activities like homemaking meeting. It's all about how to cook better food so your husband will like it better, how to keep a better house. Those kinds of things are what we were taught back then at homemaking night. And so it was even more of, you're responsible for making everybody happy. And here's. Let us teach you another way on how to do that. It was not about. Here's how to figure out a difficult challenge in life. You didn't talk about your difficult challenges.

John Dehlin [02:03:24] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:03:25] Yes. That makes all the sense in the world, actually, how you ended up there. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:03:32] Yeah. And please don't think that I'm saying Rod wasn't a good guy. He was very good. I mean, he was the dad for all five of our kids that every kid wanted. And we had all the kids at our house because Rod was there and having fun with them. And in the middle of all their games and capture the flag and all that, he was the guy. We'd have birthday parties for our kids. They didn't want. They didn't need a clown. They didn't need somebody else to come in. Rod made everybody have fun at all the stuff. So, you know, he was a scout leader so many times and. And took our kids with him on scout campouts, and, yeah, he was a fun guy. So, yeah, he's a really great guy.

Margi Dehlin [02:04:14] I think what's. I think what's important to acknowledge, too, is not just the roles and what that does with relationship, you know, within the church, but also that, for the most part, I can't remember a lesson in church. I can't remember, you know, for me, growing up, just my generation, this idea of learning about emotional connection, learning about, you know, what that looks like in relationship, how that works, how vulnerability plays into that, how. And so, you know. Yeah, it's no wonder. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Rod Osborne [02:04:54] Yeah. And you think about. I mean, I never had a priesthood lesson about how to get along with your wife, you know. You know, you just don't. In Sunday school, you just don't talk about those kinds of things.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:07] Yeah, yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:05:08] And I never, you know, we never had any counseling. No, we did later, you know, but. But, yeah, once she cracked, we did foreshadowing.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:21] Yeah, that's how that works, too. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:24] Yeah, yeah. Really quickly. What. What would your kids likely say about their Mormon upbringing? Was your family stereotypical Mormon to the extent that it could be in terms of, like, scripture study, family evening, each of you serving in callings, How Mormon was your children's upbringing?

Building a Devout Mormon Household

Rod Osborne [02:05:46] You talk, Rod, about as Mormon as it can get. Yeah, I remember we started our marriage with family prayer in the morning and family prayer in the evening. We did everything by the book. We studied our scriptures. We had family home evening, our boys, our kids, Sally included. You know, Sally sandwiched in the middle of four boys.

Rod Osborne [02:06:15] It was very orthodox. Nana and I, everywhere we went, we had responsible callings. Didn't take long when we went to a new ward to get a responsible calling. With me, it was almost always with the young men. Eventually, I served in a couple of bishoprics, but over time, but it was almost always with the young men. You know, I was never a ward clerk or anything like that.

Rod Osborne [02:06:44] And, you know, I always took my boys with me. We had a lot of fun, but we expected them to be Mormon kids. You know, we expected them to go to seminary. We expected them to go on missions, which they all did, except for Sally. We were pretty much. I don't know if we were typical. We were very orthodox.

Nan Osborne [02:07:20] Yeah. Our kids tell us now, we didn't realize how strictly we observed the commandments growing up. And now as we're adults and we're meeting other people. Wow. Our home was very strict.

John Dehlin [02:07:36] And for the non Mormons that are watching and listening right now, what were the do's and don'ts in your family home? Just go through the list.

Rod Osborne [02:07:43] You want me to do it?

Nan Osborne [02:07:44] Sure.

Rod Osborne [02:07:47] The do's were. Do everything you're supposed to do as a Mormon. In other words, you pray every morning, you pray every night, not only with the family, but you do your personal prayers, you read your scriptures every day.

Nan Osborne [02:07:59] With the family.

Rod Osborne [02:08:00] With the family. And on your own you keep the commandments. In other words, you don't swear, you don't drink Coke. We were a no Coke family. You don't violate the law of chastity or anything close to it.

John Dehlin [02:08:22] Which means.

Rod Osborne [02:08:23] Which means, you know, if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you keep your hands to yourself. That didn't work for us in every situation.

Nan Osborne [02:08:33] With the kids, you mean?

Rod Osborne [02:08:35] Yeah, with the kids. And, you know, that's typical of all teenagers, including myself. So.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:42] Yeah, attending church.

Rod Osborne [02:08:44] Attending church. Oh, they, you know, three hours every Sunday you go Three hours every Sunday you go to the firesides at night, you know, meetings at night. If we have those special meetings, you go every Wednesday to what we call mutual. And you know, that's not an option. It's a youth group stuff. And if you had extra meetings or activities on the weekend, you always attended those. It wasn't a choice.

John Dehlin [02:09:09] Yeah, stay in trainings and all that.

Nan Osborne [02:09:11] 100%.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] Seminary. Seminary for your kids.

Rod Osborne [02:09:14] Seminary. No question. Always seminary was required.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] Sabbath rules.

Rod Osborne [02:09:23] Yeah, unfortunately, Sabbath rules. I regret that we did that now because.

John Dehlin [02:09:29] But at the time, what was the time?

Rod Osborne [02:09:31] Our kids. Yeah, some of our kids were really good athletes and we prevented them from participating in very important to them, very important contests on Sunday.

John Dehlin [02:09:45] So what did Sundays look like? Just overview.

Rod Osborne [02:09:47] Go ahead.

Nan Osborne [02:09:50] When little Sam was born, every Sunday we would get together. He'd be in the stroller and the rest of us would put on our rollerblades and we would go all through the neighborhood showing off Sam to all our friends because we thought he was the greatest thing that ever happened. And then just exploring and going in the woods and different things.

Nan Osborne [02:10:12] And later on, Sally said those were the best Sundays ever. And we just were together and we did that every Sunday. And one of our other kids said, I hated those Sundays because I wanted to go out and play on my roller hockey team and you wouldn't let me go.

Nan Osborne [02:10:28] We Were really. And the kids didn't put up a ton of fight about, I don't want to do this. So, you know, there was. We didn't see R rated movies. We didn't do anything that even remotely looked like we might be breaking a commandment. The kids all did their very best and that's what we expected.

John Dehlin [02:10:49] Sports on Sunday.

Nan Osborne [02:10:51] No, no, none of that.

John Dehlin [02:10:52] No, I mean watching tv, sports.

Nan Osborne [02:10:54] Oh, I think we had a while in there where we tried to say, no TV on Sunday or only, you know, something a Hallmark movie at night. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:11:01] Okay, I'm gonna confess last. That was one commandment I wasn't going to keep watching. Sports on Sunday. On Sunday. Yeah, I went up and down. But I can't ever say that I just completely didn't do that. Sports was just so important to me, and I was just drawn to the super bowl or the college, you know, whatever college games were on. That was hard for me to stay away from.

John Dehlin [02:11:33] Okay, that's all right.

Nan Osborne [02:11:34] But from the time our kids were little, they were putting pennies from every dollar they earned in a mission bank. And we talked about the mission all the time. And then when I would fix dinner and it would be food they didn't want to eat, I would tell them, someday you're going to be a missionary and you're going to have to eat food that you've never heard of. Maybe if you go someplace far away, it'll be crazy.

Nan Osborne [02:11:55] You need to learn to like this different food and eat it anyway and be nice. And there was talk about missions. You know, like we've said here, I was the one home with the kids most of, you know, more of the time than Rod was. And I had a really good relationship with each one of the kids where they would come home from school and sit at the kitchen counter and we would talk for half an hour while I fed them cookies or whatever. And we. We were close and I knew what was going on in their lives.

Nan Osborne [02:12:23] And I shared my faith with them every day at nighttime when they would go to bed, I would go to each kid and sit on the side of their bed and say, how are you doing? And no matter what their issue was, if they have faith, that's what you need to get through this problem. So I really used every tactic with love in my heart to teach those kids the right way to go and what was expected out of them by heavenly Father. And I taught them, you've been given more than most kids on this planet will ever be given. And here's how you show your gratitude by keeping the commandments and doing what you're asked to do. And this is the way. So this is the way.

Rod Osborne [02:13:11] Yes, is the way.

Nan Osborne [02:13:12] Yes. Yes, very much.

John Dehlin [02:13:13] Why are you nodding? Why are you nodding, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [02:13:16] No. It's so familiar. It's so familiar. And in order to just keep up with that, what you're describing, it's no wonder, Nan, that you're having a difficult time. Number one, like, feeling. Doing the work of kind of feeling what your needs are, naming your needs and connecting as a couple and trying to figure out kind of how to. Yeah. To connect and build. Because that is so effortful. It is so effortful. It's just five humans and you're doing this all the time. And there's always something to do. There's always some place to be. There's always. So I'm just feeling for you.

Nan Osborne [02:14:01] Yeah. I gave a lesson in a young women's class once, and it was about something about being a good wife. And I told all the girls flat out, your job as the wife is to be the peacemaker in the home.

Nan Osborne [02:14:16] So whatever that takes in your home, if you have kids, make sure they've done everything that dad asked him to do before he comes home from work. And as the mom, you need to make sure everything is nice and comfortable for when dad comes home from work. And I taught this whole lesson, and when I came out and all the girls went home, the other young women's leader looked at me and said, what was that?

Nan Osborne [02:14:44] And I said, well, don't you feel that way? You know, we're responsible. That's our responsibility. Oh, man. She didn't even have the words to tell me how wrong I was. And so I went on thinking that was the right way.

Rod Osborne [02:15:01] Yeah, you need to make a correction. I said, some of my kids were good athletes. They were all good. And I want to make that correction. We prevented them, all of them, each one of them. I can remember now from playing on Sunday. Our older boys were roller hockey players and they were very good at it. And they made the all star teams when we were in Houston, and we wouldn't let them play on those all star teams because they played on Sunday. And then Sally, of course, was a basketball player and a very good athlete. We wouldn't let her play on Sunday. And then our two younger boys were soccer players, both of them very good, and we wouldn't let them play on Sunday. So, yeah, it was.

Nan Osborne [02:15:47] They didn't ask to play on Sunday

Rod Osborne [02:15:49] ever, once they knew that we wouldn't yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:15:52] It's kind of part of your family culture at that point.

Raising Children With High Church Expectations

John Dehlin [02:15:55] And then if you had to describe what your kids took away from their upbringing, of what their life needed to be like, the milestones that they were going to have to hit, how would you summarize the milestones that your kids left home with?

Nan Osborne [02:16:12] Go ahead and tell them that. What we expected. Well, okay. All the four boys were Eagle Scouts and they didn't love scouting, but they knew that was not an option. They all four went on missions, did a great job. Four out of the five are currently married. They were all married in the temple. Those are the milestones. They all graduated seminary. They all married someone who was worthy to go to the temple with them, who also wanted a Mormon lifestyle going forward. All of anything you can think of that the church said this would be a good idea, then that's what we expected out of them.

John Dehlin [02:16:54] So they would stay faithful Mormons just like you were, and they would raise their kids to follow the same pattern very much. And then their kids would raise their kids and the chain would continue unbroken.

Rod Osborne [02:17:08] We never thought it would be anything different.

John Dehlin [02:17:10] Right.

Nan Osborne [02:17:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:12] That's important foundation to lay for what happens next.

Nan Osborne [02:17:15] Yeah, yeah. And we didn't. In my mind there was no other option. This was the path of happiness.

Rod Osborne [02:17:24] There is no other way.

Nan Osborne [02:17:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:27] Really quickly, because we interviewed Lena. Sal. Because we interviewed Sal in our interview with Sal and Lena. I'll just throw this in there. Did you ever have any idea prior to her leaving, graduating, moving on that she might not be. I can say it vaguely, not like all other kids or I could say may have been lesbian. Like.

Nan Osborne [02:17:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:51] Would you have had any inclination about that?

Margi Dehlin [02:17:53] Go ahead.

Rod Osborne [02:17:55] No. Zero. None. None whatsoever. We were just so naive, so distanced from that world because we didn't have to deal with it. And we were. I used to tell people, even you know, I mean, as when our kids were teenagers, that the hardest thing to do as a Mormon parent would be to raise a gay child. To know that your child was gay and still raise that kid in the church. I remember saying that many times and our kids heard that and our kids heard that. But I was ignorant to what non heterosexuality was about, plain and simple. And I didn't even think about it.

Nan Osborne [02:18:51] We, during the pandemic we gave all of our home videos to our tech savvy son and he put them all on YouTube for us. So we have 231 videos on YouTube now that the whole family can watch wherever they are. And when we Go back and watch those and we see Sally. We should have had an inkling she was wearing, you know, her basketball shorts everywhere. She had her baseball hat on backwards. She didn't like being on the girls softball team because they only care about having matching ribbons in our hair. They don't even care about winning. Mom, isn't there any way I can play on the boys team? And so I'd find a way for her to go play on the boys team where they cared about winning.

Rod Osborne [02:19:41] And she did. And she was good.

Nan Osborne [02:19:43] Yeah, she's a really good athlete.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:45] And so her gender expression was kind of more non binary or more.

Nan Osborne [02:19:50] Yes, very much. But. But you know, and as a little girl, she would cut her hair because she wanted it short. So then people started thinking she was a boy when she was 3. And so I went and got her ears pierced and then in the night she would take them out so I didn't notice. And then I had to go get them pierced three times in a row. And then I gave up things like that a lot. But I just thought, I mean, this is her dad, you know, Mr. Athlete, Mr. FBI. And then she's got two brothers that she thinks are cool, that are older and doing all the sports.

Nan Osborne [02:20:21] Of course she's going to be a tomboy. She doesn't have any other option. You know, I signed her up for ballet classes when she was little and she said, okay, I'll go. And I bought her the cute little tutu and I took her off to class. And then when I'd pick her up, she had on her baseball uniform because she had it in her backpack from earlier that day. And she changed. So even when she was tiny, you know, I would make her an Easter dress with all the ruffles and I'd be sew and get her all dressed for Easter Sunday church. And then we're sitting there, she was probably four that year, and we're passing the sacrament and I pass it to Sally and she's got a cute Easter dress on and her soccer cleats instead of the pink patent leather shoes I bought for.

Nan Osborne [02:21:05] So from a very young age all the way up through high school, if she. If I was a young parent now and 20 years old and having this child because of what I know now and what's out in the world, we would have been clued in for sure. But Sally was. Sally didn't have an inkling and we didn't have anything.

John Dehlin [02:21:26] So.

Rod Osborne [02:21:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a choice.

Nan Osborne [02:21:29] No.

Rod Osborne [02:21:29] You know, I'm sure she Told. Yeah, she did tell you, but there. There. There was no, you know, any thought of that was just not an option. You know, her being gay was not an option.

Nan Osborne [02:21:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:21:43] Did. Did you ever get a sense that any of your kids, particularly the ones that maybe started having doubts or problems first? Did they give you any. Did. Did you ever, thinking back, have any indication that some of your kids may not be fully on the plan or that the gospel may not be working for them like it might have been for others? Without needing to name names or give any specifics, like, aside from sexuality, did any of you feel like it wasn't working for some of your kids growing up?

Margi Dehlin [02:22:16] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:22:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:18] Or you can name names, whatever.

Rod Osborne [02:22:19] Yeah, yeah. Alex, our number. Our number two boy, you know, all of them did what they were supposed to do. You know, they all went on missions. They all got married in the temple. So we all know the result. Right. But Alex was always a kind of a questioner, curious kind of kid. And I felt that as a dad and one who also taught him as a leader during his teenage years, you know, and I would teach classes to him and his friends who were in. Excuse me, whatever quorum he was in. He was. He was. He's. He was always a little bit cynical. And the first time he went through the temple, when it was time to go on his mission, he was blown away. And he said, I don't think I can do this mission thing after having been through the temple.

John Dehlin [02:23:24] Would that have been before they changed? Before 90 or after? After, after, after.

Rod Osborne [02:23:29] It was. This was. He graduated in 2002. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, they. They didn't have those symbols, but the temple, again, was still weird. It was still weird. And he said, hey, I don't. This stuff is too funky.

Rod Osborne [02:23:50] And, you know, we talked him into, say, look, give it a chance. He says, okay, because, I mean, he grew up in our house, right? Not going on a mission was not an option. And so he got to the mtc. Luckily for him, he got into a group where one of the guys was kind of an intellectual guy, and he had studied masonry and the Mormons, at least the fair Mormon view of masonry and Mormons. And so this kid explained things to him, and he felt a little better, and he went on his mission. And he was a great missionary. You know, I mean, he.

Rod Osborne [02:24:31] Because he was a very capable kid. He was a very personable kid, and he was a great missionary. He was an assistant to the president. He was. Was really good. And he came home. But when he came home, he was Still. Still.

John Dehlin [02:24:50] Alex, you know that statement you just made. Not going on a mission was not an option. Not an option. You think about the sacrifice a Mormon missionary makes two years of their life. The indoctrination, the sacrifice, the risks, the health risks, the psychological risks. Risks. It's a massive commitment that you would think like. Like military service. You would never say you. You will serve in. In the military. You would want a kid to, like, choose that, right?

Nan Osborne [02:25:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:22] But in Mormonism, for. For many Mormon families, there's. There's no choice.

Nan Osborne [02:25:26] There wasn't a choice. There was no choice.

John Dehlin [02:25:28] I mean, we kind of gloss over that even sometimes if we're not in the church anymore. That's kind of a big deal.

Rod Osborne [02:25:35] Yeah, it's a huge deal.

Nan Osborne [02:25:37] Go ahead.

Rod Osborne [02:25:38] I mean, you know, for me as a convert, that was a huge burden on my shoulders. I knew that I could not not go on a mission. I had to go on a mission.

Nan Osborne [02:25:50] For yourself, though?

Rod Osborne [02:25:51] For me, because I, you know, I had everything I knew. And in 1974, President Kimball said, you know, every worthy young man should serve a mission. And, you know, that was a year after I was baptized and not even a year. And I had no choice because I really was 100% dedicated and in. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:15] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:26:15] And our kids experienced all the things you just talked about, John, of all the difficulties of a mission, some serious health problems on the mission. All different things.

John Dehlin [02:26:29] Sometimes missions can be abusive.

Nan Osborne [02:26:31] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:26:31] Oh, yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:26:32] Yeah. And the expectation of the mission president, some of them more than others, had, you know, such high expectations of themselves because of their mission president saying, this is what you need to do, that they just struggled the whole time, okay, I gotta be perfect if I want to baptize anybody. And if I. If I'm not. If I don't baptize anybody, that means I'm not perfect enough. What else can I find in my life to be more exactly perfect and come up with all these rules for themselves to try and be more perfect so they could baptize more people. And they did not express all of that to us while they were on their missions.

Rod Osborne [02:27:17] They're not supposed to.

Nan Osborne [02:27:18] You're not supposed to tell your parents all that. So it wasn't until after they were home and sometimes even years later that they told us some of their experiences and how difficult that was.

John Dehlin [02:27:31] Mormon missionaries are told, if you've got something negative going on, don't write home about it.

Nan Osborne [02:27:36] Right.

John Dehlin [02:27:37] Don't tell your family. Right.

Nan Osborne [02:27:38] Yep. Because you don't want to worry your mom, because by the time she gets your letter, that problem will be solved anyway.

Rod Osborne [02:27:45] No, we were specifically told that. I mean, we had specific instructions for writing letters when I was on my mission. You write home every week, you don't say anything negative, and you include one spiritual experience from your mission. And I did that every single week?

Nan Osborne [02:28:01] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:28:02] Yeah.

First Cracks in Faith and Family

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1762

John Dehlin [00:00:01] So I guess now is the point in your story where we start to talk about some of the breaks or some of the cracks emerging. And I don't know if that starts with kind of your awakening, Nan, that you alluded to previously, but where do the cracks start emerging? What are the main factors?

Nan Osborne [00:00:23] Well, once Sally was married, she came to visit us one time and she said to me something about, mom, you need to get better at talking about how you feel with dad and with everybody. And we had some pretty serious conversations, and she kind of woke me up a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] And that's what she was worried about, why she felt that way?

Nan Osborne [00:00:51] Yeah, she felt like no matter what, I kept quiet about it and that I didn't express. You know, if Rod was upset about something, then I tried to fix what he was upset about instead of saying, that's your issue, babe. You. You figure out how you're going to get happy about this instead of me feeling like it was my job to change me to make him happy all the time. And Sally said, I'm going to hold you to this kind of. And she just kind of woke me up on that trip. And I started.

Nan Osborne [00:01:42] I was at a place where I was realizing that I needed to make some changes now. My two youngest boys were now teenagers, and I was back to feeling like, okay, who am I? I don't have to be a full time mom.

Nan Osborne [00:02:02] Rod's got his great career going still, and I needed to figure out how to be happier. And so when she talked to me pretty seriously about it then, it helped me to kind of wake up a little. And I quietly found a therapist and went to, of course, an LDS therapist a few times on my own without saying anything to Rod, which was super scary. And then I told him and then invited him to come, and he was so shocked and surprised that I would think we needed to talk to somebody about our marriage.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] And this is how many years into your marriage?

Nan Osborne [00:02:47] So many.

Rod Osborne [00:02:48] It was probably 2012 about then.

Nan Osborne [00:02:50] Yeah. So that's 30 years.

Rod Osborne [00:02:52] We'd been to China, we'd been to Guam, and I had already retired. I had retired from the FBI by then and was working as a contractor for the Department of Energy at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] So 30 years into your marriage, you were stuffing feeling bad about yourself, not feeling happy, not feeling fulfilled, and not telling anyone, and it was 30 years in.

Nan Osborne [00:03:17] Yeah, my sister tried to talk to me about that a few years before, and I brushed it off. And, And. But Sally just really, Sally and I were best, best friends. And so she knows me and knows Rod and loves her dad and wanted us both to be happier. And so she just said to me, you got to, you got to figure this out now. And I'm going to be calling you all the time asking you, did you do this? Did you do this? Did you?

John Dehlin [00:03:45] She was worried about you.

Nan Osborne [00:03:46] Yeah, she was. She was.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] That's a. Kind of a big deal when an adult child is worried about their parents.

Rod Osborne [00:03:51] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:03:53] She had been married a few years by then, and she recognized that marriage could be easy, which is a thing she didn't know before.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] Could be.

Nan Osborne [00:04:04] Uh huh. Because she and Shane were just having the time of their lives. They waited seven years to have a baby. They were taking surfing trips to Costa Rica and wherever else, and they were loving life and marriage was good and, and all of that. And there was.

Nan Osborne [00:04:25] She wasn't stuffing things down. And so she said to me, I've seen enough of marriage to know now that it doesn't have to be the way you. You don't have to feel like you do, mom, you need to start speaking up. And so I did. And it was rough on Rod at first, but then he. He got the hang of it and it took us a while to work through some stuff and to figure out for me to get able to share my feelings and for him to recognize that I needed things that I hadn't expressed before. And so now he needed to give those to me.

Nan Osborne [00:05:04] And for him to figure that out took a little while, but we did. And it's an ongoing thing. Ongoing forever. But now that I'm awake and now that I'm especially most recently that I'm aware of my value and how I am worth everything just. Just for being me, not for if my house is perfect or if I'm perfect or if my marriage is perfect or your kids or my kids are perfect, then I still have worth. It's helped me to, you know, see things differently and be able to respond differently when there's situations that aren't easy. Yeah. So things are good. Things are always getting better.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] And this has to be a very common need or reckoning for Mormon women.

Nan Osborne [00:06:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:03] Margi's nodding 100%.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:05] 100%, I think. And the way you described it, I think is so beautiful. And it's like an on. It's like just what you said where it's a whole process, isn't it? And almost like we talk about sometimes, like not deconditioning, but like getting outside our conditioning with regard to faith transition. I think it's true. Oftentimes in marriage, because that whole decade, like decades long that you've built, you know, relating to each other, how you've related to yourself, that takes a lot of time, you know, and it can feel like you're working against gravity, like the. The way it falls or what you're used to or the patterns. And you. So you almost. I mean, John and I always talk about it a little bit, like you have to burn an old version of your marriage down.

Nan Osborne [00:06:59] That is good advice, really good advice. And I wish I had known that in the beginning because it started out with me saying, well, if we just do this little thing and if we just do this. But as it's gone on and on, we've recognized that we do have to not only put it behind us, but then don't talk about it either, because you do it, you get into a dance. And we did our dance for so long that now that we're doing a different dance now, once in a while, we just naturally fall back into the old dance and we've got to say, get back.

Nan Osborne [00:07:35] This new dance is better, and this is what we both want. So, you know, again, I have to learn how to speak up and say, oh, wait, we're falling back. No, we got to go back to this new dance. So it's going to be a lifetime, forever thing, which is what marriage is supposed to be. Any relationship where you're going to pick one person to be with forever, especially if you think you're going to be with them for all eternity. It should be an ongoing journey where you're always learning and always figuring things out and getting better, which is also a thing I didn't know.

Nan Osborne [00:08:09] I just thought everybody was madly in love with each other and wanted to be together all the time, like my mom and dad. So. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] Okay.

Nan Osborne [00:08:18] I'm happy that Sally was willing to help me see that and then help hold me accountable to sticking with it until I could be strong enough on my own to figure out what I needed to do.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] Way to take care of your mom, Sally.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:33] And I love that, too, because in. What's inherent in that is that you had to save yourself. You had to go back to yourself and get to know yourself a little bit. Yes. So it's not just your marriage, it's your relationship with yourself, too. Yes.

Nan Osborne [00:08:51] Yes. So in 2018, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I was lucky that I did not have to have chemotherapy, but I did have seven surgeries, and it was three years of pretty much full time being a Patient.

Nan Osborne [00:09:11] And one of the surgeries was extremely extensive, 13 hours long, and I did not recover well. And for the following year, I was miserable. So that was another big step in me learning to express my needs and saying, for the first time in my life, I don't need to go to church if I'm not up to it, because I probably could have gone and could have got my dress wrapped around all my bandages and gone, which is what I had done up until then. But I started to say, you know, by then, I had kind of learned to speak up a little bit and to think about myself instead of putting myself at the back.

Nan Osborne [00:09:59] And I said, I'm not gonna go, or I can't do this calling right now. And I had never done that before. I would have seen that as a lack of faith, like, God will heal you from this breast cancer if you just keep going strong and keep doing everything. But instead, I acknowledged that I needed to be responsible for myself and not leave it on God to just make me happy and make everything great. And so, in the end, it turned out to be a huge blessing for me because I did learn a lot through that, and I'm happy for that.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] Love it.

Nan Osborne [00:10:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:42] Okay. So that was the one big shift. Was Nan claiming her worth and value and voice?

Nan Osborne [00:10:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] That sounds dangerous to an orthodox Mormon faith.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:55] Yes.

Nan Osborne [00:10:56] It took tons of counseling, tons of therapy, lots of time. Introspection. I've got journals as high with writing all my feelings and all of that, but, yeah, it was a good thing.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] So what was the next domino or the next.

Nan Osborne [00:11:12] You want to talk about when Alex

John Dehlin [00:11:14] called us or the mission thing?

Nan Osborne [00:11:17] Oh, yeah, the mission thing.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] Yeah, the next.

Rod Osborne [00:11:20] Well, do we want to talk about the faith transition, or do you want to talk about my health?

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Chronological.

Rod Osborne [00:11:26] Okay, Chronological, Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We were in Albuquerque, and, you know, our older three were married, and they were, you know, having kids, and they were doing their own thing, and we had two teenage boys at home, and Alex, our number two son, had been married several years and had a couple of kids. And you're going to tell him about Sam leaving?

Nan Osborne [00:11:55] That's what you're going to tell him? Oh.

Rod Osborne [00:11:57] Oh, Sam had left.

Nan Osborne [00:11:58] No, this is. You're going to talk about when Sam left on his mission to you.

Rod Osborne [00:12:03] Oh, you want me to take care of that first? Okay, got it. Okay. In 2015. All right. Alex was still married.

Nan Osborne [00:12:12] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:12:15] Yeah. Our son Sam got called to Cambodia. And, you know, I had been dealing with, you know, Nan's awakening, and, you know, I was stressed about that. I guess. And Sam was called to go to Cambodia. And this was, you know, I was at work. I was, you know, working regularly. But when it came time for him to leave on us, it was. He was going to leave on a Monday, I think, and on a Saturday before he left, I got really, really anxious, and I had never been in this position before, and I.

Nan Osborne [00:13:15] You had never had a feeling of anxiety before?

Rod Osborne [00:13:18] Oh, no, I never felt that before. But when Sam gotten ready, all of the bad feelings I ever had on my mission came rushing back to me. Oh, and everything bad on a mission. And I just could not bear the thought of him having to go through that. And I remember being with him, and I was talking to him, I said, sam, you don't have to do this. You don't have to go. And he's going like, dad, I want to go. You know, it's time for me to go. I'm going to go. And I actually tried to talk him out of it, you know, of how weird is that with me, you know, being as faithful and demanding, you know, as a Mormon to him his whole life now, trying to talk him out of a mission.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] You had raised him to want to go.

Rod Osborne [00:14:18] Oh, I raised him to want to go.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] You raised him that there wasn't a choice.

Rod Osborne [00:14:21] There was no choice, you know, And I didn't experience this with my first two boys.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:26] Yeah, it's interesting.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] But with him, was it your fears about Cambodia?

Rod Osborne [00:14:31] You know, I couldn't explain it. And so I went to church the next day on a Sunday before he was going to leave, and it was a bad day.

Nan Osborne [00:14:47] Can I. Is it okay if I step in? So for a couple of weeks before Sam was leaving, you were telling me you thought missions should only be one year and that you were gonna write a letter to the prophet and tell him, I think these kids should only go out for one year and that it should start now, and that you were only gonna let your son go out for one year. And you'd been saying things like that for a couple of weeks. So then when it got time, closer and closer, your level of discomfort with him leaving got more and more. And I was like, babe, what's going on here?

Nan Osborne [00:15:24] This is what we've wanted him to do forever. But you got more and more. And then Sunday morning when we walk woke up, you made us French toast before school, and you burned one of the pieces of French toast, and you put your head on the kitchen counter and started to cry and cry and cry. I burned the French toast.

Rod Osborne [00:15:45] And that Was not right.

Nan Osborne [00:15:46] I just said, what. What is happening to you? And I was so, so worried.

John Dehlin [00:15:52] I could probably cry over that.

Rod Osborne [00:15:55] Was not.

Nan Osborne [00:15:57] Yeah. And so we took him to church like a little. Like a wounded animal we had to care for. And we took him to church and I took him into the Stake Presidency. Is that what we did?

Rod Osborne [00:16:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. We went to see the Stake President because he happened to be there.

Nan Osborne [00:16:14] Yeah. Keep going.

Rod Osborne [00:16:15] Yeah. And he gave me a blessing, I think. And one of my missionary companions from my mission lived in Albuquerque, and he was a great guy. Chad guy.

Nan Osborne [00:16:25] So I called him and said, help me with Rod.

Rod Osborne [00:16:28] And so he brought. I don't know how he had these, but he brought his mission scrapbooks. His mission scrapbook. And a lot of it had to do with me. We were companions, and all that did was make me worse.

Nan Osborne [00:16:43] He thought he would remind Rod of all the good.

Rod Osborne [00:16:45] All the good. He wanted to remind me all the good. But when he brought that over, it just sent me deeper.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] And, Nan, from your perspective at the time as an observer, what did you see happening with Rod? How would you have described it?

Nan Osborne [00:17:03] As a nurse? He was having a mental breakdown. In the olden days, we would have called it a nervous breakdown, but he was. He was mentally cracking right before my eyes. And the kids didn't know what to do. Sam and Joe were the ones home. They didn't know what to do with it. And Sam would say to me, dad's not serious about me not going. Right? And I'm like, no, go, go. He'll be fine. We'll work it out. And, yeah, I saw him falling apart, which. He's always been a tough, strong, I can handle anything guy. And then suddenly he's crying over French toast and about the fact that his son is doing what we always wanted him to do, go on a mission. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] And the truth is, people die on missions. I've had people close to me die on their missions. They get illnesses or injuries that last a lifetime. And then. Not to mention the abuse and psychological distress and abuse that can happen. Missions can be horrific experiences, but missionaries are taught never to talk about that. And to the public, it just seems like they're these happy, jolly young men with white shirts and ties. So, I mean, there's something to. Am I. And I was telling you guys this at the break. My dad, when I got called to Guatemala, had a. He didn't have a breakdown, but. But he had a similar reaction in the sense that he's like, why do you need to go on A mission, dude, you raised me this way.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] And he's just like, what if you just went stateside? Like, you know, and I don't know if it was the foreign thing or if he was worried about Guatemala per se, but it turned out prescient because I did have serious.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] I experience significant psychological abuse on my mission that Mormon stories probably would have never happened if I hadn't have had the mission that I had. And so all I'm saying is there's history and data that would support a parent being worried. Now, that doesn't mean that had anything to do with your breakdown, but there's, there's credible support for being worried.

Rod Osborne [00:19:11] I was, I was worried. I was really worried. And I couldn't generate any positive thought about him going on a mission. And I remember, I think he left on a Tuesday. It was a Monday that I went to work. I had to go to work.

Nan Osborne [00:19:27] And I didn't think he. I said, you can't drive. The Sunday before, when he had fallen apart about French toast and was crying all day, he never stopped crying. And when we went to church, he wouldn't let go of my hand. So he came in Relief society with me and held my hand on the back row because he said, I need your hand all day long. And so then Monday morning when he said, I'm going to go to work, I'm like, you're not safe to drive.

Rod Osborne [00:19:54] That was. Those thoughts are just, just awful.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] And we didn't talk about your FBI career, but I mean, it's not like you did lightweight things.

Rod Osborne [00:20:04] No.

John Dehlin [00:20:05] As an FBI agent. Right.

Rod Osborne [00:20:07] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:20:07] You could do 10 hours on his FBI career.

Rod Osborne [00:20:10] Because I'll do that so good.

John Dehlin [00:20:11] But I mean, you dealt with sometimes just give us a sense for the type of crimes you dealt with as an FBI.

Rod Osborne [00:20:17] Organized crime, you know, Italian mafia, organized crime. I did that for the first six years of my career. And then I did a lot of white collar crime after that fraud. And then I did Chinese stuff. I went to language school, learned Mandarin and so I did a lot of Chinese related investigations.

John Dehlin [00:20:49] Spy stuff, but not lightweight.

Nan Osborne [00:20:52] He was on the SWAT team for almost 10 years. He was the battery ram guy at the front for a while, busting down houses for drug busts. He was the sniper on the SWAT team and so he went to sniper school frequently and then was in a lot of, you know, manhunts looking for actual guys who've killed policemen and a bunch of other people. And now Rod and his team have to go find him in the woods, in the dark. And just he is the best campfire story guy there is because he has so many good stories.

John Dehlin [00:21:25] Mar's like, we totally get it because we've seen the Wire.

Nan Osborne [00:21:28] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:29] I was just making eyes at him.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] Yeah, we're on, like season four of the Wire.

Rod Osborne [00:21:35] I have a couple.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] We totally get it.

Nan Osborne [00:21:37] It's just totally get it. Oh, he's got great. The kids are always bugging him to write a book because he has so has lived all the things you see on tv. Maybe they didn't all happen in one hour like they do on tv, but

John Dehlin [00:21:51] throughout his career, I would bring you back for Mormon stories if you're able to talk about that stuff.

Rod Osborne [00:21:55] Oh, yeah, I can talk about a lot of it.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] All right. So, Margi, you were going to ask,

Margi Dehlin [00:22:00] so I just wanted to ask you, like, can you remember what it felt like, like what you were feeling and did it feel like you were just kind of hit unaware all of a sudden? Like, what did it feel like for you to be in this space for that long?

Rod Osborne [00:22:17] It was, you mean in that depressive state? Anxiety state?

Margi Dehlin [00:22:22] Yeah. And like crying and feeling just.

Rod Osborne [00:22:25] I, I, it hurts to even think about it. Yeah. I'd never felt that before. And I just could not generate a positive thought. I was in. Everything was gloom, everything I thought. I just wanted to cry all day, all the time because I didn't see anything joyous about life, nothing.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Could it have been PTSD from all the stuff you'd seen before or not?

Rod Osborne [00:23:03] I don't know. I think, I don't know what it was. You know, I broke down at work

Nan Osborne [00:23:09] when he went that next day and let him drive to work.

Rod Osborne [00:23:12] I broke down at work within five

Nan Osborne [00:23:14] minutes of being at the office.

Rod Osborne [00:23:15] And I just, I took myself into. They had a psychologist on staff there. I just went in there. Well, I went to the doctor and I was just crying. And so she said, okay, this guy's, we can't do anything. So she called a psychologist in. And then they called Nan in and they just said, hey, this guy. We got to medicate this guy. And so they gave me some medication and I took the meds. And, you know, they made me feel better at the time, not better, but so that I could at least get up and walk. And then Sam was leaving the next day, and that was one of the hardest days of my life, even with the medication. But I had to take time off from work. And we went to Sal's house, actually, in California, and I was there for two weeks.

Nan Osborne [00:24:23] So he, he didn't just feel like crying every day. He cried all day, every day.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Was he pretty stoic prior to all this?

Nan Osborne [00:24:32] Very decades.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] Three decades of stoicism, yes.

Nan Osborne [00:24:36] And tough FBI, you know, oh, that's broken here, I'll fix it for you. Kind of, you know, just always taking charge and being able to do it and suddenly he's crying. I was taking Spanish classes at the community college and I said, I'm not gonna leave you alone. And he said, as long as you hold my hand, I'll come with you. So he came to Spanish class at night and sat there in the background holding my hand for weeks. So he took off more than a month of work before he could even go to the office. It was a very big break.

John Dehlin [00:25:11] Thanks for being vulnerable about this.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:13] Yeah, we so appreciate it.

Rod Osborne [00:25:15] Yeah. But, you know, I got to, you know, with medication and some with counseling and medication and, you know, I'm still taking medication because since then I've always. I had to take it if you have to take it for. If you have two episodes of that of, you know, like I had. And I had another episode when Joe left. My other. He left two years later and so I crashed again.

Nan Osborne [00:25:45] Same thing, really.

Rod Osborne [00:25:46] And so they say once you do that, you need to take it for the rest of your life. At least my daughter doctor said that. So I'm, so I'm, you know, I'm still taking the medication, but. But I got to a point where I could function and went to work and, you know, stayed in touch with Sam on his mission and, you know, wrote letters and back and forth. I was still. It was still hard for me to.

Rod Osborne [00:26:13] To imagine him there and the difficulty that he was going through because it just continued to bring back to me the difficult feelings I had when I was on a mission. It didn't bring back any joyful times. And there were joyful times on my mission. There were times where I had fun and times where I enjoyed it, but I could not generate any positive thought about a mission.

Rod Osborne [00:26:44] And then, you know, I got somewhat better from that. And then it came time for Joe to go and I thought I was going to be okay, but when he got his call, the day he got his call,

Margi Dehlin [00:27:00] I

Rod Osborne [00:27:02] just. And I was taking medication. It just sent me crashing again. And luckily I didn't go as deep because I was on medication and they gave me some more medication and we

Nan Osborne [00:27:16] knew what to do.

Rod Osborne [00:27:17] And we knew what to do. However, there was a good three week period where I was severely depressed when he left. Yeah. And so I'm still dealing with that now, trying to make it so that I don't ever go back there again.

Nan Osborne [00:27:40] And when you went in to talk to somebody and ask them what to do about it, tell them what they told you to do.

Rod Osborne [00:27:48] All right.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] Remind church leaders.

Nan Osborne [00:27:49] Yeah. You went in to talk to a church leader.

Rod Osborne [00:27:53] Oh, on that Sunday.

Nan Osborne [00:27:55] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:27:56] Yeah. When we went in to see the Stake President. And I was. I was just awful. And it was, you know, I was not good. And he said, you know, Rod, happiness is a choice. And I wanted to just leave at that moment. That is not what I wanted to hear. And, you know, that was just so. He was just so uninformed, let's put it that way. There was nothing I could do. I was trying to feel better. It's not like I wanted to feel bad, you know, and I wanted to choose to be this way. I could not feel any other way. It was not possible for me to feel any other way. I could not generate a thought that was positive. It was all negative and gloom. And no matter what I did, no matter what anybody said to me, and it was terrible. And, you know, when the Stake President

Nan Osborne [00:29:12] said that to him, I thought

Margi Dehlin [00:29:16] it

Nan Osborne [00:29:16] was another step in my waking up to see having faith doesn't fix everything. And that for the Stake President to tell him that he wasn't being seen, he was just the church leader, just. That's all he knew to do, was to just tell him, you know, it's a choice. You can choose to be happy. And I remember feeling like all my life, you just need to have faith and it'll eventually get better, but this is a new kind of problem that I've never faced before, and that is not going to work. And there needs to be more than just faith and a blessing and prayers. And that was a little tiny thing in my heart that said, huh? Because I. I always thought that's all you needed.

John Dehlin [00:30:15] You know what never Mormons won't fully understand is when a bishop or a stake President, When a Mormon bishop or stake president gives you counsel, it's not like, oh, okay, he's just being silly. I'm going to ignore that. We're conditioned since infancy to believe that they're speaking for God. And that's why it's not just a matter of, like, dismissing it. It's like, God, why are you telling me, through the stake President to just be happy? I don't want to play it.

Rod Osborne [00:30:46] No, that's. That's. Yes, that's totally right.

John Dehlin [00:30:49] It compounds the severity of the.

Rod Osborne [00:30:51] Yeah, yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:30:52] I mean, when he fell apart at home over French toast, I said, we need to go see the stake president

John Dehlin [00:30:58] because he'll have the answer.

Nan Osborne [00:31:00] He'll know what to do, talks to God. I can trust him, that he'll give him the right kind of blessing and his faith with mine will do this thing right.

John Dehlin [00:31:09] You know, it's kind of magical thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adult Children Stepping Away From the Church

Rod Osborne [00:31:15] And why don't you go from there to tell them about Alex? Which wasn't very, very long after that,

Nan Osborne [00:31:22] while Sam was on his mission, that our son, that Rod first had issues with going, our second son, Alex, called us, and we knew he'd been having. He had read Rough Stone Rolling a while back, and it brought up a lot of questions with him for him about the church. And so he.

John Dehlin [00:31:45] No, wait, was it. Was he already on a mission? He. Not gone yet. I'm a little bit.

Nan Osborne [00:31:48] Okay. So Sam, he was. Our.

John Dehlin [00:31:51] Sam was on.

Nan Osborne [00:31:52] Yeah, he's one of the two younger boys. The three oldest are married. They've got kids, they've got careers.

John Dehlin [00:31:57] So Alex had come back from his mission.

Rod Osborne [00:32:00] Alex was married with children, right?

John Dehlin [00:32:01] Yeah, he was married with children. While Sam's on his mission, he's reading roughs and rolling.

Nan Osborne [00:32:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] Post mission. Post marriage. Okay, thank you.

Nan Osborne [00:32:10] Had a great Mormon marriage with a couple little boys. All is going down the straight and narrow path. And he called and said, I want to talk to both of you. And we both got on the phone and he said he had a spiel that he had practiced and we could tell. And he said, you know, I had a great childhood and you guys were awesome parents. And he told us all those good things. And he said, I recently read this book, and then. Which led me to this one, which led me to this. And then I've been reading about this and listening to this podcast, and he said, I don't believe the church is true anymore, and I'm not going to attend. I'm going to step away. And we were both speechless.

John Dehlin [00:32:58] This is 15, 2015.

Rod Osborne [00:33:00] 2015.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:00] Okay.

Nan Osborne [00:33:02] And we were like, what do you mean you're not going to go anymore? What do you mean you think the church isn't true? Oh, Alex, we can explain everything. Just tell us what you've read and we'll explain. So the phone call was really upsetting. And I knew his wife well, and she didn't feel that way. She was not on board with this. And. And we were just.

Nan Osborne [00:33:26] I felt like all of my mothering just got flushed down the drain. Everything I'd ever taught him was all based on this is the path that you need to take to be happy. And he was willfully choosing to step off of it.

Nan Osborne [00:33:45] And it was. I mean, I cried for weeks. And I dreamed up every terrible thing that was going to happen to him and his family because of this. And we had already planned a visit to go visit them. They were living in Mexico for his job. And so we went down there to visit him. And it had only been a few weeks since he told us.

Nan Osborne [00:34:15] And he wanted to talk about it, but the only talk we could do was to tell him, oh, Alex, if you'll just hold still, we'll explain to you why you've been so misled. You know, what about this scripture? What about that experience you had? What about your mission?

Nan Osborne [00:34:32] And I told him face to face, you've just flushed. 20 years of my efforts trying to be the best mother and teaching you everything. I taught you everything you needed to know to live your life on the covenant path. And I said, you know, your. How you expect to raise kids without even the church. It's hard enough to do it with the gospel. Doing it without it, you're. You're never going to have success. Your marriage is going to fall apart, your kids are going to be on drugs.

Nan Osborne [00:35:05] You're making the biggest mistake of your life, and you're just not seeing it clearly. You. You're like a preschooler compared to God. God knows everything. He's got a plan. You just need to remember that you're only in preschool. And if you just wait and learn little by little after this life, you'll see that God has a plan. And I told him all of that, which, of course, was everything you should not tell a kid. And I'm really thankful that the cameras weren't rolling then because it was, you know, inappropriate and unhealthy in every way for me to say all that to him. But it was.

Rod Osborne [00:35:46] It's what you really believed, though.

Nan Osborne [00:35:47] It was what I believed. And talk about expectations versus traditional response

John Dehlin [00:35:54] for orthodox believing Mormons. And even after I lost my faith, my brain told me all those things about my own children. And that's why Margi and I stayed in the church for another 13 years after we stopped believing. Wow. At least for me, because my brain told me the exact same things you told your son. Does that make sense?

Rod Osborne [00:36:16] You can't raise a kid outside the church.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] No. You can't raise a healthy, moral, happy kid outside of the church. There's no way.

Nan Osborne [00:36:22] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [00:36:26] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:36:27] And this was all happening when I was, you Know, still not great.

Nan Osborne [00:36:31] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:36:32] And what for Nan? What did.

Nan Osborne [00:36:35] And then another month went by, and Sally called, and. And our son Alex was best friends with Sally's husband at the time. And apparently, we didn't know this, but for the last couple years, they had been talking to each other, reading the same books, all the things. And Sally's husband had been mentally out. And after causing some rocky spots in their marriage, they went to a counselor. And the counselor basically said, sal, you got to at least read some of this stuff before you can just argue that he shouldn't be reading it. And so she read the CES letter and some other things, and she called and told us the same things.

Nan Osborne [00:37:19] My childhood was really good. You guys were great parents. Thank you for raising me the way you did, but. And then she just cried and cried. I'm so sorry, but I don't believe. I'm so sorry. And the conversation didn't last very long. And then we went.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] You, meaning you didn't want to keep talking.

Nan Osborne [00:37:40] She was just crying, saying how sorry she was, and she knows what a disappointment she is to me and all of that. And then we went. We already had plans to see her for Christmas, so this was just Thanksgiving and then Christmas. So we went to her house on Christmas, and in my heart, I was hoping that it would go okay. And so I brought my Nativity props that I always bring that we do on Christmas Day, and I brought, you know, my Christmas storybooks about the Nativity to read to Sally's kids. And then we got there, and it was very apparent that that's not what they wanted.

Nan Osborne [00:38:17] So we didn't read Luke Chapter two, and we didn't act out the Nativity for the first time in our family history. And I went to bed on Christmas Eve and cried all night because, oh, my gosh. And I talked to Sally about it and. And try, you know. And I didn't want to respond the same way I did to Alex, but I still believed all that 100%. And so I talked to her, and I said, if you're going to stay living here in California, you know, their friends are going to get baptized. What are you going to do then? Well, you know, we're going to still be friends with all our same Mormon friends.

Nan Osborne [00:38:54] Anyway, it was another rough visit, and it took me quite a while, and Rod, too, before we could think about them and not be really, really worried.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] How about disappointed?

Nan Osborne [00:39:12] Oh, so disappointed. I had already stitched CTR in green letters on a white bath towel for our oldest granddaughter to get baptized in our. In our other kids. And I had, you know. Yeah. Just like I raised my kids with inserting the gospel in every way that I could. I did that with my grandkids as well. So I was constantly reading them, faith promoting stories and telling them stories of my pioneers. And all of that. And all of that came to an abrupt halt. And then it wasn't, I don't know, a few months, maybe a year later when our oldest son called and said the same thing. So.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] So that's three out of five within about a year. Within a year.

Nan Osborne [00:39:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:57] With. And I'm sure you're not the only grandparents, parents that had this happen.

Nan Osborne [00:40:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:02] Because 2015 is when things start really getting serious for people leaving Mormonism. I mean, the. The exclusion policy. There were several excommunications that happened in 2014. 15. The Gospel Topics essays come out in 2014. The CBS letter comes out shortly thereafter. And with the exclusion policy and ordained women happened.

Nan Osborne [00:40:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:24] Like by 2015, 2016 is when the church starts seeing this massive decline. And that's when it hit you guys for sure.

Nan Osborne [00:40:32] And what we did was double down. And, you know, Sally has taught me that when you rock the boat, the other people in the boat hold on tighter to the boat because they don't want it to rock anymore. And they just get a tighter grip and a tighter grip, and, boy, we did that. You want to talk about how we tried to talk to them?

Rod Osborne [00:40:56] Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:59] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:40:59] And doubling down. I mean, 2015 is when I discovered Bill Real. I started listening to his podcast. He was still faithful at the time, and I started listening to him because I wanted to get information that I could use to help get my kids back.

Rod Osborne [00:41:15] Then I started reading. I started reading material. Of course, that was BYU scholarship. I still, at that time, there's no way I would ever read anything that wasn't approved by the church to read or anything that I thought was not favorable to the church because that's what I'd been trained to do. Right. And that's what faithful people do.

Rod Osborne [00:41:43] They don't read that stuff. So I, you know, I was really familiar with the fair Mormon arguments, and I did a few emails to the kids where I. I said, okay, this is why the church is right. And I would give them arguments. And to their credit, they were very kind. They didn't send anything nasty back to me.

Rod Osborne [00:42:14] They just let it go and mostly didn't respond. But it was a difficult time for both of us when Nan and I would drive down to California and, you know, we would talk about these things. She would cry halfway down and, you know, cry out to visit the kids. To visit the kids, because the kids, you know, we had two families of kids that were still. That were in California. It was about a six hour drive to go to LA from Livermore, where we lived. And she would cry halfway down and then cry halfway back up.

Nan Osborne [00:42:49] You know, after we left Sally, that first time at Christmas, and we had had several talks, Sally said to me, mom, what if you. I. She said, what if I always believed in Santa Claus because you taught me to believe in Santa Claus? And then one night on Christmas Eve, I saw that it was dad that came in and left all the presents. And I knew for sure that there wasn't Santa Claus. How am I supposed to believe in Santa Claus again? And she. I said, that's silly. That's not the same. And she said, well, if I came to you and told you that, what would you tell me to do? And I said, I would have your vision checked because you probably didn't see dad come in and leave those presents. You probably just imagined that. So I would go get a vision test.

Rod Osborne [00:43:46] That's the first time, when I think about that now.

Nan Osborne [00:43:48] What's that, really?

Rod Osborne [00:43:49] That's the first time I've heard that.

Nan Osborne [00:43:50] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [00:43:51] What did she say?

Nan Osborne [00:43:52] She just shook her head. And, you know, I knew she was like, oh, give up. But that is how I felt.

Rod Osborne [00:44:00] Wow.

Nan Osborne [00:44:01] And, yeah. So then we got back in the car and drove six hours back home. And I cried all the way. And I said, sally thinks this isn't going to change our relationship. How is that even possible? What are we going to talk about now? The weather? Is that all I can talk about now for the rest of my life with my daughter, My one and only daughter? You know, I can't say, oh, this is what I taught in relief study today. And she's not going to call. And what do you think I should teach my daughter about this thing or that or. I said, we talk about the church all the time.

Nan Osborne [00:44:31] She was the gospel doctrine teacher at the time. Sally was. And she was really good. And she would call me every week. Do you have a story about this I could use? And we just bonded over every church thing. And I just thought, okay, that's all down the drain. All of it.

Rod Osborne [00:44:49] She was despondent.

Nan Osborne [00:44:51] Yes, I was.

Rod Osborne [00:44:53] It was very hard.

Nan Osborne [00:44:54] I talked to a dear friend that we'd had, that we'd been friends for 20 years, and she had kids the same age, and she had a couple of hers leave around the same time. And I heard about that, so I called her, and the two of us talked on the phone and just lamented. And she said it was the single hardest thing of her whole life.

John Dehlin [00:45:10] And you had cancer and seven surgeries.

Nan Osborne [00:45:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] And, Rod, you had a mental breakdown. It's not like you had an easy life necessarily, Right?

Nan Osborne [00:45:20] No, it was just. I have to say that I wasn't worried about their eternal salvation a ton. And I think that's because I knew them so well. They were such good people, and they were. They were doing such good things with their lives. Both of them were very generous with their time and their means for other people who needed help. And I just knew all those things about them. So I. In my heart, I didn't think, oh, I'm not going to ever see them after this life. But I was very worried about this life and what would happen to them. Yeah, I just thought the world had come to an end. I stayed in my bathrobe for weeks and didn't go to church. And some friends came over after church one week, like, how come you're not showing up? And I just started crying. Our kids left the church. Yeah, it was really hard.

Rod Osborne [00:46:20] But, yeah, I doubled down on my study. And for us, it was difficult that they were gone and they had a brother on a mission. And so it was hard for me in that I knew they weren't supporting him on his mission like they would have done had they still been faithful Mormons. And they could have made him feel a lot better about being out there. You know, he didn't. He didn't get that.

Rod Osborne [00:46:50] They were wise enough to know that, you know, hey, we're not going to. We're not going to bother Sam while he's out there because it would just make things really hard for him. They were. They were kind to their brother in that way, but it was. It was a difficult couple of years.

Rod Osborne [00:47:11] And then it was time again. Now, once he came back two years later, for Joe, our youngest, to go. And Joe went to Australia, you know, and spoke Vietnamese. And again, that's when I had another breakdown. And then it was when Joe was on his mission that Sally came out, and that was as what, as gay. And that. That. That created a whole new level of concern for us.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] So can I ask one quick clarifying question? So one of the. You know, I had Stephen Colt, world cult expert Stephen Hassan here.

Rod Osborne [00:48:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] Just a couple weeks ago, and I don't think he understands a lot about cults. I think there's A lot about Mormonism that he doesn't quite understand, partly because most Mormons don't join as adults, having had an entire life before we're raised, since babies. And one of the things that I think a lot of outsiders won't understand is if you've raised as parents. So you're 30 years into your marriage by this point, you've raised five.

Rod Osborne [00:48:37] 35 years.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] 35 years, yeah. You've raised really smart, kind, loving kids. What might seem logical to an outsider is, oh, you're adult children. Learn a bunch of stuff, read books, have life experiences. They're like close friends that you trust. They come to you and say, hey, mom and dad, we've got some new knowledge. We've learned some things about the church. We've realized that we love you and we care about you. But like this thing that you raised us with, it's not what we thought we want to share with you. Like, in a rational mathematical world, a parent would go, oh, I trust and love you. You're smart.

John Dehlin [00:49:22] You wouldn't be doing this unless you had good reasons. Teach me everything that you know. And so we can, you know, but that's. That's not what happens. Right. So can you explain to our Never Mormons or to orthodox members who are inclined to react as you did as a way to validate why. Why wasn't that your reaction? Tell me more.

Nan Osborne [00:49:46] Well, that would have been my reaction if my kid said, I want to start wearing, you know, a different kind of clothes every day, or, I think we're going to start eating only food from India. Then I could say that and say, tell me all about it. I trust you that you think this is a good idea. You know, let's hear about it. But this was not just anything. This was their.

Nan Osborne [00:50:10] Their eternal salvation. This was. It was the. It's in their DNA. It's in my DNA from all my pioneer ancestors, and now it's in theirs. And I taught it them with everything I had in my power to teach them what would bring them happiness and what was the right way. I mean, it wasn't some little thing. Oh, we've found this new information. We're going to do this to a person who's never been Mormon. I'm sure there's really no way they can get it, but to me, it was 100% of everything. It would have been much easier to hear one of them got divorced or one of them, you know, had this big problem or disease or whatever.

Nan Osborne [00:50:57] It would have been easier for me to accept far and away easier than this. This was the end of the world as I knew it.

John Dehlin [00:51:07] It's a totalistic lifestyle theology, doctrine, lifestyle. It's totalistic.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:13] But I was curious.

Nan Osborne [00:51:15] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:16] I'm curious if part of the way you experienced it, too, is because of the responsibility that's placed on the mother in particular. So it's literally like you're a failure. You have failed at the one job that you were given. Is that part of why?

Nan Osborne [00:51:36] Yes. Yes. Yes. I was taught being a mother is the measure of my creation. It is the purpose of my life on earth to bring children into this world, to teach them the straight and narrow way and to help keep them on that as they grow up until they die, so that we can all be in heaven together. And there will be no empty chairs in my family circle in heaven. That was my responsibility. And Rod did everything he could while he was home, but I was there with those kids far, far more, and I.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] He reflects more on you than on him.

Nan Osborne [00:52:15] Yes. Yes. And just. I had spent so many hours. I mean, I can remember thinking about all laying in bed at night and going from being sad to being angry to being hurt and all the things. And I thought all those family home evening lessons that I worked so hard on are all in vain.

John Dehlin [00:52:34] All.

Nan Osborne [00:52:35] We never missed family prayer ever. We hardly ever missed family scripture study. Even when the teenagers would come home from a date and they'd be so tired or from work, and we'd be like, we'll only read a few verses, but we're not going to miss, you know, what the promise is from the prophet. So we would read the scriptures. I used to lay there and think, all of that was for nothing. What.

Nan Osborne [00:52:59] What didn't I do? What more could I have done? I tried. I gave it my all. I wasn't a mom who said, oh, I'm too tired to read scriptures with you kids tonight. No way. I was in it. And to think that they were willfully just choosing to step away from that.

Nan Osborne [00:53:19] As a matter of fact, I asked Sally just recently. I said, if we came to you kids when you were, you know, 10 or 12 or 14 or 16 and said, we don't believe anymore and we think you kids should quit going to church. I said, how would you have felt?

Nan Osborne [00:53:39] She said, oh, I'd have been so upset. I'd have been mad at you guys. I would think, who have you been listening to? Mom and dad? You can't do that. And I believe all of my kids would have said that they weren't the kind of kids who would just say, oh, cool, now I don't have to go to church anymore or early morning seminary. No way. I had been successful at putting it in them, and I knew that. And now they were choosing to let go.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] And it was not only an attack on the church, it was an attack on your success as a Mormon mom.

Rod Osborne [00:54:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] After spending 30. Yeah, 35 years. Doing only that.

Nan Osborne [00:54:23] Doing only that. Yeah. It was really hard. Yeah. And I. I spent a very long time being distraught about that.

Rod Osborne [00:54:37] Yes.

Nan Osborne [00:54:38] I think I cried more than you because of that.

Rod Osborne [00:54:43] It's not the same for a dad. I was upset, and I was determined to study and find out everything I could to try to argue in favor of the church in a way that they would understand and come back. I did that. I did that until Sally came out as gay.

A Child Comes Out and the Family Responds

John Dehlin [00:55:05] So let's talk about that. How? I mean, Mormons are taught that being, you know, the sexual sin. And I'm just saying the Mormon words that sex outside marriage or homosexual sex is next to murder, in evil, or in wickedness. And we're one of the most outspoken and public and strongest anti LGBTQ powers and forces in the United States. And that's saying something. So what was your reaction as faithful orthodox believing Mormon parents to Sal coming out?

Nan Osborne [00:55:44] So I had had enough time to see how poorly I responded when they left the church, and I'd had enough time to sit with that and recognize that I was wrong and that I should have responded in the way you just described John. Like, oh, tell me more about that. I respect you and your choices. I would like to know more about that. And I had begun to apologize to the kids about my reaction and say, I wish I could have a do over because I would do it so much differently. And I told him that so many times. When Sally called, she texted me and said, mom, I need to speak with you. She'd been out of the church for two years. I need to speak with you about something pretty big. Let me know when you have a chunk of time, not just five minutes.

John Dehlin [00:56:50] And y' all were best friends, right?

Nan Osborne [00:56:52] Yes. And I just was like, oh, my gosh, what's this gonna be? And what I didn't know, are they getting a divorce? Is she really sick? Is one of the kids got something wrong with them? And I had a couple of hours before it was time for us to have a phone call. And so right before the time to have the phone call, she texted me again and she said, I would like to do the talking. Please don't ask Me. Any questions?

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Whoa.

Nan Osborne [00:57:24] Then I even more didn't know. So she called me, hey, mom, this is really hard. And then she started to cry, and she probably cried for five minutes, and then she just said, I'm gay. And I knew in a heartbeat. I knew the minute she started to cry that it was my chance for a do over.

Nan Osborne [00:57:56] I had prayed so hard that my kids would forgive me for the poor way that I acted when they left the church. And I knew that this was a way I could show them that I wasn't the same person.

Nan Osborne [00:58:08] And I knew it was my chance. And I'm really grateful that Sally gave me. You know, she front loaded me with those two texts so that I was prepared. And I sat there on the phone in my car in the parking lot, and she told me she was gay. She said our conversation didn't last a long time and I didn't ask any questions. And I told her I loved her

Margi Dehlin [00:58:38] and

Nan Osborne [00:58:40] I will always love her and I'll love her no matter what. Which now I've learned that's not an appropriate response either. But at the time, because it's like,

John Dehlin [00:58:48] I love you in spite of this awful thing.

Nan Osborne [00:58:50] Exactly. She later told me, she said, if I had just won the lottery, would you say, oh, I'll love you no matter what, even if you win the lottery? No, she said, you only say that if it's something bad. But I said every. You know, the few things I could think of to say. Nice. And then she just said, please don't call me. I'll be the one to call you back when I'm ready to talk more. And I said, okay. And then I hung up. And then I started to cry. And then I called Rod and said, come home from work. I gotta talk to you. And he came home from work and I told him and he was like, this can't be. I'll let you talk now.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] Yeah. What was your response, Rod?

Rod Osborne [00:59:33] Yeah, that was a hard day. Yeah, Nan. I was at work and Nan called, said, rod, you need to come home right now. And I said, what is it? She says, I'll tell you when you get home. So I was scared. I thought, oh, crap, what's going on here? So I dropped what I was doing and I came home. It was only, like, I was only 10 minutes away.

John Dehlin [00:59:53] So

Rod Osborne [00:59:55] I got there and she was on the couch and she was crying and I said, what is it?

Nan Osborne [01:00:01] And

Rod Osborne [01:00:04] she said, sally is gay.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:09] And.

Rod Osborne [01:00:14] Of all the things I thought it might be, it wasn't that. And I did not know what to think other than. The first thought that came to my mind was that she can't be thinking she's going to divorce Shane because they

John Dehlin [01:00:35] seem to have had a very good friendship.

Rod Osborne [01:00:37] They were good friends.

Nan Osborne [01:00:38] We love Shane so much.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] So much.

Rod Osborne [01:00:41] You know, I don't know how good a marriage they had, but they were good friends. You know, they did a lot of stuff together, in our view.

Nan Osborne [01:00:47] We thought their marriage was good.

Rod Osborne [01:00:48] Yeah, well, we didn't know. We didn't know all the differences, difficulties that come with, you know, mixed orientation marriage. But I needed. First of all, I thought I needed an Ativan. I don't know if I took one or not, because it was very upsetting. And I just. I remember, okay, I got to get out of here.

Nan Osborne [01:01:14] We talked for a while.

Rod Osborne [01:01:15] Yeah, we talked for a little while. And then I needed to get out because I needed to be by myself and. And think about this. So I remember driving. I drove back in the hills in the Bay Area, and I parked and just. I think I cried for a while. And I was there for about 40 minutes, and then I came back home and I talked to Nan. Okay, what are we going to do? And I was skeptical because we had no clue. I mean, there was never any thought that she might be gay. And so what I did, like a dummy was say, okay, does she really know about this? I don't believe her. I don't think she's gay. She needs to go see a counselor. She needs to go, and she needs to make sure that she's right here. Because, I mean, look at all you're gonna lose if you say you're gay.

Nan Osborne [01:02:30] And she grew up with brothers, and just because she's an athlete doesn't mean she's gay. And, you know, and I said, wait a minute.

Rod Osborne [01:02:37] You know, she had boyfriends in high school. She had a crush on Justin Bieber.

Nan Osborne [01:02:42] Timberlake.

Rod Osborne [01:02:43] Justin Timberlake. Come on. You know, she's never had a relationship with a girl.

Nan Osborne [01:02:47] She's dedicated.

John Dehlin [01:02:49] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:02:49] She's never done anything like that. Come on. She's got to be wrong. I mean, she needs to go get that fixed.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:58] Which actually, this. I have to say, this does make sense with a combination of kind of church. Right. Conditioning. But also culturally, how we've been talking about it, you know, until just recently, I feel like there we. I don't know, cultural discourse has been very much like, you can tell there's a tell. Which we now know that is not true any more than, you know. And I think sometimes we still get Gender mixed up with.

Rod Osborne [01:03:31] With sexuality.

Nan Osborne [01:03:32] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:33] And so it's confusing. So sorry. Just wanted to jump in and say, hey. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:03:39] Yes. I was totally ignorant. You know, I tell a story of deep regret of a friend of Sally's that we knew was in my quorum where I was a teacher of priests, which are, you know, 16 to 18 year old boys. And. But I knew that this kid was gay. I mean, I just, you know, it was pretty obvious and we talked about it and I remember giving a lesson to him saying that we all have our challenges in life. Some people, you know, have a problem with lying, Some people are dishonest, some people are alcoholics, some people are gay. It's just something that you have to overcome in this life.

Rod Osborne [01:04:32] I gave that lesson knowing that he is there listening to me. One of the. That is a giant regret in my life. But that's how uninformed I was. So unfortunately I expressed those sentiments to her husband, to Shane. I said, let's make sure that she really knows what she's talking about. Let's get her to a counselor.

Rod Osborne [01:05:00] And then it didn't take very long for him to come back to me and say, I don't want to talk to you anymore. I don't want you to be. I don't want you to say anything to Sally. I don't want you to say anything to me. You are off limits to us. And they shot me out. They shut me out.

Nan Osborne [01:05:14] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:15] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:05:15] Which was wise, in my opinion. Yeah. For them.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:19] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:05:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:19] Because at the time that probably didn't feel very safe.

Rod Osborne [01:05:22] No, it didn't. So they shut me out and I didn't have much of a choice to say anything or not.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] And you were just reacting as you were taught.

Rod Osborne [01:05:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:31] And believed.

Rod Osborne [01:05:32] Yeah, I did.

Nan Osborne [01:05:34] But luckily.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:36] And it can still do harm, of course. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:05:38] Oh, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:39] Those boundaries are so needed sometimes. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:05:42] Yeah. Not a great response from dad. Initially.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:46] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [01:05:46] Initially. Only initially I was able to because I'd had two years of thinking and learning and regretting my reaction when they left the church and then observing their very happy, well adjusted lives outside of the church, which I didn't think was possible.

Nan Osborne [01:06:11] I don't know why I didn't think that was possible. It's not like I'd been hiding under a rock my whole life, but I didn't think that was possible. And I remember watching General Conference one time not long before Sally came out and one of the speakers said, you cannot be happy without the church. There's just no way if you leave the church for you to be happy. And I remember thinking, I have.

Nan Osborne [01:06:41] At that time, I had three kids who were out of the church, had been out for at least two years, and were very happy and living very good lives and being equally as kind to the world and as generous with their means and their talents as they ever were when they were in. And I remember watching, I think they

Rod Osborne [01:07:01] were happier when they were out than they were in.

Nan Osborne [01:07:04] And I said to myself, you are wrong. I have living proof that you are wrong in what you're saying. And then later that day, I thought, if he is 100% right, wrong on that, maybe I don't have to live by every word that comes out of his mouth. And I thought I did.

Nan Osborne [01:07:25] And I was the kind who took tons of notes during general conference, and then we'd have family home, evening lessons based on what the talks were and all that. And I sat there in that conference and thought, I'm not going to write all this down.

Nan Osborne [01:07:38] My kids are doing just fine. They're all really happy and life is good and we do have things to talk about, and the world didn't come to an end. So therefore, because of that experience, because I'd had two years, I was able to respond to Sally coming out, at least when I was with her, in the way you just described.

Nan Osborne [01:08:06] Tell me more. What can I do to help? What do you need from us? We love you. This doesn't change anything. And then, of course, when I wasn't with her or on the phone with her, then I would hang up and express my concerns to Rod. But it wasn't an end of the world thing for me, like when they left the church, because a little bit of me thought, they've already thrown away the towel. They've already thrown in the towel. They've already stepped off the straight and narrow. What's one more thing off? This is just another part of their off the path lives.

Nan Osborne [01:08:46] It didn't seem to me it was gonna make a big difference as far as eternity because they were already out. So I, you know, I had lots of concerns and all of that, but it wasn't. I didn't cry myself to sleep at night for weeks on end.

Rod Osborne [01:09:08] It's just kind of the opposite with me, you know, when they left the church, she was totally devastated. I was unhappy, but I wasn't despondent like she was. When Sally came out as gay, she handled it better. And I thought, oh, crap, this is the end of the world. So we kind of had opposite responses.

Nan Osborne [01:09:30] Yeah, I think part of it did you think there was still a chance we were going to get him back to the church?

Rod Osborne [01:09:39] Yeah, yeah. You know, we, there was a long time left in there. You know, they can learn. You know, there's always a chance. But when you're gay, you're not, you're not undoing the gay.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:52] So.

Nan Osborne [01:09:53] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:09:54] Yep. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was just ignorant.

Nan Osborne [01:09:58] And from that it's been a, it's been a steep learning curve ever since then.

Rod and Nan Begin Questioning Their Faith

John Dehlin [01:10:05] Okay. Yeah. And before we jump into that, I just wanted to make one observation and we've kind of covered this, but I just want to really drive it home. And I think about this because I have two sisters, one who's passed away, but who, who passed away after pretty much all her children either came out as gay or left the church.

Rod Osborne [01:10:26] Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:10:27] And so she died faithful, feeling like she was a disappointment and her kids were a disappointment. So she didn't get the awakening part. Yeah, she just got the. I gave my life to the church, I raised my kids in the church, and now all three of my kids have left the church. I'm a failure. And then she died, you know, and then my second sister, who's still alive, we're on good terms, but let's just say many of her children are no longer faithful. And they were again, flawless Mormon parents in many ways. No one's flawless, but.

Rod Osborne [01:11:00] Right.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] And then even, you know, my brother's in a mixed faith marriage and, and I'm thinking now of my sister in law who's still super orthodox and believing. Or your mom or Margi's mom. You know, six kids, maybe one still in the church out of six. Like there's, there's, there's such a beauty and a simplicity to the train to the way, the way to, to, to the totalistic Mormon plan for parents and children. It seems so beautiful, so simplistic, so lovely.

Nan Osborne [01:11:37] Why would anyone not want that?

John Dehlin [01:11:40] Yeah, but it, but it's. It be it. This dream becomes a nightmare because inevitably it's all about eternal families. Like you said, it's all about no empty chairs. It's all about everybody making it back. And that's the whole proposition. But everybody's got to make it back. Or what we thought was happy, wonderful heaven becomes sad, tragic heaven because some are all don't come back. And so I'm just thinking how this Mormon train way, dream, promise, just for, for almost everyone inevitably becomes a nightmare because especially in 2023, half or more of your children will leave the church and, or come out as gay or lesbian or LGBTQ in some way. Yeah, Half or more.

Rod Osborne [01:12:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:34] And this is people who are raised in Utah. This is families that were, you know, Stake Presidents and Relief Society presidents and families of general authorities. You're all toast. Your plans, your dreams are all toast because half or more of your kids are going to leave. And what I'm really trying to say is how that sets up the parents for major disappointment in their golden years, in their midlife and in their golden years, as everything they work for for decades completely unravels and falls apart.

Nan Osborne [01:13:12] Thank you for stating all of that. That validates my feelings at the time and. And how. How big it was to me. There was nothing bigger, and it was really big.

John Dehlin [01:13:27] Yeah, it's a setup. It's not intentionally a setup, but the way it plays out in people's lives is it's a setup for feeling like a failure and your life was a failure.

Rod Osborne [01:13:41] And how many. How many can actually. You know, how many parents actually get through life without an empty chair, without dying, thinking there is going to be an empty chair? Not very many.

Nan Osborne [01:13:54] My youngest son said to me not long ago that the doctrine of eternal families does more damage to families than it ever has done good. And I was, you know, a believing member when he said this to me. And I said, joel, what are you talking about? You know, that's not true at all. And he said, mom, I think he was talking about one of his older brothers. And he said from the time they made their first decision, that wasn't

Rod Osborne [01:14:29] what

Nan Osborne [01:14:30] you wanted or wasn't something the church would have said was okay. They knew from that time on, they had messed up the family plan and that they knew, oh, there's a chance I might be that empty chair in heaven. And they knew it.

John Dehlin [01:14:49] Or that we're the ones screwing it up for our parents or our whole family.

Nan Osborne [01:14:53] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:14:54] We're the ones that are gonna break.

Nan Osborne [01:14:56] Right? And. And I said to Joe, joe, you were only two years old when your brother left on his mission. You don't know that's how he felt. You weren't even in the same home with him only for a couple of years. And he said, it was in the air that I breathed. And that just broke my heart to think that he knew from a young age that that's how his brother felt, that I was disappointed that his brother lived with that all his life. You know, we prayed for his brother to choose the right. Every prayer. From the time he was little, from the time Joe was little. And he said, you didn't have to say that to me, mom, but I knew it just from being in our family. Wow. That was another light bulb moment for me to have to recognize the truth of that. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:15:58] Yeah. And that was the catalyst for me.

Nan Osborne [01:16:04] What was? Sally.

Rod Osborne [01:16:05] Sally's coming out was the catalyst for me to look behind the curtain to say, BYU scholarship hasn't given me the answers, so I need to find out what's going on here, because I'm not going to be happy if she's not with me. Later on, I had a Temple recommend interview really closely after Sally came out. And I remember talking with counselor in the Stake Presidency, a guy that I truly admire and who's an awesome person even to this day, I truly admire him. And I said, hey, you know what's going to happen with my daughter? She's gay and she's going to leave her husband. And he didn't have an answer, but he did say, it'll all work out.

Nan Osborne [01:17:15] And

Rod Osborne [01:17:19] I did not want an argument at that time, so I just let that go and just answered the rest of the questions. But I was thinking, well, that's not what we teach. You know, that's not satisfactory. That's not what we teach. And so that was when I started listening to Mormon stories. That's when I started reading materials that weren't, you know, correlated. You know, I started listening and reading to Dan Vogel and, you know, David Bachavoy and Michael Quinn and, you know, reading everything I could think of, because it didn't take long after I looked behind the curtain to realize, whoa, there's a lot here that I didn't know before. And it is shocking to me and Rod.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] I. I always like to slow down a little bit for this, just to give people a flavoring.

Rod Osborne [01:18:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:18:29] Of the types of things you learned. Okay, so pick five to seven major things that you thought were X but you found out were why.

Rod Osborne [01:18:39] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:18:40] Just so that people have an idea of what you're talking about.

Rod Osborne [01:18:43] Okay. Okay. Well, the first thing I did was Nan bought me the Leonard Arrington Diaries, and she was still 100% faithful at the time.

Nan Osborne [01:18:59] So were you.

John Dehlin [01:18:59] Was this the Greg Prince book?

Nan Osborne [01:19:01] So were you.

John Dehlin [01:19:01] Was this the Greg Prince book? This is.

Rod Osborne [01:19:03] No, this was Leonard's Diaries.

John Dehlin [01:19:05] Signature Books.

Rod Osborne [01:19:05] Yeah, Signature Books, edited by Gary Bergera.

John Dehlin [01:19:08] So you were a faithful Mormon giving him Leonard Harrington's diaries from Signature Books.

Nan Osborne [01:19:16] I had heard about the book, and they had a lot of good church history in them, and I knew he was suddenly obsessed with church history, so I thought that was a Great birthday presentation.

John Dehlin [01:19:24] Awesome. Yeah, we'll put a link to it in the show notes.

Rod Osborne [01:19:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:19:26] That's great stuff. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [01:19:29] You know, I devoured those volumes and they were eye opening to me. I learned through his diaries that the. The first presidency and the quorum of the 12, even though they say they do nothing unless they are entirely in lockstep and all have had a similar confirmation from the Lord before any policy is enacted that that is not true, that they act more like a board of directors than they profess, that the senior members of the leadership hold the power and those who are junior members listen and obey and collect their chocolates last. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:20:28] So chocolates are administered by seniority.

Rod Osborne [01:20:32] Yes. So that was very apparent to me in reading those. Those diaries. And the diaries led me to other church history things, and particularly in reading. I've read the book Nauvoo by Benjamin Park. I've read all three Mountain Meadows Massacre books.

Discovering Difficult Mormon History

Nan Osborne [01:21:08] So John wants to know, name five things that you learned that you didn't know before.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:14] Okay.

Rod Osborne [01:21:15] Well, you know, the leadership of the church and that it's more like a board of directors than anything else. I learned that Joseph Smith was very much involved in occult practices, that he was very much involved in treasure digging, that his family was known to the community where they lived as a treasure digging family. And that Joseph started at a pretty early age and didn't finish that until 1826 when he was called into court and prosecuted and actually convicted.

John Dehlin [01:22:03] And for those who don't know, this is illegal activity.

Rod Osborne [01:22:05] It was illegal activity in New York.

John Dehlin [01:22:06] And, you know, it's not just searching for buried treasure. It's claiming that there are spirits guarding the treasure. And it's cult and folk magic to make people believe. You have special powers for those who don't know.

Rod Osborne [01:22:22] And it was called being peeper class looker. Yes. And it's because you commit fraud when you do that. You deceive people. And that was apparent to me that that was the truth. And the reason that the Smith family left Palmyra and that area and moved to Kirtland.

Rod Osborne [01:22:52] Yeah. I learned a lot about Joseph. I learned about the Kirtland Banking Society where Joseph and Sidney Rigdon, who was a member of the First Presidency, decided to start a bank because the church was poor. And they did a little shady business in forming a bank where they printed money and gave away a lot of promissory notes, et cetera. And of course, the bank ended up failing. And not only were church members upset because they were heavily invested, but many of the Local community were invested in it. And effectively, that drove Joseph out of town and that drove the Mormons from Kirtland, Ohio, to Missouri.

Rod Osborne [01:23:42] And so I learned there that Joseph started his life as a fugitive because he was indicted later. It seemed to me that everywhere he went, he was being chased by the law. After that time, then another very disturbing thing was the Nauvoo period where Joseph started polygamy.

Rod Osborne [01:24:16] And what was particularly disturbing to me was that he used his authority, his complete power. He demanded total loyalty from those who followed him. And those who weren't totally loyal were excommunicated. But he used his power to get.

Rod Osborne [01:24:48] His closest associates to lie to the majority of his own people. Because when he started doing polygamy, he got others to join him in polygamy, forced them, effectively saying that polygamy is the celestial law and you can't get to heaven unless you are a polygamist and you must join me. So in my estimation, to mask his illicit activity, he wanted to get others to join him so that he would have this inner circle of people that were committed to him and also secret, because polygamy was secret. It was against the law.

Rod Osborne [01:25:36] Not only did he keep it from the law, but he kept it from the general population of the Mormons. And in doing that, he forced young girls to marry him in the sense that he told them, and remember, this is a guy who says, I speak for God. And they believe that he speak for God. He spoke for God, and he was the only one on the earth that could speak for God. And told them that if you don't marry me, it's God's will that you marry me, and it's your own choice, if you don't marry me, that you're going to suffer the consequences of God.

Rod Osborne [01:26:19] Even with telling them that, an angel came to me with a drawn sword and said that if you don't participate in this marriage, that you will be destroyed. Joseph would be destroyed if the woman didn't marry him.

John Dehlin [01:26:38] It's manipulative.

Rod Osborne [01:26:39] It's so manipulative, so coercive. The story of Zina Huntington is heartbreaking. When Joseph started his polygamy before he married his first wife in Nauvoo, he said he married his first wife in 1835 with Fanny Alger. But that's another story. But a young girl by the name of Zina Huntington was in Nauvoo. He approached her about marriage in 1841.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:12] He.

Rod Osborne [01:27:13] And she said no. She told him no. He told her about polygamy. He was of course, married to Emma at this time. And she said no, because she had another boyfriend, Henry Jacobs. And six months after that, she married Henry Jacobs. She asked Joseph to marry them.

Rod Osborne [01:27:35] Joseph agreed to marry them, but never showed up to the marriage. And they had to be married by Brigham Young. This was a civil marriage. And then sometime soon thereafter, she saw Joseph said, hey, Joseph, why did you not come and perform our marriage? And he said, I couldn't bear to marry you to someone else when you're supposed to be married to me. Those are her words from her diary.

Rod Osborne [01:28:05] And six months later, Joseph convinced her to marry him when she had chosen. And you think of. Okay, you think of Russell Nelson, current Mormon prophet, current Mormon prophet, saying to a girl that just got married, you know, to her boyfriend, the love of her life, someone that she chose to marry, and he said, you should have married me instead of him.

Rod Osborne [01:28:43] How would she feel? I mean, that would be such a holy cow. The prophet of God is. Even though I'm happily married to this guy, the prophet of God is telling me that I shouldn't have married him and married the love of my life, but instead, I have to marry him. And he continues to push it until I do marry him.

Rod Osborne [01:29:07] And that's what Joseph did. He should have said, I am so happy for you. I hope you have a great marriage. If he was a kind, generous person, how selfish is that of him to force her to marry him, even though he knows she was happily married to this other guy.

John Dehlin [01:29:32] Unless it was God.

Rod Osborne [01:29:33] Unless it was God. Yes. And even to make matters worse, Joseph dies. Zina Huntington, Brigham Young, even though Zina Huntington already has two children by Henry Jacobs and she's pregnant, seven months with his child. Brigham Young calls them into the temple, tells Ina Huntington, I am going to marry you, and makes Henry Jacobs be a witness to Brigham Young marrying

Nan Osborne [01:30:11] Henry

Rod Osborne [01:30:11] Jacob's wife in the temple and forcing him to be a witness. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. She's already sealed to Joseph. She already has a husband that she loves and is seven months pregnant with the child. And Brigham Young is taking her away from a husband that loves her with all his heart. How cruel can you be?

Rod Osborne [01:30:42] How is that inspired in any way? Oh, that. Just. Just thinking that. That just makes my skin crawl. How can you do that? Well, he did it. What did he do? He sent Henry Jacobs on a mission. They leave Nauvoo.

Rod Osborne [01:31:04] When he comes back, she's not his wife anymore. He wrote her letters. He tried to say. And she never answered the letters. When they left, Nauvoo she went to live with Brigham's other wives. And Henry came back, wanted to get back with his wife.

Rod Osborne [01:31:25] No go. She was now Brigham's wife. You go find your own wives. Now, how is that the way any God with a heart would work? That just made my blood boil. And even this day, just thinking about

Nan Osborne [01:31:45] it,

Rod Osborne [01:31:47] how could the God that I believed in be that way? How could he inspire a prophet to do what Joseph did and inspire a prophet to do what Brigham did? No God that I would believe in. And another thing. Until 1852, Joseph and Brigham were sending missionaries to England. Half of the church, half the population of the church was in England, and many of those were young girls. The apostles were sent to Europe to preach the gospel. In 1850, what's his? John Taylor had a debate with a famous French pastor, and the debate ended up being about, hey, you guys practice polygamy? John Taylor, who at that time had several wives, denied that he practiced polygamy. To this pastor, he said, it is abhorrent, even though he had several wives at that time.

John Dehlin [01:33:09] He becomes the Mormon third Mormon prophet.

Rod Osborne [01:33:12] Yes, he became the third Mormon prophet. That speech that he gave was put. Someone took notes. That was put into a tract and published by Orson Pratt in England. And that was a tract that they used to get converts to come to Zion.

Rod Osborne [01:33:32] They denied polygamy. Polygamy is evil. They pointed to the Doctrine and Covenants, which said at that time that one man and one wife is God's way. And that was in the Doctrine and Covenants and was not eliminated from the Doctrine and covenants until 1874 when they published a new Doctrine and Covenants. So all of these young women in England who joined the church thinking that, okay, this is great, I am going to go to America, I'm going to find me a righteous priesthood holder, and we are going to live happily ever after.

Rod Osborne [01:34:11] They come, they spend all their money, all their resources, they leave family, they sacrifice everything they have. They get to Salt Lake and they discover that the church had been lying to them the entire time. And they have no choice because they have no money, no resources to go back. What can they do but to be sucked into polygamy and live that lifestyle for the rest of their lives.

Rod Osborne [01:34:43] And our apostles, our prophets, knew that they were doing that, knew that they were lying, and they went ahead and did it anyway. How disgusting is that? I didn't know this. I didn't know that. And then, I mean, John, I could go on. We're talking about the priesthood, and you Know what I learned from Michael Quinn and others, including who was the guy? Greg Prince, the development of the priesthood.

John Dehlin [01:35:26] Do kind of a lightning round with priesthood. Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham.

Rod Osborne [01:35:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:35:30] Not given the full explanation.

Rod Osborne [01:35:31] I'll do that really quick. The priesthood. There is ample, ample evidence, you know, and I'm an FBI agent, a former FBI agent. I look for evidence and I'm really serious about it. There is no evidence that Joseph ever had John the Baptist visit him or Peter, James and John, nothing until 1834. We still today we give our missionaries teach that we had the Melchizedek priesthood when the church was formed because you had to have it before the church was organized in 1830. They say it was in 1829 that John the Baptist and Peter, James and John appeared to Joseph and Oliver. There is absolutely no evidence that that happened. There's no talk of any of that until 1834.

John Dehlin [01:36:27] But there's anti evidence because there's a lot of anti evidence because David Whitmer, who's one of the three witnesses, says the Melchizedek priesthood never happened.

Rod Osborne [01:36:36] Never happened. He said, I didn't hear anything about that. William McClellan, also an apostle, said, I never heard anything about any of this stuff. So there's a lot to go on that. Okay, the next one, the Book of Abraham.

Rod Osborne [01:36:51] The Book of Abraham is not what Joseph said it was. I mean, we have the facsimiles in the Book of Mormon and he says, you know, this picture in this facsimile means a certain thing. He describes everything in those facsimiles and gives us an explanation about that.

Rod Osborne [01:37:12] None of that is correct. The Egyptian is all wrong. And so the argument that they now give, that the church now gives, Fairmorm now gives is that, well, there were scrolls that disappeared and the Book of Abraham was on those scrolls. So I asked myself the question, if Joseph got everything wrong that we saw, what makes you think that he's going to get two other scrolls? Right?

Rod Osborne [01:37:47] No way. And besides the fact that every Egyptian scholar other than the two at BYU right now just think it's just total ridiculousness. And the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon for me was the hardest one. I clung to that as long as I could until I studied the stuff that Brett Metcalf has given us and a lot of the stuff that you've given John on, you know, with Mike, from Mormon discussions, there's just so much about the Book of Mormon now that makes you realize it is 18th. It's a nice 18th century religious text.

John Dehlin [01:38:37] 19th century.

Rod Osborne [01:38:37] Sorry, yeah, 19th century religious text that Joseph gave us. You have to say, okay, there's a lot of stuff in the Book of Mormon that you can say are good religious scriptures. I mean, good religious stories. However, there's no archeological evidence.

Rod Osborne [01:39:01] The stuff that we have about language development, about the lack of interest, anything Hebrew being found in north or Latin America during that time, everything points to the Book of Mormon not being historical. And there's a whole argument with that. And you know, when we talk about anachronisms, the church to say, okay, we have. We have found 210 anachronisms. And now we found 150 of those anachronisms that were anachronisms at one time that we found are not anachronisms anymore. But you know what those anachronisms are?

Rod Osborne [01:39:47] Arrows. They're just silly. You count all of these things and wait a minute. To me, that's not really an anachronism. That is something you would expect to be here. But anyway, there's just so much. You look behind the curtain, you realize Oz is there pulling the strings. There's just way too much disturbing literature there that made it so that I could not believe anymore.

John Dehlin [01:40:30] Thanks for taking us through that. It was very articulate and thoughtful. Well, and. And most people don't have that level of command of the detail. And I just want. You've kind of alluded to this, but I want to really drive it home because when you're trained to be an FBI agent, you're trained to what?

Rod Osborne [01:40:48] Oh, you're trained for the. You got to have the details. You got to have them right?

Nan Osborne [01:40:53] And you got to have evidence.

Rod Osborne [01:40:54] You got to have evidence and you can't. And it's got to be evidence that will stick. It can't be hearsay, you know, it has to be good evidence. You've got to have good sources. And everything that I said just now, most all of it can be found in the Joseph Smith papers.

Nan Osborne [01:41:16] All of it. I want to say that until five years ago, I'd never seen Rod read an actual book except for when we were in college. He's a guy who reads for information only, so he's really on top of the news and those kinds of things. But he's not somebody who reads for enjoyment. In the last five years, he has read hundreds of books. He has spent hundreds of hours listening to scholars report everything about the church.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:48] And.

Nan Osborne [01:41:48] And he is like an FBI agent. When he gets his teeth sunk into a case, oh boy. He is not letting go until he has every single bit of evidence there's possible. I remember one time he had a case and some of the other agents were saying, okay, Rod, you've got a good enough case. Let's take it to court and go from there. And he's like, no way. There is so much more to this. And I'm going to find out everything I can find until I've got all the evidence. Then we'll go to court. Only then. And that's how I feel. He's done with this.

Nan Osborne [01:42:24] He has. He wasn't. You know, he didn't read the CES letter and say, okay, yeah, that's right. I don't believe anymore. Oh, my gosh. The man could be hired as a church historian at this point because he does remember the details. He could tell you every one of Joseph Smith's wives, How old they were, when he married them, why they married him, how long he stayed. I mean, he could tell it all. There were times during the last five years when I would say, rod, I need a break.

Nan Osborne [01:42:50] We gotta. We gotta talk about something else. I can't, because he gets fired up every time he starts talking about it. And he would say, okay, okay, all right, I'll give you a break. And then we'd go to bed and it would be like midnight, and then he would do this tap, tap. Can I just tell you one more thing?

Nan Osborne [01:43:09] And I'd be like, sure, go for it. And then I would hear another half an hour. And that went on for a long time and still is going on. It hasn't.

Rod Osborne [01:43:18] That was your study.

Nan Osborne [01:43:19] That was a lot. I know. Yeah. I didn't have to study as much as him. I read a few books. I read Rough Stone Rolling a few of the other things. Read the CES letter, some of the Joseph Smith stuff. But Rod has shared with me all the stuff he's read every day. When he would come home, he would have those Leonard Arrington diaries dog eared on almost every page. Let me tell you this now. Let me tell you this. Yeah, it's been fascinating to watch.

Rod Osborne [01:43:46] It was a brand new world. Surprising and profoundly disappointing.

Nan Osborne [01:43:52] That's what he kept saying. I said, well, what do you think then? And he said, I have never been so profoundly disappointed in my life.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:03] And,

Nan Osborne [01:44:05] yeah, he did not want to know the things he knows.

Rod Osborne [01:44:10] Yeah. You know, you recently put something out, John, where RFM is saying, you know, I didn't want the church not to be true. I want it to be true, you know, and he was I mean, he was a big defender of the church for a long time. And, you know, all of us that have been defenders of the church and who have invested so much all of their lives, you know, the covenants I took in the temple to give all of my resources to the church, including my life, if it meant that I was serious about that. And, you know, when you put that into that kind of effort into something, and then you realize that you have been deceived, it is so disheartening, so disappointing, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get over it.

Rod Osborne [01:45:12] I came to that realization in 2021, and it's been less than a year and a half. Nan has only been out since, like, last May.

John Dehlin [01:45:24] So, Rod, you went first?

Rod Osborne [01:45:26] I was mentally first. I was still going to church. I was still. But mentally, I was checked.

John Dehlin [01:45:35] But did you tell Nan, I'm done, or did you keep that to yourself?

Rod Osborne [01:45:39] No, I just shared with her that stuff. But the information, the information that you conclusion, it wasn't until I did 2021, I finally, toward the end of 2021, I said, no, this is not the truth.

Nan's Faith Transition and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [01:45:56] So, Nan, as you're watching him learn all this stuff and as you're supporting your kids and it took you a little bit longer, do you want to share what your journey to reach a conclusion was like?

Nan Osborne [01:46:12] A big part of my journey was listening to Rod, and he was always very nice about it in explaining it and some of my own reading. And, you know, I started to have to say, maybe the origins of the church aren't what the church says they are.

Nan Osborne [01:46:36] But does that mean that everything is now wrong? And does that mean I have to throw away everything? Because I believed, and frankly, still do, that I had many, many spiritual experiences with God that I'm not willing to deny.

Nan Osborne [01:47:00] And for a while I thought I had to deny those in order to say I don't believe the church is true anymore. I've come to understand that that's not the case, that all of those experiences really did happen, whether or not it's with a God that looks like all the pictures in the Mormon chapels. Whether or not, you know, who exactly they were with and how they happened is a different story. But so I listen to Rod and I respect his intelligence and his desire to only have accurate, provable evidence.

Nan Osborne [01:47:46] And he would say to me, nan, all this is in the Joseph Smith papers, all of it. It's not like I'm reading stuff from some random person that we don't know. This is in the Joseph Smith papers. And so I read some of that and I started to see, you know, after my son said that he felt like it was in the air in our home, this fact that as soon as one child breaks a commandment, then they know that our family isn't going to be in, you know, happy heaven forever. I had started to look at that and say, hmm, maybe not everything the church teaches gives me what I thought it would or what they say it will give you.

Nan Osborne [01:48:36] And the idea of eternal families, instead of being this loving, benevolent document that's gonna, or doctrine that's gonna help us all be happy forever, instead it's kind of fear based and that your decisions get made based on fear that you're gonna cause the family to, to not be all together. And of course somebody in the family, literally everyone in the family at some time or another is going to do something that they shouldn't, that they regret and it's off what they should have done. And so I just started seeing that.

Nan Osborne [01:49:18] I'm not sure the church is bearing good fruit all the time. When Sally came out as gay in the beginning, I just had to be present in the moment and I just had to help Sally. And we helped Shane when he was just falling apart because of all of this, and we helped their kids and then we got introduced to Lena and her kids and we helped them and that was what I spent my efforts on. But then as time went on and Sally and Lena were settled, I could really give my attention to the things Rod was telling me.

Nan Osborne [01:49:54] And I could spend time thinking about what is Sally supposed to do? What is, what should be. I have 13 grandkids. What if one of them chooses this when they're young? Not chooses it, declares it, you know, realizes it that they're gay when they're young.

Nan Osborne [01:50:18] You know, do I just tell a 10 year old, well, you're out then, you know, you've either got to be alone forever and ever, which we all know is not what God put us here on earth to be, or you're going to leave the church and break all the commandments and be sent to outer darkness.

Nan Osborne [01:50:38] So I started to see the more, the more ways that I was having to defend the church that I knew were indefensible. Like I was defending it to my kids who had left and to other or to Rod when he would tell me something at night and I'd say, yeah, but if we just have faith, then this and this and this. And I had was spending so much time defending the church defending President Nelson, and, oh, he's a good guy, and he's just trying to help us. And.

Nan Osborne [01:51:17] And then I would learn something else about President Nelson and how he exaggerated one of his stories in his talks to become pretty much an outright lie that's provable. And a few other things. And I started to say,

Margi Dehlin [01:51:36] well, if

Nan Osborne [01:51:36] the beginnings of the church aren't true and Joseph Smith wasn't who I always thought he was, and all of that church history, which is pretty much today, we're built on all that. If the foundation is cracked in a thousand pieces, and right now, it's not providing what our current members need, whether they're lgbtq, whether they're single women. You know, not that long ago, one of the leaders said in conference, more than 50% of the membership of the church is single.

Nan Osborne [01:52:17] Have you ever heard a lesson on how to be happy, be single, being single ever? Once? Have you ever had a lesson on how you can lead a fulfilling, good, happy life and be with all your loved ones in heaven forever if you're single?

Nan Osborne [01:52:38] I haven't ever heard one. All of the lessons I attend, whether it's Gospel doctrine or Relief Society or General Conference or anything else, are all about, we need a man and a woman and children to be together, and then everybody can go to heaven.

Nan Osborne [01:52:53] So if the church is aware that more than 50% of their membership is single, and yet they're not addressing that and saying, we're going to have every other lesson be about that and how to be a single mom, whether you live in the Philippines or in Utah or wherever else.

Nan Osborne [01:53:11] And I just saw that they were. I don't like to use the word out of touch, because I think they know darn well the statistics of our church and how many are lgbtq, how many are single, but they just weren't willing to do the hard thing and make some changes that would help the people in the church. So it finally got to a point where I recognized that I had been believing in a church that didn't exist.

Nan Osborne [01:53:45] Like, I believed Sally was going to be with us in heaven anyway, and my kids who had left the church were going to be with us in heaven anyway. And I believed that Heavenly Father loved lgbtq, people that were married or having sex or whatever, that he loved them just the same, and that they were going to be in heaven forever. And I. I believed that just so many things, and I started to recognize that is not what the church teaches. That is not reality. Nan, you've. You've concocted this religion that you're so loyal to.

Nan Osborne [01:54:26] That's not even a. It's not a true. It's not true. It's not a thing. The, the real church, the Mormon Church that you show up for every Sunday, every Sunday does not believe those last 10 things that you said you believe and doesn't. Don't teach that, and will actually, you know, excommunicate you for that. So why are you holding all this loyalty, even though you don't believe this whole chunk of stuff that the church teaches? And I finally had to say, hmm, I guess I don't.

Nan Osborne [01:54:59] And that was hard, really hard to do. One of my biggest hurdles towards the very end was my dad. And he told me probably four times that I can remember, and once, just two weeks, just before he died, a little bit of time right before he died, he said, we've built this family on a rock, and I'm handing you the torch as the oldest kid to keep everybody on this rock, on this solid foundation.

Nan Osborne [01:55:31] And our pioneers did it for us. And now I'm giving it to you, and I want you to do it for me and keep this family going. That was hard to let go of after, you know, because I still believe he's one of the greatest people ever. That was.

Nan Osborne [01:55:52] That kept me for a while, just that, not wanting to disappoint him. But when I finally came to terms, in fact, my brother and I had a conversation about it. He had left the church some time before, and he said, I feel the same way, Nan. It was a big stumbling block for me, dad was. But I had to come to terms and believe that he's one of those people in heaven and he knows everything now, and he knows the truth, and the last thing he's going to be is disappointed in you.

Nan Osborne [01:56:24] So I was finally ever to able to get over that and finally kind of settle into, okay, I don't believe. And it was really, really hard. And a lot of that happened. Most of that happened during the filming of the documentary.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:47] So

Nan Osborne [01:56:50] do you want us to talk a little bit about the documentary? Yeah. So we were driving to Sally's house to visit them for Ozzie's birthday, and Sally called us on the phone and said, I haven't told you yet, but we've been talking with these producers in New York that think they might want to do a little piece about our family on like, maybe ABC News or 2020 as one of the 20 minute segments, and they're going to come and film. And we said, oh, that's cool. And they said, they're coming this weekend while you guys are here, and you'll get filmed. And we like, what?

Nan Osborne [01:57:26] All right, you know, do we want to do this? Are you sure? What. What's good? What's the purpose of it? She's like, they just saw a picture of our family with our cute seven kids all dressed in rainbows online and called us and said, we want to do a little project with you guys. So Rod and I went down to Ozzie's birthday, and there was the film crew. And we were there four days, and the film crew was there the entire time with a producer from New York. And they filmed us all. They filmed the soccer games, they filmed the birthday party. They filmed us having a picnic at the park, all the things.

Nan Osborne [01:58:02] And then at the end, they said, oh, Rod and Nan, we want to film you guys just on your own. So they took us to a house they had rented and got all the lights set up, and the film crew was there, and it was just Rod and I. And they got this close to us, and they said, okay, tell us how you feel about Sally being gay. Tell us how does it feel to pay tithing to a church that says, sally can't go to heaven?

Nan Osborne [01:58:30] How does it feel to give so much to the church? Because Rod and I were still. Had leadership callings at church, and we were giving all we had. And. And how do you feel? How. How do you mesh those two things together? And of course, they would ask Rod a question like that, and Rod would answer like an FBI agent, knowing that everything he says can and will be used against him. And so he was articulate and composed and all of that. And then they.

Rod Osborne [01:59:02] I was careful.

Nan Osborne [01:59:03] Yeah, you were careful.

Rod Osborne [01:59:05] I didn't want to come out on

Nan Osborne [01:59:08] film and say anything. So then they would ask me, and I would say, well, I love Sally. She's my best, you know, daughter, and she's so great. But the church means everything to me, and I believe it with all my heart. And I'm never going to leave. So, you know, I'm just trying to work the two together somehow. And I support Sally, and here are the ways that I've tried to support her, but this and this. And then they would have another question, and I would start crying, and then they'd ask me more and more and more, and pretty soon, I'd been on camera for twice as long as Rod because that's the stuff that's going to be more fun to watch on a documentary than the carefully worded FBI agents response.

Nan Osborne [01:59:49] And. And after they Filmed us. They put together a little 15 minute sizzle reel of the whole weekend and showed it to the decision makers in New York. And they watched it all and said, yes, we definitely want to move forward with this project and do it. But this whole Mormon parent angle, what's that about?

Nan Osborne [02:00:11] That's just not like, oh, yeah, the mom and dad are conservative and so they're not sure about this gay thing. This is a whole other thing and we need to look into that. So what started out as a short little piece turned into an entire year of filming.

Nan Osborne [02:00:31] Sally And Lena had GoPro cameras all over their house. They had them in their cars and they were filmed for an entire year. And Rod and I were filmed intermittently for an entire year. So they came to our house two different times and stayed three or four days and asked us to invite our Mormon friends over and have a dinner party and filmed it all for hours on end and then decided not to use that part in the film, in the documentary.

Nan Osborne [02:01:05] But they asked us so many questions. They had FaceTime calls with us. When Elder Holland gave his musket fire talk, when Brad Wilcox gave his talk, both of which were extremely upsetting to me. So, so upsetting. I was right, right at the place where I was cracked and I didn't know which way to go and I was trying to hang on, and those two talks just did me in. And they filmed my response to that and talking to them about that for, you know, an hour.

Nan Osborne [02:01:41] So in an, in a year's worth of filming, they had our faith journey, especially mine, on film. And oh, how I wish I could have all that film because 90% of it didn't make it into the documentary. But, but, you know, they'd ask me again three months later, how do you feel about this church? And you're tithing money or, or, you know, now your youngest son has left the church. So how do you feel? You've got all these kids out of the church, you're going to be in heaven all by yourself. And I would start crying again and say, I don't know how to, how to make this fit.

Nan Osborne [02:02:20] I don't know, I'm trying. And. And I would go to bed at night, first, worried about what I said on camera and were they going to use it because I don't even remember what I said. And second, thinking about what I said and how I kind of like heard my own voice every night. Oh, yeah, you said this and this and this.

Nan Osborne [02:02:47] And you really are having so much cognitive dissonance about this. Subject about this doctrine, about this practice. And I recognized that I was questioning and that my solid belief that I had had for 60 years was. Was crumbling.

Nan Osborne [02:03:13] And I didn't want it to crumble. And so the next time I got on camera, I would say, I am not leaving. I don't care if I'm the last person in the whole family standing. I will stand on that solid rock by myself. It's fine with me. Let the rain come. And then they would interview me for six hours. And by the end I'd be crying, thinking, why am I. Why is my grip so tight that I can't see the truth? I was holding on. I had white knuckles holding on to the loyalty to the church, the loyalty to my dad, the loyalty to all my experiences that brought me faith and joy.

Nan Osborne [02:03:53] And when I finally started loosening my grip, even just a little, it was such an unfamiliar feeling that it would take me a while to recover from a whole day of filming or from four days when they were at our house filming us. And I really have to say that that documentary, speaking out loud, my feelings, knowing they were being documented forever and maybe going to be on TV for everyone to see, really helped me see myself.

Nan Osborne [02:04:36] Like, it was a powerful way to literally hear my own voice say what I was starting to believe and starting to not believe. And I don't know if I hadn't been part of that documentary, if I would be where I am right now.

Nan Osborne [02:04:55] Probably not, but because they asked me all the hard questions, boy, that producer and all her team were studying Mormonism every night. They were reading the Book of Mormon, they were reading the Book of Policies, they were listening to you. They were doing all the things so that they could have more questions for us the next day. And they would come with hard questions. And I would say, well, I don't really believe that Sally isn't going to be with us in the next life, because, I mean, it's totally evident she's the greatest person, the same as she was the day before she told us she was gay.

Nan Osborne [02:05:30] So that just can't be. And my same with my. My boy. And it just solidified in my own mind that I was believing in a church that didn't exist, that the way the church is set up right now is doing more harm than good in the world, which was a really big thing for me to accept.

Nan Osborne [02:05:58] And I finally had to say. And so on the day Sally was getting married, the big time producer from New York flew in just for the wedding day. So she was assigned to Me, to talk to me in all the wedding prep on the morning of the wedding. And now that I look back on it, I don't think that's coincidence, but she came in my room and talked to me about how I was feeling about this.

Nan Osborne [02:06:23] And three months earlier, I was shopping for a wedding dress with my sister in San Francisco. My sister had been out of the church for a while. She's the most fun person to go shopping with. And she convinced me to buy this dress that didn't have sleeves. And I said, there is no way I can do. I wouldn't even try it on. And she said, come on, at least try it on. Then we'll know if this brand fits or not, you know? And in the end, I ended up buying it, thinking, oh, this will make my sister happy. I'll put it in the closet, but I'll find something else with sleeves, because I'm not gonna make some announcements.

Nan Osborne [02:06:59] Announcement at the wedding and show up without sleeves. But the longer that dress hung in my closet, every time I opened my closet to get ready in the morning, there was that dress. And I started to see, that is the direction you're going, Nan.

Nan Osborne [02:07:16] That is the future you. So why are you so hesitant to be that now? That is. That is where you're headed and what you've decided in your head. And so I quit thinking about getting a different dress, and that dress had three months to give me some more confidence. So the day of the wedding, that producer was in, talking to me, and I got out the dress and showed it to her, and she said, put it on. Let's see what your husband and your family thinks. So I put the dress on, which they showed in the documentary. And I came out, and there's Rod and my son Sam.

Nan Osborne [02:07:56] And they're like, whoa. You know, Sam says, I haven't seen your shoulders in so long, you know, And. And they all commented like, wow, mom, are you sure you want to do this? And I said, yes, I am. And I told the producer, I think I'm gonna. I think I'm out. I think I'm gonna leave, like, all the way leave. Not just, like, not show up on Sunday. But I think that I'm done with the church. And it's a scary thing, but I think I am.

Nan Osborne [02:08:32] And we went to the wedding, and I wore the dress. And when I saw it on the documentary, it was hilarious, because to anyone who's not a Mormon, they would go, what? Like, it wasn't some sexy, strapless cocktail dress. It was a very Modest dress that stopped right here at the shoulders. And, you know, it was all of an inch and a half different than what I'd been wearing my whole life. But to everyone who watched that documentary, who is Mormon, they knew exactly what I was feeling. And that that inch and a half says everything about you very loudly. Oh, my gosh.

Margi Dehlin [02:09:07] It is an announcement.

Nan Osborne [02:09:08] It is an announcement. And I wore it, and I was happy I wore it. And that night, I said to Rod, you know, I sat on film when the producer was in with me that I'm out of the church all the way.

Nan Osborne [02:09:24] I said, I don't know if they're going to put that on the documentary. And Rod's like, who are we kidding? That is going to go on the documentary? And I said, that's scary that I would say that. And that all the world and all the people I've known and all the people I love and that I've worked with in the church for 60 years are going to hear that. And he's just like, nan, you and I both know we cannot believe in this anymore. And so I let go of it mentally and just said, let it be, whatever. And the truth is, from there on, there's been no looking back.

Nan Osborne [02:10:00] None. I don't second guess myself. I don't second guess Rod. I don't. I don't think, well, did I make the right decision? Should I go? Not even this much. I am 100% confident in my decision to believe that I don't know anything anymore. And it was really hard to let go of the certainty that the church provides. Raising my kids, it was so nice that I was certain about everything. This is what's going to happen to us after we die. This is how you stay on the straight and narrow. Here's what you need to do to get there. And suddenly I don't have any certainty. I don't know anything. That's a big, big change.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:51] But.

Nan Osborne [02:10:51] But I tell you, somehow a friend. I told that to a friend recently who's in the church, and she said, can you tell me more about that, Nan? And I said, it's one of the few things in my life that I don't think you can know until you've experienced it.

Nan Osborne [02:11:10] I don't think any amount of me telling you, a believing member of how I came to be where I am now, that it would change anything about you, that you would then be open to hearing more. It really has to be lived to be believed that I can really be so calm about this decision.

Nan Osborne [02:11:32] And also all the stuff we talked about earlier, about our marriage and me learning how to voice my opinions and then having cancer and having to not keep all my needs stuffed in. I think that had to happen before I could leave the church because I started to have to take ownership of myself, make my own decisions, not just ask God what I should do all the time or my church leaders and take ownership of my own decisions and what I needed out of life.

Nan Osborne [02:12:02] So that had happened. And then I came to this, and it was. I could let go finally. If I hadn't done that first piece, I never would have been able to do this piece. So I feel like it was all meant to be. The universe is conspiring in my favor. That's how I like to look at it now. And I really believe they are.

Margi Dehlin [02:12:25] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:12:26] Yeah. Anything else?

Margi Dehlin [02:12:31] Thank you for that, both of you. Thank you for sharing. Kind of the deconstruction journey, I think, of things. Could we. I know it's kind of, you know, a newer. A newer world, but could we talk just for a few minutes about rebuilding and what that's looked like recently for you both? So I'm curious. You kind of shared, I feel like intuitively, just naturally, a minute ago, some of the rebuilding victories, some of the things that have been really beautiful about your rebuilding process. This could be alone or together, either one. But do things come to mind in particular that you feel like, wow, here's where the beauty's been in rebuilding so far.

Finding Post-Mormon Community and Moving Forward

Nan Osborne [02:13:32] Can I talk for just a minute? Sure. And then you. Then we'll give it to you. Rod and I, couple years earlier, had thought about where we wanted to retire. And since we've moved so many places, we don't have a place that's just home.

Nan Osborne [02:13:49] And so we were debating where to retire, and we thought about all the places in the west because we have two kids that are permanently in Southern California. And we came for a lot of different reasons to the decision that Utah would be the best. So we bought an acre lot in Mapleton and said, when we retire, whether that's in two or three or four years, we'll build a house there.

Nan Osborne [02:14:14] Then when those two years went past and we really were ready to retire and to move, by then we had said goodbye to the church, and we said, well, I don't know if we should move there. It's probably not a good place for us, and maybe we should just sell that lot. And our son Sam said, mom, wherever there's a lot of Mormons, there's a lot of post Mormons and if you move somewhere else, you're going to make plenty of friends because you're good at making friends. But they won't have any idea what you're going through as you've just left the church and all the deconstruction and why you don't know what alcohol is, what.

Nan Osborne [02:14:52] And why you've never ordered a cup of coffee in your life. You need to be where there's post Mormons that you can relate to and be friends with and get through this next phase of deconstruction. So we said, okay, we'll go to Utah. We'll see how it feels, and then we'll decide. So we got here, and I said, I'm going to need to be brave because we don't have anybody here. Our youngest son, Joe, still lives here, but he and his girlfriend are taking off at the end of summer to go move to Southern Cal. So we're not here for our kids and grandkids. We're not here for, you know, any other reason are we going to be able to do this?

Nan Osborne [02:15:31] And I said to myself and wrote in my journal, all right, you need to plan out what your steps are going to be to make friends, because you got to have some friends here. Otherwise, it's just going to be you and Rod sitting in a house lonely forever, and that's not going to work until you die. Yeah, until we die. A lone couple in the world. In the dreary world, you know?

Nan Osborne [02:15:56] So we'd only been here a couple weeks. I looked online for a meetup. We marched down to a coffee shop in Provo on a Sunday morning, nervous, and what do you know? Everybody was so nice and kind and asked about our story, and we said, we're kind of on the down low, except for that there's going to be this documentary about us we think is coming out soon. And they're like, what? You know? So a couple women at that meetup said, oh, there's this group called wca, which stands for Women of a Certain Age.

John Dehlin [02:16:27] Really quick. The first group was that the Utah Valley Post Mormon Community. Uvpm?

Nan Osborne [02:16:32] I think so.

John Dehlin [02:16:33] Okay, yeah, I'll list that. First Utah Valley Postmortem.

Nan Osborne [02:16:36] Yeah, thanks.

John Dehlin [02:16:37] Then you learned about waka?

Nan Osborne [02:16:38] Yeah, and then I learned about waka, which was women over the age of 40 who were post Mormon who wanted to be friends and have a fulfilling life and rebuild a community that you probably lost after the church. So I went to this event two days later with these two women that I didn't even really Even know their names. And the walk event, there were 25 women. We were at a swimming pool. It was so much fun. They were all really nice. I told them a little about the documentary and that I thought it was coming out within a couple months, and they were all interested in that.

Nan Osborne [02:17:15] And one of them invited me to go out to dinner with her husband and me and Rod. And we went out and they were great and ready, set, go. And we are friends with that couple. We are friends with all those people who were at that swimming party and their spouses were. That was last probably July. And our social calendar is full, which makes me thriving, happy. I am thriving, and it is.

Rod Osborne [02:17:47] And I'm tired.

John Dehlin [02:17:50] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:17:51] Rod doesn't need as much social interaction as I do, but he's very willing to come along, and he enjoys it all the time. And as. Especially now with his focus on church history, a lot of the other couples that we get together with have a similar interest and know a lot about church history. So instead of Rod being the one that doesn't talk quite as much when we go out with friends, he's. He's. I'm having to rescue people from Rod. You know, we just.

John Dehlin [02:18:19] We just got a sense for how animated Rod is about.

Nan Osborne [02:18:23] Yeah. And I'm like, you don't have to stay and listen anymore. And they're like, oh, no, we love it. We're just gonna go read that book he told us about. So, yeah, we have made so many friends. And this new term, trauma bonding, which I didn't know anything about before, is probably a little bit of what's happening, like, we all feel. Here's a statement that I'll make. I have yet to meet one single person that wanted to leave the church. Not one. Not. Not anybody who was all in, not anybody who was half in, not anyone who left when they were 41 or 61. Everyone would have chosen to. To study and find out that the church is true. And that can definitely be said about Rod and I. We did not want the church to not be true.

Rod Osborne [02:19:17] We.

Nan Osborne [02:19:18] We did not want to leave with all our hearts, and yet here we are. So all these people that we've met are in a similar situation, and some of them have been out quite a while, and they're mentors to us on how it's going to feel.

Nan Osborne [02:19:37] One person told us about the group called Thrive. We went to a Thrive meeting, which in Utah county, it looks different in all cities across the country, but in Utah county, because there are so many post Mormons, there's a group that meets the first Wednesday of every month. We. We have a leader who we all sit around in a big circle and it's kind of like an AA meeting where everybody goes around and tells where they are on their faith journey, whether they're just questioning whether they're out, how long, whatever.

Nan Osborne [02:20:10] And the first time we went, we of course were nervous. We didn't know anybody there. And what do you know? Just like the other stuff. We left with 25 new friends. Everybody there was so welcoming and kind and all in need of help themselves. And they were all helping each other. And it was the first time we found people our age or even older who were just newly leaving the church, which that was really good for me because most of the people we know who've left are our kids, ages. And it was so good to see other people there who were just in the same spot we were and they were our age.

Nan Osborne [02:20:54] There were even two couples that were older than us at that first thrive meeting. And we were blown away. We're like, we're not the only ones who at this age are figuring this out. That was really helpful. So from that, we never miss a thrive meeting. We go every month. It's been a lifeline for us. It's a place where you can share one. One month I'll go and I'm so sad, and I have all this sadness about how strict I was with my kids and how I didn't teach them that they could be independent of me and choose their own way. And I'll cry and it'll be sad, and everyone puts their arm around me and says, we know how this feels.

Nan Osborne [02:21:33] We felt the same way. And then one month I'll go and I'll be angry because I talked to an old friend who said, no, I'm not going to watch your documentary, so don't ask me to. And then I'm just angry about all the people with closed minds. And then all the Thrive friends will say, it's normal to feel angry and you're going to have ups and downs and it's going to be sad and then mad and then scary and then delightful and happy and all of that. So thrive has really been good for us. And after we'd been going several months, we said, hey, what can we do to help?

Nan Osborne [02:22:07] And now we've started helping out with some of the Thrive events that take place when we have a separate event from those monthly meetings. So that's been really good. But I will say, out of all those things I just listed the best one is Rod, that he.

Nan Osborne [02:22:25] Now we go out with friends, and he has plenty to say, and he wants to talk, and he's engaged in all of it, and I don't have to say, rod, come on. I need more friends. Will you please just go out to dinner with me and this new friend I made now? He's like, yeah, I want to go out. And that guy right there, he knows a lot about church history. Let's go out with them. And it's been really fun, and that's been a really great addition to our life.

Margi Dehlin [02:22:55] Beautiful.

Nan Osborne [02:22:56] Okay, Rod, what have you got going on?

Margi Dehlin [02:22:57] I'm ready for you, Rod.

Rod Osborne [02:22:59] She just said it all. Well, she's explained pretty much what we've done since leaving. It hasn't been that long, but we've met a lot of great people, and we're thankful for that. Pardon me. For me, it's still kind of hard in that, you know, when you leave the church, you leave your community and you leave your. You know, for me, it's a lot of sense of purpose, you know, and especially that I'm, you know, I'm retired now, and, you know, I don't have, you know, going to work to look forward to and. And keeping my mind occupied with the chase that I was so used to. So I'm still working on finding now what I want to do with the rest of my life, even though I'm the age that I am.

Nan Osborne [02:24:07] We thought we'd be on a mission, maybe another mission and another mission, but.

Rod Osborne [02:24:12] But I wouldn't have it any other way. You know, I joined the church because it was true. I didn't join the church, you know, for any other reason, and because I thought it was the way, the truth and the life and, you know, finding that that's not the case kind of put me in a tailspin. And I'm trying to find purpose. And I think, you know, if you grab onto Nan's coattails, she'll take you to a lot of good places. And so I've grabbed onto her coattails and, you know, helping her when she's helping, you know, with her endless energy, she's helping a lot. And, you know, I can tag along and do about a tenth of what she does or maybe a hundredth of what she does and, you know, feel satisfied and feel like I'm contributing. So that's where I am.

Nan Osborne [02:25:26] Tell them about Encircle.

Rod Osborne [02:25:28] Yeah, we volunteer at Encircle once a week, and we, you know, we. We help host a get together with parents that might be struggling with an issue on the LGBTQ in that arena. And, yeah, that's something that we do. And I'm happy. We've met a lot of great people, you know, through that organization, and we are really thankful for that organization. It does a lot of good. So we're finding more things to do. We feel like we have a community, and, yeah, we're at a better place than we thought we'd be having left the church. So we're really grateful.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:26] I do think rebuilding goes on and on, doesn't it? It's not something you do, and then it's just neat and tidy and you leave it.

Nan Osborne [02:26:34] No.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:35] And so. And that's kind of what I'm hearing from you, but I am hearing service, a place to, like, you're finding kind of ways to serve community. Right.

Nan Osborne [02:26:44] Friends, that's really important to me, I think. I don't feel like I don't have a purpose in the same way Rod does, because we moved. I can't remember if I mentioned on here, but we've moved. We've lived in 10 different states and three times overseas. And I'm the mom at home with the kids moving to a new city, and dad goes off to work, and then I gotta figure out, how am I gonna create a life for our family in this new place?

Nan Osborne [02:27:17] And then I get to work, and most of it's through the church, but I also find, you know, how we're gonna fit in the church and the community and the school and all that. And so I have done that before where Rod's always had wherever we move, he just goes to work in the morning, and he's got all that.

Nan Osborne [02:27:35] So this is totally new for Rod to retire and then come here and not have either the church or his job to put structure into his days or purpose into his life. And so we're figuring that out together. And I've had more experience at it because we've moved. And so I'm saying, hey, Rod, I found this good place. We can volunteer. How about coming with me to the soup kitchen? And how about we do this? And we're figuring it out. We recognize that we come, that we are very privileged. You know, leaving the church when your kids have left already is.

Rod Osborne [02:28:19] Yeah, we've had it easy.

Nan Osborne [02:28:20] Yeah, we've had it easy. That way we don't have any family. My two siblings left years ago. My parents have passed on, and so we didn't have any of the worries about how we're going to navigate family relationships. That's not an issue for. For us. So we feel privileged in that we don't have a lot of those things to worry about. And so we can spend our energy saying, how are we going to help the next guy? How are we going to help the future people who leave the church? What can we offer them? So that's what we're doing. And our work at Encircle has been really rewarding, and we love being there every week with those kids and those people.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:04] That's beautiful. I really appreciate, Rod, you bringing up that overlay of kind of how. Experiencing a faith journey with retirement in particular, how that might change the experience a little bit from, let's say, if it's happening in your 20s or your.

Rod Osborne [02:29:26] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:26] Or your 30s. I think that's really important to note and has a lot I can imagine and can see and envision the impact of that being quite different. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Rod Osborne [02:29:39] Thank you. Yeah. It's a new challenge for me.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:44] Yeah. Understandably. And that brings me to my other question. So in talking about this idea of, like, what's been some of the best things, about rebuilding what have been some of the harder, and you kind of led, I think, a little bit already with that. But anything else you want to share with regard to what's been difficult, challenging any grief or loss? I think we were talking a little bit earlier with parenting kind of coming in here of some of that, coming in with what can be kind of hard about it. Okay.

Reflecting on Parenting, Regrets, and Healing

Nan Osborne [02:30:19] Do you want to talk about how we feel about how we raise the kids and what we. You know. Okay, I'll talk about it, but just. I do feel sad that I was so clear in my message to them that there is only one way to be happy.

Nan Osborne [02:30:44] And I wish I could have known to say, we love you. This is what works for us. This is what we hope you'll do while you're here with us. But you get to choose what you want to do with your life and how you want to live when it comes to church and everything else.

Nan Osborne [02:31:06] I wish, as they were young, that I hadn't put into the air of our home what Joe was talking about when he said, it was in the air I breathed growing up, that my brothers were making decisions that might make us have empty seats in heaven.

Nan Osborne [02:31:31] I so badly wish I could go back and change that narrative and say, there's nothing you can do that will change how we feel about you. And that not only that, there's nothing you can do that will make us respect you less. You know.

Nan Osborne [02:31:54] Yeah. So I do have a lot of sadness about how orthodox we were with the kids growing up. Our kids have been very kind to us and say, we know you're sad about that. We know you're sorry. I told one of my kids if I had a time machine, I would go back and do it over.

Nan Osborne [02:32:19] One of them was telling me, you know, you did this and this and this and this. And these are the thing. These are the ways that. That has caused me pain as an adult. And that was really hard to hear.

Nan Osborne [02:32:32] And I said, if I had a time machine, I would go back and do it so differently. I promise I would, but I don't have one. So I'm sorry you have had these difficulties as an adult and that you might continue to. But I can't do anything else other than just say how sorry I am, and that's all I can do. But our kids have been really nice and said, we know and we understand that now that you know differently, you can do it differently. So, yeah, for me, there's been the good that has happened since I've left and the new things I've learned and then the new ways of thinking about the world and. And all of that so far outweighs any hard things of leaving. I don't know if that's the case for you.

Rod Osborne [02:33:33] Well, probably the hardest thing for me is that it's hard for me to be a BYU sports fan.

Margi Dehlin [02:33:38] Now, this is valid.

Rod Osborne [02:33:41] It's hard, but I think I can still do it because I do have a season ticket to football. I love sports. And no, I love the athlete. And they're out there just like anybody else, you know, so I respect them. I respect the coaches. I respect, you know, those kids that are playing. But I. Am I finding myself becoming more of a Utah fan. So that's something that. Is something that I didn't think would happen. So that's. That's probably the most important thing. So I got that out of the way. Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:34:26] And you've worked through it.

Rod Osborne [02:34:27] It sounds like I'm still working through it. No, but seriously, though, there are the Aggies.

John Dehlin [02:34:35] You did get an mba, you know, I do.

Rod Osborne [02:34:37] I have Utah State, you know, and, and, and when they're playing, I cheer for them. And Weber State, I, you know, went to Weber.

Nan Osborne [02:34:47] It's going to be hard to cheer for somebody else other than BYU when you're sitting in the middle of BYU season two. Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:34:53] And no, again, I want them to do well. And it's sometimes a little triggering to be There, you know, it's a little triggering to be amidst all of that, but for sure, probably one of the hard things is dealing with, you know, friends that are still in.

Rod Osborne [02:35:21] And I think Nan's had a harder. You know, Nan's had some experiences where that are, you know, it's tricky sometimes. You never want to show disrespect to your friends. You know, we still love all of our active Mormon friends. You know, none of that has changed. You know, our personal feelings about them as the great people that they are.

Rod Osborne [02:35:47] We still honor them and hold them in high esteem. I never want to make someone that is a member of the church feel like we think they are less than us because we left. We have a good friend who. Who recently I said, hey, you know, we were talking and I had a reason to say, I love my Mormon friends, and everyone is on their own journey.

Rod Osborne [02:36:20] We were, you know, three years ago, we were as in as anybody, you know, and that can change. And we didn't want anybody at that time to judge us and look down upon us because, you know, because of what we believed at that time, and in our hearts, we believed and we were trying to do the right thing, and we really believed we were doing the right thing. So, you know, I said, you know, I think I'd be a hypocrite if I criticize you for staying in the church when I didn't want anybody to criticize me when I was in the church. And I get that. And she said, what's that?

Nan Osborne [02:37:00] And then what did she say?

Rod Osborne [02:37:02] She said, thank you for saying that. I thought you guys thought I was stupid. And, wow, you know, we don't want to make anybody feel that way. We just do not. And I hope they don't. But I think it's, you know, so I think it happens. And I think we have to make an effort to try to make people feel like they're not. I remember when we were TBMs, 100% in. It's not easy to deal with somebody that, you know, has left the church and they have their reasons for leaving the church.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:52] Church.

Rod Osborne [02:37:53] And you think they have some resentment toward you as a member of the church. Right. I mean, that's what I thought when I was a member. It's hard. Even though you don't want to think about that, you don't want to think that they have resentment, it still affects how you relate to them personally.

Rod Osborne [02:38:12] And we have to work so that our friends who are still in the church don't feel like we have animosity or resentment toward them. I think the responsibility is on us to do that, and that's a hard thing.

Rod Osborne [02:38:33] We have people that we know and love that don't want to watch the documentary. They won't watch Mormon no More because it says Mormon no More. They think, okay, this. This is going to criticize our church. It's going to criticize the thing that's most important to me in the whole world. So, therefore, I've been taught not to watch stuff like that, and I'm not going to do it.

Rod Osborne [02:38:55] They don't realize that that documentary is just a story of our family, and it would be fun for them to watch it, but that's okay. And we don't want them to feel like we look down upon them because they didn't.

Nan Osborne [02:39:12] When my brother and sister left the church together, it's been quite a few years ago. I felt like they viewed me as naive, as unwilling to really look and study the church. I had in my mind, you guys think you're evolved and that you're so enlightened and that you look at me like I am just somebody who's blindly following along. And they never said anything to me that was unkind, ever.

Nan Osborne [02:39:52] That was just what my perception was of them and what I thought they were thinking of me. And. But when I look at that now and how I behaved when they left, I didn't say, please tell me more.

Nan Osborne [02:40:05] Why are you leaving? Tell me the reasons. I want to hear what you've been studying. I didn't say that it was uncomfortable. It was. I didn't want to know all those things because I knew the church was true. So I don't need to hear all this talk about it.

Nan Osborne [02:40:22] I want to say one little thing. When we moved here, one of our friends showed us their new house. And in the basement, they have a huge room specifically for food storage. And it has got enough food storage in there to save all the people in Provo.

Nan Osborne [02:40:42] And it was just amazing. They have water. They have manuals of telling you what you should eat first and how to make sure the water's still clean and how much each person's going to need to drink. And they've been to prepper stuff.

Rod Osborne [02:40:56] They are preppers.

Nan Osborne [02:40:57] And they have been to church classes, and they have. The manuals are all put out by the church on how to save yourself when there's a terrible earthquake or an apocalypse or whatever. And when we left their house, I said to Rod, they have this. This couple we know has a lot of grandkids. So many. I don't know how many. And I said, do you think there's more chance of one of their grandkids leaving the church or one of their kids coming out as gay or Than Jesus returning or an earthquake where they're gonna need to use all that? And I said, the church has spent so much time and energy over the last 30 years telling us to be prepared for when Jesus comes again or when there's an earthquake or a flood or whatever, and we have all the food storage and we know what we're doing to save us.

Nan Osborne [02:41:55] And now even these people had a whole room for it. I said, show me a house with a room that says this room is for difficult conversations. This room is a room where you can talk to your kids when they break your heart. Why doesn't the church have classes on that? Because the members are far more likely to experience that than any earthquake or

John Dehlin [02:42:23] new kid comes out as gay.

Nan Osborne [02:42:24] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:42:25] Or loses their faith.

Nan Osborne [02:42:26] Any difficult conversation. At church, we don't talk about our hard things. That's not a place where you can bring up, oh, I'm having a hard time in my marriage or, oh, you know, this isn't going well and my kids are doing this. You don't talk about that. It's a place where everybody tries to look as perfect as they can. And. And I feel like, why don't we all have stacks of manuals on one that says how to talk to your kid when they come out of the closet. How do you talk to your kids when they leave the church? Yes.

Rod Osborne [02:43:03] Can I respond to that?

John Dehlin [02:43:04] Yes.

Rod Osborne [02:43:05] It's because you have a member of the First Presidency in General Conference saying that it is our responsibility as a church to oppose any effort to blur what is a traditional family or homogenize gender. Oppose. It is our responsibility to oppose gay people or transgender people or non binary people or any. Any other non heterosexual relationships or gender orientation. That's why is because the membership gets that message from the top.

Nan Osborne [02:43:55] Well, when we finally build our house, I'm going to put a sign on one of the rooms that says, this is the room for difficult conversation. Because I believe that the quality of your life is largely dependent on the number of difficult conversations you are willing to have. And I didn't know that before. I didn't have a difficult conversation in my marriage or with raising kids for 30 years. I just kept it in and wow. Coming to the recognition that having difficult or awkward conversations about difficult things is what leads you to a better life, I am so happy to Know that now.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:44] Yeah, yeah. All right. I have one final question for you.

John Dehlin [02:44:48] That was beautiful, by the way.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:49] That was beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:44:50] Super powerful. Super powerful.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:53] All about it.

John Dehlin [02:44:54] Thank you.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:55] Is with your marriage. So if we were going to talk about kind of earlier, when we were in your earlier years, and this idea of. I mean, if you connect to the visual of burning down a marriage and building a new one, how would you describe now, your partnership and what some of the components in your rebuild are? Okay.

John Dehlin [02:45:22] Not like, putting them on the spot, Mark.

Rod Osborne [02:45:24] No, that's okay.

Nan Osborne [02:45:25] I want you to talk about that. And how did we burn down the old one? And what are we doing for the new one?

Margi Dehlin [02:45:33] Hmm. And that can be activities you do together, I think.

Rod Osborne [02:45:43] Yeah. I think, you know, it was, you know, Nan's having this inner turmoil that I didn't know existed, at least to the degree that it was making her ill, you know, and it was making her really suffer. I didn't know that. When she decided, okay, I am going to do something about this, it was like a giant surprise to me. I don't think I'm. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm unique. I think this happens a lot, particularly in a high demand religion kind of experience where the. The husband is supposed to be the grand poobah of everything and the woman is supposed to follow. When she finally decided that she needed to talk, that was difficult for me to wrap my teeth around. Or wrap. What am I going to wrap my teeth around?

John Dehlin [02:46:55] Anything?

Rod Osborne [02:46:56] I don't think so, but to wrap my head around. I thought everything was fine, and obviously she didn't. So it was difficult for me to adjust to her saying everything isn't fine and then working through all of that. And we've done it for years now.

Nan Osborne [02:47:19] And how has our journey out of the church affected that?

Rod Osborne [02:47:25] I think things are better now. I think. For. I think it's easier to communicate because we can really talk about real feelings without the filter of, okay. I can't say that because it would look like I'm not faithful.

Rod Osborne [02:47:52] I can't say something because the rules say that a woman is supposed to be respectful to her husband. Shouldn't say things like that. And, like, for me, I am really thankful that we can now be more honest with each other without a cloud over our heads of judgment.

Rod Osborne [02:48:29] I think we both judged each other, you know, through the lens of the church. I think we would both probably take advantage if we could find a fault, and we could use that in a way that, you know, we could weaponize that we would do it.

Rod Osborne [02:48:50] That's not healthy at all. And I think we're a lot less likely to do that now that were out. And we. I think talking about leaving the church and the issues that we had in leaving, I think particularly Sally coming out, caused us to have to talk about hard things.

Rod Osborne [02:49:19] And that's been. That's been healthy for us. And I think we talked about. We talk better now about hard things than we did before.

Nan Osborne [02:49:28] I feel like just like cancer forced me to express some of my needs because I physically couldn't take care of myself, and it forced me to reevaluate my worth. Leaving the church and taking away the certainty of life before. Doesn't matter what question you asked me, I could have answered it with certainty and it would have been straight out of the church handbook.

Nan Osborne [02:50:02] Now I don't even know if there is an afterlife, let alone what it's going to look like. So instead of suffering as a good martyr would do, and saying, you know, in the next life, our marriage will be great, because in heaven, everybody's going to be perfect and great.

Nan Osborne [02:50:22] I don't do that anymore. If I'm having a hard time, I say, hey, Rod, we need to work this out. Because I don't know if I've even got a next life. And so now I see the value in taking care of myself now, not in. Everything I do is for the future. Teaching my kids so that they will go on missions, so that they will go on and have families that stay in the church. Everything was about future, future, future. Now that's been taken away.

Nan Osborne [02:50:55] So now I don't do anything for what's gonna happen in the next life. I do it for, is this gonna make us happier now? Is this gonna be for the good of the world or for us? And it's surprisingly feels so good. Surprising. I am so surprised with how good I feel. I thought it wasn't going to go this way. And I am so happy. And I'm finding the joy in taking ownership and not before I would tell you, oh, faith is everything in my faith is what brings me joy. Now I'm like, I can handle this. I'll answer that question for myself. I don't need to pray and go to the handbook and go to the bishop or whatever I used to do.

Nan Osborne [02:51:38] Now I can say, this is what I think is best and try that. So I think Rod didn't know that our marriage was rough for a long time. And now maybe you don't recognize how much it's changed and how good it is. And how things are better. And I do. And I'm really happy. Really.

Rod Osborne [02:52:04] I do. I recognize it's better.

Nan Osborne [02:52:06] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:06] Yeah. One thing I did notice, too, just in talking with you, is companionship. It does feel like in those early years where you were split parallel doing that thing that when I see you and when you describe your life or what you're up to, that there is a lot of, whether that's skiing or whether that's, you know, socializing and being with friends, that there's a shared life for sure now.

Nan Osborne [02:52:35] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:52:36] I think we're much more emotionally connected because we understand that's important and we work at it. Nan and I have always done stuff together. I mean, we've run 11 marathons together, and we trained for all those over the years. You know, we would.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:53] It's a lot of marathons, people, you

Rod Osborne [02:52:55] know, and we started a long time ago, and we run one every couple years, probably. And, you know, we did a lot of stuff together. We were, you know, that's why it was so hard for me to say. What, you're not happy? Because we do a whole lot of stuff together.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:14] Yeah.

Rod Osborne [02:53:14] You know, but. Yeah, but here we are and. And we love each other and we try harder and things are good.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:22] That's great.

Rod Osborne [02:53:23] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:24] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:53:26] Well, Nan and Rod, what a powerful, entertaining, and epic healing, informative Mormon story.

Nan Osborne [02:53:36] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:53:36] Thanks so much.

Rod Osborne [02:53:38] It's been great to be here.

John Dehlin [02:53:39] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:53:40] Yeah. We hope somebody else out there listening who's worried about the ramifications of leaving or what they're going to do and all that can get a little. Get another experience. Experience of hope from us that says it's going to be okay.

Rod Osborne [02:53:56] There is happy life after you leave the church.

Nan Osborne [02:53:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:54:00] And I'll just plug a few resources that were mentioned and maybe a few that weren't. I can tell from the way Sal and maybe your son reached out to you that they watched some of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast and resources, that whole canoe lifeboat, you know, that.

Nan Osborne [02:54:18] That.

John Dehlin [02:54:18] That's from retreats and things Margi and I and Natasha did. So check out Gift of the Mormon faith crisis@mormonfaithcrisis.com if you need support in navigating your journey. Of course. CES Letter is a really good resource for learning about the church, along with the LDS discussion series that we've done on Mormon stories and many other good resources, I want to make sure people know about the Utah Valley post Mormon community. Check that out. Waka. Women of a certain age, if you're 40 or above particularly. That's a fantastic community. To receive support. Check out thrive@thrivebeyondreligion.com There'll be upcoming events and even local communities that you can join and support groups or you can start one if you want. There's, there's four or five Thrive activities planned just for this year alone and many more to come, including a cruise, including Thrive for.

Post-Mormon Resources and Closing Thoughts

Nan Osborne [02:55:17] Yeah, can I, can I talk about the women's conference coming?

John Dehlin [02:55:20] Oh yeah. Thrive for Women.

Nan Osborne [02:55:21] Yeah. So I'm on the planning committee. It's a women's conference for Thrive women, any age, women. And you don't have to be out of the church to come. You can be anywhere in there and come. It's going to be at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.

Nan Osborne [02:55:40] It's on June 2nd and 3rd, which is a Friday, Saturday. It's a two day event. So if you want to, you know, come to it, you get two whole days out of it. You can fly in and stay.

Nan Osborne [02:55:52] We have 10 speakers coming that are going to present. We have Anthony Miller, Natasha Helfer, Samantha from Zelf on the Shelf. We have Gabby, who Gabby Accord, who is a therapist. We have two or three therapists. We have a music therapist, a meditation person that's going to help us learn about that when we get uptight.

Nan Osborne [02:56:19] We have good food planned. It's a two day all day event and it is going to be great. So if you go on the Thrive community page, you will see that you can buy tickets for that now there. It's just going to be really awesome.

John Dehlin [02:56:38] All right. And that's thrivebeyondreligion.com yes. Also there's a for, for post Mormon women in their 20s and 30s. There's a group called Faith Journey Meetups. That's the Facebook. That's the name of the Facebook group. But then there's the Lost and Found Club which is kind of the events that they have run by our friend Chelsea Homer. If you're in a mixed faith marriage, the Marriage on a Tightrope podcast can be really, really valuable as well. Yeah. So I just wanted to make sure people know about those resources and we'll try and include links to all those things in our show. Notes. Margi, it's so lovely to have you

Margi Dehlin [02:57:20] as my co pilot was such a great one. Thank you both so much.

Rod Osborne [02:57:25] Thank you, Margi. It was really good.

Nan Osborne [02:57:27] Thanks for asking.

Rod Osborne [02:57:28] Thanks for the opportunity.

John Dehlin [02:57:29] Yeah, thanks again. You guys are amazing and this has been really special. So thank you. Okay, thanks and thanks everyone for joining us. On Mormon Stories today, if you value this content and want to see it continue, you can go to MormonStories.org and become a monthly donor. And for as long as you'll support us, we'll keep doing this work, work.

Nan Osborne [02:57:48] Can I say one more thing, John? Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:57:52] Our daughter Sal is a coming out coach.

John Dehlin [02:57:56] Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:57:57] She helps people come out of religion, A high demand religion like Mormonism or come out of the closet.

John Dehlin [02:58:03] Yeah. She does as lgbtq, right? Yeah.

Nan Osborne [02:58:07] She does one on one counseling. She does. They have retreats. Their next one is in the fall at Park City. She has a podcast called Peace Out Podcast. And anybody would benefit by following her, by listening to that. But especially if you have something big in your life that you're trying to, you know, if you're worried about telling your parents one of these hard decisions, she's the girl to go to.

John Dehlin [02:58:37] So what's the website? What's Sal's website?

Nan Osborne [02:58:39] I think it's Sal and Lena. There's also a new YouTube page, YouTube channel called the Rainbow Squad, which is what the seven kids call themselves. And they have that up and going.

John Dehlin [02:58:56] It's SallyandLina.com, i think.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:59] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:58:59] And then.

Nan Osborne [02:59:00] Yeah, and I'll check that out for sure and give you that for the show notes. Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:59:05] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:59:06] And then on. On YouTube, you're saying it's rainbow.

Nan Osborne [02:59:09] The Rainbow Squad.

John Dehlin [02:59:10] Rainbow Squad. All right, we'll try and include.

Nan Osborne [02:59:12] And it's the shenanigans of their seven little kids who are like, it's a circus 24 hours a day at their house.

Rod Osborne [02:59:20] Cute little kids. Really cute.

John Dehlin [02:59:23] And Lena's doing some stuff on Instagram.

Nan Osborne [02:59:26] Oh, yeah, Lena. Sally's on. On Instagram as the coming out coach. Lena is on Instagram as becoming Lena. Lena is a Kundalini yoga teacher, which if you don't know what Kundalini is, it's kind of a spiritual type of yoga. She's amazing. She's an energy healer. She does a lot for people. So she also does one on one help for people. And the two of them together put on these retreats that have turned out to be a phenomenal success. So I recommend both of them highly.

John Dehlin [03:00:05] All right, beautiful.

Nan Osborne [03:00:06] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:00:08] Hi, Salina. You guys take care and thanks so much, Nan and Rod. It's so fun to have you all here on the Wasatch front.

Nan Osborne [03:00:16] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:00:17] Let's have lots of fun together.

Nan Osborne [03:00:18] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:00:18] All right. Thanks, Margi. Love you. See y' all again soon. Another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care of.

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