The Still Small Voice

I wanna live a life like that

Live the life of the faithful one

Wanna bow to the floor

With everybody else

Wanna be someone

I wanna make some love

I don't want no enemies

Oh, it's a curse of the man

Always living life, living life

Living just to please

Oh, the mouth of the river

And the wrath of the giver

With the hands of a sinner

On the mouth of the river

[Imagine Dragons - "Mouth of the River"]

I married Michelle Arnett over President's Day weekend in February 2000. It was a relatively small ceremony in one of the sealing rooms of the Mt. Timpanogos LDS temple (in American Fork, UT). I'd been home from my mission a little over eight months by that point, and I'd known Michelle just over four months.

 

Things happened so fast, but we both believed God had inspired our decisions — that he had wanted us to marry as quickly as we did. We were confident that God would bless our faithful response to the promptings that inspired our decisions.

 

In this piece, I revisit those post-mission months and take stock of some of the pivotal experiences that informed our relatively hasty decision to marry (despite some initial family opposition). I’ll also examine how these same experiences shaped our marriage in the decades that followed — perhaps not always for the best. 

 

Summer in New York

 

I spent the summer after my mission at home, in Ilion, NY. That summer was always meant to be transitional as I readied to leave for BYU in the fall. For those few months, I worked a temporary office job and awkwardly tried to re-adjust to "normal" life. At the same time, I hoped to keep hold of the spiritual habits I'd developed as a missionary. I also made token efforts toward readying for a tryout for the BYU basketball team, though even by then, my knees could barely handle back-to-back nights of play.

 

A few important things about that summer that play into the rest of this story. First, Dad lost his job within a week of my return from Northern California. At the time, he thought he'd quickly find work elsewhere, but he didn't. This particular bout of unemployment, it turned out, would carry well into the following year.

 

The mounting financial pressure eventually put a heavy strain on things at home.

 

Something else to consider is some counsel (actually, more of a directive) Mom gave me in the day or two before I left for BYU. She pulled me aside one evening and, in no uncertain terms (without any explanation), told me I could not consider getting married until I'd been home from my mission for at least a year.  

 

I laughed off the thought at the time because I'd yet to even meet anyone — no one was getting married anytime soon.

 

Mom didn't laugh, though. As I remember it, she just gave me one of those looks that only mothers seem  capable of.

 

One more thing: I mentioned, in my first post in this series, that after Dad's mission, he had resolved that he wouldn't even kiss another girl until he was married. He said this vow of chastity was to protect him from ever crossing the line into inappropriate behavior. He’d also told me how important it had been for him to prove that his connection with his future spouse was more than just physical.

 

I really wanted to measure up to my father. And in my mind, it was my way of further atoning for those pre-mission mistakes (at least as I thought of them back then). So I took up same pledge with God: I would not kiss another girl until I was married.

 

No big deal.

 

BYU: Marriage Factory

 

At BYU, I spent the fall 1999 semester in Heritage Halls — BYU's on campus apartment-style housing. The buildings at Heritage were all divided into congregations, so my apartment building (all males) and the adjacent buildings (all females) were one ward.

 

Michelle was in one of those adjacent buildings.

 

The bishop and counselors for these young singles wards were typically chosen from the local community in Provo, UT. The bishop over our ward, Bishop Freeze, had apparently once played football for BYU.

 

It might be worth mentioning again, but BYU is owned and run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its student body of roughly 34,000 is around 97% Mormon. To attend the school, students need a yearly ecclesiastical endorsement and must agree to the school's Honor Code (essentially to live up to church standards of modesty, chastity, tithing, and the Word of Wisdom [health code]) to be able to attend.

 

About 25% of the undergraduates at BYU are married (75% of graduate students). Those figures are high, though I thought they’d be higher based on my personal experience.

 

The marriage phenomenon at BYU is a reflection (1) of the church's heavy emphasis on traditional families and starting early (e.g., in my departing missionary interview with President Checketts, he told me then that it was time to start looking in earnest for the girl I would marry – he apparently hadn’t spoken with my mother), and (2) the prohibition on just about all forms of sexual expression and stimulation prior to marriage — beyond heterosexual kissing (which, again, I'd also sworn off). 

 

I had, of course, known this about the school.  Frankly, it was part of the draw — having a dating pool of women who were members of the same faith, held to the same standards, and ostensibly wanted the same things in life.

 

I just hadn't expected the marriage push to be quite so overt.

 

For instance, in our student ward that semester, Bishop Freeze's agenda, aside from managing callings and meetings (and warning us against chastity violations), seemed to focus ward activities on forcing interactions between the sexes (and then sitting back to watch sparks fly). Further, at one of our first stake meetings, one of the counselor's spoke to the men about our "spiritual obligation to date the sisters."

 

The Meet Cute

 

There's some dispute between us, but I first remember meeting Michelle over at her apartment building with a group of people playing games (Mad Gab). At the time, she seemed particularly flirty with someone else.

 

Michelle, meanwhile, is sure we would've met before then (it's possible, as I taught a Sunday School class she'd attended the week before). Then there was the afternoon I walked by an open window in her apartment, and she started talking to me through the window (I blundered and asked if her name was "Melissa"). What intrigued me most about that exchange was Michelle's quick wit and playful sarcasm.

 

What isn’t disputed between the two of us is that in those first few weeks, I had been hanging out a bunch with Michelle's roommate Angelyn. In fact, I would've sworn it was more like dating. That is, until Angelyn told me, on successive evenings, that she was "so glad we can just be friends."

 

I thought I understood her meaning perfectly.

 

The next day in ward council (I'd been called as the ward Sunday School president), Bishop Freeze wanted names for people to be my Sunday School counselors (who had to be male) and a secretary (who apparently did not). For the secretary position, he suggested I choose a female. I don't remember if he said it out loud or just with his eyebrows, but I got the distinct impression from Bishop Freeze that I should choose someone I'd be interested in dating.

 

I chose Michelle Arnett.

 

That night, with her calling now extended by the bishopric, our apartment had dinner with hers (and Angelyn's). During the meal, I was visibly stressed about a looming assignment in my Political Science 200 class. I noted in my journal that Michelle had noticed and asked what she could do to help.

 

Her attentive thoughtfulness caught me off guard and was immediately endearing. In my journal, I asked "Would it be wrong to ask her on a date?"

 

[Not sure why I was playing coy in the record as I'm fairly sure that had been my plan all along.]

 

Two days later, after a Sunday School presidency meeting, I asked if she would consider having dinner with me that Friday. She (apparently playfully) responded that she'd "have to check [her] planner" before quickly afterward saying "yes." 

 

[Asking Michelle out unwittingly caused a bit of a stir in her apartment when Angelyn learned — it seems that "I'm glad we can be just friends" can mean different things to different people, though it all smoothed out soon enough.]

 

For that first date, I bought Michelle a flower: a pink Gerbera daisy. I’d also rented a movie (Disney's "Hercules") and bought some cookie dough ice cream. [When I told Mom about the flower, she wasn't thrilled, worrying I might give Michelle "the wrong impression."] For dinner, we walked down to a nearby Mexican restaurant, El Azteca. Michelle wore overalls and had a toe ring, which at the time struck me as a bit rebellious — though I couldn't say I was aware of any specific church guidance against toe rings.

 

We talked for hours that night, through dinner, through the movie, and then on a walk around campus afterward. I wasn’t sure if this was how dates were supposed to go (it was my first official date post-mission), but I really enjoyed talking with her.

 

Afterward, we found reasons to see each other just about every day the following week.

 

Second Date

 

For our second official date the following Friday, I had Michelle over to play RISK with some of my roommates. I really don't remember the game, just the hours we spent talking afterward. At one point, we discussed seeing a certain musical together, but Michelle then told me the musical had this one part, one song, that included inappropriate language. She would have to decline.

 

That caught my attention, as I realized her personal standards seemed to align with mine (though, being a movie lover, I’d allowed myself to “cheat” on a few occasions and watched things with one or two objectionable parts). 

 

We continued to see each other almost daily afterward and talk late into the evenings.

Homecoming Dance 1999

Homecoming Dance 1999 

The Momentary Breakup

 

It took more than two weeks before I talked to Michelle about putting my arm around her (she said she wouldn't mind). We'd otherwise not had any physical contact. 

 

Also by that point, I had shared very little with my parents — Mom's reaction to the flower thing had not encouraged candor.

 

There are lots of stories from those early days together, including a brief stretch when Michelle "broke up" with me. The breakup lasted about a week, though ironically we still kept seeing each other every day “as friends.” By the end of that following week, Michelle kind of surprised me by telling me she "like[d] [me] more than ever."

 

Her roommates joked at the time that we were the "happiest broken up couple on BYU campus."

Ward Halloween Party 1999 (those are bagel's in Leia's [Michelle's] hair)

For years afterward, when Michelle couldn't articulate why exactly she'd briefly broken things off, I felt that the breakup was some kind of purity test from God (my journal entries reveal that I was really hung up on repeating Dad’s experience – on proving to myself that my attraction to Michelle was more than physical). I'd apparently passed.

 

With hindsight now, as will be evident shortly, my sense is that Michelle was already contemplating the bigger picture for the two of us, and that scared her.

 

"Where is This All Going?"

 

It wasn’t long after we officially got back together (in late October) when Michelle started asking my thoughts on marriage. This took me a bit by surprise.

 

A few days later, Michelle was more explicit, asking me one evening where our relationship was going.

 

[For her part, Michelle otherwise had plans to spend the following semester in Nauvoo, IL. She had also planned on serving a mission.]

 

I was in no rush and mostly contented to let things run their course, but it felt comfortable and natural to talk with Michelle about a future together. This led to a few nights of extended conversation about marriage and what we wanted in life.

 

The more we talked, the more marriage felt like the “right” thing to do.  I mean, at one point, I even showed her the list of goals for my future family, a list I’d been encouraged to make as a youth. I also shared another list of mine – attributes I hoped for in my future wife (a list she famously measured up to, item for item, but for the fact that she couldn't cut hair).

 

It was during those nights of serious conversation that I first told her I loved her. And the more we talked about marriage, the more I began to feel so good about the prospect of spending the rest of my life with her.

 

I had no clue, though, how to approach my parents with this news.

 

It's slightly embarrassing now that that we talked so seriously of marriage so early — I’d known Michelle maybe six weeks by this point.  And while I’d been anxious to date, living out a stereotypical whirlwind BYU love story was not something I ever aspired to (even without Mom’s directive).

 

But this seems to be where church culture (focused on creating traditional families, chastity before marriage, and marrying relatively early in life), and BYU culture specifically, played a heavy role — creating a sense of what's acceptable and supposed to feel right.

 

I also can't ignore that my parents' own engagement after two weeks of courtship would have further normalized this sort of thing.

 

The Holy Ghost

 

And then there is the way the LDS church teaches we're to discern truth and direction from God. 

 

In the church, we are taught that the Holy Ghost is the ultimate teacher of truth. It is “the comforter, the Holy Ghost, which shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance.” [John 14:26].

 

From as early as I can remember, I had learned that the Holy Ghost taught truth through the comforting feelings in your heart: “love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” [Gal. 5:22-23]. Described in scripture as a "still small voice" [e.g., 1 Kings 19:12; 1 Nephi 17:45], Joseph Smith had further observed that it felt like "pure intelligence flowing into you."

 

As a missionary, I had taught and born testimony that the Holy Ghost was how we knew the truth of the Book of Mormon, of Joseph Smith’s claimed visions, and of our church's unique truth claims. It was, after all, one of the final promises in the Book of Mormon — that if we would ask God if these things were true (“with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ”), God would “manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost.” That's because it is “by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” [Moroni 10:4-5].

 

In the Doctrine & Covenants (another book of LDS scripture, comprised mostly of Joseph Smith's revelations), God further specifies that he reveals his will to us by the Holy Ghost: "behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and dwell in your heart." [D&C 8:2]. For God to reveal his will to us, he instructs that we must first “study things out in [our] mind” and then “ask [God] if it be right, and if it is right [God] will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore you shall feel that it is right.” [D&C 9:8 (emphasis added)].

 

This feeling or "still small voice" is how we discern truth from God. Most of the time, though, it will only come when we are worthy and seeking it (unless the Holy Ghost is calling you to repentance).

 

In a very real sense, then, the entirety of one's efforts to faithfully live the gospel is geared toward cultivating this spiritual experience.

 

I should note here, too, that the church teaches that only baptized and confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are eligible for the "gift of the Holy Ghost" (the right to have the Holy Ghost as one's "constant companion" — if worthy). This limitation on eligibility is born out of the belief that the gift must be conferred by God's authority (the priesthood), and that his authority resides exclusively within the mainstream LDS church (conferred first to Joseph Smith, both by John the Baptist [the "lesser" or "Aaronic" priesthood] and later Peter, James, and John [the "Melchizedek" Priesthood]).

 

Those not baptized and confirmed members of the church may still feel the Holy Ghost's "influence" from time to time, but they cannot enjoy his constant presence. [Hence one of the chief reasons to bring others into the faith.]

 

For my part, from the time of my MTC experience, I had spent a tremendous amount of energy learning to discern this voice, to feel this feeling. And by this point in the narrative, I was confident I knew what it felt like.

 

[Admittedly, though, the supposed reality that I could "constantly" enjoy this feeling always seemed beyond my reach.  I typically attributed this to some fault of my own — unworthiness, laziness, inattentiveness, etc. Or perhaps just not being discerning enough to recognize feelings that *must* have been there all along.]

 

So, as Michelle and I talked further of marriage, and as I “stud[ied] things out in [my] mind,” I took my good feelings — feelings of my “bosom burning” — as a witness from God about the direction we should head in. It certainly also helped that Michelle seemed to be feeling the same thing.

 

More and more, it really felt to me like God wanted us to get married.

 

"Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence"

 

One afternoon, however, Michelle felt doubtful about the course we were charting. She was so young, and marriage was going to upend all her plans.

 

I didn't know what to do with her doubts. I didn't know how to assuage them, or if I should even try.

 

I just knew what I had felt.

 

By evening, though, as we sat to talk further, Michelle seemed to have resolved her doubts (at least for the moment). She had found confidence, apparently, in a devotional address that apostle Jeffrey R. Holland had given at BYU the prior spring. The title of his remarks, borrowed from Paul's sermon in Hebrews 10, was "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence."

 

It is a remarkable sermon, the purpose of which is to combat the feelings of doubt and discouragement that often come after God has inspired you with guidance.  Holland ascribes those doubting feelings to the devil, and Holland’s message is to trust those first feelings of "genuine illumination" and move forward.

 

Notably speaking to our very situation at the time, Holland specifically counseled young couples considering marriage:

 

This opposition turns up almost anyplace something good has happened. It can happen when you are trying to get an education. It can hit you after your first month in your new mission field. It certainly happens in matters of love and marriage. (Now I am back to those returned missionaries.) I would like to have a dollar for every person in a courtship who knew he or she had felt the guidance of the Lord in that relationship, had prayed about the experience enough to know it was the will of the Lord, knew they loved each other and enjoyed each other’s company, and saw a lifetime of wonderful compatibility ahead—only to panic, to get a brain cramp, to have total catatonic fear sweep over them. They “draw back,” as Paul said, if not into perdition at least into marital paralysis.

I am not saying you shouldn’t be very careful about something as significant and serious as marriage. And I certainly am not saying that a young man can get a revelation that he is to marry a certain person without that young woman getting the same confirmation. I have seen a lot of those one-way revelations in young people’s lives. Yes, there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been genuine illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts. You can find an apartment. You can win over your mother-in-law. You can sell your harmonica and therein fund one more meal. It’s been done before. Don’t give in. Certainly don’t give in to that being who is bent on the destruction of your happiness. He wants everyone to be miserable like unto himself. Face your doubts. Master your fears. “Cast not away therefore your confidence.” Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you. (emphasis added)

 

I'd never heard this address before, but as Michelle read it to me, Holland's words gave me goose bumps. Surely, then, it must be God telling us to get married!

 

Parents and Doubts

 

By this point, I still hadn't really talked to my parents about the fact that Michelle and I were serious — other than to hint that we were still dating. They had yet to meet her, or even to talk to her. In fact, I'm not sure they even knew what she looked like.

 

I note again, too, that Dad was still out of work. Mom, meanwhile, was in nursing school.

 

That Sunday, October 31, 1999, after talking through things further with Michelle, I resolved to tell my parents. I didn't expect excitement from them, but I hoped for some kind of warmth and reassurance.

 

That turned out to be too much to hope for from Mom. At the news that Michelle and I were now strongly considering marriage, she had almost nothing to say to me. Her silence stung, and it seemed like it was meant to sting.

 

Dad's response, though, reflected a shift from the discordant relationship of my youth. He listened sympathetically, and then offered counsel that still stirs my heart today: "Find out what is right and do it, regardless of other influences."

 

[After coming across this again while writing this piece, I like to believe this is how Dad would have ultimately responded if he'd been around to see me leave the faith.]

 

Dad then advised me to be cautious, and he shared insights from a similar time in his life (when he and Mom were dating). His words gave me hope that all would be well at home.

 

Into the next week, doubts and concerns persisted, at least at times, with Michelle. One evening she wondered aloud if it were really the right thing to get married. What if this was "simply another learning experience" for her?

 

I wasn't accustomed to this sort of back and forth (once I staked out a position, it was hard to move me off it). So I had a hard time not feeling her doubts were about me — maybe she just didn't love me enough? But as I left Michelle that evening, her uneasiness started to make me feel uneasy. I told her that I wanted to find out (from God), as soon as I could, whether it was "really right."

 

Michelle nodded but then wondered aloud as we parted "What if the answer is 'no'?" 

 

Those words hung in the air as I made my way home. They felt ominous. Looking back now, it's clear I'd only had a small peak into all of the concerns and considerations swirling around in Michelle’s mind.

 

After I left Michelle that night, my journal indicates I essentially spent the rest of the evening "studying things out" and carefully analyzing my feelings over the preceding weeks. Since Michelle had read me Holland's talk, I'd also reviewed and analyzed his words at least a half-dozen times — all in an earnest effort to try to figure out what God wanted for me. That night I wrote in my journal that I "have not, per se, received confirmation from the Lord that she is right [the right one to marry], though it is what I have often felt."

 

I then resolved to fast and make my way to the temple the next morning to seek "answers and revelation" from God.

 

[It makes me more than a little sad now to look back at how quickly things went from fun, intriguing, and exciting to a rather desperate "us against the world/does God want us to be together?" frame of reference. For a host of reasons, it would've been good if we could've just dated a while longer before getting "serious."]

 

A Defining Spiritual Experience

 

The next morning, November 4, 1999, I awoke with everything feeling wrong about Michelle and me. I don’t know how to explain what was happening in psychological terms.  But borrowing from one of Joseph Smith's first vision accounts, perhaps a slightly less life-threatening version of this description: "thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction."

 

Initially, it took a concentrated effort just to roll out of bed, kneel, and meekly ask God to simply "help me."

 

The uneasiness did not subside, though. And as I got ready for the day, I felt generally terrible, like I was carrying a heavy weight around as I moved about.

 

I didn't understand these feelings: I believed Michelle was perfect for me — from what I knew, she was everything I had ever wanted in a wife and companion. But that morning, I only felt confusion.

 

Those feelings later reached a fever pitch in class, where I recorded in my planner the following thought (again, borrowing heavily from Joseph Smith’s language and experience): "I feel as though darkness has gathered around me and I am weighed down by near despair. I cannot remove the burden myself. Someone must needs lift it from me, and I sense there is only one who can lift it."

 

Still, the internal chaos remained for perhaps another 1/2 hour. Until, inexplicably, I felt the weight lifted. Peace took the place of my anxiety and confusion.

 

[This had happened to me once before, in the post-confessional days at the MTC (when I similarly felt like I was in total turmoil, and I described the burden as having been suddenly taken from me)].

 

While still sitting in that class, I wrote further in my planner that I felt strongly Michelle should come home to New York with me over Christmas break.

 

After class, I walked home, along the way trying to examine the peace I felt (and hoping it would linger for awhile).

 

I then dressed in my Sunday best and walked to the Provo Temple (a few blocks away). As I walked, I talked with God aloud, telling him that I was going to present my case to him for Michelle, and that I intended to seek revelation. I wanted an answer, but I knew I couldn't expect one — I could only ask for it.

 

After I arrived at the temple and readied, I sat in the chapel, waiting for the endowment session to begin. That's when the answer came.

 

I picked up a nearby copy of the scriptures and was about to start reading in the Book of Mormon.  But then I felt like I should, instead, look through the Doctrine & Covenants. I happened upon D&C Section 6 — a revelation given to Joseph Smith concerning Oliver Cowdery, who apparently had a “witness” of the Book of Mormon's truth but sought from God an additional witness. By time I had read to verse 14, it felt like God was speaking to me directly in those verses:

 

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, blessed art thou for what thou hast done; for thou hast inquired of me, and behold, as often as thou hast inquired thou has received instruction of my Spirit. If it had not been so, thou wouldst not have come to the place where thou art at this time.” (Emphasis added)

 

In the verses that followed, God further told me that I should know that I had "been enlightened by the Spirit of truth" (v. 15) — that the feelings I had felt (the good, confirming feelings) had come from him.

 

I then read through verses 18-20, intuitively now substituting Michelle's and my name for Joseph's and Oliver's, and again feeling like this had all been directed to me:

 

18 Therefore be diligent; stand by my servant [Michelle], faithfully, in whatsoever difficult circumstances [she] may be in for the word's sake.

 

19 Admonish [her] in [her] faults, and also receive admonition of [her]. Be patient; be sober; be temperate; have patience, faith, hope and charity.

 

20 Behold, thou art [Aaron], and I have spoken unto thee because of thy desires; therefore treasure up these words in thy heart. Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love.

 

The direct nature of this answer felt so unexpected, so electrifying in the moment. I'd never before (and have never since) been privy to such a "revelatory" experience. It was so reassuring! Not just because it answered my question and provided direction, but because it made me feel like I was special — that God cared enough to remember me and reach me in such a clear and direct manner. 

 

Given the way those temple sessions work, it would be another two hours before I could leave. As soon as I could, though, I raced home to find Michelle and tell her about the experience. I knew God wanted me to marry her, and I could not be shaken from that thought.

 

Engagement and Marriage

 

My temple experience notwithstanding, Michelle would still need to find her own answers — her own certainty. Her story is her own, and I'll leave it to her to tell, if she chooses.

 

By week's end, though, she had cancelled her plans to study in Nauvoo the next semester.

 

That Sunday, we met with our bishop to tell him we planned to marry. He warned us not to procrastinate things and to "play it safe" (though he laughed at the idea that we hadn't kissed yet).

 

By the following Tuesday (11/9), we'd picked out an engagement ring.

 

That evening, I walked her to the nearby Carillon Bell Tower, got down on one knee, and officially proposed (bless my heart). Michelle said "yes," and we hugged.

Shortly after she said "Yes" - November 9, 1999

 

My resolve not to kiss Michelle until we married would melt a few days later, mostly at Michelle’s urging.

 

[Working through the guilt I felt afterward (of breaking the promise I'd made to God) brought up all sorts of feelings and is another story.]

 

As for my parents, Mom did not take the news well, telling me that night that she would not come to the wedding. It was so unfortunate, because I didn’t feel like I could share with her the sacred experiences bringing me to that point. And, frankly, it hurt that she seemed so dismissive, both of my decision and the careful spiritual process I’d worked through — the same process they’d engrained in me for all those years — to reach that decision.

 

[And this is where I now have a gentler view of things. The growing financial distress caused by Dad’s continued unemployment, on top of the heavy demands of Mom’s schooling and my 7 siblings still at home, had so frayed things there that the stress and implications of marrying off her first born were simply more than she could bear at the time. I can hardly imagine living day after day, month after month, with all of that stress and anxiety.]

 

But as it was then, I only saw Mom’s opposition as a stumbling block and test of my faith — would I do what God asked of me, even when I knew my mother would be furious with me for it?

 

Yes, I would, though my resolve was rather heavy-hearted.

 

This became especially true after we "felt" God wanted us to move the wedding up from April to February. Advancing the date engendered no good will with either family, but we'd both felt the same "still small voice" on that point, too. And it aligned with the prophetic counsel (as well as our bishop's) not to delay marriage — the same counsel my parents had surely followed with their swift engagement.

 

[Also, for both Michelle and me, it felt entirely within God's character back then to ask us to do hard things that he knew would upset people we loved — possibly even just to test our faith.]

 

Tensions seemed to ease, though, by Christmas break. I flew with Michelle to meet her family in Arizona. She later flew out to New York to meet mine. The face-to-face interactions melted most of any lingering resistance, and I felt like my parents were thereafter unified in helping us move forward.

 

Ilion Marina - December 1999

And then we married that February.

 

Winning the Lottery

 

In so many ways, I really won the lottery in marrying Michelle.  She is beautiful and multi-talented, of course, but we also share an affinity for quality cheap eats, tasty desserts, and dry humor. On that last point, she's so funny, too. And witty. And playful. And few things in the world delight me more than making her genuinely laugh.

 

Candy Bars on Chocolate Cake Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

At the same time, she’s driven and competitive, and she loathes losing almost as much as I do. This has made her formidable at most board games and Dr. Mario (and I just outright advise against challenging her in Scattergories). 

 

I will begrudgingly admit, too, that Michelle is a bit more studious than I am (and far better read). She's also at least as intellectually engaging. Her meticulous organization and attention to detail, meanwhile, are almost unrivaled, which often frustrates me when my shortcomings in these areas come under scrutiny.

 

On budgetary matters, Michelle is naturally frugal, and we share similar sensibilities about how to handle money (though I have to again concede she's generally the more practical of the two of us — except when it comes to managing the thermostat). Her willingness to do with less enabled my career in public service.

2009 Family Photo

In larger social gatherings, I can count on Michelle to be the social butterfly and happily engage in the small talk that quickly exhausts me.  And though I do not share her natural affinity for exploring, hiking, road trips, bird watching, and (especially in recent years) theater and performance, her pleasure in these activities usually leaves me wishing I could find something, anything that brought me half as much joy.

 

Easily, though, what most impresses me about Michelle is how she's carried herself over the years with unfailing integrity. A private person with her share of private battles (including often with me), I've watched as she's become increasingly confident in her own sense of self, while confronting seemingly impossible circumstances with gritty persistence. All this, and she is innately kind in ways that are so far beyond me, but that I aspire to nonetheless.

 

As for our spiritual moorings, we were both such rule followers! And our months of courtship and engagement set the tone for how we approached the decades that followed: hewing closely to orthodoxy and trying very hard to properly hit all the marks set for faithful Mormons. This, we both believed, was the path most pleasing to God, and we believed our reward would be happiness. Certainly, at the very least, a happy family.

2015 Family Photo

So – Happily Ever After?

What perhaps is not widely known, though, is that happiness as a couple proved elusive for most of our marriage.

 

I won’t offer a full recounting of our difficulties here. I can say, though, that many of them stemmed from Michelle’s recurrent battles with depression, as well as her struggles with the limited role assigned to her in Mormon orthodoxy as a young, married (and fertile) woman (and please do not mistake my parsing of those two factors to imply that they were not deeply interwoven).

 

I mentioned this in my first post in this series, but the faithful imperative for women in the LDS church was (and largely still is) stay-at-home motherhood. It is a woman’s “highest calling,” and God’s “divine design” is for a mother to make the nurture of her children her “primary responsib[ility]” (fathers, meanwhile, get to “preside over their families” and provide the “the necessities of life and protection”).  

Many women seem to find perfect contentment in that assigned role, and many women would probably give just about anything for the opportunity to fulfill it. For Michelle, though, whose drive and ambition were eclipsed only by her desires to please God, this was a particularly exacting sacrifice. She made it willingly (if reluctantly) because we (she) believed that following this path – God’s path – was the way to true happiness. 

 

So after graduating from BYU, Michelle abandoned the pursuit of further education (which she sorely wanted), deferring to motherhood and my law school ambitions. And as our little family grew, she dutifully stayed home to “nurture” our kids through messes and tantrums, while watching me pursue both fatherhood and a meaningful legal career.

 

As much as Michelle loved our little ones, the promised happiness for her obedience never seemed to materialize. In fact, it often left her frustrated, depressed, and miserable.

 

But as she confronted her serial frustrations and depression, Michelle responded the same way I had to my lack of success as a missionary – the way we are trained to respond in the faith: by assuming she was the problem (certainly not the counsel), and that the answer was to humble herself and somehow be more faithful.

 

Which, long term, worked about as well as if she’d just screamed “Serenity now!”

 

Michelle’s continuing unhappiness and depression (and my frequently unhelpful responses to both) bred lots of finger pointing and resentment (on both sides). And eventually, the discord left an entrenched distance between the two of us. That distance unearthed all sorts of things that I had apparently been carrying around, too – though it took an embarrassing amount of time and effort for me to recognize that I had any latent issues. 

 

For a long stretch of years, things felt increasingly dark and hopeless between us, even as we both felt we were doing our best to comply with all that God required of us.  

 

Do You Trust Me?

 

The fact that each of us stuck things out for as long as we did, for as bleak as things often were, may be the best evidence of how stubbornly faithful we both were — to the God we worshipped, and to the path he'd laid out for us in orthodox Mormonism.

 

One of our marriage counselors (we’ve had several) liked to share with us his adage that "marriage is the ordeal necessary for the perfection of the soul." His description of marriage as an "ordeal" doesn’t conjure many romantic or hopeful images, but it felt real. This same counselor told us, several times over, of his belief that we tend to seek out a partner who will (unintentionally) poke and prod us in the places we are weakest. He saw God's hand in this.

 

For a long time, I thought I did, too.

 

But as the months of counseling stretched into years, the personal growth from all the work of those sessions didn’t seem to bring us any closer together. Somehow, the chasm between us felt wider and more intractable.  

 

During those long years, I really can't count the number of times I felt stuck and hopeless in our marriage. Looking back now, I believe we probably should have divorced. It would have been so much healthier.

 

I never could truly entertain that thought, though. Part of what kept me holding on all those years was that “revelatory” experience from November 4, 1999, and the meaning I attributed to it. Also remarks like Holland’s about trusting and holding tightly to those first feelings of “genuine illumination” — especially when the difficulties and darkness began to mount (or, in our case, linger for years).

 

Whatever anyone else might have counseled me back then, I would not and could not let go of the certainty of that experience — that God had wanted us to be together. And when I contemplated ending our marriage, I usually felt this question come to mind, which I believed from God:

 

Do you trust me?

 

My heart always, eventually responded, “Yes.” Sometimes, though, the response came slower than at others. And sometimes it more closely resembled a resigned sigh. Always it bore a familiar, aching heaviness.

 

For some reason, that colloquy was always just the one question. And it always ended with my single word response. I would sense God’s direction on other matters in my life, but with this most important issue, he grew strangely silent.  

 

Frustrating as that silence was, I found ways to defend it: God’s message was surely plain enough as it was.

 

I shouldn’t give up; I should trust him.

 

As I said, this carried on for years, and I held on as best as I knew how. No matter how dark, how hopeless, how impossible our situation felt, I knew that I couldn't choose to end things. It would displease God. It would go directly against his plan for me, and it would amount to a devastating spiritual failure — a failure to hold true to the most profound spiritual experience of my life.

 

Honestly, though, it often felt like he’d abandoned me. And the irony felt so cruel: when all I wanted in the world was a happy marriage and family, his “plan” for me — at least for this life — seemed to require me to be content with something less.

2018 Family Photo

 

Re-Examining God’s Direction

 

Today, against all hope and probability, I can say that Michelle and I are happily married. I am happier in my marriage than I have ever been, though we are ever a work in progress.

 

I’ll again beg off sharing all the details of that turnabout here. I offer this one curiosity, though: real progress (for me) required finding spiritual grounds to let go of that November 4, 1999, experience — or at least to let go of the meaning I had attributed to it.

 

For me to reach a healthy place in our marriage, I had to be able to let go of the imperative that God wanted me to stay. Or more accurately, I needed to feel like I had God's blessing to let go of our marriage — if that's the direction that I determined was best. And it was important here that God's "blessing" amounted to more than the "you can choose for yourself, but I'll be disappointed with you if you choose wrong" version. [You know, the kind of “choice” I've often given my kids.] 

 

It took me a long time, and a lot of work, to find and hold that space within the faith. 

 

As for what I make of my temple experience now that I no longer believe: it was real (i.e., I did not fake it), though I do not attribute the meaning to it that I once did. I'll share more on how I got here in an upcoming post, but I no longer believe that the feelings I attributed to the "Holy Ghost" are what I thought they were. I likewise do not believe these feelings are what the church and scripture claim they are. So I do not attribute the darkness I felt that morning to the buffetings of Satan, nor the peace and moments of "revelation" afterward as direction from God.

 

I have not reached that conclusion lightly. I can hardly say, sometimes, how much I miss believing that this feeling (the "still small voice") was divine communication. Or how much I treasured the belief that a perfectly loving, all-powerful God would sometimes part the heavens to comfort me, whisper peace and direction, and allow me to feel like I really mattered to him. 

 

Explaining that experience now from my new perspective, I can only venture guesses. I can't ignore the fact that my faith and family upbringing left me pre-disposed to this exact of type of experience, if not also to seek out and expect it. On this point, I note again how closely my experience (or at least my interpretation of the experience) aligned with what both Joseph Smith and Holland described (if not outright encouraged). It's noteworthy, too, that the oppositional "us against the world and/or Satan" theme that quickly characterized our courtship was something my parents had normalized for me, too. As well as the notion of claiming direction from God for a course of action that might otherwise seem unpopular or unsound (they had their own stories, after all, to justify their quick engagement).

 

As for the Holland devotional address that was so pivotal in our early decision to marry — it frustrates me now how Holland frames situations like ours. While he does make passing reference to the necessary homework of “study[ing] things out," the entire focus of his remarks is about trusting those initial feelings — the "enlightened decisions," "revelation and conviction," "genuine illumination," "earlier illumination." He thereafter presses the idea that any subsequent doubts, fears, concerns, or conflicting counsel are, inherently, opposition from the devil. To entertain them demonstrates a lack of faith, displeases God, and threatens a loss of his blessings.

  

Holland’s rhetoric feels dangerous to me now, at least for someone as young and impressionable as I was then (and still thereafter, for a long time) — that I should put the full weight of my trust in what feels good initially, and to thereafter ignore, if not altogether squash, anything contrary (anything that threatens those good feelings).

 

I certainly understand the allure of that position, especially when one feels God has spoken and supplied the direction. It’s not nearly as messy as dealing with the opposite. And the “study it out” precursor notwithstanding, his take provides an easy short cut to the deliberative process once the enlightenment’s received and the decision made (e.g., no need to consider new information or different perspectives that don’t support your answer). I acknowledge with Shakespeare, too, that there are certainly times when “our doubts are [merely] traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt.” [Measure for Measure].

 

But from where I stand now, in both my professional (as a fraud prosecutor) and personal experience, a healthier approach might be to not use such stark terminology to demonize the doubts, fears, concerns, or contrary advice that follow those good feelings – to instead allow more room to properly to take counsel of them. And even where one believes God has spoken to them (perhaps especially then), to still speak in less certain terms about what those feelings must mean. To at least allow for the possibility that, even when we’re trying our best and are so sure of what we’ve known and felt, we could still be wrong.

 

Perhaps then we’d at least have fewer victims of affinity fraud among our people.

 

Wrapping Up

 

It’s become a familiar, cathartic theme in these posts, but I feel appreciative (now) of the long years of difficulty with Michelle. Yes, that’s in part because we seem to have found a way past the dysfunction, and we are closer today. But even if we had parted ways, I like to believe I wouldn’t feel differently. Our years of struggle changed me, strengthening (and softening) me. They bred a gentleness and sensitivity I might not know otherwise – the kind that perhaps can only come through suffering.

 

I would not trade those hard-earned gifts for all the world.

  

But Michelle is still with me, and she was at ground zero for the initial signs of my faith crisis. Through these last few years, she has been my best friend and closest confidant in this difficult, often unwelcome, process. Her support has been so dependable, in fact, that I’ve all but taken it for granted. She is the one who has kept watch with me through the cycling stages of grief. She, more than anyone else, is the one to listen to and validate my questions and frustrations as they bubble up, to hear all my complaints and pointed arguments. So often, so often, her perspective informs, refines, shifts, and corrects my own. Michelle is also the one who has held me close on the nights my loss of faith has felt the most unbearable. She is usually the first, too, to sense the onset of the recurring existential emptiness.

 

It is not all coping with loss and darkness, though. And for the glimpses of light, levity, and happiness I’ve found in the aftermath, Michelle has, of course, been there, too. She is the reason for much of that light and happiness.

 

What I guess I’m clumsily trying to articulate here is that I love her. I’m the lucky guy that gets to be her husband, for however long we have together. And I feel fortunate to have her still by my side, to help me navigate (with plenty of laughter) this decidedly less certain future.

Germany - May 2019