Millennial Mormons: Where Myth and Reality Meet

My grandma is not a millennial. She was born on Christmas Eve of 1929. But I want to highlight her story here as well because she has been so instrumental in shaping my adulthood. She's always created safe and brave spaces for those around her and been willing to listen and ask questions as well as share opinions. So pardon me for breaking my own rules. I have been missing her a lot, especially in the past couple of weeks as I have felt weighted regarding women's value in society and the church and my own complexities as a human. She passed away in November 2016, almost two years ago, but moving to Indiana, her dear home of fifty years, has helped me feel close to her spirit. Even though she is no longer here, m y relationship with her is not over, it has simply changed. My grandma is a champion of love, of intellectual queries, and of spiritual growth. My grandma read thousands of books over her 86 years of life, taught early morning seminary for decades and Gospel Doctrin...

A note from the editor: This story pairs well with story 9, “Joy in the Journey.” Many of us long for certainty in our futures. We desire to know the details of coming years regarding our physical locations, careers, finances, marriages, and children, whether illness will touch us or someone we love, how government policies will change, and ultimately, the kinds of losses and joys we will experience. We want to be ready for whatever life offers us, but we want to know the what, when, why, how in advance. However, as Anne Lamott observed, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” Part of the beauty of life is the unexpected. Part of the challenge of life is an incomplete picture. Story 11 of this project? Just learning to embrace life in all its ambiguities. story 11 of many. If you had asked me five years ago as I was graduating from high school where I would be in 2018, I would have been wrong. Looking back on these years, the path that I have taken has ...

A note from the editor: Every gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer individual needs to know that you are valuable. That God loves you. All of you. I believe that God created us differently so that we could help others understand what it is like to be us. So that we could learn how to invite others to "come in" to "come out" with our personal experiences and perspectives. Understanding and loving and supporting LGBTQ people in the LDS church is VITAL to being disciples of Christ. As Dieter Uchtdorf has often invited us, "Come and add your talents, gifts, and energies to ours. We will all become better as a result." We can each do better at appreciating the wide range of gifts God has given us and those around us. While the church officially may not yet have the most helpful of resources for how to bring two seemingly different core identities together, let us each individually sit down with our brothers and sisters, help them carry their st...

A note from the editor: I gave one of my friends some advice this summer that was part facetious, part wisdom: " To live a happy life, have low expectations and high hopes. " We practiced what that looked like. He told me that he expected to die alone in a basement working on an impossible computer program, but he hoped that he would be the world's youngest billionaire and travel the world. Hopefully reality hits somewhere in the middle.  Expecting one kind of life that you don't get can lead to confusion and disappointment, but learning to love your life regardless of whether it's alone in a basement or traveling the world, married or single, is a valuable skill.  LDS blogger Ariel Szuch wrote, "Just because I love summer mornings doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a walk on a winter evening too. Every stage of life is a season, and with each transition, we trade one set of joys and struggles for another. T he trick is to develop the habit of choosing happine...

A note from the editor: Experiences, things, people, faith, and absences define us. Those of us who have made religion a large part of our lives can hardly fathom where we would be without it. For me, faith is how I make sense of the world. Mormon feminist Cecilia Konchar Farr wrote regarding her upbringing that " Mormonism was then and continues to be my conduit into the universe , my access to personal spirituality , to healing faith , and to empowering theology . It pushes the limits of my intellect, reminding me that there are many ways to construct and perceived truth, many, many of them beyond my power of understanding." I know that not everyone raised in or converted to the LDS faith stays such, and I recognize the choice to leave is not an easy one, though neither is staying. Regardless of whether one is a "practicing Mormon" or not, I believe that experiences with our faith never completely leave us. That whatever faith we had at one point is ne...