Participant #1:
Welcome to Lift and Love Conversations, where we're building a supportive culture around LGBTQ families in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saint. I'm Allison Dunton, and I'll show you how to embrace your child and your spiritual discomfort to deepen and grow your testimony of Jesus Christ. And I am Jenny Hunter, and I will help you identify and overcome obstacles that can get in the way of sustaining healthy relationships. And I help you realize the blessings of being a LGBTQ family. Each week, we will bring you lessons that we've learned from our own life, the experiences from hundreds of families that we have worked with, and conversations with amazing experts. Hello. Our lift and love community. We are thrilled. This is, like, the first podcast we're doing in 2022, and I missed talking to our community. I have two. It's so good to be back and kind of in the swing of everything. It is. Alison just got back from Hawaii, which I want to say was a big mistake. He should have come to Florida. We should have gone to Florida. It rained the whole time in Hawaii. I know. I was so mean to her. I kept showing her, like, I was like, let's get the beach off. I'll send you our beach pictures. Like, we're not at the beach. I know. And then we were sick, so we were like, definitely not at the beach. And we had gorgeous weather. We had all the kids home and kayaking and beach. I think they went to the beach every day. It's so funny because none of them love Florida until they went out to Utah, and then they're like, we want to live in Florida because they miss the beach. We go to the beach a lot as a family, and so they really miss the beach. And so it is like, the first couple of years I was here, it's so weird that it's 80 degrees and it's Christmas, but now I'm, like, after 17 years of it, I'm, like, fully embracing, like, Christmas Eve beach time. It is pretty amazing. I do love it. And while you were beaching at my house, since no one was here, one of our pipes one of our pipes, bro, and it hasn't sold yet, so we're waiting for our bedroom bathroom to thaw so that we can use water. So welcome to life in the mountains. Yeah. I just do, like, ten days of snow straight in Utah, like, crazy. And totally great for your skiing, but it is, like, heights will freeze. Apparently they do. I didn't know that's a thing, but it happens. Let's just hope they go first. Yes. And they fully dim burst where you were bought. Exactly. Okay. And we're laughing, but we have kind of a heavy topic today. We do. I put this post up this week where I talked about because there was one week, four moms told me that their children did not feel safe at church. And I was like, okay, if I keep hearing this, this is like the Lord telling me I need to talk about this because it's a big deal. And so I did this post about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not unsafe. And so if people are feeling unsafe at church, it's us. It's how we are ministering and how we are teaching Christ's doctrine. And I got a lot of responses and I got this one question, which I from a dear fellow coach who is probably one of the nicest people I know and lovely, lovely lady, and she's like, Jenny, I keep hearing this, and I don't understand how we're doing this by this, making church unsafe, right? I can't understand how we're making children feel unsafe at church. So, Alison, if you were to talk to somebody, and I give this a lot, where they're like, what are you talking about? We don't say anything that would make somebody feel unsafe. We say, we're loving our LGBTQ saints and our congregations. There's a place for you. We need to be better. I mean, the handbook just had this whole new inclusion on it, right? And so I get pushback that I'm making this up and I'm creating this, in my mind, a problem that's not there. So we have messaging that I think people feel like it's healthy and okay, but imagine, just think about I hate the sin. Love the sinner. The root messages of this when you say that to someone is, you are a sinner, but I'm going to love you anyway. So that message is never going to make somebody feel like a whole child of God, because what are they? They're just a sinner. That's all they are, is a sinner. And they're trying to do their best, but in the end, they're a sinner. So we've got these messages that I don't think we're intentionally meant to be derogatory. We need to rethink some of our messages. Love the sinner, hate this. And it's fine if you're gay as long as you don't act on it. So here's one of the problems with being gay. There are many parts of somebody being gay or straight that happen without their bidding, right? I mean, think about the feelings that children have about all sorts of healthy, normal thoughts that they're going to have that are coming from the experiences. I'm trying to be delicate. Those are going to happen. So what do they do with those? Am I as soon as I felt that way. The trouble is that we have our LGBTQ people in the no win situation. How do they become whole? Well, they're whole because they are God's children and he put them here whole. And we see it differently. But we need to rethink these things that we think are helpful, these things. And we say to something in our church that's like, we love everyone, even gay people. Like, what the heck? We have to add that, right? If we have to add that, like, that is an unkind do we say even murderers? There's a list of things that we could lift off there, but we don't. I think one of the most healthy things said was by Elder Ballard in his talk town at BYU. Somebody asked him, what message do you have for LGBTQ young, single adults? Like, this message is so healthy. I want anyone who's a member of the church with gay, lesbian, or lesbian to know, I believe you have a place in the kingdom. And I recognize that sometimes it might be difficult for you to see where you fit in the Lord's church, but you do. And then he goes on to say, we need to listen to people. We need to find out what they're feeling. We're not listening. We're using repetitive statements that came from the eighties. And Elder Ballard said, certainly we must do better than we have done in the past so that members feel they have a spiritual home where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve God. Clearly, we need to do better, and we need to. Jenny and I experience a lot of people's pain in this. Here's the full truth. Our LGBTQ people do not feel comfortable in our churches because the messages always say will be nice, even to you and a whole bunch of other messages. And I would say that our children are not safe with that message. That is not a safe message for my child. Safe for your child as a parent. What do you do then? Alison so this is a good question. I was talking to a friend, and she's struggling with this very same thing right now. She has a child who's not out. And I said, okay, so what do we do? And she said home centered, church supported. She feels like the only way to solve this is to take the lessons home, whether it's go to sacrament meeting and then come home and work as a family. For her, this was her answer to me. I'm not sure that that would be my answer, but I know a lot of parents want their children to stay at church. It's not one size fits all. This is imperative. We are telling you parents, it is your responsibility to create the safety, which means you have to have the hard conversations with your children, and you have to find out where they're at, how they're feeling. Are they feeling saved? They haven't said anything. You still have to ask just because it does not mean they're not feeling it. No. And I had one client who was dealing with this, too, and she was feeling guilty because, like, the whole family would go to church, and they were fine with having her daughter stay home. They felt like that was the right decision for their family. But she was in the turmoil because she was like, am I being a bad mother to her? Because I'm leaving? I said, Listen, each week will be different. Heavenly Father will tell you what he needs to do each week. And so giving yourself the permission as the caretakers of these amazing LGBTQ children is part of really listening to where Heavenly Father wants you that week. You cannot leave this in the hands of the church primary young women's teachers. This is our responsibility as parents to protect, to help the mental health of our children, of our LGBTQ children. And if you're a leader or if you're just a woman in the ward or a man in the ward and know some children, you can do a tremendous amount of healing of their hearts and their emotional health by saying, hey, I love you. I'm so glad you're here. I know you have a purpose. I know God adores you as much and more than I do. I mean, these words are life saving. And, look, one of the nicest things people can say is, I don't get this, but I'm praying that we will understand more soon. I just had a client who was telling me about that where her daughter it was the family proclamation, and her son teacher said, listen, I don't understand this either. I'm praying about this. This is like part of the polygamy or the women's rights. She's like, I'm praying about this, too. And she goes, that did more good for my daughter than anything. Like, just being authentic, of like, this is confusing. This doesn't make sense, just being authentic. I love how you just listen. Like, Elder Ballard said that, because let me give you a couple of ways how we foster emotional safety. And it is the first one is to listen, to understand, not to convince. That is key. Listen to understand where their heart is, where their question is. Don't try to convince them with doctrine. Like, fight back with them of, like, why they're thinking wrong. It is their truth. So listen to understand where their heart is. Meet them where they are without trying to convince. Then it's to be curious, non judgment. Really avoid absolute language. Give positive feedback, like Alison said, through genuine compliments, validation, gratitude, empathy. Thank you for being here. I love seeing you at church. Like, literally. Like, I love your purple hair. Thank you for being purple hair to church. It adds such variety. Here I have one young woman who wears pants to church. I love her. She's one of my favorite young women. And then I had an investigator come, and she didn't want to wear a dress, and I'm like, wear pants. And so because this other young woman was wearing pants, like, this investigator felt like I could totally do this. And I went and told my young woman, I just want you to know you've made a safer place for people who don't want to wear a dress. And I could tell that meant a lot to her, a lot to me, honestly. And I was in ten years ago, I'd be like thinking, not wearing pants shirts. And I'm like, yes, you're here. It does not matter, just that you're here with us. I truly feel so grateful that anybody comes and is with us. And so practice grace and compassion. Encourage and support personal growth, meaning drop the checklist. Some of our youth are not want to go to seminars. Some of our youth are not going to want to go activity, but say, what are you doing? How are you connecting to God? What can I do to help you? Drop the checklist. With these children, lead empathy and compassion, meaning you can't walk in anybody else's shoes, but you could believe their story. And that is our role. Unless you're believing their story. And if you're struggling for something to say to an LGBTQ person that you know, let me just tell you, we can do no greater good than to reconnect people back to Jesus Christ who have lost contact, lost connection, don't know that he loves them. Focus on their connection with Christ and what you're learning about it and just focus on that. We can't fix this problem, but we can let people know when God moves us to move them. I mean, we can let them know that we're praying for them, that we're hurting in this, and that we want to understand better too, that we're confused. I mean, all of these things are they are light graphs. I'm going to share very personal experience that we have with our son, where he was kind of struggling. And I ask frankly, are you praying? Are you reading the scriptures? He's like? No, not really. And he goes, I just don't feel comfortable at church. He was very frank with it. And he goes, but I know I still need this connection. And I said, Honey, what can we do? How would you like us to support you in this? Because I totally agree. You're always going to be better with a relationship with Christ. And he said, can you just do scripture study with me every Sunday? And he's out in Utah, so we're going to do it virtually. Children are going to surprise you when you drop the checklist and drop how one way is to you have to show up this way. You have to do these things and give them the patent. I give them the right to say, what do you need? How can I support you? Is there a way that I could help you in this? Then when they really and you're generally coming from a place of like, whatever they tell you, you're going to be fine with, whether it's like, I'm not going to church anymore, I don't believe in God. Like, whatever they're telling you that you have to be in that right mode of like, I am here just to help them go in with that energy, because they're going to pick up if you're trying to sell them something else. So be very clean before you have this discussion. But when they feel that from you and I've had this with my experience and with other clients, like, I just have a client today. Tell me, like, when I stopped making church such a big deal. My daughter is now going to church more than ever in family prayer. When I stopped making it such a fight. And so I'm not telling you to do that. I'm just saying pray about it and make it specific and tailored. Curate it for your child. Stop parenting the program parenting. Start pairing your child and talk to them. I mean, Nick knew what he needed. He needed you to do scripture study with them. He knew what he needed. Nick's older, so a 13 year old is not going to know as well. So it's going to take a little more figuring it out. But I will tell you, dozens of families a day or a week saying, my child doesn't want to go to church anymore. And I will tell you, it is not healthy for your child to hear in a church setting that there's something wrong with them. They cannot do anything about it. That is not a healthy setting. So if you can't change the setting, you need to take care of your children. This is the most important thing. Yeah, I think we have to be a little bit clearer, too, because people are going to say, well, we never say nothing's wrong with that. But when we are saying, like, LGBQ saints cannot get married in the temple, that's what they hear. Listen, you're not worthy to go through the temple. That is exactly what they here, and that is the doctor. Right now, we support the doctor, but it's not without damage. Imagine if someone came up to you and said, you get to get married in the temple the way you are. You don't get to I mean, how do you reconcile with God on that? So here's a couple of things that seem harmless, but when you really think about what it's saying to somebody, how about God didn't make you LGBTQ? God hasn't created a plan for LGBTQ saints to marry in the temple. If you are LGBTQ, you could be a threat at grills camp or on a mission. That one is a hard one. That one hits home with my son and his experience on a mission. That one's really painful. I don't even know if I could talk about it. Imagine what that's actually doing to a human being's heart. I should always be asking in our church settings, are we connecting people to God? Are we separating them? That should be the only question when we are talking to anyone, am I shutting the light of God's love on you? Or am I hiding it from you? Am I putting you in darkness? And that light is connection, right? That connect where you're connecting people to God. And that is emotional safety. When we are emotionally safe, what happens is we operate, we feel our best self, and this is when we have the greatest opportunity to contribute from our gifts and our abilities, and we're free to dream and share and express. This is where we're in our full measure of creation. Emotional safety is when we are able to do full measure of creation, of how the Lord created us. And so we are stifling our LGBT child and saints gifts when we don't help them with this. We don't help create this environment. And I know nobody does this intentionally, but those scenarios which we just talked about are things that are said frequently. And this is what happens to this is the result of it. Right. They feel disconnected. They feel like they have not seen or valued by God and that there is not a part of them in his kingdom. Right. And how could you show up week after week and get that message delivered straight to you? I mean, like, how could you do it? I couldn't do it. I couldn't shop at church and have someone tell me those things day after day and disconnect me that way from God. So this is a hard one. And like Jenny said, the solution between you and your child is personal, and it's between you and God, and God will help you. And it's not going to look like you think it's going to look. There may not be a solution for you to take that child to church. Yeah. And we have to have tolerance for how each of us the answers like leaf, and they're doing it right for their family. And remember, that the Lord speaking to each of us. So when somebody does something that looks funky to you, just think, wow, that's really interesting that the Lord is having to do that. Right. Because we cannot say we do not know the heart of every family. Just because we're doing a certain way doesn't mean we need to recruit other people to do it the same way. No. And that's what I would say to members of our congregations who do not have LGBTQ children. My mother cannot talk to me without tears in her eyes when they are telling me a story of a young woman's leader or a bishop who has extended love and just let that their child know how loved they are and how thankful they are they are there. So that is some of the most impactful work you could do as a leader in our conversations, is looking at these LGBQ families and just seeing how you can support them, just being there for them. And you don't have to do much. You just have to see them acknowledge and love them and honor where they are in it and trust that they are trying to figure it out for themselves. And just know that them being in church is amazing. Yeah. It's hard. It's day in, day out hard. And if they don't show up, they're doing it to save their child and honor that in them and love them and extend what you can for them and don't judge them. They left. They don't come to church anymore. Don't judge. Love them and know that they did. They stayed as long as they could, and we're kind of creating a place that they could come back to. Yeah. I hope this message comes across the way we intended. This is super painful, but it's time that we become very honest about what's happening and how these kids are feeling. I think we want to make it a religious thing. Oh, they just don't have faith in the Lord. They don't. It's not that it is deceived. Right? Yes. The things people say, even the left will be deceived. This isn't a matter of spiritual care. No. This isn't a matter of spiritual understanding or righteousness. This is a matter of health and safety of children. And the parents are doing the best they can. So love them and support them and learn from them and don't judge. Yeah. And loving and supporting them really is not judging them and trusting that they are getting answers for their family and for their child and honoring their choices the best you can administer to each other. Even if families are not coming, that doesn't mean we can't continue to minister to our brothers and sisters. In fact, we should be doing more of it when they're gone, because they're disconnected and they need it. The 99 and one. Right. I know this is heavy. We love you, and we know there's so many of you who just want to make a better, safer place. We all are united and want that one heart. And I believe it's getting better. I do. I don't want to leave this without hope, but I want you to know that it still can be very detrimental for LGBQ youth. It's sometimes a church, and this is when we say it's unsafe. That's what we're talking about. They hear a message that they are not right, that something's wrong with them, and they internalize that. And it does such emotional damage that some of them become suicidal. It's that serious. Oh, and some of them will never like my brother never could recover. No, we can't do it. Like President Ballard said, we have to do better. We have to ask different questions. We have to stop thinking of people in one way that they're all wrong and that we have to. We love you, and have a great day. Bye bye. Thank you for joining us. If you like what we share, subscribe to the Lift and Love podcast. And if you have a minute, leave us a five star rating so other families like yours can find us. When your child comes out, you need to find support where you feel safe and understood. This is why we created the Lift and Love Coaching Community, a place where parents can connect, learn and grow in a private setting. Jenny is a certified, advanced, trained, space based life coach with almost 10,000 hours of coaching. Together, we have worked with hundreds of families just like yours. To see if the Lift and Love Community is right for you, go to liftandlove.org and click on the Community link. For more free information, support groups and available resources, check out lyftandlove.org and Liftandlove.org on Instagram and Facebook. But most importantly, remember you are not alone in this journey. We are building a community of thriving and faithful LGBT key families who are here to lift and love you.