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 Latter-day Saints. I'm Allison Dayton, 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 an 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 lived and love community. We are back, Alice and I, for another podcast. Hello. We are so thrilled to be here with you today, and there has been a lot going on. I had my Ellie, she's in the MTC. I said Las Vegas people, get ready. She's leaving in a week to come with you. And my dear sister in law passed away, which was sadness, but she had a beautiful funeral, and we just know that she is with God. She was just such a covenant woman, and so it was such a great honor honoring her. It's one of those people that I heard this today where isn't it great that you have the type of love where you can mourn and you're mourning only because you're not with them anymore, like you're missing them? And that is exactly how I feel about her. But, well, you're you carrying so much on your heart for many weeks. That was a hard bunch of weeks, getting ready to see your girls go on their missions and your sister leave. Your sisterinlaw leave. Yeah. It's funny, though, like John and I were talking about, because there's other things going on, too, that's still heavy, but we're not unhappy. And I'm like, that is the atonement that is the strength of the covenants and having Christ as the center, because hard things happen. And in fact, that's what we're talking about today. It's like when anxiety of all of the weight and everything on us, and I worked with so many families and so many mums'who, the worry is almost suffocating for them when their child yeah, it's very crippling and they can't even breathe because they are so anxious about their child's future and what it's going to mean. And I get that I have to go back to nine years when my son came out and all the possibilities of how my son's life could go wrong. That's all I focused on in that time. Right. And it was not a place where I was doing my best parenting, because when worry is your primary emotion, when you're thinking about your LGBTQ child, you are going to be operating and taking action from fear. And that is not a good place. No. And I'll tell you so, you make me think when I talk to people, they'll say, oh, my child is not out, or I had a woman say to me, her daughter, she thought she had two grandchildren and we were talking about one of the children. And I said, well, have the mom call me. Have your daughter call me yet. Oh, she's not there yet. I'm like, wow. I mean, that is anxiety and fear paralyzing. I'm saying, let me talk, let me help. Oh, no, she can't talk about it yet. Then everybody in the family is in a state of paralysis because the child's not being talked to in productive ways. The mother's not getting some of these things off of her chest and feeling like the connection. And not that I have all the answers because I probably don't have any, but I can give her some tools or whatever. So the thing is that we get so paralyzed by fear, I'm sure that mom feels like, no, I'm protecting my child. I'm protecting our family. I'm protecting and it's just a lie because really all you're doing is saying, no, I'm not ready to let go of this emotional pain I'm causing myself. That's really what it is. Where you're like this emotional pain feels needful. That's what worry is such a trickster because it really does make it feels very necessary, and it makes you feel like you're doing something important and that you're being a problem solving or you're being proactive. But I promise you, it never changes the impact of the things that you're worrying about. In fact, your brain will try to tell you that we're so necessary, but really all it does is make health problems for you. And what worry does is it causes disconnection. Usually it causes most of my clients have felt disconnected from God when they say in that worry, disconnection from friends because they're worried about what they're going to say. And they're so involved in the story that they're telling themselves that they feel like everybody will pick up that on them, right. So it changes their energy around people and their child. It's disconnection from them. And then what it does is it still serves joy today. I guarantee you there's so much happiness going on that they can't even enjoy it. And I know I was the same way. Like, I couldn't even enjoy it at the time because I was so worried about the future and what this meant in the circumstance. Right. And these are kind of the sentences I'm going to read. You just a couple, and any of you are experiencing these thoughts. You would think worry was your only option, where you're like you were thinking, the future will not be good. They will lose their faith. People will hurt them. How will they be part of our family for eternity? People will reject them. People will judge our family. How can I support them and stay active? My family doesn't have a place now in our church. How can I choose between them and God? I might lose friends. I want my child to be happy. Which these thoughts, like, I want my child to be happy, and I want my child to have faith. They're like beautiful thoughts, but they actually aren't. They create worry. They say to yourself, my child won't be happy. My child won't be happy. Yes, I can't be happy. Being LGBTQ, right. Like, that's kind of really the story you're telling yourself. Well, then the one we talked about two weeks ago is that church is not a safe space for my child. Right. So any of those thoughts, and they are true worries, those worries, it's not that they aren't worth worrying about or they aren't worth analyzing and preparing for it's. That when the problem comes, when we shut down because of them. So we're not able to move forward because any good manager or any good business person will tell you, you see a problem coming, you have to adjust for it. I always say adjust or die. Like adapt or die. So you adjust for it. And that's a forward moving motion. I'm going to adjust for it. Here's what we're going to start talking about in our family, because I'm worried they're going to lose their faith, or we're going to do this a little differently. But when you're afraid, it shuts down. First of all, fear shuts down your ability to creatively think. Yeah. And to creatively really problem solve. And you know you're in worry or problem solving, because what you're talking about is problem solving, which is a skill that is useful. But when you're in worry, you're going to feel anxiety shutdown. Really, like, you can't talk about it, and it's overwhelming. But if you've moved to problem solving, that isn't fearful. That is not anxiety. That's like, okay, what does this look like? Because the funny thing, like, any of these say, let's take people, we reject them. On the other end, you're thinking people will accept them, and we think that that's either or. But there's all these other ways we could think about it in between. There's a million sentences in between that would feel better than people would reject them and not be any less true. Example. Most people will embrace and love them. Right, exactly. So it really is all your perspective and how you're telling yourself the story. Yes, it is. And we definitely tell ourselves, worst case scenario. Yes, for sure. And that is a brain unmanaged. Okay. Because that is your brain's job. That's the story of my book, a Brain Brain, my member.

Participant #1:
A brain unmanaged is always going to lead to worry and stress, because your brain's job is to tell you the worst case is to tell you the negative, is to say, stay in the cave, be safe. And so that is always going to be the result. And so you have to get really onto what story your brain is offering you. And so all those sentences that I read, the thoughts I read, it will be hard to put those sentences, not to produce the emotion of worry. And that's what first of all, let's break down what worries. Worry is just an emotion, okay? It's just emotion. And emotion is a sensation in our body. Our emotions and our thoughts are tied together. They give us these chemicals and neurons to react. And so really, worry is what we create. It's not created outside of us. We are creating it. We are creating that emotion. And I call it the kind of the Joyceller of the day. And the problem with the worry, I was like, no, this situation, worry is going to be helpful. But that's the lie, because we have this belief system around worry that we think no worry is necessary, but our emotions are our fuel for all of our actions. And worry is one of the worst fuels you could use for your actions, especially in perennial. Well, worry should be a signal. I'm worried about this. It should signal to you that you need to do something. It should not signal to you to get back in the cave and shut the door. It should be a motivator. Just like a great therapist that we have talked to a bunch. He said anxiety is necessary. Without anxiety, nobody's getting good grades, nobody's making money. Our bodies are made to handle anxiety. Yes. And that's good. It's what you do with the anxiety. Right? And I look at this list, their future will not be good. They will lose their faith. Those are things that I worry about. People will hurt them. I mean, based on my experience with my brother, some of these things happen to him, truthfully. And it was so painful, and I just did not want that for my son. And that was what kept me in denial of Jake being gay for a long time, more than it should have been, until finally my husband was like, his life is not going to be the same as Preston's life. And then it was like, sort of snapped me out of it, and I was able to move forward again, okay, how are we going to create a family system that supports this child? What are we going to do at church? Then I'm moving forward again but for a minute, for a while, I was really stuck. I love that story, because what happened is your husband gave you a different thought that changed your perspective, a different story. And that really was it. Right? It was helpful to hear. Had I been just keeping all that to myself, I would have never gotten you would have never been the kickstart to get me out of that hole. Right. It's never been the rope thrown down into the hole and said, hey, I don't know what you're thinking about down there, but it's kind of dumb. Let's get back up here and get going. I call it either striking or thriving families, because my whole role in coaching my families is not just to make them survive, but to really thrive as a family. Because I know, for me, my journey, and I think your journey too, we view like having a child who is gay, like, now one of the greatest gifts, because it made us examine everything. It made us think that we were just surviving on. We really got good at almost at loving in a different way, all of our children. Well, I would say in the church, I was just sort of surviving. Surviving, yeah. And now you're driving. I love doing the thing, taking the calling, serving, praying, oh, I hope this, that. And then all of a sudden, I have this deep need to understand and deep need to dissect things that seem so simple before. And again, people are afraid to do that. And I will say that is the commandment. Right. And the frayedness comes from worry. Right. That's, once again, if you're not taking action, you're doing it from that emotion of worry, the fuel roar. And it was when I started doing that work that I really feel like I became a true disciple, a true sitting at the feet of Jesus and trying to learn. It was scary, and people are still afraid of me. It is your brain unmanaged. My overall is to helping you retrain your brain to a more, much more thriving mindset. Okay. Because when your child comes out, you have a choice. We could either choose to thrive, like I said, and when you're thriving, your family looks like you're not worrying about doing it perfectly. You're actually enjoying the process of figuring things out for your family. You're flexible and you adjust. As things come out, you don't feel like we're not going to be able to handle it. But if you're just surviving, you're kind of fighting with reality. You're really frustrated, and you wish things were different. You're very rigid when you're approaching situations, and there's a little room for adjustment. So I'm going to go through five kind of mindsets that I see really commonly in the many families I have coached of the difference between surviving and thriving as a family. Okay? So the first one I'm going to take is if you're just surviving as a family, you feel like your LGBQ child is in charge of your emotions. But if you're thriving, you realize you're in charge of your emotions. And when I'm saying this, I'm saying you're thinking things. If you're just surviving, you're like, I am feeling worried because I have an LGBQ two child. And the thriving sentence is, it's interesting that I'm thinking my child being LGBTQ, you know, is causing me to feel stressed. And you realize, like, thriving realizes, like, oh, it's my perspective, it's my story. And you gave a great one with you and Ken, where he's like, listen, his life is going to be different from Preston. You realize, oh, okay, this could be a different story. Jake's life is Jake's own path. It's going to be very beautiful, and it's going to be different. And so worried feels comforting during that time because we feel like an optional when you're just surviving, you feel like you have no other option but to worry and to feel stressed about your child being queer. But if you really step back and be like, there's a million ways to think about my child being LGBTQ, what way serves me the best? And I'm not talking about rainbows and daisies, but really, what way serves me the best? What puts me back in my Godgiven role as a mother? Yes. To take care of my family and to understand what their needs are and to be able to use the spirit to guide that child or my children. Yes. You really have that choice in that when you're thriving, you're thinking, I'm going to trust God and his role in my family's life. I'm going to trust that this is my child's journey. And the Lord is constantly trying to educate me, make us stronger, and he's on my side. And this is our amazing classroom. Now, being LGBTQ parents, we are embracing the calling. So that is realizing, like, your worry, your stress, your fear is not created from your child being LGBTQ. It's created by your perspective and how you're telling that story. Right. So that's the first one. The second one is thriving mindset is I focus on changing me and just surviving is I'm focusing on changing others. Okay. And this is an interesting one because it could be like, say your child comes out and you're fine, but your husband is just not on board, and he's really causing some problems. So your focus is completely on getting him to change. Right. And the problem with that is you can't change the humans. Right. Like, your husband. I know if I have all the humans, I wish I had the trick to control how everybody thought and how everybody showed up in this, but really focusing on changing me in that sense of, like, if my husband was you. I disagreed with my husband a lot on this. My focus would be like, how can I love him just as he is? How can I support and protect my child and love my husband? Because my husband is doing perfectly for him. He's having the lessons being taught to him. And for me to focus on me being the wife I want to be in that moment and the mother I want to be in the moment. So these are kind of the four questions I ask, where it's like, if I'm focusing, like, I wish my son would do this, or they should be doing this. This should is the key for this. If you're focusing on they should, then you are just surviving and not thriving. Instead of focusing on how do I want to be? Like, how am I making my child being LGBTQ something negative about me? These are questions to ask yourself to know if you're thriving or surviving in this. What are my thoughts about my child being LGBTQ? Am I showing up as the parent I want to be? How could this be the perfect classroom for my growth as a parent and a child of God? So you're open to the possibility that, truth, your life is going to be different than you imagined and that this is going to change you. Of course it's going to change your child and, like, their journey, but you're more focused on how you show up, how you want to be, versus how somebody else is showing up. Okay. All right. The third one, which this is a big one, surviving, you are fighting with reality of what it is. If you're thriving, you're accepting the reality. And we get this so much where it could be a phase or I don't know if they're really gay.

Participant #1:
It's like, it doesn't matter what it is. This is where your child is today. Like, this is what they're feeling. And whether they come out the other end of childhood feeling this, we don't know. It will be interesting to see. It will be the responses along the way are important. And we know now that if the response is you can't be gay, don't choose this. These are damaging responses. Don't tell anybody you're gay. Don't come out until you're ready. Yes. Until we know or whatever, that's still fighting reality as it is. That moment they feel gay, trans, nonbinary. Something different going on with me than I think is going on with most other people. That's what they're saying. So go with the reality. Okay. Right. What does that mean? No, this can't happen.

Participant #1:
Yes. Reminds me came out, I was like, oh, I accept it, but this is what you could do. I was like I put him on Voices of Hope. I put them like which was all good, but that's not what he needed at that moment, and that actually caused damage. He needed me just be like, interesting, okay, how can I support you? And so to really accept him at face value without trying to change the circumstance, to really just accept, like, this is where we're at, and this is where our growth is going to be, and to kind of focus on the positive. I know this is a hard one, but could you, like, come up with ten positive things of what's happening in your life right now? Like, where are the blessings? Where is the focus of how this could be perfect for your family story right then? Okay. You should have to sit down. Even if they're silly and if they're funny stereotypes, I mean, I love Elder Christopherson Tom Christopherson's mom, who someone commented on her clothes, and she's like, oh, yeah, well, you should have a gay son. That was good plus for her. And a fun way to break the ice between two people, right. Because there's good in most situations, especially with your child and really accepting your child of who they are presenting to you today and finding the good in that child that is going to keep you in that thriving family mindset versus just surviving their sexuality. Okay. Like, it's embracing it well, and let's be real. The reality of children today is that they get to decide where they fall on these spectrums, both gender, sexuality, and I would assume many other spectrums that we probably are missing. I know that I fell on an educational spectrum difference. I had an idea of where I was educationally, but I had myself lower on a spectrum, and I changed it over the years. I'm actually a smart woman. I'm a smart business person. All of these things I never knew. So we have to allow change. It's normal, and it does not denote a bad life or sin or anything. It's just a reality that these children have now, and we've got to get used to it. I think this kind of goes back to your story when Jake came out, where you kept bringing your brother's reality into Jake's reality, and it took you some time to be like, oh, what am I doing? And that wasn't accepting the reality. That was accepting Preston's reality and making it Jake's reality, right? Every story is different. Like you said, there's such variation, and their story is going to look different from even anybody you've seen who is LGBTQ. Everybody has a different story, and theirs is going to be perfect for them. And you embracing, like, whatever their story is going to look like is perfect for you to help be the parent. Right? That is the key for that mindset, for thriving. Okay? So whatever the reality is, nothing has gone wrong. This is the perfect classroom for our family. Okay. Okay. The next one. And this is where our brains love to do. Anxiety is emotion that only comes from the future. There's no anxiety for today. Like, is always created from future thinking. So just surviving is really your focusing on everything that's going to go wrong in the future. And thriving is like, you know what? Today everything's fine. Today we've got this. I'm just going to focus on today's problems because studies have shown that 85% of the time, things we worry about never happen. Think about that. The amount of time we spend worrying, the amount of energy we spend on that, and 85% of the time, it's just a waste. It's like wasting 85% of your money, right? So great story. Just this morning, I was talking to a dear friend, and she was telling me so I knew that she'd been worried. She has a child who is gay. And she'd been worried about telling her children that this daughter was a lesbian and how do I do that? And it's come up quite a few times. I know it was a worry for her. Finally, she had a conversation with her daughter, like, hey, we've got to tell the other kids. And she's like, oh, yeah, I already did. It Christmas. So all these months, all these weeks, right? And nothing changed with the kids, right? And then she ended up talking to them, and it was no big deal. One of them is in elementary school, one of them is in junior high school. They were maybe not surprised, but they were embracing and loving. And then an interesting thing that we need to really address is that they had a lot of questions about the church and the church's position and the church, how this sister would be fit in the church. And they had a lot of questions, and they had been hearing a lot of criticism. So this is something that would have served her better to focus on. Like, how are we going to show up as a family having these conversations going to look like? Because it has to change, right? And having the safe, like creating that place in your family of talking about the elephant in the room, I call it, where you are patterning and you are guiding and having this discourse with your children. They're going to stay with the faith a lot easier because they know even things that they don't agree with, that we could talk about it, we could figure it out, we could pray about it. As a family, we pattern how we do this instead of just ignoring it right now, I'll tell you, elementary kids know that this is a thing in the church, especially in a dense community like Utah. But if you've got kids who are of elementary age and you think they don't know what's going on, they're talking about this with their friends, and they're talking about it in a religious context. So this is an important thing that we understand has happened, and it's just been very recently. But we've got to get on board as parents because this is the next thing, right? How do we adopt this? How do we approach this as a family? Not like, oh, everything we can't think about it. It's like, I want to have a framework as the parents about how we talk about this in a family and how we embrace and what we do. Right. To do those things, you cannot be in fear. Yes. You have to be present and you can't be worried that your kids are all going to leave church. You got to be like, present and say, okay, this is what it looks like. So when I'm in this high stress situation, I like to like on a piece of paper, write the things I can control and the things I can't control. And usually the things I can't control are my future problems I'm creating. And Jodie Morris says this all the time, where she's like when you are worried in the future, you're like trying to solve a 500 piece puzzle with 25 pieces of the puzzle, right? You don't have all the answers. We never know what the future is going to breed for any of our children. And it's funny, even our heterosexual children, we don't know what's going to look like. But once your child comes out and you feel like it's even more uncertain, the future is always uncertain. And so really, staying present, using that energy to focus on what you want to solve today and what you want to enjoy today, because when you're in the future, that creates anxiety and it's the joy steeler, like you're not enjoying the so much good that's happening in your life because you miss it. You just missed it. And so that is the difference between thriving is focusing, just being present today, letting tomorrow figure it out for itself, and just surviving is when you're trying to figure out the future problems do all that. And remember, most of those problems aren't going to happen even in our brains. Like, well, if you worry about now, that's going to brace yourself so you won't worry later. And that's a lie. Worry doesn't make anything preventable nothing. And it doesn't make the reality of what's coming at us in this world any easier to deal with. Otherwise we'd be trained on how to be anxious, which, by the way, we don't need. So my husband always said, and he learned this because he had anxiety as a kid, and it started coming out when he was trying to go on a mission, but he said, why worry about tomorrow? You spend all this time worrying about tomorrow and then if it does happen, you have to deal with it again. Don't deal with all the emotions and the problems twice. Right. It's like watching a bad movie twice. Well, yeah, and being like, I have to sit through this again. Yes. Deal with it when it happens, to deal with it. Don't deal with it before it happens. Because like I said, it's just a waste. It's throwing good energy down the tubes. It is. Energy is not an unlimited resource for us. Right. And so we need to protect your inner goals. So you've got to protect that and you got to be onto your brain, okay? And you know, you're just surviving when you keep going to the future. That is not a thriving mindset. Okay? And so my last one, which is I think some of our worry comes like we feel like it's larger because our kids are LDS and LGBTQ. But this other side of the coin, too, it gives us the ability to feel faith in these moments. And surviving is living in faith. Sorry. Surviving is living in fear. And thriving is living in faith. Okay? Right. And I like to do exercise when I feel that fear, where I ask myself to make a list of what I'm afraid of, and I look at each one, I'm like, okay, what is going to happen if that happens? When am I going to feel if that's going to happen? Because what you need to do is you need to keep asking yourself, like, what am I going to make it mean if this happens? Because you need to find that core fear that is driving this worry. And a lot of LDS LGBQ families feel like the core fear is, my child won't be with us for the eternity. That is one of the core fears. And you need to bring that to God and question that, and you need to do the work on that and to figure out what story that you have created around your child being LGBQ. And that fear is disconnecting you from God and your child. And so to move into more faith. And I think we don't have a lot of scripture for moms like in the scriptures, but we do have Mary, and Mary was just such a beautiful example of how to mother in a hard situation, right? Like, God asked her to do hard things. I think she probably often wondered, how would people treat him, because they won't know his true identity for a while. And, you know, she was consumed before. Likely she didn't know his total true identity because does the Lord ever tell us everything? And the message that he gave to her about her son, does it translate for her into your son is right, the reading is that message? Of course not. No. I think one of my favorite scriptures, we don't know a lot of how she processed this, but we do have Luke 219 where it says, mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart, and that spoke to my heart when we went through that and Come follow me where I was. Like, she took all these things and pondered them in my heart. And I remember reading that and thinking, that's exactly what I've done with my son, where there are so many things to think about and thoughts to think about and how this is going to work. And I had to spend time pondering that in my heart and bringing it, engaging in conversation with Heavenly Father and not being fearful about leaning into my faith. I said this a lot in the podcast, but I doubled down on Jesus in that moment where I really brought in, teach me. I need to find peace in this, because I know this child is your child, and I know you have a plan for him, but I need to get that measure from you of that peace and that knowledge so I can show up not fearful, but faithful. I want to thrive as his mother. I just don't want to survive in this moment. And so spend that time like Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. View that Scripture as time to really just to go into faith. You need to spend time with the Lord of figuring this out and getting the inspiration for you. And Alice, do you want to quote, like, the Pope just came out with a beautiful article to get chased about this. It's so beautiful. So you can just Google Pope LGBTQ. We'll get it in the show notes, but Pope LGBTQ, January 26. It happened this morning, and he was speaking off the cuff. They say, of course, it's an Italian, but speaking off the cuff, he said, I am thinking to have parents in the face of their children's problems, children with many illnesses, children who are sick, even with permanent maladies. He says, how much pain is there? Parents who see different sexual orientations in their children, how to deal with this and accompany their children and not hide in an attitude of condemnation. Isn't that interesting? Not hide in an attitude of condemnation. He says, I copied their children. I love that part of that. Yeah, walk with them. Company, your children. And to these parents, I say, don't be scared. Yes, there is pain a lot, but think of the Lord. And then he evokes Joseph, who is an important part of Catholic Scripture, joseph, the Father of Jesus. And he says to him, think of Joseph, how Joseph would have solved the problem. And he asked them to ask Joseph how to help. You never condemn a child, he says. And then he says, fear is also part of life, and it too needs our prayers. God does not promise us that we will never have fear, but that with his help, it will not be the criteria for our decisions. Prayer is always inextricably linked to charity. It is only when we combine prayer with love of our children, in this case, in the cases I just mentioned, or for our neighbor, that we are able to understand the Lord's message. And then he said he had described three different prayers that Joseph had for his son, for concern for his son. One, the first thing when his betrothed says that she's pregnant, right when the sun was coming. And that could have been a little bit fearful for a man who actually was not the father. And what would people think? Fearful for Mary? Yeah, fearful Mary. And the Pope says, Joseph prayed, worked, and loved three beautiful things for parents to work, to pray, to work, and to love. And because of this, he has always received what he needed in the face of life trials, let us entrust ourselves to him. And I have a testimony of that. That has been my experience when I work with the Lord in this. That is really where I'm thriving the most as the mother of my LGBTQ child and mother of all my children. Right. And I feel good about myself. And so I love that he talks about Joseph's journey because then he had to pray, should they leave Egypt, and then he had to pray again, when is it safe to come back? And it's just like there's going to be hard things in this journey. And we've talked about in our other podcasts, but that does not mean that we have to live in that worry. And you do not want that to fuel your action. And if you it is fueling your action, you are not the Lord is not worried about your child's journey. That's what I want you to realize. That's what I've been told and the inspiration I got from my journey with my son. And so if he's not worried, why was I worried? And I had to really get to the place of that understanding that I could really love in a much cleaner place and open up my heart. And the worry was blocking all that. And so if you stay in worry, it will block your highest self and your highest experience of this whole journey, which I do testify. It is a beautiful journey of discovering things about yourself and discovering things about your child that you never dreamt for well. And then that in turn, it kind of bleeds over into life. The things you discover about your child, it's like I can only describe with Enoch and the Lord said, others cannot see far off and your eyes are cleared and you're like, wow, people and suffering and here's how we can heal and love and change and it's all about and then it becomes all about the work. Right? What can I do to help, Lord? Instead of like, I can't do anything. This is horrible. You powerful mothers and women. Yes. Praying, working and loving, and we can do actions. And if we're stuck and scared and not moving forward, that anxiety should be a notice to ourselves. I'm off because the Lord needs me to pray, to work and to love. I love what the Pope said about that. And I was teaching institute this morning and we talked about in one kings, I think it was five two, where I forgot the prophet. But it was just like Enick. Enick was told to go put mud on their eyes. And when he did, he then gained spiritual eyes. And this man was the prophet told him, go wash your eyes seven times in the river. And he's like, body, right? Yeah. And he said, Then you'll be hill. And he was like, that's too easy. I'm not going to do that. And he's like, what? The Lord told you to do what you do? And he's like, yeah, I guess. And he did it and he was filled. And so both of those were the Lord likes action and managing your brain is action. I know it takes time, and it's a mindset. And so that's why I went through those things where, you know, where the action? Love. What was the third one? The Pope. Love. Do. And it's pray, work, love. Pray, work, love. Okay. Elder Holland has that great talk, the Ministering of Angels, where he says, women, if you're living covenant lives, the angels will be unrestrained from helping you. So that's the prayer like, hey, I'm working. I'm doing this. I'm trying to figure this out. I need you to help me. And I've put my children in the care of angels before. And it was scary because I thought, what happens if this doesn't work out? Like, am I going to lose my faith? This is scary fear stuff. And I have to do it. I had to do it. I had no choice. I had no way to help this child. And I came out feeling like the angels were really there with them and protected this child. And that's what we're doing. Pray, work, love. That's right. And find out these promises that have been promised us. And when you're saying that if we could actually see the angels, we would not worry.

Participant #1:
I love how this we can relate to Mary. We can relate to we can relate to Joseph. We can relate to Moses mother. And I always forget her name. Jenny. You probably remember Joseph. Lucy? No. Moses. Moses. Something like this, anyway. Yes. His first mother or his adopted mother? First mother. Yes. He put him in the weeds, put them in the basket. And what pain like the Lord will carry this child? That is the vision. Yes, it is. That is the view that we see, is that our children are guided by the Savior. They're guided and protected by the Holy Spirit. And we have to have all sorts of faith in that. We do. And so we leave with you. Your primary motion about having an LGBTQ child should not be worried. And if it is worry you, some of the tricks we gave you in this and some of the tools to help manage your mind, because the Lord does not want you to stay and worry, and it is available for you to feel peace and love about the journey of your family. All right, we love you. Have a great day. Go take over the world. 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 Lift and Love orgs on Instagram and Facebook. But most importantly, remember you are not alone in this journey. We are building a community of thriving and faithful LGBTQ families who are here to lift and love you.