The Story You Choose

You have spent twelve chapters doing work that most people—including most of your fellow Latter-day Saints—will never be asked to do. You have named harm that the institution prefers to leave unnamed. You have grieved losses that the institution does not acknowledge. You have dismantled theological frameworks that were presented as eternal truth and discovered that the gospel underneath is more generous, more merciful, and more vast than the institutional version allowed. You have rebuilt, from the inside out, a faith that is more honest, more resilient, and more Christlike than the version you inherited. And if you have done this work in community, you have done it together—in a room with people who understand, who have walked the same road, who did not need you to explain.

This chapter asks one final question: What is the story of your life?

NARRATIVE IDENTITY

Dan McAdams, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has spent his career studying what he calls narrative identity: the internalized, evolving story of the self that each person constructs to provide their life with unity, purpose, and meaning. McAdams’s central insight is that identity is not a fixed trait. It is a story—a story that you are constantly writing, revising, and reinterpreting. And the quality of that story—its coherence, its sense of meaning, its capacity to integrate suffering into a larger framework—is one of the strongest predictors of psychological well-being.

McAdams and McLean (2013) found that “redemption narratives”—life stories in which a negative event or period is followed by a positive outcome—are among the strongest predictors of long-term well-being, generativity, and psychological maturity. A redemption narrative is not denial. It is not “everything happens for a reason.” It is the integration of suffering into a larger story in which the suffering has meaning. Adler et al. (2016) confirmed that narrative coherence—the ability to tell a story of one’s life that integrates difficult experiences into a meaningful whole—is a robust predictor of resilience.

THREE ACTS OF YOUR STORY

Act I: The Story You Were Given. You did not write this story. It was written for you by the institution, by your family, by the culture that surrounded you from birth. The story goes like this: “You are a child of God, and God’s plan for you is heterosexual marriage and family. If you experience same-sex attraction, it is a condition of mortality—a test, a trial, a consequence of the Fall. Your job is to resist, endure, and wait for the resurrection to fix what mortality broke. If you are faithful enough, God will make everything right.” This story was presented as eternal truth. For many of you, it was the only story available.

Act II: The Story You Lived. This story is yours—not authored by the institution but forged in the furnace of your actual experience. It includes the worthiness interviews in which you lied because the truth was too dangerous. It includes the mission you served while hiding the deepest truth about yourself. It includes the marriage you entered because a man you trusted told you it would work. It includes the children you love with a ferocity that surprises even you. It includes the night you almost did not survive, and the morning you woke up and decided to keep going. It includes the moment you realized the institutional story was not true—the terrifying, liberating, world-altering moment when honest faith began.

Act III: The Story You Choose. “I am a gay believer. My love is not broken, not fallen, not in need of repair. The institution was wrong about this, and future revelation will confirm what my personal revelation already has. My suffering has given me gifts I would not otherwise possess—compassion, discernment, a capacity for tenderness that is, frankly, Christlike. My calling is real. My calling was authored by my Savior, sealed by my suffering, and confirmed by the life I continue to live. And I am going home to a Christ who has been waiting for me with arms wide open, not a clipboard in His hand.”

3 NEPHI 17: BRING THEM HITHER

The story ends where it must: with Christ. Not the institutional Christ who gatekeeps worthiness. The Christ of 3 Nephi 17, who descended to the temple at Bountiful after the destruction and the darkness and the three days of silence, and whose first act was not to teach doctrine or organize a church. His first act was to invite the people to come forward, one by one, and touch the prints of the nails.

He did not ask them to fix themselves first. He did not hand them a worthiness interview. He did not check whether their afflictions were self-inflicted or externally imposed. He said bring them hither. All of them. Every single one. Have ye any that are sick? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed? Bring them hither. And I will heal them.

That is the Christ of the Book of Mormon. That is the Christ of this book. And that is the Christ who is waiting for you—not at the end of a checklist, not behind a recommend desk, not on the other side of an impossible performance. He is waiting for you right here, right now, exactly as you are. And when you arrive—when you finally stop performing and simply walk toward Him—He will say what He has been saying your entire life:

“Come unto me. You are mine. You have always been mine. And I am so glad you are home.”