Ghosts in the Church Parking Lot

On Paths Not Taken

One long yawn. After his yawn, the tired toddler threw a toy car and babbled with newfound ire. My twin sister seized him from the floor and announced, “You’re ready for bed!”

I knew what this meant: My presence in the room had flicked like a light switch from pleasant to inconvenient, though my sister would never say so. I was visiting Utah from Washington DC, and as is the case with every visit, those transitional minutes between day and night reminded me that I was indeed a visitor—if a beloved one. Born within minutes of each other, raised barely an arm’s length apart, our lives had forked in different directions.

Time to disappear.

I stepped outside for a walk around her neighborhood in West Provo. Pulling out my phone, I opened my podcast app for something to listen to. A white box with black lettering appeared, a ghost of an old dream. It was On Being with Krista Tippett, a podcast I hungrily consumed about a decade ago, around the time when the fissure first began.

In college, my twin sister and I began to seriously worry what it would mean for our futures if we remained Mormon. Could we be honest in this faith? Could we marry and raise children within it? As roommates in a corner apartment of the old Heritage Halls, we took turns disappearing into our walk-in closet to pray. Over time, I made a rugged peace with the questions. My sister did not.

Professors had helped me envision appealing ways to continue in the faith. Friends introduced me to media I had never heard of, including the On Being podcast. Krista Tippett struck me as a type of woman I could aspire to be like: thoughtful, empathetic, unmarried yet respected, the indubitable mother of a global family that she summoned under her wing. Her interviews with artists, philosophers, faith leaders, and scientists on what it means to be human glimmered like the words of Joseph Smith: “We should gather all the good and true principles of the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true Mormons.”