On the Porch Steps

I went to a retreat this week about “Faith Crisis” and after listening to myself talk, hearing the anger and resistance to being told this was a “gift” and being asked to list some of the good things that have come out of it, I finally figured out what was going on and why I’m probably NEVER going to say I’m glad this happened to me. My faith crisis happened as a result of my daughter’s death. I can’t separate the two timelines. I wish I could. I really wish I knew if I’d have gone through a faith crisis at about the same time anyway. But as far as I can tell, it happened because of my grief and guilt over losing my daughter. So many friends and family who are Mormon church members told me this narrative that God had caused this to happen because there was an important “lesson” for me to learn about my daughter’s death. It was supposed to bring our family closer together. It was supposed to make us more righteous and lead us to the celestial kingdom, where we would see her agai

Morrmons often pride themselves on the rejection of the Catholic/Christian doctrine of “original sin.” We think that in rejecting the idea that all men are born into sin because of Adam’s transgression, we focus on the innocence of new life. A wealth of other Mormon doctrines stem from the rejection of original sin, including the idea that children don’t need to be baptized until the age of eight, which we deem the “age of accountability” and even the idea that special needs children who never reach a mental age of accountability are automatically accepted into the celestial kingdom upon death. I spent most of my life holding fast to the importance of the idea of original innocence. But a few years ago, I began to question it. A few years ago, I was recovering from a deep faith crisis and returning to God. At the same time, I was also experiencing a creative crisis. The career I had built as a young adult fantasy author had crumbled. My big publisher dreams died as my sales tan