Let The Prodigals Hope Be Enough: Why I’m Ready for Re-Baptism

So I found out I may definitely be autistic, my therapist helped me realize that… I possess more than 35 traits from the autism spectrum…. so it’s been an interesting few months for me reading, crying, realizing, feeling grief for a childhood that could’ve been even a little bit saved by someone, somewhere, if not me, reaching out and realizing it sooner … so also a lot of anger and resentment… But also hope … So I’ll be spending possibly more months or years trying to figure out a diagnosis.

But I have hope.

Now about me getting re-baptized… it’s also led by hope.

— There was a time I thought I had to be perfect to belong… that God only spoke in certainties, that testimony meant conviction without shadow. But I’ve lived enough life, and lost enough along the way, to know now that… sometimes hope is all we get… and that is enough.

Hope has held me when doctrine couldn’t. Hope has carried me through storms I never thought I’d survive. And it’s hope that brings me here today… standing not just near the very edge of the font, but at the edge of becoming …again. I’m not at all asking for approval. I’m completely offering my willingness… to a God I don’t fully believe in. I’m putting my hope and what little faith exists in that hope… into this being… this God I spent my whole life praying to. Along with his doctrine. I do not come back with all the answers. Clearly…

I come back because I still believe the questions and the doubts matter. Somehow there’s a sacredness to doubts. I’ll explain in a bit.

So… My story isn’t clean or easy. Yes, not a lot of people’s stories even are.

My testimony wasn’t born in a peaceful home or a Primary class. Or among loving parents and friends. I was raised by an abuser… my grandmother…

(by the way, if you’ve ever watched The Handmaids Tale… Aunt Lydia is the closest resemblance to my grandmother, almost exact in looks and behavior)….

My grandma… who weaponized scripture and called it love. She hurt me and my 3 siblings for years and called it love, often quoting “spare the rod, beat the child” as her own act of faith and belief….. she would pull my hair and drag me down the hall … or stairs, to our uncle, she let live with us in our basement, when she was too fed up to hurt us herself…. She’d allow my uncle to beat us with a board embedded with nails. Throw glass beer bottles at me if I moved when in time-out, call me names, act like an immature man-child and play around hurting me and my siblings for fun… once even had us fight each other for punishments. I got in trouble once for pulling his daughter’s earring out…. my grandma once tied me up with bungee cords and laid me on her bedroom floor tied up while she slept, for a few hours…. to “cast out demons.”… several times she nearly drowned my sister and I because she was fed up with how slow we took showers and baths…. She said God forgave her, but never taught us what grace felt like. She never apologized for anything. I wasn’t taught that God was love. I was taught that He watched cruelty and called it righteousness. I was taught that God was always angry with me and nothing I did pleased him and that it was pointless to try yet I was supposed to keep trying.

From age twelve to nineteen, I raised myself. No parents. No stable home. Seven foster placements. Group homes. Psych wards. Got arrested 4 times for giving empty threats to bullies til I was 15 which landed me in the detention center. 4 times. The Christmas Box House. Hospitals. No consistent answers. No real warmth. Not much. When I encountered the Church at seventeen, in my 3rd foster home… I didn’t yet understand the difference between imitation and transformation. But I saw the young women at church… bullies, yes… I called the mean girls of Zion…. But they were bright, poised, polished. I thought, maybe if I joined, I could become like them. Maybe I could inherit their calm, their safety, their access to joy. I didn’t join out of conviction. I joined out of longing… for belonging, for beauty, for a family I could borrow if I couldn’t build my own.

I even broke up with my high school girlfriend before getting baptized. I was a junior at the time. I identify myself as pansexual, but back then I just called myself bisexual. Which is said to be ok by the church yet it isn’t. It’s only ok to certain degrees… I’m married to a man and the church accepts that. If I was in love and married legally to a woman, I wouldn’t be as accepted. Nor could I live with that person for eternity, sealed in the temple…. And that breaks my heart.. that’s one of the biggest problems I have with the church. The ignorance towards LGBTQ love.

I broke up with my girlfriend despite the love we had. (We are still friends now but never really talk, out of busyness and separate lives)

I told myself that breaking up with her and getting baptized was for God. But really, it was for survival. For conformity disguised as covenant. My first baptism was sincere… mostly… but mainly naïve. Still, God accepted me. Even then.

Ten years later, I removed my records. Not out of rebellion, but exhaustion. I was overwhelmed by guilt, fear, and my limited understanding of what God wanted from me. Prayer felt like echoing into emptiness. Reading scripture no longer sparked light. The “burning in the bosom” everyone spoke of began to feel more like grief than guidance. I didn’t know whether I was hearing the Spirit… or simply aching for something I couldn’t name.

And maybe, in the quiet, God whispered, Go. Be still. Watch.

That’s what I chose to believe because there was nothing else as bright and true feeling as that.

So I wandered… not toward another religion, not even toward a lack-there-of, necessarily… but toward silence. I left social media. I let go of noise and narratives. I didn’t need new doctrine. I needed air. Stillness. Time. But I never stopped praying. Never stopped hoping. And I never stopped believing that God… somewhere, somehow… was still reaching for me.

I began quietly speaking to sister missionaries at Temple Square. A month after getting my records removed…. I spoke with them for a few months… No pressure. No preaching. Just listening. And in their gentleness, I began to remember who I was beneath the shame. I wasn’t lost. I was learning. I wasn’t wicked. I was wounded. And slowly, the ember of belief began to glow again… not bright, but real.

In my song Elohim, I wrote:

“…I don’t know what faith is built on, but I still choose the light.

If You gave Your life for love, then I will live like it’s all right…”

That line is my testimony. Not of certainty, but of choice. I choose the light… daily, fiercely, through tears. My hope is my offering. It’s not always strong, but it’s always honest. This Church offers a form of truth I have not found anywhere else. Its doctrine is bold. Its covenants are binding. Its vision of eternity is sweeping and strangely personal. I’ve tasted spiritual ideas from many places… Christian denominations, mysticism, Catholicism, Buddhism, the Jewish faith, Hinduism, and so much more… and I believe most religions hold pieces of the divine. Oh they truly do…

if you’ve watched Heretic, it has pieces of truth but also it of course has theatrical drama amongst its not so obvious falsehoods of how it proclaims to uncover “the truth of religion” but that in itself is a whole other blog post/essay…..

Most religions I’ve come across hold peices of something divine and holy…. Refractions of something whole. But hear me out… even if they each hold pieces, I believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds the entire architecture of the gospel. If there’s a whole of the gospel anywhere it’s in this church… Not just a fragment of light, but the framework that holds the light in place. A priesthood restored. A plan revealed. A path both ancient and alive.

But I also believe this: I would not have seen that, clearly, had I never stepped away…

Paradoxically, it was the silence outside the covenant path that allowed me to hear my own spirit again. In that stillness, without obligation or expectation, I learned how to want without being told what I should want.

My heart was no longer crowded by the noise of performative righteousness or the pressure to feel something on cue. I stopped trying to manufacture belief and started listening for what remained when everything else was gone. And what remained… was desire. The quiet, flickering desire to belong to something true. To be changed… not just warmed… by the Spirit. To return not for social belonging or borrowed light, but because I had chosen this path freely.

The Savior taught that faith the size of a mustard seed could move mountains (Matthew 17:20). Oh… I’ve moved mountains… not by commanding them to fall, but by crawling around, between, and over them on bloodied hands and knees. I didn’t always look brave doing it. My prayers weren’t eloquent. My progress wasn’t linear. But I kept reaching. Even when God felt silent. Even when I felt disqualified from divine attention. Faith for me wasn’t a sermon. It was survival.

And Alma’s words remind me that faith doesn’t begin in certainty… it begins in desire (Alma 32). Even when knowledge fails, desire keeps the story going. I’ve nourished that desire through long years of silence, song, ache, poetry, grief, and awe. Through every moment I whispered a prayer with no answer. Through every tear-stained page of scripture I couldn’t fully believe but couldn’t let go of either. Through every hour I spent trying to unlearn false images of God and discover the real One.

Doctrine and Covenants 64:33 teaches that “out of small things proceedeth that which is great.” I used to think that was about pioneer journals or martyrdom or the kind of stories that get told in firesides. But now I see myself in that verse. Not in the grandeur, but in the grit. My faith has been built from small things… tiny, stubborn acts of hope. Forgiving people who never apologized. Writing poems and songs in empty rooms. Softening my heart after it had hardened. Choosing not to leave many situations when I had every reason to.

It’s not dramatic. But it’s holy.

This is the kind of faith that’s formed in wilderness and refined in return.

And I choose it. Now, with full eyes.

God builds greatness not out of grandeur, but quiet courage. And I believe He’s been building something in me all along.

I don’t believe re-baptism requires perfect certainty. I believe it requires a willing heart. What I feel now isn’t flashy… it’s not a spiritual high or a blinding light. It’s lived-in, quiet, rooted. It’s the kind of belief you earn after everything else falls away. It’s the faith that sings through tears, whispers through doubt, and keeps showing up anyway.

And that… this raw, aching, tender, resilient hope… is my most sacred possession.

I don’t want to return to church to blend in. I want to belong… not to culture, but to covenant. Not to appearances, but to truth. Not to performance, but to promise. I know the worries some leaders may have. I have anxiety about that… I know my path has been unconventional. But I am not the same person who left. I’m not even the same person who was baptized at seventeen.

I’ve walked through the world outside the covenant path. Not in defiance, but in quiet departure. Not running, but drifting. I didn’t leave with a slam of the door… I left with a sigh. A great need to just breathe. I had so much noise coming from so many sides. I was panicking, overwhelmed, and thought removing my records could give me a brand new start away from all religion which I then realized a month later I actually didn’t need. I should’ve just stepped away without the removing of my records unless I was more certain... it was only when I stepped into that open, aching silence (a few months later I should’ve say) that I began to gradually and more fully understand what I had walked away from.

And oh, how I miss it.

I miss the sacrament. That small, weekly miracle. The moment bread and water become covenant and mercy. The stillness that falls across the chapel, the reverence that hushes even restless hearts. I didn’t know how much I needed that ritual until it was gone… the chance to start over, again and again, with nothing more than a bowed head and a broken heart.

I miss the temple. Its quiet gravity. The way it feels set apart not just in space, but in time. I didn’t understand the depth of holiness that lives in its stillness until I tried to carry life’s chaos without it. I miss the weightless feeling of being known, the symbolic language of heaven gently folded into earthly rooms. The soft white reminder that the divine is both distant and deeply near.

I miss the people… not-so-ordinary saints who show up in their flaws and faith. Who sit in pews with trembling hands and hopeful hearts. I used to focus on what made me different. Now I see what we share. We are all just trying to believe, however we can. And there is something sacred in simply sitting beside others who are also reaching toward God, even through doubt and imperfection.

I miss the promise of eternity. Not as a fantasy, but as a framework. A way of seeing the world where love doesn’t have an expiration date. Where healing is eternal, not transactional. Where family becomes something that stretches beyond biology and into forever. I didn’t truly understand sealing before. I saw it as doctrine, not desire. But now, I feel the yearning of it in my bones. The ache to be part of something unbreakable. I want that. Not for show. Not for appearances. But because my soul recognizes it as home.

And here is what I believe now, more than ever: stepping away was also a sacred part of living the gospel.

Because silence, too, can be holy.

Sometimes, it’s not about reading the Book of Mormon for the hundredth time. Not about memorizing verses or redoubling every effort. Or praying til your knees are too weak to stand… Sometimes, it’s about letting yourself go quiet enough to hear what’s real inside you. Sometimes, it’s the walking away that teaches you why you’d ever come back.

We talk about enduring to the end… but what about wandering in the middle? What about the grace that meets us in detours? I believe the gospel is big enough to include my silence. My questions. My need for space. I believe Christ walks even the road away from Him… because it is often that very road that circles back to His feet. It’s the road he saves the 1 while the 99 are bunched together in safety.

And I am here now… not because I never left, but because I finally understood why I want to return.

In my song The Font and the Flame, I wrote:

“…This time I come with open eyes,

No borrowed light, no forced disguise.

But truth I bled and paths I chose,

And love that deeper still, now grows…”

This is not about performance. It’s about covenant. I don’t come in disguise. I come in truth. Not to prove I’m fixed. But to show I’m still becoming.

In Ether 12:27, we are told that God gives us weakness so we may be humble… and in humility, weak things can become strong. I know weakness. But I also know humility. I have no illusions about my past. But I believe it has refined me, not ruined me.

And what I offer now is this:

• A heart that still hopes.

• A soul that still seeks.

• A love that longs for the eternal.

• And a willingness to begin again—with persistent, imperfect faith.

I will live as if the gospel is true… not because I always feel it, but because I want it to be true. And wanting matters. I’ve had this desire for 11 years. I just now realized that longing IS enough to make me worthy of my covenants and sacred duties God may give me… That longing is holy. That hope is a form of testimony.

I will pray as if God listens. Even when I’m unsure. Even when my prayers feel more like reaching than receiving. Because doubt, too, can be reverent. My questions are not rebellion… they are relationship. And I trust that God sees the difference.

I will sing, even when my voice shakes. Because I believe God hears more than melody. He hears meaning. He hears the ache beneath the words. The hallelujah whispered through grief.

If grace is real… and I believe it is… then it must be wide enough to welcome me back. Not with demands for perfection, but with open arms for the wanderer who’s found her way home. Let it not erase my past, but let it sanctify it. Let it say: you are mine anyway.

Let my mustard seed of faith… not loud, not flashy, not the kind that stuns a congregation… but steady and enduring, be enough. Let that be the seed that becomes a tree. One that shades others like me. One that welcomes the weary, the uncertain, the different. One that proves faith doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it whispers. And sometimes, it just keeps walking.

I want to be baptized again. Not because I never strayed… but because I returned. And isn’t that the very heart of the gospel? Not preserving the pristine, but redeeming the lost? Christ didn’t stay with the ninety and nine. He ran after the one.

And I… I am one of the one.

As I also wrote in my song, The Font and the Flame:

“I’ll rise again, in water new,

A vow to God, a vow to you.

Not just for Sunday or for a day,

But sealed in time, in forming clay.”

This isn’t for applause. It’s not for proof. It’s for covenant. For return. For surrender.

Let my return be my testimony. Let my scars be sacred. Let my hope be enough.

In the name of Jesus Christ… the Shepherd who walks every mile beside us… I offer this plea:

I am ready to come home.