Emily Robison Adams: Has God Gone Silent In Your Life? Or Is He Just Quiet?

Morgan Jones Pearson

In her new book, "Divine Quietness," Emily Robison Adams writes of a "rethinking" that was necessary for her spiritual survival through a period of doubt. "When I look at the scriptures through the lens of rethinking," she writes, "I see a God who consistently challenges human ideas of who God is supposed to be. Rethinking invites me to embrace the very likely reality that I cannot know all of God. Rethinking allows me to accept that not knowing does not mean that I give up rather it encourages me to be open to different ways that God can show up in my life and guide me." For a long time, Emily thought God was being silent. Now she explores the idea of whether or not He was actually just being quiet. Emily Robison Adams is the mother of three children and is a practicing appellate attorney. She received her undergraduate degree in linguistics from Brigham Young University and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Minnesota Law School. She worked for judges on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota before returning to Utah. She is a partner at the Appellate Group, a boutique law firm focusing on appeals.

This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson and I am so honored to have Emily Robison Adams on the line with me today. Emily, welcome.

Emily Robison Adams

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well this is so exciting for me and I get excited, Emily, any time Deseret Book has a product that I feel like is really going to make a difference in people's lives and that is how I feel about this book that you've written and so mad props to you for that. But I want to start, I wondered if you could take me back to the beginning of this journey for you. When did you start to feel like you were going through this period of what you call "divine quietness" and what does your life look like at that point?

Emily Robison Adams

So for about 20 years, I had been struggling not getting answers from God on direct questions. I asked a lot of questions to God about should I get married? Should I go to law school? I've decided to do this, is this the right way to go? Is the Book of Mormon true? Was Joseph Smith a prophet? Is President Nelson a Prophet? You know, all these questions. And I had never gotten any answers with one exception. And so in 2013, President Nelson gave a conference talk where he said that it wouldn't be possible to spiritually survive in the future without the guiding and directing influence of the Holy Ghost. And that really stuck with me. And I began to be a little worried that I couldn't get seem to get answers to direct questions, because in my mind, that was really important. Like, if we're going to have confusion in the coming days ahead, it would be really important to know that I can ask God a question about something and He'll give me an answer. So I devised this plan, where I thought that if I could figure out how God could give me an answer to one direct question, then maybe I could crack the code. And I can use that in the future. So I decided to ask God about the truthfulness of Book of Mormon. I had, of course, asked that question lots of times in my life, I'd never gotten an answer. But I picked that question because I thought it would be an easy revelation for God to give. I mean, we ask our missionaries to go tell people to pray about the Book of Mormon all the time. So I thought, you know, I think God would be willing to give me this answer. So at the end of 2018, it took about six weeks, and I read the Book of Mormon cover to cover because I thought, that's going to help me get this revelation, I'm going to really prepare for it. And then I sat down at the very beginning of January 2020. And I prayed, and I said, Okay, I've read the Book of Mormon, please let me know if it's true. And I got nothing. And I asked, reasked that question a bunch of different ways and after awhile, I got nothing. And I tried that a few times, and still got nothing. And then what happened next, I can only describe it is just feeling like God just disappeared, and the Spirit disappeared. The only way I can really describe it is I don't know if you've seen those enormous cast iron pots that people cook in. I felt like I was inside this cast iron pot and the lid was put on it. There's just nothing. There is absolutely nothing. And it was something that I had never experienced before in my entire life. I didn't have the vocabulary to explain it. I didn't have any reason, and I just had no idea what was going on. But I felt completely alone. And I just felt that this entire spiritual life that I had, has completely disappeared practically overnight.

Morgan Jones Pearson

It's interesting listening to you share that, because having had a lot of friends, and people that I love and care about that have gone through similar experiences, I can see some like common trends. And I think that's why I think your book is so important is because while we all go through different experiences, I think that there there are similarities and things that can be helpful as we share, you know, our, our unique experience, are there things people can relate to. So this book is called "Divine Quietness." And I think some people might not know what to expect based on that title but I think the idea of it is so beautiful. In the book, you write, "In my quietness, I could choose to see God as absent, silent and aloof, or I could choose to see quietness as a different way that God could relate to me. The latter choice brought more hope and meaning. Instead of talking about God going silent, I chose to speak of God going quiet. And perhaps if I did not resist the quietness, I could find God in that quiet space." So I wondered for you, Emily, what did you learn about why sometimes God isn't silent, but maybe He is just quiet?

Emily Robison Adams

For me, the word silence carries connotations of absence, of aloofness, of being angry, you think of people giving others a cold shoulder to me, the silent treatment, just as a word with a lot of connotations that are positive and quiet. This, for me, seemed more like somebody's present, but I'm maybe not aware of it. It's just, they're engaging in my life in a way that I'm not entirely aware of. I read a lot at the very beginning and in the middle, and for months and months that quietness lasted. And there was a lot of stuff I read that was not helpful. That actually seemed to push me further into it—made it seem like the quietness of it was a result of me. Some sin, I wasn't tuning in, there was something incredibly wrong with me. And I walked away from those sources, just feeling like I didn't understand because I felt like I was doing everything right. I was trying to do the right thing when I was trying to ask God genuine good questions. But I ran across two things that were really helpful. And one was "the dark night of the soul." And one was this concept of withdrawal in the context of normal human healthy relationships. And the dark night of the soul has been around for a long time. There was a poem and then subsequently a book written by St. John of the Cross who was a Catholic priest back in the 1500s. And it's something that's actually pretty well known in broader Christendom, but we don't really talk about it in our church. But essentially, the dark night of the soul occurs when you feel extreme absence, they call it a rigidity, you just feel like God is gone. And what John likes to talk about, St. John of the Cross, what he likes to talk about is that this is actually for your benefit, that sometimes we attach a lot of expectations to God, we attach a lot of quid pro quo to God. So we say, I follow God because I get this benefit or I do this for God because I get this benefit and when all of that is taken away, you finally have to examine your relationship with God and decide, am I doing this for a deeper, holier, better reason than just getting a benefit in return? And, you know, there's a lot more to St. John of the Cross. It's a beautiful, hard book to read, because it's old. But I really liked that idea. I like that idea of maybe God was teaching me something here that I had attached a lot of expectations to God, I thought I could control God, I was attaching a lot of benefits to my supposed righteousness and by taking all of that away, I finally had to examine all these ideas and thoughts and ways that I had lived, and they were found wanting. But when all of that was covered with warm, fuzzy feelings, like going to church and feeling awesome and reading your scriptures and feeling the Spirit and seeing your parents and feeling good, when all of the good feelings are gone, you suddenly have to figure out, what does this really mean? Why am I here? Is God really a person or being that I'm interested in? Because I'm not receiving any benefit. So I really liked that idea. And the other idea that I really liked was from Wendy Ulrich. And she wrote a book called, "Let God Love You" that I wish I would have found years ago. But in it, and I believe she's a psychologist, and she talks about how withdrawal is just a really super normal stage of healthy relationships and she talks about how long term successful marriages oftentimes go through four stages, you've got the honeymoon stage, then you've got the power struggle stage, where you realize that the person you married isn't really the person that you're living with. And then, you know, if those power struggles come to a head, you can get to the withdrawal stage, where you begin to wonder if it's really worth it staying in this relationship, because this person is different than the person you thought you married. And she talks about the withdrawal stage as just a long, boring, awful road trip. And there's no magical way to get out of it, to test drive through it, and you don't have any idea how long it's gonna take. You just drive, you just keep your wheels on the road, and you drive. And eventually, if you get to that stage, you can go to the acceptance stage. And the acceptance stage is all about recognizing the person you married, as perfect as who they are and accepting them for who they are, accepting you for who they are, and moving forward in that relationship. And she takes that framework and attributes it to God, and talks about her own experiences experiencing God in a time of withdrawal. And it felt to me like maybe there was a dark night of the soul for me. But perhaps maybe I withdrew a little bit too, because God was different than I thought He was supposed to be. He wasn't meeting my expectations. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay. For me, it was never a question of to stay in the Church or not. For me, it was always a question of whether to stay with God or not. Because if God isn't isn't worthy of worship, church doesn't matter. Those two things I thought were really helpful. And essentially, they both come down to putting you in a space where you can examine your assumptions, and your ideas and your philosophies that you might not have seen before. But they become really apparent when suddenly they stop working.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Those two ideas are powerful. And I especially love the one that you shared from Wendy Ulrich. She is one of my favorites. And I just think she's she's so talented at helping us see things maybe a little bit differently than we have before. So as you were starting out, Emily, on this journey, your mother encouraged you to write down the things that you were learning. And I thought that was so sweet all along as I was reading the book, but then at the very end, you said "I do feel that the thought to start writing was a prompt from God that came through my mother and throughout this writing process, I have healed. I've seen God's hand more, clarified my thinking, and written down my most caustic thoughts, questioned them and allowed them to leave." I wondered what kind of gratitude do you feel toward your mom for her care and concern toward you through this experience? And maybe how do you feel like we can best support others who are going through a similar experience?

Emily Robison Adams

I feel so much gratitude for her. And I just felt like I was so lucky to have a small group wasn't a big group, but a small group of people who knew what I was going through and who were incredibly kind and supportive. The quietness for me started in January. And I opened up. For a long time, I didn't know what I was feeling. I didn't know how to express what was going on. But I was deeply sad and deeply fearful and I just had no clue what was going on. So I couldn't really articulate it very well. And I told my husband a couple months in, and I told my mom about eight months. And so I was in a pretty rough spot when I told my mom, and she was so kind and she knows my job for a living is writing, I write a lot for my job. So that's how I process things is by writing. And she suggested that I start writing it took me another four months to get to a place where I could start. And then when I saw I started writing, one year after the quietness started so I started writing in January of 2021. And I wrote for six months, and those were hard and beautiful six months. But I'm just really grateful for that small group of people that let me be sad and afraid and being in a space where I didn't know if I liked God without freaking out, I think that that is key. My mom, my dad, my husband, were all really good at listening. And not freaking out about it. Because I think sometimes when you're in relationships where the Church is a huge part of your life when someone in that relationship questions church and God, the others in that relationship might start worrying about eternity. And you can really devolve to everybody's freaking out about everything. And they did a really nice job of clamping that down. And even though they probably were internally freaking out, and my husband got to a good point where we'd have a conversation, and he would say, is this a listening conversation? Or can push back a little bit conversation? And I would just be like, this is just a listening conversation. Or sometimes I would say, I'm actually ready to hear your thoughts. That's great. But it was just a good place to be. So I think that if you've got a loved one in that space, for me, it took 18 months. It just takes time, and space. And sometimes they just need space, time and space, and just a person to love them for where they are.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I want to touch really quickly before we move on from that, I was planning on asking this question later. But in the book, you talk about, you know, sometimes you don't need to hear people's testimonies right off the bat, that's not helpful, but you said, You did need people to hear what you were feeling and acknowledge it. And that's kind of what you just said. But you wrote this when that happened: "I learned the power of the baptismal covenant to mourn with those who mourn more powerfully than I ever have in my life." And I love that the way that you put that. I wondered, how do you feel like having gone through this experience will change the way that you keep that covenant moving forward?

Emily Robison Adams

I had two groups of people in my life: I had my dear friends and family who loved me who had never experienced anything like this before. And for them, just listening was huge. And loving me for where I was was huge. And then we had another group of about two people. So it was a large group. And we were all going through something similar, that looked a little bit different. But it was a full blown faith crisis for all three of us because God had disappeared or wasn't showing up in our lives the way that we expected. And one thing that I learned from this group was that there's something really powerful in just listening to other people's stories. I could go on walks with these two women. And we could talk and we could say things to each other that I couldn't say to anyone else, because they had experienced it. And they knew that. I don't know, sometimes you just there are some things you just can't say in church. And there's some things you just can't say to people that haven't experienced it. But I could talk about all the anger that I felt towards God, and how I was really disappointed and how none of it made sense. And I could talk about how I wasn't even sure if God was worthy of me being with Him. And those were healing periods. So now, when I think of mourning with those that mourn, I just think of walking. Those people that walked with me, they walked with me, they listened to me, they didn't have to solve my problems, because in my mind, a lot of the questions I have are too big to be easily solved. They were too big than a simple testimony, and just having them listen and walk with me, and sometimes bring up something that was helpful to me. That's mourning with those that mourn. It's huge. It's absolutely huge. And it was so helpful. And I do think now more than ever, that it's the most important covenant we make, because that's how you create real connection between people is just listening to their stories and not needing to fix them.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I completely agree with that. Emily, one quote that I really loved, you have a chapter where you talk about doubt, and you quote Elder Dale G. Renlund, who spoke of what he called stagnant doubt, and [the quote] said "when in stagnant doubt, a person is content with himself, unwilling to make the appropriate effort to pay the price of divine discovery, and inevitably reaches unbelief and darkness. His doubts grow like poisonous mushrooms in the dim shadows of his mental and spiritual chambers." What would you say it is that you found is the opposite of stagnant doubt?

Emily Robison Adams

So the way that I interpret this statement from Elder Renlund and I think he was I can't remember who was quoting when he was talking about stagnant doubt, but is that if doubt becomes the end, it's the end of the journey is doubt. And I like the idea of viewing doubt as the journey, it's the path, it's the way, it's the means that we begin to think about our lives differently, it's the way that you begin to really see all the assumptions that are making, it's the way that we can see the frameworks that we've created, that were entirely invisible to us before. I really like Adam Miller. He's one of my favorite LDS thinkers. And he talks about that this kind of doubt is a strong solvent that burns holes in your stories, and leads you back to being faithful to life and faithful to God. I love that idea that you can use this doubt to really look at yourself and your life more carefully and more honestly than you have before. I'll say that I sat down in January of 2021, when I started writing, I think I spent two or three months on doubt, because I was so conflicted about doubt, and I felt so horrible for having doubts. I felt so unworthy. And it took me a long time to get to a point where I can say, No, these are actually for me, these are good. I know that some people may disagree with that. But for me, these were good. And they exposed things that weren't actually are harmful to my faith. And I didn't realize they were harmful to my faith. So yes, I love the idea of doubts being a way that you can reach that clear idea of God, you can get closer to reality. But you need those doubts to kind of poke holes in the things that you assumed and in the way that you framed your life.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, and I love in the book, you talk about how rethinking (and we'll talk more about rethinking later) but rethinking your approach to doubt, making it feel hopeful, rather than...I always am a big fan of the idea that hope and despair are opposites. And so naturally, we should gravitate toward the things that allow us to feel hopeful. And I think that recalibrating, as far as doubt goes, allows you to feel some hope again. Am I right about that, Emily?

Emily Robison Adams

Yes, yes. I mean, when you're in a space, I mean, for a long time, I was in a space where I have these doubts, therefore I am a horrible person, or I'm a defective person, or God would never even be interested in me. And when you can instead get rid of that and just say, I have these doubts because God's trying to get me closer to the person that I need to be and the way to get there is through kind of tearing down all this stuff that I thought was 100% true before. That's far more hopeful. And it's just for me, it's it's been a much healthier way of thinking of things.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I love that. So you talk about finding this healthy balance between acknowledging doubt, but not being consumed by those doubts. I wondered for you, what does that look like in practice?

Emily Robison Adams

Yeah. So for me, when I felt consumed by doubt, there was a lot of sadness, a lot of fear, so much anxiety. And if you look at doubt a little bit differently, what took the place of the fear and the anxiety was curiosity. So instead of saying, there's this thing that I am experiencing, that's different than what I ever thought, and therefore, life is horrible. None of that makes sense. And I'm terrified about what's gonna happen next. I can say, there's this thing I don't understand. How interesting is that? And I wonder how that works with this other thing. And I wonder how it works with this other thing? How do they balance out? So I think being curious is super helpful, realizing that there's tension in everything. And so there's going to be principles that are intention, there's going to be the space of you just have to hold space, there's going to be lots of things that are in tension that you can't resolve. And that's totally okay. And in fact, that's how a lot of nature and the world around us works are things, opposites, are held or things that don't seem to work together are held in tension. And that's what creates balance. The other thing that has helped, is getting rid of all the defenses. So I like the idea of you have an ego. And that's the part of your brain that's just trying to prop you up and make you feel like you're special. And you're important. And it's tempting to go and defend you against all of the attacks, and anything that could potentially cause you harm. And if you just get rid of the ego, and just say, You know what, I don't need to be defensive about this. I can just be open to whatever I need to be taught. I don't need to possess these stories. They can just be stories that can be revised in the future when there's more truth that comes from just kind of leading life with an open hand instead of a closed fist has been really helpful to me. And it's led me to a place where I'm not certain about many things at all. And, astonishingly, that's the best place to be. Like, I don't have to know a lot of things. There's a lot of things I just don't need to know and I don't need to resolve and that's entirely okay.

Morgan Jones Pearson

You give an example in the book that I loved. And I'll just touch on really quickly. But you talked about how you had observed as a mother, you were writing in journals for your kids, and you said the way that you approached the things that you were sharing your testimony about with them was different from your first child to your child that you had around this time. And that you realized that that was okay. It was okay to say things like, I hope or I believe, rather than I know, and I think that for a lot of people, I think, especially a younger generation, there's discomfort with saying definitively I know, and that can be hard. That can be something that when we hear everybody around us saying I know I know, I know. It's like well, what if I don't feel like I know. And so I love that thought. You write, Emily, of feeling ridiculous. That's your word, admitting that you were seeking mental health help for experiencing an existential crisis. And so you recognize that you were struggling with some anxiety and depression surrounding this situation and you sought help. And I wondered, this is something I just had somebody work on a piece for LDS Living for us about why we shouldn't feel ashamed or embarrassed for seeking professional help. But I wondered for you, what would you say it was about getting that appropriate help that was so important. And why was it important for you to realize that a trial of faith is not at all a trivial matter to be written off, or to simply hope for the best, but instead, like totally worth, if you need to, investing that time, or money or whatever, to get the help that you need?

Emily Robison Adams

So for me, my quietness started in January, and the depression came on pretty quickly thereafter. And then in the summer, I had a panic attack. And I realized for the first time that there was something seriously wrong, like I was walking around being incredibly tearful, and that was something I had never experienced before in my life. So my brain was just in a state where I was really sad, deeply, deeply, deeply sad, and incredibly afraid. And I didn't realize how deep into it I was until I started coming out of it. And I realized, oh, my gosh, I was in a pretty deep hole. And the problem with depression and anxiety is it just really screws up the way you see the world, and the way that you interact with people around you, and the way that you handle things. And so I talked about in the book, how in, I believe it was in August, my Relief Society president, I was a Relief Society teacher asked me to write something that we could send out to the sisters in a newsletter. And, of course, about that time, I laughed, because there were a lot of people that like COVID was amazing and look at all the time I can spend studying my scriptures. And I was like, COVID is garbage, and this whole year is terrible. I hate the world. I was in a really bad spot. And so I wrote that my faith had collapsed, and that I was really struggling and that I was holding on to memories essentially to keep me going. And I had a friend who reached out, there were two people that saw the smoke signals, and reached out and she walked with me, and she suggested that maybe some of what I was experiencing was depression. And then I might want to go get some help for it. And the way that she approached it was kind and it wasn't judgmental. And it was a suggestion and not a command. She told me if you think that you want to talk to someone then set an appointment now, because it's going to be three months anyway. And I'll tell you what my headspace was at the time. I said well, in three months, either I'll be cured or dead, like that's where I was. So I made an appointment. And I went to a therapist and then I also went to the nurse practitioner to help me with some medication because I was just so deep into it that I needed help both on the talking side and on the medication side. And it was really wonderful to hear from both of these people that, because God and faith are such significant parts of people's lives, that when those things are challenged in significant ways that they can cause as much grief as really other hard things that happen. So for me, I couldn't start, I didn't start writing until I felt like I had my head a bit more above water with that mental health piece, because I couldn't think accurately, I was so deep, so fearful, so afraid, so sad. I couldn't think. And once I could begin to think and once I could begin to see my thoughts, and once I could begin to take some steps where I felt a little bit better, that's when I could engage with my faith, and engage with my questions and doubts a little bit more.

Morgan Jones Pearson

As you were talking, I can think of one time in my life where I felt like I felt that deep sadness, and I did seek help from a therapist during that time. And it does, it makes a huge difference. And I don't think that it's something that anybody should feel ashamed about, or like it doesn't matter. To your point these things, they're the things that in many cases matter the very most to us. So it makes sense that they would weigh so heavy on our hearts and be very consuming. Emily, you mentioned just now, when you were talking about the Relief Society newsletter that you you said, you were kind of relying on memories, and you talked about in a chapter about desiring to believe, you highlighted this idea of remembering. And so you've kind of talked about different kind of pivotal, spiritual experiences that you had had throughout your life, and that those experiences caused you to want to believe what would you say is the connection between remembering and desiring to believe?

Emily Robison Adams

There was a temptation for me, when I was in that really deep, dark hardness to reinterpret my history, in a way where God was completely absent, where He never showed up, where there was never any type of spiritual aspect to my life, I was always alone. And I had to really resist that, because I can say, I've never had angels appear. I've never had miraculous spiritual experiences. But I have had experiences where I felt that there was something outside myself, and greater than myself, who was helping me see differently or feel differently than I otherwise would have in that situation. So for me, the remembering my history and trying not to rewrite it, that helped. It gave me a desire to actually go back to God, if I hadn't had those memories, I don't think the desire would have been there. Because why go back to a God that you're viewing as rational and angry and horrible when you haven't had any experiences of a God that's loving and kind. So for me, the remembering was absolutely crucial to continuing that. I think the remembering was absolutely crucial to wanting to go forward. If I hadn't remembered, I don't think I would have gone forward with God, I think I would have just dumped Him in the garbage and walked away because there was no reason to continue in a path where God was that painful.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Speaking of a God that sometimes disappoints us, or that belief in God can sometimes be painful, another part that I loved was you talk about how a perfect God sometimes disappoints us because we do not have perfect expectations. And so you had this idea in your mind, 'Well, if God is perfect, He wouldn't cause disappointment.' But that eventually you came around to this realization that because we are imperfect and mortal, our expectations may not be perfect. Can you share with me a little bit more about what you mean by that? And maybe you could share with our audience a little bit about how you learned this.

Emily Robison Adams

So I've heard so many times from you stand during church, you know, God won't disappoint you, of course, it's not been my reality. That's not what I've experienced. And what I've told myself, or the idea that I've settled on, that's been helpful and I'm completely willing to revise if it's not true, is that God just operates from a much broader, wider, deeper perspective than I do. He has a much wiser view, He has a lot of wisdom. He knows me, my family, my community, the world, much better, much deeper than I do. And so although I might think that I have this comprehensive perspective, it's pretty limited, when you compare the two. And whenever you have two people that have such different perspectives, there's going to be some competition, and there's going to be things that I expect that He's going to realize is not what I need, and vice versa. So, I think that realizing that my perspective is fairly narrow and limited, even though I think I'm a pretty broad-minded person. But, you know, when you look at how much I believe, God knows and is aware of, and the wisdom that God possesses, in comparison, with my near 36 years on the planet, in a very small section of the world, there's a pretty big contrast. And that means that there's going to be times where God's gonna want things for me that I don't want and I'm going to have expectations that aren't going to be met, because God knows that there is a better path forward. I think we just have to know that. Oftentimes, the stories that we tell about our lives are not the stories that God wants us to tell about our lives. And we've got to change those stories and adjust, but during that time, there's gonna be a lot of disappointment. That's okay, that's just a normal part of having a relationship. And I think that that's been helpful. It's been helpful to think of disappointment, and withdrawal. And all of these things as this is normal. We see this, I see this in all of their relationships in my life. Why am I saying that somehow God is excepted from that? I don't think He should be. So yeah, God's gonna disappoint you and for the best. That's okay.

Morgan Jones Pearson

That reminds me, I recently heard something that talked about how we want to be loved the way that we love other people. But that we have to realize that no one is going to love us the way that we would expect or hope to be loved. Everybody loves in their own way. And I think letting go of that expectation in other types of relationships, that made a lot of sense to me. But it also makes sense in regard to God, God does love us perfectly. But that may not be our expectation of what perfect love looks like if that makes any sense. Okay, Emily, for a period of time, can you talk about how prayer and scripture study were hard for you? And I know, I've heard for years that when people are struggling with their faith, the first things to go, oftentimes our prayer and scripture study, and I think one of the reasons is because they can be painful. And you share many things that were helpful to you during that time, and kind of how you approach that lack of desire to pray or read. So I wondered if you could take a few minutes to just share a few of those things that were helpful to you?

Emily Robison Adams

Absolutely. Yeah, there was a time when just kind of our standard primary answers of spiritual things are incredibly hard. Church was hard. Prayers were hard. Scriptures were really hard. And what I found was that I needed to think about spiritual practices more broadly, that spiritual practices weren't just limited to prayer, scripture study and going to church. It could be going on a walk with a friend, it could be sitting in quiet, it could be gardening, like, there's a lot of things that could be considered a spiritual practice, where you're connecting with God, at some level, that can actually help. So one thing I really liked, that I discovered was honestly, instead of having a prayer, where you're talking back and forth with God, prayer can be something where you just sit in quiet, and invite God to sit with you. And that's something that's really beautiful. I also like the idea of a kind of call Ignatian prayer for your prayer can be where you're looking, you know, you have a scripture story, and you put yourself in it, and you picture what it's like, what does it smell like? What is it here? What does it sound like? What are people wearing? What does it feel like? And you experience the scripture story in your head as if you're part of it. And you know, all these things just turn you towards God, then that's really what prayer is right? Just turning you towards God. And for scripture study, the problem with scripture study for me was that I felt whenever I opened the scriptures that I was seeing an angry god, God seemed really mad all the time, really demanding, not somebody that I was interested in being with at all. And it took me a while to get to a point where I could where I realized that scriptures are oftentimes a mirror of how we're feeling. And that you need to recognize that you're going into the book looking for, you're probably going to find. And it took me some time to work through that. So the other thing that really helped was, at least for the Bible, was getting a modern translation of it. And in the book, I use the Wayment's translation, which is what Deseret Book published a couple of years ago, and it's really a wonderful translation. When we think about it, the Bible was written in the translation that we have was done in the 1600s language has changed immensely in 400 years. And it helped me to actually, sometimes when we read the scriptures, we're so used to the language that we just kind of breeze past it because we've read this verse a thousand times, it means what it means. But when you have a different translation, it kind of disrupts that a bit, and you pay attention differently. And I think it helps you think a little bit more carefully. So, yes, scripture study and prayer are hard. And they were really hard for a really long time. And sometimes they still are hard. And I've gotten to a point where with prayer where questions are still hard for me. They still are. Our stake president a little while ago, as he was going out, asked everybody in the stake to pray to God about how He feels about you. And I've done that, Sheri Dew said that I think it was at a Women's Conference talk or I can't remember what it was but I've done that years ago and got nothing. And it took me a while to get to a point where I was like, I'm willing, I'm willing to ask the question. And I asked, still got nothing. But I was willing to ask the question, and that was huge for me. And for me, a little bit more space of quietness has been really good, just opening up my life to God and allowing God to show up in whatever way God so chooses has been really helpful.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Emily, I want to highlight because I want people to know how beautiful the way that you write about this experiences. And so you mentioned this idea of kind of putting yourself in the shoes of the person and the scriptures that you're reading. And you talk about how you were reading in Doctrine and Covenants section 30. And that in these verses, there is a verse directed toward David Whitmer, and the Lord is addressing David and says, "Behold, I say unto David, that you have feared man and have not relied on me for strength as you ought," and you write this: "I pictured in my mind the scene. This revelation was received in September 1830. Earlier that year, Joseph Smith had published the Book of Mormon and formally established the Church. Church members had faced increased persecution over the summer months with groups of angry towns folk destroying dams that created pools and a river deep enough for prospective members to be baptized. Hiram Paige, one of the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon had seemingly received instructions through a seer stone that contradicted some of the things that Joseph Smith had preached at this time of internal and external distress. Joseph was also thinking about how to spread the gospel message through missionary work, something that would strain the little congregation even more. I thought about all these circumstances and imagined how David Whitmer might have felt. Maybe he thought that because he believed he was in God's Church, things would be easier. Maybe he was disappointed in Joseph's leadership, maybe he was anxious for the future. Maybe as one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon privileged with only a few others to see the plates he was feeling a dearth of the spiritual ecstasy that followed that experience. I put myself in his shoes, imagining an itchy collar and a hot jacket. I imagined the weather in New England and September cool with a light breeze and the leaves beginning to change. I pictured Joseph dictating a few short words of that revelation, and David's brother writing them down, I imagined if I had read those words, I would have felt hot sheet and embarrassed, and I would have been a little bit at a loss about how to respond. Then I pictured those words being aimed at me, was it possible that I had feared man more than God and had not relied on God for strength as I should have? In my struggles with God, was it possible that I had leaned away from God's words a bit and relied on others and myself for strength? What did relying on God's strength mean in this scenario?" And I just that, to me, that's like taking likening the scriptures and taking it to a whole new level. And I love the idea that you kind of worked with the scriptures and with prayer until it started to work for you. And sometimes I think faith and choosing to believe does require work. It takes effort and soul searching. And that is what you've done in this book. And I think too Emily, one thing that I love is, as I read, you're clearly very well read. And so I love that you share with us all these things that were helpful. And it almost feels like a cheat sheet of sorts, but we all have to do our own work. And I think that that's so important. I wanted to ask you, before we get to our very last question. I did want to ask you, how did you feel like because this is a fairly recent experience, this didn't happen very long ago, we all remember COVID Loud and clear. And so for you, how do you feel like you got to a place where you felt comfortable sharing these things that you were experiencing?

Emily Robison Adams

Well I still feel nauseous about the whole thing. You know, I think, for me, I felt so entirely alone. And defective, is probably the best word. I was like, of God's billions and billions of children, I'm the only one that's experienced. And when I began to open up a little bit, then I found others who had experienced the same thing and it was that strength that got me through it. It was that strength, it was other people stepping forward and saying, I felt it too. I felt it too. And let's work on it together. So I think because I lean so heavily on others, and saw what a gift their vulnerability was to me. I'm hopeful that this will help others. I mean, I'm very clear in the book that this is certainly a journey that's unique to me, and everybody has to walk their own path and that looks a lot of different ways. But certainly, it's nice to feel that you're not alone. It's nice to not feel that you're the one defective child out of billions. And that there's a lot of other people that have walked this path. There's a lot of other people that have written beautiful things about it. And you can draw strength from not only from our own faith, but from the Buddhists and from the Catholics and from the Episcopalians. And you know, there's just a lot of beautiful stuff out there that can help you get through it.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Okay, I lied. I have one more question. There is a talk that you reference in the book, and I'm sure many people listening have heard this talk given by Sheree do work to wrestle. And I wondered for you, why would you say that this, all of this that we've talked, about is worth the wrestle?

Emily Robison Adams

It's worth the wrestle because I'm a different person than I was three or four years ago. And it's better, I'm a better version of myself, to be able to see that the stories that I had built, and we all build them, we all build frameworks to help explain our lives. See how many of them are not helpful. And how many of them were not. I mean, they were good at the time. But they weren't helpful as they matured. It's worth the wrestle, getting rid of those and trying to find something that's even more true. And it just feels better. It was a really awful 18 months, it was a really 18 months. And sometimes I still feel like I'm in it but I feel that I've come out with far more compassion, far more empathy. I feel that you kind of are introduced to this community of suffering, you know, of people who feel excluded. And people who feel like they don't belong, and you become one of them, you become more aware of them. And I think that that's a beautiful place to be. I'd much rather be here than where I was four years ago. I'd much rather be here.

Morgan Jones Pearson

That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Okay, Emily, my last question for you is what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Emily Robison Adams

I love this question. And I'm going to answer it from a story that Lauren Winner told in her book "Still," which was probably the first book that I read, where I felt that somebody actually understood what I was going through. And she talks about a friend Julian. And when Julian was 12 years old, she was being confirmed in her church. And in a lot of Christian traditions, confirmation happens around 12 years old. It's where you make a public commitment to God into your church. And Julian told her father, who also happened to be the pastor, she said, I don't know if I can say I believe all of these things. I don't know if I can do this. Because I don't know if I can say that I believe all these things and that all and then I'm ready to believe it forever. And her father's comment is my answer to your question. This is what her father said: "What you promise when you are confirmed, is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that that is a story you will wrestle with forever." So for me being all in doesn't mean that I'm going to be 100% believing all the time. 100% faith filled all the time. But what it means that I'm willing to put myself in the arena, and wrestle with God, this is I'm willing to wrestle with God for my life. That's it, I'm willing to be there and get dirty, and get hurt. And I'm willing to do it, and I hope that He's willing to be in there with me. When we learn about the story of Jacob wrestling with God, Jacob walks away limping. And I think sometimes we walk away limping when we interact with God. But what's fascinating about that story, is that God could have presumably overpowered Jacob at any point, and God didn't. God stayed with Jacob and wrestled with him all night. And to me, that's what that all means. It means that we stay together. And we've wrestled together all night long, all our lives. we've wrestled together, and we might walk away a little bit injured, but we were wrestling, and that's what God needs us to do.

Morgan Jones Pearson

That's so so well said and I love that thought and I just again, I am grateful that you were willing to share your experience. Emily, I think it will resonate with so many people and, and help so many people that are, like you said, in the same situation and there's power in knowing that we're not the only one struggling. So thank you so much. And I just I appreciate your time.

Emily Robison Adams

Thank you for pleasure.

Morgan Jones Pearson

A huge thank you to Emily Robison Adams for sharing her experiences on today's episode. You can find "Divine Quietness" in Deseret Bookstores now. Thanks to Derek Campbell of Mix at 6 Studios for his help with this episode and thank you for listening. We'll be with you again next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai