Kimberly Teitter: Interconnected Eternal Family Systems

Morgan Jones Pearson

Kimberly Teitter grew up in North Carolina not far from where I grew up. In fact, our two stakes neighbor one another. We are around the same age and both ended up in Utah over 2000 miles from home for years that overlapped and we have dozens of mutual friends. But we've never met one another until we sat down to record an interview for this podcast. Despite all that we have in common and aside from the fact that Kimberly is way more accomplished than I could ever hope to be, there is one crucial thing that has made Kimberly's experience growing up in North Carolina as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a lot different than my own, and that is the color of our skin. Recently, Kimberly contributed to "Every Needful Thing," a compilation of essays on the life of the mind and heart and shared some of these experiences in a poignant and profound way. Kimberly Applewhite Teitter is a licensed clinical psychologist, a published author and adjunct professor and an entrepreneur in the Salt Lake City area. She received a doctorate in psychology in school clinical child psychology, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital and was a fellow at Harvard Medical School before moving to Utah. Kimberly is a bishop's wife and mother of two daughters, as well as the Assistant Director of the Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir.

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 excited to have Kimberly Applewhite Teitter on the line with me today. Kimberly, welcome.

Kimberly Teitter

Thank you so much for having me.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, I love any chance to get to talk to somebody else that is also from North Carolina and you and I have that in common. And so this is so fun for me. And I wanted to start, you recently wrote a piece that I absolutely loved in LDS Living, and you talked about your family's initial introduction to the church and how that initial introduction kind of has shaped your testimony in the year sets, and specifically to aspects of your testimony. So I wondered if maybe to start and give people a little bit of an intro into who you are, and where you come from, and kind of your approach to the gospel if you could tell us a little bit about how your family came in contact with the Church, and how that experience has shaped your testimony?

Kimberly Teitter

Sure. My family grew up in North Carolina in a small town, like really close to you know where your family is, but we're talking small. And my family, like we're not even from the small town. We're like friends outside of the small town. We live kind of far back there. And the missionaries came to my house, like my family had just moved into this house in 1989, 1990, something like that. Some missionaries came when my mom was home by herself. And so they visited with her a little bit but didn't come in, and she told them to come back. And then the missionaries spent probably the first three to five years of my childhood in and out of my home. My mom and my oldest brother joined the Church in 1990. So that was when I was about two years old. And then my dad joined the church in 1992 when I was four years old. So I can remember his baptism, but not so much my mom's because I was pretty young. And then we were sealed in the DC temple when I was about five years old. And so I can remember that day too, which was really special. And so when LDS Living approached me to write sort of my story kind of in conjunction with Black History Month, and what my narrative is, as a Black Latter-day Saint like why I stay in the Church, I think a lot of it, I went back to those early memories, and how much of a blessing it is for me that my early memories are pretty much all Church-related. Like the things that are most poignant, in my mind, were things from the Church. And also I think, I've come to value what a blessing it is to just have the bones be good. So I think that there's a lot of things that have happened since being in the Church that I think would be really hard to endure if I didn't have a good foundation from the people that taught my family and then how I grew up in my home, that the gospel was for everyone like it was presented to me and my family in ways that were relevant to us. I talked about in the article how that sister missionaries made us this family home evening chart that was like a poster board that they made a house out of. They have like doors that open and closed and they made little paper dolls for all the members of my family. And sometimes people forget how unique this was. But I joined the Church when we really didn't have diverse representation in Church publications, like not even really in the children's songbook, or any of the family home evening materials. It was mostly all white children, and maybe international children, but definitely not kids that looked black. And here, these missionaries came with dolls with curly haired figures drawn on them. But that's how I grew up. Like those were my first experiences with the gospel. So I kind of didn't know any different until much later when I started to have the experience I have. But it was nice to know that that was not the foundation on which I joined the Church. I joined a church that was designed for me and made for me, just like, you know, for everybody else. That's what the gospel is. It was reinforced by the way that my family interacted with the Church when I was young. And so I'm grateful for that.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, and I think that there are several really important reminders in that, Kimberly, I think one, that just how we as individuals interact with one another and you know, those missionaries, their example of loving with Christlike love and thinking individually and seeing your family as individuals made a huge difference in your life. And I think that's important for all of us to remember. I also think, that reminder to go back to the foundation of our own testimonies, when there are things that challenge our belief or our thought system to be like, Okay, well, why is it that I believed these things in the first place? I want to just read because I think this is so beautiful before we go in just so people get a taste of how beautiful your writing is. You said "When I reflect on how I found the gospel, I realized that my family's experiences inform two important pieces of my testimony. First, that the Lord is knowledgeable of his children and actively seeks to bring them to him, even if they are on the most unlikely of roads in the remotest of circumstances. And second, that there's room for my brown paper doll family in His plan. And I just I think that sets a foundation for us for this conversation. So I wanted to make sure to read that. Kimberly, you wrote that while there weren't many other Black families at church, you didn't know the history of why this was the case. And I'll be completely honest with you growing up in North Carolina, there were a couple of Black members of our ward, who I loved and adored, but there weren't a lot. And you and I both know growing up in North Carolina, that's not the case outside of church. So how did your family approach this in your home?

Kimberly Teitter

Yeah, it was interesting, because once my parents were committed to the gospel, they were all in you should probably be interviewing them for this podcast, because that was kind of how it was we joined and we were there. So one of the big things was that they just stressed the importance to us about being in place, in church every Sunday, even if no other Black family was there, we were going to be there. We were going to try to be there on time, knock on wood, but we were going to be there. And you know, my mom was the kind of mom that like when it was fast and testimony meeting, she's like, Y'all better get up and share your testimony. And I said about what? She said, You better get up. The Lord's blessed you with things, you get up. And so it was like every fast Sunday, we were standing in every Sunday, we were there. And they also always told us to remember who we were which I think, you know, a lot of religious families, like LDS families will tell their kids to remember who they are. But somehow I think that we got the meaning of that, that we needed to remember who we were in an earthly sense, like as Black children, living the way that we were. That kind of socialization in school meant that we worked harder than kids around us that we tried to stand out and do the right things, treat people kindly, kind of not to behave in a way that would be unseemly or draw attention to us. So there is that aspect. I think of Black socialization that's common for kids, like you got to work harder. You got to be smarter to get the same sort of things. And so certainly when they would say remember who you are, it was part of that. But then the other part If it was to recognize our divine heritage to have our priorities straight, to know in a spiritual sense who we belong to, and that's just kind of how they taught us. So it wasn't really explicitly about being the only Black members in our ward. And so I think much later, like when we were teenagers, and we started to understand the history of the Church, we had a couple family members that took the discussions, and we kind of knew that other people thought that Mormons were racist, but we just didn't know why. I assumed it was because there weren't very many of us. And I was like, okay, yeah, I get it. But I didn't know anything about the history. And, you know, my aunt took the missionary discussions, and I remember that to her, they said, Well, you won't have the same opportunities for leadership in that church, because the Mormons are racist. And you know, in Black churches, women can be pretty much any position, and I forget what my aunt was doing at the time. But she was very involved in her religious communities. So people talked her out of it that way. And then when my grandma took the discussions, when I was about 13 years old, and that's when I found out about Blacks in the priesthood. And that was pretty painful because I can remember thinking, like, nobody has ever said this to me before, like, how is it that you know, there is this big block on what we could access, and we've never talked about it before this day. And, you know, it was also very sad, because when my grandma heard that she didn't want to take the discussions anymore. She didn't want the missionaries to come over. I don't even really remember them going too much after that, though, she did always keep a set of LDS scriptures in her home. But I think, I mean, how do you tell a kid something like that? In some ways, growing up in the South, you know, the realities of racism, most places, like you understand, probably earlier than you should have to that there are people out there that don't want to see you do well, who are more likely to assume that you don't mean well, when you're just out minding your own business. And, you know, we know, just from the psychological research that it is helpful for kids to understand that about people. And so we understood it, like going into stores, you know, like I said, performing in school, but it kind of blew me over to think that the Church was also complicit in a lot of these things. And then I think, you know, we were talking about before, that that is a continual process, because, you know, Black women didn't get to go through the temple. So I don't even think that my mom understood that until later reading, Mary Francis Sturlaugson Eyer's book "A Soul So Rebellious," where she talks about how she couldn't go through the temple while the priesthood restriction was in place. And then there's other practices in church history that are kind of born in we'll say racist tradition, or just things that were not explicitly overturned, such as I don't have a tribe declared my patriarchal blessing when I learned later that that was something that was done, mostly to Black people. They wouldn't declare a tribe. And so I had a lot of mixed feelings about how I could maintain positive relationships. And I did, I loved the people that helped me as a kid, like I love my church leaders, thought the world of them, but it's hard to think that they were doing things that were painful, and then they didn't even know. And I think I was really grateful then to have the example of my parents because they just kept going. Like, it's not that they were ignorant to these things, or we didn't talk about them so they didn't tell us not to worry about it, but they were just always were where they needed to be. And so after a while, I was like, if I put myself where I need to be, then I'll figure out the strength I need to continue. So yes, that's how we handled it in my family growing up.

Morgan Jones Pearson

So Kimberly, now you mentioned you know, that even now, it's like, how do you talk to kids about this? So you have a family in which your children, you're now trying to teach them? How do you approach this in your home as a parent?

Kimberly Teitter

Yeah, I have two girls, and they are multi ethnic. I guess my husband is white, but his grandfather is Chinese. But we don't know a lot about that heritage. So we just say that they are biracial kids, which is probably accurate, but anyway, just taking what I know as a professional, but also I think what I wish I had as a kid, I've tried to be really open about just the dynamics of what it means to be Black in the Church and we're the only ones. I think, you know, my girls are nine and three and we started with just being intentional about the kinds of exposure to Black spirituality that they have. So, you know, I'm in a gospel choir and my kids are always there. They know gospel music as well as the hymns. My sister, my father's child, who's not a member of the Church and never has been, is an elder, in a Baptist church, and she's married to a pastor. And so sometimes on Sundays we watch their church services. My kids also go to there's a prominent Black Baptist Church here in Salt Lake City, that my kids, especially when we first moved to Utah, would often go to on Sundays. They love going to church multiple hours a day, like we get rid of the third hour, and then just go spend it somewhere else. But I feel like those are the things that are important for us, because it's important for children who grew up with a Black racial identity, to have pride in their cultural heritage. And there's so much to be proud of. Kind of diverting, one of the special experiences I had with our choir, in 2018, we were involved with the event for the NAACP's partnership with the Church. And so we got to sing at the lunch. And that kind of kicked it off. We also got to go to San Antonio, later to the Convention, which was also cool, but they had a lunch with the apostles and all those NAACP leaders and everything, which was a great experience, but one of the most special things happened after the performance, because that week, there had also been, I don't know if you remember this, like a fake apology letter written, it was said to come from the desk of President Nelson apologizing to Black members for racist practices of the church. And then it was, you know, in very short order determined to be a hoax, which was really painful, because you wait your life or something like that right to turn it around, or really to have the truth of my heart reflected in, like what the church is doing. And so it's kind of hard to get something like that taken away. And so after that performance, we were talking a lot about what happened. And that was like a multi generational conversation, because we had like young kids in the choir, we had you have older people in the choir. You know, Debra Bonner was our main director at that time. And I mean, she still is, but she talked about how she taught her kids the truth going up, and her kids are a little older than me. And so they were really coming out of the shadows of the priesthood ban, like more directly than even I did with my parents joining in the 90s. But they said, like, this is just what we taught our kids. And so I think that that is another beautiful aspect of Black culture that it does have this slight multigenerational, okay, we're not going to talk about a lot of things because they're painful. But when we're talking about him, we're talking about them, we're gonna talk about them thoroughly, you know, so we kind of had a come to Jesus meeting about like the pain that we were feeling around this event and the hope that we have in the Church for things to change. And so yeah, we don't hide those conversations from our kids with the things that have happened in the past couple of years with the pandemic and, you know, the death of George Floyd and others, I think that the conversation is already out there. And as parents, we've just tried to approach it with honesty, but also with an approach of the Spirit and gentleness and understanding that we have, you know, we have One who sees all and knows all and will correct all. And in the meantime, there's all of these things that we can do to stand where we need to stand and grow into the people that He needs us to be so that we can help that work of restoration of justice move forward.

Morgan Jones Pearson

That's beautifully said and I think you're right. I think that is something that I've always admired about Black culture is kind of this respect for elders and respect for generations and a desire to have that connectedness. I think that's something that I have looked up to, especially in the people in my community in North Carolina. You wrote an essay, Kimberly for a book that is out called "Every Needful Thing." And in that book, you wrote about how you were frequently at the center of diversity and unity conversations at church. And I thought this was fascinating. You said "part of me felt like I wanted to hide from the whole endeavor and not be paraded around," which is a totally understandable feeling. You said, "the rest of me was frustrated at myself for not wanting to let my light shine like the scripture said, I often felt like I was trying to hold to what made sense to me in the way that Nephi envisioned people moving toward the tree of life in his dream but mists of darkness and confusion threatened to cover my way." I wondered if you could talk to me a little bit about this period of your life and how you combated those feelings, rather than letting them overcome you?

Kimberly Teitter

Yeah And in some ways, it's ongoing, right? Because there's always different challenges to overcome and the mists and they can wave in and wave out, I think it kind of speaks to one of the points I was making in the essay about the concept of wise mind and how it's the synthesis of things that we feel, and things that we think or things that we are and things that we do. I feel like so much of the gospel is this beautiful, unarticulable thing. And if I press toward it, I feel pretty good. But then when I start to explain it or take it out to show, then it just gets complicated. And it just makes me wish that I could proceed through to this articulable thing, like that feels divided to me, and it feels like wisdom to just kind of almost go with the flow type of thing because when you get people involved, it's just complicated. My dad had this conversation with me because I've shared a lot of opinions about a lot of different things that have happened in the Church over the years, and my dad has said, you know, why don't you like, figure out how you can say those things to the people that matters, because if you put this stuff on social media, if you put it this place or that place, who are you really doing it for? And it's so true, right? Because I do get some satisfaction from I guess earthly validation, because sometime I feel so alone, and how I feel about things, and I'm like, Well, yeah, it's obvious that the Gospel says, We should go this way. But that's what I mean, when you start to articulate it. And then the systems and the powers that be aren't ready for it, then I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is a really scary place. And so then I tell all my friends, or whomever, and I want to be like, Yeah, I want to know that you guys see the same as me. Like, are there other people like, is the body going in this direction? But then yeah, you get all of these other things too like respond to this thing, or like, give your hot take on that. And it's not about hot takes, like, I want to get to heaven, like I want Zion to be restored. Like it's not so much about me being this genius who can articulate things, I'm really just trying to do my part to get us where the Lord wants us to be. But then sometimes it becomes about what I want, what feels good to me,

Morgan Jones Pearson

Which is Kimberly, not just you, like that's everybody. Yeah, like, I think that's like our natural inclination. And so overcoming that really is like overcoming the natural man, in a sense.

Kimberly Teitter

Right. It's the task we've all been given. You're totally right. And so I like the flexibility of kind of pendulum swinging back and forth and like finding wisdom. I think that the Lord has had a lot of grace with me over the years in terms of like, how I try to refine what He might have given me but it does get confusing sometimes. Or even like, with the article I wrote for LDS Living, you know, there's always well meaning people in the comments that'll say things like, oh, like, why would you belong to a racist church anyway? Or, like, you know, my person found strength in this tradition, why are you still doing XYZ thing? And especially when it is made to seem like I'm in the Church because I don't know what the history is, or I'm in the Church because I fully accept what the history has been, which I do, like I accept that it happened but do I accept...

Morgan Jones Pearson

But you're not blind.

Kimberly Teitter

Right. So yeah, that gets hard too where I'm like, "Okay, well, am I just falling into the latest marketing ploy of the Church to be more diverse, and it's like a inauthentic thing that I'm clinging to?" So yeah, it does get confusing, but I, I know, I'm grateful that in our tradition, we learn how to hear God and we don't even talk about hearing them through voices, really, it's like there could be forces, there's the ways that He touches our minds and our hearts, the urges that we feel to act and so I look for him in those things to keep pressing forward, but it is hard sometimes.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Well, I just want to say thank you for first of all for your honesty in that answer, but also I think, you know, yes, there is a push everywhere in the world right now for greater diversity and that's something that I've tried to be conscious of is like, Oh, are we just doing this to like fit that criteria? Fortunately, we had had a good amount of diversity on the show before any of this latest push, but I appreciate the value of different voices, and people willing to share their experience because if we don't have that, like, we have no idea what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes, no matter what the experience is, whether we're talking about a race, or a difficult thing that somebody has gone through, I think we need everybody's voices. And that's something that I value a lot in my life. And so I appreciate you being willing to share your voice. Kimberly, even when sometimes I know that has to be hard, I wondered how you've learned throughout your life to embrace your identity, both as a member of the Church and as a Black person? And how do you seek to help others do the same? I think there are so many different parts of our identity, and that something that President Nelson has really stressed is recognizing your identity. So how do you embrace your identity, all the different facets of it and help others do that as well?

Kimberly Teitter

I think that I've just come to develop a real gratitude for the ways that my culture and my heritage, my history, accentuate the gifts that God has already given me, or give me kind of an earthly drive in an orientation to things that I'm already like maybe divinely appointed to be pretty okay at if that makes sense? You know, as a professional, as a psychologist, I'm really drawn to modalities that emphasize acceptance, and openness to emotional experiencing, and kind of a doing away with the things that create shame in us because I think that that ultimately, in a spiritual sense, takes us away from who we are, and our divine identity as well. And I just don't think that I would see it in the same ways or come to the same conclusions if I weren't Black, because when psychology was dominated by a certain type of people, they also weren't doing those types of things. It's the diversifying of the world that has allowed us to think about new ways of thinking and new ways of being. And so then I'm glad with my experiences, that I'm able to be a part of that. I also think that again, my parents, and you know, my grandparents and everybody, I think that they were just really proud to be who they were. So you know, we played like, I remember when I was a kid, I started listening to more like soft rock pop stuff, you know, in the 90s, what was popular stuff like Matchbox 20, or No Doubt, or whatever, Sugar Ray and then you know, the basic boy band type of stuff, but, you know, my, my family would listen to the r&b station like Luther Vandross, and like the old school stuff, at somewhat I switched stations and they were like

Morgan Jones Pearson

What are we listening to?

Kimberly Teitter

They'd be like, turn it back. But also, you know, we grew up in the era of 90s r&b, which was not always appropriate for children. And that's how I ended up listening to that other stuff. But they were just so proud to be who they were like, they valued our music, our food, our history, our contributions to society. When I was a kid, I was in young women, of course. And then I also did a program sponsored by one of the local chapters of the Black sororities in town and so we learned about Kwanzaa, and we learned about the ways that people were contributing to their neighborhoods, we learned about historically Black colleges. And I do think that there was, you know, growing up in North Carolina, it's not totally uncomplicated, because there's a lot of internalized racism about oh, but you have to choose, like the best schools to go to right. And that, like, you know, the schools that were created just for XYZ reason, but I think that we were just always surrounded by people that showed us the inherent divine quality and beauty of what our culture was. And I don't know, I don't think that there's many examples, other examples but Black culture of not making lemonade out of lemons, but like really doing something with the lot that we've been given, like, how do you make it thriving societies when there's these powerful systemic forces that say no, don't do that, when you get pulled from your motherland and brought to a new place, get made to work for free, torn from your families, like just all of this trauma and hardship and still have a cohesive culture that you can look at name package and be proud of, I think is is a miracle. I don't know if I have to see God in that. So I embrace it. Like, if he made me this way, then I embrace it. It's kind of the short of it, and I love it. I really do.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Kimberly, while we're on the topic of kind of family, and then also bringing in your clinical background, I wanted to ask you another thing that you wrote that I found interesting. You said "family systems theory emphasizes the interconnectedness of people within families, and through the generations and an eternal ebb and flow of seeking for balance and relationships. In this view, so many behaviors that seem unforgivable, are understood in context, which helps provide insight that leads to movement and growth. It is akin to how the Savior ministered to the woman caught in adultery." I wondered if you could, with your clinical expertise, explain how you see that story from the Bible in this theory, and why that was an important to you to point out?

Kimberly Teitter

Yeah so family systems theory talks a lot about how people are related to each other. But it almost compares to a system like a cell, like every part of a cell has a job to do. And when part of the cell is not doing that job, then this cell can't function in the same ways. And so then the cell tries to do things to like get it to return to homeostasis, it just feels somewhat like the organic way of being. So then when you think about, like behavior, and relationships operating in the same way then you find a lot of meaning in like patterns, how people have done things over time, what might be seeming like it will totally shatter a system that will really represent like the cell regaining homeostasis to what it needs to be. I was thinking about this for something else that I was writing, like, I feel so much disarray when things are out of order in my life. And I think about how when the Savior came in his mortal ministry, so much of what He was doing was earth shattering, so much so that He had to tell people, I'm not here to destroy anything. Like I'm here to fulfill stuff, I've got destroyed. But what did he do? He came in, he said, like these people who you think are the top? No, they're not the top these people are the top the ones that you have been considering the least of these. So in family systems theory, it talks about how like, a lot of recalibration of relationships comes from determining, like insiders and outsiders. And so when you look at the woman who was caught in adultery, she was very much an outsider in society, or at least us what you know, the powers that be wanted Jesus to say, but Jesus said, no, like, because we are all doing the thing that we are guilty of, in some way. We are all sinners. This woman just said, just like you said, this is what it means, you know, when he says, Let who is without sin cast the first stone at this woman, bringing balance to a system of people that are interconnected, they're not, we're not made different from each other. By sin, we are the same because we are our children of the Creator. And so when we create outsiders, of people who sin, then we're not doing what's right in that system. And so the shift that needs to happen in US or in whoever is doing that will feel really painful. It was interesting last month at Genesis group Zandra was there as she talked about this story? And she said, why is it that we still call this woman by her sin, the Lord says she was forgiven, the way you should call her the woman who's standing in the room with Jesus. But this is what we're used to doing. Even as like faithful Latter-day Saints. We want to say we're doing the right thing in the world to sinning or it's like we're keeping our covenants and it's that person who's gone astray. But Jesus didn't say that. He said, whoever is the least of you, whoever you're going to regard the least, that's who's at the top of my cleaning. That's who we need to have proximity towards. And so Jesus moved toward this woman, to make her the insider and bring balance to the system. It's not to say that sin is not bad. Of course, sin does distance us from the Father, but it distances us in the sense of what we are then able to receive. It's not so much an unchangeable part of our being when we do wrong, and we know this, or else we wouldn't be trying to repair it. But so often, we are willing to judge and remove things from our lives when really Jesus calls for us to be closer, to be in proximity to one another, to increase understanding so that we can all function as this body of Christ that He wants us to.

Morgan Jones Pearson

So so well said, that called to mind a couple of things for me one, what you were saying about why do we still call her the woman taken in adultery? A friend of mine was giving a sacrament meeting talk and was talking about Thomas and how we always call Thomas "Doubting Thomas." But she said Jesus never called him that not once. And so we put these labels on people. And we still do that. And so how do we how do we eliminate that practice? And then also just thinking about I think that's been one of the biggest things that has stood out to me, in this year's Come, Follow Me, is just how radical the things that Jesus was teaching really were and how he kind of flipped everything on its head, and how we need to be open to new ways of thinking, because that's honestly, I think that's something that Jesus modeled for us. Kimberly, you talk about how from the perspective of a clinical psychologist, Latter-day Saints believe in an interconnected eternal family system in which we inherit traits, both human and divine. Why would you say that understanding that should give us comfort?

Kimberly Teitter

I think, like I was mentioning earlier, when we talk about systems, we can also think about patterns of being and what we have learned. BYU used to have this really cool show called "The Generations Project." And they would ask people a question, or people would ask a question about themselves something that they wanted to know about their lives. And then they would take them on a family history journey. And they would figure out which ancestors had gone through similar things or asked similar process questions, which is very similar to how a family system psychologists would look at somebody's genogram and say, like, well, what kind of where do you get this pattern of being from? And so knowing that we have this earthly set of traits that we have from these people that have come that like, maybe I'm afraid of dogs, because I have this transgenerational transmitted fear of dogs that comes from the civil rights movement, or wherever else that comes from, right, but also, whatever my experiences with dogs have been like, that's cool. It gives me a power to almost distance myself from my fear, and figure out what I want to do to overcome it. And that's just in the earthly sense. But we also had these divine patterns of being like, sometimes the Lord will lead us into places that we would ourselves never go. So how are we to know that unless we know Him, or have faith in the fact that we have these divine characteristics and can be led or urged on to the path that He would put us on? And so, you know, as President Nelson has said, that it's so important to know our identity as children of God. Like we get things from our parents. I sound like my mom. And my daughter says, I'm funny, like my dad, apparently. And so we, we have this divine heritage, we also get things from them. And I don't know, shouldn't we be curious about those things? It's empowering to me to know that who I am comes from somewhere, it gives me power to do what I need to do next.

Morgan Jones Pearson

I love that so much. And I think there there is so much power in actually taking the time to understand why we are the way that we are in many respects. And I love what you said about that gives you the ability to then overcome if there are things that you want to overcome from that past. Kimberly, I could talk to you all day. But in the interest of time, my last question for you is what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Kimberly Teitter

It means to me to be as a full participant. I think I have strived to be here as my authentic self and listen with an open heart to what The Lord has in store for me. I'm committed, I want to be here. I want to see the church do better. I'll open my mouth as long as the Lord wants me to open my mouth, I'll shut it as long as He wants me to shut it. Like, I just think that I so want this Zion, this place where we all have one heart and one mind and we can live together and not having inequities. And the answer to that is in the gospel. And so I'm in with my feet fully planted, waiting to see what takes fruit. That's what it means to be all in to me.

Morgan Jones Pearson

Thank you so much, Kimberly, I love that idea of just do we want this to succeed? You know, this thing that we talk about, do we want it to succeed and I also feel the same way. So thank you so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom with us. It means so much to me. Thank you. We are so grateful to Kimberly Teitter for joining us on today's episode. If you'd like to read more from Kimberly you can find her recent LDS Living essay in our show notes. You can also read a new essay from Kimberly in the recently released Deseret Book publication "Every Needful Thing." Thank you so much for listening, and we'll look forward to being with you again next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai