Midnight had emptied the Provo Temple parking lot, leaving only my car, my uneven breathing, and the weight of a decision I had spent a lifetime trying not to face. The red recording light on my phone glowed softly in the dark, a lone witness to my pain.
Earlier that day I had sat across from the love of my life, his bright eyes fixed on mine. “I want to spend forever with you,” he said. And he meant it.
I wanted forever too. I pictured year after year stacking up together—a life so shared it would be impossible to remember where mine ended and his began. If I was honest, it felt like our souls had been quietly bending toward that point long before we ever met.
But his words filled me with guilt, because as much as I loved him, I stood frozen at the edge of it—terrified of what it would cost me to step forward, and just as terrified of what it would cost if I didn’t.
“The policy is so confusing,” I whispered into the phone. “I don’t know what to do about it.”
Four years earlier, the line had been brutal but unmistakable. Gay married members of the Church were automatically excommunicated and their children could not be baptized. The message was devastating, but it was clear. Then, in 2019, that policy was reversed. The announcement brought tears of relief and fragile new hope.
But in its place came ambiguity.
The handbook now described same-sex marriage as a serious transgression, which may or may not lead to discipline. Membership decisions would depend on local leadership.
May or may not. Four simple words that haunted the landscape of my future.
“I could get married and leave the Church and nothing would ever happen,” My voice wavered.
“But if I keep going — and I want to. I want to keep going. That’s when you get punished.”
The words sat heavy in the quiet car, as tears began rolling down my cheeks.
The irony was impossible to ignore: The gay couples who loved the Church enough to stay were the ones who risked losing their place in it.
There was a chance I could land in the right ward, with the right bishop, and keep at least pieces of the life I loved. But the same relationship, the same life, the same devotion in the wrong zip code could produce a heartbreakingly different result.
“I get that people think it’s a sin,” my voice poured into the phone, “but I just want my baptism. I don’t want that taken away from me.”
“My love for Ryan doesn’t feel like a sin. It feels so good and right and real. I want to build a life with him. I want to have a have family with him…” My voice broke. “But if I get married… and show up to the wrong ward… they could turn it against me. They could remove my membership records…”
“They could dissolve my sealing with my family.”
Tears collapsed into sobs. My chest heaved as the full weight of how trapped and afraid I was settled in.
Ryan was central to the life I wanted to build, and church participation was central to the life I had always known. Both were part of me. The thought of a future without either felt unbearable, like trying to breathe after having my lungs ripped out.
So yet again, I spent another night sitting in the dark outside the temple— engine idling, windshield wipers squeaking across glass, tears running freely.
Unable to move forward.
Unable to turn back.
Indecision breaking two hearts at the same time.
