Come Back Podcast

“I joined the Church as a kid in Farmington, New Mexico, baptized at eight, the baby of four.

But after my parents divorced when I was ten, our activity faded.

By twelve or thirteen I’d already lost the desire to be there. I’d go, but I wasn’t getting anything out of it.

High school made it worse, watching people act one way on Sundays and another the rest of the week.

At seventeen I fell into an unhealthy relationship with an atheist who mocked my family’s faith.

I internalized his view until I didn’t believe in anything at all.

I drifted through more relationships, became a young single mom, married, divorced again.

For years I consumed ex-Mormon and anti-Mormon content, convinced I was smarter than everyone still believing.

I even wondered how someone as smart as my dad could fall for it.

Then, right after my divorce, a new medication sent me into something I can only call darkness.

For two weeks I couldn’t sleep or eat.

I felt watched in my own home, felt a physical pressure holding me down, saw a figure in my driveway.

I was terrified, asking coworkers if they believed in demons.

Desperate, I asked my uncle for a priesthood blessing.

That night I slept like a rock for the first time in two weeks.

I stopped the medication and opened up to my dad, who’d already sensed something evil around me.

He gave me a second blessing, and I told him over and over, ‘I need to be saved.’

I started going back to church, the same ward I was baptized in.

Walking in felt like coming home.

Still unsure, I prayed for a sign: if they sang ‘Praise to the Man,’ my favorite hymn, I’d know.

It wasn’t on the board, but the pianist, my cousin, unexpectedly transitioned into it mid-number.

She’d been avoiding that song.

She made one exception this Sunday, not realizing it was for me.

I’ve turned my life completely around.

This testimony is mine now, not my parents’.

I volunteer at the temple, serve in Young Women’s, and I’m raising my kids in the gospel.

God didn’t just bring me back.

He gave me a testimony that is finally, undeniably my own.”

- Rachel