Three of our seven adult children are not active in the church. However, they ARE active in being wonderful spouses and parents. Even though we yearn for them to come back, we have kept the channels of communication open and shown our love. We do not push in any way. Fortunately, they have not been unkind or argumentative. Although it is heartbreaking to witness some of my grandchildren growing up without the gospel, I am thankful that my children are loving parents to them. I have come to realize that I cannot agonize over this situation. Worrying, fretting, and crying will not help them and it will only exhaust me. I continue to pray for my children, and I know Heavenly Father loves them and blesses them. I also put their names on the temple prayer roll. We CAN have peace when our children pull away from the church, trusting that the Lord will help them, and we must also respect the fact that each one has to choose their own path.
Laurie WhiteAugust 20, 2025
Great article, and very appropriate for our times. Religion is a very personal matter. We can't tell someone what to believe or how to feel. Agency matters. Personal opinion matters.
BKAAugust 20, 2025
As parents of children who have left, as well as siblings, our observations have noticed the polarizing difference in the way those children have been viewed, gossiped about and treated by extended family members and other church members after they leave. This is what has caused the most pain not only for those that left, but for us too. Some really struggle to relate with friends or family who no longer believe the same things as them. It’s a tragedy. Many “non-believers” agonize over their decision to leave. They need love too. And if family gatherings have been or are always centered around religious beliefs, it isn’t hard to understand why those family members/friends/neighbors stop coming around. They begin to feel forgotten and ignored and not valued. Make family time about family, about building relationships. Show them you truly care about them regardless of their changing beliefs. Don’t assume they are lazy learners. It’s easy to point fingers at them because of what some leaders have taught or said that maybe could be worded better. But instead try to remember that Jesus left the 99 for the 1. Love those people hard. And pray for guidance. Because God loves them just as much as the 99. Don’t make your relationship only about church related things. But offer real friendship.
ShelleyAugust 20, 2025
Amen brother. Thank you for your thoughts.
Kate MerrillAugust 20, 2025
As an adult convert with no family accepting or interested in the gospel, I’ve learned to implement “the art of allowing” … allowing loved ones their free agency, their personal faith journey, their preferences in living the lifestyle that suits them. I cry a lot — I pray a lot — I’m sad a lot — and I hold tight to the iron rod as i strive to be an example of Christ’s loving approach to even those who are not (yet?) desiring to have a relationship with Him.
AnonymousAugust 20, 2025
This article doesn’t speak to the most damaging place for this to occur: between husbands and wives. Nothing prepares or helps those finding that relationship strained. Or church leaders casting those families into corners instead of continuing to let them serve in leadership roles where they continue to be uplifted in stewardship and community and service. They get cast aside, denied essential and needed spiritual growth and covenant belonging, and all in the name of inspiration that leaves spouses feeling like they not only lost God in their marriage but at church as well. And where they’re clinging to testimony of a God who stays and who is the only one who can support them as they strive to stay true to covenants and keep their family together, they also start to feel that even God has no space for them because His only revelation to their ward and stake leadership is to also reject and push them out. So when they keep the faith, they’re keeping it all alone, they lose the spiritual intimacy of unity in their marriage, they lose the power of stewardship and belonging at church, they live alone and isolated in a church that believes in revelation and inspiration from God and grappling with the idea that belief fuels of a God who is suddenly silent and removed. They watch with longing all of the things they used to enjoy fully being taken from them with nothing at all they can do about it. They can’t keep their spouse from watching, reading, listening. They can’t give them answers. They can’t force their leaders to see them and continue to include them, to receive revelation on their behalf and stay with them. They can’t pray their way into the hearts or communion with anyone. And every time they try to create it outside of a calling, they get told there’s a calling for that or if they go to church x/y/z, it’s all already there. Because it is. For everyone except them. And they’re doing their part to try and keep it, but because it is designated to come through church and callings and they’re not extended the opportunity of those callings, they have no power to keep it. The temple even starts to feel like a slap in the face, just one more place where you are all alone and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Add to that the constant fear for your children, continually trying to prepare them for a spiritual battle that will come from the very person you are simultaneously teaching them every day to love and respect. Grateful that spouse sees value in the church for them and isn’t dripping their doubts in their direction yet. You still have family prayer and scripture study every night, but you have to be careful what you read and how you speak so you don’t unknowingly strike a cord with whatever your spouse is struggling with at any given time. They’re physically there. But spiritually, they’re spiraling and you’re reeling at the lack of answers and clinging to prayer and the love of God for this person who you love and honor and respect but who is threatening everything you know and hold the most dear.
I can’t imagine Hell itself could be any more difficult.
When you suddenly find yourself a stranger where you used to find home, yet your testimony knows it’s all because of the mistakes that men and women are making without any thought or knowledge or understanding of how much damage they’re doing. When you dig deep and summon the courage to go in hope to your leaders for support and love on your spouse’s behalf and are told it’s your love that will save your spouse and family and sent away alone again, feeling judged and found wanting and not worth the effort. When you ask them to pull your spouse close and give them a way to forget themselves and go to work and be pulled in, and they tell you that you need to back off and leave your spouse alone and then keep you isolated and alone on the outskirts. When belonging feels like you’re sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn’t have a place for you at the table. You can prepare and bring food, help clean up, even participate in the entertainment. But you can’t sit at the table. There’s no room at the table. You have no voice at the table. And it’s all them acting on inspiration from God to be that way.
And ironically, your spouse is still there…for now. Estranged, anger building about all the complex issues and questions, hearing the world but staying silent in their marriage … until they can’t any longer and explode at their spouse because no one else even knows what they’re experiencing or seems to care, but their loyalty to their spouse keeps them from speaking out while the silent rejection at church reinforces everything they’re being told to believe. And they’re willing to serve anywhere still because they recognize that the church is doing good things for their youth and really do miss the simple days when they fully enjoyed the sociality without seeing all the things they’ve now seen … and can’t un-see. They now know but wish they didn’t know, even while they are subconsciously biding their time until their kids grow up and realize as they did that it was good for them in their youth but has nothing to offer them as adults. And the ignorant rejection at church reinforces that. And it’s rejection from leaders because no one else even knows their situation or struggles; for all intents and purposes, they’re the perfect, active family that’s lucky enough to never get asked to speak in church or serve in high-commitment callings. No one even realizes they’re not even serving in callings with other couples, they only ever get invited to serve together and therefore alone, a new casualty of decades in Primary because no one is inspired to bring them anywhere else. They show up to set up and clean up at every activity, take their turn cleaning the building, drive the kids to every activity. But on the inside, they’re alone. And the unbelieving spouse starts to skip the second hour, which no one but his spouse realizes or cares about. And the believing spouse struggles every week between keeping it all together for their children to have a fighting chance that their spouse wasn’t strong enough to survive while simultaneously fighting against hating the community that has no place for them at the table, realizing they don’t even recognize what they’re doing or have a clue about the longterm effects or pain and rejection and loss they’re inflicting, trying not to blame their spouse for putting them in that situation, trying not to blame the leaders for putting them in that position, trying not to blame God for leaving them there, struggling to keep holding it together, fearing the day when they can’t and it all blows up and they lose everything — spouse, family, church, God, and everything they’ve loved about themselves and hoped for as they cling with longing to their covenants, the temple, patriarchal blessings, and their convictions from the years when they fully enjoyed it all and were at the table, ignorant of the fact that the feast they were enjoying was preparing them for decades of famine and God knew and gave them all in hopes it would be enough to sustain until He could get them back again.
Even the scriptures become problematic as your few conversations—scattered through the years with your spouse as you try to keep them tethered and think erroneously that maybe you can support and be a helpmeet for them in navigating the onslaught of questions and doubt and displacement and disappointment they’re feeling, that you are grateful every day that you are the only one who knows it about them AND is trying to still hold faith for them — but at scripture study, their questions, doubt, new convictions, questions without answers, all of it starts to seep out to their spouse. And while you try to remain unaffected and strong, you’re crumbling from the inside out and have nowhere to go, no one to say, “Hey! God hasn’t forgotten us and didn’t change His mind about us simply because doubt showed up. But you are treating us like He did and destroying the only thing that can actually save us: a friend, a responsibility, and constant nurturing by the Spirit at church. We’re here! We’ve been here! We don’t want to go anywhere! We need to belong! My spouse needs you to keep letting us belong, letting us forget ourselves and go to work outside of primary and nursery, with other people. We need to know we aren’t being judged and found wanting. We need to know there’s still space at the table. And my spouse’s real answers can only be found at that table, where they keep feeling known and seen and loved by God, where they’re still kneeling and praying in councils and acting on inspiration and seeing God’s hand guiding in undeniable ways that disprove everything the outside voices are telling them is truth. They need to be on Trek and at testimony meetings as Priesthood and Directors at Girls Camp. They need to show up and give Priesthood blessings to the sick, to know when there’s flooding in the basement and help clean up the home of the downtrodden. They need to be at the boating activities and youth activities, laughing and happily enjoying membership without the heaviness of questions. They need to have the mantle of stewardship overriding the isolation of doubt. They need to understand imperfection in leaders because they’re still serving as leaders and recognize their own imperfection, even with their perfect intentions. And they need to keep being surrounded by God’s voice and power, even when they can’t go to the temple because they’re still worthy but can’t say for sure they believe in the Restoration and are struggling to keep believing in God because they’re suddenly doubting everything that gives anything meaning, everything they’ve ever known. They need to be pulled IN and lifted UP, not cast OUT and alone while they spiral DOWN. And their spouse needs that, too. And their children. And every single person who walks this earth. And they are right there within reach. Until they aren’t. When they aren’t, it will be too late to get them back. You have to bring them in while they’re still doubting their doubts or you’ll give power to those doubts by adding personal experience they’ve never known before that will weld those doubts and all the rest Satan is just waiting to throw at them when the welding wand is out and the torch of loss has been fueled, the metal transformed in the wrong direction.”
All this and so much more. No one is speaking to the spouse. And God’s voice feels more faint and distant with every passing day.
David SmithAugust 20, 2025
This essay struck home. Of my seven children, I am only in contact with three of them. Of the other four, three of them I don't even know where they live or have any means to contact them, and that was their choice. This came about from a very messy divorce with their mother who ran off with our home teacher. Only my own powerful testimony that the Church is true, even if some people are not, has kept me active in spite of the loss I feel of my kids. Recently I had my grandmother's movies converted to digital files and have begun sending copies to the family members that I am in contact with and asked them to send copies to the ones I am not in contact with. Maybe it will help eventually.
MelanieAugust 20, 2025
Thank you for addressing this issue of families and loved ones not being able to communicate or be harmonious in our relationships.
This has been weighing on my mind heavily. This article has been an answer to many weeks of fasting and praying, Specifically in gathering my family back into a harmonious environment.
Thank you for the way you approached this. Charity is always the best way to handle such a delicate situation. Have a blessed day!!
JanAugust 20, 2025
Thank you for this thoughtful and helpful piece.
It is comforting and reassuring .i have read it at just the
Right time.
Comments | Return to Story
MaryannAugust 28, 2025
Three of our seven adult children are not active in the church. However, they ARE active in being wonderful spouses and parents. Even though we yearn for them to come back, we have kept the channels of communication open and shown our love. We do not push in any way. Fortunately, they have not been unkind or argumentative. Although it is heartbreaking to witness some of my grandchildren growing up without the gospel, I am thankful that my children are loving parents to them. I have come to realize that I cannot agonize over this situation. Worrying, fretting, and crying will not help them and it will only exhaust me. I continue to pray for my children, and I know Heavenly Father loves them and blesses them. I also put their names on the temple prayer roll. We CAN have peace when our children pull away from the church, trusting that the Lord will help them, and we must also respect the fact that each one has to choose their own path.
Laurie WhiteAugust 20, 2025
Great article, and very appropriate for our times. Religion is a very personal matter. We can't tell someone what to believe or how to feel. Agency matters. Personal opinion matters.
BKAAugust 20, 2025
As parents of children who have left, as well as siblings, our observations have noticed the polarizing difference in the way those children have been viewed, gossiped about and treated by extended family members and other church members after they leave. This is what has caused the most pain not only for those that left, but for us too. Some really struggle to relate with friends or family who no longer believe the same things as them. It’s a tragedy. Many “non-believers” agonize over their decision to leave. They need love too. And if family gatherings have been or are always centered around religious beliefs, it isn’t hard to understand why those family members/friends/neighbors stop coming around. They begin to feel forgotten and ignored and not valued. Make family time about family, about building relationships. Show them you truly care about them regardless of their changing beliefs. Don’t assume they are lazy learners. It’s easy to point fingers at them because of what some leaders have taught or said that maybe could be worded better. But instead try to remember that Jesus left the 99 for the 1. Love those people hard. And pray for guidance. Because God loves them just as much as the 99. Don’t make your relationship only about church related things. But offer real friendship.
ShelleyAugust 20, 2025
Amen brother. Thank you for your thoughts.
Kate MerrillAugust 20, 2025
As an adult convert with no family accepting or interested in the gospel, I’ve learned to implement “the art of allowing” … allowing loved ones their free agency, their personal faith journey, their preferences in living the lifestyle that suits them. I cry a lot — I pray a lot — I’m sad a lot — and I hold tight to the iron rod as i strive to be an example of Christ’s loving approach to even those who are not (yet?) desiring to have a relationship with Him.
AnonymousAugust 20, 2025
This article doesn’t speak to the most damaging place for this to occur: between husbands and wives. Nothing prepares or helps those finding that relationship strained. Or church leaders casting those families into corners instead of continuing to let them serve in leadership roles where they continue to be uplifted in stewardship and community and service. They get cast aside, denied essential and needed spiritual growth and covenant belonging, and all in the name of inspiration that leaves spouses feeling like they not only lost God in their marriage but at church as well. And where they’re clinging to testimony of a God who stays and who is the only one who can support them as they strive to stay true to covenants and keep their family together, they also start to feel that even God has no space for them because His only revelation to their ward and stake leadership is to also reject and push them out. So when they keep the faith, they’re keeping it all alone, they lose the spiritual intimacy of unity in their marriage, they lose the power of stewardship and belonging at church, they live alone and isolated in a church that believes in revelation and inspiration from God and grappling with the idea that belief fuels of a God who is suddenly silent and removed. They watch with longing all of the things they used to enjoy fully being taken from them with nothing at all they can do about it. They can’t keep their spouse from watching, reading, listening. They can’t give them answers. They can’t force their leaders to see them and continue to include them, to receive revelation on their behalf and stay with them. They can’t pray their way into the hearts or communion with anyone. And every time they try to create it outside of a calling, they get told there’s a calling for that or if they go to church x/y/z, it’s all already there. Because it is. For everyone except them. And they’re doing their part to try and keep it, but because it is designated to come through church and callings and they’re not extended the opportunity of those callings, they have no power to keep it. The temple even starts to feel like a slap in the face, just one more place where you are all alone and there’s nothing you can do about it. Add to that the constant fear for your children, continually trying to prepare them for a spiritual battle that will come from the very person you are simultaneously teaching them every day to love and respect. Grateful that spouse sees value in the church for them and isn’t dripping their doubts in their direction yet. You still have family prayer and scripture study every night, but you have to be careful what you read and how you speak so you don’t unknowingly strike a cord with whatever your spouse is struggling with at any given time. They’re physically there. But spiritually, they’re spiraling and you’re reeling at the lack of answers and clinging to prayer and the love of God for this person who you love and honor and respect but who is threatening everything you know and hold the most dear. I can’t imagine Hell itself could be any more difficult. When you suddenly find yourself a stranger where you used to find home, yet your testimony knows it’s all because of the mistakes that men and women are making without any thought or knowledge or understanding of how much damage they’re doing. When you dig deep and summon the courage to go in hope to your leaders for support and love on your spouse’s behalf and are told it’s your love that will save your spouse and family and sent away alone again, feeling judged and found wanting and not worth the effort. When you ask them to pull your spouse close and give them a way to forget themselves and go to work and be pulled in, and they tell you that you need to back off and leave your spouse alone and then keep you isolated and alone on the outskirts. When belonging feels like you’re sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn’t have a place for you at the table. You can prepare and bring food, help clean up, even participate in the entertainment. But you can’t sit at the table. There’s no room at the table. You have no voice at the table. And it’s all them acting on inspiration from God to be that way. And ironically, your spouse is still there…for now. Estranged, anger building about all the complex issues and questions, hearing the world but staying silent in their marriage … until they can’t any longer and explode at their spouse because no one else even knows what they’re experiencing or seems to care, but their loyalty to their spouse keeps them from speaking out while the silent rejection at church reinforces everything they’re being told to believe. And they’re willing to serve anywhere still because they recognize that the church is doing good things for their youth and really do miss the simple days when they fully enjoyed the sociality without seeing all the things they’ve now seen … and can’t un-see. They now know but wish they didn’t know, even while they are subconsciously biding their time until their kids grow up and realize as they did that it was good for them in their youth but has nothing to offer them as adults. And the ignorant rejection at church reinforces that. And it’s rejection from leaders because no one else even knows their situation or struggles; for all intents and purposes, they’re the perfect, active family that’s lucky enough to never get asked to speak in church or serve in high-commitment callings. No one even realizes they’re not even serving in callings with other couples, they only ever get invited to serve together and therefore alone, a new casualty of decades in Primary because no one is inspired to bring them anywhere else. They show up to set up and clean up at every activity, take their turn cleaning the building, drive the kids to every activity. But on the inside, they’re alone. And the unbelieving spouse starts to skip the second hour, which no one but his spouse realizes or cares about. And the believing spouse struggles every week between keeping it all together for their children to have a fighting chance that their spouse wasn’t strong enough to survive while simultaneously fighting against hating the community that has no place for them at the table, realizing they don’t even recognize what they’re doing or have a clue about the longterm effects or pain and rejection and loss they’re inflicting, trying not to blame their spouse for putting them in that situation, trying not to blame the leaders for putting them in that position, trying not to blame God for leaving them there, struggling to keep holding it together, fearing the day when they can’t and it all blows up and they lose everything — spouse, family, church, God, and everything they’ve loved about themselves and hoped for as they cling with longing to their covenants, the temple, patriarchal blessings, and their convictions from the years when they fully enjoyed it all and were at the table, ignorant of the fact that the feast they were enjoying was preparing them for decades of famine and God knew and gave them all in hopes it would be enough to sustain until He could get them back again. Even the scriptures become problematic as your few conversations—scattered through the years with your spouse as you try to keep them tethered and think erroneously that maybe you can support and be a helpmeet for them in navigating the onslaught of questions and doubt and displacement and disappointment they’re feeling, that you are grateful every day that you are the only one who knows it about them AND is trying to still hold faith for them — but at scripture study, their questions, doubt, new convictions, questions without answers, all of it starts to seep out to their spouse. And while you try to remain unaffected and strong, you’re crumbling from the inside out and have nowhere to go, no one to say, “Hey! God hasn’t forgotten us and didn’t change His mind about us simply because doubt showed up. But you are treating us like He did and destroying the only thing that can actually save us: a friend, a responsibility, and constant nurturing by the Spirit at church. We’re here! We’ve been here! We don’t want to go anywhere! We need to belong! My spouse needs you to keep letting us belong, letting us forget ourselves and go to work outside of primary and nursery, with other people. We need to know we aren’t being judged and found wanting. We need to know there’s still space at the table. And my spouse’s real answers can only be found at that table, where they keep feeling known and seen and loved by God, where they’re still kneeling and praying in councils and acting on inspiration and seeing God’s hand guiding in undeniable ways that disprove everything the outside voices are telling them is truth. They need to be on Trek and at testimony meetings as Priesthood and Directors at Girls Camp. They need to show up and give Priesthood blessings to the sick, to know when there’s flooding in the basement and help clean up the home of the downtrodden. They need to be at the boating activities and youth activities, laughing and happily enjoying membership without the heaviness of questions. They need to have the mantle of stewardship overriding the isolation of doubt. They need to understand imperfection in leaders because they’re still serving as leaders and recognize their own imperfection, even with their perfect intentions. And they need to keep being surrounded by God’s voice and power, even when they can’t go to the temple because they’re still worthy but can’t say for sure they believe in the Restoration and are struggling to keep believing in God because they’re suddenly doubting everything that gives anything meaning, everything they’ve ever known. They need to be pulled IN and lifted UP, not cast OUT and alone while they spiral DOWN. And their spouse needs that, too. And their children. And every single person who walks this earth. And they are right there within reach. Until they aren’t. When they aren’t, it will be too late to get them back. You have to bring them in while they’re still doubting their doubts or you’ll give power to those doubts by adding personal experience they’ve never known before that will weld those doubts and all the rest Satan is just waiting to throw at them when the welding wand is out and the torch of loss has been fueled, the metal transformed in the wrong direction.” All this and so much more. No one is speaking to the spouse. And God’s voice feels more faint and distant with every passing day.
David SmithAugust 20, 2025
This essay struck home. Of my seven children, I am only in contact with three of them. Of the other four, three of them I don't even know where they live or have any means to contact them, and that was their choice. This came about from a very messy divorce with their mother who ran off with our home teacher. Only my own powerful testimony that the Church is true, even if some people are not, has kept me active in spite of the loss I feel of my kids. Recently I had my grandmother's movies converted to digital files and have begun sending copies to the family members that I am in contact with and asked them to send copies to the ones I am not in contact with. Maybe it will help eventually.
MelanieAugust 20, 2025
Thank you for addressing this issue of families and loved ones not being able to communicate or be harmonious in our relationships. This has been weighing on my mind heavily. This article has been an answer to many weeks of fasting and praying, Specifically in gathering my family back into a harmonious environment. Thank you for the way you approached this. Charity is always the best way to handle such a delicate situation. Have a blessed day!!
JanAugust 20, 2025
Thank you for this thoughtful and helpful piece. It is comforting and reassuring .i have read it at just the Right time.
Joel MarksAugust 20, 2025
Amazing insight!!
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