"In class we had the stake president talking. He was shorter in stature, but just a spiritual giant. I could feel it as he started talking. I was on the fence if I really wanted to investigate the church. He started going back and forth, pacing and talking about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and all these factual things. He is a very successful person and I was thinking "How could such a smart guy be fooled by all this? This doesn't make sense." Some of the concerns he was bringing I thought, "That's a really good point, I have never thought of that." It was almost like on his piece of paper he had all of my concerns and he was just checking them off one by one. I was just sitting in the corner bawling."
Come Back Podcast
Transcript
JOSH
00:14
My name is Josh, Bytheway. And for anyone that's even somewhat associated with the church, especially, you know, sometimes older people, they automatically think about John, Bytheway, right? Yeah. So, you know, it was very clear early on that I was a member of the church and especially here in Utah, you know, parts of Idaho, Arizona, everyone always asks, you know, almost seemed like a hushed tone, like, “Oh, are you related to John?” You know, I think every, probably 8 out of 10 times at the temple, I get asked that.
ASHLY
Yeah. I thought about asking you.
JOSH
Everyone does. You know, outside of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, people are just like, “That's not really your last name.” Anyways, so it's no shock that growing up it was, you know, the Bytheways, they're members of the church. Now, just to clear it up, he's a very distant relative, I can't claim anything. I think I've met the dude twice. And he was like, “Oh, yeah, cool.” You know, like, he gets it probably all the time from fourth cousins or whatever. So, you know, I grew up here in Utah. My parents, I'm the second oldest of six kids. And church was kind of just an automatic thing. Both my parents were raised in the church–my mom, a little bit more of an inactive relationship with the church growing up. But my parents, I knew, from a very early age had a strong testimony and that they really cherished their membership in the church. And I really felt that they had testimonies. Growing up in the church, especially Utah, it was more of a cultural thing for me. I was baptized and I became a deacon when I was 12. And it was just kind of the automatic progression, right? It never I never thought about it. It was just the automatic thing. My older brother did it. My cousins did it. My dad's cousins, like whole extended family. Of course, the Bytheways, we're all members of the church, right? So I had a great childhood, and I was lucky enough to be raised in a ward where, you know, some of my closest friends even to this day, we're all in the same ward. Going to mutual was never a hard thing. I had great spiritual experiences growing up, but around that time that you get to high school, right? You kind of figure out whether or not you're standing on your own thing, or if you're gonna figure it out and, and go your own way or, or keep relying on the people around you. And I graduated seminary, I had never read the Book of Mormon. Scripture study wasn't something big in my family growing up, we tried at times, you know, especially like, around April and October, right? We, “Alright, we're gonna read the scriptures, we're gonna be really good about it.” And you know, life gets busy. It's something that you know, my family we still struggle with, of being consistent and reading the scriptures.
ASHLY
Same. Same.
JOSH
It's such a hard thing. I don't know what …
ASHLY
02:57
In my head right now, I'm like, recommitting tonight.
JOSH
03:00
Oh, every time. Every time. every, like I said, and I'm in the same category now, like every April, October, someone gives a talk. And I'm like, we're going to do it this time. Yeah, I mean, I graduated seminary. I never read the Book of Mormon. I knew all the stories, I knew all the answers. I, you know, I did all of that. And then my older brother went on a mission and it kind of started to become like, “Oh, okay, like, is this something I'm supposed to do?” I never felt the crippling weight of expectations of a mission, right? I had seen that with other friends that, you know, they were just, they're going on a mission. It's just an automatic thing. And I never felt that from my parents. And I think that they were going to let me kind of figure it out. And it was great that my older brother went, and I graduated high school. This was when you still had to be 19 to go on a mission. And I was one of the younger ones in my grade. And so I graduated high school, turned 18 that summer. And so I had a full year to basically, you know, decide if I'm going on a mission or not. Started working full time, I'm going to save money. And I kind of just naturally became disenchanted. I no longer had my parents just with the expectation of “We go to church on Sunday.” Me and a close friend, we started going to the singles ward. But then we started, you know, skipping out on Sunday School and, you know, let's go to McDonald's instead or something or, you know, we'd say we're going to Sister Smith's house, but we were actually going into like Smith's the grocery store to get like sushi or something. And it was pretty harmless at the time, but what I didn't realize is that I was regressing. I could have taken that year to keep progressing and probably should have read the Book of Mormon and figured it out. But I was already you know, going down that other path of falling away from the church, right? So then not that long after, I met my first wife, and she had a completely different background from me. She did grow up in Utah. She was raised in the church but you know, came from like a very difficult situation with her parents, and in a very messy divorce and she wasn't part of it at all. And she had recently come back from a girl's ranch and just, you know, she had a lot of struggles. And I found, I really liked kind of being part of those struggles and, you know, that was kind of my new identity, is taking that on, and thinking that, you know, I have a lot of problems. And one thing led to another and we actually ended up moving in together. I think I was probably like, a month or two before I turned 19. And I just, I completely left. I left everything. Had a pretty big falling out with my parents over all of this, because it was one thing for me to just kind of be apathetic, but now I was actively, you know, living a lifestyle that was contrary to what I should have been doing. And with that lifestyle came, you know, obviously, chastity problems, and it eventually got to alcohol, drugs a little bit later in life, you know, kind of like the prodigal son. I was just like, “I'm out of here, I'm going to do my own thing.” And it was that way for a long time. I mean, there were long stretches, where I didn't talk to my family. They didn't really know what I was up to. And I'd kind of just lived my own life. And I wasn't openly hostile towards the church, at least not at this point yet. But I just decided I wanted nothing to do with it. I obviously wasn't going to go on a mission, I was just going to go and find my happiness somewhere else.
Where my story kind of takes a turn to darker places is a couple years later, I now married, you know, my first wife, and by all measures of worldly success, things were going great: I had bought a house at a relatively young age, I was moving up at the company that I worked at, I was taking on more responsibilities, probably more than a 20 or 21 year old should at that time in life. I got a big tattoo–that was part of the whole rebellion thing of, you know, “Look, look how big I am.” And I have nothing against tattoos, by the way. But it was just a very obvious cry for attention or something. I remember my mom, she didn't give me the reaction I wanted. I went to lunch with her. And she saw my tattoo. And she was like, “Oh, okay.” And I was like, “Dang, it didn't even work.” But yeah, I mean, by all by all measures, I was doing good, right? I was successful. I was a young, successful person. But I wasn't happy. And I was still looking for answers. And for whatever reason, I started looking at the church again, but I was looking in all the wrong places.
07:52
So I started looking into anti-Mormon, anti-church, you know, Instagram accounts, forums, all kinds of stuff. And at the time, it was when LGBT, gay rights and stuff was a pretty hot button issue. And I had a couple of friends that were gay, and I, again, kind of latched on to, like, “their problems are my problems.” Like, I'm going to choose to take on, you know, their grievances with the church. And I became pretty openly hostile towards the church. I met with the bishop locally. Poor guy, he had never even heard of the Bytheways living in his ward. And we set up an appointment to go talk to him to resign our membership in the church. I was not nice about it. And Even now, I can't even believe some of the stuff I said to him in his office. And it's everything from the low hanging fruit of church history, to onward and onward to the point where I was probably, I don't know if I was full-blown atheist, but I was teetering on that edge.
I knew for sure, I did not want to be associated with an organization like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that, I thought, was advocating for such terrible doctrine and, you know, openly hurting people. So, I resigned my membership in the church. I said, “I'm never going back.” And now I was, I was full-blown anti. I was participating in those forums and on those Instagram accounts. And I remember, I was now excited for General Conference, not because– I'm excited for it now as a member, but I was excited because it was, it was almost like, open season that all these young, wide-eyed in my mind, naive people were going to be going on Instagram and searching these hashtags, you know, #GeneralConference2011 or something. And all of the anti-Mormon posts out there. Most people don't know this, but they use the same hashtags. And sometimes the pictures that they put on their Instagram posts are, they look wholesome, you know, church photos, right? It'll be a temple. And it will say, you know, something witty and subtle. And then in the comments, it's just everyone railing on all these, these young kids that have come here like, “Oh, I love, I love Conference. I love what so and so said,” and then it's just everyone bashing that person. And “Oh, did you know this about the church?” and you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, my name was under there. I was saying the same things, I was doing the same things, I was just, you know, sitting there waiting, like, “Oh, man, hopefully I can help these kids that are being duped,” right? “I wish someone would have done this for me when I was 13 or 14.” Like, “What a great opportunity for me to, to help them," or whatever I was, I was saying to myself to justify this. And I continued that way for
11:02
probably three or four years. And again, during this time, my drinking had increased a little bit, I was getting into smoking weed. And, throughout all of this, my ex-wife, she was kind of getting into like mysticism. I remember going to like psychic fairs. And it just, it seems so obvious now that we were trying to fill a cup that had a hole in the bottom, you know what I mean? Where we were pouring in all this stuff, and then we're like, “Alright, we're good.” And it's like, you leave the cup for an hour, and you come back and it's empty.
ASHLY
Right.
JOSH
And you're like, “Oh, I gotta throw more stuff in here, I got to be even more angry with the church, I need to drink more, I need to try to get some of my childhood friends to partake in my lifestyle.” And, it just seemed like a constant battle, trying to find that next thing. Right?
And this went on. And, you know, now that I brought my friends, I had some of the best friends through this whole thing. Some of my childhood friends that I'd known since I was eight or nine, you know, we went to the same ward, high school, all of that. They were still my friends through the whole thing. You know, all of them went on missions. And when they came back, they got married in the temple, and they invited me to their temple to stand outside and I went, and they would come over to my Halloween party and watch me get just completely drunk. And they still continued to be my friend, which I'm sure was a very hard spot for them to be in. It all kind of came to a point when my marriage was starting to fall apart. And I think it's honestly just that we were going different ways. Right? So my, my ex-wife, she was kind of getting into, like I said, that mysticism type of spirituality. And I was staunchly against it. Because I was like, “Why am I gonna leave one thing? I don't even know if there's a God.” There could be, I mean, I'm agnostic at this point. And I'm, I'm trying to help people get away from that kind of thing. And we're going back to something that I felt resembled it.
ASHLY
13:14
What is mysticism? I've never heard of that.
JOSH
13:18
Yeah, so mysticism–it's a lot of like, those tarot readings, like fortune type stuff. Like, I mean, I had gotten to psychic fairs and had my fortune told, and sometimes, you know, it was like, “Whoa, how do you know this about me?” And other times, I was like, “I can't believe I just paid however much money for this.” Like, “Oh, well, at least we're going to get breakfast after this,” you know? But it's, it's all about that. You kind of hear people describe it as “I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual person.”
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
And it's kind of just finding their own way to connect to spirituality. And I'm not saying that all of it is bad. I think it's rare nowadays that people can be introspective and kind of look at how they find themselves. I happen to think that there's, you know, a savior that can help us in that road. It's not something that we have to do completely on our own, thank heavens. But yeah, I just I wasn't feeling any of that. I thought, I can't leave the church. I can't, you know, completely turn my back on anything spiritual and religious, like I can do it on my own. Like, that's kind of how I felt. We were kind of going these separate paths. And ultimately, we came to a point where I think our lifestyles became different. What we wanted from our futures were completely different. And we started to go through the motions of separating and getting divorced, right? It was completely earth shattering, because at this point, you know, I had been on and off talking to my parents for the better part of six years, seven years, sometimes I was talking to them, sometimes not, you know, Christmas, maybe we were going to be there, maybe not. And at that point, I remember pacing back and forth in my backyard, and talking to my dad on the phone and kind of telling him what was going on. And he said, “Well, why don't you just come home?” And I said, “Well, we have so many things to take care of, and you know, just so you know, that if I do take you up on that offer and I move home, I'm not going to church.” Like, “You can't, you know, I'm out of it. You can't make me go.” And he said “No … yeah,” you know, “I understand that.” And I think my parents were a great example of just loving, watching and waiting. There's a really good talk, I can’t remember who gave it– it's called “Waiting On the Prodigal Son” or something like that. And that's what this general authority talks about, is loving, watching and waiting. And that's what my parents did the entire time. They never stopped loving me, I always felt welcome. And they were just watching and waiting. And my dad said, you know, you should move home because at this point, you know, my ex-wife had moved out and I was just sitting in an empty house by myself.
16:04
I moved home, and I wasn't, I wasn't gonna go to church. There's no way. I kind of started to think about it, of, “Well, why do I feel this way? Is it towards the church? Is it actually my problem? Do I know for sure?” And while I was thinking about these problems, you know, and these questions I had, I never vocalized it to anybody. And one of my childhood best friends, he was actually getting married. And it's kind of funny, you know, Mormon culture that when they're getting married, and they're in the singles ward, they kind of give like a farewell talk, which I didn't understand that. Like he said, he's speaking in church. I was like, “Oh, cool.” And you know, I went and him and his fiancée were speaking. And I was like, it was kind of weird. Like, I didn't know they did graduation speeches, and I guess it pans out. But I went, and I heard him speak, and I don't remember what he spoke about. I'm sure it was great. He's a good dude. And he kind of just invited me. He's like, “Hey, do you want to stay for elders quorum?” Because like, “I don't know, man, like I, you know, I thought you did a really good job. But like, can we hang out later?” He's like, “Yeah, you should just stay.” And I was like, “Okay, whatever.” And I stayed, and they were actually–it’s so weird. This particular Sunday, the stake president was coming to reorganize the elders quorum presidency. Yeah, I'll never forget this experience, because the stake president, his name was President Wall. And just to paint the picture that this guy, he's kind of shorter in stature, I want to say he was probably 5’5”, 5’6”, but just a spiritual giant. And I could feel it. I mean, he started talking. And if anyone's watched sports movies, there's often that time when like, the head coach is kind of pumping up the team, right? So I call this story kind of the halftime speech, right? I was on the fence of like, “Am I going to? Am I going to investigate the church as a full blown adult that has just had his life completely shattered? Or am I going to just keep going the way that I'm going and just try to figure it out on my own?” And so I'm kind of on the fence, right? It's like halftime for me. President Wall, or, in my family, we started calling Coach Wall, he's like going back and forth, you know, kind of pacing back and forth. And he's talking about Joseph Smith. He's talking about the Book of Mormon. He's talking about these factual things. And he's a very successful person. I know this about him. At first, I'm like, “How can such a smart guy be fooled by this? This doesn't make any sense.” And some of the concerns he started bringing up, even in the anti-Mormon forums and stuff like that, I was like, “Oh, that's a really good point.” I was like, “I've never researched that. I've never thought of that.” And he's putting his glasses on and, you know, to read something on a paper and he's taking them off. And he's kind of pointing with his glasses. And it was, it was just amazing. And of course, everyone is kind of sitting there waiting, like, “What time do we get to go to linger longer and eat food?” Right? And me, I'm just sitting there bawling. I have this, this huge beard. And I'm like, my tattoo is probably out because I felt like oh, don't don't approach me.
ASHLY
Yep.
JOSH
Yeah, I'm approachable. I've got this big beard. And this, you know, big tattoo on my sleeve. I'm like, “Nobody talk to me. I'm not staying.” And I was over in the corner just bawling. Like, I don't even know. I don't remember what he said. But he was just, it was almost like he, on his paper he had, you know, “Josh Bytheway’s Concerns,” and it was an itemized list. And he was just checking them off one by one of everything, with Joseph Smith, with the Book of Mormon, with modern prophets, and temple worship, and all this stuff, and ultimately landing … I remember the last thing that he landed on was talking about Jesus Christ. Everything leading up to that, you know, I vaguely remember but he got to Jesus Christ. And I just remember thinking like, “Oh my gosh, like, what am I doing? How am I doing this by myself? How am I thinking I can possibly get through this crazy time in my life?” Thinking I need to quit certain things and I need to come back to church. “How am I doing this alone?” Afterwards I was just like, “Okay, I'm one of those people that I'm like, I have to either all the way, do it or not do it at all,” right? And so much of my life, I was just kind of doing it, which is why I never really fit into either group until I was given the choice.
20:20
So I said, “You know what, I'm going to read the Book of Mormon. Everything revolves around this book, right? Let's see what it's actually about.” And my dad, I remember, he would wake up and read the Book of Mormon by himself every morning. And it was something that was hard for me to get in the habit of, but I remember waking up and coming out into the main living area, and he was there. And he said, you know, he's asking, “Yeah, you ready? Let's do this. Let's read.” And he did that. Every morning with me. And I mean, it was very early in the morning, because I worked very early and, and he did that. And we read the Book of Mormon. I said, “Okay, fine, while I'm going through this, I'll talk to the missionaries,” like whatever. I've talked to these guys, before I've approached them on the street, and, you know, done battle with them, or whatever. And let's just, let's see what they have to say. It all just started to make sense. And I remember, you know, going through those lessons and being a friend to these missionaries, that I started to remember, and I was starting to think about how I felt as a kid when I was more in the church, right? And it's a really weird, it's really hard to articulate and really hard to explain to people, especially those that have grown up in the church, that you can't really remember a time that you didn't have the Holy Ghost, like I can't remember specifically being a six or seven year old and not having the Holy Ghost. And then of course, you have it from the age of eight on and you really don't even know that it's missing when you resign from the church, because it's been gone for a while, like, the Spirit can't be with you, and you're doing some of these bad things. But then the contrast, when you start to feel it all of a sudden, I remember, praying was a very hard thing for me to get back into for a while there. I was like, I'm just talking to myself in a room, like I'm not feeling it. And then all of a sudden, one night, I started to feel something and I started to feel like I'm, I'm not just talking to myself in a room, I'm having a conversation with someone. Like I'm, I'm feeling that. And that was such an eye opening experience for me to really connect and understand what the Holy Ghost is, right. And it's different for everyone. But for me, it was a comforting old friend, I don't know, it was the most, it was just a warm feeling of being embraced by an old friend. And it was it and I had this distinct impression of like, “I've missed you.” You know, and it was just a glimpse before I got rebaptized.
23:10
And I approached my bishop at the time, and I said, “Hey, you know, like, I want to be baptized.” And you know, he challenged me to pray a little bit more and then to fast. And I never fasted in my life. And I did. And it was very clear, like, yeah, I need to be baptized, and I need to keep going and see where this is where this is going to hit. I had no idea at that time. I just, I thought, I'm going through this divorce. It's gotten a little messy at times. There's tension with my wife at the time. And I got baptized. It was actually super cool. My younger brother who had just turned 16, he rebaptized me.
ASHLY
23:54
Oh my gosh. So how old were you at this time?
JOSH
23:57
Yeah. So I moved out when I was, you know, 18, almost 19 and got married about a year later, I was very young. And at this time, I would have been 26.
ASHLY
Oh, wow. Okay.
JOSH
Yeah. So it was like a seven or eight year hiatus. And probably the later four-ish, five-ish years of that was trying to tear down the church and being as openly hostile as you can imagine.
ASHLY
Wow.
JOSH
So I was yeah, 25, 26. And then my younger brother Jake baptized me.
ASHLY
24:32
That's so special.
JOSH
Yeah. You know, one of my friends, like I talked about who was there with me through all of this, like he spoke at my baptism. And he said, “You know, I knew you would come back.” He said, “I just, I was hoping it would be sooner rather than later.” And he said, “I'm so happy to see that you're getting this restart at the time in your life when you are.” Another friend of mine that spoke at my baptism, he kind of highlighted the point of like, this doesn't have to stop, right? Like, this isn't “you were baptized and then you did all these terrible things, and then you have to be rebaptized.” And he talked about the sacrament and he kind of helped me connect that relationship of what the sacrament really means. and how we renew our baptismal covenants. Because, again, I knew that, but I didn't know it for myself,
ASHLY
Mmhmm.
JOSH
Right? And so now I'm like, I love going to church for the sacrament. And because I remember what that was like, as a 25/26 year old, being baptized and feeling completely clean, that I can do that over and over again, I can be conscious of the efforts I need to make to improve and I can feel repentant. And I can, you know, partake of that ordinance and feel that again and again. Right? That's what happened. And it was talked about for a little bit like, oh, maybe I go on a mission because it yeah, now that I'm remembering, I was 25. And it was like, maybe he can go, maybe he can't. And my bishop, he asked folks downtown in Salt Lake City–I can't remember who's in charge of this, if I could go on a mission, and they said no. That was tough. And honestly, it was an answer to a prayer because I didn't know for sure. And I think I was still on the fence at that point. It was fine, though. The following year is when things really started to accelerate for me as I got my limited use temple recommend. And I started going to the temple. I tried to go once a week, I went on like Temple Tuesday, right? And did baptisms. And that was a crazy experience, too, because it was, where my parents live, they're pretty close to the Ochre Mountain temple. I helped with the open house when I was in high school. And I remember having like very cool spiritual experiences that I completely forgot. And then going back as an adult, and I going through to the baptistry. For the first time, I was like, I remember, like, being through here, you know, like, I was helping with people in wheelchairs. And I was like, “How did I forget about that? How do you forget?” And just kind of as a side note, I remember people growing up saying, like, they would never forget the church, the spiritual feelings that they felt. And it was usually, like a EFY, or youth conference or something. Now being on the other side of it, it's like you can, and that's honestly, like, the scariest part is that you can have these amazing spiritual experiences. But you will forget,
ASHLY
Mmhmm.
JOSH
you can forget. And I've seen it with friends that have gone on missions, and, you know, in their homecoming talks, they describe these just just insane stories of baptism and conversion, and mostly for themselves. And then you fast forward a few years, and they are completely out of the church.
ASHLY
Mmhmm.
JOSH
And it's like you forgot.
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
I forgot so much of my childhood and so much of the spiritual experiences, I had forgotten.
ASHLY
Mmhmm.
JOSH
You know, that year, I started going to the temple and I, you know, I was going to my singles ward, and they gave me a calling. It’s probably something like, ward activity director or something like that.
ASHLY
I've done that before.
JOSH
That was like the hardest calling I've ever done in my life. Trying to entertain and like, get all these people like me to mingle and it's like, it's okay, we're gonna like each other. It was really good. Because I think the bishop, his name is Bishop Finauer. I just love that man, because he was there for me through all of this. And I think he knew I needed that calling to, you know, surround myself with good people that were going to keep me engaged and keep me remembering, right? It was almost like I was a bad amnesia patient and he was like, let's put some really good people around you to remind you of who you really are. And brilliant. So I was going through this and I remember meeting my wife, now, Natalie. We met through a mutual friend. And I was doing a musical number with a bunch of guys at like Stake Conference. And she's a very musical person, plays the piano beautifully. And she was helping us, kind of sort this out. And it's like, you know, my calling was hard. Hers was harder, trying to get like these eight guys to the scene in some sort of hymn. And I met her. I was dating someone, kind of, and she was dating someone. And you know, “Hey, yeah, nice to meet you.” “Yeah, cool,” whatever. And then two months later, like, I wasn't dating anyone, she wasn't dating anyone. And we decided to start going on dates. And it just seems so funny to me that like a childhood friend of mine, was close friends with her and then all these years later, that I would still be talking to him and that he would introduce me to my now wife. Again, one of those things where it's like friends that you've had for so long that just never really gave up on you. Right? He introduced us and we started dating. Let's see, it was almost exactly a year–13 months after I was rebaptized that I went through the temple and me and Natalie were sealed in the temple. Married and sealed.
ASHLY
Wow.
JOSH
Yeah, and so that year of just like this massive progression of really investigating the church and just building line upon line. And it's amazing how quickly that happened for me that a year later I was getting married in the temple, something I never thought I was gonna do. And then a year after that our first son was born. And year after that, you know, I'm going to BYU, I'm probably skipping over a whole bunch of stuff. But it just kept going and going and going, that I wanted to improve. And I now had the tools to do it. And it's amazing that, you know, I ran and I ran, and I ran. And I've heard someone, I can't remember who they talked about this, that you run as fast and hard as you can away from the Savior. And then you stop and you kind of, you're catching your breath. And then you turn around to see how far away He is, and he's like, right there.
ASHLY
Yep.
JOSH
I turned around. And it's just amazing. The testimony I have of the Atonement, and feeling forgiven for the things that I've done and the things that I've said, it's very hard to put into words.
ASHLY
31:05
I relate to your story so much. I was a heroin addict. And I had been sober for maybe like, I don't know, year and a half or so. And I was really like, coming back. And yeah, it was just, same thing. I mean, I think we got married when I was two and a half years clean and coming back to church. And then we got married in the temple. And before that, it was like, I got my limited use recommend. And then, you know, a year later, we got married in the temple. And then a year later, we had our baby girl. Yeah, my life has gotten better and better and just more blessings. And I can just relate so much to what you're sharing. And it's, you're so right, like, as soon as you take that step back towards the Savior, it's like, miracles just follow.
JOSH
32:05
Oh, absolutely. Well, and it's so funny how quickly the blessings come. It's, I don't know, like how doctrinally accurate this is, but it's almost like I was missing out on those years of blessings. And then, you know, the second I turn to come back to Christ and come back to the church that it's like, “Okay, now! Throw everything at him, throw all of it!” You know?
ASHLY
Totally.
JOSH
And it's just blessing after blessing and just reconnecting with people and just peace and all of these things that you're like, “Okay, obviously, this is the right way to go.” Like, I can't imagine coming back and it's being kind of wishy washy, right? If there was ever any wishy washyness, it was definitely on my end,
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
and out of like my own hesitancy. But once I gave that up, and I was just like, “Okay, fine, we're gonna figure this out, we're gonna see if this Atonement thing is for real.”
ASHLY
Yep.
JOSH
Yeah, like, oh, it's for real.
ASHLY
Yep.
JOSH
And it just kept happening and happening and happening. And, and to me, that is, like, such a miracle that that can happen.
ASHLY
33:09
It's so true. It's, I mean, listeners of this podcast have heard my story 1000 times, but I decided I was going to experiment and just see what was gonna happen
JOSH
Yeah.
ASHLY
if I decided to come back and just see. And it was like, my whole life was transformed. That is the same thing that happened with you.
JOSH
Yeah.
ASHLY
And so yeah, I just, I love that so much. And I have a couple questions for you.
JOSH
Yeah, absolutely.
ASHLY
33:35
So what advice would you give to a family member, like a daughter, son, brother, sister, somebody that's really out of the church that is just kind of hating on the church a lot in a public way? Like, what do you think would have maybe, I mean, obviously, you talked about your parents and how they were just made such a difference, but like, what advice would you have for just interacting with them? I think there's like a fine line between sticking up for what you believe in, but also like loving them in a way that they need.
JOSH
34:13
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, for one, it was, you know, like my tattoo example, right? I wanted, I wanted to fight. I wanted, I wanted to be combative. And I'm not trying to generalize and say that everybody that leaves the church does this. The people that leave the church and then kind of get into that anti-Mormon mindset— they do feel like they're waging some sort of righteous war. Right? And it's very contentious. I never got the reaction from the people that loved me that I wanted. You know, you don't think that that's the way to go. You're like “I gotta stand up for my beliefs.” And it's kind of funny like that. How many people's minds have been changed in the comment section on social media, right? And honestly, it's so funny that the friend that I was talking about, that invited me to hear him speak in the singles ward–he spoke at my baptism. He was my best man at my wedding when I was married in the temple. He's actually since left the church. Now we're on opposite sides. And he helped me so much. And I still struggle with how to handle him. And now I find out he's getting a divorce. Like, how did I respond to this, that helped me. And he would post some pretty egregious, you know, like combative things on social media. And it got to a point where I just kind of had to not unfriend him because that's such a dramatic thing.
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
Like, he's gonna get notification or whatever. But I had to stop following him. Honestly, you just have to know that you're there. Because when—it's not if, right? It's when these people turn even slightly just to look over their shoulder, they got to know that you're there. Right?
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
My mom tells the story of, you know, LehI’s dream. She loves that story in the scriptures. And she has, you know, paintings and stuff in her house. And I think she learned this at BYU Education Week that you get to the tree, right? And you taste the fruit? And of course, you want everybody to have it.
ASHLY
Right.
JOSH
But you can't take it to them. And whoever this was, I can't remember who it was that was teaching this lesson. But they said, “You don't leave the tree.” You have to stay at the tree so that they know where to find you.
ASHLY
36:32
Wow. That is profound.
JOSH
36:34
Because my mom, she struggled with that, too. She was like, “How much do I follow Josh, into finding out what's going on, and try to talk through it and help him?” And she went to BYU Education Week while all this crap was going on with me. And that was the answer to her prayer: “You have to stay at the tree. Josh has to know where to find you.”
ASHLY
36:56
Oh, my gosh, wow.
JOSH
Right? And it seems like such a crazy angle, but we don't really think about that. Right? It kind of the end of the scripture story is that the people got to the tree, and you know, some of them are ashamed, and some of them were happy. But then it's like, then what? We’re all just like sitting around staring at each other? It's like, no, we're waiting. We're waiting for everyone else to come to us. And so the advice I would give is that you have to stay, you have to show an example. And it doesn't have to be, you know, in some sort of preachy, judgmental way, or, you know, you don't have to be critical of them. And you try your best not to be judgmental of people. But you have to fortify your testimony. And you have to be there for them.
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
And it might be in five years, it might be in 20, it might be longer, right? But you fortify your testimony. You love them. You watch and you wait.
ASHLY
37:56
Wow. I love that, too. I know that you mentioned the stake president when he came in, and he was talking through all of the concerns, but there's so many things that people get stuck on, you know, even if they're active in the church. There's things with church history, with LGBTQ, you know, so many things that people get stuck on, and what advice would you have for those people with overcoming those hard questions?
JOSH
Yeah. No, honestly, that's not an easy thing to answer. I think, honestly, the best way I could answer that is that it's okay to have doubt. It's okay to be unsure. And sometimes with some of those things, it's okay to honestly say, “I don't know.” I don't know, especially with, you know, sometimes church history things. It's like, I don't know why that happened. I don't know, I wasn't there. And you can read all these accounts and these conflicting reports. And ultimately, you have to just decide for yourself like, what, what's important to me? Is it important to me to know all of those details about church history? Does that change my opinion on the Book of Mormon? Does that change my opinion on Christ as my personal Savior? Ultimately, I had to get to a point where, you know, I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm okay. I'm okay not knowing.
ASHLY
Mmhmm.
JOSH
And I know that's not like an easy answer for people to hear, especially because when you're searching for those answers, and those convictions, you feel like you have to be 100% solid, right?
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
What I would say is that the primary answers, the easy things, the ones that you can get the most solid are the most important. And like I said, at the center of all of it, it's Christ as our personal Savior. I know without a doubt, like that is the biggest thing for me and my testimony. You know, I'm not a great scripture reader. I'm not good at so many things. But I pray every night and I know that I need that communication with my Heavenly Father and I need that Savior to help me with my sins, so that I can continue to progress, I can continue to be better.
ASHLY
40:07
Yeah, yeah. That is so good. And Josh after this episode, today, we are reading scriptures with our families.
JOSH
Yeah. Let me go do it right now.
ASHLY
Yes. Right after this. For sure! Just this whole, your story, your advice? Oh my gosh, so good. I'm so excited to post this episode because everybody is just going to love it. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
JOSH
40:36
For obvious reasons, I relate to Alma the Younger, and the prodigal son. And it's such a sweet blessing, I think to have people in your life that love you and care about you. Don't ever take it for granted, is what I would tell people. And even if you're having those doubts, and you're on the outs of the church for whatever the reason, just know that people love you. And more so than that, your Heavenly Father loves you. And anyone that's grown up in the church that might be having this same kind of thing. Just know that you can't leave it like it's, it's so hard. And you see the people and, and I'm not saying you cannot be happy outside the church. This is something I've talked about multiple times. That I was happy, right?
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
I was happy outside the church. But I didn't feel as fulfilled in my happiness. Elder Holland, my, one of my good friends, he calls Elder Holland, like God's Bulldog, because he's, like, so passionate, and like, when he says something to you, you're like, “Okay, yeah, I know.” He gave a talk to some missionaries in the MTC. And he was relaying, you know, the story of Peter, you know, being asked by the resurrected Christ of, “Do you love me?” You know, asking like three times and, and Elder Holland says it more passionately, like, “Then feed my sheep.” Like, you can't go back. Like you, you've been a part of my ministry, you've been on this journey with me, and now you're trying to go back to your boats. Right? And I feel like being born in the church, and you know, having that knowledge growing up, having that constant companion of the Holy Ghost, where you can't remember not having it– you can't go back to your boats.
ASHLY
Yeah.
JOSH
It's so hard to go back to your boats. And you really have to make that conscious effort to follow Christ. And I just want anyone out there to know that, that you will find fulfillment and joy and happiness and you will still have your struggles, you will still have your trials. But you will feel comforted in going through those trials and those negative experiences having the companionship of the Holy Ghost and your Savior Jesus Christ.
ASHLY
I love that, so much.
JOSH
I just think that this is such a brilliant idea. You know, we talked about, you know, the one sheep, right?
ASHLY
Yes.
JOSH
And ministering to the one, you know, the lost sheep. And there's more stories out there like, like ours, right?
ASHLY
Yep.
JOSH
Like yours and what you've struggled with and mine kind of being on the other side and being on the opposition, right? And there's so many stories like this. And I think that we can give people hope, if we share these stories. And so I really appreciate that you put this together and give people like me a chance to blabber on about what I've been through in hopes that I can help someone.
ASHLY
43:38
Yes, well, and you will help so many people, I can guarantee that I'm gonna have 10 emails from people saying, “Oh my gosh, that was so amazing, exactly what I needed to hear.” And that's how God does it. He puts the person on the podcast on the week exactly that those people need to hear it. It's been
JOSH
Yeah.
ASHLY
wild to see their response.
JOSH
That's amazing. I love it.
ASHLY
44:00
So awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
JOSH
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
ASHLY
So good.
