"I will never forget my kids being dressed in all white and being brought to us at the altar. It will always be one of the most amazing moments of my life because I knew we were going to be together forever."
Come Back Podcast
Transcription
Ashly Stone 00:00
This is Ashly Stone, and you're listening to the Come Back Podcast.
I'd love to just jump in and start from the beginning. First, I'd like to hear a little bit of background about you. Where you live, maybe a little bit just of context. So as you're telling your story, we kind of know who you are,
Katie 00:26
Okay. I am in Northern California. I'm in Sacramento, and I was born and raised here. All my family's here. I haven't really traveled too much. I kind of just been here. I work in a hospital. I’m wearing my scrubs right now, I’ve kind of just taken over a break room to do this real quick. I just turned 46. I'm number six of seven kids. My parents were LDS. My mom was a member. All of her family history is done. My dad is a convert, so I have to do all of his family history work.
Ashly
(Ha ha ha)
Katie
I was raised in the church. I would say I had a very good childhood. My parents were awesome. They were a really good balance of, my mom pushing it, and my dad, thinking, “Oh good, I don't have to do everything.” And so it was a good balance. We would go to church every Sunday. It was kind of just expected. I mean, if we were sick and stuff, we had to kind of prove it. You better be sick for the day. I really didn't go to seminary. In my family, there's three older kids, then my middle sister, Amy, and then there's the three younger kids, which is my sister Jenny, me and Tara. I feel like maybe with the three older ones, she probably pushed seminary and things like that a lot more, because I think my oldest brother graduated from seminary, and my other brother went on a mission. And then, I mean by child number six, which was me, she would probably say, “Just do what you have to do.” It's hard. Yeah, we had a great childhood. My sister Amy, who's the middle child in between the two sets of three. She had cancer when she was four, so that was before I was born, and it damaged the left side of her heart with radiation, pretty bad. So she was six years older than me, and as I was growing up, I knew that she had limits. I always thought she would live a full life, but I knew she couldn't run. We would kind of have to tailor what we did, to make sure she'd be okay. And when I was 15, she had to get a pacemaker, and her health started to take a turn for the worse. So the sister closest next to me is my sister Jenny. She's two and a half years older than me, and we kind of fought more in high school than we got along. So Amy and I were super close. I feel like we had that distance between us where there wasn't any competition. So she was my buddy. We'd go out to movies and dinner all the time and hang out, and she was older and much cooler than I ever was. So she was my best friend. She got a pacemaker when I was 15, and then progressively got worse that year. I still think as a teenager, you just don't grasp the reality of things and the gravity of things. And so one day, when I was 16, she was 22 at this time, she had to go into the hospital for heart catheterization. And I work in a hospital now, in cardiology, mostly because of her, that’s kind of why I went into that. And so I know that's a pretty routine procedure, and back then, that's what my parents told me too, “This is a routine procedure, and she'll be out tonight.” I can remember her just sitting on the couch waiting for my mom, who's perpetually late to everything, and taking her to her appointment. She went, and then my dad called later that day and said that she had two medical emergencies while she was there, and that her heart just wasn't strong enough that night. I still didn't really get what was going on. I think the next day, I went down and took some pictures of us together, to put next to her bed. And my dad said, “She's not going to know who you are.” And so that was very quick. I went in there and I held hands with her and stayed for a little bit. It was hard. Now, as an adult, it probably would have not left at all. It just wouldn't have been the whole time that as a teenager, you kind of have to take a break. It's a lot. And so I went that day, on Sunday, I think, we went to church with my other siblings. My parents, of course, were with her the whole time. And my dad told me she could get a heart and lung transplant right away, she might make it, but that's probably not going to happen. And I feel bad now for my dad, in retrospect. My mom was always at the hospital, so he was kind of giving us the bits and pieces that we could handle. My younger sister was eight, and we weren't really telling her anything about it, because it was a lot for her. So the next day, Monday, my dad told me, you should come up and you should say goodbye. I got out of school early, and my friend took me up there, and I got to hold her hand, and she was kind of semi conscious, but my dad was talking to her, telling her that they were going to unhook everything and take her home, and she was going to be okay. And hearing my dad talk to her that way was so hard, because obviously it wasn't true. And my sister, Amy, although maybe weak in body, was a very strong person. She was just like the boss of us kids, and my parents. She kind of ran all of us. I knew I couldn't stay for the time when they decided to unhook her, and I also almost felt like it was something my parents should be there for. So I gave her a kiss, and even at this time, we still just, it just doesn't fully hit you. I gave her a kiss and a hug, and I told her how much I loved her, and she kind of held my hand. I left at about 2pm, and at about 3pm they disconnected everything, and let my mom hold her as she passed away. That was a really defining moment that was super hard, that changed our family a lot, in a better way. I mean, we struggled that first week or two, she would always keep her bedroom door padlocked because she didn't want all of us girls getting into her clothes, so my dad undid it, and we went into her room that first day, and you could smell her. And it was so hard, but we really became close as a family. I had two older siblings that lived, one lived in Bakersfield, one lived in Arizona, and they both moved back shortly afterwards, and we just became a very close family. I think we realized that time is short, and we wanted to be there for each other. There's kind of like the “before Amy passed away,” and the “after Amy passed away,” and I would say that we're all very, very close after that. That's as siblings, and my parents too. I mean, it's very hard on a couple to grieve, and my mom wanted to go to the cemetery all the time. My dad did not want to. That was hard for him. For me, I felt like she was still with us. I just really always got this feeling that she was with us. And maybe a few weeks after she passed away, the bishop of my parents’ ward called them in, and he told my parents that he had a really strong impression that she could do more for my family on the other side than she could here on Earth. And part of me felt like it's not fair. But at the same time, now as an adult, I see what she has done, and as each of us girls and my brothers have had children, she's been there, and in every gathering we have, she's there. I know it. I feel it. And for me, that's a super strong conviction. And so anytime I hear that somebody has had somebody close to them pass away, I talk with them, even if they're not a member of the church, because I just want them to know that that person is still there. And to me, that's super important. So I've made a lot of friends that really didn't know me before this person passed away, but I am just constant, “Are you okay? Are you getting up? You need to do this. He's still right there with you.” I was 16 when that happened.
My then-to-be husband and I met when I was in middle school. We didn't really talk to each other. That was about seventh grade on; I knew of him. We kind of went in different groups. My sister passed away my junior year, then during our senior year, he was dating a girl for about a year that I was friends with. She was a foster child. Very, very sweet. For being a foster child, you couldn't tell that anything was holding her back. She was going to graduate a year early. She was on track. She was just so nice, and she was murdered by her foster father.
[Ashley’s jaw drops.]
Katie
Yeah. When I saw my soon-to-be husband after this (we had a class together), I was really drawn to him because I just wanted to comfort him. I had seen him since seventh grade. I had never even paid attention to him before, but now I just looked at him in a different way, and I saw the pain that he was going through. I think it really just started as a friendship. I wanted to let him know that he would see her again and that it wasn't the end. And so that's kind of how we started going out. As seniors, you're obviously not making your best choices and life mates as a senior, but we started dating. I was still going to church at this time. Even after my sister died, I remained going to church. But there was a lot of me that always felt a little out of place at church. I just always felt like I wasn't quite good enough, and I didn't really fit in. I had great friends and I had good leaders, and I just think that maybe that's something I put on myself.
I put off getting my patriarchal blessing because I didn't think that I was ready or I was good enough. I needed to get closer to Christ. I needed to … all these things, and I thought, “Okay, if I can do this, then I can have it.” My other friends had theirs, and theirs is great and stuff. But I thought, “I'm not worthy. I can't do it.” And as I got older, I still just kind of had that feeling that I just wasn't worthy enough to be there, to hold those positions in the Young Women class leadership, and things like that when we were younger. And I would hang out with the crowds outside of church, and some of my church friends would too. I mean, it wasn't just me, but that makes you feel guilty when you go to church on Sunday as a kid. You don't have any understanding of the Atonement or of grace, and all I felt was a lot of shame and guilt. I feel like I kind of distanced myself from the church because of that. When I listen to some of your podcasts–I've listened to them all. I love them. I just love the people that you interview that have gone into these deep dives about the gospel, and Joseph Smith, and I think, “These guys are professors, and they know so much.” One of these missionaries came by once, and I said, “I don't know. I think I kind of have dumb faith, because I just don't question those things.”
Ashly
Mmhmm.
Katie
And when I hear about big questions, I kind of just think, “Nah, I don't want to look into it.” Not to be dumb, but from what I feel, and prayers I've had answered, I know the church is real, so my issue with the church was more with me than it was with the gospel. Things are differently taught now than they were then. I feel like there's more of an openness and an acceptance of just loving, and again, maybe it was my perception, but I just felt like I had to be this perfect person. When I was 18, one of my closest friends went to BYU, and a week later, got engaged, and so she said, “I want you to be my maid of honor.” She was going to get married in the temple. So we were planning it, and then her mother told her, “No. Katie is not worthy to be in your wedding.” That crushed me. To me, that just solidified everything I thought about myself. And so I thought, “Okay, she's right.” And that was kind of when I really separated myself from the church. If I would go with my parents, I would go, but I wasn't working towards anything as far as a relationship with Christ, or I wasn't trying to understand anything. I think I was put in a Nursery calling when I was 18, which is like isolation.
Ashly
Yeah. It’s very hard.
Katie
It's not a great place as an 18 year old. I eventually got a job at a hospital, the hospital I work at now, actually. I've been here for a long time. So I got a job, and I started working Sundays. So I thought, “Oh, I can't go to church, I work on Sundays.” I was still dating my boyfriend, and kind of from the beginning, I feel like we kind of trauma-bonded, maybe. We weren't anything alike, and we had a lot of ups and downs, right from the beginning. Nowadays, if I saw my kids who are that age in a relationship like that, I'd be saying, “You need to end this. You guys are too different.” But at that point, I said, “Nope, I'm going to work on it, and then I'm going to make it work.” My mom and I got into an argument, and my parents are wonderful, but I was probably a brat and we butted heads. My mom said, “Yeah, you gotta go.” So I moved into my boyfriend's house with his parents, and I lived there for a month while I was looking for a place to move out on my own. I found a great apartment. I was excited. And during that month that I lived there, things really declined between us too. It was just getting worse. It was like, “Okay, this is good. I need to get out.” The night before I left, his mom said to him, “I think you should go too.” She said, “You're 20.” I think we were 20 or 21. She said, “You need to be on your own.” And I wasn't expecting that. That wasn't in my plan, because things just weren't going well. But at the same time, I had a hard time back then, speaking up for myself and saying no. So he moved in. I was the one paying all the bills and everything. And he was kind of half in college, playing a little football and working. He didn't continue to do very well. I had some very sweet home teachers that came by. One time I think I bought a bottle of wine– I was carrying groceries upstairs, and they came to help me carry up the groceries, and I said, “Oh no. I barely drink, very rarely.” They were so sweet though. They gave me a copy of A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, and they left it with me, which is still one of my favorite books. We lived in our apartment, things just kind of ebbed and flowed. We had good times, we had bad times, but I felt like I was always the one that was thinking, “Okay, I gotta work on this. I gotta make this better. He's going to ask me to marry him one day,” you know? And we talked about it and he would say, “Oh yeah, in the future.” I had wanted to be a mom my whole life. I wanted to get married and I wanted to have kids. My mom, that was her dream. She got married, she had seven kids. She and my dad had a wonderful relationship. So I thought, “Okay, if I work hard enough, and if I work on this relationship hard …” I kind of didn't want to involve the gospel or Heavenly Father at that time. I thought I could do it on my own. (And you can't, just so you know.) So I just worked hard. It was me, putting in all the work, we did counseling before marriage. That's a good idea. Needless to say, it didn't work out that well. But we kept going. As things were kind of better. I said, “Maybe we should have a baby.” Because now I was 23, so I felt like my clock was ticking or something. My parents are older. They had me when they were in their late 30s. And even though that's really common now, that wasn't very common when I was young. So to me, my parents seemed older. And I thought, “I want them to be able to help us with our kids, because I'm going to, of course, have to work, and so since they're home, they watch them.” I kind of sold it to him as, “Yeah, we could do this. We're going to get married eventually, anyways. And he said, “Yeah, okay, sounds like a good idea.” And so I said, “Okay, let's do that.” That didn't take too much convincing. I think that I probably should have consulted with my Heavenly Father, maybe, or prayed about it. I probably would have gotten a different answer. I don't know. I look back now and I think everything is meant to be, and happens for a reason. But I just look back at myself now and I think, “Did you think having a kid was going to make things better?”
Ashly
Yeah.
Katie
But I don't regret having my son at all. So I got off the pill, and three months later, we were pregnant, and I was thrilled, and he just said, “Oh yeah, cool.” I had my son in October of 2001. It was right after 9/11–I was a little terrified to bring a child in the world at that time. I'm a big worrier. But he was amazing. He changed my life. And in fact, I remember telling my dad when I found out I was pregnant, thinking, “You're going to see what he's going to say.” And he said, “You'll finally know exactly how much your mom and I love you.” And that was true, because you have no idea until you have kids. There's just this infinite amount of love that you would do anything for these kids. And also, it gives you such a clear perspective also of how much your Father in Heaven loves you. And I feel like at that time, I didn't see that yet, but I knew how much my parents loved me. My son was amazing. He was an easy baby, so sweet. Being a mom is the best thing ever. I had to go back to work when he was four months old. I worked part time, and my parents watched him part time, so it was good. And he was just the sweetest, easiest baby. I think they kind of trick you and give the easy one first, and then you get talked into the second one. When he was probably about six or seven months old, and we were still living in our apartment, the relationship between his father and I got worse, we couldn’t agree on things. He was hanging out with his friends every night until late, and I was with our son every night. And I loved being with our son. I didn't have a desire to go out and to party or to do things like that, and I just felt all of a sudden this overwhelming guilt, that it was a very selfish decision for me to want to have a baby so bad when he wasn't going to be born into this wonderful family with a father and a mother that were both at the same place ready to receive him. And I just felt really bad about that. I know his dad loved him, but he wasn't really grown up yet, or ready to be a dad. We kind of got in an argument, and I talked to him about it, and I just went to my room. I prayed a lot. My feeling in my heart was I needed to move back home, and I needed to go back to church, and I needed to take my son to church. He was seven months old, so he didn't know any better. But the next day, I put in my notice at the apartment, and I moved back home with my parents, and they already had two daughters there, three grandkids, and my youngest sister, so they have a five bedroom house, but my dad said, “We'll fit you in. It's okay. Don't worry, you can come home.”
So I came home, and I went back to my old ward that I grew up in. It had kind of changed. I was an adult now, and I had to go see my bishop because I wanted to do things right. It was pretty evident the sins I needed to confess as I carried my baby in there. But it was such a different experience than from when I was younger. I felt so much love, and just warmth and concern for me and for my son. The bishop had just a really sweet way of wanting me to know how much Heavenly Father loved me regardless of what I had done. I thought, “But wait, I really made this mistake.” And he said, “Heavenly Father loves you anyways.” That was a really hard thing for me to grasp. I don't know why, because my dad's very loving.
Ashly Stone 19:26
When you came back, this was the ward you had grown up in. I'm curious to know, did you feel judged by anyone in the ward? What was that experience like coming back, and having a baby? I'm sure people knew.
Katie 19:38
Yeah. I was a little bit older, I was 24, so it's not like I was a teenager. The lady that said I wasn't worthy to be in her daughter's wedding was in that ward, and she probably said, “Yeah, I told you,” but I really didn't pay attention to her. I felt it's kind of interesting going into a family ward when you're single with a child, because you don't really fit in with the young mothers as much, because they're married couples that are hanging out with each other, and I didn't want to go to the Young Single Adult ward, I had a child. I just didn't feel like I fit in anywhere. But at that moment in time, I didn't care. I knew that I needed to be at church. I needed to be reading my scriptures, and to me, that was the most important thing. And from then on, if anybody had any judgment towards me, I had no cares whatsoever. I just wish I would have felt that way when I was younger.
Ashly Stone 20:30
Yeah, I love that so much. So then what happened?
Katie 20:34
While I was home over the next year, I decided it was time for me to get my patriarchal blessing. Okay, I've gone and seen the bishop, and I'm ready now. You hear about everybody who has their patriarchal blessings, which might say, “You'll be sealed in the temple, and you'll have all these great things.” And I thought, “Okay, I can't wait to hear that, because right now I don't know.” I wondered, “Have I messed up that chance?” And one of my friends said, “Just because something’s not in your patriarchal blessing, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.” She told me, “Try to focus on the feeling that you have when you're getting your patriarchal blessing.” And we have this very sweet patriarch who is actually still in my ward. Now, I think he's close to 100 years old because he was pretty old then. He knew my grandparents. He's so sweet. And so I went over there one day, and I prayed and fasted, and in my heart, I knew what I wanted to hear. But I guess I wasn't ready yet to hear what Heavenly Father wanted me to hear. I know what I want to hear. So I went in there, and I was trying to kind of focus on the feeling, but instead, I was honed in on every word he said. And he talked about my son, that he would serve a mission one day, and that was super sweet. And then how much I love to raise my children, or that how much I love being a mother. And he said, “Amen.” And he did not say one thing about getting sealed in the temple. And I said, “Okay, thanks.” And I said goodbye to him and his wife, they were so sweet. And I cried the whole way home. I cried when I got home to my mom, and I said, “Maybe it's just not meant to be.” He didn't say anything about it. He said that in everybody's. But it wasn't in there. And she just was very sweet, she said, “Well, you just have to have faith.” And I went up to my room, and I laid down, and I was still just feeling so sorry for myself, and I thought to myself, “There are two possible answers to this: either Heavenly Father doesn't want you to focus on that right now, and He wants you to focus on other things, or none of it is true, and you don't have to believe in any of it. And I knew right then that that is not what I believe. I know that my Heavenly Father wanted me to know these certain things. I knew that. Maybe two minutes later my phone rang, and back then it was my family phone. So my dad called me downstairs. “Katie, you have a phone call.” So I went down there, and I could hear the patriarch’s sweet voice. And I could hear his wife talking to him in the background, too. And he said, “Katie, I need you to come back tomorrow. He said, “I've never had this happen before, but there's more that the Lord needs you to know.”
Ashly
Wow.
Katie
He just said, “Would 10 o'clock be okay?” And I said, “Yeah.” So I hung up and I told my mom. I said, “I don't know, but I just made a really quick decision upstairs, and hopefully it was the right one.” So the next morning, I went back, and he said, again, “It's so funny. I never had this before, but when you left, I just got this distinct feeling that there was more Heavenly Father wanted you to know.” And so I sat down, and I got another patriarchal blessing, which on my patriarchal blessing, there's my first one, and it ends, and then there's a small second paragraph, and that ends. And in the second paragraph, it says that I will be able to take a choice companion to the temple and be married to him for time and all eternity. And I bawled. And I didn't really tell him the kind of internal struggle that I had. I just thanked him, and I went home and I told my mom, and all of a sudden I felt like I would be worthy of that. I felt that was something that was possible for me, and I didn't believe that before. So then I started really praying hard.
During this time, my son's father would still come around to see him and kind of try to flirt and date and stuff. And I’d say, “No, we're not doing that. I'm back in church …” He now worked at a job where he worked with a lot of older people that were married, and so I think he thought, “Oh, maybe we should get married.” And I was hesitant because of the things that we had been through. I was very hesitant, but at the same time, I would look at my son, and I thought he deserves a mom and dad to raise him, and he deserves to be sealed to a family, and I had to get some blessings from my dad, and I just had a hard time making my decision about it, but I told him, “If we're going to date, we're going to date like we're newly dating. I know we have a kid …” He kind of laughed, saying, “Really, we have a kid together.” And I said, “Yeah, we're going to keep it legitimate until we get married.” And he wasn't a member of the church or anything. He would go to church with us, for his blessing when my dad blessed him, and stuff like that. But I told him, “This is the new me. I'm going to church every Sunday. You don't have to go.” I never wanted him to feel like he had to go. “This is my decision.” And he was actually really great about me taking my son and stuff. We decided to get married, and I prayed a lot. Looking back now, my answers … it was hard to receive revelation on my own. And I don't know if it's because I don’t normally feel the burning in the bosom thing. I don't get that as much. I feel just this overwhelming emotion when I feel the Spirit. When I was younger, and they would talk about feeling the burning in the bosom, I thought, “What is your bosom and where's this burning point?” I don’t feel like that was explained well. And so I thought, “I don't understand that, but I know this feeling when I would hear talks at church that would just wash over me,” and I finally realized, “Okay, that's the Spirit, and that's what I'm feeling.” And I think for everybody, it's a little bit different, but I think it's important to kind of realize, when you finally feel it, what it is.
We got married in an LDS church. It was the same church my parents were married in, and my grandfather, who built the church. It was really special. It's kind of a unique church that was built back in Sacramento, when it was, like, Sacramento First Ward, back in the 50s. Back then the whole ward would work together to build it. It was really neat.
Ashly
Wow!
Katie
These days churches are all made to be similar. And this one was different. It had this beautiful back brick patio. And so we got married on the patio, the temperature was about 104*, so it was the worst time in July, but we had a little cake topper that had him and me, and my son is the little ring bearer on the cake topper. He was our ring bearer. He did a great job. It was great. We celebrated with our families. I was really happy. At this point, of course I wanted him to join the church, but again, I just felt like it's going to be a progression, and I just needed to go to church. So we got married, then we moved in with his family for about eight months. That was hard. It was his mom and dad and his brother, and they were nice. But he was raised very differently than I was. He would actually argue with his mom more than I ever would or anything. He would kind of tell her back off of trying to teach us how to parent, and stuff like that. We thought we were going to live there until we bought a house, but after about eight months, we thought, “We gotta go.” So we rented an apartment back in the complex we were in originally, and it's in this great little neighborhood in Land Park in Sacramento, which is a really pretty neighborhood. So this moved me to a new ward. So I walked in the first Sunday to our new ward, and I remember standing in the back. It was a sea of gray hair. It was all old people. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, I'm never going to get him to join this because there's no young people.” But I thought, “Okay, well, this is my ward, so here I am,” and it was nice. There was a lot of older people, but they were wonderful. And there was kind of this really great core group of young people, about five or six of us. And even though they were married couples, they were great. They fellowshiped my husband. Whether he joined the church or not, they didn't care. They would invite us over. And they were wonderful. And so at first, although I considered not returning after that first Sunday, I'm really glad I stayed. But then, as with all marriages, we kind of started hitting the ups and downs again. I remember one day we really hit a particularly rough patch where I was thinking, “Maybe I didn't make the right decision to get married.” And I spent a long time in the bathroom praying, that's kind of my spot. Mostly, I could be undisturbed. When I walked out of the bathroom, I had the feeling now of, “You're not going to get an answer right away. You just pray, put everything out there that you can, and just wait.” And a lot of times I feel like answers come in time, things like that. But as I walked out of the room, I got this thought in my head that he was going to ask to be baptized that night. And I walked out in the living room, and the look on his face just irritated me so bad. I was thinking, “I don't know where that thought came from. That was a crazy thought.” We had to run a couple errands, and we went out to dinner that night. He said, “I've been thinking about joining the church.”
Ashly Stone 29:54
Wow.
Katie 29:57
I dropped my fork. I looked at him, and it was kind of hard to explain to him that I knew he was going to say that. I don't think he got it exactly, like saying, “Hey, I was praying about how bad things are, and I got this feeling,” but it was the first time in my life that I had heard an audible answer to a prayer. I mean, when they say “still small voice,” it is so small, and it is so easy to miss it if you're not in tune or paying attention. And this was even before we had iPhones where you're constantly distracted. I mean, it's just so small. The only thing that made me catch it was it wouldn't have been a thought I was thinking. It's just being kind of so irritated with him, and I thought, “Oh, where'd that come from?” It just surprised me, and I knew that my Heavenly Father knew me, and He was listening to my prayers. I knew it. I just said, “Oh, okay.” I didn't want to push him. And we kind of just let it go. And then maybe a few weeks later, in our apartment, it was gated, and so we didn't have surprise visitors. And one night, the missionaries knocked on our door, and he looked at me. He said, “I know you sent them here.” I said, “No, I swear. I don't even know them.” I didn't. And I opened the door and they introduced themselves, and they asked if they could come in. I looked at my husband, he said, “Yeah, it's okay.” So they came in. These really, really sweet young missionaries that came in, and they sat down and they were just visiting with us, and I was telling them about my family and Rob was visiting with them. They maybe talked with us for about a half hour, and then they said, “So do you want to take the lessons?” And I thought, “I can’t believe they just asked that. Why would they do that now?” And he said, “Yeah, okay, I will.” They left, and I told him, “You didn't have to say yes.” First of all, he's not the type of person that will say what he thinks people want to hear. But I told him, “You don't have to take the lessons. You know that, right?” And he said, “Yeah, but I mean, I might as well.” And I thought, “Okay.” And I called my friend who had been on a mission, and I said, “Do you believe that they did that?” And she said, “Well, Katie, maybe they're being led by the Spirit. Have you ever thought of that?” I said, “Okay, yes.” So they came over for their first lesson. This was back in 2003 so they were still using the flip book and things like that. I mean, lesson one, I don't even remember. It was basically a summary of the Plan of Salvation and a little bit of Joseph Smith. And then, they summed it up pretty quick, and they said, “So do you want to get baptized?” And again, I thought, “Oh my gosh, did they just get here? They just came straight from the MTC.” And I thought, “This is like a path to destruction. This is not going to work.” And he said, “Yeah, alright, I'll get baptized.” I just sat there in stunned silence because I thought, “This is not true, and he's not ready to get baptized.” And I called my friend again, and she said, “Oh my gosh, you have so much doubt. Just, please, just know that they're being led by the Spirit.”
He worked a job where he had to work Sundays a lot, and so he had to get there a couple of Sundays in a row in order to be baptized. But he was able to make it work. He just kind of rolled into it. My dad was able to baptize him, which was a really sweet experience, because my dad is just my hero. And so it was wonderful to see him. The day we got there, they're supposed to start filling the font in the morning, because it takes a long time to fill and they had not. So they were filling the church garbage bins with water, and dumping it in there, trying to get it ready. But it was amazing. My son was there. He doesn't remember–he was probably three at the time, but it was just great. He went up and held his hand when he was getting the Holy Ghost conferred upon him. And it was amazing. Right away they said, “We want to give you a calling, and we want you guys to take temple preparation classes.” And I thought, “Oh, slow down. I don’t know if he’s ready for that.” Money was an important thing to him. And I know that tithing is something that we needed to pay, and that was a big chunk of our income. And I thought, “There's no way.” And right away, he starts paying tithing.
Ashly
Wow.
Katie
I was floored. I even keep one of his tithing slips still in one of my copies of the Book of Mormon, because I show my kids. I said, “Your dad has a lot of faith when he wants to.” He did it without doubting. So he started paying his tithing. I was worried about the tithing thing the most, but it was over a period of about a year where we took the temple prep classes and I felt really not ready for the temple. I thought, “I say bad words sometimes. I don't read my scriptures every night.” And the husband of one of my good friends in the ward was the bishop, and they were our age. Maybe she was about five years older than me. But I remember telling her after stake conference, “I don't read my scriptures every night. And she said, “Girl, neither do I!” So I thought, “Okay. So you don't have to be perfect to go.” I feel like that would hold so many people back. You just have this feeling that you have to be. We're never going to be perfect. But I don't know if it was just my perception, or what, but she said, “If you're waiting until you're not saying a bad word and you're reading your scriptures every night, you will never go. You need to just go.”
As we were going to the temple preparation classes, we had our second child. I had a daughter. Her name is Amy, after my sister, and she's beautiful. Our kids are half Hawaiian, so they have Hawaiian names, and hers is Keahilani, which means “heavenly fire,” which describes her perfectly. She's like a mix of heaven and fire. She's just, number two is wild. And I remember telling a sister at church when she was about two years old, “She is so strong spirited.” Not willful, but she wanted to do everything on her own. And this lady in church, she's now passed away, she was saying, “I think that all the girls these days need to be born with that spirit, because they are going to be up against a lot.” And it's so true. She is unapologetically strong and independent, a force to be reckoned with, and she's also one of my little heroes. She just turned 18.
So we set a date to go to the temple, to be sealed and do our endowment in the same day. It was quite a day. Then at the end of the day, we got the stomach flu, it was terrible. We thought, “We're not going to make it,” but we powered through. We felt better. I'll never forget my kids being led in, wearing all white and being brought to us at the altar. It'll always be one of the most amazing moments in my life, because I know that I'll be with them forever. They don't remember it. I wish they did, but my sister, who doesn't really come to church, was able to come into the dressing room and dress them for me and wait with them, because they were about four, and my daughter was about one and a half at the time. So I was glad that she got to do that. And seeing all these people show up for us in our ward, that all the old people and all the younger people were there. It just gave me a little picture of what heaven is going to look like one day. It was wonderful. We were sealed in the temple, and it was amazing. I felt like things were just going really well, and we decided to buy a house. We bought a house about eight houses away from my parents, which was great, because my parents are super non intrusive, but always willing to help. My kids can run over there whenever they want, and it was just a really great place to buy. And a year after that, we welcomed our third son, Nicholas. Going from one child to two, was really crazy. It kind of just threw my world off. Going from two to three was very easy. He just kind of rolled in with the chaos, and he was just a very calm baby that was wonderful. And I remember at that point just feeling so happy. I thought, “If this is my ‘happy ever after,’ it's great. I'm ready for it.”
But Heavenly Father has plans for us that I don't think we foresee, and I don't think happily ever after comes in your 30s. As our kids got older, and we were both working, he had a really hard job, working in the law, working with kind of the worst of the worst people. It takes a toll on you and your spirit. And I think that was very hard for him to separate work and home. That changed him a lot. It was hard for him, and I tried my best to continue. And I want to say that that was our happily ever after, but I also don't think that we have a sad story either. I remember sitting in church one Sunday, and feeling like I was the only one in there having problems. And I know that's not true. Now, of course. Nobody posts their problems on social media or on the ward bulletin, right? But you just look at all these perfect families and you feel so alone. I prayed and I tried and I prayed and I tried, and it just got to a point where I just felt like I couldn't anymore. I never wanted to get a divorce. Ever, ever, ever. I tried. We tried counseling several times, but there came a point when my son was about 15 that I knew that I had to set an example for him. There are certain things that are acceptable and certain things that aren't. And he was old enough to see what was going on. And so I told my then husband, “I think that you need to move out, and we need to work on things separately.” And if you go to church, let's work on it. You can keep going to church. We'll go to church together. We'll meet up there on Sundays, come over all the time. See the kids, keep working on it. And he moved out, and he did not take his church clothes with him. And when I saw that, I knew that he was done. And I was so angry. It had just been a really bad last year with just a lot of chaos and hurt in it, and I was trying really hard to protect my kids from that. I was so mad at him, but I wanted him to come over and see my kids. And when he would come over, I would just, I felt so incredibly angry–like lasers were coming out of my eyes at him. I prayed a lot, and I kept praying, “How am I going to do this? This is his fault. Why am I feeling this way? Why do I have to be nice?” And I kept getting the answer from Heavenly Father that I needed to be kind. And I thought, “Okay, I'm going to come back to You again and see if that's your same answer, because it's not fair,” but that made a huge difference in our home. When I would be kind to him, it made everything so much easier for my kids, and that was my goal. My goal was to make this as easy on them as possible. They were already hurting so much. I wanted him to come over, every day if you want, and be with your kids here. He moved in with his mom. He didn't grow up in a super loving environment. My kids didn't want to go over there, and so I said, “Come here, and I can go in my room, or we can hang out together, or whatever.” There had been so much that happened that caused so much pain in me that it was really hard for me to be kind, but I knew without a doubt that that was my job. And that was hard. It's still hard. So we've been divorced now for seven years. There are days where I have to go in and just kneel in prayer for about an hour and think, “I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I need Your help,” and I couldn't have done it without Heavenly Father's help. I couldn't have been kind. I mean, there's times where I tell him to get up and leave, and then he'll kind of come back and say, “Hey, sorry for all the things that went wrong in our marriage.” I think that we've both tried to make an effort to parent the kids together. I mean, we still will go out to dinner together. We'll go to the movies together with the kids. We'll take the kids to the mall together. I think we do a lot better job than some people, because people would maybe see us and think that we are together because we're being nice to each other, but we're not. You know, I guess at the end of it, when I was writing my story too, I was thinking that all of that, it seems so sad, but when I look back at it now, I see something beautiful in what happened. I see that this miraculous miracle happened where he accepted the gospel so fully, he embraced it so quickly. He did everything he could to get our family to the temple and to be sealed, and even if it was only for a short time in this life that he accepted the gospel that was enough to get our family sealed together forever. I told them, even if he remarries or I remarry, we will always be a family, sealed, because your dad accepted that gospel for that time, and I will always be thankful for that. And I think that that's helped my kids with the divorce. Also, when we were both parenting, and he kind of had fallen away from the church a little bit, it was hard for me to implement things like family prayer. Now, being on my own, I can implement whatever I want.
Emily Belle Freeman, I think she challenged people before the Fall General Conference to set a timer on your phone and say a prayer. Or, I think she said a timer every night that you're going to say a prayer before Conference comes, and that you will receive answers to your prayers during Conference. So I did that. I think it was her and The Sisters in Zion that did that. So I did that. Said it every night, and I told my kids, we're going to do this together. And I usually make my kids now they're 17 and 13. I said we're going to do this every night. And they asked, “Why?” I said, “Because this is what we're going to do.” So we did that. You know, I feel like I really did get answers to my prayers from Conference, and then after that, I said, “You know what? This works.” And so I set my alarm every night. I have kind of a late schedule, so if at 9:45, everybody is home from their various things, we're going to sit down, we're going to say a family prayer every night. And then I kind of slipped in, “We're going to also read a page of the Book of Mormon in. And sometimes I slip in a chapter, and other times they’ll say, “Can we read?” Because they know that they'll just read the one page. I always have my phone on me. Everybody does, and it's been this great way to bring the Spirit into our home.
Ashly
I love that.
Katie
Yeah, I loved it. It helped so much, because I'm terrible about remembering things. And then, you know, COVID hit, which was terrible for everybody. I feel like going to Zoom church every Sunday at 9am was just not happening, if I woke up for it. And the kids would drag out of bed, and we were watching it in our sleep, and we would nod off, and it just wasn't the same. I'm so awed by President Nelson's prophecy to start the learning at home beforehand, but I still didn't do that every week, like I should have. We had the manual, and we worked on some of it, but it was really hard. It was super hard emotionally on my two kids that were in school being away from their friends for a year and a half here in California. We were shut down. They did at-home school for my daughter, it was half of her freshman year and all of her sophomore year. For my son, it was half of his fifth grade year and the rest of his sixth grade year, and those are really formative years of making friends. And so it was really difficult. You know, we didn't make it to Zoom, and I felt like were almost inactive for a while, even though we weren't.
We had these wonderful missionaries that came by one day. They were a little bit older than missionaries normally are, like those who are right out of high school. These guys were so sweet. Because the gym was closed, my oldest son (who now is 19) had created a big gym in the garage. So he and his friend planned to work out every day, because that was his life goal then. The missionaries came over, and they thought, “Oh, he works out.” I said, “Yeah, come over and work out with them, any time you want.” And they asked, “Really? Can we?” and I said, “Oh, yeah, go ahead!” So when they were leaving, I told my son, “Hey, they're coming to work out with you tomorrow at three, so be ready.” He asked, “What am I going to talk to them about?” I answered, “I don't know. They're your age, it shouldn't be that hard.” And I don't think he was super pleased, but the next day they came over, and they came over every week, several days a week, and every week after that. What I didn't know is, the first day they came over, they asked him, “Why aren't you on a mission?” And he said that that was the first time that he thought, “Why am I not on a mission?” And it really kind of challenged his thinking, and we formed the best relationship with these missionaries. I just feel like there's some missionaries that are meant to come to your home, and the first ones came and they baptized his dad. And the second ones came, and they reactivated our testimony and our spirit, and my son told me that he was going to go on a mission. And I said, “What? Really?” Because he was a ladies man, he liked to date, and he loved the gym, and so I said, “Are you sure?” He worked really hard for a year preparing himself. This last September, he finally got his mission call. He was called to the Wellington, New Zealand mission. We were thrilled, because also, being Hawaiian, I feel like he has this really great connection. We have a lot of Polynesian wards in our stake, and so we were so excited. They did not send him out right away. He got his call in September. He had to wait until February to go out, which is a really long time to just walk that line, you know. But I think now that he needed that, and I think that it was inspired that he really needed to be on that path. And by the time he left, he was 21 so he was an older missionary, you know as standards are now being 18. And when he first left, on his visa, they misspelled his middle name, which is a Hawaiian name, by one letter, and I didn't notice it for the first couple of weeks on his passport. And so after I saw it, I thought, “Oh no.” So we had to send it in, and then it kind of set back everything at the MTC. So he went to the MTC February 28 and he is now serving in the Fort Collins, Colorado mission, which is part of Wyoming, part of Colorado, part of South Dakota, I think. And he has really loved it there, but he will be leaving July 29 for New Zealand. So he's super excited.
Ashly
Wow! That's so awesome.
Katie
I know. I'm so excited. It just reminds me again of my patriarchal blessing that said, if I raised my son to serve a mission, it would bring me joy all the days of my life.
Ashly
Wow. Yes. That's so awesome.
Katie
It was wonderful. And I think his dad seeing him go on that mission was so important. We see missionaries all the time, being LDS, they're so common. We just think, “Hey, there’s some new ones!” They give up so much to go on a mission. We watched him say goodbye to all of his friends. And as his friends are going to college and getting married and doing all this, he says goodbye to everybody for two years, and goodbye to all the Marvel movies he loves, and all the country music he loves. It's goodbye to all of that for two years. And I don't think we think about it that much because we're so used to seeing these boys, but they give up so much just to serve us and our Heavenly Father, that I'm just so inspired by them. And I think that his dad is also inspired by him. And he tells me all the time, “I'm telling dad to read the Book of Mormon.” And I think, “Okay.” Father's Day was just coming, and I thought, “Well, it's not my father. I don't want to do anything for him, he didn't do anything for me.” And then I thought, “You know what? I need to be kind.” Because my son would want me to be kind, and my Father in Heaven would want me to be kind. So I made sure that he had something for Father's Day. When I look back, I just see all these blessings now, and I see where I was when I was 18, and where I didn't think I was worthy of blessings, and then I see myself now with this wonderful, close relationship with my Father in Heaven, and it's taken a lot of work, you know, and it's so easy to kind of let go of you can stop going to church for a couple of weeks because you're on vacation, or things come up, and all of a sudden you feel that void, and then you think, “Okay, I need to get back on track.” I listen to church talks all the time. I listen to your podcast, I listen to things like that. I listen especially while I'm at work, and it fills me with the Spirit so much. I go home and I come to my kids with everything I learned, and they say, “Okay, Mom.” I say, “No, you need to know this. One day you're going to hear this about Joseph Smith, and I want you guys to be prepared, because I wasn't.” And we have a really great communication about, you know what? Everybody sins, and everybody makes mistakes, but you are always good enough to be in church. You're always good enough to receive answers to prayers, and you're always worthy of your Heavenly Father's love. And to me, that is the most important message that I can teach my kids, is that the relationship that they have with their Father in Heaven is everything. It's going to help them throughout the rest of their life. And I wish I would have learned it sooner, but you know, you have to go through things sometimes to learn that. I'm really grateful for everything that I've been through. I have wonderful sisters. I have a best friend in my work; I probably have driven her crazy, but she has kept me sane and has really been a great example of love and support, and to “keep going to church, you're doing it!” Heavenly Father put these people in my path to help me. He put those missionaries in my son's path. And I think that He will put people in our paths to help us stay close to Him, to help us keep His commandments. And I think He knows exactly how hard it is. I think He knows that Satan will tell us every lie that he can to get us to believe that we are not of worth. And so Heavenly Father, when we do our part and we invite Him into our life, He will do everything He possibly can to show us His love and to put people on our side. That means everything.
At this point, I feel like I don't know if I'll ever get married again, and if I don't, that's okay. I feel like I have so many blessings, and I still have so much to learn. If I've learned this much in the last 20 years, how much more will I learn in the next 20 years? And I'm excited for that. I'm so excited that I have the opportunity to talk to my kids and to tell them the things that I've learned, and I think that the way that we talk to our children now is different than the way our parents talked to us. Not to their fault, I think they did the best they could, but things are different. I think I share a lot with my kids. There's so much diversity out there with them, especially here in California, it's very different. Utah culture is a little different. California culture is a little different. They see a lot, they have a lot and they have leaders that love them so much. My girls’ Young Women's leader is amazing. She's also my best friend. She just loves these girls so much. She would do anything to help them. She says, “I don't care what you do during the week, come to church on Sunday, because I love you and I want you here.”
Ashly
I love that.
Katie
We have these wonderful leaders like that now that just are everything. One of my Young Women's leaders when I was a child is now a leader in the Young Single Adults program, and she was really instrumental in helping my son go on a mission and really instrumental in getting my daughter active in the YSA group.
Ashly
Wow.
Katie
It's just a blessing. I feel like all these times that we think, “Oh, that's so sad;” actually, it's not. We've had a lot of good things come out of it, and we're making it work somehow. Only because of the Lord.
Ashly Stone 55:17
Mmhmm. It's so incredible to see how you know everybody that comes on the podcast, everybody just in life, they do not have a perfect life. There's no such thing as a picture perfect story of how our lives go. You hit the nail on the head with just saying how beautiful life is, just in all of the ups and downs. And your testimony is so incredible. All the things that you've gone through, and where you are today is so beautiful. I'm just so grateful that you reached out to share your story. And I think there's a lot of people that need to hear this, and I think it's so amazing, and you're just such a beautiful person inside and out. So thank you.
Katie 56:05
Well, so are you. Thank you so much for what you do. Your podcast is amazing. As soon as I heard you being interviewed on the All In podcast, I immediately sent it out to my friends, and I said, “You've got to hear this. I can't believe this.” You're beautiful. Looking at you, looking at people in church, you look at them and you think that they lived a very easy life. We think, “Oh, look at them. They have a perfect family. They lived an easy life.” Probably 98% of the time that's not the case. We've all gone through a lot, and I feel like if we would just be a little more honest about what we've gone through, that we would find so much more acceptance and embrace each other and not feel like you have to pretend, “My family's perfect, and we do Family Home Evening …” My Family Home Evening is a crazy mess. We try to sit down, we try to have a prayer. My kids usually end up laughing during half the prayer, but we try. That's what really matters, and it is beautiful. And there's just so much to be grateful for, and love.
Also, I gained an extra child. I have to say, I am a mother to four now, because my son, when he was 18, he had a girlfriend for about two years. I guess maybe he's 17. Her name is Yasmin, and after they broke up, she moved in with us because she comes from a really hard family, and so she's been living with us for about maybe three years now. I eventually am going to convince her to get baptized and adopt her. She says that's not going to happen, but I'm like, “Yeah, you're going to get baptized.” She's definitely a daughter. She fights with my kids, like brother and sister. She's another blessing to our family that I'm just so grateful for. So thank you for everything you do. It really does affect people there. You have a lot of fans here in California. We listen to you, and we're grateful for what you're doing.
Ashly Stone 57:54
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. It feels good to know that people love the podcast. So thank you so much.
Katie 58:02
We love you and the message you're giving.
Ashly
Thank you.
