" Reading the Book of Mormon that week, I really sat down and actually studied the words of the Book of Mormon, and it was powerful. It was so powerful. It was undeniable. And I had been reading about how this genius farmer—right? We always were like, 'He's such a genius. That's how you get away with it,' wrote this book out of nowhere. And as I'm reading it, I'm just like, ’There is no way. There is no way.’ I remember so many scriptures, I couldn't get enough because there were so many things. It just felt like God was just waiting for me to open the door and He would just feed me. I was starving and He would just feed me."
Transcript
[00:00:00] This is Ashly Stone and you're listening to the Come Back Podcast.
This episode with Bailey is from the Come Back to Christ event that we did, and we are so excited to be able to release our first live podcast. And then also another quick update. We have now been able to post our episodes on Facebook, so this means that your missionaries can now listen to the podcast episodes.
So if you have any questions about that or if you have any episode requests that you would like us to upload, please email info.comebackpodcast@gmail.com.
ASHLY
Okay. We are so excited to have the first of many live podcasts. So Bailey, who's our live podcast, she's [00:01:00] actually my ministering sister. And when I was pregnant a year and a half ago or whatever, she was like this angel that walked into my life and brought me dinner when I was going to bed at six o'clock every night to escape my nausea.
I found out she has this incredible comeback story. Her story is so amazing and just aspects of her story that have given so many people hope, and I am so incredibly honored to have her and her husband Jordan, who is also an incredible person with an incredible testimony, to come and be our first ever live podcast.
So. Come on up.
Okay. If you listen to the [00:02:00] podcast, you're probably used to me saying, “Bailey, oh my gosh. So exciting to have you on the podcast.” So we'll just, yeah, just start like that.
BAILEY
I literally hear it in my head, like in my headphones.
ASHLY
Let's do how we always do and just start with a little bit of background on you. Tell us where you're from, all the things.
BAILEY
Okay. I'm kind of from all over. I lived in St. George growing up for a little bit. Then we moved to Idaho and then I lived in Orem, back down to St. George and then back to Orem, kind of honestly all over the place. And I've met so many incredible people along the way.
A lot of them are here today, so I'm so thankful for them. And then when I graduated high school, I met Jordan. We actually met at our singles ward, [00:03:00] so we are a singles ward success and he has just been the best thing in my life. So yeah. From all over the place.
ASHLY
Alright. Without further ado, let's jump into your story.
BAILEY
Okay. So growing up, I had a large family. My parents had nine kids together. Due to some choices that my dad had made, he ended up going to prison for serving some time there, and it kind of tore our family apart. So my parents ended up getting divorced and after that divorce, my mom remarried. She found this guy Scott, [00:04:00] who is awesome.
We love my stepdad, he’s so awesome. And he took us all in. We have bookend boys, so it's Kyle, and then there's so many kids, so many girls. There's seven girls, and then Mason, who's here in the audience. He just took us all in. He decided that we were just gonna be a huge family, and he actually already had six boys himself.
And so we became a giant “Yours, Mine, and Ours.” So that was 15 kids they were bringing together. And then they ended up having one more, Hillary. She's the little baby of our family. So I'm from a family of 16 kids, which is pretty wild. And it was just that it was wild. There were so many kids always around.
We never were home alone. We just always had each other. And my siblings are my very best [00:05:00] friends. So when I was seven years old, that's when my stepdad and my mom got married, and blending two families is a really hard thing. I think it's really difficult to walk away from blending a family without any, trauma, I guess, for lack of a better word. I just think there's a lot of lives that you're mixing together. One of the unfortunate things that happened in my family was that [00:06:00] my oldest stepbrother was sexually abusing me, and that started when I was seven and it happened for about four years, and my mom didn't know what was happening. Nobody really knew. A lot of it would happen when I was asleep or when he thought I was asleep, and it was happening to a few other siblings as well. It was really difficult. I didn't quite understand because I was so young, what the gravity of the situation was. I didn't even really understand what was happening to me at the time.
And so it was difficult to come to my parents because I didn't know that that was needed. I didn't even understand that that needed to happen, that I needed to come and talk to them about what was happening. [00:07:00]I had gone to my dad's house when I was about 11, I wanna say, and by this point he, my stepbrother, had moved out of the house, so he was no longer in the home, so it wasn't happening anymore.
I was at my dad's house and we were watching a show, and it was probably not a show that I should have been watching. But looking back, I think it was important that I saw this scene of this girl who was roofied and she had been touched, and it kind of set this light bulb off in my head, like, “Oh, this is what has been happening to me.”
And based on that feeling, I knew, “Okay, this is obviously not a good part of this show, right?” This is like, the feelings that you leave after [00:08:00]watching that are just not good. And so I was like, “I think I need to talk to my parents about what's been happening.” So I came to my mom and my stepdad and I said, and I told them what had been happening, and I really feel like my mom and my stepdad did the best that they could, but the situation was not handled very well. I was asked if I had made it up, if it was maybe a dream that I had, or are we sure that this really happened? Things were said like. “We don't wanna ruin someone's life over this. This is a really serious accusation.” Just [00:09:00] language that was really hard to hear after trying to find the courage to come forward about this hard thing that I had experienced. So my parents took this information and they went to my stepbrother's bishop at the time. I know that there are regulations that they have to follow, and so there is like an attorney that they have to call, they have to kind of assess the situation and see how, like, I don't know how bad I guess of a situation is, how much of a liability it is for the church for them. And ultimately, they told me that they didn't feel like it needed to be brought to the police or reported in any way. [00:10:00] And then because my parents were divorced, I was also told that I wasn't to talk to anybody about it because if I did, I would be taken away from my siblings who were my whole world and I didn't wanna be taken away from them. So I didn't talk about it for a really long time.
It probably wasn't until I was—I wanna say 17, maybe 16, that my first sibling found out about it. And it was my oldest brother who's 10 years older than me. My mom [00:11:00] had told him. And I remember him walking in the house and he looked at me and just grabbed me in the biggest hug and probably held me for 20 minutes and I sobbed. 'cause it was so relieving that somebody, I wasn't alone in it anymore and somebody knew. And so he just held me. And with all these little broken pieces that had been just getting more broken and more broken over the years, he just squeezed me back together.
That hug healed so much in me. I wanna talk about, as I was trying to prepare for this, I just was thinking to myself about a time in my childhood where I really felt the [00:12:00] Spirit, because I think when you leave, it's hard to remember those times when you feel the Spirit. You just feel like it's so foreign that it never happened, that you brainwashed yourself into thinking that you had these spiritual experiences.
But now that I'm back in the church, I was reflecting on a time where I really felt the Spirit. Being raised in a family of 16 kids, it was so extremely rare to be home alone. And for whatever reason, we were moving from one city to the next and it was about a 45 minute difference, and my family had packed up.
They were going back to the old house to get the last load, so it was gonna be a few hours, and it was my dinner day — we all had dinner days because we had to split it up. So I [00:13:00] was home alone, cooking dinner. I was probably about 13 at the time, and I just remember sitting there and just saying, “God, are you really there? I feel so alone in this. I am by myself and nobody knows except for my parents, and we don't ever talk about it, and it's eating me alive that this has happened and I'm suffering in silence.” And so I just prayed, “Are you really there?”
I was at the sink looking out. There's a window above the sink, and I'm looking out at that window and I just see the clouds. [00:14:00]I could feel His love so strongly. I honestly thought the clouds were gonna part and that God was just gonna come and descend down and give me a hug. I felt Him so strongly.
I knew He was right there, and that same feeling of being so broken, and feeling like I was in a million pieces, and just getting squeezed back together, those are the two times in my life that I've really felt like my Savior just held me together. Anyway, as you can imagine, I started to, in my later years, like in my later teens, I really started to question like, “Where are you?”
And if I'm being honest, I was getting angry, because I was like, “I've gone through this all by myself.” It felt [00:15:00] like I had been abandoned when I was 17 or 18. I had just felt so abandoned by my Heavenly Father. And I think a lot of us when we leave, we ask Heavenly Father, “Where are you? How could you let this happen to me? If you are all powerful, if you are able to perform miracles, why did this have to happen to me?” That's a dangerous question to ask first of all, but I really feel like that was kind of the beginning of where I started to have doubt. I was asking, “Where are you? I don't know if you're even there, because this has been so hard to bear on my own.”
[00:16:00] I met Jordan shortly after I graduated, just days after I graduated. I graduated on a Wednesday, I think, and that Sunday I went to church and met Jordan, and I don't think it was a coincidence. I think God knew that I needed my person immediately. I needed that support and that love, 'cause I was about to get into a really dark head space.
Jordan was so patient with me. He would just listen. And at this point my dad didn't know what had happened. A select couple [00:17:00] of siblings knew what had happened, but there were siblings that didn't know what had happened. It was hard because I felt like half of my family understood where my brain was and how what was happening and why I was processing the way I was.
And half of them had no idea of this deep secret almost that I had. And so it was very like hush hush whenever we talked about it. I, oddly enough, still had to have a relationship with my stepbrother. Even when we were first married, he would be at family events and it was really hurtful, but the overall tone was just like, “We can't ruin someone's life over this.”
And so at the expense of [00:18:00] me, honestly. And so, um, we would have a lot of conversations about it and Jordan was so supportive about just how difficult it was. And as you can imagine, there were some extreme hurdles that we had to overcome. The first year or two of marriage, I was having severe PTSD, um, sleeping next to somebody and having them roll over and touch your arm even, I would just lose my mind.
I was so scared and Jordan was so patient during all of it and understanding and would softly wake me up and make sure that I was okay. [00:19:00]
Anyway, he was just exactly what I needed to be able to overcome and work through that. I went to a lot of therapy those first few years, really just trying to work through. We ended up telling my dad together, so my dad found out. It just felt like this big secret that had been burning a hole in me was finally out and that I could start healing.
Unfortunately it led to a lot more doubt and frustration with the church because of how it was initially handled. I just didn't feel like I had anybody in my corner and I had just been shut in a closet and told to be quiet, so [00:20:00] I decided that this pain was, I don't know. Do you wanna share? I feel like I'm taking up all of the time. Okay. I just had decided that I started hanging out with a friend, and she introduced me to this letter, the good old CES Letter.
It's interesting. I do see a common theme. I think there are people that get really fixated on the letter, but I would say more from my situation, it was that I had this deep feeling of being abandoned by my Heavenly Father and this frustration of like, “Where are you, and how could you let this happen to me?”
But then when I came across the CES Letter, it [00:21:00] was like, well, this is perfect because apparently it's not true and I don't even have to believe that God would even abandon me because they're saying that it's not true anyway. So it was just this easy way to like dispel that I thought I had this Heavenly Father that loved me, but if He's not real, then I couldn't be hurt anymore by Him.
ASHLY
Right.
BAILEY
I couldn't feel abandoned by Him because it's not real. Anyway, so I read the letter and it was so, it was heartbreaking. I think for everybody, the first time you read it, it's really heartbreaking 'cause you do feel lied to, and you feel like there are so many questions swimming around in your head.
[00:22:00] And so I ended up coming to Jordan and talking to him and just saying like, I'm having a lot of doubts and there's this letter, and he brings up so many good points and it's just all pretty logical. So I thought, I'm just confused. I'm so confused and I don't know what to believe and I don't know if this is right or if it's wrong.
And it was just so confusing.
ASHLY
Jordan, when she came to you and told you that she had read the CES Letter, and she was experiencing all this doubt, what was your reaction to that?
JORDAN
I remember when she told me; she was like, I'm going to be done with the church. And I was like, not quite as gung-ho as Tokla about this.[00:23:00] She had gone on a drive, like just disappeared for like four hours and came back, and it's like the light had left her body. If I'm being honest, and I knew the direction the conversation was gonna go, and so my immediate feeling was like, “Oh, this is gonna be really difficult to figure this one out,” because I already know the history behind it at this point, and it's deeper than just a letter, and I know that when she's talking to me. I was not excited for what we would've to figure out together moving forward.
ASHLY
When she was diving into this, had you [00:24:00] ever had any like faith wobbles yourself? Give us a little background on your testimony, and hard questions that you have maybe encountered in the past, and how you navigated those?
JORDAN
I feel like I was really lucky growing up. My dad was kind of less active. My mom was a rock and always there, but she had to work a couple Sundays every month, and I have a ton of memories of just going to church with my little brother and just showing up. When I was a teenager, I didn’t have anyone making me be there. I had to figure this out if I actually wanted to do this or not. And I feel like I was super blessed, and I've always felt that way, to have been able to figure that out on my own as a teenager. It carried me through a lot of years.
I had some experiences at that age that I still hold onto [00:25:00] 'cause I know I just can't deny the things I've felt. So as I've come across things, that was kinda where my testimony was established, and I kind of had the mentality that I'm gonna learn from everybody else's mistakes. And then you just don't think like, “Oh, I'm doing everything right.” Like, “There's no way I could get caught up in a situation where my life …” My wife is just, “Hey, I'm out.” And I was like, okay, this doesn't make a lot of sense. I’m doing the things that I'm supposed to do. I've been trying to be an example of Christ in our marriage, and she doesn't want to do it anymore.
So that was like the first, I'd say trial. I really felt like that was super difficult. Before that, it was a lot of little things that I felt like I was prepared for, to [00:26:00] always just stand back against what I believed to be true.
ASHLY
Okay, so you went to Jordan and you told him, and now what happened next?
BAILEY
So it was probably about a year. I think I've seen this as pretty common with people that leave the church, where you go through this time of gleaning information. You just listen to podcasts or listen to audio books that support this new narrative because your foundation is completely gone, and I feel like you're trying to rebuild it, but it's so difficult to rebuild.
My whole foundation is my Heavenly Father and Christ. And if I don't have that, I just think that foundations crumble. And [00:27:00] so I was trying so desperately to rebuild this foundation, but I couldn't ever get there. We would have a lot of talks. Me and Jordan would talk a lot. I would bring up, specifically, we were talking last night and Jordan had written me this eight page letter, and he just bore his testimony to me in this letter. In the letter he said, “I know you're struggling with the conversation we had today about that bishop.” This Bishop had not made great choices. There was some sexual abuse going on with that bishop, and I was just like, “See, this is why this is so frustrating. These men in leadership positions are taking advantage.” And it felt so personal [00:28:00] because that had happened to me, and I was just gleaning all this information that was supposed to make my new foundation, and I would bring it to him, and he would be like, “God never said that the church is gonna be made of perfect people.” But it was just, the frustration was so overwhelming. And I say these were conversations, but if I'm being honest, I think they were fights. We fought a lot. We did. We went head to head. We really argued a lot.
There was a lot of just, this is my side, this is your side, and kind of who's right. But Jordan always was a little more patient than I was with him for sure. Because I had this like, I have to prove you wrong. And Jordan was just like, “It's all gonna work out, and I promise, if you just keep your covenants, [00:29:00] it's gonna work out.”
That probably happened for about a year. Would you agree? Yeah, about a year. Just a lot of back and forth and a lot of discussions. Jordan had set up a few appointments with our bishop at the time and he begged me to go. I obliged and it was good to talk to him. He was a really awesome guy. I actually would highly recommend forcing your significant other to go talk to your current bishop.
I thought it was interesting. I wasn't afraid of him. I was like, all right, let's do this. Let's duke it out. Like, what about this issue? What about this issue? And he was so patient and understanding and just had the tough conversations. And I really have always looked at that bishop specifically as someone that just took the time to duke it out with me, even though I was [00:30:00] ignorant and pretty upset. So I felt like that was pretty helpful.
ASHLY
So Jordan, how long was the time span of you going through this faith quest?
BAILEY
My faith quest? Probably, It's funny when he said it's like, what did you say, Austin? Something and sudden, all at once or, yes, I'm butchering that, but.
[indistinct voice from a distance]
BAILEY
Yes, gradual, and then all at once. Thank you. Thank you. I think it had been years and years and years of leading up to that point. I could pinpoint it back to even high school, where I was having those doubts, and I was just very quiet. I had been used to, if this doesn't fit the norm, then you put it in your [00:31:00]closet. And I had a lot of things in my closet. And so I just didn't talk about it for a long time, even to Jordan, but when we got married, it felt like it was building for a long time, and then it just happened all at once. When I read the CES Letter, I think that was like the straw that broke the camel's back.
ASHLY
What was your overall demeanor during this time? Clearly you're going through a lot of processing, and you're going through a lot mentally and emotionally, kind of unpacking this stuff from your past. How were you? Were you okay during this time?
BAILEY
Yeah, I wish we could ask my sister-in-law, or my mother-in-law. I think they would have good insight, or even Jordan. But it's funny, if I look back at pictures of myself, I'm like, “Who is that?” Like Jordan said, there is really a light that was missing [00:32:00] there. I even think about your mugshot. You know, it's really nice. It's like you look back at it and you're just like, “Who is that?” Right? It's just interesting. It's like you can just tell that my body's there, but my spirit was so sad. I feel like you could just see that it was really sad.
ASHLY
So what was the thing that happened that started to defrost your heart?
BAILEY
So because of the fighting that we had been going through, there was a point, and maybe you should share this, but I had pretty much told Jordan, “I want you to choose between me and God.” I straight up asked him [00:33:00] that. Like, “I want you to make the choice,” because at this point, I don't know if I believe in this guy, and you keep defending Him to the ends of the earth, and I need somebody who's gonna defend me and be there for me. So, “Make your choice,” kind of. And a lot of those conversations were pretty toxic, honestly, looking back at it.
But they were happening frequently, and it got so bad, I think, “I can't do the whole mixed faith marriage thing. I just feel like I'm gonna feel too, on opposite ends of you.” We're not gonna be able to raise our kids the same way. I just kept seeing issue after issue of continuing a relationship with mixed faith, especially with how devout we were to our sides, right? I'm like over here like [00:34:00] so intense. And Jordan was like, “I can't deny it. I'm defending this to the end.”
Jordan was gonna take a trip. He was coming down here for like a week and um, I just told him, I was like, “I'm gonna take some time.”
And at this point, I think we had like straight up divorce papers on our dining room table signed by him, and he was like, “It's time to just figure out what we're doing here.” So I was like, I'm taking some time. I've gotta really ask myself some questions because I'm gonna lose Jordan if I decide that this is not what I want, or I have to decide if this church is true, [00:35:00] and it kind of felt like an impossible decision. So I really sat with myself and was like, “When was the last time, Bailey, that you felt peace?” Like that year of just being so angry and so frustrated? I just really missed feeling peace.
I had totally replaced all of that peace and goodness in my life when I was in the gospel, with this anger. And so I just asked myself, “When did you feel peace last? And where do you feel peaceful? And it was like, well, I couldn't give any of the answers of like church or the temple, 'cause those weren't real, right?
And so I was like, you know what? My sister's house. I feel like every time I go there I'm around her kids. [00:36:00] And her kids bring me a lot of peace. And I always feel happy and uplifted after I leave. And so I was like, I'm gonna go spend a week at my sister's house. My sister's LDS. So no wonder I felt so much peace in her home.
It was very centered around Christ and they always said prayer before they would eat. And so I asked her if I could spend the week with her. And I went to Barnes & Noble and I was just kind of looking through these books, trying to find a book that I could read while I was there.
And I grabbed this book called, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, 'cause that's exactly how I was feeling. I was like, what is going on? It is not supposed to be this way. I'm about to lose everything. And so I grabbed that book and she was like a Christian author. [00:37:00] And then I was like, okay, if I'm gonna really denounce this, sign divorce papers, give every single thing up, I have got to know without a shadow of a doubt that this is not true. And so I kneeled down and I prayed. I just asked God. I was like, “What would you have me do? Because I don't even know if you're really up there, for one. And I don't know if this church is true. I'm gonna lose the one person that has kind of been my stability for the first time in my life.”
And He just sweetly said, [00:38:00] “You need to read the Book of Mormon. If it's really not true, you've gotta read it, fervently, and you need to be able to say this is not true.” So I was like, okay. But I'm also reading my other book. Okay. The one I got from Barnes & Noble.
So I started with my book because I was a little more excited about the one I had picked out. And it actually had so much information in there that was so helpful. And he was sneaky because he totally made me pick that book up too. They were both His, and there was a lot of information in there that I'll share in a minute, but mainly reading the Book of Mormon that week, I really sat down and actually studied the words of the Book of Mormon.
And it was [00:39:00] powerful. It was so powerful. It was undeniable. And I had been reading about how this farmer—genius farmer, right? We always were like, “He's such a genius. That's how you get away with it—wrote this book out of nowhere, and as I'm reading it, I'm just like, “There is no way.” I remember so many scriptures. I couldn't get enough because there were so many things, and it just felt like God was just waiting for me to open the door and he would just feed me, you know, like I was starving and He would just feed me.
So I can't even tell you the exact scripture 'cause there were way too many and it was such a spiritual [00:40:00] experience. Then in my book, my book that I picked out, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, I read that book and there was such a beautiful analogy that I tell so many people because I just feel like it's so powerful.
But she talks about the dust of the Earth. And it is mentioned a million times in the scriptures. And in the Book of Mormon, the next time you read it, I just want you to focus on how many times it talks about arising from the dust, 'cause it's miraculous, but it's all over the Bible. It's everywhere.
This dust. And I'm like, “What is, this common theme?” So she talks about how when you take a piece of pottery and you break it, it shatters into a bunch of pieces and you can carefully [00:41:00] piece it back together, and it becomes the exact same. Not the exact same. It's a little different, right?
It's got cracks in it, but it's the same shape. It has the same purpose. It does the same thing. But if you break it down to dust, then you can rebuild something completely new. And I just felt like that was exactly what had happened to me, that I had just been broken down and all of that pain, it was just like refining me into the tiniest bit of dust and I just needed to be remade into something whole again. I felt so broken, but this was to the point of disintegration, like I was about to lose everything, and so I just decided to take that step. Jordan came back and I was like, “I think I'm gonna come back to church.” All of a sudden. He had gone for a week, [00:42:00]and he was like, “That's all I had to do, was leave you for a week?”
But that was probably the biggest turning point for me was reading the scriptures and realizing that there was a purpose behind why I had to experience all of that, so I could be rebuilt.
ASHLY
So how do you now reconcile— you talked about how your bishop didn't handle that well. I mean, that's a big topic these days.
BAILEY
Yeah.
ASHLY
And how do you reconcile that now? Now looking back on that, what are your thoughts?
BAILEY
I've actually had an experience where I had to go to a [00:43:00] bishop and talk to him about a concern that I had with one of our primary children, and it was actually very healing for me to go and see the process now. It's very different now.
I think the church has learned a lot from the way that they used to handle it. Everything is handled much better. So that was good to see that over the years we've made a lot of improvements in that area. I think we sometimes view the church as the end all be all, but the law is also important. The gospel talks about how we need to obey the laws of the land. And I think if you are feeling like that imperfect person who is in that [00:44:00] calling is not doing the job that you feel like they need to be doing, I don't think that there's anything wrong with going to the law and using your rights in that way too. I think that they can both harmoniously happen together. So as a child it was frustrating because I didn't feel like I had a say on whether we got to press charges, or if there wasn't anybody behind me, but as an adult, I think I would've handled it much differently. If I had a bishop that again, wouldn't do anything about it, I would say, okay, you know, that's your decision. I'm gonna go and report it to whoever, 'cause there are imperfect people and I don't think it's fair for me to hold them all to a standard.
And yeah, I really do feel like people are trying their best. But also you have your agency, so use that. [00:45:00]
ASHLY
Now looking back on all those questions that you had that were hard questions that you read in the CES Letter or whatever, what have you done with those questions now? Were you able to find answers? What does that look like for you today?
BAILEY
The CES Letter questions? I feel like I've reconciled it to a point of just like, “Does the answer change my conviction,” I guess, because at this point the answers don't, I think there are still some frustrations that I could have if I wanted to, but, I think if you're looking for reasons to leave, you're gonna find them anywhere.
I feel like those answers just don't matter as much as my relationship with my Savior. It's like a [00:46:00] weight system, you know? I'm not gonna give up something that's so important to me for the tiny weight of this one particular answer. So I just, I'm like weighing my options, you know?
And I'm gonna choose Christ every time, because He is who put me back together, and it doesn't matter if I really believe in polygamy or not. You know, I'm like, He was there, so I'm with him.
ASHLY
Jordan, when Bailey was taking all of these concerns to you and she's like, “Yo, I read the CES Letter and this, this and this and this …” When you're diving into this faith quest with her and she's bringing all these questions to you, how did you protect your own faith? [00:47:00]
JORDAN
I think consistency for me was the only way through. I had decided that I was not gonna be the reason I wasn't gonna give her another reason to doubt.
And I certainly wasn't perfect along the way. I mean, there were conversations I could have had very differently, I'm sure. And I wish I did, but I told myself, I have to be as Christlike as I know how to be, because ultimately this is what we're trying do, to be like Him. We're trying to come back to Him.
The church is about Him. It's not about Joseph Smith. It's not about some bishop in Texas that did this or that, and it's about Christ. And if I can just focus all our conversations on Him and try and bring them all back to Him, then maybe I have a chance. Maybe a [00:48:00] miracle can happen. And honestly, a lot of times Bailey will tell me, “I never could have made it back without you.”
From my perspective, I feel like I did nothing. I feel like Christ did everything. I mean, the the Bailey that I left town to St. George on that trip and the Bailey … I wasn't even there, so it certainly wasn't me. Right? And that I came back to, it was a miracle in my life, and it was orchestrated 100% by God. And I will never forget that.
But it wasn't easy. I mean, I go back and you start to doubt your own faith a little. You're like, “Huh. Well, we just erased our moral code as a family, I guess. I can do whatever I want then.” I mean, I honestly hadn't watched, this is so dumb, but I hadn't [00:49:00] watched a rated R movie until that.
[laughter from Ashly and Jordan]
I was like, I'm watching all these rated R movies I haven't seen. Then she doesn't care. So those thoughts do creep into your mind. I mean, “My wife literally doesn't care if I do this or that.” It just felt like the moral code was gone, essentially. But I had to remember like, I will not be, I will not, I'm just not gonna be the reason I'm not gonna let our family, our future … I'm not leaving Christ with her. I love her. I love her so much, but yeah, I just, I wasn't willing to make that step. And so it did come down to that. I mean, she did ask me to choose between her and God once, and I felt like that was gonna be her theme at that point, and I knew we couldn't move forward, and that's why I did do that with divorce papers at one point. But yeah, it was an [00:50:00] absolute miracle and it is incredible.
ASHLY
I think that knowing you guys, it is literally almost impossible for me to imagine Bailey in that way because Bailey just exudes Christ's love and who she is as a person, and it's just such evidence of how miracles really do happen in this life.
Your story is evidence of that. You took something really hard from your childhood and that hurt so much and you got married to Jordan and you were still dealing with that and like you took all these hurts and all this broken and you turned it into a beautiful testimony and you guys have the most beautiful family with the cutest little boy on planet Earth.
What does [00:51:00] life look like for you guys today? Like what do you do today to stay close to the Savior? Now that you've put some time between that and now?
BAILEY
I wanted to say really quick, going back to what Jordan just was talking about, yesterday you had asked, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more later on in the event, but just like, what would you say to family that has left?
I think that's a common question that gets asked, and I feel like the biggest thing with Jordan is that, um, when you leave, you just don't have a lot of access to the Holy Ghost anymore because you're choosing to just block it out of your life.
And so having someone that was super consistent, like every Sunday without a doubt, Jordan was at church without me, dealing with arguments on a daily basis with [00:52:00] me about church. He's still right there every single Sunday, and he always had the Spirit with him. And always had that pure love of Christ with him.
And it was so important that I had access to that, even though I was so angry and frustrated. And I feel like if we can just be that for people, like an example and someone that is the pure love of Christ, showing them like that Christ loves them, I feel like that goes so far. I have gotten into heated conversations even with my siblings and I just tell 'em, if it starts to get heated, I just look at 'em and I say, “I love you too much to talk to you like this. I love you too much to get this upset about it. 'Cause at the end of the day, that's what I know, is that I love you. [00:53:00] We can have differences, but I love you.” And I just think that that goes so far with family that have left. Maybe that's not the response I always got from Jordan, but I did get that a lot. It was just like, at the end of the day, “I love you and I'm sorry that you're going through this and that. This is so hard, but he's right there, Bailey, whenever you want Him,” you know? Okay. Sorry, back to your actual question. I'm gonna let you answer this one. Oh, do you remember what she said?
JORDAN
Yeah, I do. Okay. But yeah. Like last year, we try to do the basic consistent things together. That was the miracle that saved us. And I feel like we try to make [00:54:00] church so complicated, and it's just a big thing we have to be doing all the time. And I think it’s really not. I think it's just simple, and we just try our best. And so that's our philosophy at home: do our best, and it's gonna work out. So I mean, yeah, I feel like for the most part, that's our goal. It's not always the greatest effort, but it's our best effort.
BAILEY
Yes.
ASHLY
Yeah. I love that so much. Well, okay, we're 10 minutes over, but can we give them a standing ovation please? Like, oh my gosh, so good.
