tell your story.

"No one should be left to believe that she is the only Mormon girl who walked alone into the dark. No one should be left to feel like she is the only one broken and seeking." 

- Joanna Brooks, The Book of Mormon Girl 

She told me she'd never had a spiritual desert, this teenage girl with her back ram-rod straight, her hands folded neatly in her lap. I didn't believe her, didn't believe any of them who said they'd never experienced a drought of faith. I didn't believe them, because we'd heard about their lives all semester long, we'd watched them interact with their parents, overheard conversations in Bible class. I didn't believe them, because I'd lived long enough to know: Spiritual deserts exist, whether or not you admit you've traveled through them. 

I didn't believe her, but I told her what I told everyone else in our class that day: They're coming. The spiritual deserts are coming. If you haven't been through one now, you will. And it will hurt. But you will live, and it will -- one way or another -- change your life.

That class was years ago, and while I didn't think too much about it back then, I've spent some time since thinking about that girl's answer, thinking about how adults in the church might answer the same question.

Would they admit to experiencing crises of faith? Would they acknowledge their own hurt and brokenness and what it cost? Would they share stories of not fitting in, of lonely moments when they just didn't belong? 

In another Bible class, this one a couple of weeks ago, miles away at a church in South Alabama, a young woman raised her hand to offer her thoughts on community, that buzzword that seems to spring up in evangelical circles so often these days. She wondered aloud if true community could ever be achieved without honesty, without sharing our burdens and speaking our fears.

The class -- made entirely of women, ranging in age from 20 to 65 -- agreed: It could not. 

I picked up The Book of Mormon Girl because I am fascinated by the Mormon way of life. I watch PBS specials and I read their blogs and I drive by their churches. I saw Joanna Brooks on Jon Stewart, and I thought: She might do the Mormon story justice. (Or she might at least offer a different perspective from Deborah Laake, whose story I read earlier this year.)

Although I have a couple of issues with the book -- mostly having to do with Brooks' writing style, which I'll explore in more detail in my review later this month -- I was taken by how similar Brooks' story was to my own.

It's baffling, really, since Brooks grew up in the orange groves of Southern California, and I grew up in a college town nestled between the beach and the South. She has a plethora of brothers and sisters; I just have the one. She was raised devout Mormon -- complete with food stored up for the apocalypse -- and I was raised in a nondenominational congregation not associated with any higher church leadership or authority. 

And yet. 

Despite the differences, despite an ancestry with pioneers and polygamy, despite a Marie Osmond obsession and an education at Brigham Young, the similarities?

They took my breath away. 

I, too, have read Scripture and wondered, as a woman, what those verses meant for me. I have been torn by political stances and have longed for more Jesus. Always, more Jesus.

So often, I have felt alone at church. Then these authors show up out of nowhere, and they save me.

Madeleine L'Engle. Barbara Brown Taylor. Joanna Brooks. 

These women aren't afraid to tell their stories, the good and the bad. 

I think we do our faiths a disservice when we leave out the bad stuff, when we avoid talking about the hurts and the frustrations and the doubt. 

We fail our brothers and our sisters by painting our belief in rose-colored hues. When we leave out the brokenness in our stories, we unknowingly withdraw from the broken, and they are left alone to deal with their pain. 

I wonder what would happen in our churches if we spoke freely and honestly about our doubts and hurts (and in turn, our celebrations and joys). I wonder what would come of acknowledging our church's failures and our faith's mysteries. 

What would happen if we admitted we didn't have all the answers?

What would happen if we talked about our walks through the desert as openly as Scripture does?

I wonder what keeps us from speaking freely, and I'm going to guess it's some mixture of pride and fear and misguided respect.

We forget that Jesus honors honesty, that the Heavenly Father loves when our voices reach Him, and that He calls us to the sharing of burdens and joys. That's what church is: spiritual highs and lows and everything in between. 

The truth is, we're all a little unorthodox. We've all walked through the desert and achieved the mountaintop. We've struggled with politics and winced at the words of our leaders. 

We've struggled to find a place to sit at the table, forgetting we were invited, and there's a place set for us. 

Our faiths are as diverse as our personalities, our walks as different as our faces. 

But every story -- no matter how mundane, how unorthodox -- deserves to be told, because somewhere out there, someone is waiting for it. Someone is waiting to sigh and say, "Oh, me too."

Let's not leave them in the desert alone. 

"An unorthodox story," writes Brooks, "is nothing to be ashamed of. It is something that deserves to be shared." 

Amen. Again and again, amen.

photo by Coucou Ma Petite