Not Everything Burned

Some things I kept when I left

I didn’t want to leave.

That’s the part people don’t always understand when I tell them I left.

I wanted it to still be true. I wanted the life I had built. The beliefs, the structure, the certainty. I wanted my world to stay intact in the way I had always known it.

But there came a point where the weight of my own knowing became heavier than the weight of pretending.

And once that line was crossed, there was no way to unknow it.

That’s when the moments of grief snuck up on me during nap time. That’s when I began to avoid phone calls from my family.

It was hard for a while. It was dark. Lonely.

Lonely in a way that felt hard to explain to anyone still inside it.

Because what I believed then was this:

If it wasn’t true, I had to lose everything.

Not just my faith, but the people I loved, the way I saw the world, the parts of myself that had been shaped inside it.

Part of the healing came when I realized I did not have to give up every single thing about this church that was my whole life.

The church taught me to view the world in absolutes. I believed there was right, and there was wrong, there was black, and there was white, and the shades of gray are dangerous.

You leave, and everything will burn to the ground. A total loss. At least that’s what I believed.

But then I let go, something surprising happened.

Not everything burned.

I kept love. I kept forgiveness. Not because they belonged to the church, but because they belonged to me.

I kept community as a way of life. But I had to rebuild it. I lost friends who could no longer see me the same way once I stepped outside of what we had shared. I understood why. I had once believed the same things about people who left.

And then there was the music.

The Tabernacle Choir is world-famous. They have performed all over the world, including seven presidential inaugurations. My mother used to play them in our home on Sunday mornings as we would iron clothes, curl our hair, search for missing dress shoes, and pack snacks for the littlest siblings to keep them busy during the service.

Our congregation had its own choir. My mother was often the director. I remember being so excited as a teenager when I was asked to join. I’m sure I rolled my eyes and made sure everyone knew what an inconvenience it was to stay after church to practice whatever number we would be performing in the coming weeks.

But over the years, I grew to love singing in the choir. Learning how to read the alto section, listening to the piano notes, and the pitch of the older women behind me to find the right key. My bones humming along when the men sang their bass and tenor parts.

Then, of course, the growing crescendos that lit my heart on fire when all of us sang our different parts all together, creating a magical moment where harmony becomes a something more powerful than a sound.

I kept the music.

Which is why my (still) Mormon heart beat with joy when the chorus teacher from my kids’ high school put out a call to form a Community Choir for an upcoming performance.

I said yes. I went to rehearsal.

While we were performing, I turned a page too early and dropped out on a few measures I couldn’t remember.

But it didn’t matter.

The sopranos hit their highest note. The altos carried the line. The bass and tenors held everything steady beneath us.

And there it was again—that feeling I hadn’t touched in years.

The music. The harmony. The way something bigger forms when everyone brings their part.

It only lasted six minutes.

But standing there, I remembered something I didn’t understand back then, when everything first broke:

I didn’t lose everything.

Some things were always mine to keep.

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