Ep. 298 | All In

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[00:00:00] Historian Rachel Cope has spent countless hours studying the lives of the people in early church history. She has come to see the book of scripture. We know as Doctrine and Covenants as a Study in conversion, as she puts it from the doctrine and covenants. We learn that conversion can make meaning out of devastation and trauma laws and suffering.

Carve out a place for conversion and the healing that accompanies it. Devastation and trauma. Loss and suffering. These are things that have become all too familiar to Rachel in recent years, as she has dealt with a heart wrenching medical condition that has stretched her to her very limits. And maybe that's why she's able to see these revelations from the doctrine and covenants now in a very different light.

Rachel Cope received a PhD in American history with an emphasis in women's history and religious history from. Syracuse University. Rachel is a scholar of women's spirituality and conversion in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and works as an associate professor of church history and doctrine at BYU.

Rachel is deeply committed to raising awareness for obstetric fistula. victims throughout the global south, her new book, the Slow Work of God, is available in Deseret bookstores now,

This is All In an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Rachel cope on the line with me today. Rachel, welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Well, Rachel, I told you this in an email, Rachel, but I quoted you recently speaking down at BYU Hawaii and your quote was one of my favorite parts of my talk.

And so it was so fun when I learned that you had just had a book come out and I [00:02:00] wish, I'll tell you this, I wish that I had had the book beforehand. Because so much of what you wrote about Lucy Mac Smith would've fit in with my talk, but I did not know that the book even existed until after, after the talk, so, oh, well, well, to get us started, I, I wanted to kind of set the stage for listeners.

They likely are, are unfamiliar with your book and so. This book is this beautiful retelling of episodes from church history, but you begin and in your book by opening up to the reader about a medical struggle that you recently went through and you continue to deal with from what I understand, and how you initially felt that God was not answering your prayers and not helping, but now you can see that he was helping all along and that this was part of an experience that you were meant to have.

This condition is obviously very personal, but the way that you open up about it, you do it in such great depth and and vulnerability. So I wondered how did you decide to share that and what do you hope that does for the reader? Yeah, great question. There's actually a bit of a backstory to how I decided to be more open about this story.

So I'm by nature a pretty private person. I was raised by a British mom, so probably a little extra private. And when I had my initial surgery, I really didn't tell anyone. I was very small, other than my close family and a few close friends. But even people who knew me pretty well, didn't know. And then when I was injured during the surgery and, and a number of complications ensued, and as that happened, it was of a pretty private personal nature and so I was still keeping it pretty close to home.

But as I started to read a little bit more about the circumstances of other [00:04:00] women who, um, had the same condition that I had, it's known as a vesical vaginal fistula, I discovered that it was predominant in the global south with women who were. Typically extremely poor and had very limited access to medical care and often had no way of even knowing what their condition was, let alone that it could be repaired or that there was any hope for them.

And I had been doing some reading and watched a documentary about these circumstances, and I was just thinking about it and I still, I still was, um, in the middle of my own situation. And a really strong spiritual impression came to me that if you continue to hide your story, you're participating in the shaming of these women.

And you need to share it. And it was just powerful enough and strong enough. And I think being a historian of women and feeling so strongly about women's stories and stuff certainly played into that for me. But it just, in that moment, I just knew I had to be more open. And I, I started that by sharing in a letter with close family and friends and invited them to.

Donate to an organization, um, called the Worldwide Fistula Fund for my 40th birthday. And so that's, that was my big 40th birthday celebration, was inviting people to donate. And, um, that led to the Worldwide Fistula Fund reaching out to me and saying, who are you? Because we've had all of these people donating in your name.

And so then they invited me to write. A blog post and just kind of things grew out of that. But when I was working on this book, it just felt so clear to me that I needed to share that story and that kind of kind of bookend have the, or had the bookends of that book be that, that I begin and end with that.

And in terms of what do I hope people gain from that, I've actually. I [00:06:00] actually think that people find great power. Vulnerability because it resonates and they, they don't feel alone. Right. Especially, I think, especially women and especially things tied to women's health, where a lot of times there is a lot of shame attached to that.

People don't tend to talk about women's bodies and the struggles that women go through and a lot of women face a lot of struggles and are kind of suffering silently. And feel very alone. And I think this op, or I hope this opens up a space where people realize, first of all that they're not alone. And second of all, that they don't need to be ashamed about having a broken body or broken circumstances or broken whatever, right?

That that's a part of the, the human condition and that it's not our fault. For having things go wrong and that we can find love and support through the people around us and from ourselves and from God, and that there's nothing to be ashamed of. I completely agree with everything that you just said, and I I, it's funny, I, my mom and I have had this conversation several times recently related to like pelvic floor health and how that's something that people just don't talk about.

It's like, oh, well you could do like some pelvic floor therapy and, and that could be good. It could be helpful. It's not until years down the road when women experience these terrible circumstances. And so I think, I think what you just said is powerful and spot on, and I, I couldn't agree more. I am curious, Rachel, and I did not put this in the questions that I sent you, but I hearing what you just said, how did you initially become interested in history to the point of becoming a historian?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it was actually when I was an undergrad at BYU, um, that I realized how interested I was in history. Now, my interest in academia was early childhood. I [00:08:00] was always a big reader. I was always interested, even though I guess I wouldn't have. Been able to pinpoint it at an earlier stage in life.

I was always interested in women writers and women's circumstances and women's experiences, and I was always also interested in religion and culture and ordinary people. Not just famous people, but ordinary people. So that was kind of all there, and it was actually, as I and I, I guess I was also very academically minded and knew that I wanted to get a PhD.

But it was as an undergrad at BYU when I took American Heritage, which I know is a class that is so fraught for so many people. But as I was, as I was in that class, it just kind of clicked with me that history is a way to study all the things that I love, right? It's a way to study religion. It's a way to study women.

It's a way to study culture. It's a way to understand people. It's a way to. Look at texts in different kinds of ways to, to seal documents. And it just made perfect sense to me to pursue my degrees in history at that point. And then, and then of course, that developed as you go on, right? Like my, my graduate advisor at Syracuse University where I did my PhD.

Was a women's historian of religion and she, she specifically focused on Catholic nuns. But just working with her shifted my emphasis more and more to women as well, where I realized, oh, this is what I've always wanted to do. I just didn't know how to, I get, I, I just hadn't had the opportunity to identify it in the way that she helped me identify it.

It's amazing how those mentors make such a difference along your path, and I feel really strongly that the Lord puts people in our paths for that reason. But I also loved American heritage. I didn't end up studying history, but I, that class was one of my favorites at BYU. Rachel, you said that your answer that came as you were in the [00:10:00] midst of this.

Excruciating experience. The answer that came as you were pleading for answers from the Lord was that you should focus on healing the whole person. I love that idea that, that we are whole beings physically, spiritually, emotionally, but what did you do to seek healing outside of the physical surgeries and things that you were having, and what parallels did you see in that process of seeking to heal your whole person to seeking conversion?

Yeah, great question. So. So it's actually, again, it's, I feel like everything I'm saying is this is multifaceted and there's back stories to it, but, but there were a lot of layers to it and part of it was the first surgery I had was a hysterectomy. And I approached that, I guess the way a historian would where I started reading about the history of hysterectomies and then contemporary stuff as well, and medical literature and all the things that could go wrong and stuff, and.

Um, I think a lot of people thought I was crazy and over preparing. I was also, I started doing exercises to help the recovery be better. I started like, I made sure my diet was perfect, like I was doing all of this stuff to kind of make the circumstances be ideal, which is ironic. And I, and I know fam, some of my family members and friends were just like, okay, this is over the top.

Like this is a routine surgery. But as I look back now. I actually like, I can, I can remember moments where there were things that struck me when I was reading that ended up being extremely important aspects of my healing journey that I wouldn't have been able to figure out if I, if those things just happened in the moment and I hadn't done the homework beforehand.

One of them being pelvic floor physical therapy actually, that that just really stood out to me that I needed to look into pelvic floor physical therapy. After my surgery. And it didn't make sense in the [00:12:00] context of things until we knew complications. But, so there were, there were a number of circumstances that I realized that, I'm gonna say God was preparing me for what was coming.

I didn't, you need hindsight to recognize that, right? But that was happening. Another thing that occurred when I found out I had to have a hysterectomy, I had a really strong impression that I needed to start therapy. And I just kind of thought like, oh, okay, like I am 39 years old. I'm single, I don't have children.

This is a major life change. Like it's just going to help me kind of think through this. And so I, I actually started therapy a couple weeks before my surgery, but I had that relationship developed and had started talking about things before the surgery even happened. And then when the surgery happened and things were going wrong, I had.

That kind of extra support network and was able to talk through like, I don't know what's wrong with my body. I don't know what's going on. I think I'm crazy. I think like there's something wrong with me. I can't heal, like my body doesn't heal. But it also helped me. I. Work through, I guess whenever anything difficult and complicated happens in your life, I feel like that leads to, that triggers other things, right?

That still need to be worked through. And there were a lot of triggers that emerged as a result of the things that I was going through, and I was able to, with the help of that therapist, I was able to dig deep and work through other things and come to a place where. I was able to find levels of peace and forgiveness and, and understanding and a greater sense of compassion towards myself and people around me, and in an easier way of working mentally, emotionally, spiritually, through the things that were happening.

That ended up being really, really essential. So that's another part of that process that, that was really important, [00:14:00] but also kind of attached to all of that. It just helped me see. Kind of where I guess gaps and wounds existed in my life. And I had the time and space to really think and process and identify issues that I maybe hadn't recognized or had the time to commit to in the past.

And I was, I was reading earlier today an essay on illness that Virginia Wolf wrote. And that that was one of the points that she made, is that a key, A key part of being ill is often that you have time to reflect on things that are, that are deep and maybe even painful. You haven't been able to give attention to before, and that allows a certain kind of spiritual growth and development as you're in that kind of unusual space where all you can do is focus on your wellbeing.

Right? And I think that that's, it was almost like God had said to me. You're in this unusual circumstance where you can focus on the wellbeing of your entire person, and this healing journey can be more than fixing a broken bladder or, or remove, removing a broken uterus. It can be an opportunity to dig deep within your soul and to really discover, to really overcome.

Anything that's holding you back in any way, and to discover who you really are and to find peace with yourself and your circumstances and people around you and all. Just all kinds of things. And I would say that the parallels to seeking conversion are really like healing and recovery are really tied to change and transformation in this slow process of.

Becoming whole, um, allowing yourself to be open to open to new possibilities, but also open to things not being the way that you want them to be. To things aren't [00:16:00] always going to be ideal. And I just think that, I think that healing is a huge part of converting. I think that our, we're all of our lives are filled with so many things that we need to heal from.

And that process of physical, emotional. Mental spiritual healing is essential if we want to be converted because those, we have to overcome those things that we're healing from in order to truly and fully let God into our lives and to allow ourselves to transform. And so I think that maybe the reason that so many people find.

Physical trauma to be so such a spiritual point in their lives is that you're kind of open. Those wounds are opened up and there's greater space to choose to let God in and to dig even beyond those wounds and to clean out other wounds while you're working through the more obvious wounds, if that makes sense.

That makes complete sense. It's interesting listening to you talk because I went through a medical journey of my own, um, back in 2020 and I was single at the time, and it did, it proved to be a real healing. Experience for other things in addition to the the physical ailments that I was dealing with. And so I'm a believer in everything that you just said.

As we shift from your experience to these stories from church history and people from church history, I'm curious, Rachel, how you have seen similarities in your experience, but also. I guess I'm more curious about the differences that you see in experiencing something like this in the 2020s versus during the 18 hundreds.[00:18:00]

Okay, so does that make sense? Clarify, just like, yeah, I, I guess my, my thought as you were talking was I think it's interesting like now we have tools like therapy that allow us to heal. And you look at these women and it's like. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think they had therapist. And so what do you see in terms of how we are able to deal with something like a physical illness or, or disease and how they dealt with the things that they were facing.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Oh one. One of the things that I've noticed, and I've even had students ask me this before, um, is that we kind of say like, oh, there were so many miracles in the past, right? Like, we look at the Bible or the Book of Mormon or even church history and we can see the sort of obvious physical.

Miracles that are the kinds of things we want to call miracles, right? Because they seem big and drastic. And spectacular, like a healing that seems impossible and something takes place or something, and I think we forget that. We live in a world filled with miracles where we have access to so many, so many professionals, and so many machines, and so much care, and so much, so many sanitary products, and so many just the.

Huge amount of things that can allow us to overcome or work through really difficult challenges that would've blown the minds of our ancestors. Right? That would've just been unfathomable to them. Like I just, I even just think of, I. Women who had iCal, vaginal fistulas in the 19th century, or even women who don't have access to great medical care and products now.

And [00:20:00] I mean, it's just, they were, they were shunned. They're thrown outta society. They couldn't be around people. And they had like, life was just over for them, right? They had to live and suffer, suffer through misery and pain and stench, but had no access to people or things that could help, and it's just.

An incredible miracle that I had love and support and. People who were able to diagnose and pinpoint and care for the things that I was going through. And even I ended up having to have SUR surgery at the University of Alabama Birmingham. But like I could get on a flight, right, and get there and I could go and have, I.

I have one of the top surgeons do my surgery and care for me. And we could, when there was distance between us, we could have video chats and we could text one another and she could tell me what to do and she could send me stuff in the mail that she wanted me to use. And so there were just so many opportunities I had that our miracles, right?

But we forget to think of them as miracles because they just seem like givens. And I think that, um. It's really important to, to look at the kind of miracles that we have in the context of our time, and I think that people in the 19th century had their own version of support and miracles, but I also think it was more difficult, right?

That there weren't, they didn't have access to, or even a recognition. That mental health mattered or existed, right? You were just kind of supposed to power through and you didn't have the ability often to, um, understand where ailments came from or, or how to fix them, right? You didn't have the opportunity to, um, to speak to other people who understood what was going on or anything.

And so I think that that's one of those stark differences is that a lot of time the suffering [00:22:00] was.

Lonelier. Right. And more and more difficult. And also there just wasn't, there wasn't as much space if, if we're talking about women, there wasn't as much space for women to seek help or to have support either. That was just something that they, they were more on their own. So the, the community they had was more mothers and sisters and people around them, but there wasn't necessarily the knowledge of how to.

Fix the things that were wrong, always. Does that, does that answer that or did I get off? Uh, no, I thought that was perfect. That's exactly kind of what I was thinking. I was curious from a, a, an his, a historian's perspective, kind of those things. And it is, it's fascinating. We live in an inner city right now, and I, we're almost done here.

And so I keep thinking, I'm like, man. My life is gonna be so different in suburbia, you know? And so it's interesting to think how much these little shifts, whether it's geographically or time, how much that changes the way that you live your life. And I think sometimes we don't give that enough credit to our, our lived experience.

I want to start you. You begin with two characters in church history that we know probably there. They're two of the more recognizable names when it comes to women, um, in church history in Lucy Mac Smith and Emma Smith and I learned more about them from you, which I loved, but because our listeners are likely more familiar with them, I wondered if maybe we could start by using their stories to share a little bit about this premise of seeing the.

Slow work of God in the lives of people from church history. Yeah. One of the things that I think is important to remember when you're studying history, and, and maybe this is partly why I chose Lucy and Emma to begin with too, is that these are real [00:24:00] people with real lives and real struggles and who suffered and who faced loss and who often didn't have, uh.

Had lack of confidence at times, who felt uncertain, who were frightened, who were overwhelmed, who were confused, and we forget those things about people that we see as heroes or as heroes in the past. Right? We kind of think of them as people who had altogether and knew what they were doing and we, and we tell their stories in ways where we, I guess we tell their stories in neat and tidy ways where.

They kind of jump into something, they know what they're doing, things work out. There's just a very clear sense of what the outcome is going to be, and we're able to celebrate their successes and how well everything went and look at, look to them as people we want to be like. And I think that's great to want.

To want to emulate people who are living Christ-like lives and to want to learn from people in the past. But I think we have to see the losses and the failures and the struggles, and that those things are slow and tedious and overwhelming, and that that's the way God works in our lives. Right. It's very, it's very rare, and maybe I would even argue non-existent, where something just happens overnight and everything's fine, and we're.

Happily ever after. Pretty much everything takes a long amount of time, and I think sometimes we, we look at something like the first vision and we say like, Joseph had this light bulb moment. He went into the grove, said a prayer, and God appeared to him. But what about the years beforehand that he was attending revivals and going to church and trying to figure things out?

Right. He didn't just think of praying that day. He was wondering and searching and discouraged for years before he got there. And Lucy Mac Smith, his mom, um, her story was extended even beyond that, where she'd [00:26:00] spent really her childhood developing an interest in religion and her adulthood searching for something right.

And she found, she found pieces and she found, she found hope and she found comfort. And she was a religious person, but she was always looking for something more. She was always searching for something and she says in her, in her memoir that it took 20 years of praying before she actually got the answer through her son and, and his revelation, his experiences.

And that has always stuck out to me so much, and I've said this other places, but that idea 20 years. The God is working through Lucy for 20 years before she even gets an answer to that one prayer. But God has to continue working through Lucy. It's not like that answer to that prayer solves everything that she is.

She's completely converted. She's got everything figured out. She's fully together. She's I. Perfected herself and knows how to do everything right. She has to continue to figure out what does it mean to restore the gospel? What does my family do? How do we make this work? How do we integrate new revelations and new ideas and new people and new circumstances into things?

How do we cope with death and murder and loss, right? How do we, how do we deal with mobbing and persecution and all of these things? Like she's constantly having to learn and figure things out, and she deals with. Loss over and over and over again. And through all of that, God is working through her and she is being converted.

Right. But that, that process takes place throughout her entire life. And, and Emma is, is very similar where she, she is a part of the restoration really from the beginning. She goes with Joseph to get the plates in the hill, right. And she is described for much of the. A what we usually call 117 lost pages of the Book of Mormon.

And she's, uh, [00:28:00] engaged in all of the major events and, and there as a witness of all of those things. But she's also facing intense loss and persecution and frustration and insecurity and never knowing how her family's going to survive financially. Right? She loses child after child after child. I. I don't doubt that she went through many miscarriages because of gaps between children and she was just facing all sorts of things all the time that were so difficult and painful, especially maybe even with an extra layer in the 19th century because women's, women's roles and experiences were so limited too.

Just motherhood and being a wife, right, and those things felt like they were failing all the time for her. And so her identity was completely tied to that, and she was having to constantly search for who she was and what she could contribute. Section 25 is a beautiful example of the Lord reminding her that she has so many gifts to give and that she is a part of.

That she is a part of and has been called to help restore the gospel, right? And that she has an essential role to play and that she's intelligent and creative and can preach and exhort and share new ideas with people and, and, and create a hymn book. That was not something that women did in the 19th century.

And so she was able to slowly, um, be reminded and discover who she was, but that was. That was constantly being challenged, right, and transformed through the losses and the suffering that she faced. I love something that you write and I, I wanna give listeners a little taste of just how beautiful your writing is.

Rachel, you're not just a historian. You are a very, you, you do such a beautiful job throughout this book. But, um, you said conversion happens over time, capturing a [00:30:00] person's slow. Sometimes even temporarily stagnant growth and grace. It is a process that requires heart and mind. Indeed, conversion is the continuous work of God taking place within the souls of his children.

So I think now that we've kind of laid the groundwork and given, given listeners an idea of what this book is about you, you take us through not just people like Lucy Mac Smith and, and Emma. But you also introduce us to some lesser known characters in church history. And it seems to me like you kind of utilize this vehicle of introducing a person to then allow us to better understand a concept from church history, from consecration to Zion's camp to polygamy.

You cover a lot of. Kind of more difficult topics from church history. Was that a deliberate decision to use people to help us better understand a topic? It was, yeah. I, and I think especially trying to find, I shouldn't say trying to find especially, um, telling the stories of people who weren't as well known.

Um, I think using that to just show that these are ordinary, regular people who. Face difficult challenges and losses and circumstances and that have to find ways to also engage in this conversion process and to seek healing and to be patient with the amount of time that that takes, right? And in different, in different contexts and different kinds of challenges that there are.

It's not just one kind of challenge, right? It's people facing a variety of kinds of challenges from divorce to racism to death of a child, to polygamy, right? All of those things play a role in that, and kind of seeing the varied circumstances that people faced. Well, you did such a beautiful job of that.

And this [00:32:00] person, people will recognize her name, but I am gonna be really honest with you and say, I am not one that usually gets hung up on polygamy. But there's a chapter in your book about Eliza Snow and, um, as I read through it, and I, I didn't know until probably in like the last five years that Eliza Snow was one of the.

Polygamist wives of Joseph Smith, but it was a little bit hard for me to read and I think it was knowing and reading the way that it was clear that Eliza did have, I. Feelings for Joseph. Mm-hmm. Um, so I wondered from a historian's perspective, because I know this is a topic that a lot of people really struggle with.

Yeah. How do you approach polygamy, especially in the case of someone like Eliza Ars Snow, where it's clear reading the things that she, she said that she clearly loved and felt like she had a relationship with Joseph. Yeah. It's a great question and, and it's a loaded question and there's uh, there's so many different directions that could go, but I think, I think one of the things that's important to understand with polygamy, especially Navu era polygamy, and this is me very much speaking as a historian, is how little we actually know There's not a lot of documents, especially documents from that period.

Scriptural or historical, right? There just wasn't a lot written down. And so I think it's really important to acknowledge that we don't know a lot and that a lot of times the not knowing makes people really uncomfortable. And so we've had a tendency to assume that we know more than we do. And by that I mean we often tend to.

Create justifications and explanations and reasons and things about why they practice polygamy or how they practice polygamy, or what polygamy meant to them to make ourselves feel [00:34:00] better. But we're actually being, I guess, anachronistic and imposing kind of our present views on, I. The past trying to, trying to make a really uncomfortable topic, comfortable.

And I think the, one of the most important things we can do is say, this is an uncomfortable topic. It's an uncomfortable part of our church history. And not only is it okay to be uncomfortable with it, I think it's. I think it's normal and maybe even essential. We, I think we should feel uncomfortable with it because it is uncomfortable, right?

It's not, it's not, there's no warm fuzzies there, there's nothing that feels, um, right or normal about it, and acknowledging that is okay, right? We don't have to, we don't have to love things that feel, I'm trying to think of a better word here.

Well, I guess we don't, we don't have to love every part of sacred history 'cause sacred history is filled with a lot of really hard and painful things. And whether we're thinking of the Bible or whether we're thinking of Christian history in general, or Jewish history or. Islamic history or whatever history, right?

Religious history is kind of complicated and painful at at times. And I think that it's important to acknowledge that and recognize that, which is why we do need God and we do need grace, right? And we do need conversion because there is so much difficulty. But I think another thing to remember with polygamy, and this is going back to what I said a little bit earlier, we need to remember that these are real people, right?

Living in. Very difficult times where the church was in a difficult political situation in Navu when polygamy is introduced. And a lot of people inside and outside of the church were really angry with Joseph Smith for a number of reasons. But polygamy was at the top of that. And when Joseph died, polygamy was part of [00:36:00] that, part of the reason for that.

Right. Why he was killed. And I think in a lot of ways that had. For members of the church at the time that really elevated the importance of polygamy in their minds, perhaps far beyond what it should have, and made it feel like,

kind of like a crowning doctrine of the gospel, which I don't think scripture says in any way, right? Whether that be the doctrine covenant, certainly not the Book of Mormon, but it's, but it made it feel really, really important to people. At that time, and I think it's really important to remember that how much loss and suffering and confusion was going on at that time.

And I think the Apostle AMA alignment says at best, where he's kind of reflecting back on polygamy. And he said something like, we did the best. We knew how, but undoubtedly walked many crooked paths. And I think looking at the history of polygamy. In the context of that quote is a good reminder to remember that God's work is slow, and that receiving revelation and direction is slow, and understanding revelation and direction is slow, and applying things is slow, and transforming and adapting to things is slow, and all of this.

Stuff that a mourning people were left with was almost too much to comprehend. And I think that we need to give them space and grace to recognize that they didn't know what they were doing as much as we think they did, and that it's so okay to look at the past and to be able to say. I'm not exactly sure what was going on there, and I'm not sure if they were exactly entirely sure of what was going on there, but they were trying really hard to do their best, and I don't [00:38:00] want to in any way dismiss the pain people experienced during, during that time, or the spiritual experiences they had during that time in my effort to make it more palatable for myself.

But I also don't want to overplay or overstate that and to forget that this was really painful. Even for some, I mean, I think it comes out in the chapter about Eliza, that while she obviously deeply adored Joseph Smith, she was in a lot of pain, right? And, and was, and felt very lonely and lost and confused at times.

And I think we need to remember how hard this was for people. And how confusing it was, how contrary to the circumstances that they were in, and to stop trying to wrap polygamy up into a neat little package with a bow on top and say, see, this is why it happened. And to instead look at the raw real nature of it and to recognize.

Even people who maybe felt inspired or who felt God confirming to them that that was the right thing, it doesn't mean that that suddenly became easy and ideal. How many times do we feel like we should do something or approach something, whether that's going on a mission or choosing a certain major or, or getting married or giving a talk or reaching out to someone or making a major life change where we think this is what I'm supposed to do.

That it remains painful as we're doing it, and we maybe even hate it as we're doing it and we maybe even think, I wish I hadn't done this, or Maybe I made the wrong choice, or I don't know if I can keep going. And I think that when we look at polygamy, we have to remember that that's a very real part of the experience for Eliza, our snow and many others.

And that maybe if we put. The humanity back into it, and instead of getting so caught up in how our own feelings, which. I don't want to [00:40:00] downplay that or delegitimize that, that's, that's very real. But to actually look at it in that historical moment and to try to understand who they were and the struggles that they had and to, it wasn't easy.

It wasn't ideal. And I think that if we had, we do have some, but if we had all of the stories and all of the real fillings people had, we'd see how much. Kind of loss and loss and pain and frustration and kind of feelings of being overwhelmed that emerged during that time, and how people in those circumstances were reaching out for God and that they became God's slow work through that experience, right?

That, that trying to make sense of something that didn't make sense. Very, very well said. You gave me a lot to, to chew on another thing that you write, and I think this is beautifully said as well, you said human nature tends to focus on and expect immediacy, especially in the present day. Divinity on the other hand, seems to see great value in the slow process of change in discovery.

How would you say, Rachel, based on your own experience and looking through the lens of history, that the understanding the slow nature of God is transformative? Yeah, I think it.

I'm gonna share a story sort of that of a Methodist woman that I did have done a lot of work on. Her name's Catherine Livingston Garrett, and in fact, she'd mentioned in the introduction of my book, but she lived into her mid nineties. She was born in the 1750s, so her life really covered the last half of the.

17 hundreds in the first half of the 18 hundreds, and she lived in the Hudson River Valley area of New York. Her family was very elite and wealthy. And, [00:42:00] um, she grew up knowing a lot of very prestigious people and interacting with kind of the key individuals we'd associate with the American founding and, and things like that.

And if you've, if you've seen Hamilton, those are her people, those are, those are her family members and people that she knew. But she converted to Methodism in her mid thirties and, and it was difficult. Her family was not happy about it. That wasn't what socially, socially elite women were supposed to do.

There wasn't a strong Methodist community in that area of New York during the time, during that time. She was also a single woman, which was not the norm for someone to be a single woman in their thirties at that time period. And so they're just socially and kind of family trauma and stuff. There's just a lot of, she didn't have a sense of community, and so she really kind of turned inward and focused a lot on reading and reading scriptures, reading, theology, writing, reflective diaries, and she kept that.

That pro, uh, that habit up throughout her life of writing a spiritual diary. And one of the things that really struck me as I was reading through, you know, these 70 or 60, 70 years of diaries that she wrote was that she was constantly searching for a sanctified state, which is very Methodist, right? This idea of not, not just being converted to God, but being sanctified, becoming pure and holy and maybe a, maybe an.

Easy way to put it would to become truly Christ-like. And she always felt like she was short of that, right? That she wasn't quite there and she was frustrated with herself for so much of her life. And I noticed in the final few years of her life. A real sense of softening in how she approached herself, right?

She was [00:44:00] writing in her diary where she started to focus less on what she wasn't and more on who she had been becoming all along. And she started recognizing that she wasn't going to be perfect in her mortal life, but that she had converted a lot through. Throughout her lifetime and that she had was constantly drawing closer to God.

Right? And so she, she was God's slow work. And it was when I was reading her diaries that that idea of God's slow work, even though I may not have termed it that way 20 years ago, but it really struck me as like, this is what conversion and even life is all about, right? Is this slow process of engaging in.

Engaging in transformation, engaging in becoming. And so often we're so focused on what we're not, that we can't see what we're becoming. We don't see that change, that transformation, that progress. We don't show ourselves very much grace. We don't stop and say, how far have I come? We just look forward and say, I'm not even close.

Right? And so, so Catherine really serves as a reminder to me. To sometimes slow down and to see the transformation and growth that has taken place and to recognize that the, it's, I guess it's not a race. Humans turn things into a race. God doesn't, God wants us to take whatever time we need and if it takes five years.

That's great. If it takes 50 years, that's great. He's not worried about the deadlines. He just wants us to be on the journey. He just wants us to be able to learn and to grow and to take the time that we need. But our [00:46:00] world is set up in such a way, especially, especially in America. Right Where it's like, how much can you achieve in the shortest amount of time possible?

How productive were you and productivity means? How much stuff did you get done and how fast did you get through it? And we give accolades for people who achieved. Tons of stuff, and that's sometimes superhuman and maybe even put pressure on people to be more than they should be and to do more than they should, and compromise health and physical, emotional, spiritual health and doing that.

I also have noticed that, especially after having health problems, that we sometimes praise people who are ill. And push themselves, whether that's physically pushing themselves to recover faster or who push themselves at work or to do things that maybe they're not ready to do. And then we criticize people who actually, who are, who have to slow down, right?

That maybe that circumstances are. Don't allow for them to work at a faster pace or whatever, or you know, we praise, we praise a woman who just gave birth, who run a runs a marathon, rather than recognizing that that's damaging to our body. And that that's not good for her and that there will be long-term consequences.

And then we may be criticized the mom that we don't see for a couple months, like, what's wrong with her? Why isn't she out doing things? And we need to really recognize that the pace is different for everyone and there's nothing wrong with slowing down. In fact, I think God wants us to slow down that.

That was certainly the message I got in when I was in the middle of surgeries and going through things was the. Slow down. Right? And, and it was hard. I was, I was in the middle of a career. As an academic, you're supposed to be productive. You're supposed to be publishing stuff. You're supposed to be advancing all the time.

And I have always been very goal oriented and focused on getting more stuff done, right? How much can I [00:48:00] achieve? And there was a period where I couldn't achieve anything. But after, in terms of worldly academic doing what you're supposed to do. But after some time and kind of reflecting on that, I realized I've actually achieved more.

I. In my life in the last couple of years when I couldn't achieve then I more consequential stuff I should say, than I ever have in my life before. And even though it felt like a disadvantage, like other people are surpassing me and doing, you know, thriving in their careers while I'm kind of stunted in this, um, unhealthy space.

I actually realized there was growth and development during that time that other people didn't have the opportunity to have. Right. And that there was, I gained something that ended up. Being transformative and a blessing for me and that put, that advanced me in different kinds of ways that were actually maybe more important.

And I wouldn't wanna go through that again, but I can see the value in the transformation that took place and see that there are just so many different ways that God works with us and through us. And sometimes if we get hyperfocused on the end, we miss the journey. Well, Rachel, I feel like you just, uh.

Answered some, some prayers that I've had recently. So if for no one else, then this conversation was for me and I appreciate it very much. But my last question for you is, what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I think when we hear all in, we tend to go towards perfection, right?

That there's no, there's no struggles. Like I've got it all figured out. I. I'm able to do all the things and check off all the boxes perfectly, and I don't have any struggles or questions [00:50:00] or doubts or fears or anything, but I actually think that being all in requires I. Challenges and doubts and fears and struggles and uncertainty.

Faith isn't, as the scripture say, faith isn't having a perfect knowledge of things, right? Faith is not knowing. And sometimes we overuse the word know, I think, and make it feel like we have it all figured out. And I think it would be really helpful to use words like hope and. Believe and trust more. And to recognize that that's what faith is.

That faith is holding onto things when things aren't going right. Right. It's not making things go right. It's not, we don't pray to change God's mind. We pray to change our hearts and minds, right? And often the things that we want are not the things that we get right. And so prayer doesn't, prayer's not a magic wand that makes things the way we want them to be.

Prayer is a slow process that helps us become who we need to be. And I think being all in is being engaged in that process of becoming who we want and need to be, and allowing that slow work of God to work into our hearts and our minds and our sense of self, and to have patience with ourselves and with others as we're going through that and to not to not only not be judgmental of people around us, but to not be judgmental of ourselves when we.

When we fell or when we struggle or when we're not sure about things or when or when we have questions about polygamy or we don't like the way, um, race and priesthood is explained, or we don't know what to make of the way certain people are treated or certain circumstances are play out. To be able to recognize that we can, we can hold those struggles.

Still turn to God and find love and grace and peace and hope, [00:52:00] and to also learn to let God work in the lives of other people as well as ourselves. And to remember to have grace for people who are also struggling and who also haven't figured it out. And to sometimes have days where we can just say, you know what?

I didn't really do as much as I wanted to today, but I did my best and that's okay. When I was. When my health was really bad and, and I didn't really know what was going on and I was so discouraged. I happened to see a card in Trader Joe's that I bought for myself that said, it's okay if all I did today was survive.

And that's something that I actually continue to turn to when, 'cause there's still stuff that. I feel behind and I feel overwhelmed with all of the health stuff I have to deal with and with things still not filling back to normal and sometimes being like, wow, I am, my life feels like a disaster. And I have to remind myself like, it's okay if all I did was survive and I don't have to be everything today.

And I don't have to be perfect and my life doesn't have to be perfect, but I can be all in by trusting God and allowing God to transform and change me at the pace that makes sense in my life. I love that Trader Joe's card section. It's one of my favorites and I, I completely agree with that. I think that, you know, especially in the world that we live in, we see the highlight reel of everybody's lives, and I think probably more of us than we think are simply just trying to survive and should be giving each other pats on the back just for making it, because I think.

Life in general. Especially at the pace that our world is moving requires a lot and asks a lot of us. And so I appreciate that reminder and I appreciate this book. Um, thank you so much for the work that you've put into it. I highly recommend that people go and read it, um, [00:54:00] because there's so much that we haven't even gotten to.

But I, I thought it was a great supplement to. S study this year, and I just, I appreciate the time that you put into it. Thank you, and thanks for having me.

We are so grateful to Rachel Cope for joining us on today's episode. Be sure to check out the slow work of God and Deseret bookstores now. If you'd like to learn more about the medical condition Rachel has experienced in more depth, be sure to check out her episode on our sister podcast Out of The Best Books.

Big thanks to Derek Campbell of Mix at Six Studios for his help with this episode, and thank you so much for listening. We'll look forward to being with you again next week.