During his years as an activist, Dennis Schleicher used to “make fun” of Christians. “I wanted nothing to do with religion …. I thought God hated me.”
One night in a hotel room, he decided to steal a Book of Mormon in order to destroy it. “When you’re hurting, you don’t always attack what’s false,” he said. “Sometimes you attack what’s holy.”
But he decided to read what the book had to say. “That day changed everything. My vocabulary changed. My life changed.”
Schleicher was one of the speakers at the 20th anniversary North Star conference in Ogden, Utah on Feb. 27-28. North Star describes its mission as being a “faith-affirming resource for Latter-day Saints navigating sexual orientation and gender identity who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the doctrine and values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
The conference included presentations on “Love That Never Lets Go: How Families Mirror the Savior’s Embrace,” “Beyond Self-Discovery: Practical Ways to Live Your God-given Eternal Identity” and “Building Connections of Love and Trust: How to Bless Loved Ones Who Leave the Covenant Path.”
Following are key messages shared by conference presenters:
‘Not the same person’
During difficult earlier years, Jenn Curtis, North Star president, recalled getting asked “How are you doing?” by friends. Even though her life was “crumbling,” she would respond “I’m fine!”
Curtis remembered thinking, “I’m not happy, I’m miserable. I don’t like it.” But in her efforts to seek more peace and happiness, Curtis said, “I just wanted God to magically make it go away and be like, ‘And now your marriage is great, and now kids are thriving and having a great time, and you’re doing great at church.’”
As she aligned her choices with what she felt God wanted, Curtis described a new joy entering her life. Tensions between her faith and sexuality also dissipated. “I felt free, and I felt like life had everything for me.”
“The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Atonement, prayers, fasting … they can change you and change your heart,” Curtis said, describing how friends from the past now tell her, “You’re not the same person.”
‘Knowing who I am’
“The world is as divided as it is because they don’t know who they are,” said Marianne Downing, at the conference. “When I don’t know who I am, I feel threatened by what you believe … because I don’t know who I am.”
“The minute I’m grounded in who I am,” she continued. “I can handle this opposition from people coming from completely different places, because I’m grounded in who I am.”
Tanya Bennion said during the conference that she often hears people claiming spiritual guidance from God when talking about decisions they’ve made — including some that go contrary to prophetic teaching. Yet, she said, “If an answer leads us away from attending church … away from the temple, then this is not an answer given by the Spirit.”
By contrast, a choice can be trusted, she said, if it “leads us closer toward our Savior Jesus Christ and renews our commitment to his Church and his restored gospel.”
‘Returning your heart’
“I always thought that repentance was something that I need to do when I’ve done something wrong,” said presenter Martin Reid, who now lives in Thailand.
“But repentance in Thai means return your heart. How cool is that?” Instead of dreading the idea of daily repentance, he encouraged attendees to instead think about “returning our hearts every day.”
The apostle Peter “learned what he was not … so he could become who he truly was,” Curtis later said — encouraging more self-compassion: “Can you have charity for the times that you are who you are not … so you can come to know who you truly are?”
‘Better than we’re even capable of imagining’
Many prophets have taught, “Look, we’re in Act 2 of the play,” said North Star co-founder Jeff Bennion. “It’s like you walk in the movie halfway through and you lean next to someone and you say, ‘What happened?’ And they can’t tell you, though, because they weren’t in it either.”
“Well, we thankfully have the scriptures, we have the temple, we have modern-day prophets, so we know a little bit.”
When the “great scroll” of human history is finally unrolled, Bennion continued, everyone will “weep with joy and say, ‘God, you did this so much better than I could have even imagined.’”
“It is more amazing, more glorious, more wonderful than we could even be capable of imagining.”