And I just felt that this entire spiritual life that I had, has completely disappeared practically overnight. I didn't have any reason, and I just had no idea what was going on. I didn't have the vocabulary to explain it. And it was something that I had never experienced before in my entire life. I felt like I was inside this cast iron pot and the lid was put on it. The only way I can really describe it is I don't know if you've seen those enormous cast iron pots that people cook in. And then what happened next, I can only describe it is just feeling like God just disappeared, and the Spirit disappeared. And I tried that a few times, and still got nothing. And I asked, reasked that question a bunch of different ways and after awhile, I got nothing. And I prayed, and I said, Okay, I've read the Book of Mormon, please let me know if it's true. And then I sat down at the very beginning of January 2020. So at the end of 2018, it took about six weeks, and I read the Book of Mormon cover to cover because I thought, that's going to help me get this revelation, I'm going to really prepare for it. So I thought, you know, I think God would be willing to give me this answer. I mean, we ask our missionaries to go tell people to pray about the Book of Mormon all the time. But I picked that question because I thought it would be an easy revelation for God to give. I had, of course, asked that question lots of times in my life, I'd never gotten an answer. So I decided to ask God about the truthfulness of Book of Mormon. So I devised this plan, where I thought that if I could figure out how God could give me an answer to one direct question, then maybe I could crack the code. Like, if we're going to have confusion in the coming days ahead, it would be really important to know that I can ask God a question about something and He'll give me an answer. And I began to be a little worried that I couldn't get seem to get answers to direct questions, because in my mind, that was really important. And so in 2013, President Nelson gave a conference talk where he said that it wouldn't be possible to spiritually survive in the future without the guiding and directing influence of the Holy Ghost. And I had never gotten any answers with one exception. I asked a lot of questions to God about should I get married? Should I go to law school? I've decided to do this, is this the right way to go? Is the Book of Mormon true? Was Joseph Smith a prophet? Is President Nelson a Prophet? You know, all these questions. So for about 20 years, I had been struggling not getting answers from God on direct questions. When did you start to feel like you were going through this period of what you call "divine quietness" and what does your life look like at that point? But I want to start, I wondered if you could take me back to the beginning of this journey for you. Well this is so exciting for me and I get excited, Emily, any time Deseret Book has a product that I feel like is really going to make a difference in people's lives and that is how I feel about this book that you've written and so mad props to you for that. 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 Emily Robison Adams on the line with me today. She is a partner at the Appellate Group, a boutique law firm focusing on appeals. She worked for judges on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota before returning to Utah. She received her undergraduate degree in linguistics from Brigham Young University and her Juris Doctorate from the University of Minnesota Law School. Emily Robison Adams is the mother of three children and is a practicing appellate attorney. Now she explores the idea of whether or not He was actually just being quiet. Rethinking allows me to accept that not knowing does not mean that I give up rather it encourages me to be open to different ways that God can show up in my life and guide me." For a long time, Emily thought God was being silent. Rethinking invites me to embrace the very likely reality that I cannot know all of God. "When I look at the scriptures through the lens of rethinking," she writes, "I see a God who consistently challenges human ideas of who God is supposed to be. In her new book, "Divine Quietness," Emily Robison Adams writes of a "rethinking" that was necessary for her spiritual survival through a period of doubt.
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