God, Is It Okay For Us To Have Children? (Part 2)

What the rest of the scriptures taught me about agency, revelation, and becoming.

Where We Left Off

If you’re just joining — welcome! This is Part 2 of a post I’ve been writing about a question I needed answered before my husband and I moved forward with having children.

I’m a gay member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on an unconventional path, trying to walk it as faithfully as I can given the circumstances, which has often meant taking the hard questions directly to God. So I did something that probably sounds intense to most people (but honestly, pretty normal if you grew up Mormon) — I read the entire Standard Works (the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price) — through the lens of a simple question:

“God, is it okay for us to have children?”

In Part 1, I made my way through the Old Testament and found story after story of God’s covenant people building families in messy, unconventional ways — and God showing up in every single one, even when it looked nothing like the ideal. But I wasn’t ready to rest my answer there. The Old Testament is famously wild — ancient, cultural, complicated.

So I turned from Malachi to Matthew, curious what insights the rest of the scriptures would bring.

The Family Nobody Expected

As I moved to the New Testament, something stopped me early that I had never considered before… Jesus himself was born into an unconventional family. Joseph wasn’t his biological father. His birth was scandalous by the standards of his community — people questioned his origins, whispered about his mother, dismissed him entirely…

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

And yet God chose that specific, complicated, outside-the-expected-mold family, to bring the Savior of the world into existence.

I also noticed who The Savior spent His time with during his mortal ministry. Not the people who fit most neatly inside the religious structures of their day, but consistently, deliberately, the people standing somewhere outside of them. The woman at the well. The lepers. The tax collectors. The people religious leaders had decided were too complicated to belong.

And throughout so much of His teaching was the same repeated invitation: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” I was moved by how much trust that implied, and by the invitation to come to Him directly.

Art by Jorge Cocco Santángelo

Into the Wilderness We Go

That feeling carried me into the Book of Mormon, where a deeper pattern started to emerge — personal revelation through messy, unconventional situations. Lehi’s family abandoning everything they had and walking into the wilderness based on a dream, something that from the outside looked like madness. Nephi being commanded to kill Laban, something that by every external measure looked completely wrong, and having to wrestle through that tension personally with God rather than rely on a simple rule or formula. The brother of Jared showing up with sixteen ordinary stones — his best idea, imperfect as it was — and asking God to make them work. And God did.

Revelation in Real Time

And then the Doctrine and Covenants… (I thought the Old Testament was wild, but honestly the D&C gives it a run for its money!) Polygamy introduced, practiced, then reversed — what was once considered ordained of God later considered sin. The race and priesthood ban put in place, then lifted over a century later. Revelations given, then revised. Policies changing. People asking questions that had never been asked before and getting answers that sometimes changed later.

God leading imperfect people through uncertainty in real time. And out of all of that mess, somehow, a church was built that has lasted nearly two centuries and grown to millions of members worldwide.

The more I read, the more it seemed like becoming was rarely about having every answer beforehand. It was about sincerely seeking God, using the agency He had given you, and moving forward in faith.

Back to the Very Beginning

Over 2,400 pages later, when I finally made it to the Pearl of Great Price, I found myself back with Eve.

At the beginning of this process, the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis had made me feel boxed out. The family order seemed painfully clear: male and female, commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. But reading the account in Moses felt completely different to me.

This time, the thing that stood out to me most wasn’t gender. It was agency.

Art by Carly White

In order for humanity to actually move forward — in order for there to be children and growth and human life at all — Eve had to choose to step into something uncertain and consequential. Remaining exactly as they were would have meant no posterity, no progression, no human story. God gave Adam and Eve the ability to choose, knowing full well that the path forward would require uncertainty, discernment, and stepping into the unknown.

And through all of it… The mess, the complexity, the things that didn’t fit neatly into any expected mold…

God still stayed.

And Then It Hit Me

In Moses 3, Eve I noticed described as a helpmeet — someone whose presence makes creation and family possible in a way it simply could not happen otherwise. As I sat with that word, I thought about the women who will make this possible for us. Our egg donor, who will share her genetics — the biological building blocks of our child’s life — so that Ryan or I can have a child that is truly, biologically ours. Our gestational carrier, who will open her life for nine months to grow and deliver our baby into the world.

Women whose sacrifice, agency, and generosity will be woven into the very first chapter of our family’s story.

And I had the most fascinating realization…

That it’s still the same order.

Male and female, still coming together to create life.

Just not in the way anyone expected.

What We Were Made For

As I cross-referenced this second account of Adam and Eve, I found myself flipping back to a verse in 2 Nephi that I had underlined earlier in the process.

“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

Ryan and I genuinely believe that having a family will bring us joy — the deep, soul-level kind that this scripture says is the whole point of being here. Reading those words, after everything I had read, felt like something being confirmed rather than corrected.

Like the longing we have to build a family, to bring life into the world, to love someone who is ours—is exactly what we were made for.

Scripture References & Sources

• Matthew 7:7 (KJV) — “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”

• John 1:46 — “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

• Luke 1:26–35 — The birth of Jesus and Joseph’s role as stepfather

• 1 Nephi 2:1–4 — Lehi’s family leaving Jerusalem based on a dream

• 1 Nephi 4:6–18 — Nephi commanded to kill Laban

• Ether 3:1–6 — The brother of Jared and the sixteen stones

• Doctrine and Covenants 132 — The revelation on plural marriage

• Official Declaration 2 (1978) — The lifting of the race and priesthood ban

• Moses 3:18 — Eve described as a helpmeet

• Moses 5:10–11 — Adam and Eve’s testimonies after the Fall

• 2 Nephi 2:25 — “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy”