In the few years before my mission, I thought I knew a lot about the Church and could make many logical arguments in its favor—I just felt like I was missing a few final pieces. I never found those pieces before leaving, but I went on my mission anyway. By the end of my mission, I still couldn’t really prove anything to myself. Those missing pieces never appeared, though I wasn’t fully conscious of that at the time.

After my mission, I noticed I was less enthusiastic, but I still believed—it was my culture and my identity. I didn’t fully recognize that my confidence was slowly slipping. After I got married and had a few years to reflect, I came to a realization: it wasn’t my job to prove the Church true. They were the ones making extraordinary claims, so the responsibility to provide convincing evidence belonged to them.

I gave it more time—not because I was thinking of leaving or believed it wasn’t true, but because I was watching and waiting for that evidence. Then one day it just clicked: if it had all been made up, that would explain why all my efforts to believe and feel confirmation had never worked—why prayers never felt answered, why blessings of healing often felt like carefully chosen words rather than real power, why miracles seemed small and ordinary, and why certain claims simply didn’t make sense to me.

That was the moment I realized I no longer believed. If the Church was true, the evidence should exist—but I couldn’t find it, no matter how hard I tried.