Description

"Come Unto Me, Out of the Silence" is the deeply personal journal of a gay Latter-day Saint man's year-long pilgrimage back to faith — not the institutional faith of worthiness interviews and conditional love, but a direct, unmediated relationship with his Savior. Written anonymously from inside the pews, the temple, the closet, and the wreckage of a mixed-orientation marriage, it is offered as a guide and companion to the healing program found at on the Dear Forrest website.

The book begins where the author's own journey ended: with a letter. Years ago, while still rebuilding his life in truth, the author was sent a "Dear Thomas" letter — a well-meaning piece of LDS counsel whose theology of endure, suppress, perform, and wait-for-the-resurrection-to-fix-what-mortality-broke landed not as inspiration but as a grenade in a room where the walls were still being rebuilt. Rather than regress, he sat down and wrote his own letter — not a rebuttal, but a letter to himself, in the voice he needed to hear, grounded in the Christ he had come to know. That letter took a year to write. By the time it was finished, it had become a map.

Chapter 1, "Dear Forrest: A Letter to a Gay Believer," is that map's destination — the plain declaration that you can be Mormon and gay, that these are not contradictions, that Christ did not make a mistake when He made you, and that the Savior who numbers the hairs on your head did not accidentally wire your heart to love the way it loves. It is a letter about laying down shame, about refusing to confuse the voice of institution with the voice of the Lord, and about a Restoration vast enough — and a continuing revelation real enough — to hold gay Latter-day Saints exactly as they are. It names the inward storms honestly: the seismic fracturing of a self forced to live at war with its own nature, the slow illness of shame metastasizing through decades of silence, the prayers that felt like they hit the ceiling. And it answers them with the only theology that actually heals: perfect love casts out fear — His love, not yours. Self-acceptance is not pride. The body is not a defect to be endured until resurrection. The Ninth Article of Faith is not decorative. The Savior is not waiting behind a handbook.

Chapters 2 through 13 walk the road that leads to that destination. Adapted from recovery literature and reimagined for the spiritual and emotional needs of gay Latter-day Saint men, the twelve healing steps move through Honesty, Hope, Trust in God, Truth, Confession, Change of Heart, Humility, Seeking Forgiveness, Restitution and Reconciliation, Daily Accountability, Personal Revelation, and Service. Each chapter is an act of dismantling shame and rebuilding identity in the light of a Savior whose arms have been outstretched the entire time — not behind a worthiness interview, but at the trailhead. Chapter 14 invites readers to write their own story, reclaiming narrative identity from the institution. Chapter 15 closes with crisis resources, therapy guidance, and next steps for those still in the dark.

This is not doctrine. It is not scripture. It is a fellow traveler's account of the road, left at the trailhead for whoever comes next — a hand extended from one believer who walked through the fire and came out with his testimony intact, to every gay Latter-day Saint who has knelt in prayer and wondered if God was listening. He was. He is. He always will be. Read alongside the Come Unto Me program, the book offers hope, healing, and the slow, sacred removal of shame, one honest step at a time — and a way home that runs not through performance, but through the direct, personal love of Jesus Christ.