Warning: This blog contains religious matters

When I was in high school, I told some of my friends I wanted to live in Utah when I married. I thought it would be a nice safe place for me to raise my kids. My friend Jody laughed the very next day when we were watching Channel One (the high school morning news program we watched in home room every morning) and the program revolved around the gang problem in Utah. I don't think I thought that ever again. Especially after my first semester at BYU. It was then I decided "I will never live in Utah."

Well, I didn't plan for it to turn out this way. Usually, if you say something aloud such as this (or that you will never marry a redhead), it happens to you. I married a guy from Texas, I'm from St. Louis, and we can't seem to get out of Salt Lake City. We didn't choose to live here. We just sort of ended up here. And it hasn't been horrible. In fact, I've grown to like it here--especially my neighborhood with its abundance of kids. And I honestly don't see many gang members.

But it was the Mormons that turned me off. Sure, I'm Mormon. But that doesn't mean I want all my neighbors to be. I like being different sometimes, but here, my religion makes me just like everybody else (for the most part). And there's something different about Mormons in other parts of the country. They seem to stick together more. But I really am very happy here in Herriman, Utah.

Until Wednesday, when Bianca came home from kindergarten and asked me straight out, "Mom, are people who don't go to church bad?" I couldn't believe it.

I asked, "Did somebody tell you that?"

"Yeah." Turns out, she had seen someone smoking a cigarette and a discussion with a friend turned into this statement. Maybe I should reconsider this LDS-based private school . . . well, I would, but for the fact that she's reading after one week in the "reading group" at her kindergarten.

I immediately told her that there are good and bad people who go to church, and there are good and bad people who don't go to church. Going to church or not doesn't make you good or bad. Neither does smoking or not. Do I want Bianca to smoke? No. But that doesn't mean that this person they saw smoking is bad.

I worry that this is the kind of thing she's going to hear over and over again if we stay here. That if this child doesn't go to our church, he or she is bad. Or that she shouldn't play with this child. That's the exact opposite of what I want her to learn and the opposite of what Christ himself would want you to do.

Guess what? I grew up in a part of the country where I was the one people didn't want their kids to play with because I was Mormon. I know how it feels, but I hope I would feel this way regardless.