I was fourteen when I joined the Church.

Yes, fourteen, which has to be the most self-conscious age for teenage girls.

The first time I went to church, I was too afraid to even raise my head high enough to see if there were other kids my age. I was so convinced that everyone was staring at me that I spent sacrament meeting staring at the floor, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

It could have been a disaster, but it turned out to be the time in my life when I was shown the most grace.

Maybe it’s because our Connecticut ward was tiny, and desperate for new members, and maybe it’s because I was just really cool, but the youth in the ward went out of their way to make me feel special, and to make sure I knew that they wanted me. Within a few weeks, I was singing in the roadshow, and when I was baptized, almost all of the teenagers in the ward showed up to support me.

This all happened years before President Hinckley famously said that new members needed “a friend, a responsibility, and ‘nurturing with the good word of God,’” but the youth and youth leaders in my ward seemed to understand that instinctively. When I told the other girls at Young Women’s how excited I was that our new church was just down the street from the mall because it was really convenient to go there right after church, they didn’t jump all over me and tell me I was a sinner because I was going to the mall on Sunday. One of them pulled me aside later and said, “You probably don’t know this yet, Shelah, but most Mormons don’t shop on Sunday.” When the Bishop got wind that I had mooned the boys’ car on the way to Youth Conference, he did call me into his office to tell me to knock it off, but he did it with so much love and humor that I didn’t even realize I was being chastened. My Young Women’s leaders were quick to put an arm around my shoulder and ask me how I was doing, or tell me I looked pretty, or to encourage my comments and my growing testimony.

Joining the church, at this most self-conscious time in my life, did wonders for my confidence.

But I also worried I could never catch up with my peers who had been born in the church. I’d never know as much as they did or have testimonies as strong as theirs were, despite how lucky they told me I was.

Now, nearly three decades after my baptism, I’m the parent of two kids who are about the same age as I was when I joined the church. I’m starting to see what my friends meant when they said that I was lucky. I wasn’t lucky because I’d had a free pass to taste wine and coffee or to have a boyfriend before I was sixteen. Choosing to change my life and put it on a completely different path by joining the church meant that I had to do the hard work of finding out that it was true. I had to ask and pray and seek, and I knew what that change of heart felt like. I see my kids, and the other good kids who are their friends, and most of them have had the church as a constant in their lives. It’s been primary songs and family prayer and General Conference every six months forever. So it only makes sense that for them, gaining a testimony has been more gradual.

A few months ago, my son attended EFY for the first time. He loved the dances, the late nights hanging out with the guys, and the freedom of being on a college campus for a few days. He also enjoyed the classes, but a few weeks after he got home, he said that one thing that had been hard for him was that he got the sense that everyone was walking around feeling the Spirit and crying the whole time, while he had only started to feel it a little bit the last few days. We had a little talk about how that experience would help him recognize what the Spirit felt like so he could cultivate that feeling in the future, but I couldn’t help but contrast this, one of his first experiences with having an authentic spiritual experience, which left him feeling a little underwhelmed, with my own, where my faith was encouraged at every turn. This kid, born and raised in the covenant, doesn’t get kid gloves convert treatment.

And maybe he should.

My daughter has different issues, reading between the lines of everything her seminary teacher says and balking at rules she thinks are stupid; faith doesn’t come easily for her, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t trying. But when her peers in church classes say that girls who wear short shorts are slutty and that statement goes unchecked by leaders, or lessons perseverate on presenting one side of controversial topics that she’s wrestling with in her heart, she ends up feeling judged and defeated, which is such a contrast to the gentle teaching by both youth and leaders of my convert experience.

I’m so grateful that the girls in my ward (who weren’t perfect, who I probably wouldn’t eve have been friends with if fate had not thrown us together– and how glad I am for that) wanted to shepherd me along, and were willing to do it even when I made mistakes (I didn’t even tell you about the time I led all the kids in the ward in a co-ed skinny dip at the beach– and got caught) or said stupid things, or disagreed with the rules. I’d love to see us model the same generosity to our youth, who are mostly just as green and untested, and as much in need of friendship and nurturing as I was when I stepped from the waters of baptism.