Honest, Free, and Whole

I did not know Jess Hardiman before this episode. She found her way to this podcast through a text message to my parents, a testimony she bore in their ward on Fast Sunday, and what I can only describe as divine intervention. From the moment we started talking I knew this conversation was going to be something special. Jess is thirty-four years old, holds a doctorate degree, has raised her two younger sisters from childhood, done humanitarian work internationally, and just recently came back to the gospel of Jesus Christ after more than twenty years away. Her story is one of honesty, resilience, letting go, and finding the most grounded and whole version of herself through Christ. If you are carrying something heavy right now, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• How Jess carried years of loss, responsibility, and resilience without realizing Christ was already with her

• The moment she got on her knees for the first time and felt the weight physically lift

• Why honesty — with God, with others, and with herself — became the most transformative gift of her conversion

• How letting go of shame and embracing grace changed the way she sees herself and everyone around her

• What spiritual hygiene means and why it is the foundation of everything else

Jess Hardiman grew up in rural Utah, the child of divorced parents, moving twelve times through elementary school alone. At twelve she moved in with her father. At eighteen she lost her older sister in a car accident. In her early twenties she received a phone call from the Division of Child and Family Services that her two youngest sisters needed a home — and she stepped up, taking full legal custody of them at ages seven and nine while she was still figuring out her own life.

Across her twenties she earned her bachelor's degree, her master's, and her doctorate — all while raising her sisters, coaching basketball, working as an EMT, and eventually building a career in international humanitarian programming with a nonprofit called Youthlink. She has worked in Nepal, India, and multiple other countries. She has loved deeply and lost repeatedly. She has grieved grandparents, a sister, friends, and a ten-year marriage.

She is thirty-four years old. And she says she feels like she has already lived multiple lives.

One of the most moving things Jess shared was the realization — looking back over twenty-plus years away from any formal faith — that Christ had been with her the whole time. She just did not know what to call it.

She described going on drives alone, feeling the weight of everything she was carrying — her sisters, her school, her grief, her work, all of it — and begging for relief she could not even name. She was not praying. She was not attending church. She had drifted from the faith she briefly knew as a child. And yet the weight would lift. Something would ease. Something she could not explain.

It was not until she knelt in prayer for the first time in her adult life — after years of spiritual exploration, after a breathwork session in which she felt a distinct impression to open her scriptures, after finding the pink hand-sewn quad her grandmother had made for her when she was eight — that she finally felt what had always been there.

The weight lifted. Completely. Like putting down something you have been carrying for years and finally feeling your arms go light.

She said it simply: Christ Airlines is light for a reason. You give him the luggage and he takes it.

Jess's grandmother was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints her entire life. She prayed for her grandchildren constantly, even when none of them were attending. She gave Jess a quad when she was about eight years old, hand-sewn in pink fabric with stitching that is barely holding together now — because Jess still uses it. Still carries it in that same case.

It was that quad that came to her mind in the meditative moment when she felt the prompting to open the scriptures. She found it after years of not knowing where it was. She opened it to Alma. She did not fully understand what she was reading. And she sobbed.

She texted friends and told them she wanted to come to church. They were confused — and completely welcoming. Every sacrament meeting she attended she heard exactly what she needed to hear at exactly the right time. Within a month of that first meditative moment she was attending church. Within two months she was endowed. A few months after that she and her husband were sealed in the temple.

She describes herself as a reconvert — but says it feels like being a convert for the first time.

If there is one word that runs through Jess's entire testimony it is honesty. Not just honesty with others — though that has transformed her relationships in profound ways — but honesty with herself and with God.

She talked about praying before hard conversations. Inviting the Spirit into difficult moments with her husband or family members. Asking for help being honest even when it feels scary. And what she has found every time she chooses that honesty — even with a lump in her throat — is freedom. A lightness. A feeling of being aligned with something true.

She also talked about the honesty that comes in prayer — being real with God about where she actually is. Not performing spirituality. Not pretending she has it together. Coming to Him and saying: I am doing my best and I need grace here because this is hard. And finding that He meets her exactly there.

She said something I will carry with me for a long time: you cannot fully access the atonement in a lie. Honesty is the door. And on the other side of that door is freedom.

One of the most tender things Jess talked about was the grief that comes with becoming a new version of yourself. She has tattoos that represent her spiritual exploration before she found the gospel. She has friendships that did not survive her conversion. She has family members who were angry and confused and hurt. And she has had to hold all of that with grace and patience while also holding the joy of who she is becoming.

She gave herself permission to grieve the old versions. Because that is real — when you change, there are people and places and habits and identities you leave behind. And even when you are walking toward something beautiful it is okay to feel the weight of what you are walking away from.

What she has found on the other side is the most confident, most honest, most grounded version of herself she has ever known. Not because her life is suddenly easy — it is not — but because she knows who she is. She is a daughter of God. She is rooted. And no one else's opinion of her new version gets to take that away.

Jess introduced a concept in this conversation that I loved immediately — spiritual hygiene. Just like physical hygiene is the daily practice that keeps your body healthy, spiritual hygiene is the daily practice that keeps your spirit nourished. And she treats it with the same consistency and intentionality.

For her that looks like slow mornings. Music. Temple attendance. Prayer that is honest and specific. Weekly check-ins with her husband. Weekly check-ins with herself. And protecting her capacity — being willing to tell people she loves them but does not have space right now, and to schedule a time to show up for them fully when she does.

She talked about the days she loses that intention — the days life moves too fast, humanitarian crises demand her attention, and she finds herself frazzled and emotional and burning through reserves she does not have. And she described the discipline of coming back. Of reorganizing priorities. Of choosing rest in the Lord rather than just pushing through.

In the temple recently she prayed and told the Lord she needed rest in Him. And the impression that came back was simple and direct: you are not taking rest. That is on you to choose.

Agency is not just about the big decisions. It is about choosing rest. Choosing presence. Choosing to slow down long enough to be filled.

I shared something with Jess that one of my seminary students once said — that agency and the atonement are like double A batteries. You have to keep them charged. And when you put them together they become your superpower.

Jess loved that. And she added something that I keep thinking about. She said her capacity to hold space for others — to be the strong one people come to, the person who absorbs the weight of her community — has grown immensely since she came to Christ. Not because she is doing more on her own. But because her roots are deeper. And deep roots can nourish others.

That is the redwood tree ecosystem in action. When our roots are strong and nourished we are not just holding ourselves up. We are feeding the roots beside us. We are giving to people who do not even know they are being given to.

Jess said it beautifully: Christ can solve their problem. I can reflect His light. That is enough.

I want to close with something Jess said at the very end of our conversation that I think is the heart of everything she shared. She said she is excited to keep meeting new versions of herself. To keep learning. To keep shedding what does not serve her and choosing what does. And she hopes everyone listening will look at their own life with pride — because the life you have lived, however messy or hard or nonlinear, is the one God has been working with the whole time.

You are never too far gone. You are never at a level where coming home is not possible. He was already there on every long drive when the weight was too heavy. He was in the pink hand-sewn quad sitting in a drawer waiting to be opened. He was in the sacrament meeting that said exactly what you needed to hear.

He is already there. And when you are ready — however that readiness comes — He will be there for that too.

If this episode spoke to you please share it with someone who needs it today. And if you would like to be a guest on Becoming the Oak Rooted in Christ reach out to me at kendra@becomingtheoak.com.

Until next time — be still, believe, become.