My Story

I can't give some identifying details because I am still underground with my disaffection. Only a few friends and my husband know about it. I am not sure this will be very interesting or very well written(wink,wink) but I am going to try my best.

I was born LDS. My dad is a life-long member and my mom converted. Growing up we lived in two different worlds. My dad's side of the family were church-goers and very devout ones at that. My mom's side of the family didn't go to church, they were not religious in any way. They were drinkers and smokers and gamblers and they were also kind and hardworking. My dad's family was also kind and hard working but they were more reserved and quiet. I think this helped my parents so that they weren't too strict with us. We did have to go to church every Sunday, unless we were sick. We couldn't watch R-Rated movies but every once in awhile they made exceptions(Schindler's List comes to mind). They didn't care if we drank coke or pepsi in fact those were staples in our home. They didn't care if we wore tank tops or had our ears pierced more than once. They didn't seem to think those things mattered in determining ones commitment to church. Anyway that's a little background.

I have never had a testimony. Plain and simple. I always wanted one. I didn't like not being like my friends and my parents and my siblings. I would listen to church music and pray my heart out but I never got any "burning in my bosom" type feelings. I tried reading the BoM but until recently I could never get past 2nd Nephi. I have now gotten past Alma but not any further. I didn't get it. Why didn't I see what everyone else I knew saw. That this was the greatest book on the face of the earth. I found it boring and uninspiring and I never felt good while reading it. If anything I felt worse and worse the more I read. Finally, last year I just gave up. But let me back up a few years to college. My first year of college I was drunk with freedom. I lived in a dorm. A coed dorm no less. I had no curfew, I had no one to answer to and I had no one making me go to church, so I never went. Also for the first time in my life, guys were noticing me. I had the second kiss of my life and also my first sexual experience. Totally out of curiousity. I was just dying to know what sex was like. I knew I wasn't supposed to experience sex before I was married but I didn't care. The curiosity was too great. I felt guilty and the guy was an ass hole but I don't think I regret it now but I did for a long time. Good old mormon guilt. But I never confessed my sin. I was not comfortable with talking to any male bishop about something so private. So I just kept it too myself.

After that first year I didn't go back to that school. Instead I moved back home and got a job. So I started going to church again. I went for my parents and I was also hoping I could finally get that testimony I had craved back in High School. It didn't happen and instead I started having these little doubts. Why was the WoW so important. I had tried alcohol by this point and I was still a good person so I didn't get what the big deal was. Some of the best people I knew were drinkers(my mom's family) and loved their morning coffee. I also didn't understand why, if a woman wanted it, she couldn't have the priesthood. Then there was the priesthood ban. I had no idea why they ever had the rule that black people couldn't hold the priesthood and no one seemed to even think it was a big deal anymore. "It's all in the past" I'd hear. And finally there was the way homosexuals were treated. They were sinners according to the church, we were to love them and hate the sin but I thought that was dumb. I never thought it was bad for someone to be gay. I shelved all of those things. They wouldn't help me build my testimony and I was tired of trying to rationalize them so I shoved them to the back of my mind. My parents started asking me if I wanted to get my Patriarchal Blessing. Since I had this "sin" that I hadn't been forgiven for and since I kind of believed in the power of discernment, I just kind of sidestepped the discussion and they eventually stopped bringing it up. I never got that PB.

A couple of years went by and I decided it was time to move out of my parent's house again. I moved into an apartment building by the school I was now attending. Once again, I stopped going to church. Partly because I worked on Sundays and partly because I just didn't feel like it. I would occasionally go to church when I went home to visit my parents but that's it. Soon I met someone. Someone who I could talk to and be myself with. He wasn't LDS so I did try to resist for awhile. But he liked me. LDS men never did. They didn't like my liberalness, they didn't like that I wasn't the cookie cutter mormon woman so I was invisible to them. So I decided to just follow my heart and I let myself fall in love with this nonmormon man. My parents were concerned. But they never stood in my way. When I told them I was getting married they supported me but they also started praying that my husband would eventually be converted. Heck for a long time I even prayed for that, even though I wasn't all that sure I even believed it all. But I wanted to be safe and so I hoped and prayed that someday he would "see the light" and then we could seal our marriage in the temple.(I'm trying not to gag as I write that)

My husband and I had a deal. If he came to church with me than I had to go with him to his church once in awhile. I thought cool and my mom said "Please don't convert". My husband always asked me questions about the church. Eventually he started asking about the things I had pushed to the back of my mind. "Why can't women have the priesthood" "Why did they deny black men the priesthood" and one I hadn't even allowed myself to consider. "Why do they call your church the one true church?" I could never give him an answer that would satisfy him. He saw right through all the pat answers like "It's God's Will" and "Women get to have the babies and be the nurterers(again much gagging)" They sounded so silly to him and I worried that I wasn't explaining things right. I told him he should call my dad. He didn't because he was afraid my family would think he was being insincere and trying to start trouble. By this time I had given birth to our first daughter. And my doubts were starting to creep back in to where it was getting hard to ignore them. But I still tried.

One week about a year after we had our second daughter, I was sitting in church and they were having yet another lesson on Temple Marriage and Eternal Families. I had heard it all before and largely ignored it. I had serious doubts that God would keep me away from my family in the afterlife just because of where I got married and who I married. For some reason it really hit me this time. I started feeling sick and like everyone was staring at me and thinking "Poor her, she won't be with her husband and daughters in heaven. We should pity her" I don't know if anyone really did that but I walked out of church that day knowing I wouldn't be back any time soon. I was just so sick of it all. Sick of being told constantly that I didn't have a "forever" family. Sick of constantly hearing the judgemental attitude about gay people. Sick of all the silly rules I had to follow to be considered a good little mormon woman. I had had enough. But I decided before I gave up completely I would give the BoM one more chance. I would finish it and do the Moroni's promise and see if I got any confirmation that would be so intense and powerful to make me forget all my doubts and allow me to be a full and active member of the LDS church. I also started going to LDS websites like FAIR, LDStalk and Mormonchic to see if there were any people out there like me who are still faithful church members. I made many TBM LDS friends from my endeavors and a few unorthodox members like myself. I was starting to think I could make this work. Then the bottom dropped. Someone ...Someone showed me some things Brigham Young had said about black people in the Journal of Discourses. I had never seen this before. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Brigham Young was a freakin racist. I don't care if it was normal for the time, I don't care. If he was truly a prophet of God, why would he say such things. Curse of Cain bullshit. Unseemly and uncouth. Bullshit. I lost all faith and hope that he ever spoke for God. The God I knew would never tell someone that these things were the truth. The God I knew would not want any of his children to be mistreated and enslaved. God does not hate. It hit me really hard. If I believed what Brigham Young had said, then that would mean that my own husband and my two beautiful daughters were cursed and unloved by God. Not possible. They are the best people and the kindest most generous people. My husbands family are all sweet, kind, decent, hardworking people. I never doubted for a second that God loves them just as much as he loves me.

Then someone sent me a link to NOM. I immediatley felt comfortable there. I had finally found people who could understand where I am coming from. They get it! From there I found The View From the Foyer and now Further Light and Knowledge. I found support and I also started finding out other things that just cemented for me that this church, was not what I thought it was or what I wanted it to be. I found out about BoA and the truth about the Polygamy revelations. I never knew Joseph Smith had over 30 wives and I didn't know that he took wives that were already married to other men. I learned about the Kinderhook plates and read yet more racist things by past GA's.

So I decided to just make my break from church permanent. I still let my VT's come over but I never said anything about why I didn't go to church. I'd just smile and nod and try to steer the conversation to other things. Thanks to my parents, we still get missionaries once in awhile but we are pretty good at distracting them from the reason they came to see us. I haven't told anyone in my extended family. They would be crushed if they knew. Even though they weren't as strict as some LDS TBM's are, they would still take it really hard and they would be devastated because in their minds, we would be lost to them for all eternity. I can't bear to do that to them. I know there might come a day when I will have to tell them but I am seriously hoping I will never have to.

Well that's all for now. I am sure there are things I forgot and I know that this probably wasn't the most well written post but it was from my heart and it is true. It's not easy to write these things. Losing my faith wasn't easy. But now the whole world has opened up to me. My guilt over past "sins" is gone. I know that all I need to do in this life is be a good, kind person. I am still a christian. My belief in God was never contigent on my belief in Mormonism. Maybe I am still fooling myself. Maybe I'm not. All I know is that I am finally at a place in my life where I am comfortable with myself and aside from my PMSing days, I am happier then I have been probably since I was a child. I have no desire to make anyone think like me. I want everyone to believe whatever they want, whether that is in God, Science, Nature, Jesus, or nothing at all. It's all good as far as I'm concerned. Just be good to each other.