Chapter One- What I learned from Mormonism and leaving it

Today is July 30, and I am reviewing my blog.

In this review, I decided I want to say some more things. Although, I will keep my original post below.

Here is what I want to add:

Truth is truth and needs nothing from anyone.

As soon as it needs something, it is no longer truth.

Now my original post:

I was a fully believing, and obediently striving Mormon, up until I was nearly 36 years old. Steve lived with similar faith and determination as I, and stopped believing the same week as I; he was 43. After 6 years of coming out of the fog of that faith, we consider our time in it as remarkably controlling, psychologically manipulating, and harmful. During our believing time, we did not see things that way at all. Which is significant for me to point out, because as a Mormon, I held a great deal of confidence in my faith being nothing but good. And I felt happy and good about my life and it’s direction so often while in the Church. I’m guessing that at about 25% of the time however, I also felt brutally depressed. That depression always had the narrative that I would never be good enough. Depression to the point of wanting to take my life, happened to me on too many to count occasions. Steve spent most of his time in the Church feeling overwhelmed by all that was being asked of him, and battling severe anxiety and other related medical issues. It is clear to Steve and I now, that our perspective within the Church was one in which we thought we could see the “big picture”, and we knew most of the answers. At least [we thought] we knew the most important answers. In reality, our lives were traditionally/emotionally/psychologically/culturally/spiritually/systematically dictated to us since birth. Our lives and paths had been prescribed to us before we even knew about them ourselves. And we really had no frame of reference to know any different. Today, 6 years into knowing different, we see that we had actually been trapped in a prison of perception.

While in the Mormon Church/Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we devoted thousands of hours to our worship services, and other church service work and practices that were prescribed to us. We spent roughly around $150,000-$175,000, in tithing and other Church related donations. We gave it all happily and willingly. We were running on the treadmill of exaltation. But one of our greatest sacrifices were the loss of an ability to build our own identity and path. And our children were suffering from the same issues. We certainly were taught and conditioned in some positive behaviors and systems like: love, compassion, service, family, community, integrity and honesty. But in order to grow within those values, we needed to leave the source from which we were receiving them.

We rather suddenly stopped believing in the Church after reading a mormon apologist’s blogpost (https://www.gregtrimble.com/so-you-think-the-book-of-mormon-is-a-fraud/ ) that just did not sit right. That led to devouring this website: http://www.mormonthink.com/ and this one: https://cesletter.org/ Books and other sources followed as we devoured new information previously unknown to us. It was a deep dive into the rabbit hole. For months. It was clear that this church was not what we thought it had been. It was devastating for us, to say the least. When we stopped believing, it felt like a death to us. We felt this heavy grief for at least a few months. The grief fell heavy on us because it was a death of our identities, our community, our paths, our direction, our “knowledge” and more.

If our lives had been a brick building, it felt as though we were standing back looking at that building after a major earthquake. The bricks of that building had little form left. We were left doing disaster cleanup, and we didn’t know exactly how to do it. We didn’t know if we needed to keep these bricks of “truth” in our life, or walk away, or what to do.

Ultimately what happened for us was spending the next few years taking the bricks that were left after the disaster, and built a new path with them; not walls. We had to bring in some new materials, and do a lot of learning, but we were able to pave a new way for ourselves and our children.

This new path for us has been illuminating and amazing! We have taken it far and wide. It was scary for us initially to progress on this new path. Really scary, if we’re being honest. And we did some grieving in the beginning. But it has amazed us to come to realize how much we did not know. And how wrong we were about a lot of things. And how coming to understand new perspectives has healed some wounds, and made life so much better. 

Steve and I are grateful we left when we did for many reasons, but mostly for our marriage and children. Our kids are glad we left too. Sometimes we wish it had been sooner. It has been an amazing 6 years out so far. The first year was the toughest, and darkest. But not as bad as being in the church was for us. And each successive year got progressively much much better. 

We know this is still a journey. And we know there is still more to learn than we can imagine. But we feel at peace with where we are at on our journey. And we are enjoying it much more than our previous life. We now see our past as a strange old life, that we would never want to go back to.