Letter to my Parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

There is no good way to start this letter so here goes... I decided several years ago that I no longer wanted to be part of the LDS church.  I knew that you would find this decision hurtful and I wanted to avoid hurting you so I haven't said anything about my decision.  However, I have found that I have been unintentionally avoiding you so that you wouldn't find out and be disappointed or angry with me.  I am terrible at hiding my feelings or outright lying so I'm sure you have had suspicions.

I don't want to avoid you anymore but I am also afraid of how you will react.  I expect that you will be hurt and upset and I did consider that telling you in a letter instead of in person would be even more hurtful.  While I don’t want to hurt you anymore, in the end I just couldn’t get comfortable with doing this in person.  This is based on my experiences with how you have treated others who have stopped going to church and how you have treated me.  I realize that your perspective of some events may be different than mine so I want to share with you my perspective so that you understand my choice.  When I was still very young before I got baptized, Mom told me I couldn't play with JS because her mom and dad weren't taking her to church.  I also remember coming home from Primary, crawling under the dining room table and crying while I prayed for JS not to be sent to hell because she didn't go to church.  I also remember very well the first time I told you I wasn't going to church, you tried then to convince me to return to church and it was a very painful experience for me.  You wrote me accusatory and threatening letters that just broke my heart and I had to stop responding and engaging in further conversation on the topic.  When I called with the happy news that I was engaged but would not get married in the temple, Dad yelled at me until I was in tears.  

I don’t want a repeat of those experiences and I most certainly don’t want DS to experience anything like that.  I also don’t want to have the church pushed on him or me.  I need to be clear because we are planning to come visit this year and I don’t want to get involved in any arguments or angry conversations.  If I have any reason to believe that you would take advantage of a family visit to argue for my return to church, I will not bring my family to visit.  This may sound harsh but I feel it is better to be upfront about it now then to have misunderstandings later.

One of my reasons for sending a letter so far in advance of our visit is that you will have time to work through your feelings.  It is my hope that you will come to understand that while I am no longer part of the church, I am still your loving daughter who wants very much to be loved in return.  I expect that we will have opportunities to talk between now and our visit and I hope those conversations will be pleasant.  However, I will not respond to any letters or phone calls that do not respect my choices and are anything but loving.  

I will be honest that I’m hesitant to discuss the reasons I have chosen not to be a part of the church but I understand that you may want to know more.  I will try to briefly explain but this is intended simply to answer questions you might have; it is not intended to start a discussion.  I understand that you may want to try to convince me otherwise but I'm really not interested.  Based on my past experiences, discussions become arguments which only end in hurt feelings on both sides.  Perhaps I am putting too much emphasis on this point but it is only because it is very important to me.

Both DH and I were not happy in the church but still tried for years to gain testimonies just so that we could be accepted by our families.  The problem is that we never felt that we were good enough on our own which left us feeling inadequate, unworthy, etc.  Not a good way to go through life.  by simply choosing not to go to church and not to accept teachings that were contrary to our beliefs we have been more at peace with ourselves and happier.  We don't want DS to go through most of his life not quite sure of himself and always trying to please others instead of just being himself.  So, we must be the examples of how to live with peace and acceptance of oneself.

I do want to make it clear that my main reason for leaving the church is that I disagree with many of the teachings.  I know that you have always had a concern that I was reading "anti-mormon" literature which you assume is nothing but lies.  I am conscientious enough to check references and make sure that what I'm reading is factual.  Even so, my decision was primarily based upon the following reasons (not a comprehensive list).  

1. The church's doctrine that polygamy is an eternal principle and that there will be polygamy in heaven.  It always sounded more like hell to me.

2. Tied in with the church's doctrine about polygamy is the notion that if family members are not faithful enough to make it to the celestial kingdom they will be replaced and the faithful will be rewarded with even more family.  The idea that I could just be replaced as if I never existed at all always bothered me and didn't seem very loving at all.

3. I do not believe that a family must be sealed in the temple in order for them to be together in the next life.  No ceremony can supersede time spent lovingly building relationships between two people and a family.  What will bind us together in the next life is the love that we have for each other.

4.  Women are not treated as equals in the church.  I know that there are a lot of talks that say otherwise but this is a case of "actions speak louder than words".  It was in the way that I was treated as a possession of my father as a child and then a possession of my husband when I was married.  I was not asked if I would take a calling or give a talk until permission had been obtained from my father or my husband.

5. Another indication that women are not treated as equal is the double standard.  I loath the statement "boys will be boys" because it means that boys are allowed to behave badly.  When my brothers did something to hurt me, they were not punished.  Instead, I was asked what I had done to provoke them or counseled on what I should do to avoid getting hurt in the future.  I learned self defense to protect myself from my own brothers.

6. Because I believe that discrimination of any kind is wrong, I take issue with the church's support of discriminatory laws or practices.  I understand the argument that the church has the right to deny membership to those who do not meet the standards set by the church and they are simply supporting those standards.  I claim the same right and will not support any organization that maintains practices that I believe are wrong.

I do love you and want you to love me and my little family.  It is my sincerest hope that while we may disagree about the church that we can love and respect each other.  That we can visit and have enjoyable conversations and that DS will get to know his grandparents for the loving and kind people they are.

A Letter to my Parents - Prologue

My mother is in the hospital.  She slipped and fell.  She will be alright but it's brought up a lot of conflicting feelings for me.

I have, over the last 20 years, hidden from her and my father my varying levels of disaffection with the Mormon church.  Anytime I have tried to be honest with them about how I felt, it has been met with judgement and harsh words.  During the last few years my disaffection has turned to disbelief and I am now... gasp! ... an atheist.  I have not told my parents this and I'm so afraid of their reaction that I have not travelled to visit them during this time.  While I'm afraid of them saying cruel things to me, I am more afraid of how they will make my son feel.  He is still young and doesn't really know his grandparents.  He just like the idea of grandparents and wants to go see his.  What if we do go see my parents, they very quickly realize that he is being raised atheist and they freak out?  How is that going to affect him?  What if they go to extremes to try and "save" him from his parents?

With all of this concern weighing on me, I had a moment when I first learned of my mother's fall when a small part of me wished the fall were more serious.  If she passed, I would not have to face her judgement.  I would not have to explain to my son why his grandparents don't want to have anything to do with his parents or possibly even him.  Maybe it sounds heartless of me to think such a thing.  I am human and this pending conflict with my parents is something I wish I could avoid.  Unfortunately, the only way to avoid it is to not visit them until they have passed.  That isn't much better than telling them the truth and getting their response no matter how harsh.

With this in mind, I'm thinking of sending my parents a letter prior to visiting.  In the letter, I want to tell them that I no longer believe and ask them to respect my choices for how I live my life.  I also want to make it clear that if they do not respect my choices, I will be the one breaking off contact for I will not subject my son to their hatefulness.  The next posts will be portions or full drafts of that letter as I work through what I want to say and how I want to say it.  Regardless of how this ends, it will be good to be honest and take a step towards living without fear.

Balanced Gun Control

This week I had lunch with a bunch of coworkers, all of whom happen to be in the US on work visas.  The topic of Syria came up with the questions about whether or not the US was going to go "guns a blazing" into Syria like they did in Iraq.  The conversation was around whether or not the American people could really stomach more war.  These coworkers really have only been in areas of the US that are relatively liberal and not the gun-toting American west.  So, I tried in some way to explain the gun obsessed culture where negotiations are seen as weak and bullies are idolized.

The reality is that the US is really in a tough spot.  We don't have unlimited capabilities to fight in so many places but we act like we are the police officers of the world and the only ones who can accomplish any good.    Our president had to go and talk about red lines and now not only is he going to be seen as weak if he doesn't do anything but the conservative contingent is going to claim that America will look weak if we don't do anything.  No one is going to think; "Oh, Syria is an impossible situation for America to get into we should just stay out of it."

A few months ago, I was appalled at some of the posts that I saw on Facebook after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings.  From my perspective, it seems that my very own friends and family were more concerned about the government taking away their guns than they were about this tragedy that had just happened.  It was as if they were saying "This is horrible, now the government has another excuse to take away our guns" instead of "This is horrible, those poor children and their heartbroken families".

I recognized that I was so angry about this response to the tragedy that I needed to take my thoughts elsewhere before I posted something that would be hurtful to those I love.  Without really intending for it to happen, I've let some time pass and the anger has subsided.  This is a good thing because problems don't get solved when people are angry.  Not to say that I have any magic bullet to solve anything but I recognize that with my anger subsiding my reason and ability to understand other perspectives have returned.

With regards to the gun control issue, I would really like to see a balanced approach and there has to be a basic understand of a few things.
1. Laws are in place to define what is acceptable in a society; regulation and enforcement of the laws is the responsibility of the government.  If we as a society want the protection afforded by good laws we have to allow the government to enforce and regulate.
2. Freedom is not the absence of laws but is the ability to choose the laws that will govern us.  We make choices about the laws by voting for our representatives and in some cases voting for certain laws.  We will not lose our freedom so long as we do not give up our right to vote and use that right wisely.  In other words, know what you are voting for, educate yourself and those around you and vote in every election.
3. Democracy is compromise.  For all of us to live together in this society in peace, we have to compromise. Sometimes the laws I support will be accepted and sometimes the laws you support will be accepted and even though we disagree we both have to live by the laws which are put into place.

I would like to see laws enacted around who can buy and sell guns.  Buyers should have background checks, no exceptions.  A small inconvenience to law abiding citizens but a larger hurtle to those who have shown that they can't be trusted with guns in the first place.  This would also require that only licensed dealers can sell guns and they have to keep good records of their inventory.  The analogous set of laws would be those that govern prescription drugs.  We know that prescription drugs can be abused and so they can only be sold by pharmacies and a prescription from a doctor helps to ensure that only those who need the drugs get them.

I would also like to see additional requirements of gun owners.  I think they should have to get licensed and to do so they have to take a gun safety course and demonstrate their understanding of how to handle guns appropriately.  There should also be age restrictions on who can get licensed and handle a gun.  Children are not mature enough to understand the consequences of mishandling a gun and it is up to their parents to give them time to learn that before putting a gun in their hands.  This would be analogous to the requirements that we have in order to drive a car.  Both a car and a gun can be deadly in the wrong or untrained hands so why wouldn't they have similar requirements.

I honestly think the above would be acceptable to all sides of this issue but I don't know that we'll ever get there because people are unwilling to compromise.

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful for...

Thanksgiving 2012, I had planned a Thanksgiving dinner for my oversized extended family and spent too much money on flights to be with said family.  Being an organization freak, I spent my time during dinner making sure things were running on time so that we weren't keeping the kids up too late.  I had even planned some time for family members to express their gratitude.  As this was going on, I stood off to the side, feet hurting and hungry because I hadn't been able to eat yet.  Too busy making sure the people expressing their gratitude stuck to their allotted time and everyone who wanted a chance got a chance.  I was also replenishing food on the serving tables when needed.  The brother who had abused me for most of my childhood took his turn and mid way through he apologized to everyone for the "things he'd done wrong" when he was young.  I was pissed.  I'm certain that my mother had put him up to apologizing because the last time my mom and I had spoken about my inability to get a testimony of the church (Mormon) I had reference the way my brother had treated me growing up.  She had followed up on the conversation with a letter telling me I needed for forgive and forget like she had done.  So, I'm sure my mother was thinking that if my brother apologized I would have no excuse for not forgiving him.  Of course, my brother didn't even have the balls to face me and apologize he did it publicly so that everyone can say what a good man he is but his statements are so generic that they really don't mean anything at all.

For me, this was the beginning of the end.  I realized that I could not keep trying to please my family because all they wanted was to turn me into a soulless automaton who did exactly as I was told by them and the church.  They had no understanding of the effect that my childhood had on me and how damaged I felt.  How the persistent anxiety and guilt had destroyed my health.  I was not a person to them, I was a thing to be controlled.  It wasn't long after that when I had a similar experience at church and the realization that almost everyone who joined this church became like Stepford wives.  I had controlled my son's experience at church by volunteering to be his teacher but soon he was moving to a different class and I wouldn't be his teacher.  After sending him to this new class a couple of times, it became very clear to me that I couldn't subject him to this.  He'd be an automaton by the end of the year.  I stopped attending.  I got involved in some exmormon groups and learned even more about this so called religion.  I've heard all my life that that "The truth shall set you free" ... It sure does.

So, this Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to honor the event that literally changed my life.  I'm grateful for being able to finally see my family's true intentions and begin distancing myself from that destructive behavior.  I'm grateful for learning the truth about a deceptive organization that feeds off the guilt of millions.  I'm grateful to be going through life with less baggage and hope to lighten the load even more in the future.  I'm grateful that I can appreciate all that I have and not feel like God will take it away from me as a learning experience, or punishment or to humble me.  I'm grateful for true friends who accept me for who I am and not for who they think I should be.  I'm grateful for friends who have put up with my weirdness as I tried to sort through my feelings.  I'm grateful for a husband who put up with my attempts at being religious for years even though it really wasn't his thing.  I'm grateful that he even tried to be more religious at times to make me happy and I'm grateful that he was wise enough to know that pretending wouldn't make either of us happy.  I'm grateful that I was able to turn some shitty events in my childhood into motivation to better myself in such a way that I can now support my family in comfort.  I'm grateful that I am finally OK taking credit for the hard work and persistence that was required to create a better life for myself.  I'm grateful for ....

Really, I could keep going but I think I've made my point.  Interestingly enough, this year I feel more sincerely grateful than I ever have.  I think it is a result of not being afraid of losing what I have and not feeling obligated to be grateful (to God specifically).  As I've been writing, I've been trying to think of how to explain this but I just don't have an explanation.  However, I don't need an explanation to know that it feels great!

Living with almost...

When I was a child, I was sexually abused by my brothers or as I used to think for years, almost sexually abused.  They did not actually have sex with me and that has left me in a kind of limbo where I'm not really sure how to feel about what happened to me.  One brother didn't touch me sexually, he would watch me bath or undress when he got the opportunity and he would hold me down and try out different techniques for torturing me.  The other brother would "tickle" me and "accidentally" touch my breasts.  The last time he did it, I actually felt him get a hard-on which seemed to embarrass him and he let me go.  For years, I would tell myself that I was lucky that they didn't do any more than what they did.  I couldn't understand why I struggled so much with my experiences when they "weren't that bad".

In college, when I started getting serious with my now husband, I started having panic attacks when things would get a bit hot and heavy.  I ended up seeing a counselor about it and she was the first person to validate my feelings that I had been sexually abused.  Though there was some suspicion that there might be some repressed memories which were preventing me from healing.  I went through age regression hypnosis and the event that I "remembered", I had never really forgotten.  One day the brother who liked to torture me, decided he wanted to find out what would happen if he suffocated me.  He held me down and covered both my mouth and nose with his hand.  I was probably 11 or 12 and he was 5 years older than me.  His hand easily prevented me from getting any air and I was completely helpless to get him off of me.  What I had forgotten was how terrifying this had been for me.  I'd made jokes about it and minimized it for so many years that I had suppressed not the memory but the emotions.  During this hypnosis session, I remembered how I tried to push him off of me, using all the tricks I had learned from previous incidents to get away from him and did not succeed.  I remembered how I stopped fighting because I didn't have the energy.  I remember my eyesight and hearing fading as my brain started to shut down.  Then I saw the blurry image of another brother's face peering over the shoulder of the brother suffocating me.  He said something but it just sounded like mumbling.  Then my brother let me go.  I ran.  I found myself outside the house sitting on the ground with my back against the house sobbing.  A police car drove past and as I watched it go by I thought about running to the car and telling the police officer what had just happened.  Maybe my brother would get arrested and I'd be free from his torture.  But I didn't think the police officer would believe me.  My own mother didn't believe me when I told her about the abuse when it started a year or two earlier.  I just sat there crying while I watched the police car drive down the street and felt so alone, so helpless, so resigned to my situation.  Sometimes I've wondered if the counselor was a bit disappointed that there wasn't more to it.  But the acknowledgement of how traumatic that experience had been was the first step for me to deal with the panic attacks.  It was suddenly clear that the panic attacks were triggered when I was physically put in a similar position to how I had been when my brother tried to suffocate me.  My counselor taught me how to calm myself down when I panicked.  It basically involved repeatedly reminding myself that I was no longer a child, I was a woman.  I was with the man I loved, not my hated brother and I was safe.  This simple solution worked and getting intimate with my husband hasn't triggered panic attacks since then but it doesn't really help keep the nightmares away.

Some years ago, I started reading more about sexual abuse and how to prevent it.  When I happened upon a website that included a listing of all the different kinds of sexual abuse, I felt amazingly vindicated when I read about voyeurism.  What I had been through had a name and it was considered sexual abuse.  Yes, my counselor from years ago had confirmed that I had been sexually abused but somehow because what I had experienced had not been as severe as it could have been it still felt like almost abused.  I would even tell myself that I was lucky it had not been worse; I could have been molested; I could have been raped.  However, pointing out how fortunate I had been that the abuse had not been worse only left me feeling guilty for continuing to struggle with nightmares, anxiety and other symptoms.

The site that I had happened upon was Darkness 2 Light (d2l.org) and it had so much information that I found helpful.  There was an explanation how there were a number of different factors that contributed to how traumatic sexual abuse was to a particular child.  I had been focused on the fact that I had not been molested and didn't understand why I couldn't just "get over it".  I came to understand that there are a number of factors that play into the amount of trauma experienced.  I had been raised in a very conservative Mormon home where viewing pornography was just as bad as fornication itself and the only thing worse than fornication was murder.  I was essentially my brother's pornography and that made me just as filthy.  It didn't matter that he was watching me without my consent and inspite of my varied attempts to keep him from seeing me.  When I went to my mother about what my brother was doing, she told me of ways I could keep my brother from seeing into my room but didn't do anything to my brother.  I was 10 and it was very clear that it was my responsibility to keep my 15 year-old brother away from me. Over the next 8 years with a 2 year reprieve while my brother served a mission for the Mormon church, I lived constantly looking over my shoulder, learning to dress without showing any skin, checking my walls for new peep holes, covering the ones I'd already found, fixing torn curtains, etc.  In that time, I also heard my dad make statements that it would be better for me to lose my life than give up my virtue (I attempted suicide twice) and that he didn't understand how a woman could get raped when she could run faster with her dress up than a man could run with his pants down (it was supposed to be a joke).  There was also the physical abuse.  My brother was so angry all the time.  It was like he blamed me as well for his inability to control his sexual desires and somehow torturing me made him feel better.  He was smart about it though and made sure that the things he did wouldn't leave a mark.  There was one time when he lost his temper and kicked me hard enough that I could barely walk.  Even then my parents didn't even ask what was wrong with my leg even though my friends at school did.  Maybe they knew and didn't want to have to deal with it.  I certainly wasn't going to say anything.  I knew that they wouldn't do anything about it and the next time I was alone with my brother I'd get it even worse.  Looking at what I went through in it's totality there is no other word for it... it was abuse.  It doesn't matter that others have been abused more or that I was not actually molested.  These were horrible experiences and I have every right to call it what it is... abuse; not almost abuse.

Recently, I read the following blog post on the Not Rape Epidemic and found the experiences described eerily familiar.  Although my brother never came out and threatened to rape me, it was very clear that he had the ability to do it.  Reading this article made me think about how many times I have thought I was lucky that the abuse wasn't worse and prompted me to write about how I have lived with almost abused and how I have felt guilty about being so screwed up by these events when they may seem as "not that bad" considering what others have gone through.  http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/2009/01/not-rape-epidemic.html

Here's the thing... while I'm grateful that my experiences were not worse than they were, I'm not lucky.  I was incredibly unlucky to have been born into a family that was more concerned about appearances than the well being of the children in the family.  I was unlucky to have two brothers who felt that they had a right to use my body for their own pleasures.  I am unlucky to live in a society where abuse in all levels of severity is so prevalent.  As the author of the Not Rape Epidemic article wonders how many women have not been raped, I wonder how many have almost been abused.

Exit - No Reentry

I've left the Mormon church for good this time...Yes, I've left before but not with any real conviction to stay out.  The first time was in college and I stopped going to church because I wanted to sin (the number one reason why other Mormons think you would leave the Mormon church).  Actually, I was sinning, enjoying it and wanted to continue sinning.  After college, I moved across the country to live with my boyfriend and enjoyed living in sin for about 5 years.  It wasn't exactly easy because I did feel a bit guilty about sinning.  But just a bit.  I had come to the realization while I was in college that I really didn't know for sure if the Mormon church was true or not which is really important if you are Mormon.  Since I didn't have that testimony, keeping the other rules didn't really seem as important.  What really bothered me more was that I was lying about my life to my entire family.  That's right, they did not know I was living in sin.  They probably could have figured it out but I don't think they wanted to know the truth so they just didn't bother to look.  For some reason, I value my own honesty very highly and I really didn't like being dishonest.  Perhaps because I've had to keep dirty little secrets all my life and I hate it.  So, I didn't go so far as telling my parents that I was living in sin but I did tell them I wasn't going to church.  Based on their very poor reaction to that revelation they will not ever get the rest of the story.

My love and I finally got married (it was our own choice) and with the stigma of sin removed, there wasn't really any reason for us to not attend church which would mean so much to our families.  We'd really caught some flack for not getting married in the Mormon temple so going back to church was one way to appease the parents.  For a while, it was OK because we'd moved again to where the rumours of our past sins did not follow us and found a very friendly congregation.  We liked it so much that we actually looked for a house to buy that would keep us within the boundaries so that we could keep attending that congregation.

Unfortunately, about every six years or so in Mormon congregations the leadership changes.  Since all Mormon leadership are lay ministers it's kind of hit or miss whether or not you get a good set.  The next set was not as good and we quickly started to see the "personality" of the congregation change.  Because of our lack of a temple marriage, we became the charitable cause for people to try and get us to the temple.  We also didn't have children and soon I was asked to work with the nursery aged children (as if that would convince me to have children).  Then my husband got laid off and choose not to go back to work for awhile.  He didn't have to, I was making enough.  However, he was constantly pestered with people trying to find him a job.  He stopped going to church.  I know that none of this sounds really bad, it's almost something that you had to experience to know how demeaning it was.  No one bothered to ask how you were doing.  They all assumed you must be so unhappy because your life wasn't what it was supposed to be in their eyes.  We constantly felt looked down upon.

Also, during this time the lessons that were being taught in church seemed to be changing.  Instead, of lessons that were well thought out and inspired one to do better with their lives using teachings from Jesus and other scriptures, they were propaganda-style recitations of why everyone should go to the temple and avoid sin.  Then the politics came in.  It felt like we were being told in church who we should vote for.  One person even said over the pulpit that we should all vote the same way that the president of the church votes and he's a registered Republican.  Most of the other comments were only slightly more veiled.  Like, the church does not support abortion so you shouldn't vote for anyone who isn't pro-life.  The Mormon church's support of banning gay marriage in California was another big problem for me.  I wanted to just scream "Separation of Church and State is there for a reason!"  Then there was the invasion of Iraq, I kind of understood Afghanistan but there really was not a good reason for Iraq and it really bothered me that Mormons were so supportive of the invasion of Iraq.  It felt like a betrayal to Christian ideals to be so damned blood thirsty.  Besides the scriptures in their own Book of Mormon that seemed to caution against this war...of course, everyone else interpreted those scriptures differently.

This was about the time that I started this blog because I needed a way to vent and I really didn't have anyone in my real life who would understand.  Either they were fully Mormon and wouldn't understand my doubts and problems with the church or they were never Mormon and couldn't understand why this religion had such a hold on me.  I also started reading about some of Mormon history focusing on topics to support my feminist leanings.  I was looking for anything that would reassure me that women had hope that eventually they would be treated better than they were currently in the church.  Instead of finding hope, I just found even more abusive and demeaning treatment of women in the church's history and I stopped looking.  Besides, life was getting better for me at work and at home and who wants to spend time obsessing about something depressing when you can be enjoying life.

So, with the birth of my first child I had another excellent excuse to stop going to church... It was a difficult pregnancy, I had an autoimmune disease and I was just too blasted tired for church! Looking back on it now, I'm surprised that I actually spent 9 years back in the church.  At the time, I never really felt fully part of the church.  Always a bit outside by asking the controversial questions and calling male leaders on sexists behaviors.  It just didn't seem like that long until I did the math and then I thought "No wonder I'm tired,  fighting against that culture for 9 years is exhausting!"

However, because I didn't leave at that time thinking I'd had enough but instead just thinking that I need some time to adjust to my new normal, I went back.  Again, we'd moved and I had the hope that this new congregation wouldn't have the same issues as the old (re: politics, sexism, etc.).  I couldn't bring myself to attend all the meetings so I just went to the nursery with my son.  Pretty soon, they asked me to teach in the nursery and I thought "why not" if I was going to be there anyway.  They had a new nursery manual but after my previous experience of teaching in the nursery I really only needed to know the title of the lesson to be able to deliver it.  These were 3-year-olds after all.  However, some of the lessons had changed and I was appalled to see lessons about how God loves us replaced with lessons that said God loves us when we go to the temple or pay our tithing or some other such thing.  They were basically teaching these kids that God's love is conditional.  The more lessons I saw like this really troubled me.  Probably the kicker was Mitt Romney as presidential candidate and seeing everyone go all goo-goo eyed over him.  Nevermind whether or not he was a good candidate he was Mormon and Republican.  I first came to accept that all the things that I didn't like about church were things that were inherently ingrained in the church.  I had accepted them as a child because I didn't know any better.  That first congregation which started off as a good experience was likely just an extended "honeymoon" because we liked the people and appreciated having a ready-made community (makes moving easier).  So, we overlooked the things we didn't like because there were things we did like.  Now, the curtain had been pulled back and I couldn't pretend anymore that the problems were going to go away.  The church leadership certainly showed no signs of reform or even a desire to acknowledge any problem.  I also realized that if I continued to take my son to church I was inadvertently telling him that this Mormon culture is OK.  My attendance was a form of acceptance.  I was not OK with my son learning to be a misogynist and I was not willing to let him believe that he had to do all these ridiculous things to be loved by God... or by me.  Soon I was going to church less and less and finally told the church leadership they'd have to find someone else to teach the nursery.  It was kind of anti-climatic, I just disappeared.

About the same time, another family member went public about his disbelief in the Mormon church.  In his case, he'd studied the history of the church and had shown Joseph Smith to be a fraud.  As he shared with me what he learned, I felt a great sense of relief.  I was leaving the church because it didn't feel right but not because I knew that it wasn't true.  I'd accepted the possibility that if I was wrong and the church was true that I'd rather live true to my beliefs than live miserably trying to make it work.  I would accept the consequences even it that meant going to hell.  Besides, I figured real hell couldn't be as bad as the heaven that Joseph Smith described.  It was a relief to have tangible evidence that the whole Mormon church was nothing but a cooked up scheme by Joseph Smith and his cohorts.  Now, I could essentially throw out anything I'd been taught in that miserable church and start over from a more loving and accepting place.  Yes, I'm quite pissed off about how much I got screwed up by this church.  Nearly half of my life spent feeling guilty about things that were just made up stories.

I'm still sorting through my feelings about the Mormon church and my decision to leave it and I debate on how much I want to reveal to family and friends.  On one hand, I don't really want them getting nosy about my life which they would if they knew.  I'd need "saving" or something.  I tend to lean to "live and let live" and expect the same from others but the chances of getting that from my overly controlling family is slim to none.  On the other hand, I don't like seeing my loved ones get screwed and see younger generations get exposed to the same hurtful teachings that screwed with my head.  I'd really like to stand up for what I believe is right but I question how effective it would be and if the personal ramifications would be too great.  As you can see, I may have exited but now the real journey begins.

What is wrong with us?

We want it to be illegal for some people to express their love for each other by making a commitment in marriage but we want to ensure that guns whose primary purpose is that of violence against humans and animals remain legal.