Recovery

It has been almost seven* years since I last attended church. It has been a little over eight years since I began examining carefully the church’s historical claims and doctrinal imperatives. It was not a hasty decision, and it’s not because someone offended me, or because I had a guilty conscience or anything. It was not for any of the reasons I would have ascribed to an inactive Mormon when I was a believer. As a believer, I assumed people who left were sinners: they didn't live the commandments, and they certainly didn't live the Mormon standards. I assumed people left because someone had offended them, because they were too sensitive to the truth of the gospel and its believers. I believed people left because they never had a "testimony" of the truth of the gospel. Anyone who had received a witness would never leave the church.

I'm still not sure if there is only one event that served as a catalyst to un-shelving my doubts. Several things happened over a number of years (some even way back on my mission!) that sat quietly in the back of my mind until I made a sort of accidental discovery. Together, these created the perfect storm, flooding me with information I could no longer ignore.

One of my good friends (a colleague who taught American Studies at the same school where I taught English) had read Under the Banner of Heaven. She asked me a question about Joseph Smith and all his wives, and I sort of nodded and chuckled "I think you mean Brigham Young". Brigham Young is famous for having 27 wives, but Joseph Smith didn’t take any plural wives, or so I thought. The look on her face when I said that intrigued me enough to read the book myself, to see what kind of foolish misinformation was being printed. I believed what I had long been taught: that anything critical of the Church was considered "anti-Mormon", and could not be trusted. So I bought Under the Banner of Heaven from a church bookstore, just to cover my bases. I also bought Mormon Enigma, which chronicles the life of Emma Smith. What I read shocked me. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach: Mountain Meadows. Kinderhook Plates. Eliza R. Snow. Helen Kimball. Polyandry. The stone in the hat. I started reading church apologists to try to quell the cognitive dissonance, but ended up amplifying it instead. I read a lot of other books, too. Several that I purchased at Deseret Book in fact. All of it was pretty damning. Much of what I read was news to me - things that had been covered up, or white washed. I never knew Joseph Smith married 33 women (at least), some of whom were married to other men, and some of whom were a mere 15 years old. I verified this information on the Church's own family history website. Yikes.

Once I began studying the historical foundations of the church, the doctrinal part just sort of crumbled. The doctrine and history are so intertwined, that I couldn't really separate one from the other. The concerns I had shelved, the doubts I had ignored, began to resolve themselves as I started really looking at the facts. There was no longer any reason for me question my own political leanings regarding racism, plural marriage, same-sex marriage, abortion, health-care, etc.. I've always found myself leaning to the left politically, and mentally massaging church teachings to fit with my beliefs and perceptions. When I realized that the church might possibly not be true, many other truths fell into place. Before then, I believed the church was true, but all of the other things that felt “true” to me had to be shelved because they didn't mesh with the cultural or doctrinal Mormon teachings. It was easy to shelve those concerns as long as I believed the church was fundamentally true, and that my eternal salvation depended on my believing the church’s claims, which is deeply enmeshed with its history. For nearly a year, I struggled with my newfound knowledge. I wanted to believe the church was still true, that it was everything I was taught. I tried to maintain my activity and fellowship because I wanted to believe the church provided so many positive effects, even if the history was a bit spotty.

About the same time that I was processing all of this information, and trying to come to terms with my beliefs, I had an illuminating experience. Up until that point, one of my biggest concerns was "If I leave, what will I teach my kids?", as if the church is the only place to teach children to become decent human beings. A brief interchange I had with Sarah was all it took for me to see everything clearly.

Sarah was in kindergarten and joined brownies/daisies, so we went to the bridging ceremony which was being held at a Baptist church in Charlottesville. It was a huge, lovely building - very different from the cookie-cutter building where we went to church. Sarah was fascinated. On the way home, she asked me what kind of people went to such a pretty church, and then she asked why they wouldn't go to heaven like our family. My first thought was, Holy Crap. That just sounds so wrong. My daughter was starting to believe that these perfectly lovely people, with a perfectly lovely church (who were friendlier to us than most people in our "own" wards had ever been, by the way) were not going to heaven? She was too young to do all the mental gymnastics I was used to doing to make the doctrine palatable. Why should she have to? Why should anyone have to? That was a major Aha! moment. My concern was no longer "What will I teach my kids?", but "How will I undo the damage that has already been done?".

Leaving the church has not been easy for me. This decision was not hasty by any stretch of the imagination. Much of the indoctrination is cultural, so my whole life view was through the lens of Mormonism. Even my ex-Mormonness passes through that lens. I remember how I talked about people who left. I remember being on the other side. My family members are deeply saddened by my 'apostasy', but to their credit have not made me a project. Even though I feel bad that I've disappointed my parents, I can't say it's enough to counteract the positive changes in my life. Since leaving, I’ve found that I laugh more. I can laugh at situations that before would have caused me to think God was trying to punish me because I was unrighteous. Since leaving, I enjoy my children more – being in the moment with them. My marriage is stronger and happier. I no longer have unrealistic expectations of what my husband should be or do – I accept and respect him for who he is, and I love him for it. I also feel a little more patient with myself. It would be a lie to claim that I no longer have unrealistic expectations of myself, but now I am more forgiving with myself. I am able to laugh at myself more often. I still struggle with depression, but I no longer believe it’s a result of my sinfulness or mistakes I have made, the same way my nearsightedness is not a result of unrighteousness. There's a certain freedom and exhilaration in making decisions based on critical thought and intuition, instead of dogma, guilt, and doctrine. The ultimate paradox is that I've found the peace and serenity since leaving I always believed the church would give me, but never did.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.~ Dalai Lama

*2011