Thursday, September 8, 2016

Yep, ANOTHER Ex-Mormon Blog!

As you can see from the title of the blog, and the title of this post, this is another Ex-Mormon blog. I decided to create my blog to get my thoughts on the church out (being surrounded by Mormons, it can be pretty tough, but more on that later), and to let anyone who just found out about the truth about the church and is having a hard time with it know that they are not alone.

A little bit about me...

I was raised Catholic. My mother was a devout Catholic, went to Catholic schools until High School, and my father converted after they had married. After we lost her, the family tried to continue to go to church, but eventually stopped going altogether. I still prayed and had the thought that I needed religion to have God in my life. That's when the missionaries came in.

I thought that that the church looked good on the surface (which is mainly why I joined). I actually enjoyed the lessons with the missionaries. I enjoyed that every Sunday (with the exception of fast Sundays) that you hear talks from different people, and getting a glimpse of how the gospel worked in their life. And, being  twenty-two (yeah, I know what women - especially in the church - are usually married by that age), inexperienced at life (besides a hard-knock one), without a mind of my own, and looking for a place to fit in, I enjoyed being greeted so warmly by the members. I enjoyed that they would sit with me and ask me questions, leaving me to believe that they were interested in me as a person. I admired the families that I had met, because they seemed stable and close, things that my family were not. I also loved the wholesome aspect of the church. It was the safe haven that I spent four years looking for.

After a few months of investigating, I was baptized late August of 2004, and spent many years living in blissful ignorance within my Mormon Bubble.

Who would have thought that that bubble would have been burst by a fateful conversation with another church member during a ride home from Sunday services?

If I get into everything that made me find out that the church wasn’t true, that would make for a long post. So I will separate them into different posts based on these the following subjects that caused me to discover the truth about the church:
(and how the church's essays hid the facts, in their attempt to explain the first two subjects)

Before I get into these four subjects, I would like to mention that once I discovered what I did, I read and listened to accounts by several Ex-Mormons who have heard the same things from the TBM's (True Believing Mormon) in their circle:
“People believed that I left the church because a) I was offended b) didn’t pray enough, didn’t have enough faith and did not read my scriptures enough c) I wanted to sin.”

It’s scary how a good number of Mormons are conditioned to believe this about people that leave. I never believed this (heck I didn’t even though that this is what members thought!), and now that I am near the other side, I can definitely vouch that it’s a lot deeper than that. That definitely is not the case for everyone that leaves.

At one point, I thought that I could still attend church because I was happy there, and I felt that the church was good “now” despite its ugly history (and the fact that they hide it). I even tried to justify things by thinking, “Well, the church has an ugly history, but so does America. America has come a long way and (even though we still have a ways to go) we still celebrate and sing about how wonderful the country is. The church is good now, so I can stay.” But as time passed, I would get uncomfortable about how general authorities would talk about Joseph Smith (and Brigham Young at times) and paint him up as a saint. Also on how arrogant some of the talks given during sacrament meeting (more on that in another blog post). I would also have to keep silent about my issues with the church.

As far as my beliefs goes, I still do believe in God. It works for me. It may not work for everyone, and I respect that. That’s one of the beautiful things about getting out of Mormonism, being respectful of the beliefs of others. I've always been fine with religious diversity (and diversity in general), because it keeps me open minded.

So now, we’ll get to the four aforementioned posts (and more to come, of course!).  I’ll try not to make my posts too long, but I am an aspiring writer (and former English Literature major) so that would be tough.

Brace yourself. Shit's about it get real.

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