I recently read on a mormon appolgetics website a post that said "all exit stories are basically the same".  Rather than angry at such an ignorant and insulting comment I found myself in agreement.

 

All exit stories are basically the same in that somebody exercises enough free will and intelligence and figures out the church is a prettily packaged assortment of lies, and in that respect mine is not much different.

 

 

As a young girl my parents were not active in the church. Eventually the neighborhood mormons got ahold of my parents and they became active again. Our family went to the  temple in 1988. At the time I was still young and quit confused by the whole process.  Being interviewed by the stake president was terrifying, and the experience of the temple was long and strange.  Myself and my three siblings were put in the care of several kind but very strict older women , and to my chagrin I was scolded repeatedly for talking too loud and giggling. I was then embarrassed when one of the women checked to see if I was wearing white panties.  This would not the last time I was humiliated in the “house of the lord”.

 

Our family continued to be active in the church and I grew up attending primary, then young women until I turned 16. Being an avid reader brought me into contact with books of all genres that raised many questions in my mind. Questions about the nature of god,  the human condition, and what spirituality meant. The scripture “be still and know that I am god” was often quoted to me, I felt like this was the religious equivalent of being told to “shut up and sit down”.  As a young teenager I found myself not fitting in. I choose to dress differently and colored my hair strange colors. Typical teenage rebellion, but in my small religious community this was seen as evidence of something more subversive.  I was never given callings in young women and the leaders seemed wary of me.

When I was 16 I lost my virginity in a upsetting and confusing way.  I was worried about becoming pregnant and having serious emotional difficulties and ended up running away from home.  I wrote a bad check for an airplane ticket and ran away to Los Angeles.  I spent four weeks there in a youth shelter.  There I experienced hardcore gang members, drug use, and the terrible destruction that comes when a child is thrown away by their parents and society.  As a white Mormon girl from Utah it was life changing.  At the time my older brother was serving a mission, he was never told about the situation because my parents were counseled by the bishop that it would interfere with his “sacred work” and distract him.  This would not be the last time the church drove wedges into my family and caused needless heartbreak.

 

Upon my return home I was shunned by the ward, I continued to attend church and young women despite my outsider status. I had believed my young women leaders when they had told me I was a daughter of god, and that the atonement was for everyone. When I earned my young womanhood award I was simply handed it at an activity, I was not given the usual special recognition at a program that the other girls got. The leaders and bishop assumed I was not worthy to receive it and made only a half hearted gesture as a way of keeping my parents happy.  I was heartbroken. Later when I returned to the church I grew up in I saw that my name had not been added to the plaque that listed the recipients of the award.  I tried not to let it affect me to much, I rationalized that people weren’t perfect, but the church was.

The first year of our marriage found us attending church sporadically due to my husband’s work schedule and when we moved from our first ward we had never been visited by the bishopric or relief society. Our ward had been disinterested in us and cold. I tried not to let it affect me to much, I rationalized that people weren’t perfect, but the church was.

 

After a year of marriage my husband and I bought a trailer and I was thrilled to have a home of my own instead of a crummy apartment. Our ward consisted of a close knit affluent suburb and our trailer park. We began to attend church regularly hoping this ward would be more welcoming, but the ward caste system was firmly established. I was never given any callings despite my desire and ability to serve. I was not even made a visiting teacher.  Again I was brokenhearted by the way I was treated by “gods elect”. A few years later we moved again, after so many unwelcoming church experiences my husband and I became inactive.  

 

Our new ward was much different. Somehow they found out we had never been through the temple and we became the “ward project”.  We were fellowshipped and made to feel special, and eventually succumbed to the lure of friendship and the feeling of belonging.  I pressured my husband to go through the temple with me even though I knew he had been badly scarred by his first visit to the temple and had no desire to return. He wanted to live the mormon life without the burden of temple worship and I adamantly refused.  I felt like it was something of a status symbol, and we would never be fully accepted by our new friends until we had.  This caused many arguments and tears, I forced myself to ignore the underlying fact that this religious ceremony that was supposed to bring us closer together was actually causing more dissension in our home.  Eventually my husband decided he was willing to go to the temple and we set a date.

I also managed to repress my doubts about the church. As I sat through poorly prepared and doctrinally unsound lessons I had to stifle my inner criticisms. I saw glaring inconsistencies and logical fallacies but knew that challenging them would result in damage to my new found friendships and status in the ward.

 

My temple experience was frightening and strange, and I had the benefit of experiencing the revised initiatory. When I was given my new name I firmly believed it was something special and inspired, imagine my dismay when I learned it was the same as everybody else’s that had gone through the temple that day. It was not special or divine, it was just chance and coincidence.  Again I repressed the feeling that something was wrong and continued to pray, read the scriptures, and attend the temple. My self esteem took another hit as I realized it was all for naught. I never had my prayers answered, never got that “burning feeling”, and never felt at peace in the temple. On one occasion I was so humiliated that I walked through the veil and right out the door, not even pausing in the celestial room. What had happened was that as I approached the veil I forgot what I was supposed to say and do, the temple worker that was there to help was also having some difficulty as well and I was scolded  by the priesthood holder acting as god, and as I stepped through the veil he scowled at me and muttered something.  Ashamed I fled as quickly as I could, how could someone acting as a proxy for the lord be so unkind? As I left I got the distinct impression that I would never measure up. The burden placed on mormon women is awesome . You are expected to be a cheerful, submissive, hard working servant to your husband and the church. The weight of the guilt of imperfection is crushing. And you will always be made aware of your shortcomings. If a young man did not go on a mission the mother must have failed. If a young women was not married in the temple the mother must have been less than vigilant. In the mormon community you are judged by the company you keep, especially when that company is your own family.

 

The final straw came a few years later. I had been serving in the young women presidency. I had sacrificed huge amounts of time and resources to this calling. I genuinely loved serving the girls. One of the girls was from an inactive family and having doubts about the church and had made “moral mistakes”. She confided this  to me in a letter she delivered to me. In return I wrote her the letter I wished I had received as a 16 year old. I told her that I loved her, that god loved her, and that I would always welcome her and not judge her no matter what she done or choices she had made. I also wrote that whether or not she was active in the church both I and god would continue to love her for the person she was.  At the same time the young women’s presidency was being changed and I got the distinct impression that I would be made the president.  The bishopric found out about the letter I had written to the young woman via gossip and I was unceremoniously released from my calling. I had committed an unforgivable sin, I had suggested that god’s love and happiness were not directly dependent on the church.

I realized two crucial things at that moment.

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1.        The bishopric claimed to receive inspiration and divine guidance about how our ward should be run but also allowed that I was entitled to person revelation, and ours did not match. At the minimum one of us was wrong, most likely we were both hearing what we wanted to hear. Convincing ourselves that our own inner agendass were a mandate from god.  This made me wonder what other aspects of “revelation” were wrong or misguided.  I also realized several high ranking authorities were related. Could it be that their callings were less a revelation from god and more a function of “who knows who” and what their status was? And given that it is not too hard to logically come to the conclusion that if the leaders of the church are there because of man’s will then their teachings were also less from god and more the product of their own agendas.  The church was imperfect because it had been created not by revelation or divine intervention but because it was created by men.

    

2.        A person’s value in the church correlates directly to their social status, income, and ability to blindly accept whatever doctrine happens to be true at the time. Dissent is not tolerated. Logical and critical thought will be punished.

 

 I struggled long and hard with these facts. I prayed and prayed, I studied and studied. And at the end of the day I was still left empty, no burning bosom, no quiet feeling of peace. Nothing but my own doubts and the slowly dawning realization that there never would be an answer. No still small voice ever whispered my divine election or manifested the truth of the book of mormon. Nothing but silence ever came from the god and christ man had constructed from his fevered imagination.

 

 

One other particularly disturbing fact I will add as an aside. During the Nov. 2008 presidential elections I was confronted first hand by the inherent racism and sexism the mormon church is based on. During one Sunday school lesson the bible passage about “being led by women” was applied to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. This faulty logical and biblical cherry picking was used to discourage those considering voting for a female candidate. I also overheard the comment that “we gave the blacks the priesthood, what else do they want?”  Which physically sickened me, these men of god conveniently overlooked the fact that the church had done so a full 14 years after the civil rights act, and under public pressure. They were also applying the “we are all god’s children” doctrine selectively once again.

 

Since that time I have learned many, many things that the mormon church has covered up, changed, and lied about. With each discovery I felt more and more abused by the church. I was furious to have been so misled. At this point I am happy to be free of the burden of conformity for conformities sake. The guilt and frustration of not living up to an impossible standard. I am free from the fear that I will excluded from a vengeful god’s presence for exercising the intellect god endowed me with.