My exit story won't be finished until my name is removed from church records, but I won’t do that to my parents as long as they’re around. Looking back, I think my story began when I was just a kid. Although I believed everything my parents and teachers taught me, I was just a little too inquisitive and analytical. I assumed that was a fault God gave me to try my faith, the same way he gives some people mental or physical handicaps and illnesses.

                    

I remember asking my mom and teachers questions like how the dinosaurs could be millions of years old if God created the earth only a few thousand years ago. Usually I was told God did things like that to test our faith and I shouldn’t question. I did have a wonderful seminary teacher. He would hold Q & A sessions where we could ask him anything by writing our questions down and passing them in anonymously. Even if he didn’t know the answer, he always had a really great, thoughtful guess. Still, his answer that unfortunately the church is run by humans, who are fallible, was not enough to stop my wondering why there was a time when people of color couldn't marry in the temple. Or why the church still practices eternal polygamy.

                                

I accepted the fact that men and women had different roles in the church. The thing that bothered me is that there was so much emphasis on women’s obedience to their husbands. If women’s roles were equally important, why did the priesthood holder get the final say in everything? Who was the head of the house if the priesthood holder died? Why could the woman in that case not be sealed to a new priesthood holder? My biggest issue, though, was that a man could be sealed to as many women as he wanted, so long as each one dies before he is sealed to the next. Add to that the fact that men are allowed to know each of our super-secret temple names, but we aren’t allowed to know theirs. Not to mention the secret handshakes and creepy, ever-changing ceremonies that scared me away from the temple. All the earnest prayer in the world could not bring me to believe this was God’s will.

                      

In high school, I spent my summers working and volunteering at This is the Place State Park. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on where you stand with the church), I worked with a lot of people who were very knowledgeable about church history. I was very interested in Emma Smith. I guess this was the beginning of the end for me. I was shocked to find out that polygamy was no more acceptable in those days than it is now (as I was always told), and that many of Joseph’s wives had been married to men who were still alive at the time! I had always been told that the men were dying off in large numbers, leaving the women alone and unable to care for themselves. I also couldn’t believe that God would force a woman such as Emma to endure a lifestyle she was so against. At the very least, she should have been allowed to leave. I remembered what I was told about man being fallible, but this had been a major revelation given to the prophet who had supposedly spoken to God himself.

                                          

I continued to pray twice a day and study my scriptures every night, in the hopes that doing so would give me the faith I needed. If I had to guess at the number of times I prayed hard to know the BOM and church were true, I would put it in the hundreds. I continued to believe that if I had enough faith, I would eventually know the truth. I based this on my favorite scripture (which has a special Jesus sticker-highlighter over it in my quad). Ether 12:6 states: “And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith”. 

                                        

Thinking back, the silence was probably God’s way of trying to tell me I was being bamboozled. I’m a very intuitive person, and I couldn’t figure out why my receptors were so strong in every other aspect of my life but not the one that mattered most. For instance, I knew I would marry my husband before our first date. I don’t know how to describe it except to say that I “saw” a flash of our future life together. How ironic then, that after we informed everyone we would not be married in the temple, my mom went from thinking he was wonderful to being convinced she’d had a revelation I should not marry him at all. She made sure my engagement was the most miserable time of my life. I arrived at work in tears more times than I can count. 

                          

I'd been to the temple many times for BD, but what I'd heard of the endowment ceremony scared me to death. Still, we were soon newlyweds in a new ward being forced to take a temple prep class in order to appease everyone.  The teacher made us feel like dirt in the most subtle ways. If that was supposed to be a motivational tool, it backfired, as we had no real inner desire to go in the first place. We decided one week that we just couldn’t deal with it, so we stayed home. Before I knew it, it had been a month, then a year. We moved and I began to attend church in the new ward, mostly because I knew that was what my family would want. Eventually I stopped going again, at which point, contact with the majority of our TBM neighbors ceased, despite our best efforts to remain friendly. 

 

The weirdest, most wonderful part is that I didn't become an alcoholic or start making bad choices. I still had my conscience (or holy ghost if you prefer to call it that), and I still knew right from wrong and had my ability to reason and see the long-term consequences of my actions. That's when I knew I'd been duped. Aside from skipping church on Sundays, there was really no change in my personality. If I was now the horrible person I'd always been told I'd be if I left, then I had already been that horrible person, because I hadn't changed. The only thing that did change was the way people treated me.

                                                                                                      

The longer I was away, another strange thing began to happen. Rather than just letting LDS doctrine be my guide, I began to put myself in the shoes of the people whose stories I was hearing in the news. Whether they were homeless, mentally ill, ethnic minority, religious minority, gay – whatever – I began to see the world through their eyes, and I could not believe the way we TBMs and especially the church itself treated them! For me, it wasn't until the day my MIL changed her mind on the Utah gay marriage amendment after the church encouraged members to vote it down, that I realized we were living in a theocracy. Where was the free will they are always talking about? The government should not be telling gays or Buddhists or atheists how to live their lives, and a church that truly follows the teachings of Christ would respect those people enough not to get involved.

                                          

For the longest time, we didn't discuss it in my family even though I knew they must be aware I wasn't attending. My mom finally got me alone one day and asked me out of the blue. I couldn't lie, and I was sure she must be able to hear my heart pounding, so I just came out with it. Then she asked if I still believed in it. I told her I had always had more questions than answers and wasn't sure if I had ever really believed. After an awkward pause, she changed the subject and hasn't brought it up since.

                                                       

I know I am very lucky to have parents who love me no matter what and who know a lost cause when they see it. Still, I know that when I'm not around, they are grieving and losing sleep over this. The thought of it pains me enough to consider going back from time to time. I'm just grateful there is a site like this to get me through the hard times. I'll continue to hold out hope for the rest of my family, just as they are holding out hope for me.