I am 45 years old and have been a member all my life. My parents divorced when I was 7 years old but I was raised by a very good step father and have had lots of good LDS friends growing up. We had our trials but I have had a pretty normal happy life. 

I never wanted to go through a divorce and my goal since I was a little girl was to marry the right person at the right time and in the right place. I married a good man who is from a good family. His father has served in high positions in the church.  

When I was a newlywed and married in the Mesa Arizona Temple my dad came to me with concerns he had about Joseph Smith and polygamy. My dad had spent time in prison after my mom divorced him for getting sexually involved with high school girls where he taught high school. I thought he had a lot of nerve judging Joseph Smith after what he did. 

I had been taught that there are times that the Lord says polygamy is okay to raise up seed for a righteous generation. Since it happened in the Bible I was even more convinced it must be okay. I was taught that Joseph Smith didn't want to do it but finally did when the Lord insisted. 

My mom prayed to know if the church was true after she had lost a baby girl born before me. When she told my dad that she had received an answer, he said that she was "emotionally ripe" and that it was just her emotions and not a real answer from God.  

Up until this time I felt that the church was true but I wanted to receive a real witness from God for myself so I didn't have to take any one's word for it. Unlike my dad, I had been about as obedient as any young person could be so I felt worthy enough to receive an answer. I took a Book of Mormon class while I was pregnant with my 2nd daughter, the first daughter was 5 months old. I studied and prayed but nothing happened.

 

When I prayed I told Heavenly Father I didn't want an answer from just my own emotions, I wanted it to be from him through the Holy Ghost and that I would be able to recognize it as that. I didn't give up hope. I had my baby girl in January and kept trying to attend the class but it was hard. I figured I wasn't getting an answer cause I had missed some classes. 

Then that summer when my daughter was just a few months old we went on a ward camp out. As they were getting ready to start Testimony Meeting, my baby daughter went diarrhea again in her diaper. She had been having a lot of it and was starting to get a rash so I rushed back to the tent to change her. Because of this, I was not in a very spiritual mood. 

When I got back to the meeting I saw a guy in our ward start to walk up that I didn't know that well and didn't have any emotional bond with. I told myself as he was walking up that I would never again say that I know the church is true until I had that witness. I'm not sure what happened after that but I thought it was an answer to my prayer. When this man started bearing his testimony, he started out saying that he knew that God lives. I got shivers from head to toe, not the normal shivers of being cold or thinking about going up to bear your testimony but shivers that came out of the blue and then my heart was pounding at the same time. I have been convinced all these many years it was an answer to my prayer. 

My Dad said he wished he had that but I figured he never would get an answer because he refused to be obedient first.

I have clung to that experience all these years and when things didn't make sense to me in the church I just leaned on that experience and figured it would be explained to me in the next life.  

I've been pretty happy in the church, I did feel guilty when my 2 oldest children, my 2 girls left the church when they were teenagers. I wondered what I did wrong. My husband and I went to an LDS counselor for help and read parenting books to try and be better parents and love them back into the church but it didn't work. 

We just continued to love them and encourage them to come back to church every now and then and tried not to nag them. My youngest daughter had a baby out of wedlock and they both live with us. Our ward has been very loving of my daughter and nonjudgmental. My daughter has been letting us take our granddaughter to church since she was in nursery. She is 4 years old now and loves to go to church. 

Life has still been great. My husband and I have been through some trials but still have a strong marriage and have been happy.  Last month during Spring Break my husband and I decided to study church history because I was convinced that I may find out some more information that would help convince my inactive family members including my daughters that the church is true. 

We researched the two things that we, and our family have struggled with. We have struggled with polygamy and the blacks not getting the priesthood at first so that they could be sealed to their families in the temple.

  

We went to fairlds.org because we knew it was a pro-mormon site. I couldn't believe what we found. We found out about things that we didn't even know were issues. We read about polyandry where Joseph Smith and Brigham Young married women who were already married to men. Some of the men were Mormon. After we read the story of Zina we were shocked. We were also shocked to find out that Joseph Smith was married to some very young girls, one as young as 14 years.  I thought that only weird men like Warren Jeffs did things like that.  

Since I have half black nieces and nephews we tried to find out if there were any answers at all as to why the blacks couldn't have the priesthood in the early days of the church.  We read about all the racist things said by the apostles and prophets in the early days of the church.  I am a nurse and just got back from helping over in Haiti in February and I know God is not racist. 

Then it hit me that I don't have a clue as to what God is or if there even is a God because my whole concept of God is from a man I no longer trust or believe is a prophet.  

I'm not sure what is happening to me right now. I don't know if you would call it a nervous break down, panic attacks or just a lot of anxiety and depression.  I have lost a lot of weight from not being able to eat much and have had diarrhea for 6 weeks. I have not gone one day without crying and having a sick feeling in my stomach. 

I have begged and pleaded with God to help me know what to do, or to even know that he exists. I haven't felt anything.  When I believed in the church, I felt like I could feel Heavenly Father with me all the time.  I felt like he was giving me impressions and insights all the time. Now I feel completely alone.  I feel shear terror every day. 

I don't know if I will see my family after I die. I had no doubts about that before.  My eternal husband, family and God  has been ripped away from me. I look at the picture of the temple on our wall and weep, and I don't know how I could ever take it down.

  

My husband found awful stuff in the Bible too.  I would have thought Joseph Smith or one of the prophets would have corrected it or taken it out by now but maybe the Bible being the word of God as far as it is translated correctly covers all the horrible stuff in the Bible. 

When my husband complained to our Bishop about the church being racist, one of the ways that the Bishop tried to defended the church was by showing us a place in the Bible where Christ was racist towards a Canaanite women. Now I don't even know if I'm Christian.  

I am so confused. I don't know what I am or what I believe in. When I used to go for a walk to try and get some peace, I looked at the beautiful world and I used to be happy. Now I just wonder where it came from and  if I will ever see it again after I die. 

A few days ago I was laying down in some green grass late at night when nobody was around and cried and gave the Earth a hug. I don't know where I can go for peace.  

From now on, when anyone I know dies, including our pets, I don't know how I will get through it. In the past, I have been sad but my strong faith and what I even felt was knowledge of the after life always got me through.  After I die, if I realize I'm conscious I will fall to the ground and weep, and then I will go running around leaping for joy hugging everyone I have ever known.

I have suffered so much the last 6 weeks. I don't want to suffer any longer but I don't know how to get better.  I would never commit suicide because I need to help my family get through this life but the thought of suffering like this every day for the rest of my life is overwhelming. I can't enjoy anything anymore. 

I'm the 2nd counselor in primary and my husband in the cub master. We have so much fun working together in cub scouts. I haven't been able to quit going to church. Our Bishop wants us to keep serving in our callings even though we are struggling.

  

My husband wants to stop going but has been going the last 6 weeks so that I don't have to go alone.  I always laughed and teased him when he sang the Hymns because he's tone deaf. He would sing them loud just to embarrass me. Last Sunday he quit taking the sacrament and singing the Hymns. I started crying and told him I miss his tone deaf voice singing the Hymns.  The closing song was “Have I Done Any Good in the World Today”. He felt okay about singing it and I cried to hear him sing again.

 

I regularly have a Hymn or Primary Song pop up in my head. It always uplifted me before, now it just makes me kind of uplifted but mostly sad. 

Our families and friends in the ward say they are praying for us and they they know we will get through it and stay in the church. 

I am so envious of people that don't know the truth and are so happy and at peace and have the Gospel to comfort them  I wish I could go back.  My husband is the opposite. He would rather know the truth even though it's painful.  I feel like such a wimp.

 

The night I told my daughter,the one living with us that we no longer believe the church is true, I felt like knives were stabbing into my stomach all night long and I couldn't sleep. We told my oldest daughter the next day. It was hard but since both my girls have been inactive it wasn't nearly as hard as telling my 18 year old son who told me a few months ago that he wants to go on a mission. I still haven't been able to tell my baby.  He is a 10 year Old boy. He is depending on his parents to teach him about life and truth and we don't have a clue what to teach him now. I don't want to upset his world and that is part of the reason I keep going to church and pretending I still believe. 

Stake Conference is this Sunday May 2. The leaders are planning to have my 18 year old son sustained to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood even though my son told them he doesn't know if he wants it or not.  They told him they can sustain him and he can get it later if he wants so he doesn't have to wait until next stake conference to get sustained. I guess we should go to Stake Conference to support our son. 

My husband wants to tell my 10 year Old son that we don't believe in the church anymore on the weekend of May 23 when the church will dedicate the Gila Valley Temple. We won't be able to go now that we don't have a testimony and they are not having church that day. My husband wants us to go do something fun that day and then not go back to church after that.  I don't know if I'm ready.  

I'm not going to have fun where ever we go having just told my son we don't believe in the church anymore, but I don't want to sit around the house and be depressed that day either. I don't know what we should do on Sunday. 

I can't believe how young people are that have figured it out. I feel so old. Maybe it's because my generation hasn't had the Internet as early to make it easy to research. I'm sorry this is so long . Thanks to everyone who read it.

To be continued...