It rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest.  It was just another typical, dark, rainy afternoon and work was slow.

The guy I was working for on that wet afternoon had a dusty old box of books that I decided to dig through to see if there was perhaps anything interesting to read.  Little did I realize that day would change the rest of my life.....

The book, if I remember correctly, had yellow lettering on the front cover.  I lifted it out of the dusty box and read the title:  "COMBATTING CULT MIND CONTROL  The #1 Best-Selling Guide to the Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults." By Steven Hassan

I thought, "How interesting....I wonder if my sister's cult is talked about in here."

I began to read.  Sure enough the cult that my oldest sister had belonged to for many years was in this book.  I found what Mr. Hassan had to say about that cult very interesting and informative, so I turned to the front page and started to read.......

But it was not only my oldest sister's cult that I found in that book.....but also....my own.

The cognitive dissonance that I had been dealing with for the past several years all clicked into place as I read Mr. Hassan's book.  I was thrilled to finally have an understanding to why I had been feeling like I was having an out of body experience in Relief Society for the past few years.  I would be sitting in a Relief Society meeting and the teacher, or a class member, would say something that just didn't make any sense.  Yet everyone's head would bob up and down.  I would think to myself, "What was just said doesn't make any sense....am I the only one here that feels this way?"  Mostly I would keep silent, but the feeling that "not all is well in Zion" was creeping over me.

I was seeing too much talk but not enough action.  Where was the kindness?  Why was it like pulling teeth to get people to help out with a service project?  I saw a lot of people talking the talk of kindness, but not too many walking the walk of kindness. 

I was baptized at eight years old.  Married in the temple, the mother of six grown children, and happily married to a great guy.  We had been active, full tithe paying members for almost 40 years.

I had it all......yet for several years, I had had that feeling down deep inside that "not all was well in Zion." 

Not until I picked up that book on that gray afternoon did I understand what my inner voice had been screaming at me.  CULT!

I know that many do not agree with me. They do not believe that the LDS Church is a cult...or they will say that it is a 'soft cult'.  But for me the LDS Church is a cult.  It will always be a cult, no matter how much they try to morph into a more mainstream "normal" religion.

As I read more of Mr. Hassan's book, the pieces of the puzzle of my life fell into place.  I understood that it had been my true voice screaming from somewhere inside of me that what I was being told at church was not what I knew to be true.

What I knew to be true is that we are all unique individuals...we are not meant to be stamped out like cookies from a cookie cutter.  I knew that what is in a person's heart is more important than if they wear sleeves on their shirt.

I was horrified to see the scare tactics that had been used on me all my life spelled out in a book about cults.  It was horrifying, yet thrilling at the same time to finally understand what my inner voice had been trying to tell me.

My darling husband read the book, and validated everything I was thinking about.  He too could not deny that we had given our lives to a cult.  

We had never looked at what would be considered anti-Mormon literature.  My husband is BYU educated, and took a ton of religion classes there.  He felt he had a good grip on the gospel.  Neither of us had ever felt the need to read anti-Mormon literature, but now we felt that we had to look at our faith with a new set of eyes.

We made the decision together that if the LDS Church is true, then it will stand up under any light we shine on it.

We researched, we read, we cried, we read some more, we double, triple checked the facts, and we cried some more....we took off our holy underwear and resigned together in the Spring of 2009.

For us the LDS Church did not hold up under the light that we shined on it. 

I am happy to report that life has never been sweeter for us.  We are making our way in the world......and it all started with a book I found in an old box, on a gray, wet, afternoon.