All my positive thoughts are with you and your family right now. It feels so inadequate to post about it but I'm there to support you in whatever way I can right now.
I'll keep checking up on you to make sure you're ok.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
I Can't Believe It's Really Over
To those who don't seek leadership, but who leadership is thrust upon. To those are humble in their confidence and don't seek praise. To the link with greater humanity in all of us.
To Harry Potter and to the end of his amazing tale.
I can't believe it's really over.
To Harry Potter and to the end of his amazing tale.
I can't believe it's really over.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
The Awakening
I spent way more time on this than I wanted to, it was just supposed to be a quick emotional study like the frustrated painting.
I could pussy-foot around the story but fuck it, blunt honesty it is. Most of you have already read about the party for SML and FTA on other blogs. Christy has a longer history with SML and it was decided she would attend this party as we were still navigating if we could handle being at a party at the same time.
A few people called me from the party begging me to show, so I talked to Christy and we agreed it still wouldn't be a good idea. I heard from more people at the party and I started to get irrationally livid, frustrated with the divorce, and I started sinking back into a familiar rage that had punctuated weekends in the past.
About this time Sideon logged on IM and I just dumped and dumped and dumped on the poor guy. I'm pretty sure he posed one or two simple questions and it stopped me in my tracks. We talked for a while and I felt immeasurably better by the time I went to bed.
This was a Friday night and over the course of that weekend I just felt better and better. It took a lot longer but it was like the clarity that came after the panic of leaving the church. All the sudden I knew my life would be ok from here on out.
This was the image that came to mind over the weekend and I had to get it down. The gray figure is supposed to look more like an empty husk, like the shed skin of an insect, but like I said, I just wanted to get this finished and up. Something quick and dirty.
Life is amazing again.
I could pussy-foot around the story but fuck it, blunt honesty it is. Most of you have already read about the party for SML and FTA on other blogs. Christy has a longer history with SML and it was decided she would attend this party as we were still navigating if we could handle being at a party at the same time.
A few people called me from the party begging me to show, so I talked to Christy and we agreed it still wouldn't be a good idea. I heard from more people at the party and I started to get irrationally livid, frustrated with the divorce, and I started sinking back into a familiar rage that had punctuated weekends in the past.
About this time Sideon logged on IM and I just dumped and dumped and dumped on the poor guy. I'm pretty sure he posed one or two simple questions and it stopped me in my tracks. We talked for a while and I felt immeasurably better by the time I went to bed.
This was a Friday night and over the course of that weekend I just felt better and better. It took a lot longer but it was like the clarity that came after the panic of leaving the church. All the sudden I knew my life would be ok from here on out.
This was the image that came to mind over the weekend and I had to get it down. The gray figure is supposed to look more like an empty husk, like the shed skin of an insect, but like I said, I just wanted to get this finished and up. Something quick and dirty.
Life is amazing again.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
My Disaffection Story Part 4: The One Behind The Wheel
So last we left off I received an e-mail from my sister in law stating Christy's dad had left the church.
I sat on this news for about a month, debating in my mind whether I should tell Christy about it, whether I should investigate things myself, whether I would continue going to church if she decided to leave herself. During this month my mother-in-law called to give me the same news, but also asked that I keep it from her until she had a chance to discuss it in person.
I didn't dare visit the link her sister sent me (it was to josephlied) because everyone knows you're not supposed to look at anti-mormon material. So I kept it to myself and went along as if nothing was different.
It was roughly a month later one Sunday morning we were watching the daughter of the couple we were friends with. They were both in leadership positions and both had to attend the same meeting that morning. Christy was writing out a check for tithing and was at wits end because we were giving all this money to the church while we had to charge her dental work to a credit card. She blew up, frustrated that our morning preparations were interrupted because both our friends had to be at a meeting and we had to watch their child. Frustrated that the church has money for gold-plated pay phones in the temple and we have to charge medical bills. Frustrated that we felt like we were doing everything right but were still struggling.
So I told her not to pay tithing. That stopped her for a moment and I took a deep breath and told her what I'd learned about her dad. She looked as if she had the wind knocked out of her and she began to cry. We went to church in a haze that day. I don't remember any of the lessons and I'm sure I rushed my clerk duties as quickly as possible so I could get back home and we could discuss things further.
We decided we'd visit the URL her sister sent and the doors flew open for me. I followed link after link after link. I suddenly knew why you were told not to read any anti-mormon material. It made too much sense and was a comprehensive whole that explained very human motivations for different programs and aspects of the religion. It painted a much more believable picture and everything started clicking into place for me. It was a little frightening at first, the idea that the world wasn't really the way I'd been taught it was. That quickly gave way to an incredible sense of freedom to decide what was important to me and how to view the world.
This is the point where most of you, gentle readers, started to get to know me. I was still a little backwards at first but I was absorbing knowledge like a sponge and drank up every thread and post. I learned to discard information that was too extreme and worked on (and continue to work on) fine tuning my filter. Though some of the conclusions I came to were a little depressing (You mean love is just a chemical cocktail and not some magical force written about in books and songs?) I learned to appreciate the profound complexity of life and all it has to offer, without the supernatural buttresses on which I'd been depending.
It's funny, I recall some of my favorite posts on The Foyer were from SL Slacker and NaziNoMore talking about their different experiences now that they were outside of Mormonism. I wanted to hear about people's first drinks, dressing differently, watching porn, going to strip clubs, seeing movies they'd never seen, processing the world through these new eyes.
Our first drinking experience was on a trip to California we decided on last minute for a U2 concert. We were alone and decided we would order alcoholic drinks with lunch our first day there. I remember looking around to see if anyone was watching us sin and it makes me laugh now. I think we stopped short of ordering porn in our room that trip though. Baby steps.
At first we continued to attend church because 1) it was amusing to listen to lessons that we could pick apart with abandon and 2) because we were keeping up appearances for our friends and parents whom we depended on for childcare. It quickly became grating, though, and we would find any excuse to skip church. It came to a head in June and I decided I was going to tell our bishop the truth.
I walked in to his office our last Sunday and explained that our decision had nothing to do with the local leadership of our ward and that we enjoyed the friendships we'd made there. I let him know we'd discovered information that lead us to believe The Church was not the one true church any longer. He asked for specific things and I mentioned the multiple accounts of the first vision and the kinderhook plates. He asked if I had read the FAIR response to these things and I told him I had and found their explanations unsatisfactory. I stopped him at this point and let him know I liked him and didn't really want to debate points with him. He asked if he could stop by to share his testimony with us and I refused but let him know he could stop by as a friend.
I was a little shaken as I left the building but I felt incredibly empowered at the same time. This was something completely out of character for me up to this point, to stand up to an authority and make my wishes known regardless of their opinions of me or my decision.
We enjoyed a brief period where we no longer had to attend church and our parents were none the wiser. Because my parents lived in our stake, though, this quickly came to a close when they heard from ward members that they no longer saw our children in primary.
I decided to write them a letter explaining my position regarding the church and took it over for them to read. This was a little more gut wrenching than meeting with our bishop, as I see them on a regular basis and have to put up with their opinions on my choices. My dad and my sister took it fairly well, my mom flipped out as expected but only after discovering I wasn't wearing my garments. Nevermind the part about the church not being true.
For a few months following it was a daily battle with my mother for the souls of my daughters. Didn't I know what I was sentencing them to? It's fine if I mess up my own life but they need a strong foundation! She had a brief flare up when my daughters mentioned how much they love coffee, then again when they told her daddy drinks real beer, not root beer.
It seems like they've all finally come to accept my decision and though they don't like it they respect it. I wonder how they'll react when I cut all ties and remove my name as the final step in showing just how certain I am of my decision.
I'm debating how or if there's anything else to tell. Certainly I continued to grow and change beyond this point. I influenced a friend who was on the fence to leave himself, was introduced to a whole new group of great people, learned what it's like to have a real party, and experienced the end of my marriage which almost certainly wouldn't have happened had we not left the church.
I sat on this news for about a month, debating in my mind whether I should tell Christy about it, whether I should investigate things myself, whether I would continue going to church if she decided to leave herself. During this month my mother-in-law called to give me the same news, but also asked that I keep it from her until she had a chance to discuss it in person.
I didn't dare visit the link her sister sent me (it was to josephlied) because everyone knows you're not supposed to look at anti-mormon material. So I kept it to myself and went along as if nothing was different.
It was roughly a month later one Sunday morning we were watching the daughter of the couple we were friends with. They were both in leadership positions and both had to attend the same meeting that morning. Christy was writing out a check for tithing and was at wits end because we were giving all this money to the church while we had to charge her dental work to a credit card. She blew up, frustrated that our morning preparations were interrupted because both our friends had to be at a meeting and we had to watch their child. Frustrated that the church has money for gold-plated pay phones in the temple and we have to charge medical bills. Frustrated that we felt like we were doing everything right but were still struggling.
So I told her not to pay tithing. That stopped her for a moment and I took a deep breath and told her what I'd learned about her dad. She looked as if she had the wind knocked out of her and she began to cry. We went to church in a haze that day. I don't remember any of the lessons and I'm sure I rushed my clerk duties as quickly as possible so I could get back home and we could discuss things further.
We decided we'd visit the URL her sister sent and the doors flew open for me. I followed link after link after link. I suddenly knew why you were told not to read any anti-mormon material. It made too much sense and was a comprehensive whole that explained very human motivations for different programs and aspects of the religion. It painted a much more believable picture and everything started clicking into place for me. It was a little frightening at first, the idea that the world wasn't really the way I'd been taught it was. That quickly gave way to an incredible sense of freedom to decide what was important to me and how to view the world.
This is the point where most of you, gentle readers, started to get to know me. I was still a little backwards at first but I was absorbing knowledge like a sponge and drank up every thread and post. I learned to discard information that was too extreme and worked on (and continue to work on) fine tuning my filter. Though some of the conclusions I came to were a little depressing (You mean love is just a chemical cocktail and not some magical force written about in books and songs?) I learned to appreciate the profound complexity of life and all it has to offer, without the supernatural buttresses on which I'd been depending.
It's funny, I recall some of my favorite posts on The Foyer were from SL Slacker and NaziNoMore talking about their different experiences now that they were outside of Mormonism. I wanted to hear about people's first drinks, dressing differently, watching porn, going to strip clubs, seeing movies they'd never seen, processing the world through these new eyes.
Our first drinking experience was on a trip to California we decided on last minute for a U2 concert. We were alone and decided we would order alcoholic drinks with lunch our first day there. I remember looking around to see if anyone was watching us sin and it makes me laugh now. I think we stopped short of ordering porn in our room that trip though. Baby steps.
At first we continued to attend church because 1) it was amusing to listen to lessons that we could pick apart with abandon and 2) because we were keeping up appearances for our friends and parents whom we depended on for childcare. It quickly became grating, though, and we would find any excuse to skip church. It came to a head in June and I decided I was going to tell our bishop the truth.
I walked in to his office our last Sunday and explained that our decision had nothing to do with the local leadership of our ward and that we enjoyed the friendships we'd made there. I let him know we'd discovered information that lead us to believe The Church was not the one true church any longer. He asked for specific things and I mentioned the multiple accounts of the first vision and the kinderhook plates. He asked if I had read the FAIR response to these things and I told him I had and found their explanations unsatisfactory. I stopped him at this point and let him know I liked him and didn't really want to debate points with him. He asked if he could stop by to share his testimony with us and I refused but let him know he could stop by as a friend.
I was a little shaken as I left the building but I felt incredibly empowered at the same time. This was something completely out of character for me up to this point, to stand up to an authority and make my wishes known regardless of their opinions of me or my decision.
We enjoyed a brief period where we no longer had to attend church and our parents were none the wiser. Because my parents lived in our stake, though, this quickly came to a close when they heard from ward members that they no longer saw our children in primary.
I decided to write them a letter explaining my position regarding the church and took it over for them to read. This was a little more gut wrenching than meeting with our bishop, as I see them on a regular basis and have to put up with their opinions on my choices. My dad and my sister took it fairly well, my mom flipped out as expected but only after discovering I wasn't wearing my garments. Nevermind the part about the church not being true.
For a few months following it was a daily battle with my mother for the souls of my daughters. Didn't I know what I was sentencing them to? It's fine if I mess up my own life but they need a strong foundation! She had a brief flare up when my daughters mentioned how much they love coffee, then again when they told her daddy drinks real beer, not root beer.
It seems like they've all finally come to accept my decision and though they don't like it they respect it. I wonder how they'll react when I cut all ties and remove my name as the final step in showing just how certain I am of my decision.
I'm debating how or if there's anything else to tell. Certainly I continued to grow and change beyond this point. I influenced a friend who was on the fence to leave himself, was introduced to a whole new group of great people, learned what it's like to have a real party, and experienced the end of my marriage which almost certainly wouldn't have happened had we not left the church.
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