During these challenging times....

I continue to get email from the presidents of the elders, the relief society and the other ward organisations. I imagine someone gave them all an assignment to take turns sending a thoughtful, encouraging message to all the ward members.

They really try hard and like to talk about pioneers. They make a lot of comparisons about how covid has changed the world. They try to be profound but it all sounds like a long trail of cliches. It's like getting a conference talk in my email once a week.

They also seem convinced that the guvment is conspiring to prevent them from attending church. Whatever. Not my problem.

Although I never officially quit, I did remove my email address from the church website. That didn't seem to work, so I actually put in a fake address. That helped for a while until someone figured it out and put my old address back in.

I am reluctant to make a stink about it because I don't want to put my wife in a bad spot. She is all-in and would not do well with the attention.

I think folks around here know where I stand. It does not seem to make a difference. They keep pretending like it is just a phase that I am going through.

It can really throw me off. I think I have peace and harmony and balance in the force and suddenly I am back on someone's list to get fellowship. It can be depressing.

My wife is actually ok with what I think of as our spiritual armistice. The last few Sundays I got up early and went for my usual hike. She has not asked me to study the scriptures with her in a couple of months. This week she suggested that I take my sons camping over a Sunday in a couple of weekends. We are still together on about 80-90 percent of issues, but we just reached different opinions about religion.

It all works except for the actions of the know-it-all busy bodies who insist on interfering in our marriage.

I have to admit I understand. I don't like it but I know why it happens. Also I know that they probably will not stop.

It takes a lot of concentration to focus on the things that are most important, which for me is supporting my family in whatever way I can.

I want to offer hope to people who are in the church but wish they were not. My situation is not ideal, but it is manageable and definitely worth it.

Good luck and thanks for listening.

Good luck to you!

Baby steps. Sounds like you are handling your situation beautifully.

Fingers crossed for you!

don't know me. Thankfully, they quit using my e-mail or I blocked them all.

We got a handout for what was going to happen in the meetings when the ward started going back to church. It was 4 pages long. I have asked the bishop not to leave anything on my door anymore and he said he'd try to make sure we didn't get anything. Well, at least this one was interesting. They think THIS is going to work???

But like I've said, I've been out a long, long time and I still have people trying to get me involved. I'm just inactive, lazy, want to sin, but I still believe deep down. I've written about my aunt. My sister asked why I get more e-mails from my aunt than she does (she liked this aunt better when we were growing up than I did) and I told her, "Because I'm a project." If anyone can be more insulting it was when she counted the stairs "for my benefit" to the sealing room when my daughter got married in the temple. It was52 I believe.

They never stop. Resigning does NOTHING. I love my neighbors. They are great. But every now and then they invite me to a ward function. Oh, and by the way, I've had 3 women in this ward tell me my husband chose to be gay after we went inactive. So sad . . . this is what happens when we sin.

cl2 Wrote:
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> by the way, I've had 3 women in this ward tell me my husband chose to be gay after we went inactive. So sad . . . this is what happens when we sin.

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I am sorry they said that kind of thing. Years ago my wife said something similar. She said that our teen aged sons all started to have problems after I first told her that I didn't beleived the mormon church was true. It is hard to describe how that feels. It seems to be a natural reaction to look for someone to blame when things are not the way you want them to be.

I imagine that she felt hurt, too when I rejected the church. It is hard to let go for either person. Time and effort help, but still stings to think about it.

> by the way, I've had 3 women in this ward tell me my husband chose to be gay after we went inactive. So sad . . . this is what happens when we sin.

I think if anyone said that to me, I would respond, "...in the same way that you chose to be a heterosexual? When did you make that choice? Or were you born that way? Ever occur to you that gay people are born that way as well?"

That seems a bit tame, no?

I might have offered, "Well, I don't know about choosing to be gay but my husband says he treasures the many hours he spent with your husband."

This is a suggestion to anyone that is getting unwanted email from a particular person or organization.

Go to the 'Help' in your email program and find the procedures to block unwanted messages.

You can get very creative from just sending the message to trash or just to completely deleting it with out any tracking.

An advanced effort, one could send a message to the sender and then completely deleted the original message.

The message you send is limited to your creativity.

Something like, "This email address is no longer valid, please check for spelling mistakes."

Good luck

You bring up some good points. I work in technology and I considered a couple of technical toys that would make a few people uncomfortable.

Upon sober reflection, I concluded that way lay more trouble than joy...

Thanks!

I kept getting spammed by this one store even though I made repeated requests on the store's website to be dropped from their list. I waited patiently for a few months with no result. Finally, I worked with my email provider. I marked the store's email as spam, and the provider automatically replied that if I wanted to no longer receive those emails, they would help. And did they ever! I don't know what sort of magic they worked, but finally...no more unwanted emails.