I don't mean weird in a bad way, in fact in many cases it's a huge relief. But after having spent almost my whole life in the church, it seems strange that I'll...

- Never speak in Sacrament meeting again
- Never enter another temple
- Never read the Book of Mormon again
- Never don another pair of garments (this one falls under the huge relief category)
- Never have another picture of a temple or a GA hanging in my home
- Never see a child graduate from my alma mater BYU (hopefully)
- Never bear my testimony
- Never wear my CTR ring
- Never watch the temple movie or sit in the Celestial Room
- Never speak or lead music at another baptism
- Never trust a Mormon without proof they can be trusted. A LOT of proof.
- Never accept another calling
- Never attend another tithing settlement
- Never do genealogy or submit a name for temple work.
- Never ask for another priesthood blessing

There is no real point to this list - in fact, I don't really miss these things at all. It's just weird that so much of what was my life is gone forever and that so many things I took for granted I'll never do again

I'm exhausted just reading it.

And, my favorite? Never having to explain to anyone why you aren't doing those things AND not feeling guilty about it.

I've very happy about not doing all or any on the list.

you left out ..Never clean the church toilets again


not seeing a downside to your list

I got out before that brilliant innovation. Thank heavens.

The temple movie.

That thing is so fucking funny.

At the time, those things were common, ordinary, natural parts of our lives as members of the LDS Church. It was how we lived our religion as part of the group/culture.

Initially,your list of things is somewhat similar to what I listed (in different form) to change my automatic thinking scripts about what I wanted to engage in and think about.

Deleting and changing them was an important part of my Exit Process from the religious requirements of Mormonism.

To the outsider, everyone else's religion is: weird, strange, odd, bizarre, etc. It's only by living it that it takes on some normalcy, which is reinforced as it's part of the World View and the paradigm, and religious culture of our social/familial group also. When I compared Mormonism to other religious customs, and rituals, I found them to be, on the whole, quite mild and harmless as others were much more extreme, demanding, and difficult to get through.

Not weird so much as complete and total relief

Never having to defend indefensible points of doctrine

Never having to justify sustaining bigots as god's mouthpieces

Never having to find reasons I wasn't worthy enough to move mountains

Never feeling like an outsider at church and church activities

Never feeling embarassed by other mormons

Never having to force EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE into the context of a 6,000 year old earth organized for the sole purpose of dividing god's children into distinct classes, the least appealing of which is the highest, and the most appealing being the lowest.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2011 12:15PM by Joe Laban.

-Never have to sit through another lecture on the virtues of obedience.
-Never get publicly dressed down by a GA for stating that love was the greatest commandment.
-Never feel the need to explain how religion and evolution are not necessarily contradictory.
-Never again feel guilty about giving money directly to a charity rather than trusting those funds with the Lard.
-Never again have to watch my children be publicly humiliated because they added an extra “and” or paused too long during a sacrament prayer.
-Never have to watch a procession of children mindlessly taking the microphone and telling me what they “know”.
-Never having to take my daughter to a Sunday School Christmas party only to have them do word finds with words like temple , Joseph Smith, Prophet, Nephi, etc. but not words like Jesus, manger, star, Bethlehem, etc.
-Never again having to hear “Praise to the Man” or “Armies of Helaman”.
-Never having to go help somebody I’ve never even met before move.
-Never having to answer the phone on the last day of the month and say, “No, I didn’t do my home teaching”.
-Never having to explain why I’d be wearing a t-shirt on really hot day.

Another great list....sickening what they do.

Thanks for listing those things. One day I hope my convert daughter will be proud to say she is done with it all too.And mia, I loved your response.

One question...how are names submitted for temple work. Does someone in the family just ask you to provide names. I do think that is what happened just about a month after my daughter was converted....I think it was her MILasking and maybe demanding she give her names....my daughter told me she wanted names just to put family info together now that they were married. I doubt that. I think I was lied to. I did only give about three names. Should never have done that, but I was not too knowledgeable on B for the D at the time.

The box is emptied into a white zippered sack that is later placed on the altar.

No one ever sufficiently explained why we were sacrificing the people we were praying for :|

My mom does this all the time. There is a form or something on the internet now you fill out and submit to the church. I'm not sure if you send it directly to the temple nearest you or to SLC-Central. You need to have certain information like names, dates of birth and death, places etc. You can also hold the information so you can go and do the work yourself, if it's someone close to you like your grandma or something.

Never had a chance to sit down in the celestrial room, very seldom bore my testimony unless forced, wouldn't have dreamed of going to BYU--yet I was a molly.

I don't miss a thing about the LDS church. It is such a HUGE relief to not have to force myself to live it.

Yes, it's mostly a huge relief to me that I don't have to do any of these things again but since most of the things on my original list were a big part of my life for so long, it seems weird that I'll never do them again. The thing is, I could pick that burden back up if I wanted to but I don't want to. Still, so much of what I thought was important is now given up forever ...

I agree. Mormonism, as painful as it was, did a good job of giving you purpose. I can now see how f'ed up that purpose was, but once you walk away and resolve to never go back, you are left struggling to fill that void.

That's quite a list. I can't relate to most of it, although I was raised by wonderful TBM parents, my brother and I are both inactive now for 40 years, never went to the temple after my dead dunking experience when I was 13. Would not have allowed my kids to attend Ricks or BYU so they could get f***ed up too. And they weren't' baptized anyway.

Here's the list DH and I came up with:

-Never attending another low budget, corny activity
-Never HT/VT again
-Never interacting with cloyingly sweet, fakey people again
-Never being pressured to support TSCC's agenda
-Never having to sit through trite, weepy, high-voice squeaky, and/or self-aggrandizing testimonies
-Never having to work a crappy job (calling) for free
-Never having to listen to the GAs hypnotic voices and folksy stories
-Never having another worthiness interview
-Never hearing head-bobbing primary kids singing "Follow the Prophet"