* I tried to post this on the biography board, but it wouldn't let me...but I wanted to share my story. I have been lurking here for quite a while, and decided it was time to get involved.

First off, I want to say how happy I am for sites like this. I was BIC but have not been active in the church for almost 5 years now, and for a long time, I was just happy to leave it at that. However, just this last year, my previously TBM mom finally found out about the bogus lies the church was selling and realized that her world was crashing down around her. Because of this, she began to talk to me about all the problems with the church that I did not “know” before, but had always suspected. This brought me here and made me realize how happy I am that I did not waste my life in the cult.
Growing up, my family went to church every Sunday and participated in all church activities. I grew up in Utah (Provo until age 8, then St. George) so the church was just a way of life for us. Both of my parents families were TBM and there were only a few inactive. Looking back, one of the first times I began to look at the church in a bad light was when I was eight. My parents were going through a very rough time in their marriage and my dad had moved out. They were talking about getting a divorce. I, my mother, and my older sister had gone to Colorado to visit my mom’s sisters and parents, who were all uber TBM. While there, we had a FHE together with all the cousins and grandparents. During this FHE, we sang the song “Families Can Be Together Forever” and my heart broke. I knew that my family was being torn apart and that we would not be together. I ran out of the house and went onto the side of a hill to be alone. I remember feeling such anger and sadness towards the church and the lie of the forever family. This truly was my beginning out of the cult.
Fast forward a few years into YW. I began to see the cracks in the organization when I realized that we were only to be taught to obey our husbands and live our life through them. My parents had divorced by this point and I began to wonder “what if you had no husband?” and came to the conclusion that the church would never consider me, as a female, worth anything. I began looking at the fact that the church says that it was a “perfectly restored gospel”, but had learned that there had been many changes since the beginning. If the church was “perfect” at its formation, why the need for the changes? The biggest two for me was polygamy and blacks holding the priesthood. I couldn’t understand how a god would restore a gospel and not know that what would change in the future. The timing of the “revelations” to change those two policies also seemed very suspect to me.
During seminary in my 10th and 11th grade years, we were studying the Bible. It was at this time, that I realized that the church did not worship God of Jesus like they claimed, but worshiped JS, BY and the other prophets. I remember sitting through church one week and counting the number of times God/Jesus was mentioned versus one of the prophets/apostles…I’m sure you know who one that count! Around that time, I really wanted to get a job, so my mom relented and told me I could get one where I worked weekends~ no more church!!
From the time I was 17 until I was 23, I didn’t really have too many dealings with the church. I had gone on and married a never mo (his family had been mormon, but had left the church when his mom was pregnant with him). I decided that I wanted to go back to church with my three boys that I had at the time…to give them a good foundation. Since I had never gone to any other church, I went back to my local mormon ward. Within about two months, my husband was baptized and soon received the priesthood. We stayed active through the next two years and even had my daughter blessed when she was born. I did have my oldest son baptized (a decision I regret now), but the way the ward members treated my husband that day, was horrible. The bishop told him that he would not be allowed to do the baptism, even though he held the correct priesthood, because he worked as a bartender. He did not drink and for all intents and purposes, we were living the “good mormon life”, but the job was good money and allowed us to keep our kids out of daycare. Slowly, we began to find other activities to do together on Sundays, and church began to fade out. Since that time, we have had the missionaries show up at our house and the occasional VT or Primary love bomb. I gently tell the missionaries we are not interested, and the letters go right in the trash.
I have no desire to go back to that place ever again. My children do not even remember going (thank goodness) and now that my mom is out, they will not be getting any church direction from her. My dad stopped going to church around 10 years ago (I’m not sure he ever truly believed) and is now a practicing Shaman.
Although my exit was not as traumatic as some, I still have very deep seeded negative feelings for what the church has done to my mom. My sister, who is gay, also left the church when she was 17, and never looked back. At this point, many of my cousins are also out of the church and I have the feeling that there are many relatives who are just in for family reasons…I hope someday they too will figure out the great farce the church is. I realized that I too could have fallen into the trap and gone onto become a TBM. I’m glad that now, I have more than just “feelings” that the church IS NOT TRUE, but that this intuition has been backed by the evidence that you have gathered….
Thank you 

I'm so glad so much of your family has already escaped. With your successful example before them I imagine more will follow. And congratulations on the shiny new life before you! It won't be easy but it WILL be all yours. :D

+1

Thank you Rebeckah for your words! I have known that the church was bogus for a long time, and realize that I am much happier out of it, then I ever was in it. It's great to see that there are so many more people out there who have come to this conclusion as well.

Wow, amazing story

We certainly can relate.

It sounds like you have found a place of comfortable distance from the church. Even so, it is great to come to this board to express oneself and to know that those here will understand.

Welcome!

Good for you Womans Intuition. The church is so destructive to families. They strike at the very root that they say they are working to preserve. Women are chained to the stove and work so hard at rearing an unrealistic number of children (on their own practically) since the men are being called out of the home constantly. I used to think to myself...why in the hell don't we all just go home to our families and take care of them. It seemed we were always being called to someone else's home to do their work and so many mormon families want you to roof and remodel their house. The youth projects were so often painting crack head houses where the people were smoking dope inside and loving being served. OK a negative rant, but I have had a liftime of taking care of other peoples stuff while my own wife was struggling her ass of at home. I am now home and have a better relationship with my wife and children than I ever did in the church. I can't tell you how sick I was of getting those little check list booklets that completely mess up any chance at a decent relationship with your children. Mormons act like they invented God. Hello, guess what they are selling something that is provided by virtue of your birth. I do believe in god. I do not attempt to think I understand all the attributes of God, but I feel inclined to love my wife, family, and to be a good friend to those who let me. Good for you. I hope you are able to take what you have learned about the cult and remember what a great thing it is to have a family and love them and nurture them without someone taking from you your precious economics fruits of your labor or stealing your time away in useless busy work.

Thanks all for making me feel welcome!

Although I have been outside of the church for a while, my mom's exodus has really made me think about how screwed up it all really was. I am glad for her that she is finally out as I really tried to talk to her about it before, but she was so deep into it, that she didn't see.

It has been wonderful to know that I was not alone in my "WTF" thinking about the church...and I feel for those who are still caught up in its lies. This site is a great service to those who are struggling, and although I am not, I'm glad that I have something concrete to look at, and refer to, if my kids ever start getting dragged into it just due to the fact that we still have so many TBM family members.

It's always very comforting to me, to read these, and see some common ground with the feelings I had. I'm happy you are here.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2011 01:38PM by Queen of Denial.

It just breaks my heart when I read this kinda stuff:

"I began to wonder “what if you had no husband?” and came to the conclusion that the church would never consider me, as a female, worth anything."

Glad you found your way out. Nowhere is the cult more damaging than in its treatment of women.

Welcome.

Timothy

I was the Primary Chorister when the song "Families Can Be Together Forever" came out and we had to teach it to the kids because it was part of the SM presentation for that year. The first time I heard it I got plenty of warm fuzzies, but as I started to teach it I knew there were a number of kids from single-parent homes in our Primary as well as some where one parent wasn't a member or was completely inactive. I wondered how they internalized that song and I thought it was really awful to thrust that on those kids. You're the first one I've heard say how it affected them. It's what I suspected.

The church works to make a happy family when every single person toes the line and everything follows the plan. It also helps when you live in a very Mormon area. My oldest brother has that family and I see their family pic with everyone in matching clothes and all the boys RMs and all the marriages temple ones and I think, "good for them, let's hope nothing ever bursts their bubble." They seem perfectly happy. But they would have no concept of how to handle it if one of their kids or grandkids ever strayed from the straight and narrow. To me that is not healthy and I know from first-hand experience how it make things seem way more devastating than they are or ever need to be.

You're lucky to be able to raise your kids without the mormon trappings. They will be so much healthier because of it.

Thanks for your response. As my sister and I were the ONLY ones on both sides of the family that had a broken home, it was devestating for us to go to a church that forced the forever family at us.

I am not sure as to whether or not there is an afterlife, I hope there is, but I do not think that you have to "sell your soul" to be together as a family if there is one. My husband and my children are the most important things in my life. When I look at my daughter who just turned 8 last summer, I am so happy that I am not subjecting her to a lifetime of abuses by the church. And I love it when my 13 year old son and I are discussing religion and he states that you don't have to go to church to be a good person, just treat people kindly and love them for who they are. I know that their lives will not be based upon the idea of perfection but instead will be on how they can be the best person they can be with the life they choose to live.

As horrible as the church was growing up in it, I am thankful for one thing... It has taught me how to question, think independently, and be accepting of others...not because that is how the church is, but because it is the exact opposite of what I saw, and I was able to realize how wrong that was.

I just love to hear stories where the Church shoots itself in its own foot (i.e., your clean-living husband being unworthy to baptize his child because of his job) and that such high-and-mighty uber-righteousness often drives members right out of the church.

Haha...so true! One thing that I was lucky about is that I don't think that my husband ever truly believed in the church, just went along with it because it was what I wanted to do. After that day, we both knew that it was something that we would never buy into, so we decided to make the break before our kids got brainwashed. I want my children to develop their own sense of beliefs about God and religion. Right now, I do not practice anything nor am I sure there is really a God, but I also do not stop my kids from exploring their own beliefs. We talk about religion, look up different ones on the internet, and are pretty open about everything with them. But I beleive that you should enter religion with your eyes wide open, knowing all there is to know about it.

Even being BIC, I didn't know a fraction of the things about the church that I have learned just since leaving it!

Thanks!