This website is new to me and I have spent some time soaking up people's exit stories. It is deeply touching to discover the unhappiness, bondage, isolation -- actually weighs heavily on my heart. And I realize how fortunate I was to leave the Mormon Church at a younger age before it got so much more complex with marriage, children -- and the yucky temple experiences. I cannot thank and praise God enough for giving me a life and so much happiness and freedom, when I consider what it could have been had I gone down the Mormon road into adulthood.

My father's mother's Mormon roots went generations back. We had relative in Europe who sailed to the U.S. for religious freedom in the early days of the Mormon Church. I have distant relatives who actually met while waiting to sail. Our relatives travelled across country to settle in Utah. My distant grandfather/uncles went polygamous when they were directed to do so, and one of the men was polygamous at the time the church outlawed the practice -- he spent some time in prison for polygamy; my family has the trunk he took to prison. He split up the wives and the family went monogamous. My grandmother had no trouble with it; she told me that it was a time in the church when the single women needed the shelter of a man but that the revelation changed -- and she felt polygamy was no longer right.

My great-grandfather and his wife were sent from Utah to northwest Wyoming to help start a Mormon colony. When they got there, the ground was too salty to farm and useless. He asked many times if he could move off the homestead but was never allowed to do so, so he worked away from home to pay the bills and great-grandma worked the farm on her own with the help of the kids.

My grandma was at a dance and she met my grandpa, who was playing the fiddle. They fell in love and married. He was 20 years older than she. He never joined the church but Grandma stayed active until her death five years ago. My dad was and is a Jack Mormon. He never has gone to church but he doesn't leave the church. Mom, while raised a Baptist, joined the Mormon Church and is yet there today. She is very sociable and I feel she has always liked to "belong." She led the boy scouts in church and we had home teachers and home evening. For the most part, my own childhood experience in the church was innocuous. I still remember a few of the children's songs. I remember we always went to the city park each summer and decorated up our wagons to celebrate the cross-country trip to Utah. I think the only negative aspect, as a child, was that I always sensed my mom and us kids were a lower class since Dad wasn't in the priesthood and since my parents hadn't been sealed in the temple. I felt like such a peon on that pew on Sundays. And my friend's dad had to baptize me, since my dad could not do it.

As I got older, I went to seminary, the teen dances. I remember one boy in sunday school announcing firmly, "Jesus drank wine!" No one could deny it :) The biggest benefit of the church, for me, was that I did not drink and I did not have premarital sex; hence I was able to excel in school, for which I am glad. I remember thinking, regarding whether the church was true or not: "This is like insurance. If the church is not true, it won't hurt anything, but if the church is true, I'll go to heaven." The church to me, was just rules rules rules rules.

I had lofty aspirations to study language and got a good scholarship to a private university. Just before leaving for college, I had my interview with the bishop and I confided to him that I did not know if there was a God or not.
He told me to pray about it. That, to me at the time, was ludicrous: okay, I don't know if there IS a God, so how is praying going to help me know?!?!?!?!?!!!!!! It was my turning point. I never entered the Mormon Church again.

I went off to school, began learning about things like boycotting the cafeteria's lettuce because of the travesty of the agricultural workers' low wages, etc. I came home for the summer and fell for a guy who shared my new liberal ideals. We became intimate and I was totally bonded to him. After I returned to school for my sophomore year, I went through a rape and attempted kidnapping. It turned my emotional world upside down and broke me. I turned my focus on my boyfriend as the center of my world. I quit school. His parents, meaning well for us, advised us to get married. We did. And we had no foundation for marriage, just were thrown into it. He went back to his ways of partying with marijuana, which I had never known about previously, and I joined in. Strange. A young girl who followed the word of wisdom and who did not party, etc. -- I had followed all the RULES but the trauma of rape unravelled that core of values. Long story short, for ten years we partied and partied. At my tenth class reunion, one of the Mormon women in our class nominated me as the "The Most Changed" -- and I won!, celebrating by going out to the parking lot with friends to get high!

Sometime in that ten years, I wrote to the local church and resigned my membership so that they would not continue to reach out to me. I remember standing out on the lawn of my house and those young men in suits and ties, that I had grown up with, coming to the house and woefully advising me that I was out of the church. Which was more than fine; I had become a fullblown New Ager, seeking God in ALL things and saying, "All roads lead to God."

On the positive note, during the party years I DID find out that THERE IS A GOD!!! That happened when I became pregnant with our daughter. The experience of life inside me, the miracle of it all, showed me that only a good and merciful God could do that. Two years later, with the birth of my son, I found out that God answers prayers. My son came early and I was in the hospital for several days desperately hoping he would be okay. It was a Catholic hospital and there was a crucifix beside my bed. I gazed at it with all my needs swirling around inside me and, when he was born safe and sound, I knew that he had answered my prayer.

When I entered my thirties, the joy of partying ebbed. I was so sick of that lifestyle. But my husband was not sick of it and continued on. For eight desperate years, I tried and tried and tried to quit smoking pot.....and could not do it. Then I reached my bottom. I had a skin check and a mole was nearly a melanoma. I had it taken off but I felt my life's candle as flickering. That Labor Day, September 4, 1993, I cried out to God that I had to have His help, I could not go on with that miserable party life any longer........and I felt deep inside the sensation of being lifted up and held tenderly. I felt the chains and shackles falling off me. I never again smoked marijuana. Four months later, with me quitting pot and my husband vowing not to quit, the marriage fell apart, ironically with me being cast out and him being sheltered by his parents and having custody of the kids. I know. Bizarre. But coming out of a relationship of, frankly, emotional and mental abuse, I was so broken and could not stand up for myself. I was healing from the years of pot use, but it didn't happen overnight. My emotions were up and down and my mind was not strong.

Honestly, this was a period when I came close to committing suicide. I had it all planned out. The only thing that stopped me was that I went to a random church and poured my heart out to the pastor. He opened the Bible and read to me Psalm 139: that God knows me even better than I know myself, that he is there for me, above/below/in front/and behind; that he created me in my mother's womb; that there is no place that he cannot come to get me, even in the darkest pit or bottom of the ocean -- even there it is not dark to Him. Looking back, I see the presence of God in my life and His care for me and His mercy when I did so many stupid things and came so close to death. Slowly, in those four years after divorce, my real true relationship with God formed. I gradually began wanting not ALL WAYS TO GOD, but I wanted one sure way. I wanted the protection of God, I wanted Him to keep me safe from all the evil in the world around me. And I can honestly say that, in that lowest time of my life, all the New Age beliefs had nothing to say, they had no power to take a broken life and heal it -- they could only take, they could not give. It was the God of the Bible who took a broken woman and gave her the protection, the care, the new life she so desperately needed.

One Christmas season, I walked intoa small nondenominational church and asked if I could join. I was referred to the pastor and he told me that I could go there and be a part of them, but I didn't need to "join" -- I needed to be a part of the Body of Christ. We went over a lot of things and I made the commitment to give my life to Jesus and was baptized the following week at church.

I told a friend of mine about it, a friend who I had partied with but who was still, and always will be, Mormon. She congratulated me then asked, "What do they think of Mormons?" I said that I was not sure, but said that I did know that they don't regard Mormons as Christians. She got so upset and said, "Why can't we all acccept each other???" It hurt her and scarred our friendship, putting up a wall on her part that has remained.

Reflecting on it, it is not complicated. I feel Mormons are not Christians because, point blank, the Bible states that it shall not be added to or subtracted from. Mormonism is a crafty tool of deception in these last days, taking Bible passages and twisting them and totally confusing Mormons and even ex-Mormons.

Thinking back and visualizing the Mormon Church, I would never want to go inside again. I was right as a teen-ager -- the presence of God is not in the Mormon Church!!!!!! His love, his holiness, his presence is not there, so no wonder I did not know if there was a God.

Reading this site, the truly heartbreaking thing to me is the brokenness of most people even when they do leave the church. They do not believe in God at all or they cannot see the truth of God. And the vast majority of people who make comments still need a LOTTTTTTTT of deliverance from the evil spirits that have invaded their very hearts through the experiences of Mormonism.

For myself, I have virtually no contact with my Mormon relatives, and I don't care. I have my freedom in Christ! I can read the Bible, I can pray to God and have Him hear and answer my prayers, I am protected and all IS well with my soul!

I now have a marriage of 15 years with my best friend and soul mate who too went through sooooo much but has been redeemed through the blood of Christ. I went back to school and was in the top of my class, and now I am a doctor of oriental medicine, helping people heal in many ways.

I want to end with thanking all of you for your entries on this website, thank you for this website. It has opened my eyes to the suffering of Mormon and ex-Mormons and I will continue to have a heart for you and for your truest healing.