A friend wrote me a letter and asked me why I had left the church. Even though it had been three years since my departure, I had never taken the opportunity to write it all down. It was cathartic. Not everyone comes out of it well. I never mailed it; I'm still debating whether I should.



I joined the church as a 21-year-old mother of an infant. Newly divorced from a horrifyingly manipulative and abusive man, I was ripe for picking by any organization pushy enough to snag me.
Enter stage right, return missionary. He wore European-cut suits to our Early World Literature class and had a couple days’ growth of a beard. Sexy as hell. He talked about imported motorcycles and parties (church sponsored, but I didn’t know that) and seemed infinitely interesting.

As a single mother, I never expected to marry again. I was damaged goods, with baggage. But I had plans...school, and a career teaching, so I could be available for my son. We would be broke, but we would make it, and I wouldn’t have to depend on someone else to raise my son.

I chased RM a little, to see if I could make him look. I asked for notes and lingered in the hallway to “happen” to be there when he came by. Finally, after weeks of pursuit, he asked me out.

I had four dates that weekend. I went home and broke them all, and waited for a phone call. He never called. I went to my fourth date with Tom, a bodybuilder with stunning looks and absolutely no brain...a Super Bowl party. Margaritas and TV bricks. The Patriots lost, but we weren’t too worried. We still had fun.

Monday, I wore the most guy-friendly clothes I had to school. I was angry, and wanted him to know what he was missing. I went to school and ignored him. Finally, I made him look, though. He called me after school that day. We arranged a date for Friday, 7 p.m.

Seven p.m. Friday, no date. Eight, still not there. I changed out of my going out clothes and into my pajamas. He showed up at 8:30 and said he had worked late. I broke my own vow (screw him! Never again!) and went out with him anyway.

Long story short, we met in January. Started dating in February. Married in June, after my conversion. He told me before my baptism that if I had not converted, he would have bounced. Again, sure I was damaged goods, I entertained all the assertions made to me in the missionary discussions and consented to be baptized. We had a hard time with the morality thing, so we married very quickly after that.

We started out okay. Quickly added three more kids to the throng. By #4 within five years (My oldest son was born in 1985, my fourth child was born in 1990) I was a screaming, crazy, suicidal lunatic.

By now, the church had claimed my husband. Any time I cried out for help by asking for his time, his response was “You raised your hand to sustain me in this calling.” Anytime he succumbed to my pleas, he paced the house like a tiger waiting for release from his cage. I never lasted long before I told him to go ahead and leave. He always did. The widows and fatherless needed him more than I did, I suppose. After all, how hard can it be to have a few kids in the house, right?

Too many times I would dress my children on my own and go to church, only to see DH ferrying some single woman to church and sitting with her to help with her children. If my kids ran over to sit with him, he would tolerate them for a few minutes, and then send them back to me.

The other women loved the hell out of him and asked me constantly, “Aren’t you the luckiest woman in the world, to have such a wonderful, attentive husband?” I always felt like he was building his harem for the eternities, when he had been promised to have a hundred wives, with all the sex he could handle. As stated in D&C 132, if I were to object, I would be the one cast off. Sit down and shut up, and take what you can get. You’re the luckiest woman alive, remember?

All this time, while he climbed the church ladder, I was reluctantly called again and again to increasingly difficult callings. Activities committee leader, Primary president, Relief Society counselor. Everywhere I went, I had four children in tow. Did they ever go to DH's meeting? Are you kidding me? That’s woman’s work! Take them with you! Besides, I won’t have room in my car to pick up the single mothers and all their kids if I have our kids in the car!

Now let’s diverge a little, and talk about tithing. We were subsisting on a $33,000 income. Not only did we tithe, we paid fast offerings, special offerings to the kids on missions who really couldn’t afford it, building fund, Book of Mormon fund...if it was on the slip, we paid it. And we starved.
I fed my kids pasta, beans and rice, and homemade bread. Their teeth didn’t even get cleaned until they were well into school age...we couldn’t afford it. Medical issues always made problems, even with a tiny co-pay, it was more than we had. And constantly I was told to have more faith. I would be blessed. I would have my needs met. So I paid...and always seemed to be in credit card debt to about the amount of money we had paid that year in tithing.

But I always told myself I didn’t have enough faith. I didn’t believe strong enough. I didn’t teach my children well enough. I didn’t pray enough, do genealogy enough, go to the temple enough, read the scriptures enough, give enough to my calling. I had to be better. I had to be nicer. I had to be a better wife and mother.

I was beating my head against the wall. Everyone tells you motherhood is rewarding, amazing, captivating. Nobody tells you it’s BORING. By nature, I am curious, and a seeker of knowledge. But the only knowledge I was “allowed” to seek (no school for me...I’d have to put the kids in day care and I couldn’t afford that. Don’t read anything the church doesn’t approve of...it will corrupt your mind.) was through church sources. I thought I would lose my mind...literally...from lack of use. I matched mountains of socks. I cooked piles of macaroni and cheese. I attended countless meetings. I fed hundreds of missionaries. I changed thousands of diapers (cloth, of course...I had three in diapers and couldn’t afford disposables).

A little at a time, I began to divorce myself from the guilt. I just couldn’t live with it. I did my best, but I was not willing to believe I was inherently bad, and that my kids were worthless (I got that one all the time, because they asked questions in class the teachers couldn’t answer. They talked too much. They were the troublemakers. One of the leaders even told one of my kids to quit coming to activities. She was just too much trouble. At one point, we were attending church at a far-away building. Some leaders would have activities there; some would opt to have them in their homes so they didn’t have to go so far. I couldn’t get all my kids to activities because some had to be 20 miles away; others had to be in various places in leaders' homes. It was a physical impossibility to get them all to their meetings, since DH had more important things to do and none of the leaders were willing to compromise and have all the activities at the church. I was constantly choosing who could go or not go because there was only one of me and four children who all had to go to different places. I spoke to the bishop and he put out the word that I had raised a stink and that all the youth activities needed to be at the church. One of the scout leaders must have talked about it to his wife. One Sunday while she was giving a talk, she accused me, from the pulpit, of wanting her husband to raise my children. I began to unify with my children a little at a time, until I felt like they were my unit, and nobody else was allowed to infiltrate.
DH took all the criticism from leaders and members hard. He wanted desperately to be accepted by the church leaders, and he was, insofar as he was willing to work his ass off for the church. But they still spoke subversively of my children in meetings he was required to attend. He would come home and ream the kids; I would fight with them, and he would use his “priesthood authority” to try to get us all in line. We put on game faces where church was concerned. DH wasn’t home much; it wasn’t that hard. He always sat on the stand. We passed notes and laughed, much to his horror. We were a complete embarrassment to him. But I loved my kids, and I was not willing to unify with an organization against them. Since our collective defection, we have had many conversations about how torn he felt between his family and the church. He wishes he had done it differently. But you can't change the past, no matter how hard you try.

I wondered where the funny, clever, interesting husband I had married had gone. He was kidnapped by the church, and they were doing their best to use him to get us in line. Families are forever...really? We had never been less unified. If I had had a way to make my own living and support myself and my kids, I would have left. But I couldn’t. There’s another ploy by the church...keep the women uneducated and without life skills, so they are captive in their situations. Clever. It works.

A little at a time, my oldest son began to research the church, its history, and the things it asserted to be “truth.” He would tell me once in awhile of things he had learned. I refused to listen. If I listened and he was right, it would mean the entire foundation of my life would be built in the wrong place. It was just too scary. I basically stuck my fingers in my ears and sang when he tried to talk.

And I went on believing the illogical, unsound things the church preached. The Earth is 7000 years old. Dinosaurs aren’t real. Polygamy is an eternal principle, to be obeyed by all...so women, get used to it. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not. Joseph Smith was the most important person in the world, except for Christ Himself. And, to quote Elaine Canon who has been re-quoted time and again, “When the Prophet speaks, the debate is over.” That a man, no matter how untrained, can be called as a bishop and suddenly he is “inspired” to give marital advice, dole out church food and money only as he sees fit, and give people jobs and callings.
Now, someone tell me...what would give, say, a 28 year old engineer the life experience required to give a couple married 30 years marriage counseling?
How can the church insist, in spite of decades of scientific research, documented finds, etc., that the Earth is 7000 years old? Especially when human remains have been found that are provably 4.4 million years old? How can it deny the existence of dinosaurs, when skeletons have been found all over the world? Here’s a fun one...how can it say that the things that happened in the Book of Mormon truly happened, when not one single shred of archeology clarify or back up any of it? How can the church say Native Americans are decedents of Lehi when thousands of them have been tested by mitochondrial DNA, and they are all found to be descendents of East Asia...not at all of Israel?
But I told myself to have faith, that it was all anti-Mormon literature. The prophet had spoken. It was not my job to critically think; only to blindly believe. That is the true essence of faith, after all. So I put my brain back to sleep and went on.

As I did, callings continued to come. Relief Society counselor, Relief Society president, Public Relations specialist. DH was called in different directions...Stake High Counselor, High Priest group leader, bishopric counselor. If I thought I didn’t see much of him before, he was even a bigger stranger now. Truth be told, it was harder when he was home. He had grown harsh and judgmental of us all, just like the leaders had. I refused to be budged in my unity with my kids, though I did continue to try to teach them the gospel as I understood it. But I refused to be pushy about it.

For our entire sojourn in the church, DH always felt like he didn’t earn enough money. In truth, he didn’t, if we were supposed to cover all our needs and pay the church the way they wanted to be paid. But we managed, albeit painfully. We managed for me to stay at home with the kids. (We had since added two more to our throng, for a total of six.) But he is, by nature, very anxious and competitive. It was painful to watch him struggle with the balance between ego and being among a ward of doctors and lawyers.

While a member of the Young Men’s presidency, DH met a man whose son was a non-member part of our troop. I remember his name, all too well. I remember his son’s name. I remember how that man screwed my life up.

While this man’s wife was a successful, practicing RN, he had discovered a way to earn piles of money in a short time...insurance adjusting. What was required was for a person to go to places where disasters had occurred and estimate costs for insurance companies. I thought it was a passing interest, so I didn’t mind when DH took the expensive opportunity to get licensed. The Scout kid’s dad insisted he was “handing DH a career on a silver platter.”

What he didn’t get was that DH was our sole breadwinner. He carried our life insurance, health insurance, etc. I was unemployable, with no education and no experience.
A few weeks later, some insurance company called him. There had been a hurricane in Virginia. Did he want to go? Of course he did. He quit his job with its insurance benefits and consistent paycheck and went off to seek his fortune.

Now, as a lowly woman in the church, I was pretty solidly criticized for expressing a differing opinion. I had been told time and again to sit down and shut up. So when DH decided to leave us and go chase storms, I did. I shut up. The priesthood had spoken; the debate was over. I, the boring, fat, attitudinal, unfaithful was finally getting what was coming to me. He felt like he was leaving on an adventure to better himself and our situation. I, on the other hand, felt like it was ME he was leaving. I wasn’t interesting, captivating, skinny, beautiful, sweet, or obedient enough. He wanted to find his happiness elsewhere, thank you. Ciao.

He left me with six kids, a water well that was broken, an acre and a half to tend, and a car that seated four people. He took my van...he needed the space for his equipment.

I did a lot of growing up over the next five years. I learned I was stronger than I thought I was. I learned I had friends I could absolutely depend on. I learned I could do it on my own, if I could find a way to earn money. I stripped the veil off my brain and started thinking again.

The church leaders chastised me bitterly. “Why did you let him go?” they asked. Let him? LET HIM????? He holds the hold priesthood, right? He’s the one with the authority to have revelation for our family, right? I’m supposed to sit down and shut up...RIGHT? Conveniently, when they wanted to, I was too weak. Up to this point, I had too big of an opinion. It felt like irony at its very, very best.

I was forced by circumstance to beg the church for food and rent money. I got called out every time. We had paid our tithes and offerings faithfully for seventeen years. For seventeen years they had gotten about fifteen percent of our gross income. But every time I asked for help, while I got it, it was grudging. It was humiliating. But I had no choice.

After a time, DH did actually begin to earn good money. But I, with chronic medical conditions and no insurance, used lots of it on medical necessities. The four seat car he left me with threw a timing belt, and I had to buy a car. The water well had to be repaired. We had six kids to feed and maintain. And he had living-away expenses...housing, food, gas, equipment.
It was very much a not-profitable venture. We survived, but we did not thrive. And our marriage suffered further.

About this time, I decided to put my youngest child in a Montessori program. She was four years old, bored home with me all day. I enrolled her three days a week.
That first day I dropped her off, I sat in the parking lot after and wondered what to do. I could go to Wal-mart and shop around. I could go for a walk, or visit with friends. Or I could do something I’d always wanted to do. I could, with all my new-found spare time, write a book.

So I did. For the next four months, I was not a mother. I checked out of everyone’s lives, though they choked and cried and wailed about it. Meals were minimal. Housework was done only when it became emergent. I was embroiled in my story. I realized I had so much to say, and had been saving my words for all my time as a member of the church, stuffing them down until they had to come out or kill me. I wrote. That’s all I did. I wrote.

In the end, I composed a five hundred page novel. To this day, I am fiercely proud of it. I learned so much about myself during that time. I had no idea how interesting, how committed, how amazing I was capable of being. For the first time in my life, I was proud of myself.

When I saw DH next, I had lost forty pounds and changed my hair color. I started wearing contacts and bought cute new clothes. One of the best compliments of my life was given to me by my oldest daughter, who was about fifteen at the time. As I was searching for a dress to wear to church (everything was too big), she told me, “Mom, you’re really pretty for an old person.” I sipped the honey from that compliment and cast away the sting. It was the first time in what felt like a thousand years someone had told me I was pretty.

Between storms, DH would come home and make me, and himself, crazy. We got used to functioning without him. He did not understand why we didn’t change ourselves to accommodate him anymore. It was a miserable time for us all.

I remember the day, after I had spoken to him from Florida or Dallas or Mississippi or somewhere when I concluded something important. If I didn’t change something, I could not count on anyone else to change anything for me. I had to count on myself.

I needed an education.

The following semester, I signed up for nursing prerequisites. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever done, but I was determined. I needed more security than I was getting, and I needed to count on myself.

I excelled in school, which was very gratifying. I found that while I like nursing, I LOVE biology. The logic, the mastery, the reasoning, and the way it all fits. Our bodies are magic. It just confirmed my belief in a greater intelligence to learn about it.

As I was going to school, I was teaching RS once a month. I loved my calling; it was a contribution without being too demanding. But I tended to talk about things that people were not perfectly comfortable with. Every time I talked about something that was opinion instead of “gospel,” I would preface it with “the gospel according to me.”

I must have made some people angry with my opinions, because someone tattled on me to the bishop, saying I was teaching false doctrine. I was released that week.

I never took another calling. They wanted me to baby-sit in primary; I said no. I didn’t want a weekly calling. I was stretched too thin already with DH working out of town and me trying to get my schooling done, and done well. They asked me to teach a temple prep class; I considered it, but I told them no. I was having a hard time with the temple after I learned that the entire temple ceremony had been copied from the Masons. Then it had been changed multiple times. If God didn’t change, why did the temple ceremony change? I didn’t get it, and I couldn’t justify it. I couldn’t teach something I was confused about myself.

Several times in the next few months, as I attended my classes, it felt like my mouth always got me in trouble. I asked troublesome questions. Why had Joseph Smith been allowed to marry women who were already legally married, and bed them? Why had he been allowed to marry girls as young as fourteen? Research had disclosed to me that the median age for women to marry during that time was 21.9 years. Fourteen was just nothing more than child abuse to me. Questions about it in Sunday school got me in big trouble. Anytime I tried to engage in conversation that would be rubber-to-road helpful in my life, for example, “how do you handle it for real when your kids leave the church?” All I ever got was pray, have faith, bear my testimony.

“I can always count on Sister Smartypants to make class interesting!” and everyone would laugh chummily at me, and move on.

After I finished my prerequisites at school, I had been “discovered” by the head of the science department. He needed someone to work in the office during the summer, making purchase orders and preparing for a science building move. I was interested in science, and I liked the head of the dept, so I took the job.

After I worked there for a couple of months, he called me into his office and showed me the lab schedule for the next semester. He explained he was having a hard time filling all the teaching slots for the labs. Would I be interested in teaching?
Yes sir. Yes sir. Yes sir!

As I had worked there, I would often make my silly, under-my-breath comments. I had made them all my life, but no one I hung around with go them or thought them worthy of notice. As I said my mutterings in the science department, they were received with enthusiasm, laughter, and appreciation. I had finally found the people who found the same things interesting and funny that I did. All my life, I’d thought I was alone with my thoughts. Turns out, I just hadn’t found my people.

I sort of formulated a thought about science. Literature and English is creative, mostly. Math is straight-up logic. Science gets to be a little of both...logic mixed with imagination. I learned that I loved the sciences, and had a real talent for them.

I taught there all through nursing school, and found my friendships deepening in the department. What I found odd was this. When I went to church, I had isolated myself there. I had built my life around the women there, and buried myself if my callings. I had been told again and again, time without number, that the world is an evil, wicked place. I had actually begun to fear being “out there” in the big bad world. What I learned, though, was that people are magnificent. They are interesting and amazing, and have incredible stories to tell. And, by isolating myself in the church and believing that everyone out there, while good stock, were not worthy of the level of truth I had, I had missed the opportunity to hear their stories, learn from them, and enjoy their friendship, out of fear that they would be a corrupting influence.

I loved teaching, and realized that given the opportunity, I would study the sciences and teach for the rest of my life. But I needed a quick fix. I needed a viable career sooner than that would be available, so I resolved myself to nursing, though I didn’t find any kindred spirits among the nursing staff or students.

Nursing school is a brutal venture. Add six kids, an absent husband, and teaching four or five classes (anatomy and physiology I and II, and Microbiology) a semester, and I was absolutely buried.

But I got through it, and kept my GPA up. My last semester in college, my whole wide world fell apart.

First of all, we had a house fire. It was a Saturday night and DH, two of the kids, and myself were all at a used bookstore far from home, for something to do. While there, DH got a call from a neighbor. The water heater had exploded. The house was in flames.

As we sped home, I asked the kids what they wanted to save, if they could save anything. Kellie had a favorite doll. Fifteen year old son wanted his guitar. I wanted pictures and genealogy.

We got home, extracted those items with the help of neighbors, and watched the house burn. A church member/leader happened to be driving by and saw what was happening. He called the bishop and a couple of other members. A friend showed up, carrying marshmallows. They sat with us while, in shock, I watched my home of the last twelve years burn.

The fire dept was amazing. They saved many of our possessions with their quick response. But all our furniture, bedding, linens, bathrooms, books, were smoke damaged beyond saving. The house, because it was a mobile home, was a total loss.

We stayed with my daughter that night. I had clinicals the next day, and I went. The next day or two, we stayed at the bishop's house while they were out of town. Nobody ate, we slept very little. I had anxiety to a level I had never had in my life.
After, we stayed at a family’s home in the ward, and paid them rent. They were in the process of moving and the house was vacant. They agreed to let us stay. It was a disaster, for them and for us. As anxious as I already was, I had a displaced family, displaced pets, and an absent husband. It was the final weeks of nursing school.

RS president brought us dinner a couple of times while we stayed in a hotel. We had no way to eat there, without dishes or silver, so when visiting teacher told me if I wanted anything more to let her know, I didn’t ask for more help. One friend came over and helped me recover what we could from my house. The men in the church helped us move that (packed) stuff to the house we were renting. They collectively made one trip. Otherwise, we were left to ourselves. In some cases, we were even sort of harassed. But I’ll give that a miss for now.

After living in the house for a time, it was sold. We moved to an apartment, with the help of my nursing friends. Nobody from the church showed up to help, though we had asked them to.
About that time, I got an interview with an internationally acclaimed pediatric hospital. After a couple of interviews, I was offered a very prestigious job in the Emergency Center. Excited, I took it.

Graduation came. It seemed anticlimactic with all that had been going on. I had to give up my beloved teaching job, and leave my friends. Since then, the head of the dept has passed away, one of my chums moved to Arkansas, and I was replaced by a person with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.

We took a quick vacation in the days before I started at the ER. I was anxious and scared of everything, and I should have had fun but instead spent my time cowering while going along with all the activities. Retrospectively, I was suffering from a spectacular case of PTSD.

ER work started. If I thought I was stressed out before, now I was a basket case. As a member of the church, your script is written for you. Again, “when the prophet speaks…”. I hadn’t thought critically for myself for a very long time. Now I was in situations where NOT thinking critically could mean life or death to my patient. I was scared beyond my capacity for feeling.

I was working a 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift, which meant I was never home when my kids came home. I was asleep when they woke up. I only worked three days a week, but when I wasn’t working, I was recovering from work or preparing to work. I felt like I was owned by the job, and terrified of it. I was not doing a good job, which I was not used to. I was used to excelling at my job. Here, I felt like a complete loser. And I felt like I was failing at home...I was absent or exhausted or so anxious I couldn’t do much of anything for or with my kids. My oldest daughter was being everyone’s mother, making sure they got to school, making sure they ate, did their homework, and went to bed.

About that time, I was having a hard time getting used to working on the back side of the clock. I would stay up as late as possible when I didn’t work, to try to acclimate. I am terrible at nights...I have always been an early riser. The job, while exciting and prestigious, was killing me.
In order to stay on the correct schedule, I would stay up far beyond when everyone else went to sleep. It didn’t work well, besides to make me sleep deprived as heck. But I had my strategies for staying awake.

I had become somewhat disillusioned with the church by now. People often say that the only reason anyone ever leaves the church is because they are offended. Believe me, had that been the case, I would have left the church within the first three months of my attending it. I was a member for 23 years, with plenty, plenty of offenses, but because I believed it to be the true church, I endured the slights and irritations along with what was good.

Staying up late one night, I decided to be a good little Mormon girl and do some church history research. I had heard the same things everyone else did over the years, in Sunday School and such, but I decided to do some work on my own. I wanted to re-center and strengthen my testimony, and I thought this would be a good way to do it.

Right out of the box, I wanted to read about PP Pratt. He had always been an “around the edge” interesting sort of guy. I had heard he had died as a martyr...had heard that he was “murdered by an angry mob,” but not much more than that.

I didn’t want to stumble on any anti-Mormon stuff (the church leaders are adamant that we stay away from anything that even suggests things that are contrary to their teachings) so I chose a site on the internet that had been written and managed by Parley Pratt’s own family. I was sure that wouldn’t be anti-Mormon...they would only want the facts to be known.

So I visited the site carefully, and read it over. Then I read it again. Then I went to Wikipedia. Then other sites. They all said the same thing. PPPratt had not died “a martyr to the cause,” he was, rather, killed by a jealous husband.
It seemed that he had taken a woman who had suffered abuse at the hands of her husband as his own wife. In other words, he had married a legally married woman. Brigham Young performed the ceremony, and was in on the deception. I was horrified.
“I wonder what Joseph Smith thought of this?” was my first thought. Research uncovered to me this: Joseph Smith was the one who taught him that polyandry (marrying an already married woman) was perfectly sound and all right to do. He had, after all, done the same thing ELEVEN TIMES. He had married eleven women who were already married, and their husbands were living. Several of those times, he sent the husbands away on “missions,” then convinced the women that they were his “eternal wives,” and they were married to their current husbands for time only. They were welcome to continue to live with them, but he married these women and bedded them as he wished. Often the husbands consented, believing Joseph to be a prophet.

So, I must say, school and work and teaching had taught me that not everything I heard was true. I obtained a copy of History Of The Church (a series of seven books written by the church leaders in the 1970s) and confirmed what I had been reading on the internet. The things I had learned were confirmed by the church’s own words.

I was angry. I was FURIOUS. Why had I been a member for 23 years and never been told these horrors by church leaders? More reading and research revealed more and more horrors and strangeness. The man worshiped as a prophet, Joseph Smith, was closer to Warren Jeffs than to Jesus Christ. There was nothing of the hero in him. In my estimation, he was nothing more than an egocentric scoundrel.

Using only sources given by the church, though they had been whitewashed out of modern church publications, I began to piece together the truth of the church’s history. And I was mortified that I had defended it, had raised my children this way, and would have defended it to my death.

I spoke to an LDS friend about the things I had learned, and how troubled I was. She basically told me she knew all those things, but “It was a long time ago. If one of the prophets today did something like that, it would affect me. But because it was so long ago, I just don’t think about it. If I’m going to worship, this is as good a place as any, and I’m comfortable here.”

As the foundation of my life crumbled, I cried. I wept. I sobbed. I cried at work, I cried in my sleep. I cried at traffic lights and in the grocery store. These things simply could not be true. But the truth is, they could not be refuted.
It was harder for me to sever my ties with the church than it was to care for infants and children run over by cars, abused at the age of two months, losing their minds because they had taken some strange drug, or broken and bleeding. It was harder to leave the church than to recover from my house fire. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was the right thing to do.

I’m one of the lucky ones. My husband and I came out together. My kids were already informed of everything I knew, and they were already inactive. DH and I went through some horrible times in the following year or so. We almost divorced. He had married a Molly Mormon, stay at home, sit down and shut up woman. I was no longer that woman. I had married an in-control patriarch who wielded the priesthood. He was no longer that, nor would I stand for it. Our shift in identity and life expectations and roles, to ourselves, and to each other, had decimated the foundation our relationship was built upon.

Slowly, slowly we learned to like one another again; you see, while we were members of the church, our expectations of one another and our mutual offenses had been so numerous and deep that I thought we were unrecoverable. We were not friends; we were room mates with mutual goals. We had history and children together, but no longer respected one another. As for friendship...yeah, no. No. We almost couldn’t stand one another.

And I was furious, furious, ENRAGED at him and at myself for allowing him to treat me like a second class citizen, the way the church told him I deserved to be treated, for so many, many years.

After I began to express my feelings to him and him to me, we grew first more distant. We discussed divorce very seriously. He said once, “Divorce is not an option,” to which I replied, “Oh, yes, sir, it is.” I was unwilling to be unhappy for even one more day.

We started, by default because neither one of us were encumbered with church busy work or school (by now he was working for a company, not in town, but close enough to come home for weekends) to spend time together. It was like getting to know him, and him getting to know me, for the first time. We were different people with different goals. We had spent literal years apart, for the sake of the church, then for work. We were strangers who lived together.

I remember the first time he made me laugh...really laugh. We, to that point, had not played or had fun in forever. He surprised me with his little twisted aside, and I laughed like a little kid. He told me one day he could not believe he had ever treated me the way he had all those years. He wondered if I could forgive him. He cried, and so did I.

That was the beginning.

Since then, I’ve quit the ER. It just wasn’t my style. I work for the county giving immunizations. As nursing goes, it is not sexy work. But it is useful, and it is controllable. I work set hours and have liberal days off. I have a scheduled hour for lunch every day. I never work weekends or holidays. We take vacations, our whole family, and we actually have fun and make silly, sometimes inappropriate, but always funny jokes.

We had our house rebuilt. It was a major milestone in my PTSD recovery. At first, when we moved in, I felt guilty for having such a pretty place to live. I felt disloyal to my old house for loving the new one so much. But now, every night, I’m just grateful to sleep under her eaves. I am grateful for it every single day.

I’ve learned more truths that the church has whitewashed because they are not “faith promoting.” I’ve learned of many vices, cover ups, misuses of tithing funds, and so forth. But it’s not my business anymore, so while it doesn’t surprise me, it doesn’t anger me either.

Things are stable now. Not perfect, but who can say their life is perfect? But we are stable. Everyone has their odds and troubles, but that just keeps me interested.

There are lots of things I’m grateful to the church for. I would have never had six kids, left to myself. And I have children who are absolutely, truly amazing. Talented, interesting, intelligent, broad-minded...as a mother, I am the luckiest woman alive. I owe the church that.

I’ve learned what I can live with, and how to think for myself. I would have probably questioned things less had I not had my coming out experience. Learning to think for myself instead of reading the script that is handed to me by the church was the hardest part of all. But now I relish it, and delve into my own thoughts. I investigate facts but draw my own conclusions...about life, about God, about what I want and what is right.

I have this quirky little thing I do when I live in a house. I always name them. This house has Japanese characters for a name, and the words are pronounced “Kone Ron.” What it means is “chaos precedes order.”

I think that says just about everything. There is chaos, which must be sorted and stacked, delved into and put in its proper place. Only after that struggle, there is order, peace, and truth.