I was baptized as an infant in the Catholic Church. I used to call myself a Catholic, for lack of anything else to call myself, but I was never taken to a Catholic service at all. My mother left that church when I was about 2.

When I was about 3 or 4, my father used to take me to a little Anglican church in our neighbourhood. I remember that I enjoyed Sunday School and I remember singing songs like “Jesus Loves Me.” But, every time we were in the main service and the choir began to sing, for some reason, I would start crying, and my Dad would have to take me home. He eventually gave up taking me to church altogether. I’ve no idea why the singing made me cry, but it did. I remember sitting there, clenching my little fits, thinking, “I won’t cry. For Daddy, I won’t cry.” The choir would start to sing, my eyes would begin to water, my little lips would quiver, and I’d just burst into tears.

At about the age of 12, I started to wander into a local Catholic church to look around, wondering exactly what I was supposed to do in there. I’d light all of the candles, not knowing what they were for, and I guess that was fun to do. I’d stare at all of the statues, wondering what I was supposed to be saying in prayer, or thinking about as I gazed at them.

Then came my experience with the Baptist Church, which began after a friend and I both had a dream about the Second Coming around the same time. Two problems happened with that church for me. I left after the Pastor one day gave a sermon where he named off a bunch of different churches saying, “Don’t you pat them on the back and say, ‘God bless you.’”

I was absolutely appalled. Even if one didn’t agree with another faith, I thought that he had no right to judge other people’s churches like that. It upset me enough that I never went back again.

The second thing was that after I’d begun taking the missionary discussions with the Mormon Church, one of the ladies from the Baptist Church called me, to see how I was doing, and to say that she missed me at church. When I mentioned that I’d been studying with the Mormon Church, she said, “Well you know they don’t believe in the Trinity, don’t you?” I replied, “The what?” as I was unfamiliar with the term.

She explained that she meant that Jesus was God – one and the same with the Father. I hadn’t realized that the Baptists believed that. That made no sense to me whatsoever. So Jesus was what - a ventriloquist? He projected his own voice up to Heaven to say, “This is my beloved Son. Hear him?” So when he wasn’t busy being Jesus, what did he do with his body – stick it in a closet somewhere?

I was only 14, but the Trinity never made any sense to me at all. Jesus was constantly talking to himself? He was constantly praying to himself? He talked about his father, and his father’s mansions, etc., but his father was actually him? How could he say that we should be in him, as he was in the father, if he was the father? That would be saying that if we’re in him in the same way, then we’re the father as well.

So it was actually a big selling point for me when it came to learning about the Mormon Church; that they saw them as two separate beings, one in heart and in purpose. I thought, “Finally, here’s someone who makes a little more sense.”

However, when I first heard the First Vision story, I did think to myself, “Uh huh. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.” It was bizarre. But since I was meeting a lot of nice kids and so much of their doctrine made a lot more sense to me than anyone else’s, I guess I came to accept even the things I thought were a bit crazy at first. Or perhaps I simply put them on a shelf, to be dealt with later.

I also fit right in, in that I was always a very moral girl. I had no interest in drinking, smoking, etc. I didn’t like coffee, and giving up tea was no big deal. I preferred root beer and ginger ale to cola drinks. So I fit right in. It was said that I was born to be a Mormon. Besides that, my best friend had also left the Baptist Church along with me, and it was at her invitation that I’d begun taking the missionary discussions. We joined the Church within about 6 months of each other.

I was baptized just after my 17th birthday. The only reason it took about a year and a half, and 5 sets of missionaries to get me dunked, is because I was afraid of being dunked under water, especially in front of a group of strangers. I’ve always been dreadfully shy and hate calling attention to myself. One of the missionaries finally just said to me, “Well, we’ve got the font booked for January 30th. Are ya gonna be there?” That challenge did the trick.

My friend and I found out years later, that it had been her mother who had called the missionaries after we’d left the Baptist Church, saying to them, “My daughter needs you.” Her parents had never told her that they were inactive Mormons. At the time the missionaries had come by, we’d just assumed that it was providence – God stepping in saying, “This is where you need to be.”

About a year and a half after I was baptized, I went inactive. Being really shy, I realized that I’d spent most of my Sundays hiding behind the nearest large person, hoping to avoid being called upon to say a prayer, or read a scripture. I realized that I wasn’t enjoying myself much, and so I stopped going. But 3 years later, when I was at my best friend’s birthday party, a rather arrogant young man dared me to go back to church. “I bet you can’t do it.” “Oh, yeah? Well I’ll show you,” and so I went back.

Even then, it took me 13 years to finally get up the courage to get up and bear my testimony, and 14 years to finally have enough courage to give a talk. Much to my surprise, I actually did a pretty good job of it, although I refused to talk in that silly sing-song manner that so many women in the Church used. I just talked as though I was having a conversation with the congregation and it went pretty well. I even enjoyed it.

The first sign that all was not well in Paradise, changed me a great deal. I was in Relief Society class during a time when Canada was working towards changing the laws to allow for same-sex marriage. They announced that the Church was asking us to sign a petition to send to the Government of Canada, announcing that we were opposed to such an amendment.

I was floored. I couldn't believe that they were passing along a political petition in church, and, I couldn't believe that the Church was getting involved in politics in the first place. I’d always been taught that they only wanted us to vote with our own conscience and would never tell us what to do when it came to political matters. I was shocked that they were expecting us to agree with their position, which I didn't, and that they were not respecting our rights to have our own opinions on the matter.

It put me in a bad position. As the petition was being passed around, I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to sign it. But when it got to me, the lady next to me handed me the pen and waited expectantly for me to add my name.

I hesitated and soon became aware that everyone close by had stopped what they were doing and were staring at me. My friend leaned over and said, "Just trust and follow the Prophet." I said, "But I don't agree with it."

She whispered back, "I know you don't, but just trust and follow the Prophet. Trust that he knows what he's doing and that he wouldn't ask us to do this unless it was from the Lord.” It was a test for me and I had to decide whether or not to pass the test. Would I choose to be obedient to the Prophet, or would I follow my own conscience?

I hastily scribbled my name and passed the thing on. The very moment I did, I regretted it. I wanted to write a note to the government, retracting my name. I learned something very valuable that day. I learned that we should always be true to ourselves, no matter what. That day still haunts me. I did not feel the peace they said I'd feel for simply being obedient. I felt awful, and ashamed.

But I was able to tell the World how I really felt when sites started popping up with petitions, objecting to the LDS Church’s position, as they set out to fight Proposition 8 in California. I used my real name, to tell the World what I really thought.

The good thing to come out of that incident is that I will never allow someone to pressure me into not being true to myself, even if my opinion does go against the majority. I was really angry at being put into a position where all eyes were on me, and I felt pressured to go with the status quo. They should have put the thing at the front of the room for anyone to sign, if they wanted to. It shouldn't have been at church at all, in my opinion, but anyway, that was my first moment of uneasiness while within the LDS Church. At least I learned a very valuable lesson from it, even if it still haunts me to this day.

I think the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was the beginning of my journey out of the Church. When I thought about the fact that someone could have so much faith in their religion that they’d be willing to blow themselves up, or crash into a building for the sake of their god, for the first time in my life, I realized that there were people out there who had as strong, or even stronger testimonies of their own faith, than the Mormons had of theirs. For some reason, many Mormons feel that other people’s testimonies may be sincere, but they’re misguided, while Mormons have the only real testimonies. It suddenly struck me as extremely arrogant and that bothered me.

The arrogance struck me of claiming that we had the one and only truth, when someone who was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. could sit there, with tears in their eyes, testifying to the truth of their own religion and of the love for their own gods, just as strongly as any Mormon could. Who did we think we were? How arrogant to sit there, point a finger and say, “That’s nice, but we’re right and you’re wrong.”

I realized that someone of another faith could feel the same way about the Mormons. Think of someone Hindu who could say, “Well that’s nice, but my religion is thousands of years older than yours.” How arrogant and silly we would appear to them.

It was shortly after 9-11 had me feeling not so smug about my own testimony that I got a job working for the LDS Church. I’d never worked in a place where morale was so low. I frequently encountered crying and frustrated employees. The Church expected perfection from their workers, without giving them enough time or resources to create that perfection. The employees were constantly pressured into working harder, or risk the threat of being put on probation from their jobs.

I remember a meeting we had with a General Authority, where we were told that our performance ratings affected everyone else around us. It started with our own office. A low performance score would bring down the scores of everyone in our office. Those bad reviews would mean that they were letting down their entire Region. In fact, why stop there? They were letting down their entire country. They would bring down the performance scores of every Church employee in Canada, and it was ALL THEIR FAULT. I was rather shocked by this attitude and the guilt-trip they were deliberately trying to instill in us all. It was not a positive meeting at all.

At the time I began working for the Church, my family had gone through a few years of tremendous, emotionally overwhelming challenges. I was mentally exhausted and physically not feeling very well either. I had spent about a year begging and pleading for Heavenly Father to ease up on our burdens, because I felt we were all going to break. We never even had a moment to breathe before another challenge came, one on top of another.

I’d always been taught that we would never be given more challenges than we could handle, and yet I was at my breaking point, and had hit my emotional rock bottom. I would not have harmed myself, but I felt I had no reason to live either. I kept asking myself why I’d even been born. And yet, God had put me into a job which would make things even worse because of the low morale, and it was destroying my testimony. Why would He do that? I looked at all of the suicides across the World and realized that the idea that we’d never be given more than we could handle was a lie. People were pushed beyond their limits every day.

Because of my feelings about 9-11, and the low morale in my Church job, my testimony was in trouble, and my church attendance began to slip a little, where I missed an occasional Sunday. After working in a chapel 5 days per week, I didn’t really feel like being at church on Sundays as well. The chapel I worked in was quite far from my home, so more than half of my monthly budget went towards just travelling to and from work, so my tithing payments began to slip as well.

When you’re a Church employee, they check with your Bishop periodically, to make sure you’re still temple-worthy. When my Bishop questioned my worthiness because of my lack of attendance and tithe paying, I was put on probation from my Church job. My LDS friends still probably believe that I left the Church because I was offended after being put on probation. The truth is that I was already on my way out, so I really didn’t care at that point.

One of the employees in charge, a Bishop in his own ward, told me that I was worthy to go to church, but I wasn’t worthy to work for the Church. That wouldn’t have made me leave the Church, if I actually believed it was God’s one true church. I would simply have said, “What a jerk,” and kept right on going. But because I was already mentally on my way out, I really didn’t care about being put on probation. My never-Mormon parents were absolutely appalled though. My mother made the sarcastic remark of, “My daughter, the criminal.”

Around this time though, it did suddenly hit me that in the almost 30 years that I’d been a member of the Church, I’d never felt particularly good about myself. As much of a goody-two-shoes as I was, I’d never felt that I measured up, and probably never would. No matter how vigorously I ran on that hamster wheel, I’d never be good enough.

One day, I just stopped and thought to myself, “Why on earth am I doing this to myself?” I thought, “I shouldn’t do that to myself. I should just leave.” So I did. I simply walked away and never looked back. Within a few months after my job with the Church had ended, I’d left for good. It was as simple as that. That is why I left. I just didn’t go to church the next Sunday and never went back again.

About four years later, I realized that I’d better figure out what I was going to do, once and for all. I was either resigning my membership for good, or I was going back and trying to live the Gospel to the best of my ability. I finally got up the nerve to study the Church more closely and check out some ex-Mormon sites on the internet. At first I felt really frightened and shaky, like I shouldn’t be there. Once I realized that it was just the Church conditioning, which was designed to make me feel that way, I relaxed and began to read everything I could get my hands on. I read voraciously for months.

I discovered some shocking truths that I’d never known before about the true facts and the true history of the Church. I’d been thoroughly lied to, and I was angry. I can remember the exact moment, after watching a video about the Book of Abraham, where I reeled back in my chair, my hand flew over my mouth and I said out loud, “Oh, my gosh! It’s not true! It’s really, actually NOT TRUE.” Even though I’d suspected as much, I never imagined that it could actually be a complete fraud. I was also angry that they knew the truth about the Book of Abraham at least 10 years before I had even been baptized and yet they still presented it to me as scripture. I was furious. How dare they?

I never imagined that there was actual, physical proof out there which indisputably proved that the Church was simply not what it purported itself to be. I was stunned. The list of problems and proofs was as long as my arm. So even if one could try and explain away one problem, there would still be a hundred more to be dealt with. The proof is simply overwhelming.

No wonder they counseled their members to stay away from material that is not their own. I’d always been taught that anti-Mormon material was all lies and twisted truths. Imagine my shock when I realized that it was the other way around. The truth was out there, only it was the Mormons doing the lying; lying for the Lord, as they called it. There is so much well-documented proof out there, but it takes courage to go out and find it.

Once I landed on some ex-Mormon sites, I found a group of wonderful people, who embraced me and welcomed me into their midst. They were not at all how I’d always pictured ex-Mormons to be. I learned that they are the brave ones. It takes a lot of courage to study the truth and to let go of a lifetime of false teachings and conditioning. There is so much heartache out there, and we are the brave ones. I’m honoured to be a part of such a wonderful group of people.

I often think about how the Church tells people that if they really want to know about the Mormons, then they should only ever ask a Mormon about it. They tell people to never read material which is unfavourable to them. But if you were on the Shopping Network and were going to make a huge purchase, would you just take the word of the salesperson and the people who call in to say how wonderful the product is? Or would you go on-line to read reviews and check out the competition before you plunked down a huge chunk of money?

The Mormons expect at least 10% of the gross income of its members, plus fast offerings. That’s a substantial chunk of change. It’s an extremely expensive product that they’re selling, so one absolutely should check out the reviews. And if they really had the truth, then they should fear no inquiry, for it would stand up to the test. But no, they say don’t ever look at anything other than what their own salesmen show you. What are they so afraid of, if their Gospel is God’s one true Gospel? That should tell people something right there. It should be a big red flag to any investigator.

No longer could I stand to have my name associated with an organization which would work towards interfering in the civil rights of other people, in spite of the fact that they themselves claimed the right to worship as they pleased, and when they supposedly hold agency to be such a sacred right. My sense of honesty and integrity would simply not allow me to remain on their records as a member of their organization. I felt that the church which taught me to be honest and to have integrity possessed neither of those traits themselves.

I also would have a much greater respect for them if they took the billions of dollars that they spend on saving the dead, and helped the living instead. The dead!? Let the dead take care of themselves. There are starving and homeless people all over the world, who need those dollars desperately, and yet the money is spent on building temples to save the dead. It’s unbelievable when you think about it.

Let them do their work for the dead during the Millenium that they believe will come, where they will have 1,000 years to do the work, at a time when those wanting that work can come to them and request it be done on their behalf.

After I left the Church, I felt so free and at peace. I looked back, and realized that I’d been living in a little box, and hadn’t even known it. You don’t even realize that you’ve been living in a box until you’re on the outside, looking back. I saw all of my dear Mormon friends running around in that little box, and I wanted to free them as well. But over time, I realized that some of them needed to live in that box and couldn’t survive outside of it, or didn’t want to. It made me sad, but I had to accept it, and to learn to respect their choices. I still wish I could rescue them and free them from the box though. I’m sure, from their perspective, that they’re just as sad for me as I am for them. It’s funny really. We’re all sad for each other, because we feel we’re in the best place. Perhaps we should simply be happy that we’re all where we choose to be and are doing what makes us happy.

I went through all the stages of mourning – shock, denial, fear, anger – the whole gambit. Finally came peace. I now feel that I’m living a genuine life. I’m being true to myself and am finally, for the first time in my life, content in my own skin. I’ve met myself and realize that I’m a good person. I’m the same me that I’ve always been, but I feel that I’m a much better person now – a more tolerant person, a less judgmental person. I always thought I was a non-judgmental person, but I realized that I wasn’t – at least not as much as I wanted to be. I’m still an honest person. I still give a cashier their money back if they give me too much change. I still claim money on my income taxes if I’ve been paid in cash. I still like to treat people with kindness. Only now it’s much more genuine. I’m the way that I am because that’s who I choose to be, and not because I’m doing it out of fear, due to possible eternal consequences. I no longer fear any eternal consequences at all. Wherever I’m going, if there is an after-life, at least I’m getting there honestly, by being who I truly am.

I know that God is said to be no respecter of persons, but I do feel that He’d respect me a lot more for being genuine, than if I lived a life of fear, simply because of the “what if it’s true,” factor. Some would argue that deep inside, my spirit still knows that the Church is true. No. I can honestly say that not even a smidgen of a fraction of any particle of my being knows that the Church is true. I solemnly testify that I know it is not, because it is now based on actual evidence, and not just on a feeling.

I also feel that I’ve finally grown up. The Church kept me as a little child, but now I’m finally beginning to feel like an adult.

I’ve spent a few years catching up on science, including Evolution, which is something I’d never studied because I’d simply dismissed it, due to the fact that I was taught that it wasn’t real. Well I’ll be darned. It is real. I’ve always loved science, but I came to realize how embarrassingly behind I was in current knowledge, so I’ve studied everything I can get my hands on.

I now feel free to study anything I want to, without someone telling me, “You shouldn’t be reading that.” I can explore any scientific theory, all philosophy, old and new, and take from them whatever makes sense to me and feels right within my soul.

I’m not at all religious anymore. In fact, religion now leaves a bad taste in my mouth. One friend accused me of being a “flaming anti-Mormon, who wants nothing but to tear down the Church.” I said, “Where did you get all that from the simple sentence of, “I’m just letting you know that I no longer believe in the LDS Church?”
I am not anti-Mormon. There are many Mormons I love dearly. I am simply pro-truth. I love truth, wherever it is found, even if it’s not always something which is comfortable. I no longer want to embrace an idea simply because it makes me feel good. I am hopeful, and yet doubtful. If I had to put a label on myself now, I guess it would be ‘hopeful skeptic.’

But I’ve learned to embrace the mystery. Maybe knowing everything is not such a good thing, as we all love a good mystery. The only truth that I know now is that we simply do not know. No one does, and that’s the real truth.