“And if you ever transgress again you will not live long enough to ever be forgiven!”

With those loving, Christ-like words ringing in my ears my Stake President lifted my disfellowshipment. Several weeks earlier a “Court of Love” had been held in my honor where I had been given the status of near-banishment. While single I had transgressed with a lady who later became my wife. Feeling sufficiently guilty and remorseful I had approached my Stake Presidency with a request for spiritual guidance and assistance. I knew I had done wrong in the eyes of the church and, being what I hoped was sufficiently repentant, approached my spiritual leaders for help.

I had received prior assurance that if I came in all would be handled with love and confidentiality. So began my “Court of Love”, where it quickly became apparent the sole purpose was to subject me to as much grueling interrogation and humiliation as possible, followed by the sternest condemnation for my slippage.

In a church court the high council divides and half the members play an adversarial role and half play a supportive role for the person being interviewed. In my case, with the possible exception of just one person, it felt like I was facing a firing squad. By the time this kangaroo court had run its course I felt thoroughly degraded and humiliated, about as far down as a person could go. I had readily acknowledged my error and my desire to correct my life, but that wasn’t enough. Several pounds of flesh were also required.

While these proceedings are supposed to be confidential before the day was over two outside individuals approached me to comment about what had gone on. So there it was. I had gone in with the naïve notion that I would be guided and supported in my desire to channel my life along gospel principles. Instead I felt gut shot, kicked and humiliated when I was already down, and the rumor mill was already in motion. The Stake President made it clear that he preferred, and had anticipated, outright excommunication for me. He relented only when someone pointed out I had children that were dependent upon my church example. He seemed genuinely disappointed that he couldn’t drop the executioner’s ax across my neck.

I left those proceedings in a genuine state of shock. My mind reeled for days. I just kept thinking ‘How can they kick a man when he is already down?’ I finally had to turn to outside professional counseling and medication to handle the depression and suicidal feelings that emerged. Only with that support was I able to gradually bring my life together. My recovery gradually came, no thanks to the church. Rather than being a source of strength in my life the church turned out to be my greatest source of pain and misery.

But I was determined to beat this, and I did all that was required of me. I was eventually reinstated, my wife and I were sealed in the temple, and I went on to hold numerous church positions, including being in the bishopric. For years we did the church whole thing: tithing, Family Home Evening, prayer, temple attendance, meetings, callings ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

In the back of my mind I could never fully suppress the feeling that I had been brutalized, emotionally raped as it were, by the very leaders who were supposed to be there as my spiritual guideposts. But I remained active, and things might have gone on this way indefinitely, but one day I read a notice in the newspaper that the church was censoring two women, Avery and Newell, for publishing their book “Emma Smith: Mormon Enigma”. The thought that came crashing in was “What does the church have to fear about its own history that it suppresses the work of qualified historians?” At this point in time I was still unaware of all the issues in church history and how the church tries to hide them.

Nothing would do but to buy the book, my curiosity would not allow otherwise. Upon reading it very noticeable cracks appeared in the foundation of my faith. Still resisting, but unwilling to stop the search, I ventured into many more books, subscriptions to Dialogue and Sunstone, and eventually to the Internet and to sites such as this.

I realized inside that I had to know the full truth and then let the chips fall where they may. It all slowly came out: the lies about polygamy, BoM, PoGP, first vision, blood atonement, Mountain Meadows, etc., etc.

So twenty years after my “Court of Love” my faith was finally gone, ending not in a big crash as it is with many, but like waves crashing on the rocks it was slowly eroded away by the new knowledge of what really was. I clung to every morsel of Mormonism until it was finally torn from my being by the shear weight of truth and evidence. There were many church morsels, and each one had to be pried, kicking and screaming from my psyche, sometimes repeatedly. It took years. It was death by a thousand tiny cuts.

Why did it have to be so slow?

Mine is a pioneer heritage extending back to the early 1850’s when my great, great grandfather converted in England and brought his family across the plains to Utah. My ancestral family played a major role in the colonization of southern Utah, and later western Wyoming and south-eastern Idaho.

Like Space-Time it was an inseparable mix: church-family. It was a cultural dynasty. It formed my identity, my place in the Universe. Mine is an extended family in the many 100’s reaching across many states, nearly all of them very enmeshed in the church. Family gatherings and reunions were inevitably church and genealogy oriented.

To repudiate the church meant more than just not going to church anymore. It implied a rejection of a great family history of devotion, sacrifice, courage, unity, and unshakeable faith. To leave would be considered a fundamental betrayal of all that I’ve stood for, the heritage my family has stood for, all that generations have lived, worked and died for.

How can one be guilty of such betrayal? Only by rising above the emotional conditioning inculcated since childhood and realizing that having come this far there is no way I could ever go back. It took a long time to realize I was not betraying my family, I was reclaiming my own life.

I slowly came to realize that creating one’s own identity is not betraying the past. That past will always be a part of me, but it won’t control my future, which belongs to me, not to my ancestors.

The past is where I’ve come from, not where I’m going.

It’s only with a detached perspective that I've been able look back and realize that, despite my best efforts, believing in Mormonism has always been a struggle. It’s always been a case of forcing the square peg of rationality into the round hole of Mormonism. It never fit, and I have finally stopped trying to force it.

Bitter? Angry? Sinful? This is how many in the church look at those who have ‘fallen away’. I’m not any of those things. I went through an angry phase when I learned of all the deceitful things the church has perpetrated. Now I can look back with love and support to those who remain involved in the church. I don’t try to change them, but do try to set an example of loving acceptance. I don’t feel I’ve ‘fallen’, rather that I’ve risen above the petty things of Mormonism.

I am feeling the wind beneath my wings as I experience life free from dogma, from mind-numbing control, from having my own thoughts and feelings discounted, from having to force square pegs into round holes. I am free of the judgements, the pettiness, the self-important bureaucracies of Mormonism. It has been scary at times, and family relationships have suffered, but the ride has been too exhilarating to miss. I have never been happier or more at peace than I am now. Life is good.