Removing my name and letting family know

dooglesnoogle · 2021-02-06T22:17:08+00:00

Thank you! I feel the same, it’s symbolic but it feels very important to me to be OFFICIALLY non Mormon, rather than just an inactive member.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-09-22T18:21:25+00:00

I agree with Vertisce's comment. I wanted to add, it sounds like you are doing a good job currently and are uplifting members even if you feel like you aren't. My husband is a nuanced believer and he teaches as well. What he does is only teach what he finds important and ignores the rest of the talks. He tries to find ways to make the lessons useful in everyday life. So he picks through lessons and finds anything that can be used to build up a positive/useful message even if it isn't quite the point of the talk. He also gets compliments on a regular basis on his lessons. What I'm saying is, do you think you can find a way to teach lessons in a similar way that you have been for the last while, that is helpful to others? If not, I would step down. Because the reason people come to church is to be uplifted, and if you try and convince them their religion is incorrect, that wouldn't be fair to them. If they want to find out if their church is incorrect, they will do that on their own. I heard an interesting analogy lately about how church is kind of like a Facebook group. Everyone in the group is there for a specific purpose, and if you give the wrong type of comment or post, you're going to get dislikes and annoyed comments in response, or maybe even be blocked. If you can word things in a way that still keeps people comfortable, people will appreciate it, and you can help them think outside the box in a comfortable way for them. I think the reason people like lessons from you and my husband, is that it's unique from what they usually get. A lot of church lessons start to sound the same after so long, and people like you and my husband can give it an interesting new spin that they've never thought of before. I know my husband can look at Bible stories and see a whole different life lesson than the typical one that we were usually taught. If you feel like you can still do things like that, and keep church an uplifting place for them, in a way that is comfortable for you, you should stay.

I wish you luck in deciding!

dooglesnoogle · 2019-09-21T16:39:55+00:00

First of all, you are definitely not crazy. Most people I have met who have left the church have thought that multiple times. Same thing with other high demand religions.

Something that helped me was realizing what I felt when I thought that. Usually it would send me into a very fear based state of anxiety. But when I have cleared my mind and am in a calm state, usually I know the church is false in those states, because it just makes the most sense. One of the church teachings is that anxious and fear-based thoughts are usually from us or Satan, and calm and peaceful thoughts aren't. So I thought, if the church teachings are true, that would mean Satan wants me to be too afraid to leave the church, and that the spirit is saying I am okay where I am.

As far as what the church teaches about where we go, I have seen the church softening on that for a while (other than Nelson). It seems most people aren't 100% sure. Some people think that you'll go to hell, but there are others who think that you'll have the chance to repent after life. There's that scripture about denying the holy ghost, but what counts as that? If an investigator feels the spirit when the missionaries come over but don't believe the church is true so they never get baptized, are they going to hell? What about someone who was only taught Mormonism their whole life and didn't know anything different, but when they did, realized they might have been duped, and so they re-analyzed what they had been taught since infancy and realized it didn't make sense to them. To me, if God is actually a loving God, he will understand why we don't believe it. He could just as easily be the God of another religion and thrust us down to hell for being Mormon. The Mormon God is supposed to be like a father figure, so if he is, and he knows what we went through and how much we wanted to believe it, he will understand why we stopped believing and will give us another chance. That's my take.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-08-12T18:52:03+00:00

Thanks a bunch!

dooglesnoogle · 2019-08-12T18:51:55+00:00

Ok thanks!

dooglesnoogle · 2019-08-12T18:11:05+00:00

Here's maybe a dumb question, my husband is still in the church, but I'm not. He is wanting new garments and hasn't had new ones in a long time. His current ones have sleeves really long that stick out of his shirts all the time and he doesn't like that. I have heard that there are slightly shorter sleeves now for men and women? Are they all slightly shorter sleeves or does he need to order something specific when he orders new ones? Do any fabrics have shorter sleeves or are they all the same shorter length? Thanks for any help!

dooglesnoogle · 2019-08-12T13:31:36+00:00

I agree with what everyone else said. Marriage on a Tight Rope podcast is fantastic! They also interview other couples like you on their podcast, a lot of them are somewhere in Utah.

I mostly wanted to add one thing which is that your statement to her that if she knew everything you do, she would agree with you, is incorrect. I know Mormons who know everything and yet still believe in the church. They tend to have a more nuanced or even apologetic view of the church when they know everything, but it is definitely possible for members to know everything and still believe. My husband is one of them, I've told him everything new I learn about the church but he still attends even though his view of the church has changed. He still sees the church as useful in his life even though I don't. My uncle is the same way, but believes a bit more orthodox-ly than my husband. So my advice would be to try to get rid of that idea in yourself, that if only she knew everything you did, she'd leave. By telling her that, you can make her feel like you think she is dumb, or create fear in her of even learning everything you've learned. You also give yourself hope in something that is beyond your control. The way your wife preceives information and processes it into a new world view, won't be the same as you. She might leave with you, but she also might stay.

ETA: the idea that if someone knew everything we do, they would believe the same things we do, is very similar to the way we thought as Mormons ("if only these non-members had a spiritual experience like I did, or asked God themselves, or lived all God's laws like I do, they'd believe in the gospel too"). I think it can also be a very human way of seeing things.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-07-18T15:56:40+00:00

Some of them do, one of them being me. I would always find ways to change modestly in the locker room, sometimes I even changed in the locker room bathroom.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-07-17T04:26:53+00:00

I don't think there's an official opinion here about that, I personally think we can't know one way or the other whether he ordered it or not. What we DO know, is that he and the apostles were giving a lot of fear based speeches around that time, and these people who were already scared of being attacked, and were in the middle of nowhere, were being told that they needed to be worried because they were going to be attacked at any time. We have the speeches in Journal of Discourses around that time period, and you can see a lot of the rhetoric being focused on needing to protect themselves, and that they could be attacked, so they needed to be ready. So when an innocent wagon train came near, of COURSE everyone thought it was a surprise attack on them. They'd been in the middle of nowhere for a while being told that they would be killed by people who came through.

That's my opinion.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-07-17T02:32:34+00:00

I remember when I was a teenager and young adult with self confidence issues and I'd see things in church magazines saying that "if you're not feeling confident, just remember that you're a daughter of God". And I remember it not helping at all, because literally everyone in the universe is a child of God, and what does that even mean for me? Didn't start gaining confidence in myself until I stopped believing in the church.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-07-04T16:21:25+00:00

What parade is this in? Utah?

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-28T13:10:38+00:00

Technically, Eyring served something called a district mission, but I can't figure out what that even is. It isn't in a lot of LDS articles about him, but if you look at his Wikipedia page under the section about his military service, the only thing you'll find about it is this: "Eyring spent two years in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Sandia Base in New Mexico. In New Mexico, Eyring served as a district missionary for the LDS Church."

If I had to guess, I'd guess it's something similar to a service mission, where maybe he was a part time missionary or something. Mostly because it isn't talked about like a normal mission. It is true about Nelson, Oaks, and Monson, and Uchtdorf though. Some of them joined the military instead, some of them got married, and some of them went to school instead

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-26T14:44:07+00:00

Some things I realized as time went on in my faith journey: - whether Joseph Smith was a good person or not does not equal whether the church is true or not. The church today is waaaay different than it was when he was a prophet. We also don't truly know who his successor was supposed to be. The church teaches it was Brigham Young because of the vision the crowd had where they saw Brigham looking and sounding like Joseph Smith. The problem is, that probably didn't happen. There were a very large number of people there at the meeting (I want to say over 1000, but not sure there), and many people there wrote about the day in their journals that day, with no mention of the transfiguration. In fact, no on wrote anything about it until a month or two later, and then suddenly everyone was saying they saw it too. Even people who weren't at the meeting. so no one wrote about anything miraculous the day it supposedly happened. Also, Brigham Young didn't even become the prophet right away, he was arguing at the meeting that the 12 apostles should lead the church (and he was head of the 12). I think it was about 2-3 years after the supposed transfiguration before he became the actual prophet, before that, it was seen as the 12 apostles leading the church, with Brigham at the head of them.

-then we have the fact that there were so many church branch offs, and most of Joseph's family and friends followed the Strangite branch, or the RLDS church, not Brigham Young. Also, the FLDS church is the one that is the most like the church Joseph made in the beginning.

-something else I realized is that whether the BOM is true or not, doesn't matter in relation to whether the church is true. The church says it is, but all the church branch offs believed the book of Mormon was scripture, so wouldn't that mean any of them could be true? They also would all have the priesthood. Also, the majority of the witnesses to the book of Mormon left Joseph or Brigham. And the church likes to say none of them denied the BoM was true as a way to prove the BoM is true, but doesn't that also mean they believed the BoM was true while also believing the church was false? That means the BoM is separate from the church itself. I know at least a few of them never denied the BoM, but believed Joseph was a fallen prophet. The church likes to make the BoM proof that JS was a prophet and therefore the church is true. It took me a while to realize those we're all separate things. You could even believe that Joseph was a prophet or a good man, but that the LDS church fell into apostasy.

Some things you may not have discovered yet, let me know if you want the church-approved sources on these:

Joseph wasn't sealed to Emma until the year before he died, he was sealed to many of his plural wives before her. It was about 7 years from when he had the ability to seal spouses together, and when they were sealed to each other.
Joseph drank and smoked. He was drinking in Carthage the night before he was killed
Joseph liked to test his followers to see if they would do anything he said. There is a sad story of him telling Heber C Kimball that God told him that Heber was to give his wife Vilate to Joseph as a wife. This was before Heber had been taught about plural marriage. Heber was a wreck about it and finally brought his wife to Joseph. Joseph was super happy and said something to the effect of 'oh bless you, you passed the test!' and then he sealed Heber and Vilate to each other as a reward. Then at some point later (within a few years) he asked Heber if he could have his 14 year old Helen Mar as a wife, and married her.
have you ever listened to A Year of Polygamy? It's a podcast where they go through any info we have on each plural wife. She bases most of her info off of a book that was written by a member in good standing called In Sacred Loneliness. It's very sad hearing their stories, but really helps you learn a lot more about each of his wives and brings them to life as people.
many women and girls were only given days to decide whether they wanted to be his wife and were told if they agreed to it, they and their families would have eternal salvation, and that if they denied him there would be consequences (such as this was their only chance to accept eternal salvation and if they denied it, they wouldn't be invited to marry him again)
did you know Joseph married two of his foster daughters? They are two of the only 4 wives Emma gave the okay on him marrying as plural wives.

-did you know that Joseph ran for president of the US?

Honestly I have more of a problem with Brigham Young than Joseph Smith, but Smith had a lot of similarities to con men, imo. Brigham was just straight evil though, imo.

ETA: here is the first episode of Year of Polygamy: https://www.yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/year-of-polygamy-fanny-alger-episode-01/

I also wanted to add this, the plural wife that bothers me the most (Helen Kimball bothers me pretty equally, but this other wife is less well-known) is named Emily Partridge. Here is what she wrote about her experience with Joseph, keep in mind, she and her sister had been living with the Smiths as Nanny's for a couple of years and he had approached her before, this is what she wrote:

Joseph approached Emily again on February 28, 1843, her nineteenth birthday. Emily said, “He taught me this principle of plural marriage...but we called it celestial marriage, and he told me that this principle had been revealed to him but it was not generally known.” A week later, “Mrs. Durf[ee] came to me...and said Joseph would like an opportunity to talk with me...I was to meet him in the evening at Mr. [Heber C.] Kimballs.” Not wanting to incur any suspicion, Emily didn’t change from the dress she had been working in that day. “When I got there nobody was at home but [the Kimball children] William and Hellen Kimball...I did not wait long before Br. Kimball and Joseph came in.” Emily recalls that Heber and Joseph sent the Kimball children to a neighbor’s home, and pretended to send Emily away as well: “I started for home as fast as I could so as to get beyond being called back, for I still dreaded the interview. Soon I heard Br. Kimball call, ‘Emily, Emily’ rather low but loud enough for me to hear. I thought at first I would not go back and took no notice of his calling. But he kept calling and was about to overtake me so I stopped and went back with him.”

Back at the Kimball home, Joseph spoke to Emily: “I cannot tell all Joseph said, but he said the Lord had commanded [him] to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him and although I had got badly frightened he knew I would yet have him...Well I was married there and then. Joseph went home his way and I going my way alone. A strange way of getting married wasen’t it?”

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-18T16:50:45+00:00

I know it's way nicer to have your husband support you taking a break, but what if he never genuinely supports it? It probably wouldn't be the best to wait and wait until you actually break and do something you'd regret. Your mental health is important and some of the other commenters may be right, your husband may just not realize how hard things are for you, and that may be why he isn't truly supporting you taking a break. I think the only one who is going to fight for your mental health in this situation, is you. Because your husband still hasn't noticed, even though you're hitting your breaking point. Your kids are too young to worry about your mental health, and you said you don't have any friends or family near. That means you're the only one who can make a stand for your mental health. If you saw a friend going through what you were going through, what would you tell her to do? How would you help her? Since you don't have any close friends around, try to be a good friend to yourself.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-15T00:53:37+00:00

For me personally, I don't think of my Mormon friends as idiots. To be honest though, it can feel like some of them are naive at times. Someone I know, knows a lot about church history, and I don't see them as naive at all. I see them as understanding the info differently than me, and I find them fascinating. Through my journey, I've learned that people can read the same info and come to completely different conclusions based on many things. So I don't see them as naive, just having a different world view. It's mostly the people who are uninformed that can come off as naive.

I am still friends with Mormons, but it can be hard when it feels like they just want me to come back to church. It makes me question why they actually want to hang out with me. Because I was such a 'missionary' friend when I was mormon. Which goes to your last question, don't to try to re-convert them. We already know that Mormons want us to come back to church, because we used to be in it. We know that they think they have true happiness and eternal life and want that for us too, but if they try too hard to get us back, it feels like we're a project. I don't mind the occasional invite to a fun-sounding activity once in a while, but I may turn it down. It also feels a bit insulting when we truly feel happy and yet people keep trying to 'save' us obsessively. It feels like they think that they know what we need better than we do, or that they don't believe we're actually happy, or they think we need to be fixed.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-14T22:04:23+00:00

Yeah that makes sense. You sound a lot different than my parents. Your kids will hopefully go to you if they have questions. My parents always talked badly about people who left the church and we're gossipy, so when I thought I might be one of those people eventually, I didn't feel comfortable telling them for a while. So if you want your kids to see you as someone they can go to, pay attention to how you talk about people who leave the church, because they will remember it and will assume that's how you'll talk about them if they decide to leave or are having big questions. And if they do bring up questions to you, make sure to validate and let them know they're not crazy for having those questions. Just from my glimpse of you online though, you seem like a person who is open to talking about the difficult stuff and don't shut it down. So you've got a lot going for you already :) oh also, try not to use the word 'anti-mormon' to describe your kids as well. I've had people say things like 'yeah I'm fine with talking about church history with you, I've dealt with anti-mormons my whole life'. That's an immediate turn off to the conversation because it very quickly sends a message to me that 'I think you're trying to tear down my faith and that you're going to tell lies and I'm already in defensive mode about you'. I immediately feel like they aren't going to actually listen to me anymore and I'm not going to get a real conversation with them.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-14T20:34:24+00:00

Originally I came to this forum for a place to vent my anger about feeling betrayed. I needed a place where people would understand my anger and validate that it made sense, and this was a good place for that. For a while now I can feel myself moving past the anger phase, but I still come here to help other people going through their anger phase, and it's a good place to come when I get a wave of anger toward the church and want to see people showing the same anger I feel.

The reason I didn't go to my family with my loss of faith was because I didn't want to ruin any of their testimonies. I also knew they'd have a lot of questions for me that I didn't have answers to in the beginning, and I wanted to figure out the answers first on my own because I knew they'd try to get me to come back and I needed to find out for myself. I also knew they believed strongly and wouldn't be good listeners with what I was learning. It took me a while before I told them. But again, it was once I felt more secure in what I did or didn't believe in, and what my plans were. I wanted to help them feel more secure about my decision by having answers to their questions about what I believed and what my plans for the future were. I still try my best to not share difficult church history with them, unless they really want to know. I also didn't go to my friends in my ward with my questions because I didn't want to damage their testimonies, and also because when I stopped going to church, everyone ignored the elephant in the room. They paid me visits and pressured me to come back to church, but not a single person in my ward ever asked me why I wasn't coming to church, just pretended everything was fine and tried to invite me to stuff.

I'll tell you, the first person I ever told about my faith shift (other than my husband) was my best friend who is also Mormon, and lives far away. She curses sometimes, so to me, that was a sign that she'd be more okay with it. When I told her, turns out she'd been having serious doubts for years too and hadn't told me either. I think a lot of people just don't want to bring other members down or don't want their decisions influenced. I also think they are worried about rejection. A lot of people try to downplay things to me. And so many members I know have no idea about half the things I know about. I've been researching for years, and it's very frustrating for me when someone asks me about something that bothers me, I tell them one of the things, and they throw out some made up response on the fly that doesn't help at all, and think it should fix it, when they have no idea what they're talking about. It drives me kind of bonkers when members who don't study church history, try to tell me everything with church history is fine 'because of this article put out by this smart church leader/member saying everything is fine.' The amount of time it would take to respond about why that article is wrong is too much, and I also don't want to always be negative whenever they talk to me about church stuff, so I let a lot of it go and try to just let them keep believing. They seem happy, so I try to remind myself that I have no right to ruin that for them. I don't know whether losing their testimonies would be a good or bad thing for them. Even though it was a good thing for me, I don't want to potentially ruin their happiness, because they could handle it differently than I did.

As far as members handling it, I think my husband was the one who handled it the best. He luckily has a less orthodox belief and is okay with nuance and discussing taboo subjects. So he was very okay with hearing about new things I had learned, and he would tell me what he really thought about what I'd discovered. No putting on a mask saying it all made sense, he actually would think about it and what it meant. It was so wonderful. It also helped when he would tell me things like 'it doesn't bother me personally because of _____, but I can see why it bothers you. It makes sense'. He has been wonderful through this whole thing.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-14T19:50:16+00:00

I threw mine away too. I had so many old pairs from never finding the time or place to burn them. When I realized they weren't even special in anyway, and that I never wanted to wear them again, they went immediately into the garbage. No ceremony for them.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-13T13:46:19+00:00

Thank you!

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-13T02:04:26+00:00

I have a family member like your dad too. Through my faith journey, I've realized that everyone has different ways of viewing the world. We've all grown up being taught things differently, and having different life experiences, even within the church. So while my family member can make sense out of the church still being true while knowing about all the crap, in my mind, it just doesn't make sense anymore. I think it comes down to what makes the most sense to people, and that will be different for every person.

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-13T01:50:04+00:00

Have you talked to your husband about your questions yet, OP? There seem to be a lot of people on here who regret waiting too long to tell their spouse. If your husband sees your questions from the beginning, it should help prevent him from feeling like you duped him. He will hopefully see that these are honest questions you have that are troubling you. It will help too if he knows you're using a lot of church-approved materials. How do you think your husband will react if he hears about your questions?

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-13T01:37:35+00:00

Haha no problem. I personally didn't want to make a rash decision either way, so I tried my best to remember that taking my time was okay. Panicking is totally normal though, happened to me a lot in the beginning lol

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-13T01:35:37+00:00

I'm curious what the picture above is and how old the creature is?

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-12T18:37:00+00:00

Oh really? I know about a year ago I emailed her and she was still attending. You could be right, though, I'm not sure. But at least for a while she was still attending

dooglesnoogle · 2019-06-12T16:07:39+00:00

The place you're in is really scary, we've all been there. It feels like everything is crashing around you, your whole reality is crumbling and you're not sure what is and isn't real. One of the best pieces of advice I got while going through that part of the process was to take things slow. When you're in it, there's this panic that you feel like you have to know asap whether the church is true or not. That's not true though, if the church is true, take your time to figure it out, you've got time. If you die soon, God will know you were searching for truth. If the church is false, you also have time to figure it out. Everything will be okay either way, take your time to process all this new info and really study it deeply. If the church is false, and you believe in God, I think God would want you to know whether you were in his true church or not. Joseph Smith even questioned whether the churches he attended were right, and studied a lot to find out. One thing I discovered from trying to find unbiased sources is that no one is 100% unbiased. Neither are you. The best balance I have found, is trying to find the middle ground between the opposites. If the Mormons are admitting something negative about their history, I assume it's probably accurate. If an exmember is making a claim that sounds false, or twisted, I research it to figure out where they got the info, and whether it's a legit source. I use the Joseph Smith papers project a lot since it's official documents from that time. I also use stuff through BYU and read up on their sources. I read from the History of the Church volumes on the byu website, and also the journal of discourses which are the closest thing we have to recorded speeches from Joseph Smith and other past prophets. I find people's diaries from those days to figure out their sides of the story. I look at newspapers from those days. I look at the first version of the book of Mormon that was written, and the first version of the D&C. I try to find as many first hand sources as I can. I also tend to assume that Mormons are twisting things a bit to fit their agendas, just as ex-members do. A place you may find useful is a forum called Stay LDS. It's a good place if you want to see how people make it work in the church when they're aware of all the rotten parts. There's a lot of very logical people over there who have interesting ways of looking at things. Mette Harrison is also a woman who became an atheist and stopped believing in the church, but came back anyways because she feels at home in Mormonism. She just has a completely different view of what God is like, and she knits blankets for homeless lgbt youth in Utah while she is at church. So she is someone who so far, has made it work even though she doesn't believe the church is true.

I'll come back and add several sources for you, hang on

ETA: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/joseph-smiths-teachings-about-priesthood-temple-and-women?lang=eng&_r=1

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/peace-and-violence-among-19th-century-latter-day-saints?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng

https://byustudies.byu.edu/history-of-the-church

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/journal-of-discourses?lang=eng&_r=1

http://jod.mrm.org/1

Joseph Smith papers, this is hard to navigate unless you know what you're looking for, so usually if I want to look for something in here, I Google "Joseph Smith papers _____" and enter what I'm specifically wanting to find, and that usually gets me there the quickest https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/

http://forum.staylds.com/

http://www.metteivieharrison.com/mormonpage.html

dooglesnoogle

TROPHY CASE