Anne's Journey
The Tale of Sir Joseph: Part 1
The Tale of Sir Joseph: Part 2
The Transition Out
Because of our positions and callings, we kept going to church, but each week became more excruciating. We would come home infuriated at the lies that were being taught and perpetuated. We realized that most of it was being done unintentionally, but it still angered us the same. The other members of the ward had no idea they had been deceived, nor that they were perpetuating the deception to each other.
I contacted an older cousin of mine because I had heard that she'd left the church some time ago. As it turns out, the rumors of her exit had been greatly exaggerated. She had, indeed, had a crisis of faith, but not quite like ours. She instead directed me to her younger sister, whose experience (and her husband's as well) was very much like ours. On our way back from Thanksgiving in St. George, we stopped by their house to talk to them about it. It was immensely helpful as we didn't know anyone else who had gone through something of this nature.
I became an active participant in the RfM message board, and later on Reddit as well. Through this I was able to interact with some of the people whose stories helped me out (like Simon Southerton), as well as post thoughts to deal with the anger and frustration I felt.
I wanted to stay just to finish my tenure as a Cubmaster until Avery aged out of Cub Scouts (which was about 8 months away) and Anne wished to make a graceful exit from the YW Presidency. This gave us time to contemplate and plan how we would leave, how we would tell our family, etc. We didn't think that going inactive slowly and discretely would work because of Aurora's anticipated baptism in the next year, and she'd have to field all kinds of questions from family about it. We realized that we had to tell our family in a letter, and let the bishop know that we wanted to be released.
We sat the older kids down to tell them what we'd found out and what it meant for the future. Aurora was excited to not have to go to church anymore and didn't really think about it much more than that. Avery was a little distraught. He tends to take things very literally, and had taken to heart what his primary teachers had told him about heaven/hell and how the church is necessary. It troubled him for some weeks, but he eventually came around. We started missing church about every other week starting with the new year, which we all loved.
Finally, we pulled the proverbial trigger. I went in to talk to Bishop Niceguy [a man for whom I have a lot more respect than Bishop Jackwagon and Bishop Coach] after church and told him we've found out some information, and that we wanted to be put on the "No-Contact List." I told him I would continue doing Cub Scouts until summer so he would have adequate time to find a replacement, but that other than that we didn't want to be bothered. He informed me that he would pass the message onto the ward council, and asked if I would come back the following Wednesday to talk about my list of concerns. I agreed, and had a list very similar to the information on the very first post of this blog. To his credit, Bishop Niceguy didn't try to convince me I was wrong, but just listened and asked questions. I had been thoroughly convinced that he actually kept confidential things to himself (unlike Bishop Coach and his wife).
After ward members had asked us if we had joined a polygamous sect, or joined a devil-worship church, or a few other things, Anne decided to post why we left on our family blog, and later start this blog. She sent it out to all of her ward Facebook friends just so we wouldn't have to explain it multiple times, and soon after had several ward members unfriend her from Facebook. Then we got a call from the Home Teachers, and also a call from the Ward Mission Leader to help the missionaries teach a lesson to a neighbor across the street. I briefly contemplated saying yes and then sabotaging the lesson, but I told him I couldn't in good conscience teach things I don't believe in. Apparently, "No Contact" means something different to some people.
Summer came around, and Avery graduated from Cub Scouts. At that point, we decided we might as well resign from The So-Called Church (TSCC) so we would stop being bugged by them. We wrote up letters based on ones that others had used, printed them in triplicate and sent them off: One to Bishop Niceguy, one to President Shore, and one to Membership Records in SLC via registered mail. Soon after, we got a visit from Bishop Niceguy and President Shore to confirm that we had indeed written these letters, and a couple weeks later got a confirmation letter from SLC that our names had been removed. A special meeting about apostasy was held in our old ward soon after that, but you can read about that here.
The Future
Since leaving, there have been a lot of improvements and changes to our lives, all of them positive. Anne wrote about them in this post. There are times that we feel like we just want to move on and forget that part of our lives. However, we can't just erase part of our cultural and family heritage like that. It is at times frustrating to live in the Mormon Corridor (or Morridor) and be surrounded by TSCC. Sometimes we feel that it is our duty to expose the fraud and "save" others. I would liken it to someone who was fooled by Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, and is now warning others not to give him money. Or like Morpheus trying to free the minds of those still caught in the Matrix.
We found a support group of ex-mormons who meet a couple times a month for coffee. We get together, tell our exit stories, give and receive advice, have a few laughs, and give some informal therapy to each other. In fact, we now are sort of in charge of the Ogden Post-Mos group. Together, we help soften the blow from waking up to the reality about the church. You might say it's our "new calling" :)
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