Anne's Journey

The other day I asked Joseph if it ever bothered him that none of our active LDS close friends and family ever ask us about why we left. Not that I want to be the center of attention, but I just feel like there is a huge part of our life that has changed and is now different from theirs. And it is almost forbidden for us to talk about it in front of them. Even though they are all still free to talk about that part of their life in front of us, almost as if we never left. Not that we want to start an argument but it would be nice to discuss it every now and again. I know that I would be curious. But maybe it is just because I am a curious person and like to ask questions. Anyhow, Joseph and I decided we should each share our individual stories and then our story when it comes together. Here is mine:

I was born into a part member family. My dad was raised catholic but like most, was not a practicing catholic. He did share a few stories and beliefs with us throughout my childhood. My mother was a Mormon convert who officially converted a couple of years before I was born. Her parents and brother converted when she was a teenager, but she wasn't interested at that time. My mother made sure to take us (the children) to church every week but we were never forced. My dad supported my mother and even allowed her to pay tithing on the money he made. We weren't the typical Mormon family, if there is even a typical Mormon family. For example, we didn't have weekly family nights, daily scripture study, and we didn't have to treat Sunday any different other than the fact that we went to church. We were very relaxed and church was not a main topic in our home.

Our family was not the most functional family and we seemed to have a lot more war than peace and love in the home. When I was about 9 or 10 I decided that maybe if we were doing family night and scripture study our home would be more peaceful. So I began to plan family nights and scripture study to help bring the family closer together. I would invite everyone to come and the first few weeks would always start off well, but then family members would stop coming. I restarted this many times throughout my childhood and teenage years and there would be the first few good weeks and then it would fall apart.

When I was around 14 I was given a 40 day plan to help get me on track of daily scripture study. I started it and completed it and then continued to read my scriptures daily. I prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true a couple of times as a teenager and never really got an answer. There were times throughout my teenage years when I felt the spirit (or what I thought was the spirit) but it only really happened when someone was telling a faith promoting story and never when I read the scriptures. So I just continued to just try to believe it was all true. Everyone around me seemed to think so and they were all good people. However, I was always bothered and confused as to why my dad and all of my extended family weren't born with the truth like me. What made them and other close friends less worthy? They were all good people. Didn't they deserve to be born with the truth like me? Many of them also seemed to be happy with their own found faith. Why was my faith really better than theirs?

I was also in a really bad car accident when I was 14. My brother and I were being driven home by one of our youth leaders. We hit the side of a hill and then rolled down into a gully about 30 feet before hitting a tree and coming to a stop. Right before it happened I had a gut feeling, it was almost like I had heard a voice but more of an inner voice telling me to put on my seat belt and to grab the door handle. I chalked that feeling up the being the spirit rather than intuition and that experience helped me exercise a little more faith in the church. But I still thought it was odd that I had never had an experience like that when reading the scriptures.

Then at 18 I moved out on my own to get away from the dysfunction at home. Moving from California to Utah was a huge shock. It was like living in two different worlds. I went from having all non-members friends to only having member friends. After about 10 or so months of being out on my own, I was sick of going to church, the cliques, and just the overall boringness of hearing the same old things over and over and thought about quitting altogether. There were a few weeks I did end up skipping with my friend Joey. But the guilt of not going and the fear that I wouldn't make it back to the highest degree of glory soon caught up with me and I started going again. A couple months later I met my husband. He was way peter priesthood so I tried to be really good around him. I watched my mouth and tried really hard to be more interested into going to Sunday activities.

After about five months of dating we went to the Temple to get married. The day before I went through for the first time to take out my own endowments, and boy, was that weird. I had hoped that questions would be answered and that I would finally be able to gain a real testimony but instead I couldn't understand why it was all just about the creation with a bunch of secret signs and tokens. But then the fear came again as people were asking me what I thought because I couldn't say what I really thought.  I just felt like I must be missing the point because everyone else thought it was great and wonderful. Plus I didn't want to risk losing Joseph. Side note: I think my biggest regret is getting married in the temple because my dad and other relatives missed out on a very big moment in my life.

Then sometime during our first year of marriage we were lying in bed at my Grandma's home and Joseph asked me to bare my testimony. I didn't want to because I had nothing to say but he kept pushing me so I just said a few of the things I had been taught and cried a bit through it to make it seem real. I cried mostly because I didn't believe and I felt terrible that I didn't. He pushed me one more time in our marriage to bare my testimony in church. I just wish I knew then that these were tests because little did I know that Joseph was a closet unbeliever and was wondering if I really believed. I could have saved us so much of our time and money, and I would have saved my children from having the church be a part of their lives.

The years of our life continued and we both served faithfully in out callings. We did have a few discussions about things over the years. For example, the LDS church’s involvement in Prop 8 bothered me a ton and I vented a lot about it to Joseph and my mom. Some of the Young Women lessons also bothered me and I would occasionally speak up. And the fact that callings were more of a, “Who do you think would work for this?” and less of inspired revelation really bugged me.  Then as I have mentioned in a previous post I was the Young Women President when we left and as a presidency we had challenged all the Young Women to read the Book of Mormon. I took the challenge very seriously and still couldn't understand why I wasn't getting an answer to my prayers.

Then in October of 2012 Joseph told me he no longer believed. At first I was in shock but after a couple of days I thought I need to finally find things out for my own. I could no longer rely on his testimony or others around me.

Continued in the Tale of Sir Joseph: Part 1