Postcards from a Pear

I've been a fairly regular listener of Mormon Stories Podcast for the past year, and have admired the way John Dehlin prompts his subjects to reflect on and talk about their experiences with Mormonism in a fair and well-rounded way. As my story is pretty unremarkable, I really doubt I will be asked to go on Mormon Stories. So I took some of John's prompts and answered them here as a kind of thought experiment, and a way for me to take the pulse of where I am at. If you choose to read on, please note that this blog is meant to be a safe space for believers or non-believers or believers of other persuasions alike. The intention is not, and will never be, to try to persuade others to agree with me or to come over to Dark Side (although we do have cookies. Just saying.) Ahem... 1. What about being Mormon did you find most useful? Here is a non-comprehensive list of things Mormonism provided me: Identity - I was a child of loving Heavenly Father whom I loved, and he love...

Ok, so the title doesn't make much grammatical sense, but you get the idea. The purpose of this blog is not, and will never be, to document specific reasons why I felt I had to leave Mormonism. It is a place for me to articulate my thoughts about the process:  the difficulties, the opportunities, the growing pains, etc. It is also an attempt to communicate to family and friends who may happen upon this in a non-confrontational way "that all may be edified." 1. It was too hard for me to keep my covenants. When I went through the temple for the first time over 13 years ago, I was really excited to be part of a club of sorts. I was excited to have been initiated into that level of my faith. I enjoyed wearing garments. I didn't find the slight modifications I needed to make in my dress to be a burden. The actual covenants themselves were very much in line with the way I was already living. I felt like I had taken the next step to becoming a fully fledged adult in the ...

Shortly after I began to question the truth claims of the church, I realized that almost everything I knew about God or Jesus was via the teachings of Joseph Smith. This posed a problem for me since I felt I could no longer trust the source. What followed was that, suddenly, I had to confront all of these things I thought I knew and had taken for granted about the nature of God. Did he have a physical body? Was he the father of my spirit? Was he even a he? Was god even there? How did he/she/it interact with me, if at all? Did prayer still have a purpose? In the early stages of my faith transition--deep in "crisis" mode, as it were--before I had even considered any of the bullet points above, I continued to pray as I had always done. "Dear Heavenly Father... thank you, and please bless... ." I needed that familiar, ritualistic comfort. I needed to feel like something was unchangeable amidst the cracking crust of my shifting ideology. But I almost immediatel...

On Sunday, a friend of mine and her twin daughters were killed in a brutal car accident on their way home from church. I did not know this friend very  well, but we had spoken on multiple occasions, spent some time together in the mother's lounge at church when we both had nursing babies, and walked the halls together with fussy toddlers. I made a meal for them when their twins were newborn. We had more or less been in the same ward for several years, but I would not say we were extremely close. And yet, I have been wretchedly, achingly sad for the past several days. Sad, yes, for the three lives that were snuffed out so senselessly and suddenly. But mixed into my grief is also an inexplicably heavy dose of survivor's guilt. Guilt that I was somehow not there for this friend in the weeks before she died. Guilt for not remaining a participating member of my religious community. Guilt for the fact that while she was on her way home from church, I was on my way to the swim...

"And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me." - Jane Eyre This is the scariest thing I've ever written. Two weeks ago I was released from my calling in the nursery at church where I had been serving for a year and a half. I had asked to be released, but as I sat through sacrament meeting--the first I'd attended in nearly two months--I cried and cried and cried. I cried through the rest of the announcements. I cried through the sacrament hymn. I dropped my head and let my bangs fall in front of my face to hide my distress. I was sad for my babies that I'd grown to love so much. I was sad for the babies I wouldn't get to know. I peeked at all the faces around me and waves of pain would wash over me afresh as I realized how much I loved these people. Most of all, I was--am--grieving the end of an era. An era that has been a part of my...