So glad this forum exists!

I’m just like Porter, who just posted. I’ve been looking at this site off and on for a while, and am now ready to be a bit more involved. So, my story …

I had the picturesque LDS family up through “Primary.” Everything in life revolved around the church. I was home-schooled through elementary school, and more or less learned to read by reading the Book of Mormon. Mom was well known in the stake for her piano skills, Dad was the bishop, and we have several kids in the family. We lived outside of Utah, but were as TBM, “Utah Mormon” as you could get (please forgive me if I misuse some terms, I’m still learning some of the online LDS lingo).

Just before my 12th birthday my dad asked me who I would like to have ordain me to the priesthood. I looked at him puzzled and told him I wanted him to do it, of course. Was this even a question? Boys were always ordained by their fathers in my TBM, nearly 12 years-old mind. Dad said he couldn’t do it, he wasn’t allowed. I remember crying while he held me, having no idea how many more tears would be shed over this issue.

My honorably RM, AP, previous Bishop and nearly every high profile calling short of stake president father had been disfellowshipped. About a year later he was reinstated, but the family, or Mom rather, had a poison in her soul that would never leave. My teen years consisted of going to church, seminary, scouts, etc, and acting like we were a happy family, while mom screamed at dad and he punched holes in the walls to let out his frustration. I came to fully understand the saying, “hell know no furry like a woman’s scorn” (no offense ladies, that is not meant as a judgment on women in general, only that my mother embodied this saying). I think my mom was so crushed by her LDS world falling apart (in her mind) when Dad was disfellowshipped that she suffered emotional and psychological damage that she refuses to seek help for. She systematically alienated each child to a different degree in our teens as we started to have our own opinions and would disagree on the smallest matters with her. We were each told we were becoming evil, “like our father.” With the hypocrisy I saw in both of my parents, I would occasionally question the church, but I could never do it seriously, not yet. Mormonism was too ingrained in my head.

I went on a mission and had, as Dickens wrote (though to describe a very different era), “the best of times, and the worst of times.” The high point was my last transfer, where I was told by a GA who came through our mission that my companion and I needed to have two baptisms (our mission was one of those where a missionary had about 2-3 baptisms total after 2-years. Some went home with none). Like manna from heaven, 2 investigators emerged miraculously in the last 2 weeks of my mission, and I knew God was real. I went home knowing I would never doubt the church. I enrolled at BYU and was immediately hired as a teacher at the MTC.

For the first 6 months home, life was heaven; but my parents’ problems started to catch up with me as I finally got to thinking for myself and seeing other issues with the church. I started to notice more and more how my boss at the MTC (my training coordinator) was more focused on stats than anything. Politics were at play for raises and promotions here, just as much as it was with missionaries in the field trying to get leadership. Meanwhile, I decided to major in history and had my mind opened to other religions and world views more than ever. I couldn’t understand how my LDS classmates could so quickly disregard the miracles in the history of other faiths (Catholicism, Islam–you name it) as “preposterous,” yet believe in ours. Long story short, I started to see Mormonism didn’t have the monopoly on miracles. I saw more politics and less that Jesus-like behavior on BYU campus and at the MTC, which caused me to reflex more and more on my still bickering parents, finally solidifying in my head the fact that Mormons aren’t really any better than non-Mormons (remember I grew up outside of Utah, so this was my first experience in an LDS-predominate community). Basically, I could no longer see anything special about this religion, except for one thing: the miracle from my mission. With that as my sole evidence for this being a special, true church, I forged on, even marrying my sweetheart in the Temple; still a TBM, but very shaky.

That was over 2 years ago. About a year ago, maybe a bit less, I decided the “troubled” part of my faith had to end. My mission miracle was great, but I didn’t know anyone else with such an experience and it couldn’t hold my faith forever. It had already been my crutch for years at this point. I’d been told by my bishops overs the years that I just needed to read and pray more/better. I didn’t get why it wasn’t working. I wanted it to so badly!! But with all the hypocrisy I had seen in our church, and the goodness I had seen in others, and lack of other miracles, I couldn’t call this church “the one true,” anymore.

So I thought, I just need to see that others have experienced miracles like mine, and then I can disregard all the hypocrisy. I’ve been told that a “wicked generation seeketh signs,” but why was it okay then for Parley Pratt to ask the same question I was asking? If this is Christ’s church, shouldn’t the same miracles follow? Why did they appear all the time in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, but now seem to be gone? I knew that some miracles happened in my LDS family back in the day. I started digging, as a good historically trained college grad, and spoke with the oldest family member left on my mother’s side. Turned out these accounts were mostly embellished. The stories of angels that I heard were just “impressions from the spirit” when my uncle heard them decades ago. Wow. A severe blow.

Shaken, I thought, I will have to look at some of what historians call “foundational myth” miracles in our church’s history, because as a TBM, I KNEW these had happened. So I started to research LDS history … and found out that Martin saw the plates with his “spiritual eyes” … and that Joseph’s first vision changed dramatically from account to account … and that many of his prophecies didn’t “come to pass.” Within 2 weeks of this, the years of cracking had finally made the glass shatter. My faith was gone. I had moved from “believing but concerned” to just “concerned.” That was last November.

My wife and I have talked about it a little from time to time. She loves me, but hates this wavering in my faith, so it is largely ignored for the time being. I keep going to church and fulfilling my callings because I love her, and I see from what others have written on this site/mormonstories, that going inactive doesn’t necessarily fix things. I’m moving slowly and thoughtfully. Besides, I still see a lot of good in the church with the bad, and I want to keep the good. Likewise, I think deep-down I still hope that I can recover my faith, because it was simply the only world I’ve known, and it would like life MUCH smoother. My family and friends are all hard-core TBM though, so I am very, very alone in my spiritual journey now. I’ve spoken minimally to to a few close friends, but that is all. They have taken it well, but I need to talk and associate with others who don’t want to pray for my lost soul the second I say, “I wonder if Joseph might have not been a prophet.” I still think there is a god–my mission miracle and some of the other small miracles in my family and church history point to that–but right now, I think he could careless what baptism we prescribe to. So I’m currently reading the Koran, the Dhammapada, and the Analects of Confucius, just looking for direction on how to be a force for good in the world. Well, if you actually read all this … that’s my story. And I feel better just writing this out, sorry it was so long!