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BLC,

Welcome! I am new to this site, but can say this is a nice safe place to come with warm caring people who offer support!

Hi BLC,

Welcome to the community. Thanks for taking the time to share some about your personal journey. I love reading these stories because even though there are common themes, everyone is different and interesting. Glad to have you here with us to share a bit of the long road of life.

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I came to realize that anything regarding church had to be a free-will offering. I couldn’t just follow along what everyone else was doing. There is a tendency in Mormon culture to do things because this is the social expectation of Mormonism.We pay tithing, go to this meeting and that meeting, attend the temple, work at our callings etc., etc. Low and behold one is on a treadmill of Mormon church activity. What for ? To keep up with the spiritual Jones’s ? Or because we want to ? Sometimes it’s just good to stand back and say: I may not do this or that but I look after the material needs of my family. I don’t abuse my wife. I don’t go to bars and drink my pay check away etc.,etc.. Sometimes we just have to tell ourselves we are doing good in spite of not doing all we are suppose to do in the church, and I think that is important.

– Even if we do break standards or values within the Mormon community sometimes it’s just a matter of being or allowing ourselves to be human beings. Heck, if I want to ___________ then I’ll ___________, the heck with the church community standard on the issue.

I could go on and on about this but I think you get the picture. I had come to a place where I had to be comfortable with my own individuality and humanness – and even if it meant not keeping the commandments and just being human and allowing myself to be human.

Another conclusion I came to was that as a Mormon I felt I had lost my identity. Who was I without the church ? This I had to find out and this is what led to my conclusions above.

I am hoping that this community – StayLDS.com – can be a springboard for possibly aiding people to work through their negative feelings toward the church and possibly assist such individuals in coming back to full activity. My hope is that maybe this online community can help shape and change the church into a different entity, one where all can be accepted, all can be loved, and all can feel they have a voice in this worldwide church.

Sincerely yours,

BeLikeChrist

I so loved your honesty and sincere post. I welcome you too. What you wrote above reminded me of something I read many years ago that made me feel I was not alone in my thinking. I would like to share it here:

MONSTER IN OUR MIDST

After long hours of consideration and investigation, I have decided that we are living with a monster in our midst. Should I describe this monster? It is large, has green scales, a long tail, a big belly and flared nostrils: a basic Walt Disney dragon–huge and frightening but a little bit comfortably familiar–comfortable enough, obviously, that we tolerate its presence with a minimal amount of complaint.

Who is this dragon, and where did it come from? I call it “The -Way-Things-Are-Supposed-To-Be,” and I think that we’ve collectively given birth to it over many years. As a teenager, I was fiercely determined not to be like all those other girls who were snagging boyfriends, fully determined to marry them either shortly before or shortly after graduating from high school. Even so on the eve of my twenty-third birthday I sat with my sympathetic roommates, wondering what had gone wrong–I was supposed-to-be married. Then there was my friend, the new Relief Society President. Once quite vocal about the importance of molding programs to meet individual needs, she now extolled the virtues of the home-making meetings she had previously refused to attend because they didn’t meet her needs, since that was what she was now supposed-to-do. Or there was the ward I once lived in where everyone very, very impressively fulfilled charitable duties well into the second mile, but none of the women were close friends. By their own admission they were afraid to let people find out what they were really like–the inside just might ot match the supposed-to-be.

For years, I wasn’t absolutely sure of the dragon’s existence. I only caught glimpses of its shadow and sometimes felt its fiery breath upon my neck. But one day, during a particularly trying period at school, feeling that awful presence strongly, I turned around very quickly and caught the dragon full face. Rather than relieving me at all, I was terrorized by my discovery. I became fully aware that something other than my own consciousness and feeling was governing my life. I became aware that I was essentially living two lives–the real me and the supposed-to-be me.

I felt for awhile that I was very alone, but as the problem of my dragon-terrorized life came to obsess me, I began to notice some interesting things. Other women also bore testimonies made up of a combination of stock phrases from the Church vocabulary. I heard others answer

questions with the expected answers that didn’t quite ring true as having been cycled through their own hearts ad minds. I began to suspect that other people were being intimidated by the dragon, too. A few exploratory ventures on my part into te world of saying-what-I thought tended to confirm my suspicions–a few people would want to talk privately to me about what I said, while others were appalled to the point of speechlessness that anyone would say such things in public.

I immediately began looking around for some chauvinist or institution to blame, but could find no tangible culprit of widespread-enough influence to be responsible for the whole mess. I was not ready, however, to take full responsibility for creating this thing which was taking over my life. I still don’t think that it is possible to assign responsibility to any one individual. The dragon was hatched and growing large long before many of us were born. But it is still growing–it grows every time I let the dragon decide what I’m going to say or how I’ll act. It grows every time one woman encourages another, however subtly, to react the ways she’s supposed to rather than the way she really feels.

When I described the dragon above, I referred to his Walt Disneyish appearance. I did that for a definite reason–that being that its comfortableness is part of the reason it hasn’t long sine been banished from our midst. It is frightening to live without a structure to support us, and the dragon has provided the most readily available, if far from the most positive, support for many of us. It is also terrifying to hear someone truly express the depths of personal agonies and angers, and the dragon has successfully squelched in many, the impulse to express these feelings.

The blame cannot, then, be placed on any one person or even any one source. I am not responsible entirely for the dragon’s existence in my life, and neither is any other person entirely responsible for its existence in his or her life. I am responsible, though, for the nourishment I provide it ad for the acquiescence that I give to its existence. Every time I gush about the spirituality derived from a meeting that I traditionally daydream through or refer to my ‘good husband’ in phrases that we hear over and over, I make it a little bit hardr for someone to see around the dragon to the person–the soul– on the other side whom he would really like to communicate with.

I’m not sure that we can completely kill the dragon–I really don’t know. I’m not sure that enough of us want to yet. For me, the first step was realizing that it existed. From there it was easy to move to a conviction that its existence was not good for me. But to this day I’m awed by the power and influence of the dragon and its ability to pull me again and again into its clutches.

I have learned, though, that inasmuch as I differentiate carefully between my feelings and those of the dragon, it is easier for me to consciously choose to act as I wish, rather than to react to the dragon’s ominous rumblings. I don’t know if it is entirely possible to eliminate the dragon, but I’m up for stopping the inadvertent feeding of this beast ad for working towards relationships which are unfettered by this monster in our midst. Cynthia Thorley Anderson , Utah

Hi BeLIkeChrist,

Since I am no longer active in the church, I did ask my self your question: “Another conclusion I came to was that as a Mormon I felt I had lost my identity. Who was I without the church?” The church was such a huge part of me. I had alot invested in the church with callings, and going on a mission. I grew alot from my callings and opportunites to serve. I believe in alot of the teachings though I cannot say “I know”. My faith is based on ‘hope’. Without the church I am still a child of God and very loved. Without the church I still have my faith in Christ and try to follow His teachings. The spirit told me once, “Zion is within”. That made me realize that Zion is not a place or the church, but in your own personal relationship with God. What God thinks about me is the only thing that can really give me peace. I still feel His guidance outside of the church and see His guidance abundantly in the other churches I am now involved in. Having the Spirit with you is the most important thing.

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