ok, here goes nothing…

[Anonymous]

Hello all, I’ve been aware of your site for a year and a half, but I’ve only now gotten the guts and courage to reach out for support. My story is probably pretty typical to this site. Born and raised in the church, served a mission, married in the temple, had some kids. I’ve always been bothered by certain things like the priesthood excluding women (actually the role of women in general), blind obedience, and not being told really where my tithing goes, as well as the contradiction of putting family first, but being asked to spend a lot of time away from them. BUT, I always found ways around it because the church was true, and that made the contradictions and problems somehow solvable in the long run.

But, a year and a half ago, my husband discovered Joseph Smith’s polyandry and how he even had split up a family in order to marry an already happily married woman. He wasn’t looking at anti-mormon sites when he found this. He was reading something off of a church site. My heart dropped, and I flew into a depression that lingers to this day. Would a God that preaches all that I have been taught EVER command that? I had to say no. this made all of the previous questions more glaring and hard to ignore.

I didn’t know what to do, so we’ve kept going to church, accepting callings, and on the outside, pretending that everything is the same. In fact, on the outside nothing has changed except I comment less in class and am very careful with what I will and will not say when teaching a lesson. But the problem is, the longer I try to pretend that nothing has changed, the angrier I get. I wake up a mess each Sunday morning. Half the time, church is torture as I hear people talk about things that they think they know about, but they haven’t been told the whole truth on. I see exhausted families serving themselves to death, me included. But now, the reason is gone and it just makes me so mad. The other half the time, I forget myself and I find myself hoping that it is all true and revel in going through the motions again. Then I come home, and by midweek, I’m back to where I started again.

Why do I still go? Mormonism is my culture. It’s how I was raised and it has created me to be who I am, and I like who I am. But I don’t believe much of it anymore besides the very basics. I do think that the church has great values to pass on to my kids, and wonderful people that I love to be around. I also don’t think I’d be happier at any other church. But our church is so black and white. I often feel like I’m at an alcoholics anonymous meeting having never drank a drop of the stuff in my life. The core reason for why they are attending church and why I am there are so different, and they don’t know that. The other reason why I go is because of my parents and extended family. My brother left the church after high school, and it was devastating to my parents, and to me as well. Having been there, I know that my parents would never understand, it would just hurt them and change my relationship with them forever. I know they will always love me, but I will cause them a lot of worry.

Additionally, I have two hefty callings that take up a lot of my time that I really need to be devoting to other things. I want to ask to be released from at least one, but I see how overworked everyone else is and how few people they have to replace me that it makes me feel bad and I stay. I stay and get mad. Because eve in if I did ask to be released, I couldn’t say why I really need to. The good part about all of this is that my marriage is solidly intact. If anything, going through this terrible situation together has brought us so much closer.

I guess, I just wanted to get some advice or the like of how honest you are with your faith transition with others, especially your ward family. I don’t want to be a project, and I don’t want to be looked at like I have been deceived by people who happen to just be luckier than me b/c they didn’t stumble upon what I now know and can’t erase. I think that would make me leave, and honestly, despite all the pain and anger, I really don’t want that. Sorry for such a long post. I’ve had this all pent up for a really long time.

Also, can anyone tell me what the acronyms mean around here? DH, FT, etc. Sorry, I’m not to tech savvy I guess.

[Anonymous]

Hippo,

I know it’s very difficult to learn some of the things that you have learned. I still hurt quite a bit from my experience when I first came to the realization that there were some things that I was taught that just weren’t what I thought they were. I’m still in transition myself in some place between anger and acceptance. I think it gets easier over time, but really only because you have to learn to accept and love yourself. You have to find where you are at and what is important to you. Not because anyone is telling you to believe a certain way, but because it works for you. That is harder to do than you might think. It is difficult to let go of other people’s expectations of you.

I know I still am very guarded with whom I share my views on certain topics or where I’m at in my spiritual journey. Sometimes I wonder about how/if to share anything with parents who might disown me… Trying to stay can be difficult, but it can also be rewarding as well. There are so many good people in the church with good intentions. You can’t help but wonder if it all isn’t true, but the hand of God/light of Christ is still there anyway. You’ve got to find your own path and your own way to personal acceptance. Finding yourself on your own journey is perhaps the most liberating freedom that occurs on the journey away from 100% belief to something else. Good luck and God bless you.

[Anonymous]

Welcome Hippo,

Glad you took the plunge and joined the forum. I think you will find that this “ward” cares about you and is willing to reach out and support. There is a wonderful group of people who frequent this site.

My faith crisis came as a result of teaching church history in primary last year – I simply wanted to do a good job on the lessons. As I went through my transition, it was (and still is) the polygamy/polyandry that just turns my stomach. I can in no way see that God condoned that type of behavior. I have reached a point where I am okay just being completely to oblivious to what that whole thing was about. Was it Joseph Smith’s version of David seeing Bathsheba and pursuing her? Who knows? It’s just bizarre and I’m okay throwing it out.

As I have gotten on the other side of my faith transition, my focus now is simply to be more Christlike instead of more church-like. I ask myself “what would Jesus do?” and go with that instead of following the Mormon creed of “what would the church like me to do?”. This has helped a lot.

The other thing that has helped me is prayer and personal revelation. If I pray about something and feel that it’s just not right, I go with that confirmation. This makes it so that I may totally disagree with talks or teachings I hear from leaders, but that’s all right. Brigham Young himself said something about the danger the church would be in if the membership just followed the leaders without questioning.

As I read through your post, I get the feeling that you have some guilt about bailing on the callings and I really hope that you can get beyond this – it is perfectly fine to ask to be released. You and your husband know what is best for your family and “overserving” is frequently very damaging. Church and ward leadership is VERY idealistic on what people can accomplish and in my view it is simply not fair. You do what you can to help out, but you also need to put family and home first.

I still go to church faithfully and enjoy it much though I will admit to getting frustrated with some of what goes on there. Still, it’s a pretty good way for me personally as a reminder to try living a Christlike life and I am doing my best to pull what I can out of meetings and lessons to support that. I don’t want to be a catalyst for someone else to have a faith crisis so I’m pretty careful with what I say. People simply do not understand and they can easily think you are on the road to apostacy if you say too much. There are definitely good, caring people there. Besides, how can anyone argue when you make a comment in class about not judging and loving and accepting others for who they are?

Good luck and God bless in your journey.

[Anonymous]

The best thing I have done is just take the parts I like about the church and ignore the rest.

[Anonymous]

hippo wrote:

I guess, I just wanted to get some advice or the like of how honest you are with your faith transition with others, especially your ward family.

Hi, hippo – (That sounds funny. 😆 ) I hope that being here will reduce your stress by about half. It did for me. I’m very cautious about what I share, but more opportunities are going to present themselves soon. There are a lot of threads here about how to function at church, in LDS culture, etc. And if you and your husband are on the same page, you’re very fortunate.

Re. callings: I would be hard-pressed anymore to do something I thought was pointless. I still have callings. I feel like I do a “good job” with them and I like that the church pushes us to extend ourselves, but it’s an incredible relief to have boundaries now. Good luck with that! Something else I learned: for most of our marriage I was the one to second-guess my husband’s approach to his callings. I probably wanted him to be more compulsive and approval-seeking than he was. He had the right approach all along.

[Anonymous]

If your callings are too time-consuming, tell your Bishop that you can’t do both of them anymore. Tell him it is impacting your family negatively. It’s hard for a Mormon leader to argue with that, although some do. Tell him you will continue in both callings for ____________ length of time (ideally, about a month, to give him time to get a replacement) and then do one of them from that point. Tell him which one you want to do, or let him pick which one – whichever approach you want.

If you haven’t been released in that time frame, simply stop doing the second calling. If anyone says anything, simply say the same thing you said to the Bishop – and tell them directly that you kept performing both callings for an extra month to provide time to call someone else. Then, let it flow off your back and try not to second-guess yourself.

[Anonymous]

Welcome, I’m new to the Bloggernacle as well and am still learning the acronyms but I believe DH is “dear husband” and FT is “faith transition”.

[Anonymous]

hippo wrote:

I guess, I just wanted to get some advice or the like of how honest you are with your faith transition with others, especially your ward family. I don’t want to be a project, and I don’t want to be looked at like I have been deceived by people who happen to just be luckier than me b/c they didn’t stumble upon what I now know and can’t erase. I think that would make me leave, and honestly, despite all the pain and anger, I really don’t want that. Sorry for such a long post. I’ve had this all pent up for a really long time.

Welcome to the forum, it sounds as if you will fit in well here. One of the greatest benefits of this forum is that we’re able to be honest with each other, somewhat protected by anonymity, and it’s great just to be able to get it out sometimes.

As to your ward family, my advice is to be honest but vague. Phrases like “I just have some things I’m working through right now” seem to work. If pressed, you can thank them for their concern but tell them it’s personal. Generally speaking, airing your doubts publicly or to your local leaders is not a good thing and will not be helpful to you in the long run. If you don’t want to be a project, just say so – the working through some things line works there, too.

[Anonymous]

There is a site that will tell you what the acronyms mean.

FT == full time

DH == dear husband, DD = dear daughter, DW=dear wife etcetera

FP = first presidency

TSM: Thomas S Montson

BP = Bishop

SP =Stake President

HPGL = High Priest Group Leader

YW =- young women

I could not find a list readily on the web for a comprehensive list, but you get the idea

I have a few thoughts

1. Do not share ANY of your doubts with your Ward family. It’s the fastest way to getting ostracized I’m aware of. Nothing good ever comes of it. Share it online here where you will be accepted.

2. Regarding the calling — remember, the reason everyone is stretched is because of the church’s expectations, and particularly your Bishop’s and Stake’s. The minimum a Ward needs to keep running is the Sunday callings, the key leaders in the Ward, and to have the records and finances running. The rest is non-essential, although desireable. Don’t let the Achiever of the leadership make you feel obligated to give more than you can give. They can only move as fast as the Ward members who must do the work will let them.

I have had problems with getting released in the past — just so you know. So, I now give a period after which I will no longer be serving. Make it reasonable so they can find someone unless your own inner peace can’t handle that accommodation. I have even told them I am going away for a few weekends after a certain date so there is a gaping hole that must be filled.

We are volunteers in the church — I believe that is our legal status. So, I now act like one — not as an enlisted person (in spite of “We are all enlisted ’til the conflict is o’er”).

3. Most people know i have been putting my service into the community now. Best thing I ever did. Putting in long hours but really enjoying myself, growing, and realizing that there comes a point when you don’t grow anymore in the church (at least, not for me). And its good to have a different perspective on service and organizations through service to the community as a whole. If you still have energy, and get out of one or both callings, find a calling about which you feel passionate and serve God there.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys for the kind words and advice. This is such an amazing group of support. I spent several hours poking around the site last night and I found a little peace, which is something a rarely find spiritually. In fact, my anger is melting back to just sadness again. The church meant everything to me, and now I just don’t know how to place it in my life anymore. It is so sad to hear that airing doubts or history facts isn’t a good option. I’ve kind of instinctively known that, but I feel like such a hypocrite (hence my user name). I’ve always been an honest person, and it’s killing me to keep it inside, but I don’t know if there is a choice if I choose to stay. After looking at the posts here, I got the courage up to email my bishop and ask to be released from one of my callings. He’s already responded, and it was a very kind response. Now I feel kinda silly waiting so long to do it. The church is full of good people like him. I just wish I still shared their faith.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the explanation on the name, seems like a good choice if that’s how you feel. I do know what you mean when you said the church was everything to you, I felt the same way and I still don’t know how it fits exactly into my new faith, either. There is room for the church, but faith is so much more than the church.

[Anonymous]

There is a HUGE difference between being honest and being completely open. That is important to understand and remember.

Classic example:

My wife walks into the room wearing something I think isn’t very flattering. It’s not a catastrophe, but I wouldn’t choose it for her. Being honest can include shutting up and allowing her to wear whatever she wants to wear; being completely open means telling her I don’t like how she looks at that moment. Those are different things: one is fine; one often is stupid.

People who are totally open generally are disliked by the people around them, since they have no filter and end up offending all the time. “Radical honesty” is polarizing, so we talk about honesty as being important, but we almost never practice absolute, unfiltered openness. We strive to be honest, but we value not dumping everything we think. Tact and discernment are FAR more important than total openness – and I think you’ll see that if you think of people you know who have no tact or discernment. People still can love them; people still can tolerate them; NOBODY is completely open with them, since there is no belief that confidences will be kept.

Also, I believe strongly in “creative honesty” – meaning finding ways to tell the truth without having to dump every detail. “Does this dress make me look fat?” can be answered in different ways. “Yes.” “No.” “No, your weight makes you look fat.” “No, but you have other dresses that are more slimming than that one.” “You never look fat to me.” The possible answers are limited only by your creativity. My point is: Every answer I just listed can be an honest one.

If you are interested, I wrote a short post on my personal blog about this concept back in July 2009:

“Being Creatively Honest” (http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2009/07/being-creatively-honest.html)

[Anonymous]

Hi Hippo,

I was serving as WML and DW as PP when our faith crisis hit. We made lots of mistakes in how we handled it. Thankfully we have moved to another state and have been able to largely start over.

I believe that FT stands for Faith Transition (although it could also be Full Time depending on the context. ). Some people prefer the term Faith Transition to Faith Crisis (FC) to describe the broader evolution of religious feeling long after the initial chaos has subsided.

There is a thread explaining all these acronyms here:

http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=114

My thought on the callings is that I like my Bishop. He works really hard. I would like to help him out. But the church is set up in such a way that there will NEVER be enough help in my local area. It would be too easy to allow the church to swallow all of my extra time and much of my energy. For my sanity and the wellbeing of my family life I must set boundaries in what I can and cannot do.

DW and I currently team teach the 4 yr olds in primary. That fits my definition of sustainable.

Welcome Hippo.

[Anonymous]

Welcome, hippo, to our forum. Faith crises and faith transitions can be hard to experience. I went through a faith crisis and a faith transition myself. My faith crisis was brought on by studying up on church history, mainly through anti-Mormon websites. (I made some bad choices along the way too.) At first, I didn’t believe any of the stuff I saw from these sites. I just thought they were lies. I then discovered that although the anti sites had an axe to grind against the church, many of them were true. I was overwhelmed. Then I found people like John Dehlin and others in the church through the internet that had faith crises and have dealt with them. That helped me to prayerfully change my paradigms without causing me to lose my faith. I’m grateful for that. Then I found this forum and it has helped even more. I will probably post another introduction pretty myself. Anyway, again welcome to the forum, I pray you will find peace, and I hope to see you more on here.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forum, I love the openness of this new ward. I know this is a hard subject to grasp. I wanted to punch someone in the face when I first found out about polyandry but my FC was not very drawn out. It helped to go to fairlds and get all of the facts because the anti sites leave a lot out because there is a big difference between malicous intent and lacking human judgment of JS.

I would read everything there is on FAIR-LDS on polyandry or JS marriage to married women. Some things need to be considered when looking at this because it is the hardest to understand. First, is that when JS resumed polygamy in Nauvoo in 1841, for the first year all, except 1, were to married women. This seems counterintuitive since these marriage would cause the most problems because most importantly a married jealous husband would be involved and the threat of physical violence, not to mention that there was already children in the picture that these women had, so that had a lot more to lose than single women. None of these problems surfaced, the husbands were all friends of JS and remained so til his death. These women all continued to live with their first husbands. 3 of the married women were to non-lds men, and 1 to a non-lds man, so the desire to be sealed to someone eternally is something we all can understand. 2 were women were separated or divorced and under common law marriage, separation was virtually divorcement. 6, 5 excluding the doubtful sealed women to JS, were married to faith LDS men. Sexual relations was not part of these relationship. Many anti sources show that JS and Brigham broke up Zina Huntings marriage, but the sources cannot be verified or the time and place and quote do not match up. The best explanation is that JS wanted to connect his family to others in the gospel. This makes no sense to me, and just sounds weird.

The reason why there is strong evidence that there was not sexual relations in these polyandry sealings is that Mormon detractors such as JohnC. Bennet and William Law were aware of some of these and in there rebutal of JS after they left the church they make mention of these but they never mention JS having sex or commiting adultery with these women and given that they were willing to use the biggest ammunition they had, if it happened they would have. A second evidence is that in 1892, the RLDS church was sueing the temple lot group, a break away group for the rigthts to grounds in Missouri. The temple lot wanted to show that JS had sexual relations with other women of whom he was married to because this would deny RLDS claim as the sole heirs of JS, especially considering that RLDS denied that JS practiced polygamy. So the temple lot traveled to Salt Lake in 1892, and 9 of JS polygamous wives were still alive with 3 of those being polyandrous wives. Factors in consideration of who would be interviewed included health, distance from Salt Lake and likelyhood that the relationship with JS involved physical intimicacy, because if it did not then it was just a spiritual relationship and of no use to the temple lot. Well, the temple lot passed by the 3 polyandrous, Zina Huntington, Mary Lightner and Patty Sessoins, wives even though they were all in good health and live in SLC. The temple lot actually only ended up interviewing 3 of the 9, Malissa Lott, Emily Patridge and Lucy Walker and physical intimacy was at the core of their interview. A third evidence that sex was not part of these relationship and not a big part of the polygamous wives in general is the lack of children from these. If Js was a sex horse as often claimed by anti sources, than he would have a number of children even some from the polyandrous spouses. However only one likely child came out of these possible another though unlikley thanks today to DNA testing and the ability to identify haplotypes with the descendants of the suspected concieved children. Again for more indepth study, look at the articles on polyandry and polygamy in general. I would also suggest looking at the testimony of the witness these women got that they should marry JS. While I completely do not understand how this fits in the plan, it is evident they recieved an answer.

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