Becoming Ex-Mormon: The Thing I Feared Most Saved Me (Part Two)

An Honest Question

With my mind overwhelmed with unaccustomed questions and thoughts about the LDS church, on September 4, 2021 I finally sat on the side of my bed and asked an honest question:

Is the church true? 

The Answer that Changed Everything

“Of course it’s not. Why would the little thing I happened to be born into, that I learned to love and cherish, be the one true thing when everyone thinks their little thing is the true thing?”

What?! My world stopped and all I could do was laugh in shock and disbelief. I felt completely unmoored. How could everything I’d built my life on be false? Would there even be a life for me if I left the LDS church?

Flooded With Love

At that moment pure love flooded over me. It was bright and warm and reassuring. And it contained a new life. I felt like my whole being was rebooted with new software. Everything looked and felt different. I was still sitting on my bed, but I felt like I was everywhere. My being expanded and I was part of everything. 

No longer bound by the constraints of the church, it was like my mind was suddenly a new place, so I looked around to notice what was different. I noticed that all the little worries about whether I was dressing right, using my time right, saying all the right things fell away completely. I was loved and none of that mattered. 

Because love filled every part of my being, I noticed that I didn’t love my next-door neighbor in spite of the fact that he rarely wore a shirt and dropped f-bombs with abandon. I just loved him. There was no “in spite of” anymore. I honestly didn’t care what anyone did or didn’t wear, what words they did or didn’t use or who they did or didn’t sleep with. 

I noticed that there was no sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ like there had been before. Even when I was sincerely loving people, there was always a disconnect because I thought I knew how they should be living and what they needed to change in order to be happier. Now I felt judgment fall away, and for the first time in my life, people just looked human to me. Complicated, different, and beautiful people doing their best to love and live meaningful lives.

A New Understanding of God

So I realized that I could no longer believe that God makes demands of people: the freely-given love I felt could never be earned or lost. It loved me and every single other person no matter what.

I basked in the joy of this new experience of unconditional love. 

All of the inadequacy and guilt that had weighed me down more and more over the years lifted and I felt free for the first time. Free of the need to perform to please God. I reveled in knowing that my existence pleased God.

This made me aware of the quiet suffering people endure when they believe they are failing spiritually, the awful weight of guilt and self-doubt.

I knew I couldn’t be part of something that came between people and God the way the LDS church had for me. Leaving the church seemed like my only option.

I sat for a moment processing this experience. There was so much in me that changed in that moment. From the tiniest cells in my body to the farthest reaches of my consciousness, I was new.

I felt awake and alive for the first time ever.

And Then the Terror Began 

The love was so strong, but three main fears pushed through as I thought about the repercussions of actually leaving the LDS church. The terror was real, but luckily the love was stronger.

Terror 1: Fear of Life on My Own

What was going to happen to me? How would I be safe now? What would keep me from making destructive choices and losing control of my life after leaving the LDS church?

Growing up, I always believed that people fall apart when they leave the church. That the commandments kept me safe and that I needed prophets to tell me how to live. With all of that gone, what could protect me and keep me good?

The answer was simple and clear: Trust yourself. It was clear that leaving the LDS church didn’t suddenly make me less good or less wise than I was before. I didn’t need the church to keep me safe. I could trust myself to make good choices for myself and my family. That was a wildly foreign idea, but it penetrated my being and I knew it was true.

Terror 2: Fear of Uncertainty

The relief from this answer was immediate, but it didn’t last long before a second terror rose up: Wait, I don’t know anything now! 

In the church, I’d had an answer for everything, and now I didn’t know anything.

I hadn’t realized how much feeling like I had the answers had created a sense of safety for me until it disappeared. Mormonism had answers for where we came from, why we’re here, what happens after death, which choices are right or wrong, and what kind of life leads to happiness. I had a clear map of life.

Suddenly, I was standing outside the map, and it was scary. 

Peace came as a quiet understanding that all of humanity is and has always been part of this not knowing. I realized that certainty and truth are not the same thing. Often certainty can keep us from seeing clearly, because we start to try to force reality into the shape of what we already believe. So uncertainty can actually help us find truth.

In fact, some of humanity’s most meaningful ideas, art, and spiritual traditions come from our attempts to grapple with uncertainty. I was reassured that uncertainty is normal, good, and beautiful.

Terror 3: Fear of Death and Losing My Eternal Family

I loved that realization and felt comforted. But then the great terror arose:

What about death? What happens after death? Maybe I really will go to hell and lose my family if I leave the LDS church! This fear reached deeper than the others. Uncertainty was one thing, but the possibility of losing the people I loved forever felt too heavy to hold.

I had always felt so much pity when anyone outside the LDS church lost a loved one, because they didn’t have the sure knowledge of the resurrection and eternal families to comfort them. I’d never had to fear death because the church had wrapped it up in a pretty bow. But now the bow was ripped away and there stood death in all its threatening unknowableness.

At that point I was getting really comfortable with this connection with love that seemed to give me so many answers and so much understanding, so I looked up expectantly, waiting to hear the answer to what happens after death.

Nope.

All I got was more love, and the realization that I don’t need to know anything about death. I just know that love is powerful, and I don’t have anything to fear. Love doesn’t send people to the void or damn them or tear families apart over a difference in belief.

Trying to Stay LDS

Talking to the Bishop

The next day was Sunday and I went to church, but I was miserable. During Sacrament Meeting I realized that I couldn’t continue teaching in the church, so I texted my Bishop and told him I needed to meet with him urgently. After church I talked to my husband and told him I didn’t believe in the church anymore and then I went to my appointment with the Bishop.

He convinced me that I could hold on to my experience and still stay in the church. That was a relief, because even though I’d had that huge experience, there was still a big part of me that just couldn’t fathom leaving the LDS church. The church had been my entire life and I didn’t even know if there was life for me outside of it.

Living in Love

The next few weeks almost felt like a dream. I kept attending church. I kept reading the scriptures. But I also kept thinking. And I was still connected to pure love in an almost overwhelming way. The world was colorful and I felt completely alive. I was part of the world and humanity in a new way. 

Everywhere I went, I found myself talking and laughing with strangers. I was overwhelmed with love for my kids. All the old worries about nit-picky standards and do’s and don’ts completely disappeared. Things that don’t really matter, magically didn’t matter to me. And I found that I wasn’t afraid of things I used to fear. 

I would kneel by my bed to pray like I always had, but instead of feeling numb and inadequate, I was consumed with joy. Without noticing, I’d find myself sitting on the floor, just feeling love all around me. I remember reading something about the benefits of meditation and feeling that old voice, “I should really start meditating,” and then just laughing when I realized I was already meditating regularly on accident, just because I couldn’t get enough of sitting with God’s love!

Living Between Two Selves

I went to church and I went to activities. But I felt removed and like I didn’t really belong. I remember thinking, “I wonder what they would think if they knew what I really believe.” 

It was an interesting time because I had changed so quickly that I could still see everything clearly from my old perspective while simultaneously seeing everything from my new one. And on top of that I was still connected to pure understanding, so I was learning and understanding new things all the time. 

It was very difficult for my new self to see the LDS Church as a benign presence leading me toward God. Rather it seemed to be a source of guilt, fear, and judgment. It felt like something standing between me and God’s love. I felt less and less able to reconcile the church I knew with the unconditional love I experienced. 

Grappling with such huge life choices had the remnants of my old self freaking out. I wasn’t ready to let go of the church, but I kind of knew I couldn’t keep doing it. At the same time, it all felt almost funny because I was so happy, and my new self knew that even if I made the scariest decisions, it would all be okay.

Seeing Ex-Mormons Differently

During this time I felt a lot of curiosity and connection with people who had left the church. I didn’t want to dive into church history, but I watched a couple of ‘Why I Left the LDS Church’ videos and saw how good the people in them were. They weren’t the scary ex-Mormons I’d been raised to believe in. And I didn’t feel scary or bad even with my new perspectives. I knew that whether I chose to stay in the church or not, it wouldn’t change my innate goodness.

Leaving the LDS Church

It took almost 3 weeks before the old me was ready to let go of the perceived safety of the LDS church. On September 21 I finally faced the fact that I wasn’t Mormon anymore and took off my garments. 

I was officially an ex-Mormon and, strangely, I’d never been happier. 

Life as an Ex-Mormon

I’m not going to pretend that since then I’ve never felt any hurt, betrayal or anger. There’s also been grief and loneliness. Sometimes I’m seen as the villain and as untrustworthy. There’s been really hard stuff.

There is always something you give up to stay true to yourself. Sometimes it feels like I’ve sacrificed everything to find myself, but the difference between this sacrifice and the sacrifices I made in the church is that before I was always sacrificing myself, and now I sacrifice for myself. 

And now all the hard things are cushioned in love, joy, and peace.

After leaving the LDS church, I don’t have all the answers, and likely never will. But that doesn’t scare me anymore. I no longer have to spend my time and energy safeguarding certainty. Now I can just focus on trying to live honestly, love people deeply, and stay connected to the sense of peace and aliveness I first experienced that day on my bed. 

People often assume that leaving the LDS church means I lost my faith, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. For me faith no longer means believing the ‘right’ things. Now it means trusting love enough to follow truth wherever it leads.

I spent forty-two years believing that leaving the LDS church was the worst thing that could ever happen–that I would lose God and myself. That wasn’t true. I didn’t lose God or myself. I found a sense of trust in myself and a living connection with God and other people.

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