Here it goes...

So this is the blog that I have been putting off writing for several months, mostly because of my unease over how people would react, but since this is going to be a permanent change in my life I decided it was finally time to spread the word.

Basically, to sum it up, I've left the church...not officially but I've stopped attending meetings and doing other church related things. I'm not sure how to exactly explain why without offending people. My mother and sister are certain that I left because of my divorce, but that isn't really true. My divorce was the catalyst, but not the reason. Here's the story...

When my divorce started happening, I also started thinking about my place in the church. It just struck me that for the first time in my life, I was going to be independent and it was really my choice whether or not to go to church. After a lot of pondering, I realized that I had no desire to keep going and that my main motivation for being active throughout my life has been to please other people. When I was a teenager I went because I was supposed to, ya know? Then I went to a church college and got married in the temple...but you can ask Ryan, after we got married we hardly ever went to church even though we were "supposed to". We always had a hard time with doing the things we were supposed to, like reading scriptures or attending the temple on a regular basis. I always wondered why I had such a hard time doing the things I was supposed to or not doing the things I should stay away from. I think slowly I realized that I was tired of feeling like that...like all of the things I wanted to do or didn't want to do were bad. I realized that all of this guilt over church things wasn't doing me any good, and that it was guilt I was forcing on myself...not guilt that I was feeling from God.

To go back in time a bit, after my brother died some of you might remember I had a crisis of faith. At the time, I decided that God was much more forgiving than we gave him credit for. I decided that really all you needed to do was be a good person and be good to the people around you and things would be fine. Obviously I changed my mind later, but now I am back to thinking that. As far as my brother goes, I just can't believe that he was punished in the afterlife for the things he did here like the drugs. He already suffered enough on Earth because of his choices.

As far as my marriage goes, I also think that I rushed into it because of the church. I don't blame the fact that it fell apart on the church, but I can't help but feel it shares some blame in me making a reckless decision as far as who I chose to marry. Ryan was the first LDS guy that showed real interest in me in college, and he was someone that I was attracted to and liked. I think that was the main reason I rushed into things...I mean, he was LDS and I got "inspiration" from the Lord that he was the one for me so what else did I need? I don't know that this is true for everyone, but another couple of reasons I rushed into marrying Ryan was because we weren't allowed to have sex before marriage and that's something most people are eager to do, and at 22 I was making my way into Old Maid territory in the LDS World. I made a stupid decision in marrying Ryan after knowing him for about five months. If I had known him better beforehand, I probably wouldn't have married him to begin with. I also stayed in my marriage MUCH longer than I would have if we hadn't of been married in the temple. I was so unhappy through most of our marriage, but I didn't think of divorce as an option because our marriage was eternal. Even after Ryan told me he wanted a divorce, I wanted to work things out not because I still loved him but because I thought I was obligated to try to fix things because of our temple covenants. I think doing all of that just gave me a lot of mental trauma I would have been better off without.

I'm not sure how many other details I should go into here. Like I said, I don't want to offend anyone and I don't want to dis on the church. I know that most active LDS people are going to read this entry and feel sad for me, but please don't. Honestly, I am so much happier now. I don't have any self-imposed guilt. For the first time in my life, I am not so worried about when I die I might not make it to heaven. I feel like I can finally be myself and just have a real sense of freedom. I still believe in God but I don't think that I will ever be involved with organized religion again.

I wanted to share this with everyone because like I said before, it's not a temporary thing. I know this will be a decision that is permanent, at least for the foreseeable future. I hate to hurt my mom and sister, but at the same time I know now that I have to be true to myself and I couldn't do that while remaining active in the church. I hope that in time they will accept my decision and will still love me and support my decisions as much as they did before...I hope the same for all of my friends out there too. It's hard when you grow up LDS and later leave the church because pretty much your entire support system is made up of LDS people and this church is your life...when you leave it you sometimes feel a sense of isolation from your LDS friends and/or family. I hope that won't happen. Just please remember, I am still me, am still a good person, and am happier than I have been in a long time. =)