A Little About Me

I suppose I should tell you a little about myself. I've had a few commenters now and I enjoy replying to you. Many of you tell me it's apparant that I "have an axe to grind" and that I am "hateful". I thought that if I share a little about myself, hopefully some of you will understand me a little better.

First of all, growing up in the Mormon church I was basically trained to not ask questions, not voice my opinion, and just do what I'm told. As a result, I am somewhat of a people pleaser, afraid of what other people think of me. Of course, I know now that MY opinion of me is the only opinion that really matters and I have been working to overcome that weakness. I've progressed by leaps and bounds since I began my journey.

I have always been a good writer and I have found that I express myself much better through written words rather than spoken words. So I blog and I let my opinions freely flow. I guess the appearance of my axe to grind comes from the fact that my entire life I have always held it in. I have never voiced my opinion and I have never told others how I feel. In the Mormon culture, you just shut up and obey. So I guess that basically I have discovered my "freedom of speech" so to speak, and am just experimenting with it.

There are many who might say that I feel the way I do about the church because I was a weak member and didn't really follow the "commandments". That couldn't be further from the truth. People who had doctrinal questions often asked me. I was, and still am, very knowledgable about the scriptures and the Mormon gospel. I went on a mission for it, I defended it. There was a time when I would have wagered my life that it was true.

On the other hand, I always felt that life as a Mormon was extremely demanding. I used to wish that I had not been born Mormon so that I could "have my fun" and then discover the "truth" later and join. I always believed and obeyed but in the back of my mind, I was resentful that I was born into such a dictatorship. In the "gospel" you really don't have free agency. You obey or you fry. What choice is there really?

The exact reason why I'm right here today is complex. My mission was a HUGE eye opener. It was really the beginning of the end for me. There was clearly no inspiration and even then, I knew that. It was full of politics and manipulation. The mission rules were not inspired of god, because everyone who followed them to the letter was a pure asshole. Follow the little white hand book was more important than following the spirit. On my mission, I saw, for the first time, that the church was definitely flawed. I had strong feelings about things, but I still believed it was true. I finished my whole two years and then got married in the temple.

To be quite honest, I dreaded my mission my whole life. Even though I believed in the church, I didn't want to go. But I knew what the "right thing to do" was so I went anyway. Perhaps if not for my mission, I would still be a TBM to this very day. It's hard to say for sure because there are other factors as well.

One of those factors was that after I returned home and kept attending church, I began to realize how unrealistic everything the church teaches sounded. I began to question the idea that Christ walked on water. Or that he brought people back from the dead. Surely, if he was such a great and powerful man, history would have remembered him a little better.

Then the idea that only Mormons have the true priesthood began to bother me. I began to look around and wonder why I never saw anything miraculous. I was a believer who never asked for signs and still I never saw any signs. I eventually realized that Mormons have no more special powers than anyone else.

Then came the hardest period of my marriage where we did not get along well at all. But every Sunday we would go to church and put on our "happy faces" and pretend that life in the Mormon church was fantastic and wonderful. After doing that for not too long, I got sick of lying and pretending. My life wasn't fantastic and I was miserable.

To top it all off, we would endure Sunday after Sunday of tithing and hometeaching. I went to Elders Quorum and sat there listening to guilt trips week after week. That is all they talked about and I was getting extremely fed up with it. Sunday school started sounding more and more like a trip to fantasy land.

Then I was assigned a calling where I was required to come to church early for PEC meeting and then stay after to run errands for the bishop. I was also required to come to several meetings during the week. I sat through those awful, boring meetings where absolutely nothing got accomplished except a huge waste of time. We talked about the same things again and again, week after week, and it only took a month of that before I was completely sick of it. It was a huge waste of time and nothing was getting accomplished.

It is ironic because all of these things were happening at exactly the same time! It must have been fate. So I stopped going to church, cold turkey, and haven't been back in that building for almost three years now. And shit, I don't miss it for one second. I have had to sit through 3 or 4 sacrament meetings due to a baby blessing or a missionary homecoming and I can honestly say that one sacrament meeting a year is about all I can handle. I don't know how I ever did it before without blowing my top! Before my mission, I was even attending two wards FULL TIME! Six hours of church, completely voluntarially.

So that's why I get pissed off when TBM's accuse me and apostates in general of never having a testimony. I had one and I never questioned or doubted. Even when I quit going to church, I still semi believed it was true.

Right around that same time, the Tsunami hit and Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. I thought it was ironic that all the Mormons were sitting there saying things like, "It's about time god destroyed that wicked city." But I was asking, shouldn't a true prophet have given them a chance to repent first? Why didn't Gordo warn the world of so many terrible natural disasters? Prophets in the Bible and Book of Mormon did. But Hinckley goes on national television and denys doctrine and constantly says, "I don't know". Then he comes up with the mind blowing ear-ring commandment. At that point, my faith in the man was practically gone. A true prophet of god and all he can say is, "Girls, only one pair of ear-rings." Give me a fucking break! The world is at war and there are natural disasters happening all over the place and all the guy can do is "reveal" gods wishes on ear-rings. What a fraud! What a worthless piece of shit and what pathetic advice! Girls, your eternal salvation depends upon the number of holes in your ears. Truly pathetic. At that point I was 99% convinced that the guy was a fraud and about 50% convinced that the church was not true.

I did hours and hours of reading and studying real church history. Some of the things I discovered left me feeling sick to my stomach. I discovered many horrible things in Mormon history and my testimony was fading quickly. It was barely hanging by a tread when I discovered the Book of Abraham issue as I discussed a few posts back. Needless to say, the thread was broken and my Mormon world came crashing down around me. Mormon "prophets" have been lying for the last 187 years, starting with Joe Smith and ending with Gordo. The entire church is a fraud, a lie, a hoax. Not one word of it is true.

So naturally, when one disovers that the first 30 years of their life was based upon lies and fraud, it tends to upset them. So if I come across as angry, it is because I am. Those lying fuckers stole my youth. I wasted precious years trying to please god and follow every Mormon commandment. I wasted my youth for the sake of obeying all the "commandments". It then turns out I was born into a cult which demands un-questioning obedience from its members. So I fight and I blog against them because they do nothing but take money and steal lives. I blog in the hopes that I can help that person who felt the way I did, a believer who still believes and yet has those subtle doubts and questions.

So excuse me for putting my feelings down into words. Excuse me for wanting to help a doubter. Excuse me for saying "fuck". It's my right, and if "god" wants me to stop, then I will, just as soon as he tells me personally. Until then, I'll just keep on saying whatever the hell I want.

Free yourself from the Mormon lies and discover a whole new world!

Just another evil apostate...