(no subject)
Yes my parents ended up leaving the church. This is another long story, so bear with my wordiness, but I find I'm enjoying putting this on paper. It's important stuff and has a lot of meaning in my life. I'm grateful to you for the opportunity.
We were strictly religious in my home. No shopping on Sundays, no swearing...my mom once even threw away a carton of ice cream when she realized it had caffeine in it. I never drank, smoked, tried drugs, dated before I was 16...none of it. My biggest rebellion was drinking Dr. Pepper in high school. We genuinely loved the church...it was our way of life and looking back on it, it was a good way to grow up. It was a good lifestyle. We were always very VERY poor and both my parents worked full time so faith and our activity in the church was almost all we had. Despite being very poor though, my parents never missed paying their tithing, and only went on church welfare for food once while I was living at home. They never went on state welfare either...we just did without. So they weren't involved in the church for the help, but they genuinely thought that if they ever needed help it would be there for them.
While we lived our faith devotedly, there was also a very strong attitude of acceptance in our home. My parents were both converts, and only my mother's sister was involved in either of their families. My grandparents were good people who just happened to smoke and drink alcohol. It was the decisions that were wrong, not the people. My grandparents were all people of faith, but in no way affiliated with any one religion. And my dad had tried on many different religions before he found the Mormons, so we had a pretty healthy attitude about non-members despite growing up in Utah. I teased my mom that she was the reason I left the church. It was that very accepting attitude that sowed the seeds of doubt in myself and my brother. How could God's true church be so short sighted? What happened to "love one another"? Why do the members turn their backs on people with no other fault than wanting a drink or a smoke now and then. How could bad habits count for more than the Golden Rule?
Sometimes I think that my Mom had some doubts from the very beginning...very soon after she joined the church. Like when she found out that black men had been denied the priesthood, and that the church preached that polygamy was indeed a true principle, but couldn't be practiced in this life. These were tidbits of information the missionaries left out during the discussions before her baptism. Unfortunately, joining as a teenager despite the very vocal protest of her parents made leaving the church mean admitting her parents were right, and she couldn't do that. And then she met my dad and he kind of joined the church because of her. And then she had kids and moved to Utah so by then it was all or nothing. She couldn't back out gracefully so she flung herself in wholeheartedly.
My parent had the full range of callings. Dad was everything but a bishop or stake president. And mom was primary president and in the Stake RS presidency when I was living at home. I never heard a disgruntled word about a calling until my mom was called as the ward RS president 5 years ago in the neighborhood I grew up in. It took about a year for her to realize everything was not as it seemed. I kind of think that seeing how the church ran behind the scenes, and seeing how the bishop counseled people was a huge eye opener for her. One huge issue was a pair of women raising their daughter together. Sweet, kind, wonderful people, but gay, so they were treated like dirt under the shoes of the members. Another problem was that Mom was working full time, taking care of ward business the rest of the time, and leaving my dad alone all of the time. She came home one evening to find him passed out on the couch from an insulin reaction. He stopped breathing before the paramedics arrived and they got him back...but he's never been the same. She was frustrated that the church would ask for so much. That it would constantly take her away from the one person in the ward who needed her more than anyone else.
Another huge frustration was the realization that the welfare system is handled on the whim of the bishop more than on the needs of the members. People who were inactive would receive help as a bribe of sorts while becoming active again, but solid members were told to ask their family and friends for help before asking the church. This particular issue became very personal when my dad nearly died and had to stop working two years before he could qualify for his Social Security. My folks were left dependent on my mom's part time income at Alpha Graphics and they had no insurance benefits at all. Six months after that my mom was released from her calling and then, soon after all the dominoes toppled because she got sick.
It was a recurring case of appendicitis and she kept putting off seeing a doctor because of the cost. After months of pain she finally had to actually call in sick to work. That's when I knew it was bad. My mother does NOT call in sick. I finally had to tell her that it would be cheaper to pay for the ER than to pay for her funeral. That was the argument that finally convinced her to go to the hospital. In the emergency room, her appendix ruptured and they got her into surgery, but the damage was done and she spent a couple of weeks in the hospital and nearly died of sepsis. The bills were staggering, and mom hadn't been working so there was no paycheck coming in at all. My folks appealed to all the parties involved. The doctor ended up donating all of his time, the hospital made my parents pay only 10% of the bill, and my mom's boss gave her two weeks of paid time off, but when my mom went to the church for help with the house payment for a couple of months, the bishop told her no.
I think the shock and despair of that moment must have been tremendous. After swallowing her pride enough to even ask for help, I can't imagine how she kept her cool, but she did. She told the bishop that she'd always been taught that if she was living faithfully, completing her callings, attending the temple and paying a full tithe, the church would help when they needed it. She'd been faithful to that ideal for all those years and couldn't believe that he would say no. The bishop said that he'd looked back at their old tithing settlements and felt that there was no way what they had paid represented 10% of their income. He said, "There's no way you raised 5 kids on so little money so obviously you never paid a full tithe."
So the bishop, with his appointment from God and his vast spiritual knowledge was accusing the most honest and decent person I know on this planet of lying about her income for years, and he was using this " certain knowledge" as a reason not to help when my parents needed it desperately. In the end it was three of us children, ironically her 3 who had left the church, who worked out their finances and made sure the bills were paid and they still had a place to live. My mom made an attempt to keep going to church after that. She wanted to believe that her lifetime hadn't been wasted...that all those years of faith must count for something. But one day she came home from church just sobbing and told my father that she never wanted to walk into a church again...ever! It was just a couple of days later that she apologized to me for ever raising me mormon.
My dad took a lot longer to come to terms with the church. He attended as often as he could until about a year ago. But I think he realized as much as Mom that what they thought the church had been was far from the reality. He finally said to me that he couldn't see how things like that could happen in a religion actually run by Jesus Christ. It was one thing for a bishop to be human and make mistakes, but church leaders use their position of power for dominion over others and make life altering decisions that aren't based on anything even close to prayer or faith. It's abuse in a way. He could finally see that.
So my whole family is now deliberately inactive except for my oldest brother, who is probably the second most honest and decent person I know on this planet. He'll probably die a mormon because his wife would leave him if he ever left the church. I find that a sorry commentary on the value of marriage in the mormon religion. I think it makes my brother sad that we've "fallen away" and sometimes I wonder if he blames me and my two siblings for my parent's leaving. Like somehow our examples forced them into denial or something. It's there in the background at family gatherings...the silent blame...it fills the room sometimes.
For my part, when Mom told me she was leaving the church and why, I was so anguished for her. I knew how hard it was for me to walk away, and she had a lifetime of membership to turn her back on. I felt terrible. I knew that facing her mom and sister would be really painful and I didn't want to see her walk through that fire. But my mother is so much happier now. I never saw the weight of accumulated guilt and stress that she bore for so many years. She's free now. So, in the end I'm relieved. Not to mention, it's so much easier to be around them now. No more trying to justify my choices and no more of them pretending they weren't disappointed with me.
I said before that being in the church was a good lifestyle. That I was glad to be raised that way. I realized much later in life that all the things I loved about the way I was raised are the things that are not unique to the mormon church. It's a lifestyle that any caring parent would create for their child. It wasn't the church that had such a huge influence on me. It was my mom and dad.