Giving and Getting Forgiveness.

Today I read this quote on a friends FB page: 

It got me thinking about who I am, who I have been, who I want to become.  When I left LDS church more than a year ago now, I was worried that I would lose my values.  I was worried I would somehow mess my kids up.  I was worried not be able to teach my kids where I came from.  In some ways, I am still searching hoping for some spiritual home.  In other ways I have already found it.  

In 2012, someone I love a lot went through a difficult situation.  They were married and loved their spouse deeply, when they found out he had done something really horrible.  At first they tried to stick with that person.  They asked all of us to forgive and move forward.  But I couldn't.  I was angry.  I was hurt.  Forgiveness was something I would never grant.  I was angry at this person for even asking me to forgive.  I was cold. I was bitter.  I said things that I'm sure were cutting.

Early 2013 was when my spiritual shelf had the first few rungs start to crumble.  I almost didn't dare to share my feelings with anyone but Glenn.  Even then I was kind of at war with myself.  I reminded myself of this Rapunzel Clip.  I was elated in some ways, and felt like a despicable human being in other ways.  

I remember a lesson at church that someone talked about how people sometimes look at homeless people and don't want to help them because they don't deserve it.  They did that to themselves.  (I was that person. I thought they didn't deserve it, so I didn't give.)  Then this person went on to talk about giving them love and kindness anyway-even if they didn't deserve it.  He went on to compare it to Christ dying for us and atoning for our sins.  

We didn't/don't deserve it and he did it anyway.  It wasn't just for temple recommend holding people.  It wasn't just for people deemed worthy enough, because they met some worthiness checklist.  It is for ALL people.  Even those who don't deserve it.

I realized I had been in a place where I deemed myself more worthy of atonement and forgiveness than others.  Lots of others.  I had been sure I was going to Heaven way more than others because I met the checklist more, and atonement only works if you do the checklist first.  

Then I went through my faith crisis.  It was painful.  I started to realize that I was now that person deemed unworthy.  I was now that person that people were going to Heaven way more than.  I was not checking the boxes on their list.  I was "Once Churched" like this blog mentions.

I have mentioned before, but I will say it again.  When you leave the church, you go through a grieving process.  I lashed out at people and they sometimes lashed right back.  I can remember a certain instance where I felt like I was not being heard.  I felt kind of attacked.  I cried.  That person I mentioned in the blog up above about 2012, they hugged me and told me it would be okay.  They gave me love even though I had been cold to them.  Even though I didn't deserve it.  In giving me that love, my eyes were opened.  I was able to see that horrible situation that had happened in a different way.  I didn't forgive the person who hurt and I still don't.  I forgave her though.  I no longer felt like she was at fault.  I realized that because I wasn't the one who had been in that situation, I couldn't know what it was like.  I realized that it was not her fault and that she was a victim.  It was a rock out of my backpack and a weight off of my chest.  

Let's Talk About Body Shaming

I have seen several posts on social media recently about body shaming incidents:

The first: Dani Mathers, a Playboy model, secretly took a picture of a nude women showering at the gym and talked about how she couldn't un-see that.  Not only was she violating this woman's privacy, but on some level she was implying that this woman, this beautiful human somehow had no right to be accidentally seen nude in a shower, and worse, that she wasn't enough.

Second:  I read this one  yesterday.  It is about a woman who was privately messaged about her one piece bathing suit, because someone could see the shape of her nipples through the bathing suit.  The message this sends, is that it is certainly not okay to get cold and have naturally occurring body functions while in a bathing suit.

Third:  A little girl, going to a Bible school activity, was not permitted to join because she was wearing a spaghetti strap and her shoulders were showing.  Her mother literally gave her the shirt off of her back, so that she could participate in the activity.

Over the past 10ish years or so, my body took on new meaning to me, and I realized how body shaming is something that I was/am sometimes still guilty of sometimes at the expense of people who I truly love dearly.  For this I am so sorry.

I can remember going on a camping trips growing up, with one of my siblings and her going through some kind of a faith struggle.  I was maybe 14 or 15.  She had taken her LDS garments off and was sporting a perfectly lovely sleeveless top with a rose on the front.  Some of my family told her that she was immodest.  Looking for comfort, she turned to me and said "What do you think?"  Even though I wore tank tops all the time, I told her that it was immodest.  She seemed so hurt.  Several years later, the same shirt wound up in my closet.

Additionally, several siblings/friends of mine have gained weight over the years of growing up, and I remember talking about how I felt bad for them or even telling them that I was worried about them, as if their weight was something they hadn't noticed until I pointed it out.  Or worse, as if I had any right to point that out to them at all.

I remember posting on social media about how I only support modest bathing suits and friends rebutting that modest is what one feels comfortable in.  I didn't understand but I think I am starting to.
Before my wedding I had gained some weight.  I remember someone telling me that if I continued, I wouldn't fit into my wedding dress.  After my wedding I joined Weight Watchers and lost 30 pounds.  I think it made me feel entitled to be an expert on how everyone without the same body type as mine, could lose weight as easily as I did.

Fast forward 3 kids later and I am 54 pounds heavier than when I got my lifetime membership at Weight Watchers.  I haven't been able to lose the weight and yet somehow I am just as happy as I was when I was thinner.  Somewhere along the lines of those 54 pounds I realized that I was a body shamer.  All body types are different.  All bodies are good.  They hold the most beautiful souls.

About a year ago when I stopped going to LDS church, I took off my garments, the same thing I shamed my sister about all of those years ago.  It felt so good to buy clothes that I didn't have to worry about my garments poking out of or layering shirts underneath to cover it up.  I felt beautiful buying underwear that I was excited about wearing.    I felt free.

I have to say that my definitions of modesty have changed a little as I really figure out what it is I believe.  Different people feel comfortable in different kinds of clothes and one thing that we don't have is the right to make each other feel bad for wearing something or that our clothes are responsible for the thoughts of others and we certainly don't have the right to think that our bodies are somehow superior to someone else's-no matter how they look.

My mind wherever the wind points it...

This is is my parent's dog Dukels with my Vivian.  He has been a beloved soul in the Marchant house since around 2007.  He has loved my kids (or at least let them love him ha) for their whole lives up to this point.  He has been a running partner to my mom, and a console to my brother at times when human companionship just doesn't cut it.  Duke is dying.  My parents recently found out that their sweet boy has cancer.  He isn't going to make it much longer.  Soon my parents will be faced with the choice of putting down the dog they love so much, so that he won't have to live in suffering.

Duke is such a sweet old soul.  He has a big personality.  Thinking of Duke dying has made me think all kinds of thoughts.  His body is dying, but I can still tell his soul ins't broken.  As I thought I began to wonder where Duke's soul would be going next.  Surely I believe he has a spirit.  Does he go to person heaven or is there a dog heaven? And if there is dog heaven, does that mean that there is also other kinds of heaven?  Is his soul still dog shaped or are all souls one shape?  I guess I think that he is still dog shaped and that all souls go to the same heaven.  Kind of like Earth, but hopefully better or else it won't be very heavenly.  Especially if you get there before all the people you love best and are missing them.  Then it would seem kind of Hellish.

After coming to that conclusion, I also began to think of other animals.  Do all animals have a soul?  And if not, where is the line drawn? The Disney Pocahontas believes that every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.  And if you spend some time deep in the mountains, there is definitely a majestic feeling there.  Could she be onto something?  As a child who grew up on a little 1 acre farm, I would for sure tell you that our animals had a soul.  You could tell when you fed a baby cow their bottle.  We used to Christmas carol to our cows every Christmas Eve, and you know what?  I think they liked it.  We also had chickens who clearly had personality.  For awhile we had chickens that were allowed to roam the yard.  There was one with no tail feathers that we called squeak.  When we came outside with chicken feed and yelled "squeak" he would come running to eat from your hand.  Eventually the chickens wound up where chickens wind up on a farm.  I recall at dinner one time someone making the comment that we were eating squeak.  My sister Becca was so upset that she wouldn't eat anymore.  She has always had a strong connection to animals.  Maybe she's onto something too. 

Another place that thinking of Duke brought my mind is to the "death with dignity" law that some states have in place.  As pet owners, we put our pets to sleep to save them through a life of suffering.  We grieve and we send them off knowing that they are onto a better place.  We don't let them suffer.  So why do we make people who don't want to?  I remember reading about a girl who moved to Oregon after finding a brain tumor that was going to kill her, because they had a death with dignity law that would allow her to basically get put to sleep before there was too much suffering.  She didn't want to die, but since she was being forced to at least she wouldn't have to suffer.  This also got me to thinking about what I would want should I ever be put into that situation.

My initial thoughts would be that I would also want to die without too much suffering on my part but also on the part of my family.  The Mormon raised part of me shouts "wait a minute that's not enduring to the end."  I don't think it is suicide though, because after all I wouldn't want to be dying.  I don't think people who commit suicide are going somewhere different than heaven anyway.  After all, they endured to their end.  

I know these are a lot of weird thoughts stemming off of one sweet soul getting ready for dog heaven.  Thoughts that we won't have answers for until we actually die.  I'm okay with that.  I have had a lot of those thoughts since I stopped practicing Mormonism.  I don't know if I didn't allow myself to think them before since they are weird, or if I just didn't think them because I already had an answer set into place for me and if I didn't I could "ponderize" away.  

It has now been more than I year since I left the church.  I am still a member on record, but no I don't think I will ever go back.  My life is happier since then.  When you leave though, you do go through a grieving process.  There were a lot of times I lashed out at family members or tried to work my frustrations into a conversation. I wanted to be understood, and I didn't want to agree to disagree.  I wanted my family to see and hear the words that I saw that seemed to speak truth to my soul even if it was unpleasant at times.  

I feel like I have mostly worked through all of my grief and I am in a pretty happy and content place as far as spirituality goes.  I haven't found a new religion to call home and I probably never will.  I still feel close to God, although I also include Heavenly Mother in what I believe about God (even though I haven't yet found a way to feel bonded to her, feel like I am talking to her, or feel like I have any kind of relationship with her at all since Mormonism basically teaches you to ignore her because SACRED!)

Every once and awhile I still feel angry about things.  Different things.  I created a playlist that I love to listen to when I start feeling that way.  

Sicily has been very curious about God lately and my faith transition.  She like to listen to the songs with me and ask all kinds of questions about what we think the writers meant about the song.  In the song "Follow Your Arrow" we talked about what it means to "Follow Your Arrow".  After talking about it Sicily told me that she doesn't follow her arrow, she follows her hair whatever way the wind points it.  LOL

When we listen to Trash by Tyler Glenn she asked all about him and why the song sounds so angry.  I told her that he was gay, so he feels hurt by the churches stance on being LGBT.  We have had conversations about this before in our household as we try to create kids who are friendly and accepting toward LGBT people.  I feel like Sicily really understands.

Sicily turns 8 this week, which has caused a lot of people to ask us the big question.  Will she be getting baptized?  The answer is no.  Since she was little she has always told us that she doesn't want to and has never ever said that she wants to.  We will never pressure her.  She is an amazing soul and while I know that she will definitely be someone who comforts those in need of comfort and mourns with those that mourn, I don't think she is old enough to understand that it also means automatic membership into a church that only teaches you the good parts of it's history or teaches the bad but says "God said so."  I try to teach her that God is loving.  Loving Gods don't command things that are harmful and loving churches don't teach us to obey even if it makes us uncomfortable or takes away our agency.

You might notice that there are still pictures of her in a beautiful white dress.  This is because we believe that she is still beautiful and pure and ready to take accountability for her own actions.  She is 8 and she doesn't have anything she really needs to repent for and we also don't believe that the atonement is only for the baptized.  We also think that the Holy Ghost can and does guide you even if you aren't baptized.  So why be baptized?  We think it's an outward representation of an inward commitment (kind of like your garments.)

The other day when I was giving Deklan a bath, he was pretending to baptize a sponge.  I asked him if he planned to be baptized someday and he said yes.  I said, "Into LDS church or somewhere else?"  He replied that he was going to get baptized into LDS church because they give candy.  Then he added "Good thing I'm not gay."  Isn't that interesting that at 6 years old he knows that it would be a problem for him to join the church if he were gay.  Being welcome in a church is more than just having words on a building that says "All Visitors Welcome."

Well if you have made it this far congrats!  I have had a lot on my mind lately.  Some of it weird as Hell and some of it as normal as I get.  I am sure I will post more thoughts as they come to my mind with time.  It seems I have a lot of questions, but I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

Where did it all begin?

Many asked me: "What did you read, that caused you to lose your testimony? How could you just abandon the religion that raised you?  Did something offend you? Did you do something wrong?" Others didn't ask but simply feel that I have lost my way, gone off the "deep end", or just think that I have always been a little on the crazy side.  I can honestly say that there wasn't one sole thing that caused my belief to change.  I didn't wake up one morning and decide that I didn't believe.  I didn't suddenly change my values.  I didn't stop praying, in fact I have done more of that.  If you are looking for a beginning place though, I guess I could pinpoint it to sometime around December 2012.  That is when my first real "doubt" began to creep in.

We had just purchased a house, and while we bought a house that was more than $20,000 below our max budget, we were a still a little house poor.  While we were a little house poor, we did have money in savings, we were good at budgeting, and we paid our tithing, which I knew I would be blessed for.  While there was times before in my life that paying tithing felt like a lot to ask, this was the first time in my life where I started to feel resentful about it.  I didn't want to pay it, but I was paying it because I believed it was "right."  10% of your income might not seem like a lot to some, but when you are reusing plastic spoons putting duct tape on holes in your car, it starts to feel a little uncomfortable.  

About this time, my husband was chatting with a friend from work (someone who was raised outside of Utah), who didn't know a ton about Mormonism.  She asked Glenn about tithing and how much income you give, and why you give it.  Glenn told her that we pay it, because it blesses our lives and makes us worthy to enter our temple.  Her reply seemed to stick with me in my mind: "Huh, at my church we pay it because we want to pay it, not because it makes you worthy for anything."

I thought about her response a lot.  I was paying tithing that I didn't want to pay, because I expected the blessings from it and because it made me "worthy."  I had been a full tithe payer my whole life and there are times that I truly know I was blessed from it.  If I suddenly stopped paying, would that make me less worthy of a person? I would no longer be temple worthy, but would I truly be less worthy to enter the temple and grow closer to God all because I didn't pay 10% of my money? Even though I was the same girl who was worthy last week because of paying it?  In my mind I couldn't reconcile, but I tried.  I did what I was taught and I read my scriptures, prayed and "doubted my doubts, before I doubted my faith."  I paid my tithing diligently for more than a year and a half after this point, but the stupor of thought stuck with me.  Oprah calls those "Aha moments."

The second thing that seemed to begin to open the box, happened around the same time for me.  Most people know that the LDS church considers LGBT people to be apostates.  At this point in time marriage equality was not legal in my state (and wouldn't become so for 1 more year.)  My husband had always openly accepted marriage equality, but I didn't because I was trying to keep my viewpoint in line with what I thought God wanted it to be.  I did have LGBT friends and family that I cared about and I wanted them to experience what I had.  I have found that most who are in that position, take the stance of: "Let's allow marriage equality, but not call it that."  That way, they can be married and have happy lives, and they won't "wage a war on the family."  So, that is the position I had taken up to that point.  

But sometime around December 2012, I realized that I didn't really take that stance.  I didn't believe that LGBT people were defiling families.  I believed that they were just trying to make families and that supporting marriage equality would allow them to have families that are more in line with my beliefs.  Most states have banned conversion therapy as a form of treatment for LGBT people (thank heavens).  The reason this kind of therapy is banned, is because you can't change who someone is, and being LGBT is a very real part of who someone is- you can't change it. As I thought about this, I thought about my own beautiful children. What if my daughter someday told me she was a lesbian? What if my son someday told me he was gay? How would I react? What would I want for them?  

The church told me that LGBT people could be LGBT, but just not practice it.  If you are LGBT, then that is your trial in life, and you are to live a celibate life.  Then in the next life, it will all be made right.  But what was meant by that?  If it is truly a part of who they are, then wouldn't they still be LGBT in the next life? And if they were LGBT in the next life, then wouldn't that mean that God actually made them that way? And if God actually made them that way, then why should they live an unfulfilled life on Earth?

There it was.  I believed that God made them that way. Why?  Who knows? Maybe to beautify and diversify the Earth.  That's what I think.  So what would I do if my child told me they were LGBT?  I would give them a hug, and I would tell them that they will have a beautiful life and do great things.  Around this time was the first time I dared to admit that I was Mormon and I believed in marriage equality.  It was scary for me, but I was glad.  

Doubt number 3 came along when I was at Sunday school.  And it was a big one.  Someone said something that seemed to imply that Joseph and Emma had split up at some point, and that Joseph had plural wives.  I had never heard of this before.  Yes, Yes, I know that it was in D&C, but it was rarely talked about, and this was a year and a half before the church even released the polygamy essay.  I began to search historical documents and they seemed to confirm that yes, he was indeed a polygamist.  When I talked to my family in my first early days of doubt, they said: "Historical documents are not always accurate." 

I began to think about it, and I knew deep down he was a polygamous, but did it really matter?  Should I write a blog about "Why I don't care at all?" No, because I cared.  Somehow to me it mattered.  Why hadn't I learned about his other wives along side of learning about Emma?  Why didn't I hear about how hard is was for Emma when she found out about Fanny Alger?  Why hadn't I heard that Zina was already married, pregnant, and in love, or that the first time Joseph asked, she said "No."  I had always been taught that there would be polygamy in the next life, so I was not sure where these feelings of uneasiness were coming from, but somehow having this whole giant herd of plural wives that I was taught nothing about didn't sit right with me.  Each of those women had a life, a story, a face, that was just as important as the life of Emma Smith.  Why wasn't I taught about them?  Why didn't I know their story?  I had other little doubts at this time, but these were the major big ones, and I felt that I could forever be someone within the church who politely disagreed.  

In early 2013 I was called to be a Young Women's leader in the church.  I was so excited, because this is a calling I had wanted forever.  I wanted to go to camp, teach spiritual lessons, bare my testimony about how I knew without a shadow of doubt that the church was true.  This was going to be my year.  I told myself that I had to know.  I couldn't just believe, I had to "know."  You know, the kind of know that makes your nostrils flare when you bare your testimony.  I told myself I would pray, read my scriptures, do FHE, read my class lessons ahead of time, and do all the things that would make me know.  So I did all of those things, but when it would come time to bare my testimony, I could always only say what I believed, but never what I knew.  

I still tried to shelf my doubts, especially when it came to teaching my YW lessons.  What if I am truly just messed up in the head and I teach those girls wrong? What if I mess my own kids up?  I tried so hard to just breeze past things that I knew I didn't agree with, and in 2013 I did pretty good with it.

In 2014 I had another baby.  A beautiful girl. Vivian.  We had gone back and forth about weather or not we would bless her.  We chose to.  We were still active at this point, but my doubts were starting to fall off of the shelf.  When we blessed her, there was such an amazing feeling there and I got a very strong sense that my grandpa Marchant was there.  They even sang "How Great Thou Art", which was his favorite song.  I still think he was there, but was he there because he was shouting at me: "It's true, all of this!  It's True!"  Or was he there because he loved me.  Was he there because he loved my Vivi and wanted be there for her special moment?  I thought the latter.  No ulterior motive. Just love.  

I think it was sometime in 2014 that the polygamy essay was released by the church.  I thought: "Oh good, it will help me see things clearer."  I read it, and I hadn't known the part about the angel with the sword before, but it sounded a teensy speck crazy to me.  The essay left me feeling like I had more questions and doubts about it than I ever had before.  It left me feeling like Joseph Smith was manipulative and that the church was saying: "It's okay, because God said so." (Nowadays I call that being a jerk for Jesus.) 

Also around this time, the church released an essay about Blacks and the Priesthood.  I think they renamed it Race and the Priesthood, but I could be wrong.  It basically said that the priesthood ban (which is what it is referred to as, but really women and children were also impacted as they were not allowed to enter temples,etc.) for African Americans was racially influenced and never doctrine. Well fewf, I am glad that they admitted that.       

When I tried to talk to people about it, I was met with looks like I was truly crazy.  Person after person told me: "God said Joseph's name would be known for good and evil." And "He was human, he made mistakes."  When they would tell me these things, I would think "Oh good, you know he's still human."  Did you know humans make mistakes?  The part that has been hard for me is that people acknowledge Prophets as human, but then the moment they say anything at all, it is like they didn't say it, God did.  That elevates them to a level that is not human and that's creepy.  

For a long time I tried to just fit in at church knowing that I would never be someone who "knew."  People tried and still try to fix me by telling me to do Moroni's promise.  (No I have never read it cover to cover, but yes I have read it all in bits and pieces, especially the first half, which I restarted nine billion times.) So many people tell me: "It's either all true, or it's all not true." My mom used to tell me this until one time I almost yelled at her: "When you tell me this, it makes me feel more than ever like I don't belong, because I will never be someone who thinks it's all true!" 

Then I left.  It was June 2015. Glenn left 6 months previous, I just didn't tell you all because I was scared.  It was my week to teach YW.  The lesson was about Joseph Smith. I tried to think up words to use and parts to breeze past, but I couldn't teach the lesson without feeling like a liar.  So I didn't.  I didn't go.  I never went back.  There were so many other things and reasons I knew I couldn't stay for, but it would take me all night.  I will save them for another day. 

I found my support on the Feminist Mormon Housewives FB board.  I wish I had found it years sooner.  Who knew where were actual active Mormons who thought and talked like me?  I'm thankful for them for opening my eyes to feminist issues that exist within our culture and church.  

I came to realize that through my doubts that I have Heavenly Parents who love me.  They sent their son to die for me.  It's done. I can draw closer to God and feel his love by turning to them.  I am not more worthy than anyone else.  All are welcome at God's table.  I don't believe my family will be held over my head because of a bunch of hoops I didn't jump through.  This poem by Kristen Shill, published on Feminist Mormon Housewives, describes more beautifully than I ever could, how I feel. I know this is the paragraph that many might disagree with, the part where I tell you what it is that I do know.  I know that I am taught generosity, service, and giving through paying tithing, but it doesn't make me more worthy than anyone else in the world.  The blessing is that I'm taught those things.  I know that I am good enough. I know that you are not going somewhere different after you die than LGBT people.  Or non Mormon people. I know that inspiration from God comes in many forms and what inspires or empowers one person, may be different to someone else.  You don't get to decide which it is. You don't get to decide if you hurt someone either.