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.
