In words of one of my favorite authors, Martha Beck, I lost the Mormons and found my faith.
When I was seventeen years old I ran away from home for good. It was either that, or kill myself.
The first time I was only thirteen. I left home on my bicycle after a school teacher openly made advances toward me. My father found me and attempted to “beat some sense” into me. The beating only made me more determined to leave the craziness of my religion. In my eyes, no loving God would beat a child into submission.
That wasn’t a God I wanted to believe in and I wanted to believe that love meant something more that what I saw around me.
After leaving the Fundamentalist Mormon cult of my childhood I moved to Utah and became a member of the normal Mormon church. I went through all of the missionary teachings as though I were any ordinary gentile, never letting on where I came from and what I knew. I pretended to be a convert, even though I was already VERY familiar with the teachings. I had hoped that being accepted as a normal Mormon would help me feel better about myself and the God I had been taught to believe in. But that didn’t help. I felt awkward in false-acceptance and the fellow-shipping felt disingenuous, as though it had a hidden agenda I couldn’t quite put my finger on. All I knew is that all of it made me feel very uncomfortable, and it just didn’t feel right for me.
In my early twenties a friend of mine introduced me to a spiritual center. There was no fear-mongering or guilt-tripping, just happy people doing their own thing.
For the very first time in my life I felt at home. I was never a regular attendee at this center, or any center, as memberships of any kind made me feel uncomfortable. The only time I stepped into any church over the next twenty years was for occasional weddings or funerals. My spirit felt free of dogmatic obligations and judgmental eyes as I came to terms with my own truth. The real freedom came just a few years ago when I finally found the process to ask for a release from the Mormon church.
Dismembering from the Mormon Church is a lot more difficult than becoming a member, just as disbelieving is.
Now, more than ever before, my spirit is free to follow its own path. I am free to be who I am really here to be and I am free to listen to my own internal guidance without fear or guilt for trusting my own truth. Leaving religion is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. It has freed me up to connect to Spirit without the dogmatic perceptions, expectations and practices created by middle-men.
I am one with Spirit, God, Source, Love… and It is one with me. I am that I am and I am free!
And yes, I forgave this past a long time ago. I could not do the work I am here to do had I not had the story that I have. I’ts all good.
Until next time, Be Fearless, Fabulous and Free!
