Hello everyone. Thanks for coming to my blog to learn more about why I have left Mormonism, aka LDS church.
The story begins around the year 1986. I was 11 years old. I am the 6th child born to my parents, with 6 siblings younger than me. My mother had her first 3 kids in about 10 years, then she had 9 kids in the next 10 years.
When I turned 9 things changed in my family. My mom had just had my littlest sister a year or so earlier, but was suddenly starting a job. I don't remember all of the details, but what I do remember is that my life changed dramatically. My mom was gone all of the time. Now, you must understand, I don't know if she was really gone all of the time from the home, but when she was home, it seemed like she was always asleep. She worked the graveyard shift up at the VA hospital in Salt Lake. My dad worked graveyard shifts too, just on the opposite days as my mom. They both worked all of the time, it seemed, taking over time as much as possible.
That brings me to the year 1986. One night my mom was getting ready to leave for her shift at midnight. I watched her get ready because I was sleeping in her bed with my 2 younger sisters, as we often slept there because my parents were at work.
After my mom had left and as I laid my head down to go to sleep, I heard a male voice say, "Sarah, get up and lock the door." (meaning my parents bedroom door) I answered the voice by saying, "I'm too tired." The voice came again and said, "Sarah, get up and lock the door." Once again I said, "I'm too tired." The third time the voice said the same thing, only this time I said nothing and promptly fell asleep. The next thing I know is that I'm having a dream where someone is touching me in places they shouldn't. I was kicking and screaming in the dream. After some length of time, I woke up. As I woke up, I saw my schizophrenic brother sitting on the edge of the bed watching my parents little black and white TV that sat on a table next to their bed. I laid there motionless and scared. At the age of 11, I had the presence of mind to see if what was happening in my dream had been happening in real life. I had to know if what was happening to me in reality could also be the exact same thing that was in my dream. I lay there waiting to see if my brother would do anything. It didn't take long before his hand began to move under the blanket and I waited to see if he would touch me, and when he did touch my leg I then knew that my dream was true. I immediately moved, pretended to stir and wake up, and then told my brother to go to bed. I got up and locked the door. I told my mom as soon as she got home from work. She told me that she would tell my dad, and she also said to start locking my bedroom door when I sleep. I found out later that my mom never told my dad, so he claimed. It is entirely possible that she did tell him, but he just didn't think enough of the incident to keep it in his memory. He's that way to this day.
After that life became very hard for me. My parents were still working as much as they ever did and I felt frustrated with them and their lack of taking care of me and their other children. I became really upset because I didn't judge that we needed money more than we needed mom to be taking care of her kids. It was especially painful for me to watch my parents spend money on things that weren't needful. I felt like they were using me. I was a free, built-in babysitter.
But, the experience I had that fateful night in my 11th year gave me a knowledge that someone, somewhere, knew me, by name, knew what was going to happen in the future to me, and most of all, loved me so much that he wanted to warn me of danger that was coming to me. Although I was deeply resentful of the hours and seeming obsession with money that my parents had, I knew that God was there for me. Because I was born into the LDS church, I believed that that was where God was and I began to deeply convert to Mormonism. My parents intermittently attended church because of their work schedules, with my dad going inactive altogether at our home ward from the time I was 11 until I married at 22. I took it upon myself to get what siblings I could to church every week. My parents didn't seem disappointed with my choice to do that. Those years were very dark for me and I would often ask my mom when she was going to quit or retire. Every time I tried to talk to my parents about my problems with taking on too many of their responsibilities, I was met with the response, "If your problem isn't as bad as Jim's (schizophrenic brother) don't talk to us." Well, when was my problem ever going to be as bad as Jim's? I went silent.
You might think that I would start paying close attention to my dreams from the experience I had had in my youth as a way to keep connecting with that Being who had protected me. But, I didn't. Too much pain and darkness in my life. At least, not until several years had gone by and I was very unhappy in my life as a newer mom doing everything the LDS church was telling me I should be doing. My husband Jared was unhappy with the way his career was going at his father's business and he was bringing that unhappiness home to me. After several years of seeing Jared so unhappy, I put our Sugarhouse home on the market, sold it, and moved near Logan, Utah in a city called Providence. I hoped Jared would come with me because he wasn't wanting to improve our situation at that time. He did come.
It was in Providence that I began to dream again and I realized very quickly that God was communicating with me through them again. It took a lot of prayer and guessing what the dreams meant at first. I would do the best I could to determine what my dreams were telling me based on what was happening in my real life. If I was wrong, sure enough I'd have another dream soon that would help me by bringing clarity.
All this time, I was still attending the LDS church, faithfully, attending the temple, sometimes once a week since we were so close to the Logan temple. I could leave my house and be at the front desk of the temple in 4 minutes. I lived Mormon standards, attended church faithfully, held callings, paid honest tithes, listened faithfully to General Conference always, read the Book of Mormon almost everyday as a family and alone, and was just a true blue Mormon, as they say. The only thing I could not do is to say that I KNEW that Joseph Smith was a true prophet who God and Christ came and gave authority to create a church or that any of the current leadership of the church had any authority either. I believed it was all true, with all of my heart, but I couldn't say that I KNEW. I couldn't say that I knew the way that I could say that I knew there was a Being in heaven who knew me and loved me and wanted to be there for me in my life.
One night, as I was getting ready for bed, I went to go kneel down by my bed to pray. As I was praying, a strange force came upon me, as if something or someone was trying to make me not pray. I have had this experience a handful of times in my life. What I did in the past was to think it was Satan using some power upon me to get me not to pray and I would then endeavor to force out a prayer that looked like this, "Heavenly Father, thank thee for this day. Thank thee for everything you've given us. Help our family and keep us safe." And then end the prayer. Now, remember this was all fighting against a force that was trying to make me stop praying. I had to fight to get that much out. Well, this particular night, I decided I wasn't going to fight that feeling and say that ridiculous and meaningless prayer. So instead I said, "Lord, it's me, Sarah. I'm here. Speak. I'm listening." The words that came into my mind after I said that were in a man's voice, "We got through!" I was astonished. I didn't realize that that was God putting that force on me, trying to get me to be quiet so that he could tell me something.
Well, I wish it was good news that He had to give me. I was pregnant at the time and the Spirit told me that I was going to lose the baby I was carrying. I was 5 months along. I said, "Is there anything I can do to change your mind." God told me that I needed to go tell Jared and he would tell me what I needed to hear. So, I went downstairs to find Jared and told him what had happened. Jared was very upset, as was I. I was weeping on Jared's shoulder and we stood there in our basement together in each other's arms. After a time, maybe a couple of minutes, I heard the same voice in my head, "I accept what Jared has offered." I pulled away from Jared, startled that I heard that male voice again, and asked him if he had sent up some thoughts, just barely? He said, "Actually, yes, I did." I said, "The Lord just told me that he accepts your offering." The offering is personal to Jared and I won't say what it is here.
So, the baby was born and we continued living life.
At this time in my life, I'm continuing to have struggles with my parents. My schizophrenic brother had passed away a few years ago by this time and I was trying to have a relationship with my parents. It was hard. I was always feeling unloved and unwanted by them. Jared was also still upset at my insistence that we improve our marriage because he was deeply resentful of our move away from his father's business. My dad began fighting with me over emails about my stand against how I was not okay with being put second to a career, and I wasn't okay with just accepting that he has the Priesthood and his decisions and beliefs are always the right ones because of it. In hindsight, I can see how I was 'leaving Mormonism' during these years of trying to serve God first, not a religion, or a husband, or a dad, or a bishop, or anyone else.
I was having several dreams where apostles would come into my dreams but they didn't have any authority like they suppose they do in real life. I was having dreams where there was an anti-Christ at church or at the temple. I was having dreams that a bishop was a false prophet. And I had a dream where an apostle had hurt his wife really bad in their younger years of marriage and instead of going to her, apologizing and changing, then going to Christ for forgiveness and healing from what he did to her, he came into our home and wanted Jared to comfort him. Seemed perfectly fitting as Jared had hurt me really bad in our early years of marriage by choosing a career that he knew I adamantly opposed, and he was having a hard time moving forward.
But it was in mid April of this year, 2015, that it became obvious that God was setting a decision to leave Mormonism altogether in front of me. One night I had a dream that Vanessa was going to share her gift (she plays the violin in real life) to the entire state of Utah, and it was Dieter Uchtdorf, though he had no authority to tell her this, only that of a brother in Christ, to warm up for the real performance. He told her that the door wasn't open yet for her to do the real performance, so now she should warm up. She began to play, and the song she played was Be Still My Soul. When she finished playing the song in the dream, I looked at her and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. Here are the words, which are still chilling for me to read even to this day:
I awoke from the dream and proceeded to tell Jared that a change was coming to us because in verses 1 and 3 it talks about change. For 2 weeks I told him a change was coming and to prepare himself. He was really worried as he'd already changed so many things that he didn't ever want to change, like leaving his father's gravestone business.
Then one night, 10 days or so after the violin song dream, I had another dream. I dreamt that my child, who I'd had the experience that he was going to die when I was pregnant with him, came up to me and told me that he would rather die than go back to the LDS church. In the dream, we'd been away at a school and our Bishop had called Jared and told him to come back to the church and espouse ourselves to the Church. It was then that this child of ours starting screaming in the dream and communicated to me that he would rather die than go back.
I awoke from this dream and at first just thought how strange the dream was. It took me a couple of days before I realized it was the same child who God had told me would die when I was pregnant that was now in this dream telling me this. The thought would not leave me, 'I would rather die than go back to the LDS church.'
So, I left the LDS church. Just like that. I decided that if by my leaving that I would find that the dream was from an evil place then it would be evidenced to me and I would go back to the LDS church. I told Jared. You'll have to ask him to tell his feelings about this story. He had had his own dream about this same time that he was in Denver trading his 1/4 ton pick-up truck that he used to do his father's work in, to a semi truck. I felt like his dream was going to dove tail into what was going on with me, but I did not see how yet.
But, I began praying and asking God to tell me what was so bad about the LDS church that I had to leave. I had no idea. I mean, there was the polygamy thing that always bothered me. And the way the Priesthood is lived out culturally in my life is horrible. But, I added study to my prayers. I studied and studied and studied. I was reading church history from sources all over the internet, everywhere except from Mormons because God had taken me out of the church, so why would I trust their sources? I couldn't and I wasn't going to. I decided that if my studies from non-Mormons proved false to me, then I'd take that information to God knowing he'd guide me through it. *editing to add that I am reading and have read from many people who were former Mormons, like William Law and the Tanners.
One morning I awoke and as I was going about doing my morning chores, I heard myself singing a song. The song was, "Come Let Us Adore Him." Short version of this part of the story is that there is a book with that title by an LDS man at the time he wrote this book, named Denver Snuffer. Jared had the dream he was in Denver changing vehicles, so I got online and ordered it. It came and I read it. It is a book about the church during Christ's time. It was shocking to me to read that that church closely resembles the LDS church today. Christ was very hard on that Church calling the members whited sepulchers inwardly full of dead men's bones, hypocrites, etc. Yikes, I thought. *editing to add that if you look up Denver Snuffer, he's got his own following, and I do not subscribe to what he is doing.
I studied more.
I then came upon a man by the name of William Law. He was the 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency when Joseph Smith was the Prophet. There is an interview that was published in the Salt Lake Tribune that he gave in his later life to a man by the name of Dr. Wyl. After first denying that Joseph Smith was practicing plural marriage, William Law painfully became aware that Joseph was practicing it when Joseph tried to get William's wife for one of his polygamous wives. William's wife, Jane, did not accept Joseph's advances.
Then I learned the several different stories of the first vision. I learned that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph, Oliver Cowdrey, and Sydney Rigdon and maybe others. There's the Kinderhook Plates, the several affidavits of people telling of Joseph Smith's true character, Fanny Alger, Emma trying to poison Joseph, D&C 132 threatening to murder Emma if she didn't accept Joseph's multiple wives (see verses 51-54,) murders, statements and books written by contemporaries of the time trying to expose what Joseph Smith was doing, temple rituals taken from masonry, etc.
But, the real blow came to me when one night I had another dream. In the dream, I was telling some of my immediate family members that I had left Mormonism. They were stunned. But, a woman who I know intimately in my real life walked over to my family members in the dream and took an envelope with a letter in it and put it in my family member's pocket. This woman then said, "Read this when you are ready." She then walked back over to me and I said, "What was that?" She said, "Oh, it's the Ferguson letter." I said, "Is that letter going to help them understand what is wrong with Mormonism?" She said, "It's the best one!"
I woke up and immediately got on the computer and typed into the Google search engine: Ferguson Mormon, and this is the link to what I read: http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no69.htm
The story of Thomas Stuart Ferguson is that he went on a journey to prove the historicity of the Book of Mormon. He went to the then prophet, David O. McKay asking for money. He was given $225,000 in the 1960's, if I'm not mistaken, to aid in his work. What Thomas Ferguson found out is that there is no evidence of the historicity of the BOM. It was a huge blow to him and he completely lost his belief in Mormonism. But, the worst part of this story is that Mr. Ferguson decided to become 2 faced, as they say, 'spoof' back, in his words still go to church, but not bare testimony, not pay tithes, not go to the temple. Essentially, don't believe it, but pretend he did in order to stay a part of the social network, or fraternity, as he called it.
Now, you must understand that the woman in my dream is living the exact life that Thomas Ferguson lived. She is known to be an accomplished liar. She has become an expert at being able to live a double life just like Ferguson did.
I recently wrote my letter of resignation from the LDS church, October 2015. After all of my studies and the painful awareness that Mormonism is a made up religion, I have been ever since trying to build my life outside of it. It is a challenge, but rewarding and hopeful. I am reading the Bible without the lens of a supposed prophet. Jared, bless his heart, has had a huge struggle. He has been reading most of the material I have and he is just as devastated. He has commented several times that he doesn't know how to live a life without Mormonism. He'll tell his story when he is ready because he hasn't resigned and is trying to understand his experiences from his 2 year mission. To him God and Mormonism are seemingly inseparable.
I am not a popular woman. I've only been in 5 wards but there are high school classmates who will hear of my departure. My family is large, and my siblings have spouses and children and their spouses families will hear of my departure from Mormonism and I want a place for everyone to come to get my story from me, not through secondary sources. Most of my family is LDS and will have a hard time understanding what has happened to me. But, I hope this will help them and anyone else who wants to hear my story.
I believe dreams. I know Jesus is the Christ and He is my Savior. He was nailed to the cross and with that price, he is able to draw all men to Him. I love Him. I adore Him. I trust Him. I thank Him for bringing a knowledge to me of the truth about Mormonism. And lastly, I will let Him guide my future as He has my past.
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1 comment:
Hey Sarah, would you mind emailing me back? I have gone through a similar disillusionment and have some questions, maybe you feel like you can help? I hope you feel like you can, I am feeling a little lost. Thanks.
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