The Church Taught Me to Leave the Church
“As a middle-aged ex-Mormon woman once told me, ‘everyone says that if your testimony was ever actually real or as strong as it was supposed to be you never would have lost it. But that’s not right. We were doing everything we were taught, as much if not more than anybody else…It’s really the best of us who leave.’” (Source 1) “....David had been quick to recognize and point out: that the church had made me who I was, including many of the best parts of me. ‘You left out of principle,’ David told Grace and me, ‘pretty much the same principles you were raised with. And your departure was both a rejection and an affirmation of everything you were taught....’ Weeping, I had asked him how he could possibly say such a thing. We were betrayers. ‘In a way,’ he said, ‘leaving Westboro Baptist Church was the most Westboro Baptist Church thing you could have done. They’re the ones who taught you to stand up for what you believe in, no matter what it cost you. They taught you that. They just never never imagined you’d be standing up to them.’” (Source 2)
The Church taught me to leave the Church, and to stand up for my beliefs. In some ways, leaving it was the most Mormon thing I could do.
That is such a healing thing to realize.
Source 1: E. Marshall Brooks, The Disenchanted Self: Anthropological Notes on Existential Distress and Ontological Insecurity Among ex-Mormons in Utah, https://link-springer-com.csulb.idm.oclc.org/article/10.1007/s11013-019-09646-5 Source 2: Megan Phelps-Roger, Unfollow, page 274, 2019
Photo by Ajsa Boros, https://www.asjaboros.net/