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Today in Sunday school we were dancing around the topic of people who “leave the fold” and what to do about and for them. The standard, “never give up on

them” answers floated on the air and then a girl wearing pants and Birkenstocks at the back of the room raised her hand and talked about how important it is to recognize that most people don’t leave the church on a casual whim. She talked about how, (and it seemed from personal experience) leaving the church is like a really difficult break up, how it isn’t just not going to church on Sunday anymore. She talked about how no longer being mormon means leaving behind or changing an entire life. Nothing of what she said felt like a surprise to me. Most of my closest friends have left the church for different reasons. I’ve been on the front lines of heartbreak for well over a decade.

The thing then, that stuck out to me about the comment the women made in class, was this distinct and clear realization that I was who she was talking about, and yet, I was still sitting there in a Sunday School class, wrestling a baby who is not quite old enough for nursery, but too old to sit still for a full minute. My other children in primary. My husband next to me. I had chosen to come of my own volition.

I get it if leaving completely is the best way to heal. I empathize with what it is to break up with something you once loved and feel it no longer loves you back. I also empathize with what it is to still love and see as perfect a structure that is making your life better. I want to reach out in solidarity to a group who maybe is not as talked about: a group that is likely quiet and maybe unsure about their place, a group that has experienced huge, changing shifts in the landscape of their spirituality and still call themselves Mormon. A category I think I fall under. The people who have experienced true heart break and turmoil within the structure of Mormonism and are somehow still here. I felt today that it was okay to be in that group.

I’ve been the girlfriend of gay men who realized that as things fell apart between us, that they would leave the church and make a new life. I sat with them in cars in my driveway, overlooking the city, in my college art studio, in the mountains, and cried with them as their world dissolved, a part of mine along with it. I’ve seen these men, and so many of my friends and family enter that bleak place of grief where all the familiarities are rooted out from you and for a time, you are left hollow. Sure, leaving the church may have been the best and healthiest decision for many of these people I know, but still, happiness cannot negate that thick forest one must move through in order to come out on the other side. (From what I know the men I dated are happy now outside of the church.) For better or worse, Mormonism does not leave someone unmarked.

My more recent years of dissonance came on like a 7-year famine. I could not have known my innocent, ripe years of feast through high school, a mission, college, would be almost immediately followed by such a plunge. How could anyone prepare for such a thing when the relationship seemed so comfortable, so happy?

During my roughly seven years of internal struggle with doctrine, church policy, and institutional walls I could not pray myself over or through, I started to wonder why God would be so quiet about it all. Whether it was out of fear, loyalty, hope, love, a longing for familiarity in an increasingly complex world, or maybe a blend of all of them, I continued for the most part, to attend church while my heart and mind experienced change and loss. I don’t think I am unique in this experience. I learned to be kind to myself, though perhaps that came last of all. I don’t think I simply lack courage for continuing to go even when I disagreed with so much happening on the larger scale of the church. There was something pulling me to what this community, at its most basic, intuitive level is attempting—learning to be Christ-like.

Today in Sunday school though, I had the distinct realization that I knew exactly what the woman was talking about when she talked about leaving the church feeling like a hard break up. I have been there, even recently, and even sometimes still. But I also felt something else. I had this sense that I had somehow made it to the other side. Not that I have made peace with the church’s stance on LGBT policies, or inequalities in the roles and voices of women, or any myriad of things, I haven’t. But I am also on the other side of grief in losing something I thought would always be perfect. It is true that time heals and in my case, I think time is the only thing that could have healed the sorrow I felt for many years in my spiritual life.

I realized as she spoke that there is a peace now in sticking around that I haven’t felt in so long. It is a confidence that I am okay, even if I never, and likely won’t return to the belief I once had. I’ve also let myself take things a week or a month at a time, rather than making decisions for a lifetime. I know this might counter what many people consider a main tenet of Mormonism, but this has also enabled me to stick around. I’ve developed a new confidence that God speaks to me in ways They had not before, and maybe now, it is not even God, but my foremothers reaching out in faith that I might notice them and ask to know more.

For the most part, my spiritual heart beats wildly in the moments I am compelled to be better. Not better than, just a deep desire to be better because I have been loved. Like when the 88-year old woman in our ward reached back, grabbed my hand and squeezed almost imperceptibly during the sacrament while my three kids rolled around on the floor between our pews. A lesson given in Relief Society about loving deeply and without judgment when for weeks I had not even realized how badly I needed an hour to simply contemplate explicitly the commandment to love. It is standing next to a shy, older man at a linger longer and while we have nothing in common there is only kindness exchanged between us. It is a woman who I know disagrees with me on so much thanking me for a comment I made and hugging me, my baby squished happily between us. It is singing the words: I would be my brother’s (I would add sister’s) keeper; I would learn the healer’s art. To the wounded and the weary I would show a gentle heart. I would be my brother’s keeper—when I’ve spent a week thinking too much about myself.

I felt today that although I don’t believe that organized religion will save our society, there is something holy and sacred about a group of people attempting, however imperfectly, to place what Christ represents at the center of our lives. Many former Mormons I know now find this same attempt elsewhere, and I’ve come to love the work they do too.

There is much about Mormon doctrine I hope to be true and some I simply sidestep for now. Maybe my faith is simply dogged and stubborn, or maybe I do still fear what it would be to leave fully. Maybe I stay for my kids. Maybe I am too tired to go looking elsewhere. Maybe I am just comfortable. I don’t know. I do know though that today I left feeling more full than I came. I know that for a brief moment a deep, internal switch was turned on that started me down a path of thinking less selfishly for this coming week.

I’ve learned that my experience is flawed, sometimes because of myself, sometimes because of Mormon culture and sometimes because of the structure itself, but I also felt today that it was okay for me to be there regardless. I felt that it is imperative that I make space and make space and make space for anyone who might quietly be trying to find their place too. It is imperative I not forget or dismiss the experiences of those who have left. I don’t want other people to do their speaking for them. I do not know the many pathways to God. I do not know the way the God I want to know holds each of us in Their palm. I do not even recognize when I am there myself, but I want to believe I am held with people who are different than me in vast and various ways.