I still remember a Sunday when I was a young teenager, when the bishop felt impressed to get up at the end of sacrament meeting and share some counsel. I don’t remember any of the specifics of what he said. But I remember how he concluded his talk: in a voice of utter certainty, he said, “This is the will of the Lord for this ward.” And I loved that he said that. It made me feel so safe. God was aware of and interested in our ward, so tiny in comparison to the great vast world. God would send direction through priesthood leadership about even small decisions and issues. Weren’t we lucky to have that, while other people had to deal with uncertainty and doubt. We had a sure connection to God.

(I actually didn’t know when I was growing up that other churches also believed themselves to be guided by the Spirit. I’d never been to another church, but I’d somehow picked up the idea that not only were the Mormons the only group to be truly guided by the Holy Ghost, they were the only group that even made the claim. Based on the bits and pieces I’d heard at church, as well as passages from the Book of Mormon, I vaguely imagined that other religious groups just talked about how sad it was that they didn’t have prophets, didn’t have the Spirit to guide them, and lamented that the age of miracles had ceased. I remember my first semester at the University of Notre Dame, going to opening mass and hearing the president of the university tell us that the most important words we could say were “come, Holy Spirit,” and being struck by how incredibly incorrect so many of my assumptions had been.)

The idea that God was directing everything in the church, from the decisions of local priesthood leaders to the counsel given at General Conference, was tremendously reassuring. But sometimes it was painful, too. When local leaders told me something that was the absolute opposite of my experience, and claimed inspiration as their source, I had no framework from which to consider that they might be wrong. I was all too easily persuaded to simply dismiss my experience, which I wasn’t very in touch with in the first place. I was well aware that I was a very confused and messed-up teenager; who was I to know anything? Surely a priesthood leader had superior insight. Even if what we were talking about were the personal details of my own life.

And yet there were ways in which I was conflicted. I had feminist leanings from a young age; I was the kid in Primary who wanted to know why women didn’t get the priesthood. So much of what the church said about gender roles didn’t seem right to me. I couldn’t decide what to believe. The General Authorities spoke on the subject with such authority, such finality. I was both the doubter who asked obnoxious questions, and the kid who was desperate to believe, who paid close attention to General Conference, listening for the message the Lord had for me personally. I thought it was a system of patriarchal, sexist nonsense, and I also believed it wholeheartedly. I can’t neatly put all those pieces together, but they were all there.

To this day, when someone gets up at a microphone and speaks in a GA voice, with the cadences of a conference talk, I react. I don’t know that I ever won’t have that response, at least a little. That being the ultimate voice of authority goes back to my earliest memories. And for so long, I so badly wanted to believe in that world where God was closely running everything. Where certain humans were able to convey God’s messages with perfect clarity. Which is perhaps why, no matter how many times General Conference left me in tears, I went back for more.

I’ve seen a lot said in the past few days about how we need to give the GAs a break. They’re only human, after all. They’re trying their best. And I actually do believe in their sincerity. There are ex-Mormons who concoct stories of hush money and conscious deception, but my take is different. I think they really do see themselves as seeking inspiration as best they can. But this is where it breaks for me. The leaders of the church are the ones who are claiming with absolute certainty that they speak for God. This notion is not a strange idea being cooked up by credulous members. This is what the leaders themselves are saying. This is how they are representing themselves. President Nelson got up in January of 2016 and stated clearly and unequivocally that the PoX was a revelation, that it was the will of the Lord. He didn’t say that this was just an idea that seemed worth trying for a while. I deeply dislike the trend I’m seeing now where members are getting blamed for not knowing better. Yes, members have a responsibility to check what authorities are saying against their individual consciences and experiences with God; I absolutely believe that. But don’t leaders have a responsibility as well, to not represent themselves as having a sort of batphone to the divine?

I don’t know how many times I’ve sat in a therapist’s office, crying about all of this. Intellectually, I kept saying, I could see that the church was clearly wrong. About women. About gay people. Everything in my experience told me that. And yet on some level I was still terrified that they might be right. Because they were so incredibly sure of themselves. They were so confident. They knew. And if they were right, and they were in fact speaking for God on these issues, the world was such a bleak place that I could hardly bear it.

I’ve only been in an affirming church for two years now. And I’m still in the process of really letting myself take in the possibility in that God is ultimately about love. And that “love” doesn’t mean carefully drawing circles to separate out the worthy from everyone else. That it’s radical and inclusive beyond comprehension. When I sense that even a little, it brings me to life. But is a slow thing, to undo a lifetime of absorbing different messages. It’s not that I didn’t learn about God’s love in my LDS upbringing. But what made it so confusing was that the messages about love were deeply intertwined with other, deeply hurtful messages.

I can live with institutions making mistakes, sometimes huge ones. I don’t think that’s avoidable. Discerning the voice of God is not easy. We’re all limited by so many things, and what we hear is shaped by biases we’re not even aware of. That’s simply the human condition. I don’t expect perfection from a church. But I’ve hit a breaking point. I simply cannot deal with a complete unwillingness to ever acknowledge mistakes, a stance in which you never take any responsibility for any decisions that went wrong, or stop even for a minute to look at the damage you might have done. Too often it seems to me that LDS leaders value preserving a certain institutional image over ministering to the needs of the actual people in the church. No matter how energetically Mormons attempt to re-brand themselves as Christians, I suspect it will feel somewhat hollow, so long as love of God and love of neighbor are both less important than loyalty to the institution and obedience to authority.

I know this is harsh. I’m angry. I’m really, really angry.

I’ve been thinking for the last few months that I needed to finally take the last step and formally break ties with the church. Even though I’ve been gone for two years now, it’s still felt like a big decision. But this past week was oddly clarifying. This worldview in which prophets are for all intents and purposes infallible, in which everyone has to apologize except for the people in authority—it’s not an annoying side feature of the church. It’s core. It’s thoroughly baked in. Policies might change, doctrines might change, but this understanding of authority isn’t going anywhere. And from the beginning, it’s been a recipe for abuse.

I value the spiritual experiences I had in the LDS church, and the times that it connected me to God despite everything. I value the people I met, the communities that made space for me, the priesthood leaders who genuinely cared. I will never not be Mormon, I don’t think. It’s too much a part of what formed me. But I am done with the institutional church. I submitted my resignation yesterday. (Yes, on April 6.)

I am feeling a lot of things. Both sadness and relief. I think back to my teenage self, who felt so secure in the confidence that God was micromanaging his One True Church, and I feel some wistfulness. But I keep finding that God is bigger than I’d imagined. So much bigger. And there is more breathing room in the world than I ever thought possible. This journey has been incredibly disorienting in some ways. It has completely changed my life. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.