I know you, you are thinking, “Sure, I can write a blog. Everyone is doing it.” You think, “Yeah, I have something to say. I think I will write it, and put it out into the universe.”

So, you start a blog. You come up with a thoughtful, yet witty (albeit over played) title. You share it on Facebook. You feel pretty good about yourself because you are being all “vulnerable” and “introspective” and “authentic”, like all those cool millennials you’ve read about. You are feeling brave and strong because you are saying things you never thought you would say. You are even friends with your lap top, something that no one who has seen you with technology dreamt was possible. Things are going well.

You start to get more positive comments than negative, more hopeful emails than hateful, more understanding readers than angry. Soon, you are celebrating having 500 views on your post in one day! Remember, that’s a lot when you are still some low-budget, side-job but not getting paid, just sharing it on Facebook- where most of your friends don’t want to read about you leaving the church they love, wannabe blogger anyway. So, 500 seems super rad! Self Five! (That’s me, giving myself a high five, like I learned from Barney Stinson. It’s what you do when no one is around, or no one wants to give you a high five even though you feel you are totally deserving of one. Just take care of yourself, Self Five!) You are starting to think you might seriously know how to blog.

So, you sign a few autographs, pose for pictures with your 500 fans, kiss a few babies, and sit down with your laptop to write for the following week. What could go wrong?

Then you do it.  You make the fatal writer’s mistake, that you didn’t know existed. (Because you didn’t read anyone else’s blogs before you started your own, and you didn’t think far enough ahead to get to this place, with a magnificent 500 person viewership, and you were basically clueless about a lot of the painful healing process that comes with being a writer.) You accidentally write about something that really hurts. Of course, you thought you had processed all of this crap already. Isn’t that why you bought self-help books, started meditating, talked to your therapist, and decided you were strong enough to start this blog in the first place?

But you didn’t know about triggers. No one warned you that someday you might write something that would trigger pain. (And if they did, you weren’t listening because you were too busy writing, duh.) You didn’t know that you could write something that would cause you to panic, shut down, feel isolated and depressed. You were so clueless, you didn’t even know there was a self-destruct button hidden deep, just waiting to detonate. (Which is actually your own darn fault, you have watched enough Phineas and Ferb to know that there is always a self-destruct button!) You thought you had this all figured out, didn’t you? You thought you could write a blog.

Guess what? It isn’t as easy as you thought.

 

I am sorry I stood you guys up last week, when I didn’t post anything on my blog. Next week, I will try to share the post that was my blogging-self-destruct button. (Barring any other unforeseen breakdowns.) Don’t worry, it wasn’t some traumatic memory, or some bottled up secret from my past. It was something that I have talked about often, that I thought was a safe topic to write about. I had no idea it would devastate me the way it did. One minute I was writing, the next I was overwhelmed and angry. For some reason, I just couldn’t share it. I am not trying to be some “cliff hanger blogger” or even worse “the annoyingly vague Facebook friend” writing things like “Well, that doctor’s appointment when different than expected….” (Why? Why do they post things like that?!) I am just trying to explain why I took a little break from my blog, and how “triggers” are real.

I know it is hard for some members of the church to understand why a loved one won’t come listen to them speak at church, or why they aren’t sitting outside the temple waiting for the bride to come out, or why it seems like they don’t want to hear about the new calling in the Primary Presidency. They aren’t being jerks. They haven’t “changed” or become selfish people. They aren’t being anti-Mormon. (All things I have heard said about people who don’t seem to be “supporting” their Mormon friends or family.) They are protecting that well-hidden self-destruct button. They are trying to listen to their heart, the broken one that has been through a lot the last few months or years. They are trying to avoid a situation that could trigger some extremely painful feelings. They really do love you, active members of the church. They want to support you in a million other ways, that don’t have to include a building with a sign that says, “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” They have taken your feelings into consideration more than you know, fearing the disappointment they think you will feel, fearing rejection and loss, and hoping that after some time things will be different. They are smart enough to see a “trigger,” (something that will stir up the hurt, anger, or pain that they have finally overcome) and know when to avoid it. Or in my case, when it’s healthy to post it.

Wait, what? You didn’t even notice that I missed two Mondays in a row? What kind of an enormous 500 person viewership are you? Oh, the kind that has their own life and plenty of other blogs to read, yeah, I get that. No biggie.

Stay tuned for next week, when the saga continues….

(Just kidding, no more vague posts)

A woman posts a blog about a triggering experience. See what happens next…

(I just can’t help myself!! Self Five!)

 

 

 

 

 

I think many members could admit that they were a little confused the first time they felt “spiritual feelings,” often described as the Holy Ghost, a “burning in the bosom,”  a tingling sensation, or a deep sense of peace, in a non-LDS atmosphere—like watching the movie Saving Private Ryan and feeling overwhelmed with emotion, or walking into a beautiful Catholic Cathedral and falling silent in awe.  When “feeling the spirit” is always connected to the LDS church, or God, it gets a little confusing if it suddenly connects to something else. But for me, I felt like spirituality was much more than a religious feeling associated with the church.  (And, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you watched Saving Private Ryan. It was rated R after all. Just pretend like you saw the edited version one night on TBS. Wink. Wink.)

In the church, spirituality is linked exclusively to a relationship with God. Spiritual experiences were usually opportunities to have your testimony strengthened about a certain principle or teaching. I had many of these types of experiences, even as a young child. Feelings of love associated with a Heavenly Father, or feelings of truth while reading a scripture. I relied on those experiences to confirm my belief in the church.  It’s taught that these experiences come directly from God, and often manifest as promptings we receive when we are worthy and listening. We are taught that those promptings will always align with what the modern prophets teach. It seems impossible, to some, to have a spiritual witness that is incongruent with the Mormon faith, or one that contradicts the teachings of the church. I think that is why so many people believe that we are “led away” or being “fooled by Satan” when we feel that we have had a spiritual witness that confirms our belief that the church isn’t true, or that we should no longer participate in the church. These people may not realize that spiritual experiences exist outside of the Mormon definition.

I remember the first time I took a yoga class and had a very beautiful, even otherworldly, experience. (I also remember being crazy sore all the next week. Who knew you could hurt so much from just a few weird stretches?) It was actually with a private instructor, just she and I, in her small, quiet studio. While meditating in different yoga poses, I felt a deep spiritual connection, not with a heavenly being, but with something that connected me to things unassociated with myself, my faith, and even my immediate surroundings. Until then, I had no idea that yoga was so powerful and peaceful. I just thought it was doing strange, flexible stretches. But it connected me to a much broader universe and a new concept of spirituality.  I loved it. It was liberating to feel that spirituality did not need to be connected to a specific religion or belief—it could be a personal, unique experience outside of those parameters. Some spirituality might be inspired by God. Some might come from deep within ourselves. Or it may even come from something else entirely, like the way I felt practicing yoga.

When I realized that I wanted to leave the church, I became overwhelmed trying to process many of my previous spiritual experiences. They came at me like a tidal wave—a rushing sensation that buried me under years of witnesses, beliefs, testimonies, experiences, and miracles, like the time when I felt that “I knew the Book of Mormon was true,” or the promptings that led me to decide to marry JT, or the other amazing experiences I had throughout my life in the church. Suddenly, I was forced to deal with the question of what to make of all of them. If I left the church, how would I reconcile the testimonies and witnesses I had once believed were true?  Especially when I believed that God had previously confirmed these truths through spiritual experiences. I thought that I had to have an explanation for and an understanding of each one.

I was fortunate to have a small life preserver thrown to me when the first tidal wave hit. I clung to it as the waves continued to break throughout my entire faith transition. And the little life preserver continued to pull me back to the surface, keeping my head above water and giving me time to thoughtfully process each wave. It was thrown to me by a non-Mormon cousin who was raised Christian.  She has always inspired me, and I have admired her for years. In desperation one night at our family reunion, I told her about the tidal waves. At that time, before many of the waves of doctrinal experiences hit, I was thinking about my mission. “I loved my mission,” I told her, fighting back tears. “If I leave the church, if I go to another church, or none at all, what does that mean for my mission in Madagascar?” I didn’t think I could go to a Christian church and talk about my spiritual experiences sharing the Book of Mormon in Africa. Would they think I was crazy? Obviously, Christians would not believe in the Book of Mormon. Would I have to abandon all of those amazing experiences, the little miracles, and things we considered tender mercies? Would I have to look back at them as fraudulent moments from my life as a Mormon? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t forsake the things I loved about Madagascar—the simple things, like the smells and sounds in the streets, the hugeness of the sky and the infinite colors of the sunsets, the strangeness of speaking a foreign language, the spiritual moments that connected me to everything, and the love I felt for the other missionaries and the Malagasy people that we served. The mission meant so many different things to me. My daughter was even named after a beloved Malagasy mother. The force of that wave was enough to keep me from ever leaving, and strong enough to drown me, until my cousin reached out and lovingly said, “You can take your mission with you, if you choose.”

My cousin’s words have carried me over massive waves and through darkest storms for the past three years. Her words never prevented a church-related memory or wave of testimony from cascading down. I went through them all, but after I processed each one, and followed the spiritual light that has always guided me, I was able to keep what I wanted to keep. I was able to examine many of my beliefs in a new way. I realized that I had been basing most of my beliefs on feelings. I had been interpreting feeling inspired by a particular scripture or principle to mean it was true. But, as I looked deeper into the questions I had about doctrine and church history I found new information. And this information changed the feelings I had about many of those principles. I no longer felt the “burning in the bosom” feelings when I thought about Joseph Smith, I felt quite the opposite. Realizing that much of my testimony had been based on limited and even false information, I no longer perceive my spiritual experiences and impressions as concrete. For instance, the indescribable feelings of beauty and peace I felt at Notre Dame in Paris did not confirm to me that Catholicism is true. Feeling good is not a Truth-O-Meter. It was difficult, at first, to not feel trapped by past spiritual confirmations. But I found that I can trust my spiritual impressions and instincts, and not have to be limited by them. I can still cherish some of the amazing experiences I had in the church, and on my mission, while rejecting the teachings I find to be false.

For example, when the wave that carried my struggles with the temple came rolling in, I was momentarily swallowed up. I had to process the good things from the temple and weigh them against the bad. I trusted myself, and how I already felt about never wanting to go back. But what would I do with the rest? Then the words from my cousin came back and lifted me up: “You can take this with you, if you choose.” So, I kept the sweet moment in the Celestial Room when JT and I were all alone, almost 13 years ago, when he told me everything he loved about me and why he so desperately wanted to marry me, right before he took my hand and walked with me into the room to be married. I held tight to that moment, Celestial Room and all, as I gratefully watched the wave recede back into the sea, taking the other negative experiences from the temple with it.

Right now, while the sea is calm and I feel peace and connection, the life preserver is tucked away. I don’t need it to save me as often as it used to. To some, it may not make sense how I can continue to consider myself a spiritual person while abandoning a temple-worthy Mormon life style, or how I can still have beautiful memories from my mission, while sometimes wishing I had never gone, or singing “Mary’s Lullaby” from the Children’s Hymnbook to my kids at night, while not wanting to ever hear the song “Follow the Prophet” again. Just because I left the church and most of the things in it, doesn’t mean that I can’t take the things I love with me.

You know vomit? You know how disgusting it is, but people talk about it anyway? Like when someone’s  been really sick, and they want to tell all the details, even though you know the details about being sick, but everyone likes to share their own horror stories about it, so you listen? Don’t worry, I am not going to talk about anything gross, I promise.

I hate being sick. By the way, I always say how much I hate being sick. And then I think, “That’s a dumb statement.” I mean, does anyone like being sick? Isn’t it just a given that we all hate being sick? But then I think, “Well, I probably hate being sick more than anyone else does, so I am going to keep saying ‘I hate being sick’ so people know how much I hate it more than they do.”

There are a few things I really hate about being sick:

1. How confusing it is. On one hand, you feel miserable, and you know that your body just wants to get rid of the evil alien inside that is making it sick. (Side story: in Madagascar, if you are visiting and have a sensitive stomach to the local food you say, “Vazaha Kibo” which loosely translates to “I have a stranger/alien/foreigner/white person tummy.” I always thought it was “there is a stranger in my tummy.” Either way, it’s pretty funny imagery, right?) You totally don’t want to throw up because it is the worst thing ever. The worst. Ever. But you know how much better you will feel if all that junk is out of your system. So, you don’t want to, but you kind of do. And you are afraid to, but you keep a bucket close by in hopes that you will.

 

2. How it warps all sense of time and reality. Even if you know it is a 24-hour bug because that is all anyone has talked about on Facebook or at the bus stop for a week, you are still terrified that it may never go away. You forget what it is like to feel normal, to eat real food, to function as a human being.

 

3. How it is such a waste. You should be happy—you have a day or two to lay on the couch, drink 7up, eat saltine crackers, and watch Pride & Prejudice without any expectation that you should be doing something productive! But you feel like crap. So, the whole time you resent being stuck on the couch, only being able to drink soda and eat crackers, bored of watching Pride & Prejudice, and anxious to be productive again. And of course, three days later you wish you could “just have a sick day.”

Apparently, processing an event like, you know, leaving the church you have known your whole life, feels a little bit like the stomach flu.

Finding a way to share my story without being swallowed up in it is a balancing act. There are still doors I don’t want to look behind, shelves I am afraid to talk about, and a giant rabbit hole of doctrine that I don’t want my blog to fall into. But the need to share tugs at me, like an evil stranger in the bottom of my soul, clawing to get out. Even though it scares me, I know I will feel better letting it out. And with each post, I see that the evil stranger isn’t a stranger at all. It is actually a beautiful, vulnerable piece of me that just wants to be free.

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get past this stage—where little things are constant triggers, and where I have to work hard to change the narrative that has been ingrained in me. I worry that I will never know how to just be normal—how to trust my own instincts instead of following a “prophet.”  I find myself connecting with people and the world around me, and then hear a general authority’s voice reminding me to “not be of the world.” The voice that tells me I am just desensitized to the sin and evil around me.  Sometimes, when I laugh hard at a dirty joke, or swear out loud, or watch a rated R movie, I feel a pang of guilt. But it isn’t real guilt—it’s just a reflex from being told for so long to feel guilty about things like that. Right when I think I am adjusted, that I am past that phase, and that I am over those feelings, a Mormon idea will pop into my head and throw me back in. I can look around, and see friends and family who have left it all behind and are settled into a new life. I can rationally tell myself, “it’s just the 24-hour bug”—you’ll feel normal again soon. But it’s so easy to forget.

Lately, I have been paralyzed with the realization that I have the chance to push the Do Over button, and I don’t know what to do. I look at all the decisions that led me to where I am today, wondering which were my own and which were just the path I was on. I ask myself, what do I really want? I’m excited for the opportunity to start over fresh and change so many things, but I’m also terrified of the change and the new opportunity for failure. I’ve felt so frustrated with some of the choices that I made when I was younger, based on the principles I learned at church—choices that have affected my entire life. I’ve longed for the chance to change my destiny, my perspective, and yet, in this moment I’m so afraid. It’s like wishing for a sick day to watch Pride & Prejudice, but now that I have it, I don’t know how to enjoy it.

Sitting here next to the pool with my glass of wine, my laptop, and wearing my pajamas (I can do that now, because I am being a writer, and we get to do cool sh*t like that), I see the similarities between a sick day and faith crisis. I feel it consuming me, but I know there must be an end in sight. The Do Over button is frustrating and intimidating, but it is also exciting, and I don’t want to miss my chance to change. Most of all, I need to release the scared, delicate, not-so-evil stranger inside. Every time I write a post, I feel a tiny bit freer.  Writing that I don’t believe in the temple makes me feel less self-conscious when I run into a friend from church and I am wearing my shorty shorts and tank top. I don’t care if she’s trying to figure out why I am not wearing garments. I tell myself, “If she wants to know, she can read the blog.” Sharing the story about piña coladas (and bravely writing at the beginning of this paragraph about my glass of wine) makes me feel less paranoid about posting a picture on Facebook of me and my friends at a bar. I think, “Meh. Everyone knows that I like to try new cocktails. I don’t have to worry that they all assume I am an alcoholic. I wrote about it in my blog.” Admitting that this has been a traumatic process, a decision that I did not take lightly, and opening up about the tears I have shed, gives me strength and confidence. When someone wants me to attend a church event that I know will hurt me and trigger a lot of pain, I don’t need to feel guilty about not going. I feel comfortable thinking, “Don’t take it personally. My blog explains that this has nothing to do with you. I just need space to heal, and acceptance as I do this in the best way I know how.” The more that I share (or purge, since we are still comparing this to the stomach flu), the more free I feel, the more true to myself I become. Releasing these little bits of myself, and my story, allows me to come back to reality and opens the space to move on. So, I guess this blog is a little bit like the bucket I keep next to the couch on my sick days. Sometimes, I feel anxious about using it, but in the end, it always feels better when I do.