telling the relief society president

The woman who was relief society president in the local ward when I left the church was a friend of mine. In her position of president, I felt no obligation to telling her my business about leaving. In fact, I felt an aversion to telling her. But because she was a friend, I opened up a little. I wrote the following after my "coming out" conversation with her.

So my relief society president is a woman my age, lives in my apartment complex, and has a kid the same age as mine. Through a series of play dates and informal meeting-in-the-park, we've become friends. I guess today she couldn't keep pretending to not notice that I don't show up to church anymore. [It was kind of obvious I wasn't just staying home sick when she saw me returning from a bike ride just as she was arriving home from church one day.]

She asked, "Can I ask a personal question?"

I knew what was coming: "What's up with the whole church thing?" I had been feeling the need to talk to someone about it, so I let her in on my little secret. Been attending UU, don't believe in the "true-ness" of the church anymore, etc. She actually handled it really well. She's had siblings and close friends leave the church already, and she was able to approach it maturely--everyone has their own way, you need to find where you are comfortable, if you're not questioning, you're not in a healthy place, etc.

Of course, I could still tell that she thinks the church is the best place to be, the best path to take. And "everyone has their own way" means some of us will end up in the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms. But, hey, at least she didn't tell me I was deceived of the devil (like my mom did when she found out I was reading non-correlated books on Mormonism) or give me the first discussion (like my sister did).

I wonder exactly what consequences this "outing" will have. Will we be talked about in her next meeting with the bishop? Will the gossip get around to the rest of the Mormons in our neighborhood? Will the home teachers (whoever they are) start the love bombing? Will my visiting teachers find out I'm "struggling" and need some extra preaching to? Ah well, the ball is rolling...

Looking back at this, I find it curious that I used "my" to refer to both the relief society president and visiting teachers. Like I still allowed them some stewardship and authority over me. But this was at the same time that I felt I had to justify why I even talked to her--as a friend, not as "my relief society president." And yet I used "the bishop" and "the home teachers." Interesting. I was coming out from under the authority of the church, but was still partially granting that authority, too.

Later, I wrote about her reaction in the following weeks.

Since I told my RS pres/friend about my unbelief, she's paid more attention to me, hugged me when saying goodbye for the day (never had before), gotten her husband to try to quell some of my concerns about the historicity of Book of Mormon, and been quick to defend the church against any comment I make she thinks is "anti-."

Like yesterday when we got back from a weekend away, we saw all the Koreans at our apartment complex were BBQing at one grill, and all the Mormons were BBQing at another grill. I went out to the Mormon BBQ and commented that it was a Mormon BBQ, and she quickly said, "There are non-Mormons here too! See, over there!" Her husband, not realizing how important it was to her to defend the supposed inclusiveness of the BBQ, said, "Yeah, well they segregated themselves pretty quick once they brought the beer out, didn't they?" Oh, how I longed to be with the drinkers and a bottle of beer...