they asked; I told

I stopped believing and attending in quick succession in spring a couple years ago. I couldn't bear to tell my family. I couldn't muster up the courage. I knew how bitterly hurt and disappointed they would be to have a "lost" daughter and sister. And as time went by, I wasn't sure I felt obligated to tell anyone about my personal beliefs, unless it became a matter of deception. I wasn't willing, or able, I think, to blatantly lie about it if they asked. But they didn't ask.

After that conversation with my mom, I couldn't talk to my parents straight for months. They stopped asking when they could come visit. I avoided phone calls, especially on Sundays. I just couldn't risk them asking, "How was church?" I pretended everything was hunky-dory, even though I was going through the greatest emotional and psychological upset of my life. I never called them. They called me.

Every time I talked to them, my secret wanted to burst out, but I kept it down, locked up. There just is no good time to tell your parents something that will hurt them. There's no good time to tell your parents you reject the way they raised you, you reject their way of life. Over the phone is especially bad. But I lived too far away to tell them in person.

I debated with myself and my husband: Should we just wait until we visit them at Christmastime, so we could do it person? But would that just ruin Christmas? There'd be nowhere to go; we'd all just be there, upset. Should I send them a letter a few months before Christmas, give them time to mourn before we show up?

Time passed, and I never made a decision. I spent a whole summer in the non-believer's closet. Then it came up one day that we liked The Sugar Beet, a Mormon satire website (at the time). My mom was appalled, and so was everybody else, according to her. "Why do you read a website that mocks God?" she asked in serious and wounded tone. I couldn't quite figure out what she meant.

I, apparently, had been desensitized by the devil by this time, because I thought it was funny, Mormons poking fun at their own quirks. I thought it was funny when I was still a believer. I still think it's funny. Come on! Poly-gay-mists? The Spirit now comes in a refreshing mint flavor? Sleeveless dresses banned for nursery-age girls? Funny stuff!

She, however, thought it was so blasphemous that obviously the only way I could like that stuff was if I was totally and completely out of tune with the Spirit. And the only way that could happen was if I wasn't going to church anymore. Or if I'd become a serial killer. She gave me the benefit of the doubt and assumed the former. Not that it was that much better, in her mind.

So she got it out of me the only way she could: she asked.

"Are you still going to church?"

I didn't want to lie. I didn't want to tell the truth. So I equivocated. "We've been exploring some other churches this summer." Which was true. But not a direct answer to her question, since by "going to church" she, of course, meant "going to the LDS church."

This was it. It had to come out.

"FTA, have you been going to the Mormon church?"

"No," I said. I felt horrible. But it was out there.

She reacted a little better than I had anticipated. Which was great. But I still got a lecture along the lines of "Searching for the truth is fine. If that's what you need to do, then do it. But don't ignore the once place where you will find Truth."

It's the "why" of her reaction that bothered me. Turns out her contained reaction was due to an experience she had right after the first conversation a few months previous. After I got off the phone with her that time, she now told me, the Spirit told her I would come back to the church eventually. Frankly, I was appalled that the Spirit told her my future without asking me first what I wanted. What happened to free will? If God knows I'll come back, does that mean I don't actually have a choice whether or not I return?

"What?" I asked.

She explained further. "After I got off the phone with you that last time, I felt peace. So I knew you'd come back."

She felt peace. Then she interpreted it to mean the only thing she could: I'd come back. There was no way that peace meant that she searched her soul and found that she did, indeed, still love her daughter? No way that it could mean that people can leave the church and still be just fine? No, of course not. The church teaches that The Only Happiness comes through obeying all the rules of the church, making and keeping all their covenants, going through their rituals, believing their theologies. No room to budge. So the only way my mom could possibly feel peace after finding out I was questioning all that was "It's only temporary. She'll be back."

I understand that it's her way of coping. But it's also insulting.