Starting in 6th grade, my family started moving
around in the West. Everywhere we went, I would become
involved in the Mormon Church and I grew up being taught
about the pre-existence of our spirits as literal
offspring of God the Father and how if we went to the
celestial kingdom we could become gods and goddesses and
have our own spirit children to people worlds.
I learned that God was once a man, and that it was
because of the principle of eternal progression that we
could become gods like him. I also learned I had a
Mother in Heaven somewhere along the way — whether I
learned this as a child or an adult, I don’t know. I
learned that the Book of Mormon was the word of God and
that the Bible was so far as it was translated
correctly.
I also learned over time that there had been polygamy in
the family. My grandma on my father’s side was the
product of a polygamous marriage. I was always
embarrassed by this. (I learned later that there was
polygamy on the other side of the family, as well, and I
have a family history detailing the hardships the
polygamous families, especially women, went through.)
When I was just a girl, I saw the facsimile to the Pearl
of Great Price, which is a drawing from a papyrus that
Joseph Smith acquired along with some Egyptian mummies.
A hovering, birdlike creature in the drawing was said to
be "an angel of God." I took a good look and thought,
"It can’t be," but immediately suppressed the thought.
(The papyrus has since been rediscovered and is actually
a part of an Egyptian Book of Breathings, although the
LDS still will not admit that.)
My home was not a happy one, and I suffered both
physical and emotional abuse as a youth. One of the most
damaging things to me was when as a girl of fifteen I
wondered why other girls were dating and I wasn’t, and
my mother said, "Some girls have it and some girls
don’t. You don’t." This was devastating to me not only
then but through my adulthood, until I dealt with it. As
a result of such abuse, I clung to the Mormon Church and
believed that my parents just weren’t "living the
gospel." I didn’t recognize the pressures the Mormon
Church was putting on them as individuals.
I went to BYU (Brigham Young University) for a semester,
but was unable to stay longer as my parents were in
financial straits. I came home and went to work and met
the man who became my husband. He was a brand new
convert to the church. We were married in the temple
just less than a year after he had joined (fudging the
one-year waiting period a little). I was horrified by
the death oaths of the temple ceremony at the time we
went through, thinking that it was like a pagan
ceremony, and I had trouble going back to do the proxy
work for the dead. (Due to publicity about them, the
death oaths were removed several years ago.)
We started our family right away, and had three sons in
five years. We attended regularly in our little branch
that grew to become a ward (a small geographical
division that grew in population and thus deserved
official "ward" status from the church). We served in
church callings whenever and wherever the bishopric
decided we should serve. I was Jr. Sunday School
coordinator and served in the Primary (the children's’
organization) as a teacher, as well as teaching Sunday
School and in the Young Women's program (teenagers) and
Cub Scouts as a den mother. Steve also served in varying
callings, often working with the scouts. Before we left
the church, I was public relations coordinator.
At one point, a lesson was being taught in our adult
Sunday School class about polygamy — not only its' early
existence in the church but how God outlawed it by
revelation. My husband raised his hand and asked, "When
in the history of God’s people has He ever changed a law
to bow to political pressure?" The teacher sputtered and
asked, "Why do you ask that? Why do you ask that?" Steve
was nearly ostracized for a while after that. Still we
kept on, and our boys went through scouts, and the first
two passed twelve years of age and held the Aaronic
Priesthood.
Steve and I had had problems in our marriage, and in the
process of counseling began to allow ourselves to
acknowledge thoughts we had suppressed before. We both
confronted our abusive pasts (Steve’s at the hand of
Christian parents — by the way, he went on to see
remorse in his Dad and to combat abuse in his church of
birth after we left the Mormon Church, which had a
lasting impact; my parents denied my abuse). He began to
face his negative feelings about Mormon authority (and
I, mine) and I committed myself to reading the New
Testament without Mormon preconceptions. In doing so, I
was struck by the first few chapters of Romans, in which
I read about Abraham’s faith being credited to him as
righteousness. Having been raised with the idea that the
only way to attain righteousness was to strive for it, I
was struck by what was said. I told Steve, "If this is
right, the Mormon Church is wrong." The more I read, the
more my perception changed.
We stopped one evening not long after that at Steve’s
old church and asked a question about prophesy. The
pastor patiently looked up the information and
considered the question. Such a change from the
threatened and angry way Steve’s questions were handled
in the Mormon Church! We decided to attend once there,
as perhaps the first of many churches we might visit
until we found the right one for us.
Before we did so, however, we made our decision to leave
the Mormon Church, and make it a clean break. We didn’t
want our names left on the records of the church, to
swell the ranks, as they count the "inactive" members.
We requested our names be removed and were told we would
have to go through a high council court and be
excommunicated because my husband was an elder. We did
so and were asked to reconsider; we bore our witness of
Jesus. Some Mormons have been convinced that we must
have committed some major infraction such as adultery,
which is a reason many Mormons are excommunicated, but
it wasn’t so. We protested having to go through that to
change churches, and the rules may have been changed
since then. Our sons also wrote letters asking that
their names be removed.
It was after making our decision that we read "No Man
Knows My History," by Fawn Brodie, and "Joseph Smith,
the First Mormon," by Donna Hill, and discovered the
wealth of documentation that indicated the Mormons
weren’t getting the whole story from their leaders. The
facts told by the documentation about the origins of the
church and many other aspects, including polygamy, are
far different than the official Mormon versions!
We began speaking about our experiences in the Mormon
Church at Christian churches, and we especially told
about the temple ceremony and the special clothes we
wore there and the undergarments we wore as a result of
going through the temple. Over time, though, my family’s
extremely negative reactions, including a letter from my
mother saying she had "lost a beautiful daughter," left
me depressed. We had decided to stay with the church of
my husband’s youth, a rather liberal Mennonite Church
(liberal for Mennonites, that is), and we had been
baptized there. I fell from the high of our speaking
engagements to a low. I rebelled against the idea of
organized religion altogether, even the
rather-unorganized Mennonite Church. I stopped attending
church and focused on working to help support the
family. I lived a moral life, but saw no need for church
attendance. I believed I could worship Jesus on my own.
My husband developed a terminal disease, and he
eventually passed away in 1995, after 11 years out of
the Mormon Church. Towards the end of his illness (about
9 months before), I attended a church Ladies Night Out
and the speaker talked about the importance of getting
in the Word. I had read the Bible off and on and prayed
at times, with the feeling that my prayers weren’t
answered, but this time I decided to start reading the
Bible and not stop. I had a One-Year Bible (NIV) with
selections from the OT, NT, Psalms and Proverbs for each
day, and I started reading it. I continued reading, no
matter what, and my attitude of rebelliousness began to
abate. Three months later, a friend from church saw me
in the store and invited me to go to
Bible Study
Fellowship a nondenominational Bible study, with
her. I went and enjoyed it immensely. We were studying
the life of Moses. With each week’s lesson, I learned
more of how the Old Testament pointed toward Jesus. The
subject matter was rich and I was growing spiritually.
It helped me be strong as my husband’s health continued
to deteriorate.
He passed away, and I was faced with life without him.
He had always been a dominant and extremely strong
person, and now I was even faced with taking over his
business. The Lord gave me strength and I was able to do
so successfully.
People at church were so loving and supportive at the
time of his death that I was led to begin attending Zion
Mennonite again. Not long after, I started a new year of
BSF again, studying the Book of John. (I am no longer in
BSF.) Then I was asked to co-edit the church newsletter,
and later become church reporter to the regional
newspaper. I was given a choice in the matter in both
instances! Both have brought me a great amount of joy. I
also edit the Oregon Mennonite Historical and
Genealogical Society newsletter and am on the Society’s
executive board as a result. I can testify that reading
the scriptures daily changed my life.
The business continues to do well, benefiting me and my
sons. I give thanks to God for His goodness and His
grace in bringing me to where I am today.
— Suzanne