My Side of the Story - Church

I have decided to tell my story. There are two sides to every story, and this is my side. I grew up in the LDS church and always had a strong testimony that the church is true and everything the church teaches is the right thing. But then I grew up. I went out on my own for a couple years and I started having questions. Not necessarily about the churches teachings, but more about the rules and how the church made me feel guilty for every single thing I did. I started dating my husband who is a convert to the LDS religion. He grew up without a religion and was baptized at 19. He would go to church and hear people bare their testimony saying “the church is amazing, my life would be a mess without it and I would be so unhappy” my husband had a fabulous childhood. He’s one of the happiest people I know even without the church. He had questions about the church and would ask me. I could never give him solid answers and I began questioning as well. My doubts built up and I eventually stopped going to church. I still love the church and many of its teachings. 

Many people throw around the words “best friend”. they call many different people their best friend. Well I can honestly, truly say the girl in this story was my one and only BEST friend. I loved her so much. I would choose her to be stranded on an island with. After not going to church for about a year, I had this LDS friend over for a sleep over. I was married at this point but my husband works 48 hour shifts with the local fire department and was on shift that night. It was getting late in the night and the conversations became deeper and deeper. Pretty soon we were telling each other all our secrets. A lot of things were said that night. But the main thing that I believe stuck out to my friend is that I told her I didn’t know how I felt about the church anymore. I was having doubts and questions. She became very brutally honest with me and was very stern. She said something along the lines of “the church is true, you know it’s true. Why would you even think it’s not?” 

The night ends and a couple of weeks pass by. I try to hang out with this friend several times and continuously get shut down. I finally bring up my concerns to her and she openly tells me she doesn’t want to hang out with me because she is scared I will try to persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to (like drink alcohol). I tell her that’s not how it works. We can believe different things without pushing each other to do anything they don’t want to. Several months go by of me trying to get my friend to hang out with me. She continuously shuts me down by making excuses. At this point I have finally had enough. I tell her I am done with a one sided relationship and as soon as I do, I saw a side of my “friend” I’ve never seen before. Her words crushed me! “Good luck being lonely because we all know no one else wants to hang out with you.” I was completely appalled by these words. I didn’t know she had such horrible feelings towards me. I tell her “You may be getting married in the temple, and you may be going to church, but you can’t just go through the motions. You actually have to be a good person to go to heaven” the church teaches to love everyone and accept them for who they are. Why was I not receiving this love and acceptance from my “best friend”. She reply’s with “You better believe I am a good person. The church is true and there is nothing about your actions that will ever make me believe you are doing better than me. I am a happy, worthy member and don’t you ever drag me down to your level because of something as petty as not being able to hang out with you.”I’m speechless. Now I’m at a lower level than her because I don’t go to church? Now I can never do better than her because I don’t go to church? 

This encounter has made me very sour. I have such hard feelings towards the church right now. Maybe the church should be teaching more about love and acceptance and how everyone is a person no matter how they live their life. We shouldn’t choose to run away from people who don’t believe the same thing as us. We should love them just the same. Maybe we should put the Book of Mormon down for a minute and read a little dr Seuss. “A person’s a person, no matter how small” 

Its been almost a year since I’ve talked to this friend. I still have feelings of anger towards her. But every time these feelings come along, I pray (yes, I still believe in and love God) that I won’t feel so much anger towards her. It’s just hurting myself. That’s why I’m writing this now. I want to stop being angry about the situation and I’m hoping writing my feelings down will help with that. I decided to share my story but I don’t share it to be thrown a pitty party. I tell this story to provide awareness. Awareness that we all want to be loved and accepted no matter how we choose to live our lives. 💕