Grief, Trauma and Mary

I'm going through the stages of Grief, is Mary the answer to my trauma?

I wasn’t necessarily completely cognizant of this before, but it appears that I may be going through some of the stages of grief after leaving the LDS church. Apparently, the stages of grief include Shock / Denial, Anger, Sorrow, Acceptance, and Resolution / Hope.

The diagram below illustrates this, as well as things to help manage it.

Stages of Grief and how to combat them

I think that I was in the Denial stage for a long time, maybe at least twenty years or so. During that period, I was immersed in a ton of LDS apologetics material from many sources, as well as reading books by LDS authors. I recognize in hindsight that I had mostly “lost my testimony” and was looking for reasons to continue to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS church) is true.

I wrote out the full name of the LDS church because, according to my wife and the current president of her church, those who do not use the full and proper name are not being respectful of the church. For me, being born and raised LDS, I’ve seen this sort of “initiative” come and go repeatedly over the years. It’ll pass again as people realize how awkward it is and fall back into using the comfortable and easy LDS or Mormon monikers.

Initially, however, I was asked to spell the whole thing out in any place I was going to use LDS or Mormon. I told my dear wife that this would be awkward, horrible to write, and horrible to read. How do I add possessives and plurals or refer to members of the church if I have to write the entire thing out? I explained to her that sometimes I could use “LDS” multiple times in the same sentence and that I felt I’d already gone above and beyond to be respectful. I could have named this MormontoOrthodox and referred to the church as “the Mormon church” and its members as “Mormons,” - but she persisted, and I felt like I was being guilt-tripped into it.

Writing it out once, followed by the abbreviation in brackets, was the compromise, but it resulted in a huge fight that left both of us feeling hurt and angry.

While stewing in my anger, I realized that a few things might be going on inside me. I wasn’t just angry at what I considered to be a banal request; I was upset about the state of my relationship with the LDS Church in general and furious about feeling like I was being guilt-tripped (which was not her intention, but that was how I felt in reaction to it.)

As a primarily intellectual person, I think I initially skipped over the Anger phase and went straight to the Sorrow phase. I have been feeling a deep sense of loss that has led to depression. I’m worried about the deep sense of loss I’m creating in my family with my wife and children. I hope that through my writing, they can come to understand and accept it, but it will probably take a long time. I can sense that at least one of my sons is struggling with it, which hurts my heart. There is no good solution here. Do I shelter my family from suffering by staying in a faith that I don’t believe in? That I find uninspiring? That requires a monumental emotional effort just to walk in the front door? My initial impulse is to say yes so I don’t have to see the sadness on their faces, but I know I wouldn’t be able to do it. The most I could probably do is to become agnostically inactive. On the other hand, Orthodoxy gives me peace and inspires me to be better and grow in Christ. I actually want to go to church for the first time in my life and pray to be a better person - finally able to trust and rely on God. I also am actually doing service for other people I don’t know, mainly the homeless and those less fortunate. This is a first for me, and I think it’s probably a good thing.

I know what I have to do, but it’s really, really hard. So, I’m working on the Acceptance part of this - for myself. That’s largely what this entire publication is about, a perhaps lame attempt at processing in a way that helps diffuse my anger and frustration. Hopefully, in communicating why I left and what I’ve found, my loved ones can understand and have empathy.

Anger

As I come to terms with my exit from the LDS church, I do, however, feel that anger and frustration starting to come out. Thinking about how much time, money, emotional suffering, and effort I put into the church makes me angry. When I think about how just being in the church was an uphill battle for me every week for decades, I get angry. My cousin probably put it best…. being Mormon feels like rolling up a hill of broken glass in your birthday suit. That’s how I’ve felt most of the time I’ve been in the LDS church and why I became inactive years ago - content to live in a spiritual limbo and not have to deal with the pain of leaving or going.