9: Chatting with the Martins

This was absolutely fantastic, and resonated with me so strongly – especially Teri’s description of feeling ‘broken,’ which is how I spent my teens and early 20′s. 

I also appreciate Greg’s input about how expecting a genuine spiritual response to a prayer looking for confirmation is NOT ‘seeking after signs’ or demanding that God dance to your tune but is simply putting faithfully into practice what the scriptures teach. I think that point is so important as part of the pulling down of the ‘blame the victim’ tendencies in religion.

I once tried to express to a TBM why the church had been so damaging to me and the response was that I had ‘taken it too seriously,’ which totally floored me. This is ‘the one true church,’ the church that leads me to eternal life – how could it be taken anything else but seriously?? I’ve seen that same sentiment other places and I’m still baffled. 

I particularly like, however, hearing your discussion as a couple in your different roads to leaving the church. Much of what you say reflects my own experience, but my husband and I never talked together about why he had left vs why I had left, only that we were grateful that we had. I think it’s mostly because there was no resource that we were aware of at the time like NOM or post-mo or ME or MS; there was no general culture against which we could frame our personal journeys. It’s one of my minor regrets that I won’t ever know what his path was, so hearing insights from Teri and Scott is really, really valuable to me – thank you both for your willingness to share.

**What resonated with me the most was how Scott has spent so much time posting on NOM.  I feel insane when I have this urge to spend all this time untangling mormonism.  And then, when you manage to untangle something, there’s just silence on the other end of the line.  Nobody else out there wants to engage in the conversation.  Even others who would have been interested at some point in their journey, have moved on, so at any given time there are just so few people who want to talk about your specific thing.  

**It took a long time for me to connect the dots in church that on the one hand this was supposed to make me happy, but it was dull, boring, and just not working for so many people.  

**Mission experience.  I’ve heard so many variations for how things go with mission presidents.  I tend to give latitude to those guys and their individual styles.  There is no way my mission president would have sent someone home for what you did.  That’s just lame.  

** Tracting out a whole town 3 times.  There are so many things the church could do to change up the mission experience to make it a more useful / psychologically healthy thing.  I’m curious how you look back and view that time.  Is there any other way of looking at it than to see it as a giant waste of time?  Empty promises around every corner.  

** I’m a person with a healthy level of confidence, and a childhood where people were basically good to me.  I’m amazed at the amount of time I spent feeling like I didn’t measure up and never would.  Its weird.  

**I’ve been told I took the church too seriously as well.  Lame.  I’ve also been told I didn’t give the church enough of a chance or try hard enough.  Its a tool kit that is used to get you to do/feel whatever ‘the man’ wants you to do/feel right now.