Annul Me

I'm not so sure the LDS church needs to keep “us”, or that we need to keep the church. Maybe that is the core concept that I have finally come to see.... I have been exorcising my church demons and am feeling a lot better about life. I am at peace these days. The only time the internal struggle is even present is when I try and rectify my beliefs with those of the church. I'm not doing that so much anymore and the gospel has become as energetically charged, to me, as Buddhist theology or a book on ancient Mesopotamian culture. It has ceased to even register on my radar these days.

I am happy for that. Life exists outside of this particular maelstrom. Peaceful life. A good life. I am thankful for that. I personally don't feel that beating my head against the giant Mormon Theology stone is even a realistic, or desirable, option for me anymore. There is so much beauty and wonder outside of that paradigm that I have decided matters more and has more bearing on my spiritual progression. I don’t feel like the church fills that for me anymore.

Maybe I have fallen from grace. Or maybe I have evolved beyond the need for an external savior. I dunno. But there is peace and purpose to my life that I was unable to find within the limited confined of LDS theology and culture. I don’t miss the dissonance. I don’t miss the internal unrest and struggle. I don’t miss the narrow definitions and stifling ethical definitions. I am alright with my life. I’m alright with my connection to deity. I am no longer waiting for someone to save my soul, or allowing someone to step in and assume responsibility for the direction of my life. I am assuming that role myself. It is beautifully empowering.

The church doesn’t need me harping ad nauseum about its history, its theology or its cultural practices and I certainly wasn’t benefitting in any real way from any of those things. So, like a bad marriage, I have elected to dissolve the ties that bind. AND, like a bad marriage, both of us are better off without the company of the other.

I have been participating less and less here over the last few months. I need it less. I am feeling connected and grounded and feel I may have actually purged the bile that was building up inside of me over the last few decades. I no longer hate the church. I no longer feel the need to pull people from it or even discuss the things I have studied about it. I feel like I can close the book and file it away on a shelf somewhere, never to explore it in this way again. I am free now