I look out over the valley from where I am parked while waiting to pick up my oldest son from school. The mountains are covered in the red and oranges of fall, and the valley floor is bustling and busy and golden in the afternoon light. From where I sit I can see three temples and seemingly hundreds of steeples marking the LDS churches thickly dotting the valley and hills around me. My heart hurts.
The busy cars and bustle remind me of the pioneer spirit my Grandma Ginny was so proud to have descended from. She loved to talk about how her ancestors had made the desert salt lake valley “bloom as a rose”. I felt that connection to those pioneer ancestors deep in my soul as we spent summer evenings swinging on the porch swing in her flowering orchard garden. The bustle, the chapels and temples, all remind me painfully of what I have chosen to let go.
Being Mormon isn’t just something you believe in, it is your whole world. It is your community. It colors all your thoughts, and hopes and fears. Omar used to say being Catholic was part of your identity as much as the color of your eyes. I never understood how much that was true for me with my Mormonism until I tried to figure out which parts of me are me without it.
Leaving was the right choice, I have felt peaceful Godly confirmation over and over through this process. But it is so hard, too. It is a crazy mix of a million emotions, sometimes angry, sometimes heartbroken, sometimes wild and free, sometimes peace and love. I imagine that is what divorce is like. At the beginning when you are so sure and so in love, you never imagine that there will be an end. Sometimes I am so very sad that it wasn’t all what I thought it was, because I loved what I thought it was so much. There is so much I still do love. But I also know that I can’t stay any more.
The pain of leaving the church is part of the truth of leaving the church. But when our soul calls us to do hard things, we do hard things. So I am doing hard things.
