Dear Friends,
We apologize for an impersonal email and hope this does not diminish the personal nature of what we share or how much we appreciate your friendship. Some things are best said in print.
You may or may not know that our family has been through a faith journey over the past couple years that has led us to a change in beliefs over the church’s fundamental teachings. We know this saddens you. It grieves us also. We recognize we haven’t openly shared the details of our journey with you. Our reluctance to share has purely been a manifestation of our struggle to accept our new reality, but not a desire to keep you at a distance or because we don’t love or trust you. The reality is that this has been hard. In all honesty, it’s probably been one of the most difficult experiences we’ve faced together. Our loss does not come without grief, but we want you to know that we are doing well. We have grown closer as a family as we have gone through this faith transition together and we continue to feel God’s hand in our lives.
We are forever grateful for our time in the church. We have had many beautiful and endearing experiences in the church that have shaped who we are as people. There are many good things that we still appreciate and admire about the church and its people. The church will always be an important part of our heritage and a part of our story. We hope to keep all the goodness it has given us.
We value you and our friendship. Our hope is that a difference in beliefs will not come between us. We respect everyone’s individual beliefs and spiritual journeys and are teaching our children to respect others as well. We hope you always feel safe when we are together. We don’t want the church to be a taboo topic. If you ever have questions for us, we hope you feel comfortable asking, but out of respect for you we are not going to bring up the details of our faith journey with you. Rest assured, we have no intention of becoming anti-Mormon and certainly do not intend to spread doubt. We know that you can raise a happy family in the church. We are also confident that we can raise a happy family outside the church.
There are various misconceptions about why people step away from the church: a desire to sin, being offended, exposure to anti-Mormon literature, or being led away by Satan. None of these explanations describes what we’ve gone through. We want you to know that we are not doing this because we desire to live a life contrary to what the church or Christ have taught us. We were not ‘casual with our covenants.’ We were ‘all in’ and have spent more time studying the doctrine and history of the church the last couple years than ever before – from church approved sources. We have certainly been on both sides as we have watched many friends and former ward members leave the church. We have talked to them personally to better understand so we could help them navigate their doubts. We have both spent years in service on ward council. We have applied the advice to “doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” Just please understand that this enormous shift for us has not happened on a whim. We are not being flippant or just merely choosing to go inactive. In our attempt to live by our value of integrity, we feel a need to distance ourselves from the organization of the church.
We recognize relationship dynamics can shift when a commonly shared belief system changes for someone. We will work hard to not allow this change to affect our relationship. We will not be offended if we aren’t invited to temple nights, family home evenings, etc. In fact we’d prefer not to be someone’s project. We would love to spend time together in other ways. We are confident that our friendship exceeds religion and ideology. Thank you for continuing to be respectful of our family. We have felt your respect and love–it means so much!
With Love,
Anonymous
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