This is wise. When I was a teenager, so many kids around me used the idea “we have to try things to see if they’re good or bad” to excuse using drugs or sex. Well, now they know. I guess earth life is meant to teach some people in the only way they will learn.

I do wish that there was a side blog or tab that had a place to “Ask Ardis” about things that are from older posts, and to also be able to express gratitude for both current content, and the richness of the archives.

I have had a number of friends who were introduced to the gospel through our friendship, and who have been taught by the missionaries in my home. A number of times I have heard the missionaries ask my friends about their religious experiences growing up, and then take those less positive aspects of their experiences, and explain how the gospel and our LDS doctrine and church structure are more in line with the teachings of Christ. With only two exceptions, these friends did not know me as a teenager, and so I have always struggled with how open I should be about me experiences growing up in my family and ward(s). (I lived in the same house from 3-18, but because of ward boundary changes was part of three different wards.)

Certainly the missionaries teaching my friends have been sincere in wanting to contrast churches who do not have prophets, the restoration of priesthood keys, and the additional light and knowledge of the gospel, beyond just the Bible, in our canonized scripture. Still, I have wondered what those missionaries would say about my personal experiences as a child and teenager, if they did not know that I was raised LDS.

Certainly my “lived experience” with the gospel, during my childhood, has led me to reject the faith of my father and most of the ward leaders I knew as a teenager. It is only because of my personal relationship with my Heavenly Parents, and Their request that I continue to labor in “this part of the vineyard,” that I have stayed active. I have had to wrestle with myself and angels to reach that decision, but I do not blame others for having come to the opposite conclusion. After our shared experiences, it is not surprising to me that most of my cohort turned their backs on the religion of their parents. This lesson, as the discussions I have listened to as my friends have investigated the gospel, continues to convinced me that if the joy we feel at the souls we bring to Christ will bring us great joy, so will those who we have chased away from the church bring us despair.

I was already thinking about this before I read Grant’s comment, but felt prompted to share my thoughts, rather than keeping them to myself. Certainly it is good when adults, whose early experiences with their parents and the church are not positive, have the chance to find other experiences that make the gospel come alive for them in other ways. It is not easy to find a few drops of truth in a rainstorm of abuse from a variety of sources.

When I listen to the stories of those who have left, who had either similar social stigmatization as children and teenagers, or the abuse by a parent or siblings, I find no place to judge them. They could easily follow all of the steps outlined in this lesson, and not receive the same spiritual experiences I did, and easily have decided that the faith of their fathers was too destructive to them spiritually and emotionally. Some may find their way back, and I would support them in that decision, but I also see that many of my former Sunday School classmates are living much happier lives, and providing much less abusive environments than we grew up in. Often when I spend time thinking about those experiences that I clung to through each crisis of faith, I know that for me, I did reject the way the faith was lived by my parents when they were married. I reject the sociality of the ward(s) I was a teenager in. I reject the unrighteousness dominion of my father and a number of priesthood leaders from my childhood and teenage years. But for the Grace of God, (and for me that Grace came from knowing the spiritual “voice” of my Heavenly Mother) I very easily could have left the LDS church, without looking back, by following the process laid out in this lesson.

My point is some people leave the church because their parents can be real jerks sometimes. (I hope my kids aren’t getting any ideas.) But if they would only apply their own reason, experience, and the spiritual/feeling/intuitive aspect, they can still hold on to truth – that whole Apostle Paul thing – “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

But still, the really cool part was running into my friend, Ardis!

And a hear, hear, and amen to Marilyn O’s ecstatic response to finding Keepapitchinin. It’s a really great place, isn’t it?

Marilyn, comments like yours are so fun to read! Keepa has been going now for something like four years, and in the beginning the comments were full of the same enthusiasm and response to novelty that yours shows here — this way of looking at our past was new to all of us then. But the novelty has worn off for most regular readers so I don’t very often hear the rush of enjoyment anymore. Thanks for igniting it again!