Religious Freedom

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Oh, and while it certainly changed my relationships I found that hardly anybody took the hardest line interpretation of not associating with the lapsed.

Hopefully you'll find that to be true as well, particularly within the family (but I know that is something that seems to vary a lot from region to region).

I doubt that any family will cut us off. On my side only two of my sisters and my parents are still members. My other sister and two brothers already left. My mom will understand, my sisters won't but they will still talk to me. It will be a long time before I'm honest with my dad and his wife. I would hate for it to get back to my 87 year old grandfather who's been serving his entire life. None of Michael's five siblings are, which is actually one of the reasons why we'll just gradually let his mom see that we don't plan on returning. I think she had high hopes that one of her children would come back to the religion.

I have seen many people cut off family for leaving though. My older brother was one of them. I often wonder how different his life would have been if he had been shown compassion and sent to rehab rather than being kicked out of the house at 17.

Regardless, such a decision seems to be a mixed blessing. I feel somewhat as though I've carved a huge chunk of my own flesh off. It may have been infected flesh, but I still have religious ghost limb syndrome.

Thanks for sharing your experience.