I'm a little hesitant to return to online forums 'cause I used to have a real problem with how much time I spent on 'em. But I could use some support and fellowship, and online forums are a great source of these things.
About me now
I'm 41, the divorced father of 5 wonderful sons ranging from 10 to 19. I live with my oldest son Jedidiah in a two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of a large west-coast city. The younger three boys are with me & Jed on alternate weekends; they live about an hour away with their mom, who has remarried. Jed stopped going to church and believing in the gospel in his mid-teens, as did his younger brother Alexander. They were very close. Their mother and her children (their younger half-siblings) are still LDS. Alex took his own life a little over a year ago after a breakup with his first & only girlfriend.
The younger 3 boys and their mom & her husband are very active. In fact, she's one of the "best" Mormons I've ever known. Their stepdad is pretty darn wonderful as well.
My early past
I was raised in the Church, in Utah. My mom is another of the "best" Mormons I've ever known. She still lives in Utah, with my sister, who left the church in her mid-teens. I've had a rough road with my faithfulness to the gospel, though I've never come anywhere close to lessening my testimony. My primary temptations have always been moral - pornography & sex, but I've also dabbled frequently to various degrees with Word of Wisdom. I don't feel like I've ever been addicted to any substances, but I've used alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, and all but the most hardcore drugs. My participation in church has fluctuated, mostly depending on how well I was doing at resisting various temptations. It's tough to attend church when actively engaged in moral transgressions, and often feeling the effects of a wild Saturday night. I divorced my first wife, and when she moved out to the west coast I followed her to be close to Jed & Alex. I soon met & married a wonderful LDS girl. We were sealed in the temple, and had 3 more sons. After about 6 years our marriage was falling apart. We separated, and I moved in with a buddy from work. I soon "fell in love" with a young stripper and moved her in with me. That was the last transgression the Church would allow me, and after a loving & compassionate Disciplinary Council I was excommunicated. That was about 12 years ago. Despite all of this, my (2nd) wife and I reconciled and spent another 3 years together. But our efforts & therapy kept falling short in keeping our marriage alive, and 9 years ago we finally divorced.
Through all of this time between 15 and about 33, my pattern of waxing & waning in my struggles continued. I put vast & earnest efforts into religious & secular therapy, online forums, groups, etc. Despite lots of willpower & work, I always eventually fell to temptations, and repeated the cycle of repentance and renewed efforts again and again, endlessly, for 15 years or so, through 2 wives and 5 children.
That all changed a few years ago, not long after I divorced my 2nd wife. I was 33.
My recent past
About 8 years ago I stumbled back into an old passion I'd had in college - acrobatics. After training a local acrobatic troupe for a year I was offered a position as a performer. I agonized about it for about a week, primarily because I knew what it would do to my fluctuating & pathetic efforts to live up to my beliefs. The circus lifestyle is rife with temptations, and full of every vice known to man. It's the Great and Spacious Building with glitter & backflips.
But on the other hand, I was more miserable and lonely and sad than I'd ever really been before. I avoided any kind relationship with LDS women, 'cause I'm a nice person and I couldn't conceive of saddling some righteous lady with a serial "failure" like myself. I've always been a very nice person, a good father, and someone that non-religious people would hold in high esteem. But by LDS standards I was in pretty sad shape. So, I found myself becoming a hermit, sinking into video games and online pornography to escape my misery. I was getting depressed enough to worry for my health, and I guessed that Funseeking would alleviate a whole bunch of my struggles.
Besides, maybe wickedness really was happiness...
I mostly stopped attending church, and gave up on my efforts to obey the Lord's laws regarding the Word of Wisdom and chastity. I didn't exactly dive off the deep end... I exercised restraint in my Funseeking, and in comparison with most of the worldly crew I was running with, I've been pretty much average. I've had ridiculous amounts of fun living my circus lifestyle, and my life has in most ways been better than it's ever been before... except for the growing distance between myself and Christ. I've not become a bad person, at all, but my spirituality has faded slowly, and I've gradually succumbed the overwhelmingly prevalent worldly viewpoint that the best guide to living is, "Do what feels good as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. The more consenting adults you can share the fun with, the better."
I've found a great many wonderful friends who I'm very close to. They're pretty awesome people and I love them dearly. But each time someone compliments me on what a great guy I am, it reminds me of the world I grew up in, a world where people look up to spiritual giants. Every ward I've ever been in has a handful of families who are led by an incredible Brother and Sister. These "best" Mormons are Really Getting It, and living the gospel in their every breath, 95% of the time. They certainly make mistakes and selfish choices and they have their flaws and sins... but the spirit dwells with them almost always, and the light of Christ shines from their eyes at almost every moment. In the worldly lifestyle I've been part of, there aren't any of these people. There are some wonderful people who would be that if they only had the truth, but they're few & far between, and they're surrounded by hedonism and selfishness that holds them back.
Every compliment paid to me is kinda like a knife, reminding me of how pathetically low the bar is out there... when I get praised for how good I am, and I'm so living much abysmally further below my potential than I ever have before.
My decision to return
I've never been tempted to give up on my beliefs and justify my sins. I've seen plenty of LDS people leave the Church and do this, and without fail I can clearly see how lost and miserable and bitter they are, 'cause deep down where their soul is, they know full-well they've traded true happiness and joy in for something shallow and fleeting. Satan can't fool our spirit, he can only cloud our mind and command our appetites. My testimony of the gospel has only been strengthened by watching from onstage as the misery of self-indulgence and funseeking is played out again and again. People seek entertainment, excitement, and fun. They use these as substitutes for joy and true kindness. They're very generous and loving and kind to their friends & family... they can be almost manic about it, in fact. It seems pretty clear to me that it's a desperate attempt to offset and counteract the lack of true, Christlike kindness and generosity. Christ didn't lavish his kindness and mercy on his friends, family and disciples. He lavished it on those who didn't deserve it. That's what LDS folks are taught in church - be kind to those whom it's not easy to be kind to. It's wonderful to help the miserable and poor and needy... almost everyone I know would sacrifice a great deal to assist a desperate single mother or a hurt child or a wounded animal. But they've years of practice at turning away from a filthy homeless man, and hardening their hearts to someone who "deserves what they get". I learned all my life in church, that none of us are worthy of the mercy that God extends to us through the Savior. Christ never rejected anyone who was in need of His love and kindness, no matter how terrible they'd been in their life, and what lousy decisions had put them at the end of their rope. The "best" Mormons I know give their love and compassion because it's needed, not because it's justified. And I really, really miss that in the people I associate with. As Little Red Riding Hood learns in one of my favorite musicals ever, "Nice is different than Good."
So, after 8 years of intensive research into vice and hedonism, I've succeeded in building an ironclad testimony that Wickedness never was Happiness. I always knew this, of course... but now I know it to the core of my being, from personal experience and painstaking observation and experience.
But here's the difficulty of my situation - I really love the benefits of my circus life. I love what I do, I love entertaining, I love being healthy, I love teaching people to do amazing acrobatic feats, I love my community of friends, and I love thousands of other spectacular perks that come with my new life. I'm doing handstands on the Great and Spacious Building, and it's even more fun that it looks like from far away. I've never in my life had less problems with gaming, pornography, and similar addictive, escape-from-reality kinds of behaviors. I'm afraid that if I give up my lifestyle and return to my old lifestyle, I'll end up leaping off a bridge. I was close, before. I doubt I'll be much better at resisting temptations now than I used to be, and I can see myself going right back to the isolated, miserable depressed life I used to live.
It's only been in the last few months that I started to really believe that maybe I can keep being a trainer, acrobat and circus performer while withdrawing from the vices that tempt me.
When my son Alex killed himself a year ago, my circus life was in full swing. I saw my kids on weekends and loved them dearly, but when they weren't with me I was very much caught up in my own life. I was Funseeking just as hard as everyone else in my peer group, despite occasional pangs of sadness for the Christlike potential I was falling further away from. Alex's death really shook me, because I have no doubt that if I'd been the father I could be, living the life I should have been, he would still be alive. I was doing a "passable" job as a father, rather than an "excellent" job, which had always been my #1 goal... until the hedonism edged in and started eating up my time & attention. It was an incredibly painful realization that my selfishness had resulted in failure at the most sacred and important responsibilities any of us can undertake - stewardship of one of Father's children, to act in His stead in guiding and loving and setting an example for them. I really dropped the ball, and as a result, we lost a soul that should've lived a long and fruitful life that was filled with the light of divinity. I hope to someday ask for forgiveness for that... but I can't even think about doing so until I've become the kind of father that I could and should be. Rebaptism is the first and most straightforward step in that process, and once I get to that point I can figure out what else I need to do in order to finally feel like there's any justification for me to claim I've repented.
All last year I observed myself and how I handled temptations. I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised, and I got some encouraging feedback from everyone I talked to about it. I party less actively than most of my peers, for example. I drank less, and was sparing in my use of recreational drugs, and marijuana. I was one of the more chaste people, as a monogamous boyfriend. Even when I was single, I dated sparingly, cringing from the sluttish lifestyle that was available to me. I wasn't prideful or arrogant, and I was known as a kind and compassionate person who loved to help and serve. These affirmations bolstered my belief that I could resist the temptations of my circus life, perhaps well enough to not have to leave it in order to give up my vices.
So in the last few months of 2012 I decided and announced that in January, I'd be returning to living my beliefs. I made sure to talk about it a lot, so that everyone would know, and I'd have social consequences if I gave in to the inevitable temptations. After the great big New Year's Eve party and afterparty, I stopped using any chemicals more powerful than sugar. My girlfriend doesn't fully understand or agree with why it's inappropriate for us to be intimate, but she supports and upholds my resolution completely. To my immense surprise, every one of my friends and compatriots in the circus world has been very supportive and encouraging of my resolution, even those who think it's repressive and foolish and wasteful. Some of the most hedonistic people I know have been very forward in praising and bolstering my decision, which has brought me to tears on several occasions. These people really do love me and want me to be happy, even if they think the reasons behind my choices are silly and brainwashed. It's pretty heartwarming.
2013
I've done passably well in my resolutions. My girlfriend and I lasted a week before the temptation to reconnect sexually won out. We're trying to figure out, still, how we're going to handle that one. It's tough to restructure a deep, long-lasting relationship to remove the sexual element. We've been together for over 3 years, and while we've considered changing to "just close friends" I truly don't think that would fix things... it would just shift the adversary's lane of attack to pornography and casual hookups. I feel less guilty about monogamous intimacy.
I did great at the "no chemicals" part, until our circus' first road trip. I held someone's drink, and sipped at it to fit in, knowing I wasn't taking in anything but a taste of alcohol. Then I took a drag on a cigarette, and before long I was partying along with everyone else. I've done great since then, and I think I'll continue to do so. The chemicals used to be a bigger temptation than they are now, after having lived among party animals for years and watched over and over how it works, as well as trying it out myself. It's just not that tempting to me.
So, that's my story as it pertains to my journey back into fellowship, and eventually back into rebaptism and membership. I'm excited to be part of an online LDS community again... I understand and dig Mormons, and I like hanging out with 'em.
My girlfriend is experimenting with coming to church with me and the younger boys, and I of course harbor the secret, nervous hope that she'll be open to the Spirit, and discover why LDS people have such strong belief in the gospel. I'd love to spend eternity with her, and my journey would be wonderful if she were part of it. I mean, she is part of it, and she supports me in it... but it would be incredibly better if we were actually sharing it.
