This is a big one, and I don’t know how far I’ll get with it tonight; this move and the subsequent CRAP that goes along with it is definitely taking its toll on me, especially as I’m now driving an hour to and from work in addition to hitting up the old house to keep getting it readier for sale…. Sigh. I’m EXHAUSTED.

But anyway.

How it all started kind of depends on which “it” we’re talking about.  But, here’s a stab at it:

A few years ago, when I was pregnant with our first, Little Miss, we visited Palmyra, New York with some friends. We had such a great time visiting during the off-season for tourists there – we had all the sites and tours to ourselves, and could actually get around the shops and bookstores without bashing into people at ever turn; it was a great trip!

While visiting the LDS-themed bookstore in downtown Palmyra (is there really anything else TO Palmyra other than downtown? I mean, really… a bustling metropolis it is NOT!) and picked up a few things. I remember him picking up a few books that looked so interesting, among which was one on Mormonism and magic (Early Mormonism and the Magic World View) and another on Mormons and the ever-so-hot topic of polygamy (Mormon Polygamy: A History). I thought nothing really of it except that I was excited to have the books in our library and eventually get around to reading them: I LOVE to read and I love to learn about history and what happened, why, when, by and with whom… people are and always have been FASCINATING.

Anyway. So he bought these cool books.

And then over the next years would read a little bit, and put them aside, then read a little bit…. he’s not a voracious reader like I am, so it often takes him forEVER to get through a book, if he gets through it at all.  As far as I know his purpose in purchasing these books or having an interest in the subjects had nothing to do with a desire to test or undo his faith, but you’d have to ask him and see if he remembers where his brain was at back then. WHO knows?

About two years ago he lost his job.  His DREAM job – the job he had his sights set on when he was tailoring his education at university, settled his family in a city for, and quite frankly, for the most part, really enjoyed doing.  He’s a computer programmer and was working on programming video games.  Yeah.  All nerdy boys’ dream, right?  And here he was more or less living it.  With some hiccups, for sure, but it was safe, secure, and decent.

And he lost the job.

Poor man came home just a wreck.  Totally blindsided.  There were a bunch of legal issues and crazy things going on and the funding for the company’s project just disappeared….everyone was laid off. It was BRUTAL. We were definitely not the only ones hit.

So then, he’s unemployed.

For a YEAR.

It seemed whatever he did for a year, just…nothing happened. Which was frustrating for ME, so I can’t imagine how incredibly disheartening it was for him; he’s VERY VERY good at what he does, and should be making great money at work that he LOVES to do, and here he can’t even get a job doing ANYTHING.  It was an awful year.

But at the end of the year I found out he’d not just been working on finding a job, but also been working to expand his knowledge base and understandings of some of the stickier bits of Church history.

An interest he’d piqued by actually sitting and reading the book he’d bought years earlier on polygamy.

It was sooooo unfortunate that his “journey” as he calls it, for a large part, happened in this year: we both suffer from depression and him being out of work was hard on BOTH of us. And then choosing to spend some of his ridiculously valuable time researching history instead of pounding the pavement…. that was a huge part of why I was so furious with him; I couldn’t believe his lack of priorities (or at least that his priorities at the time didn’t align with my, obviously, perfect ones 😉 – if hunting to understand and have truth isn’t a priority in life, yeah….  Anyway!)

By the time he hit me with the news he’d stopped believing the Church was really anything other than an organization that does some good stuff in the world (he’s very not ANTI-Mormon) he’d been working on his position for five or six months.  There was no back-and-forth, no chance for us to investigate and learn together.  I was so disappointed, AM disappointed: it’s a topic I am SO interested in, but being happy in my faith and kind of run-off-my-feet busy ALL the time since…I haven’t found the time. I WILL, but oy.

Anyway. There you have it! That was that.  While some people hide and/or struggle with addictions to substances, pornography, video gaming, gambling, shopping…goodness, any number of things, my husband hid from me his secretly debunking our entire world view!  hahaha

Don’t worry – we laugh and tease about it now.  More on those developments later. 🙂

You’ve been light on questions, lately – any new ones out there? Your questions give us things to talk about with each other and definitely things to write about!  hahaha Yes, our love of your questions is totally self-serving. Get over it. 😉 Ask away!