We're fixing to move, and paring down the stuff. I was cleaning the garage and throwing stuff in the large bin, and saw she had thrown away a bunch of LDS church books. One was "Miracle of Forgiveness." That book is the source of a lot of her problems, and she's been really hurt by being forced by her bishop at BYU to read it when she very nearly got thrown out of the university. So much later, I got rid of the copy we had. Then another copy popped up again over time, and I was going to throw it out a few months ago, but I noticed that it was inscribed by her mother who has since passed away, and I was afraid to throw it out. Her mother was a master of passive aggression, so she had gone through the book and had underlined a bunch of things that she wanted my wife to see and read. But yesterday it was in the trash, along with several others, including "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith," given to her father, and an antique LDS hymnal from the 1800's. I thought about fishing a couple of them out. I went through "Teachings" to see if it was worth preserving for doctrine that the church pretends they never had, but it was just not worth it. I threw them all back in.

I have no particular hope for her. She is a true believer. But it's nice to see her make this decision to discard the books, and that the Miracle of Forgiveness may have got too painful for her.

That's a good sign maybe.

A lot of Mormons are good at ditching the old teachings because, after all, only current prophet matters. All that old stuff is trumped by whatever the current prophet and brethren have cherry picked anyway.

OTOH, it shows she doesn't want to "save the evidence" to show how crazy it was.


Hey, at least you don't have to move that stuff!

I think it's a good sign.

Moving is also a good sign. It's much easier to leave the church when you don't have the social pressure of a community you've been a part of for years. You don't have as much to lose.

Good luck!

I would just love to have a copy of the first edition of "Mormon Doctrine"

I wound up with a 1st ed copy autographed by Bruce R himself. It came from my father's past when he was doing LDS. Somehow he got a copy signed. He bailed out of the church before I did and it ended up in my pile of books to dump when I left. I was last of the family to do leave. Slow learner it would seem.

Anyway, I had no use for it. I despised Mormon Doctrine and BRM even when I was a TBM. I didn't even want to try to milk money out of it, just get rid of it. So my late wife gave it to someone named Craig that she knew from alt.religion.mormonism back when that was a thing, like in 2000. My wife was an a.r.m moderator. Talk about a thankless job babysitting a bunch of dicks. I have *tons* of awe for Eric, Concrete Zipper, Susan, Tevai, et.al. who do it here. I wonder now who that Craig was and if he still has it.

the first edition of McConkie's MORmON DoctUrine has some real gems in it, like the declaration that MORmON polygamy would be re-established prior to Jesus returning to pave the way for His second coming. My wife at the time had a first edition copy and she used that McConkie Gem as justification to practice polygamy, more commonly referred to a screwing around just prior to year 2000 when she figured that Jesus was going to return over the Y2K computer crash crisis. of course, McDonkie himself was quite a gem. listening to his sanctimonious drone made me realize that Hell would be preferable to any MORmON heaven with an ASSpostHOLE like that in it.

Throwing out the MoF which had such an negative impact on her life has to be a marker of something good. Dyed in the wool Mormon or not, I hope this means your wife is appreciating her own self on her own terms more and not allowing the Mormon church to define her.

Take that as not only a good sign, but a very good sign !

A good way to let go of something or someone is to throw them out and burn them so that you won't have to think about it go back to it again.

It's like a break-up: you throw out the photos, letters, cards, etc. to move on.

IMO, if you wife thought those books had any value, she would have lovingly donated them, right?

If she threw them in the garbage bin, then maybe she realizes that these books should be trashed, instead of given to others, to perpetuate the lies and unhappiness that the books caused her.

Often, the death of the domineering Mormon parents--the "Keepers of The Lie--will leave their adult Mormon children free to leave the cult and follow their own Truth.

Yes, it is a very good sign!

(Not Defending MoF)

I wish my former (I dislike ex) would Forgive me of my mistakes & challenges of the past;
I also think a Great part of being mature is being responsible for choices & actions, regardless of when-why-how they occurred.

Don't we all have items we'd like to be forgiven of, & pass that along to others?

All those LDS books. That was always there in the back of my mind. The GAs making money off of their callings.

New development: Last night wife comes in with my scriptures in their zippered cover. I haven't used them in over 10 years. She says, "I'm going to throw these away if that's okay." So now we're throwing away scriptures. I have some other old "scriptures" inscribed by my dad, who had a nice and professional looking hand when he wrote, so I'd like to save those. And because they were the older kind he had bought, so they are either George Albert Smith or early David O. McKay vintage, and they have all the old curses on black-skinned people, and the weird substitute names for Joseph Smith and others (Gazelam, Baurak Ale, Olinah, etc.), and stuff that today they try to maintain never existed.

And for you home brewers, there's another name crying out for a beer: Baurak Ale. (It's actually supposed to be Barakh El - blessed of God, but don't tell nobody.)

I need to give mine to Deseret Industries, but there is one that I'm going to hang on to: A personally autographed copy of The Miracle of Forgiveness. On the inside it says To (my full maiden name) From Spencer W. Kimball. Written in blue ink and his capital letters are pretty and intricate.