I was going to start this story at 16, but in truth it starts at 12. President Hinckley had come out with questions that he wanted father’s to ask their children once a month. My dad only did the first month of questions. I choose to believe it’s because he saw that they were harmful and awkward.
One of the questions was if I touched myself, I didn’t understand that, so he explained. That night I became curious and that spiraled out of control. By 16 I was dating and had a steady boyfriend, outside of the church. We had intercourse, my parents found out and dragged me into the bishops.
The bishop asked me all kinds of intrusive questions which I thought were ok for him to ask. If they weren’t ok for him to ask why would my parents have dragged me in there to talk to him, right? Questions like: how did it start, what happened next? Basically wanting a play by play.
I went through the repentance process and felt really uncomfortable about talking to the bishop after that. It turned into shame and guilt and my anxiety got worse. I didn’t feel like I could talk to my parents. They took me to talk to him in the first place. So i started smoking marijuana, then taking, snorting, smoking pain killers to numb myself and calm the anxiety.
When I went to talk to the bishop about graduating seminary I wouldn’t talk to him about much of anything besides seminary and my attendance of class and he wouldn’t let me graduate unless I talked to him about my sexual relations again. So I walked out of the church and haven’t been back in one since. That is not a man called of God.
Wow. I’d like to know what Hinckley-recommended questions you are referring to. I looked at lds.org but couldn’t find anything. I was also taught a lot of things, as a child, in the name of the Church… or as a teaching of an apostle or prophet… which was actually just “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints According to my Dad”.