To my children

Dear children,

I want you to know that I love you.  More importantly, I hope you know that from our relationship. I want you to know a few things about me, how I view the world, and how I view you.  I want you to know I worry about your lives every day and I know I fail you as a father in many ways.  After my transition away from religious faith, I have adopted a nihilistic view of life, so the framing of what I say is a view of this life as your only chance to do whatever it is you want to do in life.  Once you die, your legacy and other's memories of you is all that is left.

I was always introspective and curious.  I've always wanted to know the origin or creation of things.  I knew thoughts, ideas and beliefs all originate somewhere, somehow.  As a missionary for the LDS church, this deep seated curiosity flowered and bloomed.  A fellow missionary introduced me to F.A.R.M.S. (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies), and I subscribed and started buying books and publications from them.  As a 24/7 missionary, my goal was to be armed with every answer possible to questions and concerns from not only investigators, but from members as well.  I quickly learned that Utah Mormonism was quite different than non-Utah Mormonism.  Members outside of the homeland, so to speak, tend to lack much of the culture of Utah that is often associated with the church.

The first thing I learned was that Hugh Nibley was a sort of demigod within the F.A.R.M.S. and apologist world.  He could go off on a historical tangent to support a lesson or teaching for pages and pages with this immense knowledge base, on a topic you, while reading about, are wondering how on earth he is going to connect to the point he is trying to make.  The Book of Mormon classes he taught at BYU is full of these tangents and his teaching style was very lecture-based, much of it was stories and tangents to lessons from a Book of Mormon scenario.

I soon branched out, including reading other authors that contributed to F.A.R.M.S. growing my apologetic library and knowledge base.  I felt more and more confident as a missionary and as a member in general, being able to speak with a background in historical and doctrinal accuracy.  After my mission, the studying tapered a bit as I was expected to do adult things like college and starting a family, but I persisted in my interest, as Mormon history is complex and bigger than a 2-year mission could cover satisfactorily.

D. Michael Quinn was the next big author I stumbled upon.  In the second half of my mission I saw his hierarchy series on a bookshelf of a man who had "lost his testimony," and had gone inactive.  This turned me off at first, but I had to know the validity of the author and the curious publisher, Signature Books.  I soon found an alternate library of knowledge outside of F.A.R.M.S., where authors had a little more freedom in their research and writing. I soaked up everything by Quinn, despite some subtle warnings from your uncle Andy.  Many of the things Quinn touched on only fueled the fire within to learn as much as I could about anything and everything Mormon.  The left fields and rabbit holes were endless and fascinating.

I started to gain a perspective of modern Mormon history and how much of what I was learning was largely unknown only a couple decades ago.  Leonard Arrington as the grandfather, then the rise of the internet soon had this modern Mormon history spreading like wildfire across the globe.  My shelf was stacked to what I thought was its breaking point for a while.  I tend to view my shelf material as a bit stronger than average.  Whether that correlated to stubbornness, patience, suspended judgment, or a combination of all three, I am not sure.

What I do know is that I grew up in a pretty good environment.  I had no reasons to dislike or even question the church.  My ward family was awesome.  I knew all the members and remember them today fondly.  Leaders led with love. Teachers taught with love.  I took this for granted a lot.  My initial cracks in my shelf were academic, supplemented with personal experience.  I was able to dismiss many experiences and chalk them up to emotion and my inherent naive outlook.  I held on to what I considered a handful of personal, sacred experiences that I had a hard time denying without further knowledge.  That knowledge eventually came. I now view these experiences with fondness, but without giving them as much weight or meaning.

I think my shelf was ultimately structurally compromised through personal experience.  The church adopted the view that people get 'trapped' in compulsive viewing of pornography, and label these poor souls as addicted to this form of sex.  They would even adopt a lot of terminology that was damaging to these individuals.  Terms like trapped, addiction, self-abuse, sin, plague, epidemic, etc. produced massive shame and dissonance within a person.  This shame directly and instantly produced compulsive behavior.

My curious nature showed through much earlier than my mission when I learned about sex.  I wanted to know everything about sex and human physiology. Because much of it had a shame association, it made my curiosity worse.  What was it about human nature and sexual acts that was so sinful?  I had certain topics in an Encyclopedia Britannica set in my room secretly bookmarked, as well as certain terms in a dictionary.  Eventually, my curiosity and self-gratification got out of hand.  I started looking at pictures. It weighed heavily on me.  The shame was like a giant thumb, pressing on me constantly.  Everywhere I went, everything I did, it was at the forefront of my mind.  I felt extreme guilt from every religious lesson.  The closer I got to turning in my papers for my mission, the more I was determined to be honest about it with the bishop.  As a priest, I was mortified by the prospect of having this interview as the bishop didn't exactly come across first as loving.  He seemed quite kind, understanding and thoughtful, but I knew I would shun this responsibility with him.

Luckily, it was time for the bishop to be released.  Six months before my interview, I got a new one.  His prevailing trait was love.  I knew I could go to him with this thing hanging over my head.  His response was to kneel in prayer and ask for help in overcoming this.  He thought, after meeting with the stake president, that I should not delay in going on my mission as planned.  I also loved the stake president.  I met with him and I could tell he was concerned, but I could also tell he thought highly of me and didn't think I should delay in going.  I left on my mission without changing and without feeling much fortitude in stopping.

Because the suppression messages were so strong, it became part of who I was.  The shame cycle eventually went from unbearable to mind numbing.  I became dead to the emotional roller coaster of getting high, then feeling massive amounts of remorse and shame, then slowly recovering, resolving to be better, only to find myself back on step one to start all over.

When things got serious with your mom and me, I was determined yet again to come clean.  I sobbed like a child telling her.  I knew I wasn't living up to the standards of a priesthood holder or even temple recommend holder.  Like the bishop, she wasn't quite sure how to handle this information.  We considered delaying our temple wedding, but in the end, mostly due to the culture, we kept our date.  Delaying a temple wedding would only mean one thing: sin.  We didn't want to reveal any notion of sin to our temple recommend holding family, let alone extended family.

If you have a basic understanding of the shame cycle, it is easy to also understand what it does to an emotional and social animal that is a human.  Isolation and projection are primary indicators.  I isolated myself from your mom, and I projected my feelings toward myself onto her.  I was angry, depressed and ashamed of who I was.  That was expressed outwardly and the primary target was your mom.  She often suffered in silence, only to blow up at me every now and again.  I revealed to her my unceasing problem a few times, but she had never been given the tools to deal with it as a spouse.  The church also tells its women that this is unacceptable, that a wife ultimately owns the sexuality of their spouse, and that their husband isn’t fit to lead their household with the priesthood with this problem.  Because it didn't help either of us, I soon gave up in confiding in her.

In 2010 I stumbled upon a new outlet.  I was never one to seek out someone else to share in my sin.  I shun from being social and I am naturally introverted.  Yet a girl from my past reconnected with me and we soon started having inappropriate conversations over the phone and via text message.  It was a stimulus overload.  I couldn't believe anyone else would desire me and it rekindled something within.  I felt new energy and hope not only in everyday living, but also with my wife.  It didn't last long though.  Your mom soon found out. She went into severe shock.  She was inconsolable.  I was willing to do anything.  We went to the bishop and I confessed everything.  The bishop put me on probation with the threat of disfellowship. I started going to the LDS 12 step addiction meetings.  They adopted the 12 step AA model.  I met with a dozen other men in the area on a weekly basis and we would share our feelings and focus on the steps.

I was sober for six months mostly out of shock.  Eventually the program plateaued.  It didn't help anymore.  The same depressing stories repeated every week.  The stories wreaked of hopelessness, even though people stated they had hope to merely manage their addiction.  Yet their shame and depression over the relentless cycle told the story of hopelessness.  Their wives or loved ones were in a similar place as your mom.  Some went to the spouse support group where similar struggles told had the same spirit of hopelessness to them.

A good friend told me of a non-LDS program, Sexaholics Anonymous.  Going there with fresh faces and less shame gave me new hope.  It was here that allowed me to be sober for the six months.  I felt more connected to the others that struggled.  Your mom and I was able to grow together from all this, even though it took her a long time to get to a good place.

Amongst all this, I was still on my spiritual journey and had to make all this fit into my belief system.  I still didn't know any better and believed what the church taught: that I had a sex addiction.  I had books on it and learned that my brain was equivalent to being on hard drugs.  This led to the belief that the problem would stay with me throughout my life.  The craving would always be there to combat and manage.  This is depressing news to someone who thinks there is inherent shame in it all.  So depressing that it makes the rest of life also something to manage.

We got orders in the Air Force that took us to Virginia.  It was also time to renew my temple recommend.  I had gone through a 'council of love' while still in Colorado and had taken the steps necessary to get back in good standing with the church.  There was a significantly negative meeting I had while doing so with our local bishop.  It soured me permanently toward leadership in general and how they aren't given adequate tools to support their members.  Because of this, they do more damage than repair.  I played the game regardless.

In Virginia, the outcome was the same.  The bishop was ill equipped and by this time, I was so emotionally and academically separated from the church I called home for 33 years that I decided I was done.  There was no way I was going to willingly carry their shame on my shoulders any longer.  I couldn't stand idly by while they put me in one of their boxes and told me how to think or what was wrong with me.  I went mentally inactive.  Although I still went to church with your mom and you, I didn't believe.  The experiences I went through were an inevitable compromise to my shelf.

I slid deeper and deeper into solitude.  My six-month sobriety relented and I distanced myself from your mom again emotionally and physically.  She went crazy internally.  She was at her wits end and couldn't be around me any longer.  Her mental and emotional health had deteriorated to the point of desperation.  That is when she took you and moved to Utah.  I was unintentionally abandoned by some of my few remaining allies.

Soon after you left, I was faced with a huge setback with my career.  I allowed my problem to seep into my professional life.  That fall (2014) I was due to have my security clearance renewed.  Because of the nature of where I worked, I required a polygraph.  I told the truth and was soon facing disciplinary action for what I did alone in a back room in the quiet hours of a midshift.  While waiting for the disciplinary action, they took my access to the building away.  It was determined by the superintendent to have me sit in a chapel on an army base 30 miles away.  My world went dark.  I came home to an empty house every day after sitting quietly in an army chapel all day doing nothing.  I had no purpose and very little meaning in my life.

I learned to drink heavily.  It was my escape for four months.  I had to force myself to eat anything, let alone anything healthy.  The actions against me soon concluded and soon thereafter I got rushed orders back to Colorado.  I was given a job in a closet where other misfits are relegated to.  Although my future didn't look too bright, I was given purpose through a job.  I had something to do.  I was determined to work hard again and put my negative record behind me.  For 18 months I worked hard and showed my leadership my competence.  They quickly viewed me as someone who knew what they were doing, was trustworthy and professional.

With new found energy for life, I moved back into our Colorado house and had a fresh view.  I started working on the house.  Your mom was planning on moving back after school had ended.  It had been too long.  I saw you over Christmas of 2014, then for a short week over spring break.  I missed you badly.  When it came closer to the end of school, your mom told me she wanted to stay in Utah through the summer and come back sometime in August.  Something triggered within me.  I couldn't take the negative news.  I wanted to be with you again and I was fixated on this light at the end of the tunnel.  I told her that was unacceptable.  I told her she was keeping you from me and it made me mad.  It was a difficult situation and she didn't have much choice when she first left.  Part of me couldn't get over it though.  My life was so dark and I missed you so badly I even mentioned divorce to her for the first time.

Since my clearance was put on the shelf in Virginia, it still needed to be renewed.  Once my package was submitted in Colorado, my past came back to haunt me.  The decision authority didn't like what my past had shown in my file and determined to take away not only my top secret clearance, but my secret clearance as well.  This meant I couldn't work in my office anymore.  It was another blow to my career and my outlook.  Just after gathering myself and trying to put a semblance of a life together, the Air Force decided to knock me down again.  Like my punishment 18 months ago, I took responsibility for what I had done, even though I knew the punitive system was broken.  It is inevitably so in a bureaucratic government agency.

Back to the shame cycle.  Only about a year ago (fall of 2015) did I learn that my sex addiction was bogus.  It boiled down to be a construct or method of control.  Without associating sexuality with shame, compulsive behavior disappears.  Without having this compulsive behavior, my whole countenance (to borrow a religious term) started changing.  The suppressive thumb constantly applying pressure had faded.  At this point in this dialogue, the ethics behind viewing pornography hasn't even been addressed.  Regardless of whether it is acceptable or not, unnecessary shame and misdiagnosing the problem as an addiction is the foundation of the problem.  By shifting the paradigm and viewing this behavior as normal, it fades into the background.

Once you and your mom moved back to Colorado, I hadn't yet realized this.  We found a counselor to focus on our marriage, but things didn't get any better.  The counselor only helped a little before we stopped going.  The wall between us had added a different color brick.  The divisiveness was growing with bricks of religious difference.  The bricks that founded the previous wall from my problems were growing irrelevant.  More and more I was viewing religion as a control device, full of abusive patriarchal, misogynistic, fear based and outdated or reactionary based policy or doctrine.  At best, it is a great way to network in a community anywhere you go.  At worst, it suppresses the intellect, your emotions and your ability to delineate your self-worth and your autonomy in the world.  Integrated into your individuality is ownership.  Relying on an imaginary person to save you from their opposite imaginary friend teaches one to partially blame an outside influence for your own actions, then teaches one to rely on another outside influence to save you from mistakes you made by allowing the influences of this dark, vague entity, never fully owning up to those mistakes, which, ultimately are all on you.

It is hard to articulate my atheism compared to how I view organized religion.  Enough reading on the details forced me to look at the bigger picture.  Sure it is easy to see the scripture for what it is: a collection of stories eventually written down and codified, derived from verbal tradition to standardize the story and pass down to future generations as the story of past generations as a chosen people.  Many of the stories were borrowed to glorify their selection by their god as the chosen people.  Once Jesus came along, some gifted writers wrote stories about him and the celebrity status grew.  They wrote him to parallel the rantings of Old Testament prophets to fulfill the role.

A similarly gifted writer came along during the 1800's (there were others, such as Muhammad, etc. that aren't necessarily pertinent to this story).  He had a gift of storytelling and it clicked with a lot of people.  He wove a fascinating tale and connecting it to the chosen people.  Eventually this organization grew into a corporation and modern day revelation faded into the background as only a concept, not a practice.

The bigger picture perspective is looking at the world for any evidence of a loving Heavenly Father.  Sure, I see beauty everywhere I look, but beauty in and of itself is not evidence of a creator.  The look at humanity is even weaker evidence.  Without engaging with people, believer and nonbelievers have no outward difference.  Their successes and failings are similar.  The way they treat others are in the same spectrum. Believers and nonbelievers alike could be seen as loving or hateful.  Religion just gave believers an excuse.  Don’t love people or hate people because you are human, love them or hate them because religion teaches to do so.  Not just an excuse, religion also justified and armed believers with self-appointed authority from a higher law and higher being.  Abuse of power follows religion inherently.  There is no indication that a supreme being is blessing believers while cursing nonbelievers.  Mercy is another reason for me not to believe.  A merciful being doesn't let millions suffer by genocide, pestilence, starvation, disease or natural disaster just for an object lesson for his believers.  The problem of evil in the world is answered least adequately by religion.

To look at my personal life has similar conclusions.  Since leaving, I have only felt like I have broken free of something. My experiences as a believer only went south within the last year or two.  I wasn't about to throw away 30+ years of positive religious experience just because I was in a bad place.  But it wasn't that simple.  There was no reason to cling to a belief that wasn't doing me any good.  I was given the tools to think for myself, act for myself and answer for my own actions.  I didn't need to pray for good feelings or rely on some vague idea of salvation through perfect blood.  I could live my life and look at life and interpret or extract meaning through things however I chose.  Life is more beautiful than ever.

I also learned that people the world over can have special experiences.  Not all attribute these to a higher power.  The mind also has powerful capabilities that allow you to see things that are only in your mind.  The human psyche can be heavily influenced by confirmation bias.  Thanks to this knowledge, I have been able to dismiss every experience I have had.  This is not to say they are no longer special to me, but I have been given the freedom to view them as they are and not attach external meaning to them.  Also consider the 4000+ religions in the world having spiritual experiences that tell them 'without a doubt' that their religion is true because of those personal experiences. If one god is confirming to this many different religions' believers, why?

After pondering this letter and the messages I want to convey to you for a week now, I want to say a few things about experiencing life.  The Mormon bubble is most prevalent in Utah, due to the high concentration of believers, as well as the heavy influence the church has on state legislation.  I clumped many things together that were forbidden into the same category.  Casual sex, along with crack cocaine fell in the same bucket, for example.

I want to stress to you with clarity and importance about many things the church deems off limits, which are not 'evil' or bad in the slightest.  A word of caution about this list though:  I still believe in moderation in all things.  When someone grows up in a strict religious home, then experiments with one or more of these things, binging or excess is often a step taken. For instance, when first trying alcohol, experiencing heavy inebriation to the point of losing bodily functions or consciousness is often a tendency, trying something new that was previously prohibited and off limits.  This is not advised except rarely and in the safety of your own home.  Enjoying a good buzz while keeping intact bodily functions and consciousness is ok.

Other 'sins' on the list include coffee and tea (which are actually quite healthy in every consideration), tobacco, marijuana, mushrooms, cocaine, and sex outside of marriage.  The same rule applies: moderation.  Keep in mind also that two substances on this list are more addictive than others: tobacco and cocaine.  Don't just go try these things for no reason.  Do your research.  If something doesn't appeal to you, don't do it.  Mushrooms, it is said, can enhance a spiritual experience.  Tobacco gives a mild buzz.  Cocaine can give someone intense focus and energy.  Pharmaceutical companies have exploited many of these drugs and others to put in pill form.

Regarding casual sex.  Like anything, sex should be taken seriously.  If you find someone you care deeply for, sexual compatibility cannot be talked through by two virgins who have been given a very superficial education regarding sex, sexual behavior and human physiology.  Your sexuality is your own.  Your partner, nor your parents, nor your religion has or should have any say regarding how you share it, or who you share it with.  Like everything else, take this seriously.  Be careful.  If you don't want children with that person, talk about that. Use birth control and protection.  If you don't want STD's, talk about that and use protection.  It's that simple.  Being intimate with someone doesn't mean you want to spend the rest of your life with them.  After taking that step with someone, if after a few months you love them more than ever, only then should you consider marriage.  Yet, marriage isn't for everyone.  Marriage is a social construct and has many benefits.  There are arguments on both sides of the coin.  Not getting married also has benefits.  You can even decide to build a life with someone and even have children with them without getting married.

Other experiences in life that the church frowns upon cannot enumerated.  You saw my tattoo. I love it. I plan on getting others.  If you find something you like or find meaningful that you want tattooed on your body, take some time, give it some consideration, and then do it if it feels right.

Having children can be a sensitive topic.  The Mormon Church stresses to members that they should desire having children, it is their responsibility, and that there is no higher calling.  If you truly feel that way when you are older that is fine, but don't let religion tell you how to think in this matter, just like any other.  Not all humans should procreate and not all humans can.  For as long as I can remember, I wanted to adopt.  Adoption is a noble choice that offers a possibly better life for a child than they otherwise would have.  Some individuals simply don't want children, either their own or adopted.  There is no universal highest calling for humans.  You have to do what you feel is best for you.  Some people don't do well as a parent.  In all honesty, it is hard to tell if you will be a good parent until a child is dropped in your lap and you are asked to be their primary caregiver.  You don't know what you don't know.

Along this same way of thinking, the church also feels the same way toward assisted suicide.  They say, since your life was given by an unknown creator, to which you shall return, your life is somehow not your own.  Terminally ill are asked to suffer because it is somehow the will of their god.  This is, quite simply, inhuman.  Your life is your own.  Although suicide in general is a permanent solution, it may or may not be to a temporary problem.  Don't adopt the adage that it will get better.  It doesn't always get better.  Some people suffer throughout their entire lives. I don't encourage anyone to end their life, but I cannot tell anyone that it isn't the best solution.  I wish I could tell people that it will get better, but no one knows that. What is the point to life if it isn't enjoyed, but rather managed?

All of this leads me to write some thoughts about the nature of the god that humans have constructed. What type of god concerns itself with these temporary, arbitrary rules? Why is this god so anthropomorphic? If it is so it can be relatable, why doesn't it then relate to us?  Religions tell us that god is personal and loves us, but where is the difference between a believer and nonbeliever in their feelings of belonging and being loved?  Shouldn't there be a notable difference in quality of life? The truth is, there is no difference because there is no god handing out blessings to believers while allowing nonbelievers to suffer.  Suffering is relative and dependent on the person.  Quality of life is also relative and dependent on the person.  Third world countries experience the full spectrum of peace and joy just like first world countries.  Third world countries also have a wide array of belief and non-belief, just like first world countries.  

Another reason I find it hard to believe in a god is the reactionary way religions interact with the world.  The Catholic Church burned scientists at the stake for heresy, feeling their precious god being threatened by new evidences that seemed to them contradicting Holy Scripture.  How would an all-powerful god be questioned by first revealing one way the world works, only for us to find out that the world didn't work that way?  Wouldn't this all powerful being explain things correctly the first time?  If it was supposed to be allegory, why is Holy Scripture not written explicitly that way? 

Other significant reactions rather than actions can be seen within Mormonism.  When Utah wanted statehood, they had to get rid of polygamy to do so.  When a non-Mormon started the prohibition activism, Mormonism jumped on and decided to mandate the word of wisdom for believers.  When the civil rights movement showed prevalence throughout the country, the church finally relented and gave blacks the priesthood and temple admission.  When it was shown that personal family decisions were highly complex, the church quietly took themselves out of the decision making with a couple deciding when to start having children, how many to have, and so forth.  Before, they stressed having children soon, having as many as you could, not worrying about income or education regarding starting or number, and refraining from contraceptives. These are just a few highlights.

Another reason for me deciding I am better off autonomous is emotional, spiritual and mental health. Upon freeing myself of religious bias, I found I was better able to view people as they were.  I saw many people suffering from negative impacts of religious belief.  Some more than others suffered emotional, spiritual or mental growth stunts.  Relying on an unseen or seen, control mechanism over your life inherently stunts growth as an individual.  Learning to express emotion, learning to truly think for yourself over all aspects of your life and learning that personal spirituality has as wide a spectrum as there are people on earth isn't a tendency within organized religion.  They tell you how to think, how to view the world through their lens, how spirituality only works through their construct, and how any intellectual endeavor should be framed within the confines of their religious worldview. This is quite limiting.  They may use language that indicates otherwise, such as god’s ways are not our ways, neither is his timing, he knows us better than we know ourselves, etc..  This helps organized religion monopolize many concepts that ought to be left alone, and allows them to have the answers, even though believers have to wait until the afterlife to have them explained.  If scientists adopted this way of thinking, progress would have ended centuries ago.

Regardless of how you choose to live your life, regardless of your belief system, I want you to be happy.  I want you to know that my love for you is truly unconditional.  I am not bound by religious rhetoric that demands my loyalty and love for you come in second or third.  Religion inherently puts up walls between family members who act, think or feel differently.  Religion demands complete submission so those that choose not to submit are labeled as lost, sorrowful and missing out on real joy or happiness.  Knowing happiness comes from within, as well as peace, I have been able to realize genuine, personal happiness, as I have freed myself from the conditions that enable these feelings.

This rhetoric is another big issue I have with religion.  Threatening rhetoric comes from insecurity.  If a religion is insecure about their faith or beliefs, that should set of a red flag.  Should god need apologists and defenders to stave off the secular evils of the world? What is actually threatening religious survival? Some say things like same sex marriage threatens it.  If the world were to allow the LGBTQIA community to marry whomever they wish, what would the religious landscape look like? Are they turning the entire human population to identify as LGBTQI or A?  How does allowing them marriage rights threaten your heterosexual families? In truth, it doesn’t at all.

The threat to faith really boils down to indoctrinating youth.  If the religions aren’t allowed to indoctrinate children at a young age, they would lose a significant number of believers who aren’t tied to a specific faith-based culture.  Why do we lose our belief in Santa Clause? Because our parents and our society supports that transition.  Why not so with god? Because our parents and the religious culture we were attached to at a young age doesn’t support that transition.  Children are inherently atheist.  Atheist sometimes has a certain connotation, as ‘theist’ is part of the word.  If a child is raised without any mention of religion, faith, or god, the child doesn’t eventually ask its parents to teach them about god.  Of course this is to not consider factoring in the internet, books, school, etc., where they would inevitably hear about those concepts from external sources.

Not only are religions concerned about indoctrinating children about their god, they want to frame the world a certain way so as to not question that authority, and so they consider their specific worldview as the ideal, or god’s intended worldview.  God tells us to think a certain way, they say.  When in reality, church leaders use this as a control mechanism to protect their interests.  If they can get a child to agree with them, they have an ally in that child and it grows up to take their place as defenders of the tradition.

Ethnocentrism is a significant concept when it comes to religious rhetoric.  Why are religions based primarily on geography?  Why does ethnicity or environment play into your god’s plan if your god is the god of the whole earth, let alone universe?

If I seem overly fixated on religion it is because it plays such a huge role in people’s lives to impact relationships, career choices and worldview.  I do not wish to ramble on about something when it seems like I have an axe to grind or something.  I see it for what it is and I think its usefulness has run its course.  If I could eradicate all religious belief from the earth I would.

When I returned from my mission, I immediately applied for acceptance at the University of Utah.  Back then, I considered Brigham Young University, but the admission requirements were a bit more stringent and I couldn’t live at home while attending.  Uncle Andy and Bryan had or were currently going there and they loved it, so it seemed like a natural choice.  I eventually settled down back in my old job at Dick’s Market in the produce department, working with Uncle Alex.  He was the one that suggested asking your mom out, as she worked in a different department, managing prices and sales throughout the whole store.

I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life regarding a career.  I had always been fascinated with human flight and history, so I was bouncing between becoming a history professor and going into aeronautic engineering.  Without getting much guidance, I eventually settled on the engineering course.  I had a decent grasp of calculus, but physics was getting the better of me.  During the first and second semester I dated your mom and had a temple marriage date.  We married in August and I continued into my third semester.  We got pregnant with Connor in my fourth semester, but I had left my stable job and hadn’t found much luck with stability for a while.  With a baby on the way, and my work prospects uncertain, I found myself struggling with my studies.  My grades dipped and I lost my Pell grant.  I couldn’t pay for school, but I knew just dropping out was a bad idea.  The thought came to me to join the Air Force.

On a whim, I visited the recruiter.  Everything sounded too good to be true, but I needed a good job, while somehow paying for school.  After the first visit, I liked what I heard enough to take your mom back.  She wasn’t certain, but she supported me in whatever decision I thought was the right one.  We decided to do it.  Your Sheffield grandparents seemed more supportive than my parents.  My dad masked his true feelings with humor.  This never sat well with me.  As a child, he took me to Hill AFB all the time to look at the jets.  He fostered a love of warplanes in us.  I went to basic training in January 2004, 2 1/2 months after Connor was born. That was rough for your mom and Connor, especially since my follow-on training at tech school was an additional 4 months.  After tech school, we moved to Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota.  We built a new life, isolated, over 600 miles away from family.  Your mom struggled with the transition, but took this challenge with a great attitude.

I cross-trained out of aircraft maintenance after I deployed once and realized the flight-line life and the deployment tempo was not a good fit for me and our family.  I fostered many irreligious ideas there, as I had started to question the ultraconservative mindset that is so easily adopted within the church.  I tried to embrace mutual ground between religion and many secular or progressive ideas that I was finding I was in agreement with. Seeing live bombs being loaded on the B-1 in the desert, then seeing the jet come back empty, along with seeing videos loaded on the network by the army or NATO forces, had an impact on me that would stay with me.  It was a big factor in my decision to cross-train out of that career field. 

I narrowed my choices down to the intelligence career field, or space operations.  I knew intel works on every base and also deploys often.  Space ops were limited to a handful of bases, some close to Utah, some not, yet they didn’t deploy nearly as much.  I decided on space ops.  I went back to tech school in May of 2009.  Connor, Orson and Tensley went to Utah to wait.  We packed up our house and put most things in a storage unit for two months.  During that time your mom visited Colorado to look for houses with Aunt Tiffany.  It was a new and exciting stage in our life.  

I shelved my disaffection with my career choice of the military, hoping my new career field would help me stave it off.  Deep down, I knew I was disagreeing more and more with U.S. foreign policy and our methods of intervening or interfering in other countries.  It all seemed to have a bottom line of oil interests.  I soon started to recognize fear tactics.  The DoD rhetoric of fearing terrorism and other countries who wanted nothing but to bring the United States down was becoming more and more obvious and tiresome.  We were a world superpower bully who took what we wanted and gave little in return.  Defense contracts and overall defense spending I saw as job security and unnecessary allocation of a massive amount of funding that could otherwise improve the quality of life and technology in other vital departments of government.

So here I sit, in the fall of 2016, nearly 13 years in the Air Force.  I love satellite operations.  I love the technology and the capabilities of the human race to put tools in space for the benefit of mankind.  I love the idea of going to the moon and mars.  I am fascinated we sent a satellite beyond our solar system.  Today, I have leadership all the way up the chain that believes our dominance in the space domain is under imminent threat.  Cyberwarfare and counter-space are top concerns they are addressing.  Considering the nature of our enemies, their capabilities and their end goals, I find most of these fears laughable.  The U.S. are decades beyond most countries regarding space, and those that are closer have coexisted in orbit for a while now.  The perspective of a bully always seems to be on the defense, protecting its position of authority and control.

I tell you all this because I have concluded I am a man of peace.  Today’s wars are completely unnecessary.  I am not fighting for freedom or liberty, let alone peace.  Humans today are probably like humans throughout history, too quick to fight, seemingly incapable of utilizing other resources for peace and cooperation.  World peace has only been a concept in my lifetime, and the words don’t even have meaning, rather becoming cliché.  I still struggle with my desire to embody peace, while working for the department of defense.  It may be a dichotomy I can never resolve.

I would have hope that you choose careers you are passionate about.  Don’t get stuck doing something you hate.  I know it is hard sometimes.  You will have bills to pay and loved ones to support.  This concept is often framed with the idea of being true to yourself, or living with integrity.  Everyone is different, but I feel like I have already portrayed the notion that I can without that kind of personal integrity.  If I could walk away from it all, I would.  We would take a whole year off and travel the world.  We could experience different cultures, different foods, volunteer in third world countries.  The education you would receive from that would be priceless.

These words are as much for my daughters as they are for my sons.  I want you to be independent and happy, free to think and do as you wish.  The world is yours for the taking.