This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.  – Rumi

People ask me most often about how Rick responded to my decision to leave mormonism. He was a devoted, steadfast convert to the Only True Church, he had chosen the life, this faith, as a grown man.

I tell them, I made him make the choice.

Almost everything we had experienced as a married couple up to the moment of the agonizing decision to leave the mormon church had created a yawn of absolute emptiness inside me.  It was suffocating despair.  A growing, urgent need.  A need for someone to see me.  Hear me.  Listen to me.  Know ME.  It was a forceful demand from the divine within me to honor my spirit. 

I was a mormon woman…I hated to ask for things that I needed.  I danced around it, hinting, teasing…but I could not ask.  Rick did not know me, no one really did.  Until he gave me permission to be myself.  It was a sacrifice so tremendous, I was awed by his love, his choice to honor me.

He decided we would stop being a mormon couple, to save my bleeding spirit.  He took my hand, and we stepped off the rock of our religious faith, the foundation of our relationship. I had  told him in every moment we were together, as quietly and indirectly as possible, that it was the only thing I needed.

So we left, and I did not trust it. I made more promises, to smooth out the broken ones.   “If you become unhappy, if you can not live with our decision any longer, we will go back.  We will return to the faith, and I will live with you as I promised to on our wedding day,”  I had whispered it earnestly, into the silent dark of our bedroom.  I tried to read into the beat of his heart with the palm of my hand, through the sacred garment shirt he still wore every day, despite our apostasy.

And suddenly, I asked for what I needed.  All the time.  Directly.  My love, answer this:  “How is it that you will sacrifice your God, for me, and you can still hold me the way you do?”

What he went through to convince me of that love was something else entirely.  It was years ago, when Rick had to save my bleeding, dying spirit.  And now in the darkest, most desperate moments, I know it is time that I redeem myself.