Interview: Susan Ray Schmidt

[Music] well i was just a little child probably five four or five something like that raised in the mormon church my mom and dad were temple mormons and they had nine children and i was the seventh of the nine children and i didn't realize this at the time because i was too young but my mom and dad were becoming really disillusioned with the lds church i think that they felt like it was evolving away from joseph smith's teachings and they were they were very disillusioned and looking for answers to you know find someone that was actually following joseph smith and so they were prime candidates to be converted into fundamental mormonism and so the next thing i knew i was six years old and my mom and dad moved us away from utah and moved us to mexico where they had joined joel lebaron's church called the church of the firstborn of the fullness of times so we moved down to mexico to this little community colonial lebaron and moved into a little adobe house my dad added on to it and it had four rooms and and we live very primitively and there were probably i don't know 30 or 40 people families living around us that all live pretty much like we did you know we pumped our water out of a well and washed our clothes on a scrub board and and we had a little community um building that we used as a church and of course we had a new prophet joel lebaron and i was raised that way i thought it was totally normal i loved living down there and my childhood was actually a great childhood had lots of friends both boys and girls and we went to government schools down there for the most part once in a while there were church run schools that they tried but um my dad took a plural wife when i was eight and my new mama maria quickly began to add to my father's family so um it was it was actually fun i enjoyed it i loved living there loved my friends i grew up knewing knowing that i would be living polygamy but the thought didn't scare me because my mom and and my mama maria uh got along fine i didn't see a lot of issues and so i was i actually look forward to growing up and becoming a polygamist wife i thought that it would free me away from my mother and and uh i wouldn't have to do the things that she told me to do and i could be on my own so um yeah i was i was uh 14 years old when the when our prophet joel lebaron's younger brother verlin started to court me and i married him when i was just past my 15th birthday i became his sixth wife he was 38 and his first three wives were his age mature wonderful women and then he had married two younger women they were both mexican women and i didn't know these girls at all i knew the older three a little bit but i felt like i would fit right into his family you know i wasn't i wasn't scared i wasn't i mean i was a little bit nervous about getting married but to me verlin was mature he was a leader in god's church he i knew that he would take me to the celestial kingdom so i was excited to marry him but i was 14 and 15 years old and i did not realize what i was doing i i had no idea what polygamy was actually going to be like and it wasn't until i was actually married to him and come to find out a lot of his families didn't even know he was going to marry me he came to colonial baron from baja california where his families lived for conference and married me and took me back home with him so i was a surprise to the family and i felt like i was i was thrust into a into a family who wasn't expecting me who didn't want me who couldn't relate to me as a 15 year old girl the the older wives couldn't relate to me and i became abandoned immediately by verlin who took off left me with his families and moved to went back to las vegas to go to work so here i am in this in this family um i was i made myself useful to help with the with the children and and tried to get along with the wives but the little mexican wives wouldn't speak to me wouldn't look at me and the older wives were too busy to pay any attention so i became increasingly lonely missing my mother missing my family uh confused about what my role in life and especially as verlin's wife was supposed to be and uh pretty soon i was pregnant a morning sick on top of the rest of it so it was pretty miserable and what was the process of of you selecting him and him selecting you how did that happen in in the lebaron uh church we were taught that women had the right to choose who they would marry because they only got to marry once whereas a man could marry many times and so it should be the women's right to choose so we were not placed in two marriages as some of the other fundamentalist groups did and i felt like god led me to marry berlin as a child as a young girl i i had heard that there were women who would have dreams about who they should marry and i actually dreamed about verlin uh thought that that was a revelation from god it was actually more of a nightmare than a dream but i thought it was a revelation from god and so when he asked my dad if he could court me i agreed my dad asked me if it was okay and i agree and so he came along and six months later came to conference and we got married so you technically had the right to say no i could have said no absolutely but but the thing is is i knew that i had to marry someone who would take me to the celestial kingdom and i mean verlin was the president of the 12 apostles plus i figured that his life would be interesting and um that i would help him to convert many people to to the church and so that's kind of where my mind was at so in terms of just your own affection for him or was there a sense of i was very attracted to berlin yes i thought i was in love with him i did yeah he was uh exciting he was handsome he was fun fun-loving and i i totally thought that we would have a great marriage what i didn't realize is i had absolutely nothing in common with him and i didn't realize until after we were married he was all about the church and mature things and i was still a kid i liked kid music and and and stuff like that and so we i had nothing to talk to him about i didn't know him he didn't know me and our time together was very uncomfortable in every way now you talked a little bit when we were talking earlier about your attitudes toward polygamy when you were growing up compare and contrast what it was before you married and then when you realized you know this isn't what i thought i was getting into i expected polygamy to be a girls club that my sister wives and i would be best friends that we would do so many fun things together and the husband will be just sort of out there you know i just really didn't expect that he would be that much involved and that i would just have fun with with my sister wives the reality was i didn't realize the emotional uh bond that you would form with your husband and that that would be something that you didn't want to share with anyone and that's what i found after i was married and truly felt like i loved my husband uh that's when the jealousy hit me i couldn't stand to have him go in and spend time with the other wives and you know for for it was four months after he and i got married that he began uh the courtship of another teenage girl who had been a childhood friend of mine and i'm telling you it devastated me i i was so jealous i was so upset and at that point i started wondering how is it that he can marry me bring me into his family of women who don't get to see him very often and now he's courting another girl when i hardly know him myself and that's when i started having my first questions about polygamy and how how could it be right how did you and how did other women deal with the jealousy what did i do with my jealousy i felt like something was wrong with me like something was wrong with me when i felt jealous that i wasn't a big enough person that i wasn't a good christian woman that i should love these girls that i should enjoy them and i did enjoy him as long as he was gone for the most part but that i should want them to to spend time in the bedroom with my husband absolutely killed me and i felt like something was wrong with me and that i wasn't a good person that i i begged the lord to help me to deal with this but i couldn't i felt brokenhearted i felt angry at my husband i i felt like i hated the other women and my life was turned upside down with the jealousy and did you think that you were the only one of all the women that were dealing with that or no all of them were i think that some of the women actually dealt with it better than i did at least from what i could see they dealt with it better than i did but yet the more that i got to know like my sister wives i saw their jealousy against me against one another the first two wives of verlins they fought they battled they they tried to get along but they couldn't and that's how i felt i i just i tried to behave nicely in front of them but on my own when i was alone i absolutely i'd cry myself to sleep at night talk a little about your day-to-day life after you had married my my early years of being married to berlin were spent in helping his other wives take care of his children and his home and whenever i had free time i would lock myself in my little bedroom trailer and try to divert my mind by reading i did a lot of crying i was homesick i i was miserable and i wondered why did i do this why did i agree to marry this man i wan i realized how lonely i was and looking forward to what my life was going to be like i felt like i'd made the biggest mistake of my life i wanted so badly to take it all back to to get my childhood back to to be a teenager again to have some experiences that teenagers have to be able to date boys to be able to hang out with my girlfriends and not uh and be a single girl and not be the married lady who's trying to hang out with all the kids my age but i couldn't do that i couldn't go back as time went on i started having babies one right after the other and by this time uh berlin had moved me into my own little adobe house complete with my own outdoor toilet and my own well that i could haul water from and it was just existing day by day existing trying to take care of my babies on my own trying to keep them fed with when we had very little to eat and trying to get along with my sister wives who lived all around me did you consider at the time that you had that you were being mistreated by by verlin or did you just think that was the way life was i felt that that was the way life was i saw that same misery that i felt in the women all around me the same jealousy the same struggling to take care of their children without a husband present or a father for their children watching the little kids around me my my sister wife's children needing a daddy so bad needing his his guidance his structure and yet never having a father because he was too busy he was uh busy running the church uh trying to support us and that that that was a lot of what my life was it was a day by day getting through that day getting through another day and not falling apart and when you when you were reconsidering polygamy were you thinking you should have married someone else or were you just thinking polygamy in general as a as a lifestyle i i thought about other men and wondered whether it would have been better if i would have married a different polygamous man who didn't have as many wives but for the most part i wanted right from the start i wished that i would have had my own husband someone who would have been a companion to me someone who would meet my needs find physical needs financial needs but more than anything someone who would just be a companion be there daily that we could enjoy dinner together you know wake up together that sort of thing and i mean i i fantasized about that from this from the beginning when did you first start entertaining serious plans about leaving i really didn't even consider the day would ever come that i would leave to start with i i had these fantasies about being on my own about finding a husband to to love me and to be there for me but i i never thought that it would become a reality i felt like i had these evil secret ideas of wanting a husband of my own and i couldn't share that with anyone because then they'd know how evil i was but when i really actually started thinking about leaving was i was pregnant with my third child my church had fallen apart one lebaron brother had murdered the other lebarron brother and the one that got murdered was our prophet my own husband who was another brother of the prophet was his life was also in danger um he was being pursued by by his brother the murderer to that wanted to kill him as well and so my whole world was falling apart and at that point i thought oh my goodness i i i've got i've got to do something i don't know what to do um i don't i was afraid for my life i was afraid for my children's lives and so all of this turmoil on top of seeing uh the loneliness in the women around me and dealing with my own and not having a husband around all of this made me start looking into the scriptures and i'd never studies the scriptures before i'd never studied any of them before number one i didn't study the bible because it couldn't be trusted and the book of mormon um was so confusing to me i tried to study it and i felt guilty that i didn't know it better um but but in reading it i just felt lost all the time through it so therefore i really didn't know what my own gospel was my gospel was polygamy living it um not um not killing my sister wives or i mean that that's strong but getting along with my sister wives trying to accept them trying to love my sister wives that became my gospel and so to say that i knew a lot about what we were here for what we were supposed to be doing i really didn't um you asked me what caused me to leave um it was actually beginning to study the scriptures and i focused on polygamy and i looked up everything i could find on the subject of polygamy and all of the books that we considered as scripture and i found the most amazing things the book of mormon condemned polygamy in the second chapter of jacob and when i read the second chapter of jacob and i stumbled onto it and i found that god called polygamy an abomination and that he warned the men not to break the tender hearts of their daughters and when i read that i fell apart that was the first inkling that i had that god actually loved me as a woman and loved women that he didn't favor the men more than the women and that he cared about us and that's where my love for god really first uh developed and i started praying at that point and i asked god to please help me to either live polygamy if it was his way or to get me out of it if he wanted me out of it and um then i i found other places in the in the scriptures you know the doctrine and covenants commanded that we live polygamy and if we didn't live it then we would be damned and i thought how can god in the book of mormon tell us not to live polygamy say it was an abomination and yet in the doctrine and covenants it we were commanded to live it and so i thought how can god do this how can he say this one place he commands us to live it and the other one he calls it an abomination and so that that planted some doubts in my my mind and um they just grew i asked my husband about the about this very thing you know why would god say this in one area and change his mind in another and he tried to explain it away but i didn't buy it i realized that something was wrong and that was when i started studying more and more about polygamy and trying to understand what my gospel was about and i believe that at that point god just started really working on my heart and showing me that polygamy was not his will that he created one man to have one wife and i remember reading the story of abraham and sarah and hagar and i had been taught my whole life that abraham was the beginning of god commanding polygamy to be lived that he was commanded to take hagar as a wife and when i read the story and i saw that that wasn't the case at all that hagar was sarah's idea in order to procreate have a child with with abraham um i realized that i'd been lied to that that was not the case and so i don't know the more i the more time went on the more god was working on my heart and at that point i started really thinking i'm going to leave i want to get my children out of this i want a life of my own i want a husband of my own i want more for my life than what this uh church has to offer and you begin to realize then that those desires were not evil that they were natural i still battled with that a little bit you know at one at one point i would feel like um it was it was okay to want a husband of my own and to want freedom from this lifestyle and then i would have i would question myself and think oh no no you're just not strong enough like some of the other women that put up with this you're just not as strong as they are and so i had this battle going on inside me talk about who god was to you before that who what was your idea of god his personality his character i felt like i didn't understand god at all and in reality i didn't i didn't care that i didn't understand him i didn't like what i knew about god god in my mind was a polygamist who had many wives in heaven who was uh totally enthralled with with men and male leadership and males and women were subservient we were created to be subservient and i couldn't understand why god would give a woman good brains and a tender heart and yet not allow us to to use them that we had to turn to the men for everything we had to ask their permission for everything um we were to be seen and not heard so as far as god i really i didn't have that much of a desire to even get to know him in fact i avoided it when it whenever the thought of god came to my mind i'd i'd i'd turn him off who did god become as you were coming into that that understanding i remember sitting in my little house down in los molinos baja california sitting on my little couch my little ragged couch and actually falling to my knees at the at the base of that couch and sobbing into that couch thinking god you love me you care about my heart and it was just like a a breath of fresh air and a revelation i just felt i was shaking as i as i thought about it and it it was uh it changed my heart and you know since then i've read the bible and he's expressed his love for us in so many many ways and i wish that i would have known back then that i could have read the bible and trusted the bible because he's told us and shown us in so many ways how much he loves us did you have a lot of guilt uh as regards to your parents what they would think and if they'd be ashamed if you were so disappointed in you for for choosing to think that maybe polygamy wasn't right not just what my parents would think of me what everyone would think of me what my sister-wise would think of me what my friends would think of me i had married one of the leaders of the church i was in a position not not personally of authority but he was of authority and i didn't want to humiliate him and embarrass him by proving to not be uh a pliable subservient wife to this leader in in god's church and the fact that i felt the things that i felt that i that i resented polygamy and resented my sister wives i was afraid to let anyone know and so i tried to keep it all bottled deeply inside i tried not to let anyone know that i'd cry myself to sleep at night that i was lonely it took quite a few years before i actually even let my husband know how badly polygamy and the jealousy that i felt affected me and what was his response when you when you let him know that you know he would try to let me know that as a woman i needed to love my sister wives that that was something that i would that with time i would grow and and be able to handle better and he tried to be understanding but yet at the same time he was very strong in letting me know that this was not an acceptable way to feel so it really didn't help too much though no yeah no the children of the families were did you notice that the wives rival wives or sister wives were they jealous of the other women's children and were the children treated or mistreated as a result i i don't believe that the children in the different uh why the different wife's children were mistreated at all i know that i loved my husband's other children they i thought they were wonderful i enjoyed them i know that they loved me i was aunt susan they would come to me and help me and no i the children that wasn't a problem at all they loved my children they'd take my kids with them and play with them and within the children themselves no there was no jealousy that i could see is there such a thing as good polygamy and i don't believe that there's any good polygamy no i think that possibly my experience with bulimia wasn't as harsh as some other women's many other women's experience with polygamy my husband was never physically abusive he was gone a lot um i think that every polygamous situation is mentally abusive because we were not meant to share our mate that was never god's plan and so to try to take the bond of marriage and water it down to be like a apparent like parents would feel for their many children that they could love each child i remember verlind used that argument with me when i talk to him once he says well you love all of your children don't you don't you love them all equally and and you have great feelings for each one well that's how i feel with all of my wives i can love each one just the same um but no as far as polygamy i think every bit of it is abusive uh god did not mean for that relationship to be shared with other wives or husbands or whatever yeah what was the straw that broke the camel's back what actually led to you're saying okay this is it i'm out of here i know that one thing that i was extremely concerned about um was the fact that the gospel wasn't being taken to the whole world as we were taught that we were supposed to do our guys it seemed to me like every every man i knew was so involved in taking care of his families finding new wives uh battles within the families about that they didn't have time to go on missions and to convert the world to the one true gospel it's like there was so much involved with just keeping polygamy going that taking the gospel to the world got lost in the confusion of it all and to me i i thought you know how how can this be god's plan i was concerned about the church i was concerned about the gospel it seemed to me like we were growing the church from the inside instead of converting new membership to the church and i thought how could this possibly be god's plan of salvation for the world when we weren't bringing very many people whatsoever into the church and so to me that was uh that gave me a lot of pause and it went right along with uh all of my my questioning of the church in the first place now what did you believe about those who were outside the church what did you think their eternal destiny was well i believed that unless they were converted to the church because this is what i was taught of course yeah converted to the church of the firstborn uh that they would be lost they would they would end up in hell and you know we believed in several three degrees of glory in heaven and at the very uh the very best that would happen to them was they would be in the celestial kingdom not the celestial kingdom where we were headed if we were if we kept all the commandments and lived polygamy and where did the mormon church figure in all that the mainline mormon church you know i felt sorry for my mormon relatives because they didn't have the the true gospel and i i basically felt very sorry for them because they didn't know about polygamy they weren't willing to live polygamy they were willing to settle for something less than what we had to do and i figured that they would end up in intellectual kingdom and i had a lot of cousins and some of my older brothers and sister that that were never members of the church and i used to pray for them that god would please help them to realize that they needed to move to colonial baron become a member of the church and start living polygamy because i wanted to be able to see them in heaven so did it ever strike you as strange that god would seem to put his focus on such a small group of people the thought that god had created so many people in the world and yet there was such a few of us that were members of the one true church it it baffled me it it boggled my mind i remember asking my older brother who was a member of the priesthood about this at one time and he just said well straight is the gate and narrow is the way and few there be to find it we're the few that it's going to find it now now tell about the process of actually leaving i figured once i'd had my third baby at that point i knew that at some time i would leave my my faith was really shaken but i didn't know where i would go i didn't know how to leave and so i didn't know how i would leave my family my my mom and dad my siblings all of my friends and i really didn't feel like that there was anywhere to go so i stayed and i had two more children i had a total of five kids but by this time um my battle with my husband was so huge because he kept marrying more women he married a couple of widow ladies and and i felt like it was just so wrong of him to do this he didn't have time for his his wives he didn't have time for his children he was he was never around so how could he justify marrying more so i wasn't a very good wife to him at that point i wasn't supportive of him i we were fighting almost anytime he was home and so i knew that i would leave but it was just a matter of how could i do it how could i find a way out and of course i wouldn't leave without my kids so this thought was in my mind for i don't know two or three years looking for a way to leave wondering how i could go the opportunity presented itself to me all of a sudden my dad was planning to leave to go visit utah and he was going all alone going to drive all the way to utah all alone and the thought just suddenly hit me oh my goodness i can go with my dad and of course i didn't know whether my older brothers and sisters who lived in utah would be willing to let me come with five little kids and stay with them but i was so desperate at this point i had to have somewhere to go and i felt like it was worth the risk and so i convinced my dad to let the kids and me ride with him up to utah and it was in the winter it was in november and so it was freezing but he agreed he said that we could go with him and just on a little vacation and so i packed up my suitcases and i was shaking absolutely terrified i didn't know what was going to happen i didn't know if my brothers and sisters would send me packing say hey you've made your bed now you need to go lay on it we we certainly don't have room for you and five little kids but so uh i piled in my children with my dad and we drove across the mexican border into the united states and i remember laying in the back of my dad's pickup he had a camper on the back and i had my little kids around me and i prayed like i'd never prayed in my life i prayed all the way to utah and just said lord will you please just take care of us please help me i hope i'm doing the right thing i feel like i am doing the right thing please help us to find somewhere to go and someone that will help us we pulled into my oldest brother's home on thanksgiving night and they had no warning that we were coming in traipse is my dad with me and my five little kids in tow and uh my my brother and his family welcomed us in they were shocked and excited to see us and they welcomed us in their home and fed us turkey and potatoes and gravy and pretty soon i found a way to take my brother uh into the back bedroom and i mean i was i was shaking i was so afraid to tell him what i was doing but i told him i said perry i don't want to go back i left i i want to leave and he said are you sure this is what you want to do you're leaving verlin what about the church and i says i'm leaving the whole thing i want out of there and he hugged me and he said honey i'll do anything i can to help you you and the kids can stay right here we've got the the apartment down in the basement i'll help you and he said does dad know and i says no i couldn't tell him and he said we have to tell your dad you know have to tell dad so we called my dad into the bedroom and i told him dad i'm not gonna go back with you and he felt like i had betrayed him like i'd lied to him which i had and um he says well you're gonna have to call your husband you're gonna have to tell him and so i was scared to do it but i did i got on the phone and and tracked verland down he was in san diego area somewhere and he called me back and i told him i says i'm in utah and i'm leaving you and he says oh don't be silly of course you're not leaving me i'll be there to pick you up in a couple of days and i told him don't come because i'm not going home with you and i was shaking so so bad i i i felt like i was acting like i was brave but i wasn't i was terrified but he showed up a couple of days later to try to convince me to go home with him but during those two days that i waited for him to come i talked to my older brother and he explained to me something that before then i had no idea and that is that women have rights and he told me that what what berlin had done with me marrying me at 15 years old and um that that he that he what he had done was totally illegal and i nev i didn't realize that and that all i had to do was to call the law and that he would they would do something with him so i i confronted him when he showed up i said i will call the police if you try to make me go home with you and so he backed away he left me he knew what about what about your kids did they have any kind of relationship with him i mean was it hard on them or was he just sort of no the guy who showed up occasionally my my kids cared about berlin they called him daddy but they didn't have a relationship with him because they didn't know him he was he was a an occasional visitor who came to our house who would give the kids a kiss on the cheek and a pad on the fanny and send them outside so that he could spend time alone with me and that's all they knew of their dad so when we left they they were excited they got to watch cartoons for the first time in their life they got to they were excited at thought of going to school my my oldest daughter was would would have started first grade and um no it was it was a great experience for the kids they were getting some attention that they'd never had before from my my brother and my sister-in-law they got new clothes they got dolls they got toys um everything was exciting to them what if you didn't have anyone that you knew on the outside who you could even hope might take you in if it hadn't been for the fact that i had older siblings living in the united states that i hoped would take care of us i would still be i'm afraid that i would still be involved in that community that polygamous community today i don't think i would have ever left i would have had nowhere to go um i can't tell you how many times i have praised the lord and thanked him that i had older siblings and thanked my my brother for his willingness i've called him a hero a thousand times and he knows that he he was my he was my rescuer you had known for instance that there was a place you could go with your children i would have left mexico and left my husband uh a good three four years before i did if i would have known that there was somewhere to go but i really didn't i didn't know that my own family would take me in they had huge families of their own they they had responsibilities and i didn't know that i had a place to go if i would have known i would have left several years before i did i was ready to go several years before did you know it was illegal when you were raised in it when you were married and when did you find out it was illegal i probably always knew that polygamy was illegal in in the united states because it had been explained to me that the reason that we lived in mexico was because we could live polygamy and peace down there and not have to worry about uh the u.s authorities so i did know that it was illegal in the united states anytime that i traveled with my husband which was rare but if if we ever went anywhere i was always told to uh let people know that i was his daughter so i was very well aware of the fact that it was illegal did you have a lot of lying that you had to to do or were you pretty cloistered that you didn't have to worry so much about your appearance out to the outside world um we were very cloistered um i uh let me start over okay i realized i just asked a two-part question that probably wasn't fair but that's okay that's okay um we were cloistered away from most society so it was rare that i really felt like i had to lie but and when i did lie you know tell people that my husband was was my father that i was his daughter stuff like that i felt like it was okay that it was an acceptable lie that i was doing what i needed to do for the kingdom of god so i didn't have a lot of guilt about it sadly but um no i you know even cloistered away like i was i didn't even realize what christianity was about i didn't know what other religions were about other than mormonism i knew a little bit about catholicism because my mexican friends around me were catholic but that seemed like a cult to me because i knew that they had saints hanging around in the catholic churches and it all seemed rather strange to me and so um i knew that their religion had to be wrong but as far as like christian religions i knew nothing about them the little bit that i didn't know was a few times that i'd got to watch television and i'd see christian ministers on tv and they just seemed wild and crazy so um to say that i knew anything about any other religion besides mormonism i didn't talk about your journey from where you are safe from polygamy but how do you get from there to to a living relationship with jesus right after i left mexico and moved into utah my my brothers and sisters who lived in utah were either mormon or else they really didn't attend any kind of church or have any kind of a religion but i wanted my kids to have a religion i i wanted them to have the society of a church family and so i became baptized into the lds church one of the wards there that my family went to and my oldest daughter was baptized as well we'd go to church but they sang the same songs i got the same feeling that i got in my fundamental church i felt very dissatisfied with it and i knew it was wrong i knew that that did not have the answers that i was looking for and i was looking for answers but i was afraid to even consider a a christian church because i'd been taught from joseph smith that all christian churches were an abomination in the sight of god so i really didn't know where to look so pretty much i just did my own thing i lived i took care of my children i worked i went back to school i got my high school diploma i was looking hoping and praying that i would find a husband i wanted so badly to share my life with someone but that's that's actually what happened three years after i left uh my husband i met a guy from from california and uh fell in love with him he married me he raised my children he loved my kids that he became dad right off the bat and he was from a nazarene christian background although he was not an attender as an adult his his grandparents had taken him to the nazarene church as a kid we moved away from utah and moved to idaho and it was shortly after we moved to to idaho that a new friend that my husband met invited us to come to his church and it was a christian church and my husband came home and told me about it and he says hey this friend of mine wants us to go to church with him and at first i really i was scared to go and step foot into an abominable church but he convinced me and so i got the kids ready and and we went and um it just seemed so strange the music was strange i mean everybody seemed weird to me you know and i spent the first the first visit there just looking at people and feeling out of place but we went back the next sunday and i had been searching for god and i didn't really realize how bad i wanted to find him but the the little pastor i can't tell you what his message was about but i know that it was absolutely perfect for what i was looking for he explained about jesus and who he was and that he had saved us that he had saved me and it's like my heart was so drawn to what he had to say that i was i i knew i was hearing the truth and that this was the answer that i'd been searching for and we stood to sing and the songs were phenomenal just perfect just so all about jesus and i remember thinking why are these people singing every song to jesus what is that all about but yet i knew it was the truth i knew that i was hearing truth and so when we stood to sing the final song the the pastor did an altar call and i was shaking so hard and i was crying and one of the little gals that was uh playing one of the instruments up front she could see me and she came down and she said are you okay do you need to pray and i didn't know what i needed but i just knew that i was so convicted and she led me to the altar and i didn't even know what an altar was for i'd never seen an altar before but i knelt there and the pastor came and prayed with me and i knew that what i was doing was right i didn't know what i was doing i knew that i was accepting jesus as my personal savior and that it felt right and that i i just uh i i said the sinner's prayer and it changed my heart even though i really didn't understand what i was doing that became the change in my life and i accepted that church i i started growing i accepted the bible as the word of god i realized i remember how amazed i was at realizing that the bible could be trusted and that it i didn't have to worry about it and that i could read it and trust in what it said and it was a journey it was a process of me sorting through the things that i had been taught my whole life trying to decide which things were biblical and which things were not biblical and it was just it was an amazing journey of getting to know jesus of getting to trust in him um of realizing that he's god god in the flesh and that he's my friend and that he's my savior and that he's my shepherd on a daily basis and it's been an amazing journey it's one that i wouldn't trade for anything um it's so different than the life that i had as a polygamous wife there's so much joy there's so much um there's so much peace there's no more worry that i'm i might go to hell if i don't behave a certain way and um i feel so incredibly loved and blessed to be where i'm at today is that when you first discovered excellent that you that jesus died on the cross for our sins i was aware that jesus had died on the cross but the fact that he had actually died for my sins was was news to me i did not realize why he'd die on the cross what the purpose was i didn't realize that his blood would pay for my sin debt i didn't realize that was even a possibility because i'd been taught my whole life that i had to pay for my own sin debt and how did how would you do that it would be by the good works that i did the acceptance of polygamy the treating you know living the ten commandments was a big deal in my church i really didn't know how i'd ever go to heaven i really didn't expect to ever end up there because i knew that i was sinful in my heart um my whole religion was confusing to me to say that i really had a good overall understanding of what i believed or supposedly believed what i've been taught my whole life i really didn't but the fact that jesus died for my sins that he paid for my sins was something that i learned once i became a christian talk about the the way that was life changing that understanding what kind of change is it affecting the change of finding out that jesus was my savior and that it wasn't it wasn't about what i could do but what he had done for me it took quite a while before all of that sunk in for me before it all gelled in my head and i understood it um i am so grateful that i have that understanding today uh i don't think i would have i would have never got it being in fundamentalist mormonism that was never discussed the subject of grace was never discussed i didn't understand even what the word meant let alone um what the concept was i think the sharpest contrast is my understanding of who god is today as as opposed to what i used to think he was i used to think that there were many gods in heaven that my god had a father god who had a father god and you know infinity backwards that he was a polygamist that he was definitely a male chauvinist um i i had heard that he was a god of love but i certainly couldn't understand it when you added in all of those things so that's probably the sharpest contrast is to find that he is an amazing creator that he is a king that he is uh my friend that he cares about everything about me and my family and and my loved ones and that he's good the fact that god is good and kind is so foreign to what i was what my understanding was in fundamental mormonism what kind of appeal would you make to somebody who was in your shoes that desperately unhappy realizing that something is fundamentally wrong there are places to go today there are people who would love to help you today they'll help you to find a new home help you with your kids help you with your life teach you the truth about god and who he is that he is wonderful he is good that his plan of salvation is simple and beautiful and understandable and i couldn't i couldn't encourage you more if you're caught in polygamy today like i was i used to say that i was trapped if you are trapped in polygamy today there is a way out there are people who are desperately wanting to help you and go for it excellent you're talking to a bunch of people who probably don't even have a clue that polygamy is even a problem in this country what what was what would be the main thing you'd want to educate them about there is polygamy in probably every state in the nation today uh there's little groups of it all over the place some of them consider themselves as churches some are independent polygamists but polygamy is alive and well throughout our country these people need to know about jesus that it's not something that they do such as living polygamy like i used to believe that that was what was going to to save me that was what was going to get me to the highest degree of glory in heaven that's what these people believe they need to learn the truth of who jesus is that there is salvation that they can get out of their polygamous lifestyle that they can have a husband they can have hope they can have a wonderful life and that they they can know that they can go to heaven and how is it they get to happen they get to heaven because jesus died on the cross and paid their sin debt he is the way the truth and the life and uh when you really break that down and think about it all it is amazing excellent um and now it kind of backracking a little bit now when you left what did you have in terms of your possessions life skills education what what did you come out with i came out of polygamy as a 23 almost 24 year old with five little children um a couple of suitcases with a few clothes in it and absolutely nothing else i had no high school education i my job skills consisted of changing diapers and feeding babies i was very naive about electricity microwaves how the world ran i was scared to death to have a bank account i didn't know how to work all i knew was i wanted a change in my life i wanted to have hope in my future and i did not want my children to be raised the way that i was i wanted them to have a future outside of polygamy and so i knew it was a big risk i knew that i was very naive but i wanted to learn i had the desire to change my life if people knew that there was a place to go if they knew that they could get there they could get there safely and they'd have their needs taken care of do you think there'd be like a huge rush out of polygamy i think there would be an awfully lot of people who left polygamy if they knew that not only was there a place to go but a plan to rehabilitate them for the future it's very very difficult to leave but it's hard to leave somewhere and not know that there is a long-term plan that you can make your life work that you can take care of your family that you can have a future and i discovered that it's a day-to-day process it's not easy to live to leave it's not easy to leave your your family your loved ones but i'm so glad that i did i'm so very glad that i did because i have a future today my children have a future today they have uh hope they have joy they've made wonderful lives for themselves just as i have and i still have a relationship with my polygamist siblings it's not the same relationship that i used to have um i i'm somewhat of an outsider to them but we still see one another occasionally and so honestly i haven't lost anything i've done nothing but gain peace and joy and uh i've gained jesus that's the biggest thing what do you perceive then as the biggest need for those who have finally mustered up the courage to leave what what's the biggest need somewhere to go it's a it's a step-by-step process but that i thought about the following week when i left the following day what would i do for the next day they need somewhere to go where they know that they're going to be safe where they they know that they're going to be their children are going to be fed that they're going to have a roof over their heads and then they need to learn who god really is because that's what's going to sustain them did you suffer a lot of guilt it vacillated back and forth my at times i'd feel like i was a loser like i wasn't strong enough like everyone else was a stronger person than me that i had left because i was weak and then there was the other flip side of the coin where i felt like i was the strong one who had the courage to leave um and i i dealt with that for honestly for several years after i left i probably got rid of it once i became a christian but even then i at one occasionally i deal with it not not guilt because i left the church but um that i'd left my family behind can you talk a little bit about concepts such as the brainwashing thought control manipulation did you experience that or or see that happen in your group it was it was definitely brainwashing and thought control but it was very subtle i probably could have married an outsider but i was taught from the time i was a little girl that if i did that i would go to hell i would not go to the celestial kingdom of heaven which of course i wanted to go there so the thought of actually marrying an outsider was i didn't even entertain the thought seriously so it was it was a mind control um one thing i wanted you to talk about and i don't know if you've watched any of the sister wives and that kind of stuff yeah what uh are they providing an accurate view of polygamy in these tv shows like sister wise usa um generally speaking no um there are a few things that i'm sure that is a little bit right but the overall concept that they're trying to show to the world that um life is wonderful in polygamy uh that they can deal with one another without wanting to tear one another's face off uh no it's it's absolutely not accurate there is so much more emotional turmoil that goes on in a polygamous family than these shows ever show um it's heartbreaking it's heart-wrenching it uh to share your husband is it's not there's nothing normal about it um i think that these these women truly uh are brainwashed i think that they have they have never studied on their own they don't they don't know their scriptures they certainly don't know their bible they believe that that polygamy is necessary and i think that they all think cody's cool and so whatever his agenda is has become their agenda i think they like the attention that the show gives them um and so they're battling for what they they believe is right and what do you think has been the overall effect of shows like that on on society in general i think it's been a very negative effect for the most part because although it has educated people that polygamy is out there like never before it has caused our society to look at polygamy as an alternative lifestyle just as they do the gay agenda and to be more accepting of it rather than appalled by it discuss the idea of consent versus free will in in polygamy do you really have a choice to not live polygamy no you do not have a choice as a as a woman as a girl raised in polygamy you're not given a choice either you choose to live polygamy or you know that you're you're going to go to hell because that's part of the doctrine uh that's joseph smith's doctrine right out of the doctrine and covenants um if and of course that's harped on a lot in polygamous groups the doctrine of joseph dnc 132. it's talked about it's explained over and over and over again there can be no question that either you live polygamy so that you can go to the highest degree of glory or you're a loser you are you're weak you're not strong you're gonna you're gonna go to hell so to say that it's a choice yeah you choose either to go to hell or to do what your leaders tell you to do and that is become a polygamous wife and does that come out very much in shows like sister wives no they do not talk about the doctrinal issues at all that's the thing that i had the hardest time with with both big love and sister wives they talk about the polygamy and the day-to-day whose night it is and how you deal with the kids and how you you know financially take care of your family and but they don't talk about the doctrine and what's behind it all what the concept is in the first place why they would ever choose to live polygamy in the first place is never brought out that i've ever seen and that's the thing is you get the impression well there's these women who voluntarily choose it is that really accurate to no they're they're they're not explaining that doctrinally they have to or else they're going to go to hell they're not they're not telling you that they're making it sound like it's just their choice because they're open-minded and loving and big-hearted and they can love these other women just fine okay is there anything else that's on your heart that you want to um yes i'm hungry

Channel: Sacred Groves

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Id: DVLhANv7awI

Length: 65min 30sec (3930 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2013