Middle Mormon

I was raised Mormon. I was told I was perfect to begin with. A pure, perfect soul, worthy of all the grace God had to give. And then I grew up...

Then I was told that no one was perfect, except Jesus of course. And that perfection wasn't possible, not in this life, only in the life to come. But the expectations to become perfect were always there, always expected. Unattainable perfection expectations. This was a recipe for psychological torture that would haunt me far into adulthood.

I was told there was a war in heaven. I was on the winning side, so I got to come to earth. With the potential to someday become a God. There were three heavens that I could go to someday, too. If I was perfectly perfect I could go to heaven number one. If I was anything less than perfect, then I'd go to heaven number two. And heaven number three was for all those who fell below heaven number one and heaven number two. Then there was one more place. Outer darkness, reserved for the ultimately wicked. 

I was told I needed to earn my way to one of these three heavens. The only way to get to heaven number one was to do absolutely everything they told me to do, with no exceptions. In a sense, to be ultimately perfectly perfect. I fell below these standards time and time again. This only brought guilt, shame, confusion, self-loathing and desperate depression. God wouldn't want me to feel that way, why would his church?

These concepts boiled my brain and destroyed my soul. There was no place for a soul like mine in a design like that. It only left me feeling horribly unworthy and far from perfect. Far from grace and far from heaven. I was a Mormon, caught somewhere in the middle. Heaven number two or three were probably waiting for me...