Changing my Grace

How do you tell people that you’ve changed your mind? That maybe this isn’t working for me anymore. That you feel that what made you free before has now become terribly confining. This is where I find myself; trying to come to grips with my evolving feelings on faith and religion. I could say that it was all of a sudden. That one day I woke up and realized that what I had invested my life (and soul) in snake oil. In lies. But, that’s not how it happened. It started with the echoes of doubt, that maybe something wasn’t right. Those feelings were quickly stuffed down by the fear of turning my back on the truth and facing a bleak hereafter.
For a long time I quietly questioned and accepted answers that I didn’t agree with. I split myself in two: the religion and the belief. I consolidated these halves the way that many of us consolidate contradicting beliefs… I just believed them both. It was similar to school when I believed in creation six thousand years ago and dinosaurs roaming the earth six billion years ago. I became of two conflicting minds. My church highly discouraged the use of coffee, tea, tobacco and alcohol. I agreed that these restrictions were for a better me. I also had no qualms about consuming any of these substances, and only refrained because I was told to. I stopped wearing tank tops and short skirts, not because I thought them immoral, but because I was preserving my modesty for The Church. God told us, through a prophet, not to participate in loud laughter or coarse speech, so while I tried to speak calmly at church and around church friends, I was rowdy and dirty everywhere else (per my natural inclinations). It has come to a point that I can no longer reconcile these two different people in one body. I cannot believe in two conflicting sets of morality and continue as a healthy person.
I am starting down a path of self awareness and truth. Not a specific truth taught by The Church, or any other church for that matter, but a truth that I can accept with my whole being. I cannot share this journey with many of my friends or most of my family. Because of these facts, I have chosen to share my journey of discovery with you, the faceless; those who don’t know me. I hope to come to a better understanding of myself and the world around me. So I invite you to share this experience with me.