When my daughter stopped going to the LDS Church, she was 13. It was a long, complicated battle. She'd had a blow-up with one of the other girls her age and said she wanted to go to a different ward with one of her friends. I agreed to this for some months, until I happened to go home in the middle of church one Sunday to get something I'd forgotten, and I discovered her watching television in the front room.
I was angry. I felt like she had lied to me. I tried to think of some punishment to fit the crime, but when I sat down with her and talked about it, she made it clear that she'd only lied because she couldn't tell me the truth. She didn't believe in the church anymore. She'd tried to go to her friend's church for a few weeks, but she just couldn't. She didn't believe in God. She was an atheist.
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