What we need to live.

This is a fictional story I wrote based loosely on many events from many people I have met and share life stories with. I hope you enjoy it. Quick warning, This could be taken as "anti-mormon." So you've been warned.

"I just cant accept that god doesn't exist. If he didn't create us and have a plan for us, then why the hell are we here?" She was having a hard time accepting that she had lost her faith and I started to worry that I was pushing her to hard. "look Kristine, its okay to have doubts about anything, including atheism. I'm not saying you can't believe in God, I'm just asking why you do." Kristine had been questioning what she believed in for a while now. She had started to wonder about who God really was after her brother was sent home from his mission for reading "anti-Mormon books" and telling the mission president that he though Joseph smith had lied. The church made her feel like she had to choose between her brother and her God, she didn't understand why she couldn't have both.
She handled her issues with the church by pretending they weren't there. She took a calling in the nursery and enjoyed spending time with the little kids, where she didn't need to question what someone else was teaching that week and where she didn't need to take a hard look at the doctrine she believed in. She could just play with little kids for two hours a week and call her religious duties filled. She spent three years in the nursery before the Bishop called her in his office and wanted to release her from her calling. She cried and asked to keep it but he said that "she had other responsibilities she needed to attend to." What he really meant was she was 24 unmarried and in college and she should be looking for a husband.
So she did what was expected of her, she found a man to take her to the temple, and she married him. She tried to forget getting her endowments, to her it was weird and uncomfortable, but she smiled and told everyone she was so happy to have finally gone through the temple.
Her marriage was a mistake, she knew it from the moment she said "of course I'll marry you." It made it harder to call it off when she tried to tell her mother she wasn't sure about it and her mom lectured her saying, "He is the perfect man for you. He's a return missionary he's becoming a doctor and I had a spiritual prompting that you two should get married before he ever asked." What Kristine's mom didn't know was he was abusive, he wouldn't let her have a job or friends that he didn't approve of and he wanted her to start having kids as soon as they got married, and they did. She got pregnant a week after their honeymoon. it took three years and two children before she left him and it took four trips to the hospital and a restraining order before he let her go.
Now here we sat, Kristine and her brother talking about religion and family. We talked a lot lately because she has been living in my basement for the last four months. Our parents kicked her out of their because she wouldn't go back to her ass hole husband Dave after he said that he had gotten counseling and he was over his issues. I found it funny that it only took a short three months for him to work all his issues out. I found out what he was after the last time he hit her, she called and asked me to come get her and bring my trailer to move her out. When I found out I almost killed him, I told him if he ever touched my sister again I'd shoot him dead where he stood. We never knew about the abuse because my sisters family lived a state away and we only saw them on holidays and he would always act like a great guy in front of us which is why my parents liked him so much, he was a nice guy, a priesthood holder and they got to tell everyone their daughter was married to a doctor.
So here she was 28 living in her brother basement with two kids, no education, no job skills and making 11.25 an hour at a call center listening to people yell at her all day. She couldn't believe that all of this was it. That there wasn't an eternity of joy and happiness waiting for her when she died.
"How can you not believe in a God? look at the world around you, there is so much beauty and wonder." I asked her the same question another way "What makes you think that some all powerful god would make this beautiful world and then put things in place to destroy it every day like volcano's and earth quakes that kill millions of innocent people? Why make the universe so big and mysterious and send your only son to just this planet?" Kristine knew that I would never be moved on the existence of god with out some major proof, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I learned on my mission that if you look at your religion and really thought about it that it was a way to control you. I was paying to serve my church for two years with out having ever really examined what I believed with scepticism. It wasn't until we started teaching a ministers daughter, Who asked a lot of tough questions that I couldn't answer, did I start to wonder. So I started buying books and reading about things I had never been taught or even heard of. Now I'm sitting with my sister trying to teach her how to really be sceptical of extraordinary claims with no real evidence.
I finally asked her "why do you need the church to be true and God to exist? What would make that so terrible?" Kristine's eyes started to tear up, "I wouldn't care if the church is true or not, I really don't think it is any more, but what do I teach my kids? How do I raise them to be good people with out it? I know God exists, with out that I'm nothing. I wouldn't know how to get out of bed in the morning if I didn't believe that God had a plan for me and was watching out for me, guiding my life and helping me know what to do." I sat in silence for a while not knowing how to respond, not understanding how someone could totally leave their life to the whims of their "promptings" and hoping that everything turns out all right. I finally said "If that's what you need to feel like life is worth living, then that's what you need."
We would still talk religion every so often, she even left the LDS church but I never pressed the issue of god again because I knew she was right, she couldn't survive her life if there wasn't a loving god at the end of the road to comfort her, to care about her, to love her, because at times she felt he was the only one who did. I still hope she's right, but I still know she's wrong.