"What makes you stay in the Church?"

Hello again! First off, I have to say thank you to everyone who took the time to read my first blog post. You don’t have any idea how great it felt to be extremely authentic and allow for people to get to know the real me. I have felt nothing but love, compassion, friendship, and support. I love you all so much and feel extremely blessed to have you all in my life. I was beyond terrified to actually post the first entry to this blog. I may or may not have had to walk away from the computer a few times before I hit post, and I am glad that I posted it. All that I can say is thank you all.

This past week a lot of things have happened because of my coming out post. I have had a lot of opportunities to talk and to be myself. There have also been a lot of great conversations that have been had with a lot of great people in my life. One of those conversations was had with one of my friends from childhood. We grew up in the same ward and he has always been a great example to me, and I am forever grateful for his friendship. He asked me a really good question that I will address in a little bit in this blog, but before I get to that, I want to address something that was just brought to my mind, but that I think I have actually been thinking about for quite some time thanks to a certain TV show that I watch . . .

The thing that brought this topic to my mind was the movie “Charly.” It is a cheesy, depressing, wonderful LDS movie (that brings me to tears every single time I watch it) that I haven’t watched probably since the mission. There is a quote in the movie that, while I was watching it tonight, kind of struck me really hard. In the movie, Sam asks Charly why she asked him out again, and she responds by saying, “Truthfully you intrigue me. A grown man who actually believes in fairy tales, but does he actually believe it or has he just never read anything else?” This quote kind of hit me like a ton of bricks and made me start to think about a lot of things in my life, but it brought me back to my conversation I had with this great friend, and this conversation was great for me because it made me think a lot about where I stand.

So we were talking and he said, “Kevin, I have to ask you this, and it may sound insensitive or something, but I just want to understand. What makes you want to stay in the church?” Of all the questions I could be asked after coming out, this was not the question I was expecting, but it lead me to think a lot about it as I answered. Why, as a gay man, do I want to stay in the church? What is it about the church that makes me want to stay an active member? In all honesty ever leaving the church has never even seemed like a possibility to me, but this question made me actually think about my reasons why for a second. Is all of this all just a fairy tale, or do I actually believe it and know it to be truth?

So, what makes me want to stay in the church? First and foremost, I have a pretty solid testimony in the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have prayed about it and I cannot deny for any reason the answers that I have received that yes, God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in answer to his prayer. Through the Prophet Joseph Smith Christ restored His church to the Earth with all of the priesthood and fullness of the gospel. I have absolutely no doubt in the Book of Mormon. It is the word of God. I know this because I have prayed about it and received a spiritual confirmation of this that I cannot ever deny. I know that we have a prophet today, Thomas S. Monson, and that he receives the revelation necessary to guide us in these latter days. 

My next reason is because of my relationship with my Savior Jesus Christ. I have experienced the atonement in my life more times than I could ever count. Most recently when I was having probably the hardest, longest, most difficult week of my life, I felt Him lift me up when I felt like all I wanted to do was wallow in my own self-pity. I have felt His loving arms enfold me through the actions of so many other people. I have felt His love for me through so many different experiences, be they a text message out of the blue, a loving and strong embrace, words of kindness, and countless other ways. I have absolutely no doubt that Jesus Christ loves me and atoned for me. I know that He knows exactly what I am going through in every stage of my life, and He has never left me alone.

One other reason is that I cannot deny the feelings I have had as I have communed with my Heavenly Father, be that through prayer, church attendance, scripture study, or going to the temple. I know that God lives and that I am one of His children. I read one time a quote by Ezra Taft Benson that I believe fully that says, "Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us." I believe that so much. I believe that I had a personal relationship with Him before I was born, that I continue to have a personal relationship with Him now, and will only further that relationship in the next life. His ways are absolute, and I cannot change them. I believe completely that His ways are perfect, and I can't argue them. I love my Heavenly Father and I know that He loves me.

So those are some of my reasons as to why I want to, and will always, stay in the church. I have made covenants with my Heavenly Father that I don't intend to break. Do I still have a lot of questions? Definitely. Are there still hard days? Absolutely. Are there confusing feelings? Of course. What I have learned though is that this is COMPLETELY okay. I have to realize that life is a journey and not an event. I am always going to be learning and growing, as long as I do my part. I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ IS NOT just a fairy tale. I know that it is the truth.

I can’t deny the truth. I will defend it until the day I die. Yes, I have some extremely emotionally challenging days. I have moments where I think, “Why am I torturing myself?” There are moments where I just want to curl up in a ball and scream at the top of my lungs because I don’t know what to do with all of my confusing feelings, feelings I never actually let myself feel before, but I am okay with that, because when I start to feel like I don’t know what to do, I am reminded exactly what to do, and that is to get on my knees and pour my soul out to my Heavenly Father. He truly does listen to me. He truly is there when I am praying, and I have absolutely no doubt in that. I know He hears me. I haven’t received all of the answers to my many, MANY questions, but I also know that I don’t need to have all of the answers right now. As much as I would like to have all of the answers, a very good friend told me something that I hope he doesn’t care that I share. He told me, “On questions, sometimes it is nice to remember that we don’t have all the answers.” This simple phrase actually changed a lot of my outlook recently on some of my many questions and confusions in my crazy life. Sometimes it is nice to remember that I don’t have, or need, all of the answers. I need to take a step back and just let myself breath for a moment and enjoy where life is taking me. Do I know what my happy ending looks like? Yes and no. Eternally speaking, yes. I do know that in the eternities I have the opportunity to return to God and be just like Him. Will I get married in this life? Probably not, but thankfully God is a God of love and I am an eternal being. There is a 1000 year period where I will have the opportunity to have an eternal family, and I am grateful for that eternal perspective that I have been blessed with. This perspective doesn’t necessarily make the hard days go away, but it makes them bearable. I am just learning to be myself, the real Kevin, within the bounds that the Lord has set. So, do I truly believe in fairy tales? Yes. As Snow White/Mary Margaret says, “What exactly do you think fairy tales are? They are a reminder that our lives can get better if we hold on to hope. Your happy ending might not be what you expect, but that is what will make it special.” Good thing the gospel is not a fairy tale though.

The church is true! I love you all!

Meet Kevin, the REAL Kevin

Hello there! Nice to meet you. Welcome to my blog. Let me tell you about myself. My name is Kevin Landeen. I’m 26, a graphic designer (production artist but do freelance work on the side) by day, cinephile by night. Reigning Harry Potter trivia champion with my awesome team at The Geeky Cauldron, fluent in español, LDS, and just living life as it comes at me. Oh, and did I mention I am gay?

Years of denial ruled my life. I would just suppress these feelings. There was no way that I could be gay. I had never heard about good Mormon boys who are also attracted to men. It was just something that is never heard of, so I would just always pretend that I wasn’t really feeling any of those attractions. They weren’t real, so I figured they would go away one day. Teenage years were very interesting because as the rest of the guys around me were starting to date and talk about all of the girls they were interested in (“She is hot . . . I want to date her . . . Look at her . . .”) I would try to chime in on the conversations, but it felt so fake. I thought that it was one of those, “Fake it until you make it” situations, and if I just prayed hard and tried to choose the right, these feelings would go away. They sure didn’t.

That brings me to graduation and the start of the next chapter in my life. Finishing High School I knew immediately what my next step was going to be. The mission. I always knew, without a doubt, that I would serve a mission. Was I a little nervous? Of course! I wasn’t nervous because of the attractions I had though, because I still wasn’t allowing myself to admit that I had them. They were there, yes, but I wasn’t allowing myself to even admit it. You just never heard about gay Mormon men. So I opened my call and I was called to THE BEST MISSION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. If you served a mission you might say yours is the best, but I will fight you on that, the Mexico Monterrey East Mission is the best. The experiences that I had on the mission were the greatest ever. I met some of the best people on Earth. I had the opportunity to serve with one of the greatest men on the face of the planet and his wonderful wife. My mission president is a perfect example of living a Christ-centered life, and I have so many special memories serving with, and learning from, him. I had some incredible companions who changed my life forever. I shared the gospel with some of the greatest people on the face of the planet. I will forever be grateful for the experiences I had on the mission. I was completely focused on other people and didn’t have any time to focus on myself, so I didn’t even think about the same sex attractions that I had. It was like they were non-existent in the mission, so coming home I was all gung-ho in thinking, “Hurray! I served God as a missionary, and now He is going to send me a woman to marry!”

Post mission life was VERY different than I expected. Did God magically "cure" me? Most definitely not. All of those feelings and attractions I had had all my life came back stronger than before. Was I just supposed to suppress and deny them? Was I just supposed to ignore them? What was I supposed to do? I figured that I would just ignore them and it would all be okay. There is a Mormon checklist in life that I was trying to fill out: Turn 8 and get baptized, turn 12 and get the priesthood, turn 19 and go on a mission, and then come home and get married. Dating for me has always been a challenge because it just felt so forced and fake, which is why looking back the only times I ever made the first move in the dating world was the High School dances, and that was just because I wanted to hangout with my friends and they were all going. When I would go on dates, it was always because someone either set me up, or the girl asked first. I would pray hard that God would let me be attracted to these girls, but it never happened. In the back of my mind I would always ask myself, “Could it be possible that I am . . .” but I would always immediately say no, because you just can’t be Mormon and gay. It is just not a thing that is possible.

Flash forward to 2015. A lot of life experiences had happened between the time I got home from the mission that I don’t really want to get into . . . I will just sum it up with an almost marriage, confusing dating world, and a constant pressure to get married as soon as possible from the entire world (I think that in Utah there is a stigma towards men and women who aren’t married by age 25, which is ridiculous, but I’ll talk about that another time . . .). All of my friends, siblings, cousins, ward members, exes, basically everyone I know in the world were getting married, and I was like the only one who wasn’t pursuing a relationship with anyone. I always got the, “Kevin, look at that girl over there! You should go ask her out,” and I would just say, “No, not right now. I am not looking to date right now,” (and secretly thinking, “But the guy she is standing next to . . .”) I always came up with so many excuses as to why I didn’t want to date so and so. Distance, school, work, just busy in life, but the truth in all of the different situations was that I am not even remotely attracted to women.

These were a lot of conflicting feelings and emotions to have, because you just don’t hear about gay Mormons in the world, living the gospel and enduring to the end. Where to turn to in these confusing times? The church basically only has one pamphlet, “God Loveth His Children,” which is alright, but not my favorite thing that has ever been written. Mormonsandgays.org is fine, but needs a redesign and more info for sure. Basically this is the only thing that is said: “Where the Church stands: The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.” Okay, so what does that mean? Am I supposed to just not admit that I have these attractions? Am I just supposed to hide them and pretend that they don’t exist? Am I just supposed to live in hiding and live a sad, lonely life? It was definitely a confusing time.

It was like suffering in silence. I put on a good face and just went through the motions, but there was this constant internal conflict inside of me. Basically everyone I know was either married, in a relationship, dating around, or whatever, and then there was me. I knew that I should be attempting, but any attempt felt so fake. I had, and have, NO desire to date women. I stopped going to singles wards because I hated the constant reminder that I was different from everyone else. I never went to the activities because the purpose of them is to find a girl to date and then get married. It was just another place I felt out of place and alone. Bishop interviews were always, “Kevin, who are you dating?” Sacrament meetings were always, “Men, there are a lot of single women who are just waiting to be asked on a date, so you need to get on that because you are holding up their eternal progression.” Whenever I heard from someone I hadn’t seen in a long time it was always, “You dating Kevin? When are you going to get married?” I felt broken, lost, afraid, and alone. I was so confused because of these attractions I have. I felt like I was wrong for having them and that I needed to change. It was stressful and a very dark time for me.

October 2015, General Conference. I prayed and prayed that God would speak to me through one of the talks and help me to figure my life out. Elder Holland is a personal hero of mine. When he speaks, I shut everyone out and just listen. It is like he is speaking directly to me. Elder Holland’s talk this time was absolutely exactly what I needed to hear and brought a lot of clarity in my life. I will just share part of the talk that basically started me on this journey of opening up to myself and others. He started to talk about a young man who entered the mission field and experienced same sex attraction. Wait, he was talking about people like me? Was an Apostle really talking about people like me from the pulpit? There was part of the talk that spoke to me extremely powerfully: “But with the grace of God, her own tenacity, and the help of scores of Church leaders, friends, family members, and professionals, this importuning mother has seen her son come home to the promised land. Sadly we acknowledge that such a blessing does not, or at least has not yet, come to all parents who anguish over a wide variety of their children’s circumstances, but here there was hope. And, I must say, this son’s sexual orientation did not somehow miraculously change—no one assumed it would. But little by little, his heart changed.” Was god asking for my sexual orientation to change? NO! He wasn’t, and this was the moment where I decided that it was time to start confronting these feelings. God wasn’t asking for me to change this part of myself, but to bridle my passions, just like everyone else. I wasn’t supposed to just completely suppress and hide myself from the world. All He wants from me is my heart. He wanted my heart to change. This was the first time that I realized that I didn’t need to “pray the gay away” but that I needed to just hold to the iron rod and live the gospel.

Then Google became a good friend of mine and I found a website that for the first time gave me hope. The Voices of Hope website. I finally saw that there were indeed people like me. There were indeed people who experience same sex attraction and live the gospel, and were sharing their stories. I found that it is possible. I watched all of the videos and found myself just crying. Not out of sadness, but because for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I needed to pretend anymore. I still wasn’t ready to tell anyone. How do you, at 26, tell people who have known you for your whole life that you are gay? How do you explain that you don’t plan on leaving the church, but that you are planning on just living the gospel and keeping my covenants? It was definitely a dilemma. The very first person who I ever talked to was one of the people on the Voices of Hope website. I sent him a Facebook message and was not expecting to hear back, but I did, and it was great. I received a lot of advice and a lot of hope. I would go to the temple and pray for strength to talk to people. I specifically prayed that someone would specifically ask me, because I had a hard time imagining that I would ever be able to bring myself to tell anyone that I am gay. I didn’t think it would be possible to say those words. God likes to answer our prayers, and most often it is when you least expect it. I was chatting with a friend from the mission on Facebook and low and behold he specifically brought it up. Now it was a do or die moment and there was an intense internal struggle happening. Do I actually follow through and tell someone? I had asked for this, and God was answering my prayers, so I had to do something about it. So I just said, “Can I tell you something? Yes, I am attracted to men,” and we had a great conversation about it.  I was freaking out and fully ready to have a horrible reaction and to never hear from him again, but the reaction was the exact opposite. He responded with love and concern. It was great to be able to talk to someone and have them know the real me, the hidden me, the me that no one really knew, and it was liberating.  Another friend of mine gave me an analogy that I think describes the feeling of coming out perfectly. He said it is like taking the first breath after drowning. It is so true. It felt amazing to not have to pretend anymore to be someone I wasn’t. It doesn’t change anything, other than that it is no longer a secret with that person.

Then I joined a group called North Star, which has been a HUGE blessing in my life. I have met some of the most amazing people in the entire planet, people who understand me and love me for me, who help me to live the gospel. I have found some absolutely amazing friends there who I have grown to love so much (if you are reading this, you know who you are and words can’t describe how grateful I am to have you in my life and I love you so much! Thanks for giving me the strength to carry on and for the love you have shown to me. Love you and sending you a HUGE hug! You gave me the strength to talk to my family and friends, and I will be eternally grateful for your friendship!). I have found joy in openly talking about my experiences and feelings. It has been wonderful.

I finally started to talk to people in person, and it was absolutely terrifying. I told my sister first, and it was terrifying, but liberating. She just gave me a hug and said she loved me. My brother in law was next. Then mom, dad, my older brother, my younger brother, and my sister in law. My whole immediate family all were in the know, and it was terrifying. I was absolutely terrified to tell them. I had to work myself up to telling them each time, and it was scary for sure, but they all reacted with love and hugs. I was terrified. I had worked up so many different possible scenarios to how people would respond, but everyone responded with just love and compassion, and acceptance of me for me. Talking to them helped me to gain some perspective. Coming out to them wasn’t me telling them that I was leaving the church or going to act on all of these feelings, but that I was just becoming a more authentic me. It was no longer this secret that I have to keep hidden, and I feel so much better.

I started telling my coworkers and friends as well. Everyone has just reacted with love and acceptance. It has been scary every single time, but it has also gotten easier and easier to talk to people. I have felt so much love and acceptance.

So, if you have gotten this far, welcome to me. You now know the Kevin Landeen who has been hiding for a long time. You now know the Kevin Landeen who is still learning who he is, finding his place in this world, and figuring life out. I have a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am just trying to live the best I can. I don’t have all of the answers, but I do have a strong testimony. I know that God loves me and all He asks of me is that I do my best. I have made covenants with him, and I fully intend on keeping them. Yes, I am a gay Mormon, and yes I am still finding my place in the world, but all I know is that life is a journey, not an event, and I am just working on finding many answers to many questions. At this point, me being gay is not such a big deal to me, and I hope that it isn’t a big deal to you either. I hope that it isn’t a big deal to my family either. There is a blog I have read and I am just going to blatantly steal this section of one of the posts . . . “I believe, with time, it won't as big a deal to all members of the church either. They just need opportunity to think about it, so here I am posting about it. Every Mormon I've come out to has been awesome.  Soon enough, gay people will be able to come out and not be as afraid to do so." I am open to talk to any of you if you have any questions or want to talk. I am not afraid anymore to talk openly about this, so if you have any questions or want to talk, I am here and more than willing to talk.  I love you all and thank you for reading this. Am I terrified to post this? Sure. It is always scary to open up about something like this, but the “Sparkly secret” (inside joke!) is no longer a secret. I am still the same Kevin, just a little bit more authentic.

The church is true! Love you all!