Joy in the Journey

I have enjoyed going to Music and the Spoken Word each week this year. It has been a wonderful way for me to start the Sabbath. It puts me in the right mood, helps lift my spirit, and starts my Sunday worship perfectly. I have enjoyed the spirit that the music has brought to my life and I have gained a greater appreciation for the effort that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra at Temple Square, and the countless others who work tirelessly to make the broadcast exceptional each week. This has been a wonderful weekly tradition that I fully intend to keep.

This week’s broadcast was exceptional for many reasons, and not just because I got to sit next to my favorite person on the planet (if you are reading this, it is true! You are my favorite person!). The message was something that I absolutely loved and have been thinking about a lot recently. It was entitled “The Road of Life” and was all about the different journey’s we are on in our lives. There are two paragraphs that I want to share that touched my heart in a way that I wasn’t expecting this morning.

“During those rough patches, it’s easy to become discouraged, especially when we look at others whose way seems much smoother. We hear stories of people who accomplish remarkable things and wonder how they got such an easy path. But the truth is, there is no fast lane, no shortcut to true happiness and peace. Every life path winds its way through sorrows and setbacks before cresting on the sunlit highlands of contentment and accomplishment. Every autobiography–written or unwritten–has its plot twists before reaching its ‘happily ever after.’

So instead of comparing our road to someone else’s, it may be more productive to see each other as fellow travelers along what ends up being pretty much the same road. After all, none of us makes it very far without help. Indeed, we were sent here not to compete with each other but to walk side by side–to help each other when the road gets steep and to enjoy the pleasant stretches together.”

These two paragraphs are profound and wonderfully written, and bring a lot of what I have been thinking about recently to light and to words that I wasn’t sure how best to express. Life can be crazy. It can take twists and turns. We all have moments where we stumble, where we feel lost and afraid, or where we feel like we can’t go any further. I don’t think that there is a single person on the face of the earth who hasn’t looked around at people around us and wonder how they have it so easy. What we forget though is that everyone has his or her own trials and difficulties. Some people have very visible difficulties, and other people have trials that are not visible to anyone else, but deeply internal. No one has it easy in this life. Everyone has struggles and difficulties which can seem crippling to each and every one of us.

The journey in life can be rough, that’s for sure. President Monson spoke about that very thing and gave a suggestion that I think is extremely necessary. In his talk, “Joy in the Journey. He says, “Stresses in our lives come regardless of our circumstances. We must deal with them the best we can. But we should not let them get in the way of what is most important—and what is most important almost always involves the people around us. Often we assume that they must know how much we love them. But we should never assume; we should let them know. Wrote William Shakespeare, ‘They do not love that do not show their love.’ We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.”

My journey as a gay Mormon has brought me so much joy and happiness. Sure, there are confusing times, but everyone has confusing times in their lives, not just me. My situation may be different than yours, but that is one of the great things in this life. The fact that we all have so many different things, but can come together and help each other on the various paths that we are all on and make it to the same road that leads us back to our Heavenly Father. I am noticing more and more how necessary it is for us all to learn to help each other out, lift one another in our burdens, and be there to help each other in the good times and the difficult times.

President Monson gives one great tip to help us find joy in our journeys, and that is to never let the stresses we may find ourselves in detract from the most valuable and important things in our lives, and that almost always means the people around us. Recent events in my life have helped me to realize that what is most important to me in my life are the people who I know and love. I always seem to end up here when I am writing, but that is because I can never fully express just how much I love the people in my life. Something that rings true to me is the fact that I am an eternal being having a mortal experience, and that I existed before I was born, and I will exist forever. I will one day be resurrected and have the opportunity to live with my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ once again. The fact that I am an eternal being has came to mean more to me recently, for many reasons, but I think that the most important reason to me is because of the relationships that I have in my life.

Why would the relationships in my life mean so much to me as part of my eternal existence? I believe that the love and relationships developed in this life will continue and grow stronger in the next life. I have found joy in my journey because I have found some incredible people who love me and support me, who don’t compare their paths to mine but are willing to just walk with me, supporting me and loving me for me. People who are just wanting me to be successful in life and continue moving towards my Heavenly Father. I have THE BEST FRIENDS on the face of the planet who support me in keeping my covenants, help me to recognize truths, and allow me to be me without any pretexts or lies. There are so many people who have helped me to find joy in my journey, and I hope that we all can see our journeys as joyful ones. Difficult times arise for all of us, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t find joy. I personally have so much to be joyful about. I have some amazing friends who mean more to me than I could ever begin to explain and I wish I could list each and every one of you and explain exactly how much you all mean to me in detail, but I figure that is something I can do in person, so just know that I love you all and your friendship and love means so much to me. I have a family who want what’s best for me and is willing to sacrifice so much for me. I have a strong testimony that is built on a firm foundation. I know that God loves me for me. My journey is a wonderful one. I am finding so much joy in my journey and I pray that we all kind continue to walk together as fellow travelers on this path, celebrating one another’s successes and helping each other to feel the love of our Savior and Heavenly Father.

Titanic, Love, and Answers to Prayers

Hello again! It has been awhile since I last posted on my blog . . . I have a lot of things going on in my life, and that has been good. I hope that this blog post makes sense. Sometimes I feel like I am rambling, and I have a feeling like this one is going to be all over the place because I don’t really know what I want to write about, only that I want to write and get some thoughts out of my head.

As you probably know (and if you don’t, where have you been?) I have a borderline crazy obsession with the movie Titanic. I say borderline, but it probably is crazy . . . I mean we are only on January 17 and I have watched it more than a few times this year . . . That movie is just so good! Best movie of all time, without a doubt. There is a scene in the movie that hits me really hard every single time. Cal and Jack convince Rose to get into a lifeboat. The music starts to play and in slow motion the lifeboat lowers. You can see the internal struggle that Rose has as to what she is doing. She loves Jack and she doesn’t want to leave him. She eventually decides, as the music begins to swell, that she would rather be on the ship with him and risk dying than be safe in the lifeboat and never know what happened to Jack so she jumps back onto the sinking ship. They race through the ship and find each other at the bottom of the grand staircase. They embrace, kiss, and Jack asks, “Why would you do that? Why?” Her response is simple, and a callback from earlier in the movie, “You jump I jump, right?” Okay, so this scene is beyond beautiful, but it has also been a source of heartache for me, at least up until this week, and that is because I have been very thoughtful, introspective, and pensive about what I have been feeling.

Love is a very powerful thing and I have come to realize that there are many different types of love. There is romantic love, brotherly love, family love, love between a husband and wife, love between siblings, emotional love, and love between friends. This scene between Jack and Rose is one of the most romantic scenes in cinematic history (in my opinion) and I have, in many points in my life, imagined what it would be like to love somebody so much that I would be willing to jump back onto a sinking ship and risk my life to be with the person I love. I have always wondered if I would ever find someone I loved that much, “true love” so to speak, but I have come to realize that I don't have to have romantic feelings or "true love" to be willing to do that. There are a couple of people in my life who I love so much that I would gladly, and without hesitation, jump back onto the Titanic to be with, risking everything and hoping to survive together, but I'd rather risk everything to be with these people than to live the rest of my life not knowing what could have been or what would have happened. I don’t think that I need to mention their names, because it isn’t important who they are because I know (and one of them knows that this is about them because I have talked to this person about this exact thing), but if they are reading this, I hope that they know who they are. Some of them are people who have been with me for years, some for months. People who have accepted me always, no matter what I have been going through. People who have accepted every aspect of my life and loved me and helped me through many, MANY trials. People who have not ceased to check on me while I have been sick, who have worried about me physically and emotionally by texting, Facebook messaging, or stopping by to visit me. Someone who has come to mean the world to me who was there for me on one of the most difficult days ever and just held me as I sobbed, has loved me unconditionally, and has become one of my best friends on the face of the entire planet who I have shared some very special, very spiritual, and very incredible experiences, and who I can talk to about anything and everything. Someone who came and rescued me during an emotional breakdown during a crazily difficult week in my life (and who was watching over me, ready to defend me, through Facebook as I came out, for which this person will never know how grateful I am). Someone who has been there for me since my sophomore year of high school and I have shared many, MANY experiences with, a second sister to me, and I love her and her family. Two people who have become my second family, traveling together, and loving me for me. This is the kind of love that I am experiencing in my life, and I am extremely grateful for the change of heart that I have had. This scene in the movie used to hurt sometimes when I watch, but now it brings me joy again, and I am truly grateful for the spiritual confirmation that I have had that I am okay to experience the love that I have been experiencing.

So that is the first thing I wanted to talk about, love and how I have been experiencing it in many different ways and loving every minute of it. The next thing I want to talk about is just how much our Heavenly Father knows us and loves us, and how I have been experiencing some incredible tender mercies in my life recently. Last Sunday was an interesting one for me. An experience I had in the morning made me really question a lot of things and I just wanted to throw in the towel. I left this experience (I won’t go into it here, because this isn’t the place to talk about it) thinking, “Screw it. Why even try anymore if this is the way I am going to be treated here.” I had every intention of just coming home and locking myself in my room and blaring music to drown out my thoughts, but for some reason I felt that I needed to be at church, so I begrudgingly went. It was ward conference so the third hour was combined and taught by the Stake Presidency. The topic was presented and I had a Liz Lemon (30 Rock reference for anyone who watches the show) sized eye roll: The Family. My first reaction was, "Oh, great, another lesson on how terrible I am because I am single, gay, and how I need to be dating and pursuing a wife right now," and I was ready to just leave the lesson (I was conveniently sitting right next to the door so it would be so easy to just stand up and leave). I decided to stay though because I got a really strong prompting that I needed to be in the lesson, and I am extremely glad that I have learned to follow the promptings of the spirit as I get them, because this lesson was actually an answer to many, MANY prayers I have been having and helped me to feel a lot better about myself, my situation, and my decisions in life. The Stake Presidency started to list off different types of family units in the church, for example Heavenly Father's family, the Family of Adam, House of Israel, Seed of Abraham, Husband and Wife, Parents and children, and then the one that made me actually start to listen: ourselves. The majority of the lesson I feel was tailored exactly to me and the Lord was speaking to me through the Stake Presidency. We talked a lot about how some people just don't have the opportunity to marry in this life. Something that was said hit me like a ton of bricks. "Single members in the church sometimes feel alone or like they don't fit in. I testify that is not the case. You are not alone or lost. Through making and keeping covenants you become a member of the eternal family of Jesus Christ. Being single in mortality is not the tragedy. The tragedy is not making and keeping personal covenants with the Savior." This was exactly what I needed to hear. I had been feel really down and confused. This lesson though was like God was speaking right to me, letting me know that I am okay, that I am doing what He wants me to do. He wants me to just do my best, keep my covenants, and live the gospel to the best of my ability. Another quote that I found helped me a lot in an article talking about The Family: A Proclamation to the World. "Barbara Thompson, who was present when the proclamation was read for the first time and later served as a counselor in the Relief Society general presidency, said: “I thought for a moment that [the family proclamation] really didn’t pertain too much to me since I wasn’t married and didn’t have any children. But almost as quickly I thought, ‘But it does pertain to me. I am a member of a family. I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a niece, and a granddaughter. … Even if I were the only living member of my family, I am still a member of God’s family." He doesn't care if I get married in this life, and neither do I. Yes, I know that to gain exaltation I have to be married in the temple, but I firmly believe that that is what the next life is for for me. It was made clear to me that I am an eternal being having a mortal experience. This life is just part of my eternal progression, and that I am just supposed to be working on keeping the covenants that I have made. I have no shame in feeling the things I feel, having the emotions that I do, or the attractions that I feel because I have felt the Lord tell me that I am okay, as long as I stick to living within the bounds He has set. I know that I am fine as long as I stand in holy places, which I feel I am doing. God is good, and He loves me for me, and I have felt so much love from my Father in Heaven. I have felt love from my friends, felt my Savior's love through the people I care most about in this world, and I am eternally grateful for that. I am grateful for my gayness because I have been extremely blessed because of it. My experiences in life would be very different had I stayed in the metaphorical closet. I just feel blessed and I have been able to see the hand of the Lord through my trials, and I have been blessed in more ways than I could ever count. 

I finally got around to reading President Nelson's talk... I actually REALLY liked it, a lot, and I wish the media wouldn't have made a huge deal about the one paragraph about the policy change. I actually found a lot of peace through reading it.

The first quote from President Nelson  that brought me a lot of hope came from him talking about Millennials. "The term Millennial is perfect for you if that term reminds you of who you really are and what your purpose in life really is. A True Millennial is one who was taught and did teach the gospel of Jesus Christ premortally and who made covenants with our Heavenly Father there about courageous things—even morally courageous things—that you would do while here on earth." We made covenants with our Heavenly Father about courageous, and morally courageous, things? Loved this. ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS!

The next thing that he said that hit me hard was, "You were taught in the spirit world to prepare you for anything and everything you would encounter during this latter part of these latter days. That teaching endures within you!" Wow. Just, wow! Apostolic confirmation to me that Heavenly Father and I had a conversation about me being me, about being gay, and that I was prepared for this. With this knowledge, I can definitely find the strength to endure to the end. It won’t be easy, but by surrounding myself with people who love me and have helped me find strength to just keep ahold of the iron rod, I can do it. I can find the strength to endure to the end. Life is great and I love it.

So, yeah, that is my rambly post for the week. I have been through some really difficult times recently, and I wouldn’t have been able to get through them without the love and support that I have felt from some of the greatest people on the face of the planet. I love you all and am grateful for the blessing it is to have you in my life. God is good and I am grateful for Him. I am grateful for a Savior who knows me and has lifted me as I felt like I was falling, picked me up as I was stumbling, and made me stronger when I felt the weakest.

I will end with a scripture that I love. Hebrews 13:1 Let brotherly love continue.