13.1 miles of bliss

I ran my third half marathon yesterday. It was cold, wet, windy, painful, and absolutely satisfying and amazing! I started off at a decent pace, but eventually came to some hills, then more hills and then more. During the race, I had plenty of time to try to draw connection between the race, my preparation for it and life. Alas, I could not find anything. The only thing that I took from that, was that I can do hard things, that somewhere inside of me is the courage to endure. I can muster it when called upon. Thing is I usually don't. Why? I'm not sure.

I had an interaction with my Bishop this past week. It was both petrifying and disconcerting. I received an email from him, he wanted to say he was sorry for anything he said that may have been hurtful. Certainly I appreciated the sentiment of that email, but at the same time I was filled with a sense of guilt and shame and fear. I talked with my Therapist about what I should do.

As I talked with my therapist I recounted to him what was most painful to me, it was not the simple mechanistic approach, nor was it lack of understanding about same-sex attraction and in-experienced advice on the matter, while that is frustrating it does not pain or hurt me. I told my therapist that what pained me the most was the association my Bishop has with homosexuality - that be implicitly linked homosexuality with beastiality and called me perverted (both in our conversations and while He gave me blessing). Above all else this is what stings and hurts the most, this is what causes me to fear for own emotional well-being. As I recounted this to my therapist the pain came back, it still hurts. I trusted the Bishop with my emotional, spiritual and intellectual well-being, and part of me felt violated.

My therapist explained that Bishops are not trained in these matters, to which I agree and have never expected perfection from any Bishop, simply compassion and understanding, however imperfect those expressions maybe, they should make me feel safe, not unsafe. But my therapist did stop short of saying that I should simply not be offended, but that I should speak the truth to help the Bishop also own the consequences of his actions (however, misguided they were). My therapist wondered out loud if those accusations or associations would have been made with a "straight" brother. I wonder the same thing, but for my own sanity and well-being my therapist asked me to simply state how I feel and ask for more space and time away. And I did.

My Bishop is a good man. He is. Certainly there is much for me to learn from him, as there is much for all of us to learn from each other. I hope that one day I can stand on solid ground and not fear for my emotional well-being when I enter a Priesthood leaders office. I hope one day to be able to stand before God with a pure heart and clean hands. While that may be simple for many people, the reality is it's more complicated than that.

I talked a dear friend (my roommate from undergraduate days) and his wife over lunch today. They asked about my struggle and we explored at some length the problematical issues of homosexuality and the church, their relation to covenant making and keeping, and the ultimate plan of God. It was a nice reprieve and edifying discussion. I was hoping to ask him for a blessing, but it was a little difficult given our location. Perhaps when I see him next.

Seeing

The past few days have been good. Recently, I've been feeling like there is a connection to the Savior; this is new for me. Being a very prideful man, I have refused to fully allow my will to be swallowed up, I may have thought it was a good idea, but have never really tried to let it happen.

While I still don't know what it means for me to be gay and in the household of God, I'm willing to let go. Before I acknowledged the uncertainty and attempted to convince myself I was OK with not knowing. Recently, however, I've simply stopped fighting - mentally, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Doing so has provided me a fleeting glimpse of "things as they really are."

I used to think that once I got to a point of seeing "things as they really are" it would mean all would make sense, that I would see my sexual attractions as an aberation, or consequence of the Fall and would find great peaceful answers or I would think when I saw "things as they really are," I would recognize the Church would change its ontologic position.

This addiction has kicked my ass, it has beaten me into submission, and beaten me into seeing with new eyes (at least momentarily). I'm coming to sense that seeing things as they really are is simply about seeing uncertainty and moving forward in faith and placing my hope in the Savior to provide me the strength to endure all things. That enabling strength is the healing. The outcome of that enabling strength is not my focus; the process is the end. That is coming to see things as they really are - becoming present and accepting reality.

I'm a son of God and I'm gay. I don't know how these two coexist, nor do I understand the depths of what either mean. What I do know is they shape my understanding of each other. The doctrine of the church will not change, I accept that as a given. Any intelligent person can see the ontological differences between blacks and the priesthood and homosexuality. While the resources of support may not exist, it does not mean that God does not want me to endure (even that I'm not sure what it means).

All of this to say that seeing things as they really are is about me seeing myself for the first time in a true and intimate relationship with the Savior. I'm coming to (and hope to continue) walking with Him.

Yet that does not mean that I do not search the deep things for answers to these things that plague us, nor does it mean that I give up on creating a forum to instruct others what is most good for them. I don't know what I have to give, but I'm coming to sense that I really have nothing to give without God. And that is not scary or threatening anymore.

Dialogue

One of my favorite theologians writes about dialogue:

“The dialogical-dialogue is not a simple conversation, not a mere mutual enrichment by the supplementary information that is contributed; it is not exclusively a corrective of misunderstandings … It is the joint search for the shared and the different. It is the mutual fecundation of what each one contributes …It is the implicit and explicit recognition that we are not self-sufficient … God is the one who makes it possible for dialogue to be more than the mere sterile crossing of two monologues."

This is a good idea, especially given that a conference or symposium on homosexuality and the church is being planned for the Pacific Northwest.

I've been asked to help, and so I will. Perhaps this will help me explore more fully the questions that linger in my mind and in my soul.

Today is a good day. I look up and feel a sense of hope!

The logic of truth

This morning as reflected on my life, I came to realize that I've not seen things as they really are. In other words, I'm not in a place where I can anticipate and appraise the effects of my actions. I act compulsively, and as a result, I'm not able to discern the effects of my actions on me and others. This is part of the addiction, and that addiction has certainly agitated my faith.

I realize I'm coming to view my faith in God and the gospel through a lens that insists on me being in control. That is, I want God to justify to me why I should be obedient, I want God to justify to me what I should do what He asks. This insistence on God justifying to me is an element of control that I'm having a hard time letting go.

Recently, I've hit a bottom (not in terms of acting out) but spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. I'm coming to realize that I've got no where else to turn, I've got no where else to look, but up. Looking up is hard: it hurts my neck and it hurts my eyes (as there is light when one looks up). But that pain of adjusting to the light is necessary, it means I must slowly put off the things that pull me down, the things that insist I can find light in the darkness.

I don't know what my future holds. I certainly want a fulfilling relationship, but at what cost? I'm not sure. This morning as I was journaling, I pondered and wrote about my spiritual experiences. When I was 10 I received a strong spiritual communication that the Book of Mormon was true, it has take me nearly 23 years to figure out what that means - it means not only that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that the contents of that book are true, that the stories therein actually happened. That through Jesus Christ I can find my seat in the Kingdom of God.

Why has it taken so long for that to settle in my heart?

Ennui

So I'm suffering from ennui or perhaps I've hit some bottom of some sort. It's been a while that I've "acted out," being an addict sucks. I've discovered some things that have given me some perspective on life and on how to manage this addiction.

1) The last time I acted out with a guy, I got to know him a bit - it turned into a weird sort of relationship. I think for the first time there was a hint of real intimacy, a hint of real emotion, and dare I say "feelings?" As we sat and talked I felt these feelings I never really felt before - a real connection. This happened over the course of time and continued. The night we went to the bedroom, was a very different night for me. We had talked and there was just something different - it wasn't this rush of lust that usually accompanied my previous exploits. It was tender, really.

After it was over, I still felt a rush of regret and a degree of pain for what I had done. Yet, I discovered that sex can be extremely powerful and an agent that binds people together. Truly one the ultimate expressions of love. I'm coming to understand this, albeit slowly. It took this weird relationship to get me there. I'm no longer in contact with this guy - and I'm OK with that. The past week or so I've thought about acting out, but as I contemplated it, it seemed to simply be an empty experience, void of any expressions of love and humanity - something that was merely animalistic in both its desires and consequences. I hope this clarity lasts. I hope that I can come to respect and reverence the power of sex again.

The second insight came as a result of my daily habit of listening to General Conference talks. The other day, I was listening to a talk by Elder Kristofferson on covenant keeping. This reminded me that if I keep the commandments, then I will never have healthy relationship with another man. This leads to intense loneliness and pain, and so I search out some company to medicate the pain. After this realization, I decided, with the help of my Therapist, to stop doing to those aspects of the church that remind me of a potential life of loneliness. So I've stopped listening to conference, reading contemporary church literature, and visiting with my Bishop and other priesthood leaders. Not having those aspects in my life reminding me incessantly that I'll be alone has helped me feel so much better about myself and given me a confidence to move forward. I still do read out of the Book of Mormon every day - the Book of Mormon does not bring me the unnecessary guilt and shame a lot of those other aspects of the church do.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty good and feel a degree of happiness. However, I must continue to be vigilant.

Faithful Obedience

Yesterday I met with my therapist, and I told him of the dream I had Tuesday night, or rather early Wednesday morning. I was up late grading papers and growing in my resentment towards my students for having me suffer through the in-coherency of their arguments, their logic, their poorly constructed prose and the like. (I realize my writing and logic suffers much, but then no one's grading me, at least I hope not!). I had gone to a support meeting earlier that evening and heard someone share, "When praying, it doesn't matter who's listening OUT THERE, what's important is who's listening inside..." I tried to allow that to distill into my senses, but something about faulty logic and incomplete sentences hindering arguments makes one easily focus on other things.

I did not heed that powerful sentiment. Rather, sometime near 1 am, I found someone to come to my apartment and act out with. And so it happened. After he left, I decided no more grading and to sleep, it was close to 2am. I normally wake up at 5am so I would be getting three hours of sleep - I was OK with that. However, I kept waking up every half hour or so, with an intense pain, the heaviness of what I did was settling on me. Despite my inability to get restful sleep, I did have a dream which came back to me as I was in my therapist's office.

In this dream, there were two versions of me, they were in dialogue and clearly concerned about me. I recall one asking the other, "What are we doing?" The other responded, "I'm trying to get us to hit bottom, so we don't do this anymore." As I sat with my therapist, I was startled and scared by what my subconscious had to say. He too was clearly concerned. I'm not sure what my bottom looks like, but at the rate I'm going now, it could be something devastating. I hope to never find it.

While I was in his office, slumped into his big comfy sofa, I had a realization about faith and obedience. I'm reading out of the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price. Earlier that day, I read about Enoch in Moses 6. There Enoch asks, "wherefore am I thy servant?" To which God replies, "Go forth and do as I have commanded thee..." The Lord never answers Enoch's question, rather He tells Enoch what to do to get an answer to that question. Hundreds of years later, most likely, Paul tells us in Hebrews, that before he was translated, "he had this testimony, that he pleased God."

Enoch certainly struggled, he took a people who angered God and celestialized them. He, too, struggled with his mortal predilections, but God saw faith. Enoch had faithful obedience. He knew that while obedience was the first law of Heaven, everyone falls short, therefore he relied on God's grace. He knew that those who struggled daily can enter the celestial kingdom, despite how many times they fall, even if it means they have to crawl, beaten and bruised, passed the finish line. These are faithful and obedient - these include all the people who never givjavascript:void(0)e up trying, who struggle daily with prayer, scripture study, and seeking God, but they never give up, no matter how hard it gets.

As I reflected on my addiction and the realization I had about my behavior, my therapist simply stated, "don't give up." While I feel like giving up, I am encouraged by the insight I gleaned from Enoch, and the many others I know who struggle daily, but move forward in faith of something better.

And so today I will not give up.

Gross Night

So the past few weeks have been particularly difficult for me. I've taken a break from meeting with my Bishop, taken a break from trying to resolve the big questions in my life, taken a break from taking advice from multiple sources on what to do. It has been a good experience for me to do that, as taking these things away has exposed me to myself. Now, it's me and my therapist, but really now it's just me, me figuring out who I am and what I stand for.

Before taking a break from the Bishop, I would try to avoid doing and thinking things because of an obligation I had to him; it was not really for me. I tried to not "act out" not for me, but for him. Now that I've taken a break from him, a burden has lifted and now I am left with just my thoughts and me trying to figure out what I really want. Now the source of shame and guilt for acting out no longer comes from the obligation I have to a priesthood leader, but rather now has to come from a violation of my own internal compass. This is proving to be much more difficult. In addition to the break from the Bishop, I've also taken a break from trying to resolve the uncertainty around my place in the church - that uncertainty and the line of questions it raises will always be there. As a result, I additionally feel liberated from the shame associated with that line of questioning.

While taking these breaks is good in that it's forcing me to search within for the willingness and desire "to act for myself," the relief of the obligation is also sorely tempting. This relief has manifested itself in a license to "act out" more. And so I have. The shame of acting out with men has dissipated, and as a result I don't feel much guilt for doing so. It's interesting that the guilt and shame left with the commencement of these breaks - this is indicative of the fact that I had been trying to avoid specific behaviors for others (i.e. my Bishop) and not myself. With this "freedom," I am now trying to find myself, sadly it has taken me to do things I'm not particularly happy about.

Last night, I moved from oral sex to anal sex. It was not a pleasant experience and actually really gross. To speak more clinically, the tip of the prophylactic had some slight remains of human waste. I suppose at some level I always knew that was the case, but I was living in some fantasy land of it being a euphoric clean experience. It was not. As soon as I finished, something inside turned. It was gross. I could not believe what I had just done. Even the addict in me, admitted to being grossed out. I suppose under different conditions it could have been a different experience, but alas, the conditions I had were less than ideal. I had developed a strange relationship with the guy I did it with last night, so he wasn't an unknown, but nonetheless, the primary emotion there was lust NOT love.

Given where I'm at with taking a break, there was something within that recoiled at my behavior - not simply because of the physical uncleanliness of the act, but because of the emotional pain it brings.

I went to church today and felt a great desire to pay tithing - I searched my feelings to determine whether the desire was simply some form of penance, as I searched, I realized I genuinely wanted to pay tithing, not because I "had" to, not because I was expected to, not because it would absolve me of immediate guilt or shame, but rather, because I recognized that what I have comes from God and is ultimately His. I wanted to pay tithing for me.

This was a good sign, I suppose I'm now coming to slowly meet who I really am and come to know what I really want. While it's not ideal that I have to discover who I am from crawling through mud, it's nonetheless nice to meet me for the first time.