Finding Strength of Will

I wrote this post two weeks ago, as you will see at the bottom.   I’m actually glad I didn’t post before as it gave me two weeks to put everything in a better perspective. Will has always been gay or attracted to men.   Since he was 8, he knew he was different.   Then, I assume, sometime a few years later he realized he was SSA (Same Sex Attracted).   He had a goal in mind though; he was going to go on a mission, he was going to get married, he was going to have a family, and he was NOT going to be gay.   Though that did get him where he wanted to be, and we think that the goal to not be gay was a good thing for our journey, the time comes when you have to be honest with yourself or you might explode!   :) When Josh Weed came out (you can read our story about that here ) it allowed Will to be OK with being gay.   That means he isn’t squashing those feeling anymore.   And if he isn’t squashing those feelings, that means he is having them.   We are now also associating with lots o

Thinking about what it means to see things as they really are.  Much of my energy in life has been spent trying to make things be what I think they should be.  This has mostly been in the form of attempting to control other's perceptions of me, or alter my perception of myself.  For many years I thought I could actually change myself, change who I was, or change some aspect of me simply by altering what I liked and what I didn't like.  What I've learned is that it is simultaneously much more complex and much more simple.  It is complex in that it is impossible for me to understand all of the interactions of emotion, desire, needs, feelings, and thoughts resulting from even the smallest thought.  Yet it is much more simple in that each thought, feeling, desire, emotion, and need may be simply just what it is. Today I said simply, "I love you" to a friend.  More of an acquaintance, really, but I understand somewhat of the challenges that are facing him.  He may ha

I am Azalea, Will’s wife. He is gay and I am the opposite.  I LOVE guys!  LOL  He was worried I would be uncomfortable at a North Star Fireside which was mostly all (SSA/gay) men.  Really?  You do know me, right?  A place where there are mostly men and for that matter kind, sensitive, caring men?  Sounds like heaven to me! So in the last few months my husband Will has embraced the fact that he is gay.  He is becoming a different person and it is so fun!  Our marriage is very solid and we are best friends.  I think that is what makes this all work so well. I love that my Will can see the big picture. He, much like Josh Weed, knew he wanted to go on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he knew he wanted to marry in the Temple and he knew he wanted to have a family and he knew that he wanted to remain a faithful Latter-day Saint. This is one of the reasons he was not going to be gay. Well, it gets to the point where you just can’t deny something anymore.  A

OK, just found something I want to share.  The reason it is going to be remotely coherent is that I wrote it almost six months ago, just after  Josh Weed's coming out post  on June 7 of this year.  Just six months ago.  A friend of my wife shared Josh's post on Facebook, my wife read it, and shared it with me.  Up to this point in my life, I was blissfully living in denial.  I read the article and my world  turned upside down.  Here is a portion of an email I wrote to Josh a short time after. " I have started and restarted this email more times than I can count in the past few days.  There is just so much bottled up that I have never really been able to share, now that I am able to share it, I don't know where to start.  Oh, well.  Might as well get straight to the point:  I am an active Temple-attending Latter-day Saint, have served a full time mission, have been married to a wonderful, amazing woman for 10+ years, and have crazy, wild, ingenious, hilarious childre

Rough day today.  Been emotional lately.  Some days everything makes sense.  Today wasn't one of them.  Even things that usually make sense didn't today.  The slightest thing would set me off crying, too.  I'm sure that some of it's been not enough sleep.  Thoughts have been disjointed, random, and it was a struggle to put them together.  It was as if my thoughts were a bag of marbles, spilled on the floor of a gymnasium.  Thank goodness the day's almost over.

I found myself in the kitchen, surrounded by the familiar complexity (nice way of saying mess) of family life, doing a reality check.  More of a sanity check, actually.  Was I really going to do it?  I rolled it around in my mind, letting it seep into the cracks.  So much change in such a short time.  Maybe it was because -- nope, wasn’t the gay part.  That felt pretty comfortable now.  My wife and I even laugh about it.  Haven’t told the kids yet, but the oldest isn't even into puberty yet.  Wow -- had to laugh at how comfortable I am referring to myself as gay.  It’s the blogging part that I can’t believe.  I’ve told a lot of people lately -- but I don't think that counts. They’re almost all in the same boat.  LDS, attracted to their same gender, some even in mixed orientation marriages like myself.  But that’s a lot different than posting on the internet.  Yet does feel right. Maybe I'm just getting comfortable at being uncomfortable. I snapped out of my trance and re