Finding Strength of Will

Just faced another of the scariest moments of my life.  I wonder if I will ever get used to it?  This morning I came out to a friend I carpool with.  His friendship means a great deal to me and I have wanted to tell him for some time, but have not had the courage.   I used to think that I was a pretty good judge of character, and while I still believe it to be true in general, there are the secret workings of a person’s heart, their true character, that are difficult to see.  There are moments, though, when we truly see a person’s character, moments when guards are down, moments of vulnerability.  When talking to someone you care about, outing yourself is definitely one.   For both of you. “I’ve got to share something with you,” I told him this morning.  “Before I chicken out.  You never know where God is going to take you and he has certainly taken me on a strange path during the past year.” I explained that I had spent the majority of my li...

I am excited for the things that are happening in LDS and Christian communities to support those in the LGBT community.  Here is an article of a wonderful women who gets it. She wrote one of our family's favorite Primary Songs "Nephi's Courage" ~Azalea http://www.mormonwomen.com/2013/01/30/lisas-courage/

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...

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...

I've finally worked up the courage to start blogging.  Been thinking about it for a long time but somehow there was always a reason not to.  Now I've got a reason.  Still nervous, though, as I'm generally not the sharing type.