That
Your Burdens May Be Light
My cell phone
rang. "Do you want to go for a walk
tonight?"
Both relieved
and surprised by this invitation I responded, "Uh, yeah, that sounds
great."
Mitch and I had been best friends in
high school but had grown apart in college, especially after he got
married. It's not that we didn't get
along, we just didn't see each other very much. We had never invited each other to go on a walk before which is what
made his invitation so unexpected. Mitch
surely didn't know that I had been holding in a secret for some time that I
needed to talk about and that he had suddenly given me the perfect opportunity
to talk to someone I trusted.
I hung up the phone and said to my
roommate Craig, "Hey, I'm going to go on a walk with Mitch. Do you want to come?" Craig and I had met the previous year in our
BYU ward and had been roommates for some months at this time. He had met Mitch once or twice, but they were
only acquaintances. And yet, my new best
friend readily agreed to go on an impromptu summer walk with me and my old best
friend.
Craig and I got in my car and I
drove us to Mitch's apartment. That's
when I started to get nervous. It was
the summer between my junior and senior years at BYU and I'd been feeling
increasingly lonely and sad because of a secret I was keeping. It was something that I thought I could
handle on my own, but as life got harder and harder I knew I needed help, but I
didn't know who to reach out to or how. I was incredibly embarrassed by it and felt like I would be rejected or
shunned if anyone else found out. I had
wanted to tell Craig for months, but he was my roommate and I thought he would
feel uncomfortable if I opened up to him about my secret. And so I kept it inside.
We got to Mitch's apartment and the
three of us went on a summer evening stroll through Kiwanis park in east
Provo. We engaged in small talk as we
walked along the park. I tried to sound
jovial and carefree as I spoke, but I felt exactly the opposite. I so badly needed to talk to someone about
what was going on in my life, but I was petrified to reveal something that I
thought my friends would find disgusting. I felt like I was about to drop a bombshell on
them that they wouldn't see coming and I didn't want to put them in an awkward
position. As I smiled a forced smile and
talked about the daily comings and goings of university life I was struggling
internally with whether or not I should tell Mitch and Craig. I was so afraid, but I also needed them to
know. I thought about how odd it was
that Mitch had invited me to go on a walk which was something he'd never done
before. And yet, his invitation had
brought me to a private place with my two best friends. It was as if Heavenly Father knew what I
needed and orchestrated the optimal situation for me to share my secret.
I gathered my courage and
interrupted the commonplace chitchat saying, "Do you mind if we sit down
on the grass? There's something I want
to tell you guys." We sat down and
I started to feel so nervous that I thought I was going to puke. Stalling, I began slowly pulling out blades
of grass by my feet so that I would have something to look at instead of
looking into the faces of my puzzled best friends. As I tugged on blades of grass and stared at
the ground I almost chickened out, but I reminded myself that I had been
wanting to do this for months, that I needed to do it, and that God had put me
in the best possible situation to do it. And so, I took a deep breath and for the first time uttered the words
that I had carefully chosen weeks before: "For as long as I can remember
I've been attracted to men instead of women."
At the time I wasn't comfortable
calling myself gay and so I described my situation instead of labeling it. Gay just didn't feel like the right label for
me since I had never had a physical relationship with another man. I had been attracted to men since puberty,
but I always thought it was something that was temporary. Surely my mission would cure me, I thought. I would work hard, God would see my honest
efforts to serve faithfully, and I would be rewarded with a wonderful wife that
I was genuinely attracted to. However,
when I got home from my mission I disappointingly discovered that I was still
attracted to men. I felt very let down
by God. Nevertheless, I decided to
square my shoulders and be like Nephi who said: "I will go and do the
things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no
commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them
that they may accomplish the thing which he commandth them" (1 Nephi
3:7). I had been told that now that I
was home from my mission that it was time for me to find a wonderful woman and
get married. Certainly the Lord would
help me find success in this righteous pursuit.
A few months after my mission I returned to BYU and I started taking
many girls on dates. I took out several
wonderful girls and some of them were even interested in me, but I had a hard
time finding one that I was really interested in. In April 2007 I had been taking a really
great girl on dates for a few months. She was kind, witty, beautiful, and her dream was to someday play Maria
in The Sound of Music. She was perfect for me. One evening I expressed interest in dating
her which led to a conversation about our relationship. She told me that she thought very highly of
me, but felt like we just had a good friendship, not a romantic
relationship. She pointed out that after
more than two months of dates I hadn't kissed her or even held her hand. She was right and I hadn't done either of
those things because there was nothing in me compelling me to. My guy friends would talk about how hard it
was to wait to kiss a girl they liked and yet I had found an awesome girl that
liked me and I had no desire to kiss her. Something was obviously different about me. This girl and I decided to just be friends.
After two years of sincerely trying
to find a girl to date I was still single. I had always felt like I was different than other guys. That difference, obviously, was that I was
attracted to men. I finally had to face
the reality that it was my same-sex attraction that had made my search for a
wife so unsuccessful. Why did I have
these feelings? How could I find a woman
I was attracted to? And even if I did,
what woman would ever want to marry a man that experienced same-sex
attraction? These questions plagued me
and caused me to give up on dating altogether.
I was feeling increasingly lonely
and sad each day. A number of my friends
noticed that something was wrong and kindly asked what was going on. I wasn't ready to talk about it so I just
avoided the question and withdrew more and more from the activities I usually
did. One evening a friend stopped by my
apartment and told my roommates and me that a close friend had just come out to
her at dinner. She was shocked and was
trying to process the whole situation. I
immediately perked up when she mentioned that her friend had said he was gay
because at the time it hadn't occurred to me that there were other gay people
at BYU. I had thought that I was the
only one which left me feeling incredibly isolated. She mentioned that there were a number of
anonymous blogs written by BYU students who experienced same-sex attraction. I was stunned. There were other people going through what I
was going through? And I could read
about their experiences? I then played a
delicate dance of trying to get as much information out of her as possible
without trying to look too interested because I didn't want her to suspect that
I was gay, too.
As soon as she left I went into my
room and typed "gay byu student blog" into Google. I quickly found about half a dozen blogs
written by my peers experiencing same-sex attraction at BYU. Some of the blogs had more than a year of
history and dozens of posts. I would
start at the oldest post and then read through each entry of the blog. I devoured their words and spent many hours
reading. At first just knowing that
there were other people experiencing the same thing I was experiencing helped
me to feel very included. However, the
blogs started making me feel worse and worse. They often began with the writer sharing his testimony of the gospel of
Jesus Christ followed by a statement of determination to stay active and
faithful no matter what. Then as months
and sometimes years passed the writer would develop feelings for someone,
decide staying active in the church wasn't right for him, and eventually decide
to leave. Not all the blogs followed
this pattern, but enough of them started out with strong testimonies and ended
leaving the church that I worried that that was the inevitable conclusion to my
story.
One evening early in the summer of
2007 I sat in my room pondering the blogs I had been reading. I thought about my life and what I wanted and
hoped it would be. Then I considered the
reality of my life and what it actually could be. I concluded that I had two options: leave the
church and pursue a gay lifestyle or remain active in the church and stay
single for the rest of my life. Both
options seemed inconceivably hard for me and I couldn't imagine being happy in
either path. I let my mind wander as I
envisioned my future if I chose either path. As much as I was afraid of being alone for the rest of my life, I knew
that I had to stay active in the church. Other people in the same situation as me have made other choices and I
respect their decision, but I knew that staying in the church was the right
thing for me.
I knelt down in my room and said a
prayer. I told Heavenly Father that no
matter what I was going to stay in the church and if I needed to spend the next
60 years of my life alone I was willing to do that. I then sat down on my bed and with a heavy
heart pulled out my scriptures. For no
particular reason I started reading in Alma 40:8 and was stunned when I reached
the following phrase: "...all is as one day with God, and time only is
measured unto men." The rest of my
life seemed like a long time to be alone, but these words jumped out at me and
reminded me that sacrificing for a time really wouldn't be a long sacrifice
when viewed in the eternities. My mind
then jumped to a line that I had always loved from Preach My Gospel. It says,
"All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of
Jesus Christ" (p. 52). It felt so
unfair to me that I had to choose between staying in the church and being
married to someone I was attracted to. Straight people don't have to make that choice so why do I have to
choose? It really does seem unfair, but
I knew and felt that night that everything that was unfair would be made right
and that I would be okay.
Life wasn't quite as bleak for me
after that night. I had made a firm
commitment to remain active in the church and I had felt peace and comfort that
someday, and maybe not until the next life, everything would be okay. This knowledge provided me with great
comfort, but it didn't change my circumstances. I was still a single man longing to love someone and be loved in
return. I knew that I was going to be
single for a long time and that scared me to death. In spite of all the good I had felt, life
hadn't gotten any easier. That's when I
decided that I needed the support of my friends. It took me two months to get up the courage
to tell Mitch and Craig because I didn't know how they would respond.
After revealing my secret on the
grass in Kiwanis park, I looked up expectantly at Mitch and Craig to see how
they would react. They both said that
they were surprised and caught off guard. Then they did exactly what I needed them to do--they said that they
cared about me and that I could talk to them about what I was going through
whenever I needed to. I looked over at
Craig and said, "I understand if you don't want to be my roommate
anymore." He looked surprised and replied,
"Why wouldn't I want to be your roommate? You're the same person you've always been." Even though I didn't know it, that's exactly
what I needed him to say. I had felt
broken and unworthy, thinking that no one would like me if they knew that I experienced
same-sex attraction. Hearing Craig say
that he still wanted to be my roommate even though he knew I experienced
same-sex attraction changed my world. I
saw that I wasn't broken and that I was whole the way I was.
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