4.27.2010

Gay Pon Farr--Gone Too Far?

"Should I smile because we're friends, or cry because that's all we'll ever be?"
~Anonymous

(I feel like doing the latter.):

4.04.2010

Questions

Browsing MoHo blogs I came across this quote from the Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 509:

"Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive."

Then, as I was verifying the quote, I came upon the second half:

"...and at the same time more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect in every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be..."

I am at a crossroads with basically everything--church, school, family, identity.  I suppose it's the age--as my mom says, "At 17 everyone is just trying to find who they are and where they fit in"--but being a gay/LGBT Mormon seems to add an extra dimension.

Already, people--family members, ward leaders, etc.--are asking about my mission.  I'll have to make a decision soon, especially as I try to arrange college.  And the scary thing is, I don't know.  A couple of years ago I was Peter Priesthood; now I don't know who I am, and no one else does, either.  Not too long ago I was visiting "inactives," but now I'm the one being hounded by the Priest Quorum advisor.

Am I straying?  Am I lost?  Have I been deceived by the "permissiveness of the world" (a popular phrase in today's GC session)?  Will I forever have to wonder about "what might have been"?  ("Of all sad words of tongue or pen..."--another conference favorite.)

I don't know where I stand with God.  Nor do I know which God to look to--the One "more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive" or the One "more terrible" and "awful" to the sinful than we would suppose.  On which hand do I stand?  In which direction am I going?   To what future should I look and act to bring about?

I wish I could put these things out of my mind, but I am running out of time.  There's a sense of--at risk of sounding too melodramatic--a sense of foreboding, and a sort of suffocating inevitability to all of this.