A Rock and a Hard Place

Growing up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) while at the same time being attracted to the same gender is a somewhat awkward situation.  From when I was very young, I was always a bit different from my peers.  The knees of my pants never got holes in them.  I preferred thoughtfulness and music to roughhousing and sports (although I did participate in sports a bit).  I also started to develop spiritually at a very young age, and had experiences which helped solidify my testimony even before I was baptized at age eight.

When I began to enter puberty, I almost immediately recognized that I was not attracted to girls.  I knew my feelings were not similar to my friends feelings, and I started having feelings for boys.  This seemed to be incongruous with my faith, and I didn't know what to do about it.  So I just hid it, and went on with life.  Some might call it a double-life, going on as if nothing was wrong in public, and having private desires that I never expressed to anybody.  But, really, a lot of teenagers do this for one reason or another.  Even adults do this all the time, and it's not considered a double life in most situations.

Anyway, I think I was 13 (or maybe 14) when it all became too much for me.  I felt like I was trapped between a rock and a hard place.  I felt like I wanted to hide forever, that nobody could love me if they knew all my secrets.  I turned to the Lord in prayer, and had one of the sweetest, most powerful experiences of my life.  I knew without reservation that I was loved no matter what.  The rock of my physical desires was just one of the many characteristics that I would learn to build with in this mortal existence, and the hard place of the teachings of the Church was actually a solid foundation on which I could build.  That's not how I understood it at the time, it's how I see things in retrospect.  It was the unconditional love I felt from my Father in Heaven that helped me be at peace until I could start working these things out.

When other questions and conundrums cropped up in my life, I have always been able to turn to the Lord in prayer, and He has been generous in his communications.  I'm not saying life has been easy or that I always knew what to do.  I know I don't feel worthy of the great blessings I've always received, but I feel incredibly thankful for the mercy and grace of the Savior in my life.