Living In The Mix

Over the course of this year members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have had the amazing opportunity to study the New Testament through the new Come, Follow Me program.  One of my favorite scenes from the recorded life of Christ is when he taught the people what really mattered in life.  "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." This has become one of my absolute favorite moments in the scriptures. There is SO much to unfold in these verses. I feel like we could spend an entire year...

The last few weeks have been a crazy whirlwind for me and my wife. If you had told me a year ago that I'd be doing the things I am today I would not have believed you. A year ago I was not out to the general public nor to most of our family. Now, Emma and I have participated in a music video with North Star, we've come out to all of our family, we have come out to our church leaders and are working closely with them to help them learn how to help LGBTQ+ Church members and providing them with resources to learn and help (that is an ongoing process and I will probably write a blog post about that when we've gotten farther into it), I've come out to the general public and started this blog and a Facebook page to go with it, and just this last week we have officially become part of the Voices of Hope Project with our videos and essays being launched.  It is a surreal feeling to see all of this happen in such a short time when it took me and us as a couple so long to b...

September is suicide awareness month and last week was suicide awareness and prevention week. I do not feel adequate enough to talk about such an important topic, but I would be remiss to ignore it. I hope that what I share here is not hurtful in any way but filled with love and hope. Although I have gratefully not lost a family member to suicide, it has been close.  My grandmother (pictured below in her high school graduation picture) survived the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. For those of you who are not familiar with the Dust Bowl, it is considered one of the greatest environmental disasters in American History. If you want to learn more about it click here for a book I highly recommend. The city she was born and raised in was one of the worst affected areas. She is also a survivor of child sex abuse. I bring this up for context, but will not share more in this blog post about that. That's for another time.  In her adult life she struggled with the ramifica...

On August 24, 2012 I married the love of my life in the Manti Utah Temple. It is without a doubt one of the best days of my life. The two pictures below have come to be my absolute favorite from our wedding.  If you've never been to the Manti Utah Temple it is on top of a very large, very steep hill (you can see the full size of it in the first picture of this post). These pictures do not do justice to just how tall and steep it is. Our photographer caught these two candid shots while we were climbing back up the hill after taking some photos at the bottom. It was very difficult for Emma to walk up the hill in her wedding dress, and her feet kept slipping. It was very slow going, because we did not want her to fall and get a grass stain on her dress. I had to help push her up the hill and keep her from falling when she slipped.  Over the years these two pictures have become beautifully symbolic of our marriage.  Our marriage is what may be ca...

F or members of the LGBTQ+ community both inside and outside of the Church coming out is a big deal for many reasons. It means that you are coming to accept who you are and overcoming the shame that you have carried-possibly for decades-due to your sexuality falling out of the "norm" of how society defines sexuality. It is a major step toward living a life of authenticity and self-love. It is a demonstration that you will not be controlled or shamed into hiding who you are. It is putting yourself-your entire self-on public display for all to see. It is the willingness to be vulnerable and live whole-heartedly.   It is an invitation for others to come to know the real you and finally be able to connect wholly and completely without reservation with family, friends, colleagues, and others you interact with. It means you will no longer live in fear of other's opinions, judgement, hate, and discriminatory views. It is a big deal.  But...why? I'm sure that we have ...