What Coming Out Has Taught Me

June 15, 2016 by Trevor Johnson

I started coming out to family and close friends just over a year ago. Seven months later I decided to come out publicly through my blog. Both were equally terrifying, vulnerable, and rewarding. The growth I've experienced since coming out has been overwhelming and at times painful. Among the many, many things I've learned from coming out, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on two of them: patience and love.

About two years ago I came out over the phone to a gay friend of mine whom I had met while living in Tulsa the year before. He was one of the first people I came out to - he was at a safe distance and I desperately needed to talk some things out. The first thing he said to me after I voiced my concerns was

But the Greatest of These is Charity

April 10, 2016 by Trevor Johnson

by Amy Despain

I used to think I knew what charity was from what I was taught in church but I’m embarrassed to say that for me it included a “holier than thou” mindset. I felt like charity was loving and serving others but in more of a patronizing way, like, “I forgive you for being needy,” or, “I’ll love and serve you because Jesus would and I was taught to do what Jesus would do.” It was a thing on my checklist done rather insincerely. This past year I’ve experienced a significant amount of self-discovery and gone through a (sometimes painful) transformation. As part of that I’ve gained a new understanding of what I now believe is charity and I have my brother Trevor to thank.

Happily Married

March 29, 2016 by Trevor Johnson

My older sister Amanda got married to her husband Ben in May of last year, about 9 years after my oldest sister Amy married her husband Brandon. It had been a long time since we'd had a wedding in the family so it all seemed so new and exciting! I was 25 instead of 16 this time around so I had a lot more life experience under my belt. I felt like I could better comprehend the excitement and fear Amanda must have been feeling as she prepared to make that lifelong commitment.

I was at Amanda and Ben's marriage sealing in the Salt Lake Temple. I looked around the room at all the family and friends there to support them in the important ceremony and I thought about the significance of a temple marriage in the Mormon religion. It is considered

Embracing Complexity

February 20, 2016 by Trevor Johnson

I loved having such clear answers to questions many struggle to answer their entire lives. But embedded in this simply beautiful plan were requirements that felt impossible for me to fulfill authentically. According to Mormon doctrine, if I hoped for eternal exaltation, I needed to marry a woman in a Mormon temple. If I didn't complete this commandment I wouldn't get to be with God or my family for eternity. As a gay man, this particular commandment felt overwhelming. And the more I strived to obey it, the more hopeless I felt. Did God set me up to fail?

Paradigms

February 01, 2016 by Trevor Johnson

Paradigms. They’re a thing. It’s hard to know you live in one until you have an experience that pulls you out of it. Then, before you fully grasp what has happened, you find yourself standing at a glass window looking in at yourself existing in a world that has shaped who you are and affected your decisions on a level much deeper than you realized, mostly unaware of what’s outside. Paradigms aren’t bad, but it’s good to know which one you exist in and how it fits in a world made up of thousands of paradigms different than yours.