But the Greatest of These is Charity

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.

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Happily Married

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

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Embracing Complexity

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?

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Paradigms

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.

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Healing

I can't tell you how nice it is to exist in a space where being gay doesn't feel so overwhelming or hopeless. Don't get me wrong, I still have my moments, but now it's less, "There's only one way to be happy and being gay makes that impossible," and more,"I believe I can be gay and happy but I'm not exactly sure what that looks like." I've learned that when I love others in the way that God created me to love, I only grow closer to Him. I feel like my capacity to love myself and others unconditionally has grown exponentially since I started to accept that I am gay. And I can see goodness in others and myself with much more clarity, untainted by paradigmic lenses. No more boxes to check. No more playing charades. 

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