My Best?

I often feel uncomfortable when people talk about how they did their "very best" on their missions. "How can you have done your best?" I mutter in my head. "That's impossible. You could always do better." The pessimism almost certainly comes from my own experiences.

As a 19 year old preparing to face my fears and go out to accomplish what was asked of me, I made a deal with God that is probably familiar to many a Moho. I promised God that I would put away all of my fears and hold nothing back, that I would serve with all of my heart, might, etc. etc. in exchange for the simple blessing of being switched from gay to straight by the time I returned. This was no passing thought; I prayed deeply and sincerely about it and felt confident that God was willing to keep his end of the deal.

Despite the optimism, I didn't become the super-confident missionary I needed to be overnight (or over the space of two years, for that matter). I found myself doing less than AP-caliber work (I lacked AP-ness-- teehee, say it out loud). I blame a large part of it on my suffering from what my therapist recently diagnosed as social phobia.

Did I love my mission? Yeah, I loved the spiritual highs, the baptisms, the friendships I built, the culture, the testimony I gained, the packages I received, the lives I helped change, the train rides, the DDR. Did I hate my mission? Yeah, the door approaches, the street contacting, the difficult teaching, the zone leader exchanges, the companions, the 18 months it took to speak Japanese, the phone calls, the unkind members, the biking through blizzards while ice shards made my eyes bleed.

And in the end, I found myself back at home with no change to my attractions. Had God let me down? No, not necessarily; I could have listed thousands of things that I could have done better as a missionary, so I could not claim to have done my best. Having started my mission with "best" as my main goal, such a realization was crushing. If I wasn't straight, I couldn't blame God.

I was recently praying for forgiveness of recent sins and rededicating myself to the Lord, when I found myself promising to "do my best." My thoughts turned to my mission. At first the pessimism set in, and I thought the task impossible.

But then I remembered a significant lesson I learned from Robert Millet in an Institute lesson last year. We're taught that we are saved by grace "after all we can do," a concept akin to doing our best. Is it really possible to do "all we can do?" Don't we fail every day? Brother Millet pointed out that rather than seeing this as some vague requirement to be absolutely perfect, we can understand the principle through the words of the king of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies: "It was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God."

I remain confident that I can do my best simply by living in a repentant state. I hope by doing so the Lord will be able to mold me as he sees fit.

I'm Staying

I haven't much been in the mood to read blogs for the past ten days or so. Reading a computer screen while laying on a bed is a sore for sight eyes anyway. But since I've dropped out of school, I've slowly come to realize that you can only do nothing for so long before you start feeling like there's nothing to do.

So I caught up on the blogs tonight and found myself rather sad at the state of the Mohos. Out of the 45 blogs I read regularly, like... three or four of them are written by people who still like the Church at all. Okay, that may be exaggerating, but it seems like the leaving-the-Church stuff is all I hear and see around me.

I guess I'm just sad for everyone. They'll tell me that they're actually happy with their new, easier, "authentic" paths. They'll even tell me that they feel sad for me. But I'll just keep on being sad, wishing that they could have held on longer and wishing that we all could have some answers that would make things easier.

I don't stay in the Church because it makes perfect sense. I don't stay in the Church because the leaders are perfect. I don't stay because I agree with everything my ward members say at the pulpit. I don't stay in the Church because it's easy. I don't stay because I'm never sad or depressed or lonely.

I stay in the Church because it's true.

If Jesus reads the blogs, I just want him to know that I'm still on his team.

My Life Hurts

Not only am I down, but I've been kicked several times while down. Last Sunday night I felt like I was coming down with something, and by Monday it was in full force and I had almost every symptom of illness you can name.

I need to backtrack, though. In early December, I did something to my back during a snowball fight at work that made me unable to bend my back for a few days. Though the pain lessened, it never fully went away. While sledding after Christmas, I redid whatever it was that I did to my back, so I finally made an appointment with the doctor to see what was up. He had me bend and stretch a bunch of different ways and diagnosed it as a muscle spasm. He prescribed some ibuprofen and told me to go to physical therapy.

But after that appointment, my back started feeling worse. Come Tuesday of this week, I could no longer sit for more than a few minutes. I decided to stay in bed, where I went through periods of heavy shivering with my electric blanket on its highest setting and intense sweating, sometimes experiencing both at once. I soon began living in fear, as each cough or sneeze would bend my back and leave me whimpering in pain.

On Wednesday, I was sitting at my desk for a few minutes and my leg went partially numb, and then it hurt so bad I could barely stand. I began to suspect I had a pinched nerve rather than a muscle spasm. Thankfully, I met with my bishop and he gave me the name of a great chiropractor and told me to go to him first thing on Thursday.

I had been skipping almost all of my classes because I was much more comfortable taking my DayQuil and ibuprofen and lying around trying to get in bits of sleep here and there than trying to move. In the process, I've missed at least two tests and a book review paper. I was hopeful that much could be excused upon my return with the help of a doctor's note. Unfortunately, we discovered that I was unknowingly dropped from my parents' insurance last month and was left with no option for getting excused from school, let alone finding out what was wrong with me.

Thursday looked happier when I was able to enroll in the Student Health Plan right away, and I looked forward to seeing the chiropractor and being able to stand and sit again. Driving the short distance to Orem, I almost stopped in the middle of State Street to hop out and relieve myself of the pain of sitting. To my delight, I discovered upon arriving that the chiropractor's office is closed on Thursdays.

Rather than try to accomplish anything, I decided to once again pull off my clothes and crash as a miserable mess onto my bed among clean and dirty laundry, used tissues, and empty Ensure bottles. My wonderful time was highlighted by the discovery (in ways that you probably can but shouldn't imagine) that the ibuprofen had been making my stomach bleed.

Somehow I don't really feel depressed from all this. I guess I don't really have the mental energy to do so. I mean, I break into fits of crying and "Why me's" and loss of hope and wanting to not exist, sure (That's not depression, is it?).

I've rearranged the pieces of my computer so I can navigate the internet while lying in bed. This is where I will exist until I muster the strength to get up to Orem in the morning. I guess there are some things that aren't so bad. My roommate even poked his head in tonight to make sure I didn't drink out of his carton of orange juice.