The First Steps...

OK...Here it goes...I think I am ready to do this...I think.

As I was signing up for this blog with a fake name and email address, Blogger asked me for my birthday...I quickly thought of one.  June 6th, 2010.  What an amazing day!  Two days early was probably a day that I found myself in the darkest place I have ever been, but in a quick two days I found myself on top of the world.  I was ready to take on anything and make a change.  I realized that I was not going to ever be happy living the way I was.

I am 23.  I think it is a good age.  Scientists have proven that about every 7 years your body completes a continual process of regeneration and growth.  Technically I am in the beginning of my third life.  I don't have one cell left that was with me 7 years ago.  I think of this metaphorically as a time to change, after all...I am a new person.

I am LDS.  I love my membership in the church!  I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it was restored to the prophet Joesph Smith and as it is taught by President Monson.  I have a testimony and have always had a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the church.  I think that is what makes me feel so deeply complicated. 

Why am I attracted to guys?  I am a fit, active, full of life young man....why am I attracted to guys?  Why have I been attracted to them for so long...since I was 12?  I don't know.  I don't know...

What I do know is that June 6th 2010 may have been one of the happiest moments in my life.  It was the day that I decided that life was going to change.  It was the day that I decided to man up and start doing what I knew was right.  It was the day that I began to grow up. 

Two days earlier I had done something that would have been unimaginable to my 12 year-old self.  I had acted out...in a major way and it wasn't the first time.  It feels good to write now that I know that it was the last time.

I served my mission in Europe.  Learned an amazing language and made so many wonderful friends.  I never had any problems with my attraction on my mission...why?  Probably for a lot of reasons.  I was busy.  I was doing the things that I knew I should do...praying, studying scriptures, and testifying.  Those were good years, but I still had so much to learn about myself and my attractions.

I could go on about my past forever...hopefully Blogger will last long enough to let me go on forever.  June 6th was a good day because I began to make a change.  I began to use the atonement of Christ in my life for the first time.  That was a good feeling.  It was a feeling of happiness and strength.  A feeling I hope that I can hold onto forever. 

Having same sex attractions isn't easy...but I am starting to see how much I can learn from them.  I am taking my first steps into the Refiner's fire.