The Guilty Question: A Response to "You're Beyond Feeling"

My bishop called me the day before my birthday in 2009 and made a pressing invitation for me to go to his office for a little visit.  I had just moved back into my parents' house from a couple of prodigal years on my own, I wasn't "actively engaged" in the good cause of The Church, and I was angry at what I felt was the shit life had thrown at me.  I didn't know exactly what he wanted to discuss with me, but I suspected the bishop wanted to explore the reasons I chose not to maintain a high level of activity in the ward.

So, I took a deep breath, rolled up my white-shirt-sleeves, buttoned my black slacks and, wearing a fabulous pink tie, I met him one evening at the church meeting house.  He welcomed me into his office, where he had conspicuously placed two chairs in front of his desk, one for him and one for me.  We sat across from each other, and (after the obligatory, everyday salutations) he suggested I offer a prayer.  I hadn't prayed aloud for quite some time, and the words "Dear Heavenly Father..." felt like an old, forgotten language in my mouth, while at the same time, I found a starchy, hard kind of comfort in talking to God again.  We said our amens and then the bishop gave me a tender, pained looked and quietly asked, "What's wrong, Nic?"

I didn't want to be there.  I remember asking myself why I was there in the first place.  Because he called you in and you don't know how to graciously say no to authority figures, I thought. I don't feel like I've done anything which would merit the help of a bishop in repenting.  I don't want to repent.  He thinks I need to change something.  I shouldn't ever have agreed to come here.  But he looked so sincerely concerned and -- with the pictures of Jesus were staring me down -- I decided I'd just be as honest with him as I felt I could trust him.

Over a series of visits, we discussed what, for years, I had called my "guilty question" : I told him I was gay.  I told him I didn't know how to make that work in The Only True and Living Church on the Face of the Earth Today.  I told him how I had tried to ignore it away, to pray it away, how I had tried to serve it away (as an LDS missionary), how I had tried to date and engage and marry it away.  I told him how it had never gone away.  I told him I was tired of hearing I was fighting a "tendency," a "weakness," that I needed to be fixed.  I don't need to be fixed, I gritted my teeth many times. I silently testified, Homosexuality is not an illness.  There isn't a cure, and we won't find one here.  Jesus loves me as I AM.

He was as empathetic as any married, Melchezidek Priesthood bearing, rural, straight man could be about it.  He cried over my heartaches when I wouldn't.  He offered me hugs and blessings I didn't accept.  I prickled every time he said he just wanted me to talk with him about what I felt.  I didn't believe him when he said he wouldn't judge me.  My emotions were becoming raw when all I wanted to be was callous.  I admit, I looked for reasons to quit meeting with him. 

I found that reason in our last meeting before I left for a midsummer music festival taking place in WI.  We had been making progress in understanding why I had felt the need to ignore all emotions except anger, and he blurted out, "Nic, I think you're beyond feeling.  When was the last time you really felt a prompting of the Spirit?"

I was so shocked I couldn't think or hear or speak.

(End  Part I)