Unconditional Love

First off, I'm typing on my brand new computer!!! I'm so excited that I can finally start to blogging again!

This is going to be a bit deeper of a subject than I normally talk about and I hope that you will read this with an open mind. I know you're used to my cookie cutter family stories and decorating dilemmas, but recently I've had something on my mind. For those of you who do not know, I have a gay sister. She's been "out" since I was in junior high (although my parents didn't tell me until I was in high school). She's quite an amazing person and the more I get to know her, the more impressed I am. She's kind, generous, loving and intensely creative. She's always been very independent and self confident which (thankfully) has made her journey easier.

I am also a Mormon, which is not the ideal religion for someone in the gay community (not that many religions are ideal for them). We are taught in church that homosexuality is a sin. It just doesn't seem fair to me that she should be given this great "challenge" in her life. Why was I born without those feelings, why does it come natural for me to "live a straight life"? I know she did not ask for these feeling or choose them. She was born this way.

Unfortunately, I didn't understand how my sister must have felt until I listened to the story of Carol Lynn Pearson on the Mormon Stories podcast. She is an active Mormon who married a gay man (after he was told by his church leaders to go ahead and get married and his same sex attraction would go away). After many years of marriage and 4 children, her husband's same sex attractions never went away and it led to their divorce. They stayed close friends until he passed away. Hearing her story about her husband gave me so much more understanding into the pain that the homosexual community has to go through. She wrote a book about their love story and it's called Goodbye, I Love You. She later wrote another book called No More Goodbyes (Circling the wagons around our gay loved ones) which I am reading now to continue to understand more about this subject.

I recently heard of a man in one of the single adult wards at our church who stood up and gave a beautiful talk on the Holy Ghost. At the closing of his talk he told the congregation that he was gay. Here is the link to his talk which he posted on his blog. I was touched by his candor and bravery. I love that it got people thinking and talking. It prompted me to write this post, which I probably would have never done, but his example gave me the courage. This is a subject that many are (in my opinion) way too judgemental about. Please take the time to read the talk to help open your mind a little.