Butterfly Wings

 My lovely spouse seems to believe that I can do anything. They’re constantly pushing me to believe in myself more and take more risks, particularly in my career. I just started a new job two months ago, and my boss just got promoted, so her position is open. My lovely spouse spent the last two weeks convincing me to apply for the position, even though I’m 100% not the most qualified person for the position. Well, they succeeded, and I have an interview today. So, even though I probably won’t get the position, gaining the confidence to apply for jobs that I’m not qualified for is going to help me so much for my future career. So, I guess this is a love letter to my spouse for the way they believe in me and don’t let me settle for less than what they know I can accomplish. They gently encourage me to be better, do better, and stretch myself in ways I’m scared to. I feel safe with them, but they’re never going to let me get comfortable and complacent. And that keeps me free and joyfu...

 I haven’t written in a while. There has been a reason for that: I had some parts of myself that I was becoming aware of that I wasn’t ready to share with the world. Things I was keeping hidden because I didn’t know how to handle them myself, much less how I could expect others to react to them. Things that have been part of me for a while. But, recently, I decided to come out. I am queer. I currently identify as pansexual and non-binary, but as most people in the queer community understand, those labels are transient ways of explaining how my experience is different. When people talk about how “those labels aren’t the most important part about you” they don’t seem to understand that we get that. Those labels are a way of trying to build community and explain our experience, and nothing else.  But I digress. As most of you know, I have picked a new name to go by: Jay. I chose this name, because it has deep meaning for me. A Jay is a type of butterfly, a beautiful black one wit...

 My spouse and I live with roommates. It’s been great, because we get along well, and it’s like having your own support system that you live with. We like to drive to church together, but as we are all young adults getting there on time can be what I like to refer to as “a struggle bus.” Our struggle bus was having a hard time yesterday morning, and we made it to church halfway through the sacrament while the bread was being passed. As the prayer on the water was being said, I resigned myself to not getting the sacrament this week, because we hadn’t gotten the bread yet. Then, I deacon came over, holding a tray with both bread and water. In that moment I felt seen. I felt like God saw my efforts and accepted them, even as they weren’t perfect. 

There has been a lot of drama at BYU in the last couple of weeks. We have had people posting open letters on the doors of classrooms, protests outside the Wilkinson center, people handing out flyers outside devotions, and people standing outside yelling their opinions. It's been stressful for the whole school, and it has put me greatly on edge. There are so many sides to the issues, and I have been feeling that acutely. Everyone wants to be right, and oftentimes they are not willing to listen to each other. People on both sides have been accusing each other of being bad Christians. I joined the protest on Wednesday, and it left me reeling a bit.  This is an unpublished and unfinished blog post from  March 2020. This was during the protests on campus, and during the time I finally came out to myself about my queerness. I just wanted to make it available to look back on. 

I feel like owning a car simply means that you will have problems with it. Not necessarily big ones, just little ones that need to be addressed. It can get a little frustrating for me as a new car owner and adult to learn that. Adult problems are weird because they are oddly convoluted and simple at the same time. For example, I've been struggling with the car locks on my door. I recently got a new key made so that my brother and I can more easily share the car. After we made the key, we learned that the car lock is jammed and doesn't work. On my car there is only one lock, and it's on the drivers side door. So, when it's jammed, there is no other way to get into the car except by using the car remote. Well, that was in the process of breaking, so not only are the keys useless for getting in, I was loosing the only way to get in. This last Thursday, it broke. And my car was locked. I had to call the locksmith to get in my car, and now have to take the lock in to get fi...

In high school I used to write in pencil. I was afraid of making mistakes, especially spelling mistakes, and I wanted to make sure I could always fix them. I loved erasers especially because they could make those mistakes disappear. I would often go back a fix my mistakes in notes I took from months ago. I would even write in my journal in pencil. Then, my senior year, I went back and looked a a journal that I had kept a couple of years ago. The pencil was fading and it was hard to read the words I had written when I was younger. I was upset, and I took it to my mom. She told me that pencils fade after a while, and that often something written in pencil would eventually fade away completely. I really took this to heart when I got to college and I changed my mind. I started taking all my notes in pen. I bought a pack of multicolored pens and I would take notes in a different color for each class. I would get pen all over my hands, and I had to cross out tons of stuff, but note taking ...

What is the answer to our greatest questions in life? Who am I? What am I doing here? How should I treat people around me? What is moral? What is the purpose of it all? These questions come to us all every day in different small ways. I ask variations of these questions to myself regularly. Right now, I am taking a class where we explore one of these questions and right a 15-25 page scholarly paper on it. So, these questions have been floating around in my a little more than usual. I guess since we have been finding scholarly sources for these papers, I have been looking for the answer to these questions in the world. I was realizing this week, however, the answer to these questions doesn't come from the world. I have found parts of the truth in good things like psychology, good books and movies, philosophy, politics, and other good ideas, but I haven't found much peace. Every time I think I've found it, I learn more about the idea, and realize that, while it has trut...

This last week moving back to school has been crazy. School hasn't even started yet and I'm already super busy. I have been unpacking, buying a car, applying for jobs, volunteering, applying for volunteer positions, going to doctors appointments, meeting with the bishop about being a temple worker again, and doing all the paperwork associated with getting two jobs. I feel like for every thing I do, two more things are created for me to accomplish. I have been running around a lot and it has been stressing me out. So, when two days after I bought my car three different warning lights came on, I was pretty ready to give up. Yesterday, as I was driving my roommate and myself to the grocery store, I was ranting about how stressed I was. I was so upset I started crying a bit. I was paying attention to the road, and I hadn't been driving very long, when I suddenly looked down at the dashboard. All of the warning lights were off, and my car was driving perfectly. I was stunned. ...

This week, for the first time, I actually asked God to not take my trial of anxiety away. I am taking an online writing class this summer to catch up in my major so that I can graduate in two years. For the class I have to write a research paper, and I decided to write it on the way fiction effects the development of empathy. In the course of doing research for it, I stumbled upon an article that talked about how people who have  successfully navigating a trial aren't necessarily better at having empathy for people who are currently struggling with the same trial. This is because people who have been through the trial often forget how hard it was, and judge people who are currently struggling on how well they are coping. This got me thinking, and I realized that currently a lot of my ability to understand and help people comes from my constant struggling with anxiety. I can't look down on other people who are struggling because I still do every day. I am getting better, but...

When I am running, I have a very bad habit of comparing myself to the other runners. It comes from the self-conscious feeling that I am not good enough or dedicated enough to call myself a runner. My mom calls it impostor syndrome. Basically, I always feel like I am not "really" a runner unless I run more regularly, faster, or look like I'm doing a hard run. This, unfortunately, leads me to compare myself to the other runners I see on the trail with me, asking myself if they have been running longer than me, or if they are judging me for not going fast enough, or if they think that I am not wearing the proper clothing. What is absolutely hilarious about this thought process is that I have no way of knowing where in their run the other person is, so there is no way I can legitimately compare myself to them. Maybe they don't look tired because they just started. Maybe they are faster than me because they are only running two miles. Maybe they are slow and tired becaus...

Last Monday, I decided to change my major. I had been applying for the nursing program, a very competitive program at BYU, and had decided that I wanted to be a nurse. However, the more I worked on my application, the more wrong it felt. I have been volunteering for a lot of different things that have to do with mental health, and I love what I have been doing. I realized that if I did the nursing program I would have to stop doing almost all of them because the nursing program is very rigorous. I want to go to graduate school in mental health, and I realized that if I went through the nursing program and then became Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, I would miss out on a bunch of experiences that would prepare me for a career in Mental Health, and help me get into graduate school. Not only that, but it would take me a year longer to graduate. I realized that all I really wanted to do was become a therapist. I want to help other people in the way that I have been helped, and it is wher...

The older I've gotten, the more I am convinced that love is a choice. Everyone has beautiful and divine parts to them, and love is choosing to overlook the bad parts and see the good. I think too much in our culture we confuse it with a feeling, giving rise to the idea that one can fall out of love. But, in my opinion, "falling out of love" is simply seeing the bad in a person instead of the good, and using that as an excuse to stop communicating and stop trying in a relationship. That said, because love is not a feeling, it is possible to love someone and be annoyed at them. It's possible to love someone and be frustrated or mad at them. Love is not a feeling, so feelings can coexist with it. Just because you love your family doesn't mean that you are never going to be upset when your brother breaks something of yours or if your sister borrows something without asking. These kind of frustrations are normal in a relationship, but love is choosing to see the good...

God notices us and our needs. This week I got a 71% on my Physiology test, and this was devastating to me. I have been doing a lot: I had a job working 20 hours a week at 4 am, I was volunteering at the hospital, part of the student outreach council, and working at the temple, taking 14 credit hours and spending every other available moment working on my relationships. I felt like I had neither the spare time or energy to put even more effort into my Physiology class so that I could actually do well in the course. Chipping Sparrow John James Audubon On Wednesday, I had class at 1 and we were going to have an in class quiz. It was 12, and I was in the Jessie Knight building trying to figure out what the material was that we had learned on Monday because I had been sick. I was crying on the phone to my mom, and she that she needed to go, but for me to call my friend in the class for help and then call her back. I hung up, and immediately started freaking out. I felt unable to ask t...

For those of you who know me well, you know that last semester was difficult for me. When I stopped writing last semester, a girl had just committed suicide on BYU campus, and this greatly upset me. I have struggled with anxiety for a while, and I related to her too well. The last month or two have been ones of healing, and I have learned to see God's hand in my life more than ever before. I become a temple worker on Saturday afternoons, and started volunteering at a hospital. I learned to simplify, and how to just hang on when I having bad days. I prayed intensely, and have seen many miracles. As I was reading John 1 this morning, I realized that, like John, I also have something important to share. I have a personal witness of Christ. A testimony hard won through experience. I know that Christ is my Redeemer! As a consequence of being a constant worrier, I don't have very much that I am always certain of. Growing up, I had every question in the book about the gospel. I had ...

In my German class we have been learning about romanticism and the sublime. In romanticism, sublime means something that is beautiful, but terrifying and mysterious at the same time. It is the feeling you get when you are standing on a cliff peering over the edge. I feel like this is much the way life is sometimes. There is something sublime in the trials we go through, and something beautiful in the pain of a fallen world. This week I have come to understand and love the sublime as I have struggled. Most of you probably already know the specifics of the difficulties I have had this past week, and I don't want to belabor the point. I just know that I have begun to learn not to ask God why somethings is happening, but rather "How can I learn wisdom from this?" and "How do I accomplish the things that thou hast commanded me to do?" There are a lot of troubles going around in the world, and these are my trials and temptations to bear. God will help me, but He i...

This week I went to a stress evaluation center at BYU called the Biofeedback lab. There they hook you up to whole bunch of monitors and measure your stress response in your heart rate, breathing, hand temperature, and muscle tension. Then they teach you to control that response through breathing, and other methods. I was practicing my breathing with a pacer, where you have to breathe along with a moving dot. I was actually getting a bit stressed about doing it right, and worried that I wasn't going to be ready to breathe out or in when the dot told me to. As I was worrying, I suddenly realized that I was being ridiculous. Sure, if I didn't breathe in when I needed to it was going to hurt, and if I didn't breathe out when I needed to, it was going to hurt, but I couldn't breathe in when I was breathing out, or out when I was breathing in. I physically could not do both at the same time, so there was not point in worrying about the next step until it was time to do it. ...

Trouble never ends. As humans we think that we can end problems just by fixing our current problems and then everything will be better. If we are single, we think that our life will be perfect if we were married. If we are busy, we think life would be better if we only had more time. But the problem is that just as soon as one problem leaves, a new one takes its place. We finish one homework assignment, another is waiting for us to do.  However, God wants it to be that way. We could not learn if that were not the case. This life is short, and there is a lot to learn. I learned this week how important it is to be meekly accept the difficulties in life, and embrace the messiness, because this is beauty in difficulties and trials that we will miss if we are always waiting for them to be over. Instead of constantly being discontented because life is not the way I wanted it to be, I want to embrace its craziness and dance in the storm. Each difficult and beautiful moment is to be...

One anxiety that has been difficult for me to kick has been about failure, specifically when it comes to schoolwork. I was homeschooled as a child, and so I never received grades until I got to college. It was a bit of an adjustment, but it wasn't too bad. The hard part was that I love my professors, and with some of my favorite professors I develop friendships. I then see my grades as a way of showing them I love their class, and that I appreciate them as teachers. It becomes difficult for me then, when I do poorly, or not as good as I would like to, because I feel like I have failed them. This translates into me thinking that when I have bad grades it means that I am a bad person. This past week was a experience to learning that what bad grades actually are is an opportunity to learn what I need to do better. If I don't fail, I don't learn. This week I got a paper back in my German class, one of my favorite classes, with a less than perfect grade. The grade was not bad,...

The adjustment back to school has not been easy. I love most of my classes, but leaving my family and social support group for the third time this year has been difficult. It is easy to feel lost and overlooked in such a big school, especially because I am not in a major yet. I miss my family and my mission. I was beginning to feel like no one cared about me or anyone else who was struggling, but there was a lot this week that contradicted that fear. Last Sunday, Karina convinced me to go to ward prayer even though I was nervous about it. I was just standing there awkwardly, until I overheard two people next to me talking about Dungeons and Dragons. I joined in on the conversation, and ended up having a super long conversation with them. I made some new friends just because of where I was standing when I went to ward prayer. On Friday, I was leaving my German class, and I wasn't feeling the best. I was really worried about the next paper that was due on Monday, and I wante...

This week I have been focusing on trying to build relationships. I don't have a lot of close friends right now, and so I am trying to cultivate old relationships and build new ones. One thing I have realized as I have done this is that relationships require a lot of forgiveness on both sides. As imperfect people we hurt each other with varying degrees of severity every day. It is impossible to avoid, and the closer and more vulnerable we are with the person, the more we can hurt them and be hurt. As I was thinking about this, I realized that forgiveness is simply accepting the complexity of a human being. Forgiveness is the process of realizing that people are more than what they did to us, and giving them a chance to be better. This doesn't necessarily mean letting them back into our lives, though. It could simply mean not talking bad about them to a bunch of people, and letting go of the desire to get back at them.  It is allowing them to be imperfect just like we all need ...