My Own It Gets Better Post

My remarks are directed at parents, particularly any other parents like myself who may have more fluid sexual identity, are devout members of the LDS church, and are dealing with the early stages of a child questioning and coming out.

It gets better.

The internal conflict you feel may be debilitating, the decisions you are called to make on how to best counsel, guide and, yes, at times discipline your LGBTQ child may be daunting, and your ability to care for your own needs may be diminished. In my own case, I fasted and prayed, not for change, but for a greater ability to love, that my child might develop a testimony, and to know how to best respond. I eventually was blessed with tremendous peace and great hope for a better future. I also had to work and walk a fine line. With gay kids and the ever present dialogue over suicide issues, its easy to slip into lower expectations for them to avoid conflict. Don't. Stand firm and require progress in school and other facets of their lives.

Surprisingly, you will also come to a greater acceptance of yourself and have more grace in dealing with the foibles of others.

Question-Believing and LGBT or same sex attracted and parenting children who are LGBT or same sex attracted?

It has recently come to my attention that there are at least two other members of the MOHO blogosphere who could be classified as "actively believing" in the "gospel" and remaining close to the church and either consider themselves LGBT and same sex attracted, and raising children who are questioning, same sex attracted or openly LGBT. Are there more of us than three?

The Resignation of Boyd K. Packer

As I listened to his talk, the best way I can put what I heard from him on the "marriage" issue was resignation that change was on its way outside of the Church. And frustration. All in all, I thought that talk covered much more than marriage and touched the vast majority of all LDS homes through the pornography issue and others. I also found Dallin H. Oaks talk interesting in light of what I know about John G-W's experiences. However, I believe each individual has to do the very best they can in light of what they experience of the Spirit. And, I know in my heart that some things will always be in conflict or be ambiguous when it comes to the gospel. Each person must seek to reconcile their own experiences in the very best way they can. Perhaps most telling was the fatigued, wearied, yet powerful gratitude of our prophet at the end of the morning session.

How I will Spend Conference Weekend

My comments are inspired by Kiley's post on General Conference.

Today I might do some grocery shopping before settling in with my computer for the Saturday morning session. I may even do the dishes and begin my preliminary 'fridgerator' purge preparatory to grocery shopping, or maybe not. I will ask Baby Song if he would like to watch a talk or two with me this morning. He may or may not, but I will not require a Saturday morning session of him. After conference on my laptop, I doubt that I will reopen a conference program until very late this evening.

Some years ago, I helped start a community event which takes place on fall conference weekend. All of us Mormons on that initial board forgot about conference and didn't raise an objection to the timing, so for years we all had to juggle our community committment with our inherent conference commitment. This afternoon, DH and I and Baby Song will attend part of that event together. Then we will go home and work on our landscape for a while. I may bake sweet treats, make jam or make soup. Mid evening I will go to another part of the community event alone.

When I get home, depending on my fatigue level, I might listen to a rebroadcast of part or all of the afternoon session.

On Sunday, I along with Baby Song will probably get dressed and go to the Sunday Morning session of conference at the local building receiving the broadcast, although I have been known to skip it and only go to the afternoon session. I will make my normal Sunday calls to loved ones. I may go alone to the Sunday Afternoon session at the local building, skip it or watch it by myself on the internet. For the next few weeks I will watch whatever parts of conference I missed online by myself.

Sunday night, I will go alone or with a friend or possibly with DH and Baby Song to the final activity of the community event.

Sometime in the next few days, I will talk with Number One Song, who did the entire conference weekend last year and had some "picks" as to what the best talks were, to see what his take was on his favorites this year (that is, if he was off from work and made it to different sessions than I did). Last year DH and Baby Song joined in that telephone call and it had a bit of a flavor of a fantasy football draft as we talked about Number One Song's "picks."

If our history is any indication of the future, we will have at least 4-5 family home evenings in the next 2-3 months where we watch talks from conference from the internet archives and discuss them.

I will probably shoehorn a nap or two in somewhere as well. I don't suppose we "celebrate" fall conference in the stereotypical way, but I think it works for us. I also would like to blog a bit and do some bookkeeping for my business.

I do like conference weekends in both Spring and Fall, but I do not think I could ever do an entire weekend with my current family configuration and I've always had a bit of morbid disbelief that some families do manage to attend or watch the whole thing, together.

I've never attended conference live. I suspect it's one of those things that is really better for some people in person, although I do not know if I'm one of them-I don't think I'd like the traffic and the huge numbers of people. I love the flexibility of the broadcasts on the internet. Each year the technology required to deliver to a worldwide audience seems to improve as well.