Who I Am and Who I'm Not: Part I

I was bright and my grades showed it. I felt like I could have gotten into a really prestigious school somewhere in the North East. I'd have loved to be there. Not Texas. Not Utah.  No one had thought about saving money for college and even though my parents had enough of an income to make me ineligible for financial aid, they were unable to contribute much towards my education. My mother attended BYU and I had family in Utah near by. It was the cheapest option and quite frankly, a really good school for what I wanted to study. Thus, BYU not only seemed like a good option but was my only option. Only applying to BYU, I got in with a full scholarship. In my first few weeks I was called to be a counselor in my student ward Elders quorum.

My course work was boring and just not nearly as challenging as I hoped it would be. I remember my first year at BYU thinking that this college thing is just four more years of high school and all my respect for people who went to college evaporated; were they just going to school to avoid reality for another four more years? Of course, I have a lot more respect for what colleges can be and gratitude for the time to really push my ability to think critically about my subject of study. However, more than my course work,  I also began to question the efficacy of the priesthood I was supposed to be able to use to bless others. My experience in the Elders quorum revealed a sterile church where practical business experience reigned and inspiration was hard to find. I really was incapable of finding the spiritual experiences I was supposed to be having in the church I grew up in. 

To be fair to BYU, I think this started in high school. I never had a single class with a fellow member of the LDS church, which suited me just fine since the youth in my ward rarely wanted anything to do with me. My freshman year of seminary the only guy I thought was kind of my friend secretly took my For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet and decided to go through it with another and highlight all of the areas they felt I needed to improve on in my life. As much as that hurt, I kept reading my scriptures each day and praying for revelation and direction in my life. I was a member without a community.  During my sophomore year I ran into some 'anti-mormon' literature online that pushed me into LDS apologetics. I spent a solid two years reading article after article of mormon apologetics that kept my faith afloat and sufficiently convinced me that no matter the scandal, the church was the side of honesty, truth, and scholarship. My senior year is probably when I really stopped making the church central in my life and stopped praying and reading scriptures very regularly. The year before the LDS church had openly threw all of its political muscle behind the passage of Proposition 8 in California and also that year a remarkably charitable and caring gay class mate of mine had been murdered. I really could not understand the church's focus on a social issue that hurt so many feelings and its unwillingness to address poverty and abuses of power around the world. For the one true church, it just seemed to have very skewed priorities. So wherever my testimony was my junior year, I left it there my senior year and didn't examine it. I believed the church was true last time I checked and I did not need to check again.

So now I am a freshman at BYU... in the Elders quorum presidency... and every male in my ward is talking about preparing for their mission. "Where do you want to go?" "When are you putting in your papers?" and "Will you give me a priesthood blessing?" were questions that were asked all around and to me. I had to look at my testimony again, but my problem was that I couldn't find it no matter where I looked. I must have forgot to pack it before I left home.