No news is good news

I had someone ask me recently, “you’re such a happy person, why don’t you write happy things?” I don’t know that I completely agree that I am all that happy of a person, me thinks he just doesn’t know me well enough. To answer the question however, is a simple answer. I write as a form of therapy. It’s a way for me to express that which I might not otherwise be able to, either due to cowardice or social impropriety.

When I am genuinely happy, I don’t see a need for therapy or a reason to escape. Oftentimes when I find myself amidst the elusive emotion known as joy, I am too encapsulated by the bliss to ever bother to sit down and write about it. If anything I am far too busy trying to enjoy the fleeting feeling for as long as I can before it wanes and once more I find a need to write. As short as these moments might be, I cherish them and revel in them as they happen. Often I hold on to them long after they’ve passed and try to recreate them, always lacking the original luster… but I remember enough that in order to appease some who might believe my writing to be all depressive in nature, I will now recall of a time when I was happy beyond any ounce of measure. This was after I was baptized.

There is an array of mushy details leading up to my actual baptism itself. To know my background and what I grew up with, my getting baptized was pretty much the first sign that hell was freezing over. It was a long road to baptism for me with my biggest obstacle being my own pride. I had so many fears about what getting baptized would mean. I would be living to a new standard and I wasn’t certain if I could live up to it… did I want to feel guilty all the time? I wasn’t certain if was ready to turn my back on the person I was. After all, all the experiences I had prior to that point had made me into who I was… how could I just ignore all of that?

There was a moment when I remember just letting go of everything. I was sitting in the passenger seat of my friend’s car. We were driving on our way home from attending the Spring General Conference in 2009. I’d had this thought in my head for a while but finally just sitting there, enjoying the quiet hum of the freeway beneath the tires, I was brave enough to say it out loud. “I think I’m supposed to get baptized.”
From that moment on I had found a sense of courage and strength that I never knew I’d had. I felt like I could take on the world and that no matter what trial came my way, there was this peace in knowing I didn’t have to face anything alone anymore.

I had so much gratitude for the people in my life and the experiences I’d had. I was even grateful to have had my heart ripped out and stomped on because I knew that without that story, without that suffering, I would have never been humbled enough to fully embrace the love the gospel had to offer me.

I haven’t been so happy as that day I was sat down on a chair on May 9, of 2009 and was confirmed a member to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This isn’t to say my testimony has been diminished, this isn’t to say that I haven’t experienced spiritual moments that filled my heart, but I am saying that I can’t remember being as happy as I was then prior to that moment or since that moment.

I know that these heart breaks and pitfalls I’ve encountered since then will merely be speed bumps in the grand scheme of things. While they seem inescapable now and utterly devastating, these minor afflictions and heart aches will be nothing compared to the happiness I’m sure to feel when I find that special someone. A mere trifle to my wedding day or the birth of each of my future children. My life isn’t all doom and gloom, but until I have met with these joys, it helps me to write about the trivial little cracks in my heart.