It was weeks and months of feeling as if no matter what
I did, I didn't measure up.
I didn't want to have to wake up the next day
and have people ask me: “What’s your plan?
What are you going to do with your life? I did this.
They should do that.” I didn’t want to have that experience
anymore. Thought to myself, “OK, this is it.”
I mean, I was raised in a kind of
a typical Latter-day Saint family was expectations to kind of
follow the path of graduate high school, serve a mission,
come home, get married, have a family, you know,
pursue a career. And it didn’t work out that way. Growing up,
experiencing a lot of separation anxiety,
I couldn't leave the house
for long periods of time without getting really panicky, fearful,
anxious. And it led to a lot of, you know,
teasing and bullying
and things that affected me emotionally and spiritually.
Kind of ebbed flowed throughout high school.
I didn't experience that at all.
And so I thought to myself, “OK, well,
I can go and do this mission thing because I haven’t
experience it and everything else is, you know,
looks good for me.” So I was called to serve a mission in
the Baltic Mission, which is northwestern Europe.
And I thought to myself: “OK, this is absolutely
someplace I've never heard of in my entire life.
I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I can do this.”
I quickly learned that my mission was going to be what
I had anticipated. I started experiencing really bad anxiety
unlike I had ever experienced before.
And it wasn’t separation anxiety; I wasn’t homesick.
It was this perfectionism that was a part of me where
I literally felt like if
I wasn’t expending every last bit of energy,
pushing myself to the breaking point,
that I wasn't going to be blessed.
And, you know, two weeks later,
it was determined that I should go home and get better, recover.
Three weeks after I had returned home from
the missionary training center,
I was starting to experience a lot of low points.
A lot of, “Gosh, what am I going to do with my life?”
This was not my plan. I still tried to do the right things.
I tried to do what I thought I was supposed to do. I prayed,
I read my scriptures, I served in the temple,
I tried to keep the commandments. I still struggled.
That drove me to the point where I,
I still remember one night I was in my bedroom and I was like,
“I can’t do this anymore.” Another medication failed in my system.
I got really suicidal.
And I thought to myself: “OK, well, this is it.
You know, no one understands me,
and no one's going to understand me.
So I might as well just go to a place where I can be happier.”
When I was at my lowest point,
I asked God how He felt about me. “Am I doing the right things? Am
I a failure? I still remember His answer: “You’re going to be OK.
I have a plan for you. Don’t worry. It’ll work out.”
It offered me so much clarity and peace because
I was looking in all the wrong places for appreciation and
for fulfillment, when in reality
I should have just been looking to Him.
No one has the depth of understanding,
no one has the depth of love,
and no one wants your success more than God does.
I felt His grace through peace,
that I was in the right place doing the right things,
that I was going to be OK. That it's not just this
esoteric kind of dream that we think about,
and one day, we’ll achieve grace.
It's doing the right things that, you know are right,
getting the right professional help if you need
the right professional help,
and then trusting in the Lord that He loves you.
But he can take care of you.
But He understands you. When no one else understands you, He does.
When no one else gets it, He does.
I think where I've gone to in my life is
more of a sure place. As long as I’m moving forward—
and obviously some days, you know, I’m, everyone’s a sinner;
I'm not perfect. And I take a step back sometimes.
But as long as, you know, I learn from it,
then that’s what matters—
that I’ve switched my focus from perfectionism
and not good enough to progress and growth.
One of the challenges that
a lot of people of African descent have as members of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
is this struggle with the history of
the church in regards to race and the priesthood?