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It’s no secret that I’ve struggled greatly for most of the last year and a half.  Depression has gotten the better of me for a lot of that time and pains, difficulties, setbacks, and heartache that would have only been a mild irritant under normal circumstances have stacked up and thrown me well off balance — leaving me unstable.

Last Sunday, I was sitting in fast and testimony meeting listening to the traditional flow of shared testimony and experience with no intention of taking part in more than a strictly passive sense.  Sundays, in particular, have been very hard for me, and last Sunday was no exception.  All I wanted was to crawl in a hole and sleep until Monday.  The last thing on my mind was sharing anything with anyone.  However, what I want rarely had any bearing on what actually occurs, and this was no exception.  I spent several minutes convincing myself that the promoting I received was authentic, and a few more trying to rationalize ignoring it.  Ultimately, I submitted.

Generally speaking, I like talking to an audience, and have no issues sharing a message.  However, what I was prompted to say was something I didn’t want to share.  I didn’t want to air my feelings and struggles in public, but that was exactly what I was being directed to do.   Standing there in front of a ward full of strangers who knew me as nothing more than Liz’s husband who left his wife and family alone for seven months immediately after moving in, I was called on to admit how I felt and what I’d been through — even if in an abbreviated form.

However, I was not there to complain.  The details of my struggles remain my own.  However, the part I needed to share depended on what bit of struggling I did share.  This year has taught me to be empathetic to those who decide it’s easier to believe that the answer to the question “why” is that there is no God, and that it is all just random chance.  It would seem be easier to give up everything rather than believe in a God who could inflict such pain on one who he nominally loves.  Standing in front of that congregation as an emotional wreck, I testified that this view was very short sighted.  While I can understand how one could reach that conclusion, and how it could be appealing to just give up faith in exchange for not wondering why anymore, I couldn’t bring myself to take that step.  As much as it might temporarily ease some pain, I am perfectly confident that it is wrong.  While I don’t understand the purpose in pain, I do have hope that there are several, and that they are all worth it.  Even seemingly pointless suffering has a purpose, and I testified that I was certain we would see and understand that in it’s fullness in the end.  I declared that I have faith in the Lord’s timing, unbounded love, and deliberate purpose.

I didn’t know it at the time, but there were many more there beyond myself who needed to hear that.  One of my young men had been admitted to the hospital with what was reportedly a minor bug, but I found out later that the situation was very serious and the family was struggling.  Another thanked me for reminding them their fight with an aggressive cancer had a point.  The most poignant example took a week to evolve.  A friend confided in me that his wife’s health had been rough lately, and that she had been diagnosed with a heart condition just recently.  He was confident that it was treatable, but was obviously weighed down by the reality of his present.  I shared with him a little of my experience when Liz got sick, and we parted ways.

Yesterday morning Liz got a phone call telling her that our friend had died that night of her heart condition.  Her husband had been out of town.  This fantastic 31 year old wife and mother was called home to heaven and her husband now faces the full anguish that I only contemplated several years ago.  My heart aches for him and his children.  I doubt anything I said will help him.  Logic and reason cannot penetrate that kind of sorrow, but I think that above all else I needed the reminder.  Grief and pain exist in a very real way, and cannot be compared between sufferers, and much of what happens makes no sense given our mortal perspective, but I do believe there is another, more perfect, perspective where all this makes sense.

The Lord has a sick sense of humor…  I have a long established dislike of scouting (that’s probably too mild of a word, but I’m trying to be positive), and have recently been caught expressing my feeling that the only calling in the ward I would like less than being Bishop would be as the Scout Master.  About six months ago, while I was passing through Amarillo on my way back to DC after an unplanned and very short return to New Mexico, I got a call from the stake Executive Secretary asking if there was any way I could meet with the Stake President before I returned to DC.  The Bishop had been in the calling long time, and the talk was that it was time for someone new.  Seeing as how I had already left the state on my way to DC and wouldn’t be back for six months, the appointment never happened.  About four months later, they called a new Bishop…  Bishop Johnson.  I joked that it must have been that other brother Johnson they were looking for.

When I got home, everybody teased that I had dodged a bullet.  My response was generally along the lines of… “Yeah, so long as they don’t call me to be the scoutmaster instead.”   Fast forward a month or so, and lo and behold, exactly that happened.  I actually contemplated going inactive for a few years rather than accept the calling…  As a more positive alternative, I opted to accept the calling, and am still working on getting my mind wrapped around the fact that I have to have anything at all to do with the BSA.  I have been firmly in the camp that believes the church should cut ties with that organization, and have been disappointed every time the decision has been made to stick with them.   When I accepted the call to work with the young men, the Bishopric agreed that there was no need for me to dress up in a stupid uniform, and that I could make the program what I wanted it to be.  So… we’ll have a bunch of young men’s activities, and help the boys that are interested to earn rank/badges/whatever on the side.   That aside, I am now decidedly affiliated with scouting.

The first activity we’ve done (aside from one weeknight teaching boys to handle/throw/tie ropes) was a camp-out and rock-climbing.   Of the more attractive aspects of this almost God-forsaken city is that it’s a relatively short drive from here to some of the most beautiful ponderosa forests and  high-deserts you’ll find. As a consequence, there are a wide variety of people who rock-climb, hunt, mountain-bike, hike, show-shoe, and almost any other outdoor activity you can find.  With several avid climbers in the ward, the scouts have done an annual climbing trip every year for the last four years.  All I had to do was show up with a truck to haul all the boys gear and participate in the fun.

Weather here has been gorgeous lately, with temperatures near eighty, and overnight lows only dropping into the fifties.  Nobody thought too hard about the fact that the place we would be climbing would be several thousand feet higher elevation, so everyone was shocked when it had dropped down near 20 by morning.  I think I was probably one of the only ones who was comfortable (I never rely on scouts to plan and pack for me…  I keep what I need to be comfortable in my truck toolbox pretty much all the time).   It was a chore to peel the boys away from the fire to get camp broken down, but we succeeded and were packed up and headed to the rock-face by seven thirty.

Of the boys and leaders, everyone but one of the young men went up the rock face at least twenty feet.  A few of the boys made it to the top of the most difficult route (I only made it 1/3 of the way up that particular one before realizing pulling my 200 lbs another 40 feet up that route wasn’t something I was going to be able to finish).  I was proud of all of them.  Of the croud, I managed the worst injuries with just some skinned knuckles and a little road-rash on an elbow (on that last and most difficult climb), so the trip met my criteria for success — nobody in the E.R. and everyone tired and happy on the ride home.  Pictures below: