2016. What a year!
Here are the races I ran:
Jan 1, Red Eye Fat Ass (50k), Virginia, 2nd place, 4:40
Reverse Ring (71 mile), 2nd Place, 19:30
April, Boston Marathon, 2:58
July , Vermont 100, 2nd place, 20:
September , Ring, 2nd place, 17:51
October
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Father, my Greatest Calling
The past couple weeks I've been seriously considering taking a break from church. Our Bishop ignores me, won't give me a calling or even let me speak or pray. And after he asked me to serve as Sunday school president, he never asked the ward to sustain me in sacrament and called someone else. And yet, in our previous ward, I had my temple recommend, but he won't even meet with me for an interview to renew my temple recommend. He's lied to me and ignored me, and I can't take it anymore. I really feel useless and unwanted. I am out to most of the ward members, and they are mostly accepting. Anyway, I was resolute that I would stay home today, but the deaf sister in our ward accepted my Facebook friend request yesterday and messaged me that she'd see me at church. So I went. And that sister beautifully bore her testimony today. Then the last testimony was from a former bishop of our ward, now a stake presidency counselor, from Samoa. I could really feel his love and Christ's love through him. Then his father-in-law, also a former bishop of the ward, gave the closing prayer, and it felt that he was praying solely for me.
I usually drag myself to priesthood, but today I just sat in the foyer. About halfway through the third hour, a sister from primary brought me our oldest, autistic son. So I kept him with me for a little bit. I heard the primary singing and decided to take him back in and just enjoy the presence of spiritual giants in small bodies beautifully singing. We have another deaf member in our ward, and he missed the primary program from a couple weeks ago (we missed it too since we were gallivanting about all around the country) so they were performing it for him. For every single song, they had one of the older kids signing it for him. That alone broke open the tear ducts. Their last song was one that they all helped write, and the wonderful primary chorister put it to music. It was about feeling the Spirit and loving each other. Truly beautiful. There was no holding back the tears after that! After they finished and had prayer, I thanked the chorister and told her it was beautiful. Then she told me about the song that they wrote, that Gavin (our middle child) had contributed one of the chorus' main lines, to love each other "no matter what". Yeah, a flood of tears upon hearing that...
Throughout my journey and from my many supplications, the Spirit has told me that I was given this male body for the sole purpose of bringing our three boys into this world. For some reason, they needed my DNA as their father. So today, that was reaffirmed in a way. I need to go to Primary with our oldest to help with him. And anyway, RS and priesthood and Sunday school are boring - primary is where it's at. :P That is my calling, whether or not the bishop extends it and has me sustained. That is where I am needed and am supposed to be. That is where I will stand and where I will lift.
I usually drag myself to priesthood, but today I just sat in the foyer. About halfway through the third hour, a sister from primary brought me our oldest, autistic son. So I kept him with me for a little bit. I heard the primary singing and decided to take him back in and just enjoy the presence of spiritual giants in small bodies beautifully singing. We have another deaf member in our ward, and he missed the primary program from a couple weeks ago (we missed it too since we were gallivanting about all around the country) so they were performing it for him. For every single song, they had one of the older kids signing it for him. That alone broke open the tear ducts. Their last song was one that they all helped write, and the wonderful primary chorister put it to music. It was about feeling the Spirit and loving each other. Truly beautiful. There was no holding back the tears after that! After they finished and had prayer, I thanked the chorister and told her it was beautiful. Then she told me about the song that they wrote, that Gavin (our middle child) had contributed one of the chorus' main lines, to love each other "no matter what". Yeah, a flood of tears upon hearing that...
Throughout my journey and from my many supplications, the Spirit has told me that I was given this male body for the sole purpose of bringing our three boys into this world. For some reason, they needed my DNA as their father. So today, that was reaffirmed in a way. I need to go to Primary with our oldest to help with him. And anyway, RS and priesthood and Sunday school are boring - primary is where it's at. :P That is my calling, whether or not the bishop extends it and has me sustained. That is where I am needed and am supposed to be. That is where I will stand and where I will lift.
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