Flight Anxiety

Lucy wants me to take her flying. "Wouldn't it be lovely?" she says. "Like Superman and Lois Lane, soaring through the clouds above Metropolis. Except, you know, Provo. And there's no way I'm letting you hold me with just one hand. Because gravity."

I tell her I'm not ready to do that. She says I need to accept the gifts God gave me. I tell her I'd feel better about waiting to act on my power until the church officially changes its position on mutant behavior. She says personal revelation trumps church policy. I tell her I'd get kicked out of BYU. She says BYU doesn't need to know. ("You don't have to announce EVERYthing you do on your blog.")

So, yeah. I'm starting to feel like I'm being irrational, like I'm not being fair to Lucy. I mean, if my power really is a gift from God, shouldn't I be sharing it? But I'm just not ready yet.

Gravity

I went jogging tonight. I often go jogging when the urge to fly is so strong I can hardly breathe. It's a coping mechanism I learned from a therapist I saw for my "unnatural power proclivity" before my mission. Jogging clears my head, expels some of that pent up energy trying to escape, puts my focus somewhere else besides on the desire to act out, and forces me to breathe. Except tonight it was windy. As I ran between the MTC and the temple, scattered raindrops hitting my glasses and wind rushing past my ears, it felt like all I had to do was let go and the wind would carry me away. It took all my concentration to force each step I took to connect with the pavement. It was like gravity was pulling me up and I had to will myself down. Each step could easily have launched me up, up, and away.

Somehow, I managed to stay on solid ground. I jogged for half an hour, then came home and showered. I might even make it through the night without levitating above my bed. No matter how much I tell myself that mutant powers come from God just as much as any other gift, no matter how cynical I allow myself to be about things I've never thought to question before, I can't bring myself to give up and fly. Because that's what it would feel like--giving up. Gravity is pulling me upward and I'm clinging for my life to what I know. Is this the iron rod protecting me from the mists of darkness or is it an iron shackle keeping me from freedom?

Gifts of the Spirit

I snorted. "You think it comes from God, then?"

"How do you know it don't?" I turned to her and I saw she was leaning forward, like she was excited. "Maybe it's one of the gifts of the Spirit, like Paul says in the Bible: to one is given the gift of healing, and to another the gift of miracles, or prophecy, and like that. Who's to say there ain't more that Paul didn't talk about?"

I raised my eyebrow. "'To some is given the gift of turning into a big scary rock monster?'"

"Well it sounds stupid when you say it like that, but why not?" 

 --Dan Wells, "The Mountain of the Lord"

Theric Jepson recommended a while back that I read Dan Wells's story "The Mountain of the Lord" and I finally got around to it this week. It's a great story, found in Jepson and Wm Morris's great anthology Monsters & Mormons. "Mountain" is about a kid who is presumably a mutant, about a hundred years before being a mutant was cool (or even heard of, for that matter). This kid is a Mormon pioneer in an early Utah settlement and has the power to turn into a big stone monster. He starts out hating his power, believing it's of the devil, but over the course of the story he comes to believe that his power just might come from God.

I've spent too much of my life feeling bad for myself because I'm a mutant, and now because Jan left. I love Jan and I miss her, but I can't live my life waiting for her once-a-week phone calls. Deep down, I know that she is doing something amazing--she's devoting her life to helping people, to using the gift God gave her to make the world a better place. Instead of moping around and feeling bad for myself, I should learn from her example. Just as God gave Jan her healing power for a reason, there's a reason why he gave me my power to fly. I just need to figure out what it is.

In the meantime, I'm going to focus on the day-to-day stuff--going to school, doing my home teaching, finding ways to serve the people around me. Maybe even dating. We'll see. For now, I'm going to stick to BYU standards, which means no using my power. I've got less than three months before I graduate, and there's no reason to throw my chance at a college degree down the drain. But after I graduate? I guess I'll see where God wants me to go from there.