just got back from seminary graduation. we rushed back from bakersfield, cutting short our family’s involvement in a little family reunion, and making good time over the grapevine and through los angeles traffic.

for the past year jana’s made great sacrifices, getting up before five in the morning each weekday, and this after staying up late preparing lessons in the previous evenings, driving around to the other side of the newport backbay to teach 13- and 14-year-olds the history and doctrine of the lds church.

tonight the seminary students from the entire newport beach stake who were graduating were honored, and among these we saw children who we babysat or taught in junior sunday school when we were dating. some of them now towered over parents and church leaders. i remember them, years ago, breaking from their parents’ arms and sprinting for the rostrum; now, as their names were called, they sauntered up to the podium with teenage non-chalance. we spoke for awhile with the parents and reminisced about their children and their parents remembered us. as i entered in to my office to wrap up programming for a deadline tomorrow morning, i turned on the light and saw my office and my person reflected in the windows, near-perfect mirrors against the night sky, with only the points pale-orange streetlamps and occasional pair of taillights penetrating the image. i see myself as our old friends must have seen me: uncombed mop of hair, bags under my eyes, trendy green and brown plaid shirt on top of tan jeans. when i shook hands with my former stake president, he called me by my former missionary title: elder remy. i think about how i would have appeared to him, and to others back then: an energetic young man with short, neatly-combed hair, perhaps a charcoal gray suit and a white shirt and tie–the very image of vibrant, forthright, straight-arrow mormonism.

i wonder if members (esp. from those who knew us in the years after i converted to the church, or members of jana’s family) look at jana and i together now and see me as a spiritual deadbeat. i no longer make those proper testimony (that’s ‘witnessing’ to most of you christians out there) payments. i neglect my family from the gospel perspective. perhaps i popped right into their minds when they heard in the most recent general conference elder holland speak of those parents who “pitch their tents on the periphery of faith” and who endanger the eternal lives of their children. maybe they shake their head and lament that jana’s in such an awful situation right now.

and perhaps no one grieves for her loss more than i. i wish that i could provide her with a husband who has a powerful conviction of the truthfulness of mormonism, who can answer all of those belief-related questions that would get him into the sacred precincts of the temple–where they were married, who fervently fulfills all of his priesthood duties and who is elder’s quorum president or bishopric material. and i’ve tried faking all of this, doing it all on the surface, sans belief. but she was still not getting the real thing, only a cheap imitation, a hollow shell.

it is hard to be one at odds with my chosen faith and society. it is lonely. i am not all alone, however. jana, better than anyone, understands my struggles. she allows me to be true to myself, and though what she gets may not be what she would like to have in an ideal world, what she does get is authentic, 100% pure john dewey remy, through and through. i think that she’s all right with that, for the time being.

it’s funny, but i find that in my unbelief, i can relate to joseph smith (and to the apostle paul):

however, it was nevertheless a fact that i had beheld a vision. i have thought since, that i felt much like paul, when he made his defense before king agrippa, and related the account of the vision he had when he saw a light, and heard a voice; but still there were but few who believed him; some said he was dishonest, others said he was mad; and he was ridiculed and reviled. but all this did not destroy the reality of his vision. he had seen a vision, he knew he had, and all the persecution under heaven could not make it otherwise; and though they should persecute him unto death, yet he knew, and would know to his latest breath, that he had both seen a light and heard a voice speaking unto him, and all the world could not make him think or believe otherwise.
- from the pearl of great price, joseph smith history, chapter one verse twenty-four

i haven’t seen a vision, but i have my own convictions, and i hold to them, even if there are those within the church who would ridicule and revile me. and if he or she is up there, i can’t see how a understanding and just god would hold that against me in the long run. heaven will be a sad place indeed if many who held to their honest principles ended up getting sent down below (figuratively or literally).

ultimately, i can choose to keep my own company by being true to myself, or i can sacrifice myself and gain the embrace and accolades of shallow society. try as i might, i can’t keep in step with the rest of the world–my feet are continually distracted by my own inner cadence. and i’m all right with that::