The silence that followed was as astonishing as our inability to answer such a question. After all the He had given us in the past days… He had healed our crippled family members, ordained us with power, and given us the answers we had so desperately searched for. Even more resounding to me, and I’m certain all of us, He gave me peace. Peace that I could rightly hope for a heaven where I belonged, where we all belonged. A gift of a return home… and yet, here He was, astounding us again with another one of His questions that somehow consumed my every part. He asked us one by one, and each one of the Twelve began to answer in beautifully individual, yet similar ways. Nine times the same choice was made until the lot fell to me. The truth in my heart suggested a different desire and I was afraid. His eyes locked on mine, and I was greeted by eternity, with a smile.
“What do you want?”
“Hey, are you guys hiring right now?” I asked, via phone, pacing in my front room. “Can you work 70 hours a week?” He replied, shouting over loud machinery. I paused, thought of a witty retort to his joke and scoffed, “Sure, why not?” “Come in on Thursday for an interview, before 2.” Then he hung up. My ‘interview’ consisted of a handshake, some snide comments on the length of my hair and maybe a question on my work ethic. “Wear a hat.” Was the acknowledgement that I had gotten the job.
I worked 70 hours a week as a butcher that fall, winter, and spring. We killed cows, sheep, and pigs from all over the state. We hung them to cure for up to two weeks and butchered them as ordered. Custom slaughter is what they call it. We processed wild game too, those were always the longest days. When we’d cut through 40-50 deer, elk, mountain goat, wild boar, etc in a day. Killing and cleaning happened at the end of each day, sometimes during a nighttime snow storm. Blood usually splattered across my jeans, boots, and white shirt. I drove home exhausted, and satisfied every day.
The seed that got me to the butcher shop was planted sometime during my senior year at Brigham Young University. Months before graduating with a double major in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. It was a seed of doubt, of not belonging. I knew that I was surrounded by intellectual and social contemporaries, but there was almost a complacency in the university. I felt like the charge to go and change the world was unreachable in a world of academia. I felt like the wheels were spinning, but without traction. I longed for good honest labor. I wanted to be physically exerted after work. I wanted to shake hands with the people I was helping. I wanted to feel and see my efforts. So I followed that seed and after graduating, made my way to the butcher shop. The seed usually manifests itself as a question, “What do I want?”. Over the next year that questioning seed sprouted consistently, and guided my life’s growth, weaving doubt and faith, conversion and apostasy, love and hate.
After six months of dating my girlfriend I decided to break up with her. The question seed had gotten hold of yet another aspect of my life. I didn’t want anything to do with relationships or marriage. It seemed like everyone I knew was either getting divorced or enduring a marriage that didn’t seem worth it to me. So with some cynicism and resentment I decided that I was tired of pretending that marriage was something I really wanted.
My prayers revealed a pattern. I did my best to look God in the face and say, “God, I know I should want this, but I don’t. I have other desires, I’m going to do all I can to follow them. If they are wrong, please help them change.” On paper, none of my desires were as important or grandiose as marriage. I went to Puerto Rico for two weeks to learn how to surf, and I surfed every day. I rafted the Grand Canyon for 10 days straight. I sang and danced every single day. Read books, wrote poetry, played music. I quit my job. I grew my hair long.
The forest behind our village had always been a place of comfort. As a small boy my dad and I would often hunt together. Usually it was an excuse for us to talk. Seemed like the forests eased us into conversations about God, more than I could talk about Him anywhere else. That day I went to the forest alone, angry with God. I had been bottling it in for months, but again, the forest found its way to ease it out of me. And so we wrestled. I was surprised that He let me speak my heart. I had always censored my thoughts when praying, but that day I let all my desires out. What surprised me more was that He answered, more powerfully than I’d ever experienced before. I heard His voice and He told me He loved me. And I believed Him. Then He asked me questions. The same question actually, but three times. “What do you want?” Each time I answered He smiled, “Your dad said the same thing.” I left the forest that day forever changed. I knew I was my father’s son.
I knew I was His son.
The question seed led me to unemployment. Everywhere I went I saw people running frantically trying to get a career, build their resume, save money, get married, etc like they were obsessed with progress. It all felt hollow. Church felt hollow. I’d look around each Sunday and ask, “What do I want?” The question took me on a quest. I realized that if I wanted to believe that my worth was infinite and unchangeable in God’s eyes, then I would have to find it in my worst moments. If I was worth anything to God, I had to be able to find it at my lowest point. So I quit my job and challenged my testimony. I spent most of my time alone on the front porch, asking questions, things I had been afraid to ask for years. I stood on the edge of my apostasy and looked down.
And so I ran into the darkness. It was real silence. It was real loneliness. And I knew it, the same loneliness that I’d felt since my earliest memories. Panic attacks where existence felt inconceivable, I was an impossible speck in the infinite universe. Five years old waking up in the middle of the night, at school with hundreds of kids, in the car with my family. Gasping for breath and reaching out to touch someone, to help me come back from the darkness. For the first time I let it engulf me. The silence was familiar. I slowly began to recognize that the familiarity wasn’t because I was alone, it was because with no one and no thing around me I could finally be with Him.. Each pang of loneliness was an attempt for me to realize that I have always felt separated from the people around me, but I’ve never been separated from Him.
Of all the doubting questions that I explored on that adventure, there was one that I feel like sharing. I asked God, “Will I ever be tempted to kill myself?” and we talked and explored. I went to the darkest places I could, wanting to know if I needed to be prepared for such a temptation. I felt all the self hate, frustration, and anxiety I could and tried to go deeper. I didn’t want to be blindsided by a moment of weakness by suicide. I had been afraid of it my whole life. I had thought it before.
What I learned was miraculous to me. There is no darkness or apostasy I could ever go to where I can escape my knowledge that there is a life after this one and that I am the same person there as I am here. I also know that there is a God and He knows me. I found a testimony that had been rooted in my soul my whole life. An inescapable knowledge, unique to my identity. And the fear of suicide trickled away. It was a simple answer, I know that if I did kill myself nothing would change. I could never run from myself, and so I learned to love myself.
I found the love of God in inaction. Laying in the grass I fell in love with the silhouettes of the great tree in my front yard. My toes stretched through the blades of grass that sent a cool tickle down my spine. Ants would often wander around my legs and arms, and I let them. I saw tree bark and moss that grew all over my neighborhood. I cried, because I fell in love with these small and simple things and I knew that God took such great care of this earth because He knew that I could love so much of it. I breathed deep every breath and let my hair grow long. It was the first time I had ever looked in a mirror and saw myself look back. It was the first time I looked in a mirror and saw something of Him look back.
I might conclude by talking about my hair. My hair that I kept groomed whenever told to do so by ward members as a child, missionary regulations, and then finally BYU grooming standards. Twenty-five years I did what I was supposed to and not what I wanted. I grew my hair out and grew into myself at the same time. I gained a testimony of it. Now, I know that it’s only hair and in the long run is meaningless. To that same point I happily state that everything is meaningless. We walk around every day of our lives surrounded by utterly meaningless things and pursuits. The wonderful thing is the potential bestowed in these things without meaning. Here we are, agents walking around imbuing our meaning and power into the meaningless and purposeless. Using our priesthood power to breathe life into an otherwise fallen world. So when I account to God at the last day here is what I’ll say about my hair.
I had to know if I was good. If my natural spirit and self was of worth. So I let myself grow long. I trusted that if I was good, my desires could be trusted. Even if those desires weren’t exactly what I saw everyone else do. And I fell in love. With who I am and have always been. With every hair, a living soul, with its own unique will, story, and life. They are all active individuals that create a collective fractal of oneness. The wildness I was stifling my whole life, that I felt bad for feeling. That was from me, and from You. And I need every one of those hairs. I need the dark ones, the blonde ones, the coarse, the fine, the unruly, the broken ones that still fall in my eyes, and the greying ones. I learned that my heart is and will always be part of a whole. My wildness belongs here.
I realized a few years ago through my scripture study that when an individual reaches a certain level of righteousness God always asks them the same question. Now I have learned that God is always asking us that question. He trusts us to follow our desires, and if we do we’ll learn something beautiful. We are His. Our desires become the same as His when we follow our hearts and trust our own desires. So, now I leave you with that same question.
What do you want?
