The Grey-Grid Painting

A guest post over at Modern Mormon Men came across my Reader today.  The author, Sam Nelson, writes about his mother's hobby as an artist and some of the insights he gleans from the way she sees the world.

In this specific post, entitled "The Grey-Grid Painting," Sam describes a large canvas, divided into small squares arranged in a checkerboard.  Each of the squares is filled with differing shades of grey and black, with just a few of the hundreds filled with brilliant colors.

His mother interpreted the painting to represent the life of a mother, filled with cooking, cleaning, driving, and generally thankless work.  (I'd add the half-dozen or so "talent" shows my parents sat through as well).  These are all squares of grey: days that mothers merely muddle through. However, there are days of brilliant color when parents get to partake in their kids' accomplishments and success.  Like in real life, the numerous grey squares on the painting fade in the background when they have to compete for attention with the relatively few colored squares.

Sam agreed with his mother's interpretation, but also gave it a new spin when he served a mission.  Many of his days were filled with walking, thankless service, and a hundred doors knocked with no measurable success.  And then baptisms would happen, families would enter the temple, and lives would change.  Suddenly, those grey days become mere white noise competing in vain against a symphony of good experiences.

I think that being gay feels the same sometimes.  There are vacuous grey days, there are terrifying black days, and there are days that are full of color.  There are days when I'm blessed with good friends, days when I'm blessed with a fabulous car to drive around in, days when my mom listens with a sympathetic ear and saves the advice for another day, and so on.  There are even days when being gay is fun, especially when the hot guy in the ward pulls up to church on his motorcycle (As my straight brother once said, if you don't look once, you're not a man. If you look more than once, you're not a missionary).  And there are days when we, as wannabe-faithful LDS gays, stand together and support each other in the face of the conflict that rages within us.

Those days of color are what make life worthwhile.  Amid all the relationship drama, the regret that follows sin, and the loneliness and pain of the trial, there are brilliant days of blue, green, red, purple, ochre, peach, amber, teal, copper, gold, silver, robins-egg, slate, aubergine, sangria, fandango, iris, turquoise, seafoam, and jade.  Grey just can't compete.