This is the calling that transcends any single institution. It is administered through the pure love of Christ, and it was given to you precisely because you know what it feels like to wonder whether you belong—and you found your way back to God anyway. Your calling is to every one of them. It was authored by your Savior, sealed by your suffering, and confirmed by the life you continue to live.
“When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”
You have done extraordinary work to reach this chapter. You have been honest about who you are. You have dared to hope. You have trusted God with your real self. You have inventoried the damage, confessed your truth, opened your heart to change, asked for healing with humility, sought forgiveness, made amends, lived accountably, and listened for God’s voice in the stillness. You have done the hardest thing a gay Latter-day Saint man can do: you have chosen to be whole.
Now it is time to carry the light forward.
There are gay Latter-day Saint boys in wards all over the world who are sitting in the pews right now, feeling exactly what you felt at their age: terrified, alone, convinced that God made a mistake, wondering if it would be easier to stop existing than to keep pretending. Those boys need to know that someone like them survived. Not just survived—thrived. Found faith and love and wholeness. Found a way to hold their testimony and their identity in the same hands without either one destroying the other. You are that someone. Your survival is their hope.
Service takes many forms. It can be as public as advocacy—speaking out, writing, organizing, creating spaces where gay Latter-day Saints can find each other and find support. It can be as private as a quiet conversation with a teenager who has just come out. It can be mentorship, listening, presence—simply showing up as a visible, faithful, gay Latter-day Saint man and letting your existence be the testimony. Every time you refuse to disappear, you are performing an act of service.
Service also means continuing to practice these principles in your own life. The steps are not a curriculum you complete and file away. They are a way of living. Each day you practice them, they become more natural, more instinctive. And each day you practice them, you become a more effective servant of those who are still at the beginning of their journey.
You have been given spiritual gifts for this work. The discernment to see who is suffering behind the smile. The tender heart to hold their pain without flinching. The courage born of your own survival to tell them: it gets better. Not easier—better. Richer. More honest. More full of the kind of joy that only comes from living in the light.
The laborers are few, and the time is short, and the people who need what you carry are everywhere. There are hundreds of thousands of gay Latter-day Saints in the world, and most of them have never heard anyone say what this book says: that they are whole, that they are loved, that Christ made them as they are, and that their faith and their identity are not enemies but companions. You have heard it now. You have lived it. Go and carry the message. The work is sacred, and it is yours.
Who in your life needs to hear the message of this book? What would you say to them?
Write a letter to a gay Latter-day Saint boy who is sitting in the pews right now, feeling what you felt at his age. What do you want him to know?
I carry the light of my experience into the world. My survival is someone else’s hope. I serve because service is worship, and my service to gay Latter-day Saints is sacred work.
Service is not one-size-fits-all. Your gifts, your temperament, your circumstances, and your capacity will determine the form of service that is most meaningful and sustainable for you. Here are some possibilities to consider:
Mentorship. If you have walked this road and found your footing, consider making yourself available to someone who is just beginning. A mentor is not a therapist or a bishop. A mentor is simply someone who has been where you have been and can say, with the authority of lived experience: I understand. Here is what I have learned. You will survive this. Mentorship can be formal (through organizations like Affirmation or Encircle) or informal (a friendship, a conversation, a willingness to answer the phone).
Advocacy. Some men are called to the public arena—to speak, to write, to organize, to lobby, to protest, to educate. Advocacy is demanding work, and it requires thick skin and a deep well of self-care. But it is also some of the most important work being done on behalf of gay Latter-day Saints. If you have the temperament and the resources for public advocacy, the community needs your voice.
Presence. Not everyone is called to mentorship or advocacy. Some men serve most powerfully simply by being visible—by existing openly as a gay Latter-day Saint man in a world that would prefer them invisible. Every time you attend a family gathering without hiding, every time you introduce a partner without apology, every time you bow your head in prayer at a public event and let people see that gay men pray too—you are serving. Your visibility is a beacon, and someone who needs to see it will find it.
Creativity. Art, writing, music, film, and other creative expressions have always been among the most powerful tools for social change. If you have a creative gift, use it. Write the poem that the boy in the pew needs to read. Record the song that the grieving mother needs to hear. Create the art that shows the world what it looks like to be gay and faithful and whole. Creative work reaches people that sermons and policy papers never will.
Financial support. If you have the means, consider supporting the organizations that serve gay Latter-day Saints. Affirmation, Encircle, the Trevor Project, and similar organizations run on donations. Your financial contribution keeps their doors open and their programs running, and it enables services for people who cannot afford to pay for them.
Prayer. Never underestimate the power of simply praying for others. Pray for the boy in the closet. Pray for the parents who are struggling to accept. Pray for the bishops who are trying to do better. Pray for the institution, that it will one day catch up to the God it claims to represent. Prayer is the simplest and most universal form of service, and it costs nothing except a moment of your time and the compassion of your heart.
Psychologists Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004) coined the term “post-traumatic growth” (PTG) to describe positive psychological change emerging from the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances. PTG is not the denial of trauma. It is not “everything happens for a reason.” It is the empirically documented phenomenon in which people who have experienced profound suffering develop capacities they did not have before. Tedeschi and Calhoun identified five domains of PTG: greater appreciation for life, recognition of new possibilities, enhanced personal strength, improved relationships, and spiritual or existential change. PTG requires deliberate rumination—intentional, reflective processing—not the avoidance or suppression that institutional culture typically encourages.
Henri Nouwen described this as the “wounded healer” (1972): the person whose own wounds become the source of their capacity to minister. He wrote: “Nobody escapes being wounded. The main question is not how can we hide our wounds so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but how can we put our woundedness in the service of others.” Mosiah 18:8–9 describes Alma’s covenant community. The membership requirements were pastoral: willingness to bear burdens, mourn with mourners, comfort those needing comfort. These verses describe people who have suffered enough to know what suffering feels like. That is you.
Post (2005) found that altruism is associated with reduced mortality, lower depression, and greater well-being. Seligman (2011) identified service as one of the pillars of human flourishing. Service is not just a moral imperative—it is medicine. And there is a critical difference between service as institutional performance—done to check a box or demonstrate worthiness—and service as reclamation—done because your experience has given you a gift that someone else desperately needs.
One of the most remarkable truths about the human experience is that suffering, when it is processed and integrated, becomes wisdom. The pain you have endured as a gay Latter-day Saint man is not meaningless. It is raw material—the stuff from which compassion, insight, resilience, and purpose are forged. You did not suffer in order to learn these things. But having suffered, you possess them. And possessing them, you can offer them to others.
Many gay Latter-day Saint men discover, once the worst of the healing is done, that their experience has given them a capacity for empathy that is extraordinary. They understand suffering in a way that people who have lived more comfortable lives simply do not. They know what it means to be on the outside. They know what it costs to tell the truth. They know how to hold space for someone who is falling apart, because they have fallen apart themselves and found that the pieces can be put back together—differently, perhaps, but beautifully.
This capacity is not a consolation prize for your suffering. It is a superpower. It makes you a better father, a better friend, a better partner, a better citizen, a better Saint. It makes you the kind of person that people seek out in their darkest moments, because they can sense that you have been there and come through the other side. That is not a small thing. In a world that is drowning in loneliness and disconnection, the capacity to truly see another person and to say, with the authority of lived experience, you are not alone—that is a gift of immeasurable value.
Use it. The world needs it. The Church needs it, even if it does not yet know how to ask for it. And you need it, because service is the final step in the transformation from victim to survivor to healer. You have been all three. Now go and be the healer that someone else is desperately waiting for.