ACCORDING TO ZAC

It’s Sunday night and I can’t sleep. I’m mad about it. But I should have known this would happen; I took a nap at 3:30 this afternoon. As I’ve lain here, my brain keeps going over a surprising situation I’ve found myself in (that I won’t be chronicling in detail here… yet?). It’s something I’m completely surprised by, something I wasn’t planning, yet something I’ve speculated on for a number of years. It also happens to be something I have prayed about but haven’t really found any answers. For many elements of my life I love to use trial and error and know that the Big Guy is waiting in the wings in case things go sideways. Then He and I work to find a better route. However, this is something I was hoping He’d give me the nod for. All I’ve gotten is radio silence. In replaying the last two weeks and forecasting the one ahead, I somehow had a memory pop up from 2015. It was the last summer I lived in Tucson, and we befriended two guys who had moved into our ward for the season. I though...

For a minute there, I was mad at my therapist. Not for a breach of confidence or any other kind of unprofessional behavior. No, I was mad at him because he’s right, and he has been for the better part of the three years I’ve been working with him. Change is hard, and the process to develop personally can be grueling. But even if I was mad, it’s not lost on me how lucky I am that I’ve got a trained professional to help me through it all. Most remarkable about what I’m realizing isn’t that this guy has been right all along—I knew he had credentials and a wealth of experience at the outset—it’s that he has allowed this process to be mine , even if it probably (certainly) prolonged the outcome. He has let me move at the pace that’s appropriate for me, even though the path through this maze has probably looked pretty clear from his vantage point. While the endpoint, the goal of getting through this maze, was why I started working with him, the fact that he didn’t dictate anything has meant ...

Growing up in a middle class family in suburban Tucson meant that I wasn’t exposed to a lot of different lifestyles growing up. I think that was born out of circumstance more than anything. I appreciate my mission to Kentucky because I was able to see and come to know an incredibly wide variety of people. Across nationalities, cultures, religions, education levels, languages, and economic situations, I’ve got a much healthier appreciation for the many components of identity that exist outside my own. I’m able to be more compassionate as a result; I see the value in what others bring to the world. That doesn’t mean there isn’t much more to learn, though. My exposure to the experience of transgender people has been incredibly minimal; I know so little of what trans folks go through. That’s why I’m grateful for my coworker, Catherine. She’s trans and is always very generous to share her thoughts and lived experiences. And while my association with her isn’t primarily so that I can learn h...

I had a long chat with my friend last week, and she made a remark about turning 25 this year. She seemed a little uneasy about it, and I felt a real kinship with her. I felt the same about that particular birthday (but I got a cool cake that year—I even blogged about it and the accompanying angst of aging). But I feel that uneasiness again now, because I’m turning 30 this summer (have I not told you that I was born in 1990, that this year I get a new first digit, that it’s a milestone year, that my youth has slipped through my hands, that I’m not panicking I don’t know why you’d think that it’s a big deal because obviously it’s not and I don’t bring it up in every conversation that I have why would anyone do that?). But I told my friend how awesome 25 ended up being, and I wasn’t even lying. That year was really amazing. And on the heels of my last blog post , I’m trying to decide that 30 is going to be amazing too. Doubts and fears so often end up being unfounded, so why gi...

0/10, would not recommend a broken ankle to anyone. The cycles of life are at the forefront of my mind tonight. Or rather, my blindness to the cycles of life are what I’m thinking about. The last couple of weeks I haven’t been very happy with where I’ve been spiritually, and it’s been getting pretty frustrating. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that I ought to change and ways that I could be different, but I’m struggling to break out of my rut and actually do a thing— anything —that will move me away from where I am right now. And surprisingly, I hadn’t really talked to anyone at length about it (truly an unusual occurrence). But I finally felt a little tug, and I went and saw my best friend Eric. He didn’t have the answers, but he was kind and empathetic and it was unquestionably time well spent. He and I talked about the phases we go through, some of which are of our own doing; we make poor decisions, we avoid certain things or people, we run away from what’s ha...