#ImAmormon

So today on campus I saw a man wearing a shirt that said, "I can't, I'm mormon." (at a school mostly comprised of mormons)

That shirt is just so incredibly wrong. There is nothing, aside from a good conscience, keeping us mormons from doing anything. It'd be the same as wearing a shirt that says, "I can't jump off a cliff, my mom won't let me."

Being a mormon doesn't mean I can't do things, it means I choose not to do things I have been informed are bad for me. It's not that I can't drink alcohol or some mysterious power will shame me and burn me, I know alcohol is poison and so I choose not to drink it. It isn't that I can't have fun on sunday; it's that I know there is a God in heaven who is my father, which means that I have a spiritual side of me that needs attention in order to live healthy and happy so I choose to devote one day a week (~15% of my week) to my spiritual needs. I don't have sex before marriage not because I'm a prude, but because I know that that level of initimacy is meant to be between two people who will never leave each other, who will stay and support each other, and who have already promised their commitment to one another through a ceremony (kind've exactly like marriage) and so I choose to wait and use it properly. It isn't that, as a mormon, I can't do stupid things, I just choose not to do stupid things.

And it really frustrates me that people seem to really focus on what mormons don't do, what about all the things we excel at? Being a mormon means you are part of the most caring community, and the best support system ever invented. We pride ourselves on the large amounts of service we do, we have a special committe dedicated to it actually like seven, one for the teenage women, teenage men, children, and two for the adult women and adult men. People check up on me randomly, just to see how I'm doing and if there is anything they can do to make life better. We have a stereotype for caseroles, because whenever anything happens to anyone we bake them a caserole (childbirth, hospital trips, sniffles- we got you covered). No matter what happens in my life, somebody has my back and I've got anyone else's back. It really is a fantastic way of living.

Stop focusing on what I don't do, I have chosen not to do those things. Focus on the things I do do, and take advantage of it- I got your back and I would love to help you out.

~Birdy