 I swear I had a paintbrush and some more paint. This is kind of why I like the go-gam thing, but yeah. My idea was kind of like in pointillism they sort of used brush strokes, right? Like thick brush strokes. So I thought in this case I'll just use tile strokes. I'm really fascinated by... My name is Laurie Campbell and I now live in Oceanside, California with my husband and son. You see, all I can get are sheep and rock. I am a copywriter for advertising. I just go take my chair and sit with my laptop at the beach and I have like an excellent ocean view. So that's my office. Much to the chagrin of my medical family, after four years of microbiology I switched to art, went out to California and went four more years to the art center. Honestly it was kind of soothing to tell you the truth. You know, the mental health was really tough. And those tile projects that I just decided to kind of take on literally helped save my sanity. When I was in high school I had a lot of depression and anxiety so I just got into drugs and alcohol. And I had my first real strong crush and it was for a coach, a woman. And you know, it was never reciprocated. And I figured I'd never act on it because you know, I'm Mormon. I knew God was going to help me and so I'd pray for him to help me. And I wouldn't get anything. I'd pray for one thing and something else would happen. Or I can't go one more day and I'd have to go one more day. By the time I got to college I was just tired of feeling guilty. I started dating women and you know, that felt good. I ended up with a woman who I fell in love with and I felt like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. And it felt right. But there were still times where I had this feeling that God did not want me in that life. You know, I had a gun to my mouth more than once. Because the conflict of being so in love and having such intense feelings for a person and then feeling like you need to break up, like God doesn't want you. That split is so hard. It's like the two things that matter the most in life and they appear to be this dichotomy that's so hard to face. It was just, I didn't want to live. Getting sober was so much work and it was so hard and there was so much time spent failing at it. I went to AA for a while, that whole idea of putting God first and turning it over to God helped me. And I decided I want to start going to our church again because this is what I believe. There was just this literal like flicker of light. Like Christ was holding up a candle, like a tiny candle too, right? It was just this hint of you can do it. It's not going to be pretty, but you can do it. And he's right. It wasn't pretty. I still was just totally in love with her and wanted that life and I said two things I believe in. I believe in our relationship and I believe that God doesn't want me in this relationship. And I said and I'm just, I'm going to go with God on this. And it took a lot of faith for me to start dating men and that was the problem. I would date men and I was like, oh my gosh, I am lesbian. That was such a bad experience. Help. I feel like sexual orientation is a way of kind of categorizing people and it's important for many and for me it was a hindrance. So I didn't want what I felt like was a label. What did not help, even back then, were the people that would say, you know what, well the church is just going to change and they're just going to accept same-sex relationships. And that was crippling for me because it's like, well okay, if that's the truth then I should just stay with Tracy. What strength do I have to move forward? What helped the most for me was a bishop who was understanding and he said, I've never dealt with this but you know, let's figure out how to do this. For three years, for three years he met with me. Friends, the church were important. Praying, reading scriptures. I was finishing up the manuscript all about my life and a friend of ours had just started coming back to church. We just like did stuff for fun and he, you know, he didn't try to be physical and I didn't really give any cues for it either so that went perfectly. Aside from being in love with Tracy, I've always enjoyed being alone. So I assumed I'd be celibate. Then one day he said, I'm hoping this can go further and so I panic. I go over and I have this 150 page manuscript of my life and I said, you know what, I think you need to know a little bit more about me. Why don't you take it and read it? My friends tease me the whole weekend because they're like, okay, you gave him the book so he would leave, huh? And I said, I'm not sure. So I plopped this 150 pages in his lap and I said, if you still want a relationship after you read this, I said come to dinner Sunday night and meet me here at six o'clock and if you don't show, I totally understand. I said, you don't even have to call if you don't want, it's fine. He showed up at six o'clock with tears in his eyes. He was crying and he said, I am so sorry you had to go through this. And he said, that was horrible. He said, I wish I could have been there with you when you were young. I wish you had somebody to talk to. And it just melted, I just melted. He just held me and he just put his arms around me and cried and I just cried. It was like of all the reactions he could have had to that book that talked about, you know, drinking and drugs and relationships with women. You know, all the reactions he could have. We held each other and it was that sense of oneness that I had never felt with another person, not a woman, not a man. And it was like nothing else I'd ever felt. He said, and if you'd still consider a relationship with me, I'd consider an honor. And it was really, it was a miracle. To think that, oh marriage and family, I've come to the end of all my problems. I feel so silly for thinking that, you know, that anxiety, depression, whole, whenever anything went wrong with the kids. That's occurred because of being married and having kids. Some people who say to me, well really you're just a lesbian and you're married to a man and you're not living true to yourself. And I understand where that's coming from because I have felt that way before. But now what I thought was truth before, for me, was not the whole truth. I'd have to accept it's gonna be challenging no matter what and just trust where the Lord's gonna take us.