Still a Christian…

I have been having this conversation with a fellow queer Lee alumn. Our stories aren’t all that different in terms of our personal struggle with understanding who we are and feeling different from our peers. She grew up in the church, I grew up in the church. She was a student leader and so was I. We both tried to model compassion and understanding to the students we served. We both felt inadequate in our service to God. Both couldn’t attain perfection. Both struggled and fought against our faith of origin, coming to a crossroads.

But our paths diverge at a very crucial point- she isn’t a Christian anymore and I am still an absolute sucker for the Gospel.

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My most vivid memories of childhood center around a church sanctuary with blue carpet and orange pews. A wooden pulpit. The bulky Texan transplanted to our mid-western town to serve as a pastor. A message of repentance, calling for admissions of guilt, surrendering to the guy in the sky who startled easily at the purview of our total human depravity. Sometimes a nice guy who one time reluctantly permitted us to slaughter his porcelain skinned, silky bearded son and then told us to never say he didn’t do anything nice for us. Old Testament schmold schmestament. A new law with some old law undertones. Yes, love you neighbor. But also don’t be a faggot. Or a Baptist.

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I was raised in the church- a  woman empowered within a specified radius of male authority. Scripturally rebuked into a closet I built in between the bones of my rib cage and underneath the beds of my fingernails.

But my faith was planted into the marrow of my bones, sewn up into every muscular fiber, and coded into the circulation of my blood stream. Open me up and my heart pumps to the rhythm of “Come Thou Fount,” my lungs expand and contract in time with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

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I almost walked away completely once. Once every day for three years. A desert season. A sputtering disconnection. An act of surrendering myself over to the doubts, giving precedence to the anger and frustration.

Southern drawls oozing convictions I couldn’t bring myself to accept. Standing in a crowd of people lifting their hands and singing words about grace that they didn’t care to even whisper when the music had faded and it was them and their opinions to be heard.

I was a lost cause. A sordid soul. A discarded thing.

A crumpled, greasy laundry list of depravity, abandonment, baseness, contamination, criminality, debasement, debauchery, degeneracy, degradation, depravation, evil, iniquity, lewdness, licentiousness, perversion, profligacy, sinfulness, vice, viciousness, vitiation, wickedness, etc.

And when you have such a low opinion of yourself, how can you begin to grasp something composed of infinite goodness? How can you close your eyes and ask to talk to Love?

And why should I want to? I was always a misrepresentation of the Gospel away from losing my mind. Why should I want to join the ranks of those who named my “sin” as greatest of all? My kind of love didn’t mix with their pristine chapels and the husband God was waiting for me to get pure enough for before he was placed into a headship over my life.

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I remember our conversations being one-sided for a very long time. I was a mumble and nod kind of gal and she was an eloquent, thought-provoking force. Unafraid of the silence, she sat with one leg tucked under the other and a head tilted in a way that I imagine they teach in therapy classes. Lower the chin just enough, gaze softly, fold and unfold your hands slowly, etc. It wasn’t the rehearsed thing I am making it out to be. It was genuine and loving and exactly what I needed to be brought back to myself.

When I started that therapeutic journey to accepting my sexuality, I also began a process of rediscovering my faith. It was no longer the hostile entity from which I needed to protect my vulnerable spots or otherwise submit to with sacked cloth and ashy cheeks. That laundry list of depraved adjectives no longer applied when I thought of a Savior slaughtered in the name of ripping up such lists and renaming/reclaiming me for a good and perfect will.

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Even in talking with my friend who no longer identifies as Christian, I have a difficult time fully articulating why I abide in my faith. It is difficult to name something that feels like a second skin.

All that I can tell her is that there are these moments when it swells up inside of me and I am overwhelmed by something wholly other. That I stay amazed even after 28 years of ups and downs. That when I strip away everything that has gone wrong with the Church and I am just contemplating the Gospel, I can’t imagine not wanting to be a part of that story. And for me that is enough to keep engaging/struggling/dialoguing.

That I may identify as many things, but none of them will ever hold the weight of identifying as follower of Christ.

And that suits a queer gal like myself.

Benediction

I can’t get myself to commit to publishing a post. Writer’s block is no match for draft insecurity.

But this month is the big month- the month the Supreme Court let’s us know their decision regarding DOMA and Prop 8. Landmark cases.

I’m anxious. I feel vulernable. Like so many other lgbt folks and straight allies.

I am praying…

Grace and peace be multiplied.

Hope abounding.

Love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit guide us.

Sacrificial Lamb, pleasing you with word and deed.

Give us opened hearts and purified minds.

Guard our tongues, reveal to us the power of our words.

Illuminate Your good and perfect will.

For thine is the Kingdom-here-and-now, the merciful power, and ever-present glory forever.

Amen.

Articles/Blogs I Have Enjoyed This Week

I have lots of things to say, but I’m trying to figure out how to say them. In the mean time, here are some blogs/articles I have enjoyed reading this week:

A Letter to LGBT Student Groups (and Allies) at Christian Colleges by Rachel Held Evans Blog

You are Not Alone: On Being A Queer Survivor from Autostraddle

Shame-Based Sex Education: We Can Do Better from Rage Against the Minivan

Queering the Table Series Part 4: God Plays Fierce from Didwell (I highly recommend the entire series)

Four Ways Christians are Getting the Gay Debate Wrong from Crumbs from the Communion Table

that’s what SHE said: two open letters about Christians and the LGBT community

A great letter exchange:

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2012/11/thats-what-she-said-two-open-letters.html

Come On Out

Coming Out. The big C-O. 

It’s super fun to sit awkwardly across from someone and tell them that you are “the gay.” My personal approach has included the fine art of stuttering/stammering, avoided eye contact and a general lack of grasp on basic human interaction.

It has been a blasty blast, letmejusttellyou.

Luckily, I have had overall successful responses from my listeners. My favorite response is “oh- I/we totally knew you were the gay.” An overwhelmingly consistent response that made me wonder why everyone knew it but forgot to tell me. At first, I felt like I was the last person in on a cosmic-ly important secret that everyone was whispering to each other on the regular. I have since recovered from that narcissism and realized that my friends have loved me for a long time- long enough to know that I needed space to self-actualize and discover my identity on my own. Even though it feels like the process took longer than necessary sometimes, I am grateful for its slow and intentional unraveling that has kept me much more grounded and self-aware. 

That, and I have a kick ass therapist. And copious, copious amounts of unconditional love. 

So- back to the actual “telling” process. For me, as a person of faith in a portion of the country known for belting people with the Bible, working for an institution with clear and unaffirming guidelines on the topic of same-sex attraction… I was a littler more than nervous about the responses I would receive even from people I had known for multiple years.

Throughout my process, I had become that person who shifts through every word, every context clue trying to figure out where my friends stood on the topic. And I had to be sneaky about it- couldn’t just bring it up casually- had to be subtle and coy. And if you know me, I am not the coyest fish in the pond. But I learned to observe. Body language, verbiage, tones. I was an expert on picking up subtle groans of disgust or the uncomfortable shifts at the mention of “homosexuality.” I began to separate people out- the safe from the unsafe. The people that would reject me from the ones that wouldn’t. 

And once my list was made, I decided to take that next step. Choosing to tell certain people about where I was at in this process of discovering my sexuality. A carefully selected crew of folks that would be subjected to my “dirty little secret.” 

The trickiest part was that everyone was a wild card in my mind. No matter how long I had known someone or how consistent their love had been, I was holding in my hands a beast of a different kind. A more fragile, potentially explosive piece of knowledge that has been known for years to be the source of hatred, rejection, loss, etc. A different kind of grenade where the pull of the pin could either clear away the rubble or pile more cement and ash and dust and whatever damaging debris onto my already burdened heart. 

It’s dramatic because it has to be. Because it’s a risk. Because you just. Don’t. Know. It wont make complete sense to you unless you have felt its weight.

I have already talked about the responses being positive, so I don’t want to dwell on the specifics of each telling other than to say that more often than not, my stammering and red face and beating, POUNDING heart was met with patient silence and then overwhelming love and affirmation. 

I am lucky that I haven’t had a truly damaging response, though I assume those will come by the dozens. But I am grateful that there are ten souls who were more than just guinea pigs in my experiment, but people that set a precedence for how I could move more confidently forward knowing that no matter the crap that lies before me, I can always look back and around me at the ten faces who have loved me well. And, have sometimes made fun of me for being worried about telling them because that’s what good friends do. 

I hope that you have had some good experiences yourself or will allow yourself to be a good experience for your friends. They sure could use it. 

Support

I want to spend time talking about the support element of my process. Man alive am I incredibly, incredibly lucky to have a small core group of friends that have worked through some of the hardest things with me. And so, when it came time for them to love me well in this process of working out my sexuality with fear and trembling- they were there.

Before I go on with my story, I’m going to pause and do a little PSA-ing. If you are reading this and you are in a similar situation with working out your sexuality as a Christian, I already know that feeling heavy amounts of isolation is a big part of your day-to-day existence. This is the most important thing you can do- find people. Find. People. If it’s someone you have known your whole life- great. If it’s someone you find through the internet- fine. (Well, with that one make sure to filter out the creepers). A counselor, a pastor (that can get tricky, I know), a professor, an RA or a relative. You desperately need to have people walking alongside you. Someone to listen and process and challenge and help move you toward the healthiest version of yourself. Find. People.

It took me a very, very long time to be honest about who I was and so it took me a very, very, very long time to be honest with the people in my life. A deep and abiding fear of rejection was suffocating me and I really just didn’t want to be an inconvenience. Everyday I was bombarded with people’s opinions on the topic of homosexuality and most of those opinions were just plain mean. You know- the love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin-but-really-just-make-the-sinner-feel-like-scum-hate-the-sin approach. It’s kiiiinda intense in the way that made me internalize their words and actions for the fuel of all my ever increasing self-loathing. It was overwhelming and I was not doing well.

I would love to tell you that all of this coupled with my large amount of emotional intelligence and penchant for authenticity moved me willingly toward self-disclosure. That I called all of my closest friends together and had an intervention moment where I eloquently laid out everything in a three point, concise manner.

But actually, it looked more like a car trip with one of my best friends where she essentially asked me point blank if I was gay. Nothing ceremonious about it, no candles were lit and exchanged to symbolize the sacred moment. I felt the years of loneliness sitting directly on top of my heart and I paused to consider the implications of my response.

I could (A) Tell her “no, silly! I’m as straight as a very, very straight board. I loooove me some fellas” or (B) Trust her with this part of myself knowing that she had proven herself over and over again to be a constant and never-judging friend.

And so I told her that I was confused. And scared. I listed all the reasons of why I was a bad person and would lose every single person in my life if I went down that road.

And her response was incredible. Even though I didn’t initiate it, it was the best first “coming out” experience I could have possibly had. It was safe and it was so so so affirming of my worth as a human being. She was quick to point out that she loved me without pause and wanted to journey with me during my process. She wanted to know what the next step for me was and helped me to work that out verbally with much tears.

Since that first encounter I have told ten people which is the number of people I trust the absolute most with my inner and outer life. I will go into a little more detail on this later- but, some of those experiences of opening up were not perfect and I struggled. However, there was an overall theme of unconditional positive regard that allowed me to feel overwhelmingly loved and supported. And infinitely less lonely/crazy.

Whenever I am talking with a friend struggling to make a difficult decision, I like to ask them to consider this: As a person created in the image of God, what decision will affirm and honor that image in you? As a creature endowed with all the Divine affection, how can you move forward in acknowledgement and honoring of that core identity? It’s my favorite way to frame the process because it makes them respond in very self-aware and self-affirming ways.

So, for me, the decision to disclose this part of myself to safe people was the most affirming, honoring thing I could possibly have done. I will say this a million times in the future- we are relational beings. We were created to connect. And that connection is not meant to be easy-peasy, but we HAVE to do it to survive. We have to open ourselves up, we have to let people see, we have to walk alongside one another.

Otherwise, life would just really, really suck. (That shit is theological).

Shalom,
J.