The Shepherd

Today hasn't been a good day. I wouldn't be lying if I said that it's probably been the hardest day I've had in months. It seems like all the stress is piling up and ganging up and attacking me at once, and I've been bottling up things that threaten to come to the surface and I don't know if they'd make me feel better or destroy me if I let them out. My boss called me worthless at work last Saturday even though I bust my ass and try to stock as much as I can, and last night he threatened twice to fire me because he said he knows someone is trying to get away with not stocking by saying things are "backstock" (what we call items that are already full on the shelves). I know this isn't true, but the morning people keep saying it's true about me (I don't know why they hate me so much) and you can say all you want "oh, if it's not true, he won't fire you" but Ive been fired before from a job when I was accused even though I didn't do anything wrong. I'm barely scraping by as it is. Losing this job would be devastating for me. Especially when I work so hard to do my job and do it well, and I'm so stressed out about everything else in my life that my job was the only thing that seemed to be going well. I don't need this stress on top of everything else.

So yeah. Bad day. And I'm so tired of trying to have hope in the midst of a sea of people who keep telling me to have hope like it's easy to do, or like it's not something I'm already trying with every fiber of my being, while I get sicker and sicker and still don't have insurance and still have so much debt and still see people losing hope all around me and giving up and dying, and I want to tell them to have hope, but I know how trite that sounds to me and I want to give them something real, so I try my best only to have people mock my words or tell me I'm a drama queen. I'm about to stab the next person who says something like that to me.

See? Now I'm threatening to stab people. I want so badly to be a good person. I want to be the kind of person I expect others to be. It's so much harder than it sounds, and I'm so tired of trying and failing. When the author Renee Alston wrote in her book "Stumbling Toward Faith" about her husband, her description of him touched my heart in so many ways that I read it over and over and over again to remind myself that there is good in the world, even when I can't see it for myself:

there was so much that was shattered and broken in me. i was distrustful and skeptical, and i pushed love away because i was terrified of it. the thought of being hurt kept me from taking risks, and kept my life protected and safe.

my husband came into my life with great gentleness. he never forced his way in. he never insisted that i give him anything that i couldn't give. he simply sat with me and waited with me and loved me.

i learned from him the wonder of being loved. he has stayed with me even when i have begged him to leave. he has respected me even when i have yelled at him and thrown things at him and refused to respect myself. he has held me when there were no words to be said, knowing that to say them would only trivialize my pain.

he walked with me through the process of intense therapy, of nights when i slept in the bathtub or the closet, too terrified to be with another person; too full of memories to be in my own bed. he has watched me sign "no suicide" contracts and visited me in mental hospitals. he has nurtured the small wounded parts of me and always believed i would make it.

i have held on to his hope for me when i have had none for myself. i have held on to his love for me when i have felt unloved and afraid. through him i have learned that there are places in me that love can reach. through him i have been willing to begin to be loved. through him i have learned the worth of letting people in. because of him i began to open up to others again, to be brave.

he has been the beginning of my ability to believe.

That description tugs at my soul. It reminds me of what I'm trying to be for other people, and for myself, a friend...someone who is there for people and tries to give them hope; and I keep trying to remind myself that even if it seems like it doesn't matter, it does matter. So many people gave up on me. I want to be the kind of person who will not give up on someone else. I honestly don't feel strong enough, like I don't have one thousandth of the resolve I need, and the light I try to shine looks so small in the face of the darkness. I try to remember that it's important that I'm shining a light at all, but it's hard to remember that when all I can think about is what a horrible job I'm doing and how messed up my life is (and how bad my grammar is when I keep putting prepositions at the end of my sentences).

Have you guys ever seen Pulp Fiction? There's this part I keep thinking about, where Samuel L. Jackson's character says this:

There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Maybe that's it. I'm the tyranny of evil men, but I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd. It doesn't seem like enough, but it's going to have to be, because it's all I've got right now.

We are All Fags Now

Nifty title, huh? I think I have the evidence to back it up though, so please keep reading. Most of the time I rant about movies in this space (or books, from time to time) and I'm going to talk about a movie later, but first, I wanted to say a word about everyone's favorite pop culture icon, Fred Phelps. 'Who the fuck is that?' you might ask. Well, Fred Phelps is the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, that infamous little slice of fundamentalist frenzy that sends its members to picket at the funerals of famous gay people. Yes, I said “picket.” The church members carry signs that say “God hates fags” and “AIDS cures fags” and other fun things. Now as horrible as it might be to imagine picketing a funeral, a time of mourning, and pouring more grief on top of people that are already grieving, a lot of people (especially people in my small little backwoods community) wouldn't think this has much affect on them. After all, those people are many states away from us, so we don't have to see them, and we all know the bible does say something about gays being evil or something like that, so these crazy church people are only practicing their religion. It's not a big deal.

I'm not just being sarcastic, either. To be honest with you, as much as I wanted to vomit at the thought of someone picketing at a FUNERAL, I didn't think Fred Phelps and his creepy little church had much to do with my life, either. That was before Matt Webber. 'Who the hell is that?' you ask, 'Why the fuck do you keep throwing random names out there? We have no idea what you're talking about.' Well, let me tell you who he was. Matthew Alan Webber was a local soldier who fought in Iraq and died on April 27, 2006. I didn't know him beyond saying “hi” a few times, but in a town as small as this one, whenever local soldiers are overseas fighting, we see their names a lot. Local churches publish their names on bulletin boards and organize prayer chains, and when local soldiers die, everyone hears about it. When Matt died, people would come into work crying, because we all knew someone else who was still overseas fighting, and we all mourned for those who died. As much as it sucks living in a small town sometimes, this is one of the good things. Tragedies can connect us.

Something strange happened around the time Matt died, though. Remember Fred Phelps? Well, his church has decided that since God hates fags so much, that means God hates any country where a lot of fags live, so God hates America too (but...but...that doesn't make sense-hush, you and your logic, just try to follow this train of thought as it derails). So since God hates America (as we've established, because we're all a bunch of “fag enablers”) that means God hates anyone who fights for this country, so God hated the soldiers fighting for the USA, so God killed them, and people mourning the soldiers are mocking God, so they need to be told the “truth” and Fred Phelps and his church need to spread the gospel to those at these funerals. Again, kind of insane, but what does it have to do with us? Well, you guessed it, Fred Phelps showed up at Matt Webber's funeral to picket and protest and hand out “gospel” literature. We got warning about this a week or so in advance, and everyone at work was abuzz with the news, everyone wondering what kind of person would picket a funeral. When they found out that I knew who Fred Phelps was, they asked me about him, and I got to have several variations on the following conversation:

Them: Who is Fred Phelps?

Me: He's a pastor of a church that pickets at the funerals of gay people-

Them: Matt wasn't a faggot!

Me: Yeah, but since Matt Died protecting the U.S., and the U.S. has laws protecting the rights of gay people, Fred Phelps says God hates America, too

Them:..That's stupid.

Me: Yeah.

I have to hand it to people. As full as this city is of small-town rednecks, when Fred Phelps came here, no one took a shot at him. No one even threw a rock at him. The Mecosta County sheriff John Sontag (who knew Matt growing up, since he was Matt's rocket football coach) even said he'd have officers stationed around the high school during the funeral to protect the Westboro Baptist church protesters, saying: “We will protect these people, because that’s what Matt died for. He died so these scumbags can protest.” I personally think that's a laudable attitude, especially since I would have gone apeshit and at least thrown rocks at the protesters if I'd been at the funeral (this is why none of my friends would give me a ride to the funeral; they knew I'd go off on someone). I know, the protesters just want attention, I'd be giving it to them, it would be wrong to assault them, blah blah blah. I would probably have done it anyway. All my logic would have gone out the window the second I saw Matt's mother crying while people were standing across the street holding signs saying that God hates Matt. But no one from my area did that, and I admire their restraint. Score one for the rednecks.

The thing that stood out to me the most about this event was the conversations I got to have with people because of Fred Phelps' visit. Like I said, most people in this area have some idea that the bible says it's a sin to be gay, so on that basis, they can understand some church wanting to go off and preach at people about it, but that stance changes the second you start talking about protesting SOLDIERS. The grand majority of citizens in this area are military families, and we all know someone fighting overseas, so when the issue hits us closer to home, it's harder to be objective. I know people say it's a good idea to always be objective in debates and such, but I don't always agree. I don't think people really understand how hate poisons everyone it touches until they are confronted with it affecting someone they love. The people I talked with were shocked that someone would protest Matt's funeral just because he fought in a war representing a country that had laws protecting the rights of gay people. That's kind of what hate does, though. You start hating something, then you slowly begin to hate everything associated with it, and it spreads. I'm not a fan of arguing for a “slippery slope,” but this sure is the track that hatred seems to take when it infects people. For me, if anything good came out of Fred Phelps' visit at all, it was this: I got to talk to people, and they'd say “I can't believe he's protesting at Matt's funeral, that's so horrible,” and I'd say “He's done this to hundreds of funerals of gay people, too,” and they'd pause for a minute, then they'd say “That's horrible, too.” Yeah, it is. But I'm glad we all could learn something from it. Sometimes, when people are confronted with evil, they shrink away. Sometimes, they take the experience in, and they grow from it. I think the people in my town chose the latter path.

I recently watched the documentary “Fall From Grace,” about Fred Phelps and his church and how it got its start and how its teachings have spread, and it's pretty harrowing to watch. I didn't feel qualified to write a review of the movie, because I'd have a hard time being objective (there's that word again) but I thought I'd at least devote a post to the issue, because it's important to me. Watching the documentary gave me an inside seat to how hate spread throughout Phelps and his family and how it spread through their teachings and how it's grown stronger until it became what it is today; a monster that's so strong it even has his family protesting at the funeral of Heath Ledger, because he's an actor who portrayed a gay character. I guess no one is immune from the wrath of this God, because in Phelps' world, we are all fags now (well, at least we all have something in common, then). That level of hate must be difficult to maintain. I would do well to be sympathetic if not to Phelps himself then at least to the idea that it's not a good idea to hate so strongly that it ruins your entire life. So here's to taking baby steps toward not hating people. Here's to all the people whose funerals have been disgraced by Phelps' presence, and here's to Matt Webber, who even in death had a battle to fight against ignorance, and whose funeral helped a lot of people learn something. Even me.

Coming Out

Someone asked me to post my "coming out" story here, since I keep going on and on about how mine is different. It is. I'm not like most people; I can't say "well I realized that I was attracted to people of the same sex at X age" because for me, things didn't work out like that. Someone asked me to write "What the letters GLBTACQI Mean to You" and this is what came out. I apologize if it's incoherent (and it's going to have more profanity than I typically use in this blog, because it's been the sort of week when I use profanity quite a bit).

Yeah, so when I was younger, I realized that I never fit in and never belonged anywhere, and I blame my mom for a lot of that, because she never let me go to school or get out of the house and socialize and be around other people and learn their language. So anyway, I felt like an outcast, and when I was fast becoming a rabid reader in my pre-teens, I read every book I could possibly find about gay people. I figured I wasn't one of them (since, you know, I didn't want to have sex with women, but then I didn't even know how women HAD sex, and I didn't want to have sex with anyone, even though sex dominated my thoughts as a kid, it was a skewed view of sex as pain and degradation, so even though I felt like it was a part of me, I didn't want any part of it) but anyway, yes, I figured I wasn't gay, but I figured that everyone hated gay people and everyone hated me, too, so we had something in common, so I should read about them. So I did. that's when I discovered Harvey Milk, and how he was the first openly gay person elected to US public office (other gay people had come out and told people they were gay after they'd been elected, but Harvey Milk was elected when everyone knew he was gay, meaning he didn't hide it but he told everyone about it because he was loud and mouthy but most people seemed to like him anyway). I read about him, and I read his speeches, and I became obsessed with him ("yes you did," said Lillian's friends list, "and we're all still paying for that, so many years later") because he talked about hope like it was a real, tangible thing that could keep people going when they had nothing else, and I had nothing else (I wasn't even allowed to leave the house) so long before I discovered Jesus, I discovered Harvey Milk, and I tried to have hope that someday, I would be able to break free from my prison (because that's what my home life was) and live. It took me years, but I managed to do just that, and forgive me a moment of blasphemy, but I'd have done well to hang on more to the message I got from Harvey Milk than most of the messages I got from church, because churches fucked me over and fucked me up royally for years. But anyway, gay people were always important in my life, so it bothered me somewhere deep down knowing that I was supposed to believe that they were going to hell (well, if they had sex and were happy, they were going to hell...if they stayed celibate and beat themselves up over every homosexual thought, they could stand a chance of being righteous one day maybe if God chose to love them more than they deserved or something).

In college I really desperately wanted to go to the gay group on campus, but I was too afraid to go...I went to a few meetings, but I was so messed up that it didn't have much of an effect. The only thing that wore down the stupid walls I had built in my head was years and years of being around gay people (because I stand by this: I always did love them and never thought they should have to change, even when I tried to change myself in later years, even when I beat myself up for my sinful thoughts, even when I hated myself, I never hated them, and I hated myself for not being able to think what they did was sick and wrong like I was supposed to think...how fucked up is THAT?) And after years of being around gay people (and probably convincing every single person in my church that I was gay because I look back on my pictures from back then and I dressed like the biggest fucking dyke I've ever seen...but that was more to cover my body and not ever cause a man to look at me and think about sex, because that was a sin and that would send me to hell...just ask my church...) one day, after I'd walked away from the church and started kind of seeing this guy, I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I'd seen a million times before, when suddenly it hit me that I had a crush on one of the girls in the episode. Just like that. It never occurred to me before, but I think that's because I spent so much time in a screwed-up mindset about sex that I never thought there was anything positive about sex...I thought about it all the time, and I had graphic pictures in my head that nothing could erase, but I knew next to nothing about what sex really was and what it really could be...does that make sense? I saw that I had a guy who found me attractive, and suddenly I stopped thinking I was ugly and sinful and evil, and I stopped seeing my sexuality as something ugly and evil, too. So it wasn't until I had a guy who was sexually attracted to me, a guy I liked who was nice to me, that I could begin to see anything positive about sex, and it was then that I was able to open up to my crushy-gushy feelings about another girl (yes, I'm saying that it wasn't until I was in a sexual relationship with a guy that I was able to see sex with a girl as a good thing, yes, I know how stupid that sounds, this is why I've never said it before, no, I don't know why I'm saying it now...wait, yes I do...blame Dani).

So anyway, after this guy broke up with me, I got my first crush on a girl who I knew in real life, and then I had my first relationship with a girl, and even though it was messed up, I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it made me realize that there was always something missing when I had sex with a guy (I liked looking at him, I still like looking at guys and especially at naked guys but when it comes to actually having sex, I most certainly enjoy having sex with women more). So that's when I finally realized that I don't just empathize with the letters on that alphabet soup list, I'm ONE OF THEM.

That's the long answer to the question, of course. The short answer is that "GLBTACQI" means to me that we have WAY TOO MANY letters in our acronym.

This is the Way the World Ends

So some of you wanted to know what's going on with me. Well, for starters, my old campus minister gave me a ride home from the store today.

Those of you who remember my old campus minister might be cringing right now. You'd be right to do so.

I shouldn't have taken the ride, but it was raining, and...yeah, I shouldn't have taken the ride. Pneumonia is better than this. Still, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

His kids were in the back seat (the two oldest, Nate and Sam, and man, they've grown...they're so cute!) so he couldn't get too in-depth, but I know this drill. I used to meet with him for "leadership training sessions" and we'd run into people he's met before, and he'd talk with them, all nice, and as soon as they walked away he told me everything that made them leave the ministry, and all the sad sins that ruled their lives since they left...so I'm sure he had some choice words for his kids after I left. But while we were in the car he just asked me how I was doing, and he said he's seen me around town, and it's sad for him to see people who used to be active in the ministry now involved in things that could damage their souls and the souls of those around them, and he remembered what I was like back when the campus ministry was the center of my life, and he hoped I'd return to God. I said that I was happier and healthier now than I'd been in college. Then he just asked me where I worked, and the conversation was over.

So why am I sitting here seething now?

Because I gave SO MUCH of myself to that church, and I got so little in return. I got insulted, told that I wasn't a good witness, told that I shouldn't cry in church because it ruined my witness, that there was something wrong with me, and that he didn't want new people coming into the church to see me. And even after all that, I still stayed and served and tried to change whatever about me wasn't worthy. I never quite made it.

Well then the straw came, the proverbial one that breaks the camel's back, and some of my friends might remember it (my friend Rachel should remember it, since she's the one who woke me up and made me see how bad things had gotten the night I left the church...I don't know if I ever told her that). See, the campus minister kept giving sermons about how he was proud of this guy in our church for "sharing the truth" and how for the first time in his campus ministry career, he found a good reason to read the student paper. You know why? Because this guy, Aaron, was the editor of the student paper that year, and he had badly written an editorial about why gay marriage was wrong, and suddenly every week, the campus minister found time to have "let's all praise Aaron" sessions, and I was getting tired of it.

One week, someone from my hall, an RA that I knew named Zach, wrote a letter into the paper saying that he didn't appreciate the "anti-gay marriage" rhetoric, because he was gay, and it wasn't just that the article was wrong, it wasn't written very well and the arguments in it were stupid (which they were...gay people can't bear children, gay people don't have sex the way most people do, the bible says it's an abomination and Romans says it's unnatural, blah blah blah please shoot me now). Aaron wrote a "response" in his "letter from the editor" section about how it's sad that people don't want to hear the truth, but that's not his fault, and if they have a problem, it's a problem with God, not with him. So I sat there thinking every week, "Dammit...I hope no one who's gay is sitting here listening to this, because they might think God doesn't love them" (yeah, I was thinking that, never underestimate the power of denial). But it ate away at me, and I didn't say anything, and then I finally wrote a letter to the editor myself, saying that it was one thing to share an opinion, but it was quite another to spout off without any love or respect for those on the other side of the issue. Aaron called me at home after he got that letter, saying it's unfair for me to attack the paper that way, and maybe I needed to talk to my campus minister if I was having problems with God's word. That night, I talked with some of my friends (Dani, Rachel, and Matt) and that's when Rachel told me that she hoped no gay people went to that church, because if they did, they must feel totally alone and unloved right now.

THAT hurt. I thought about that, and turned it around in my head, all through the church service that night. I thought about how before, the sermons were just hurting me, and I'd been hurt enough by this church not to really care anymore, but now I could see the impact their words and message had on other people, too. Zach was someone I really liked and respected, and he deserved better than that. I didn't want him to think everyone in the church felt the way Aaron did. That day, my letter was published in the paper (in spite of what Aaron said in his call) so I was prepared for someone to say something nasty to me at church, but no one did, no one even came up and said "hi" to me, and I had to hold back tears the whole time, because I knew what I had to do. So finally, after the service was over, I told my campus minister I didn't know if it was healthy for us to focus on "Gay = BAD" so much in every single sermon, because it's like we were losing focus on everything else (like, y'know, the gospel and other unimportant things like that). He replied that this WAS an important issue, people didn't realize how damaging homosexuality could be, even if it's genetic, that's all the more reason to fight against the temptation, gays are like alcoholics so why don't alcoholics get a parade. So I threw some really weak arguments at him (let him come at me today, I have way better things to say, but back then, I had nothing, and I ended up shooting blanks at every person who fired at me...I still have the scars, and I bet they don't have a goddamned thing). I told him that I don't think it's helpful to compare alcoholism and homosexuality, since even sociologists recognize that associating sexual orientation with sin can be harmful, and even some Christians believe that perhaps the bible verses used to condemn homosexuality could be interpreted differently, and that even if people aren't "born gay" that doesn't mean they shouldn't have equal rights, because people aren't "born Christian" but our rights are protected...

And he just said, "Lillian, it's sad what some people choose to believe" and walked away.

End scene.

Kind of anticlimactic for a conversation that put an end to five years of my serving in and giving all my extra money to his church, don't you think? Is this the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper? I thought I'd at least earned some yelling and screaming, for Christ's sake.

That's how it ended, and this is where it stands now, I suppose. I'm better off when I'm not in an environment like that, because I'll always be a freak no matter where I am, but it still stings (especially when something opens up the wound this way, and in a small town it's hard to avoid running into people who hate me...I know they still hate me even when I can't hear them saying it, but I can at least PRETEND it doesn't exist when I don't have to look at it).

Sigh.

I think a long bath is in order after I finish my laundry. Something to calm me down. I get my test tomorrow, so we'll find out what my cancer is up to in a few weeks. I'll just keep on trudging, I guess.

This is Not You

In further "Synchro-blog" news, I feel like I didn't address this issue in my earlier post so I wanted to do that now. I wanted to share these three images with you. The first two images are of protesters who stood outside the fence at the Grand Rapids Pride festival on June 20th, 2009. The third image is of some similar protesters who stood at the end of the parade route at Lansing Pride just a week earlier. For me, seeing these signs and hearing the things these people were saying through their bullhorns was saddening. I didn't come to Pride because I have any desire to be militant or yell at anyone or "push my lifestyle" on anyone. I came because in my small town, it's hard to find other people who are like me, and sometimes I need that to remind myself that I'm not alone. My "lifestyle" is pretty boring. I go to work, some home, watch The Golden Girls, eat, sleep, play with my cat, watch movies, and read books. That's how I spend most of my time. That I also happen to be in love with a woman is something that certainly makes me stand out in a lot of ways, but when people tell me that they abhor my sinful lifestyle, I have to wonder what they think I DO all day long that's so sinful.

By the same token, I look at these pictures, and I realize that my friends may be very different from me. Some of them disagree very vehemently with the fact that I do indeed love another woman, but regardless of this, MY FRIENDS ARE NOT THE PEOPLE IN THESE PICTURES. Even though we disagree strongly about scripture and how the bible should be interpreted and how it should be applied and what it might or might not be saying, my friends are not the people standing there holding these signs. Too often when we GLBT people complain about Christians, we act as though everyone we're talking about is holding one of these signs and yelling at us through a bullhorn, when in reality, that's not true. We can't ask them to see us as normal people and cry out that they can't put us in a box while at the same time we try to put THEM into a box. It just doesn't work that way. We have to respect them, even if we can't respect some of their views. My friends do this for me. We disagree on a great many things, but I love them, and they love me, and I know this because of their actions. Like the song says, "They'll know we are Christians by our love," and I know that these people love me because they have been there to listen and support and encourage me, and I know it's hard sometimes for them to do that, because they disagree with a lot of what I say. Before I begin to run around demanding acceptance from them, I need to love them even when I disagree with what THEY say. It's difficule (for me and for them) but we have to TRY.

When I was a kid in Vacation Bible School, I learned this song. The refrain goes like this:

"You can have a big box, you can have a little box, but if your god is in the box, your god is very small. You can have a plain box, you can have a fancy box, but if you think that god is in the box, you don't know god at all. you don't know god at all."

I'm smart enough now to at least know that God is never in the box (even when we take great care to fashion a box, with bright edges and narrow definitions and scripture references to back up everything we say, God isn't in that box). I need to stop putting people into that box, too. I wouldn't want them to do that to me.

For those of you who see pictures like the ones at the beginning of this entry and you want to scream and pull your hair out and shout "That's not me!" It's ok. I know it's not you. I know these people don't represent you or your views, and I'll try very hard to keep writing and keep speaking to you with that in mind.

Bridging the Gap: Synchro-Blog Entry "Common Ground"

My post today is part of a larger initiative of more than 60 bloggers all coming together to share their thoughts on how to 'bridge the gap' between GLBTACQI people and the church. You can check out the other links at: www.btgproject.blogspot.com

What I'm Doing

This blogging initiative is one I'm proud to participate in because it touches my heart in a unique way, and I'm excited to read what everyone else has to say on this issue, because for me, the realization that I was a lesbian is what brought me back to God, not what turned me away from God, so my journey is different than that of most people with whom I've discussed this topic. I always tell people that I think it might be helpful for GLBT people and Christians to try to focus on the ways in which we are alike instead of focusing on our differences, but that sound slike a cliche, and I don't think anyone understand how hard that is for me to say or what a difference it has made in my life. Perhaps if you understand more about me, you'll understand why this is so important to me.

Who I Am

Now here's the deal. I'm one of those people who's never fit into the church as a whole, no matter who I was or who I was trying to be. I tried many different denominations, and no matter what, there was always some reason that I didn't "fit in" at the church. I talked too loud, I laughed too loud, I watched the wrong movies, I listened to the wrong music, I wore the wrong clothes, I didn't seem to be able to believe the right things (or I shared my doubts about things everyone else seemed to believe without much effort). I never had any reasons growing up for why I was such a square peg in a round hole, so I spent my time trying to change myself to fit the environment I was in. I looked at the people around me and tried my best to dress like them and talk like them and modify my beliefs to fit what they believed. Much to my dismay, this never seemed to work, because I was always denying some part of myself that made me who I was. I'm the kind of person who can get more spiritual truth out of a zombie movie or an Elton John song than I can out of a sermon. I've always been this way. For whatever reason, God uses pop culture to speak to me, and that's something powerful, and to deny that is to try to suppress a part of me that is vitally important to who I really am. The point of this isn't to say that going to church and listening to a sermon is something that doesn't affect me at all, it's to say that whatever truth I need to see about God I see more clearly in the things that resonate with my soul, and it's not a bad thing to go to church or to read the bible, but to do those things purposely as a way to suppress the part of me that needs to listen to music and watch horror movies is to ignore a vital part of what drew me to God in the first place. Once I began to believe he existed, I could see him all around me, and I could hear him singing in the words of songs I'd loved since I was a child, and it was like I was seeing everything with new eyes. Then I learned that this music and these books and these movies weren't part of the life experience of most Christians, and in fact were thought to be sinful by the people in the churches I attended. I spent years going to rallies, burning my books and CDs, asking forgiveness for watching movies, and growing increasingly frustrated that no matter how I tried to change myself, I was still different than those I saw around me who seemed to seek God and instantly become able to blend in with those around them. I left church for good one year when I decided that I was never going to be "good enough" to fit in there, and I swore I'd never go back.

Who We Are

The thing is, when I was 25, I fell truly, madly, and deeply in love with another woman, and I realized that this was a problem for many reasons. I'd read all the bible verses that Id been taught to believe would condemn people to hell for feeling the way I did and acting on it. Oddly enough, I realized that although I'd pretended to leave the church and never look back, I still believed everything I'd been taught, I just believed that it excluded me from ever having a relationship with God, so I tried to live as though it didn't matter to me, when really, it did. I started seeking out other GLBTACQI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally, Curious, Questioning, Intersexed...wow that's a lot of letters) people in my area, and when I met them, I started getting what I call "nudges from God," slowly leading me back to him. I talked with these people, over and over, and I learned that somehow, miraculously, many of them went to church, they believed that God loved them, and they didn't spend every moment worrying that they were going to hell because of who they were. this boggled my mind. Something that a lot of people don't understand is that I've felt like I was damned to hell and completely hopeless since I was four years old, long before I was ever aware what "gay" even was. I've never fit into a church, and for years, that had nothing to do with my sexuality, it was simply a side effect of how weird I was. I had never felt worthy of God's love, and it was only recently that "I'm gay" was added to my list of reasons why. It was a big reason of course, because I'd been taught that there was no way that someone could be gay, be in love with someone of the same gender, and still be a Christian. As soon as the idea that I could be both gay AND Christian was introduced to me, I was ready to read all the books I could find, revisit the bible verses I'd heard, and start listening to my Christian music again, because a small spark within me had been rekindled and I had hope once again that I was worthy to sing about God's love.

Who They Are

Trying to find a church that will have me while I'm on this journey has been difficult, but one of the biggest revelations for me is that this would always have been difficult for me, whether I'd been gay or not, because I'm a weird little person who doesn't fit in with most people, and that's who I've always been. In college, I hung out with a small group of similar weird people, and they're still some of my closest friends today, even though we're spread out all across the country and we have very different religious beliefs. Something that I've had to learn, over and over again, is that when dealing with other Christians, it's just as important that I accept them as it is that they accept me. Read that sentence again. I sure need to. I feel a sense of rejection whenever I end up not fitting in at a church, but the truth is, it's taken me years and years and years to get comfortable being in my own skin, so I can't possibly expect other people to be comfortable with me in five minutes (or even five months). If I come into every church situation expecting the Christians to be hostile toward me, for whatever reason, I'm going to be stooping under the weight of the massive bag of chips on my shoulder, and I won't have time to see those people as fellow human beings, with their own flaws and struggles and concerns and lives.

Common Ground

Mother Theresa has been quoted as saying "If we judge other people, we don't have time to love them," and I'm realizing more and more every day how that applies to my journey back to the church. If I'm going to get anywhere on this journey, and if I really think church is going to be an important part of this journey, then I need to cool down and start trying to understand who these other Christians are. They may not agree with my "lifestyle" (whether that includes who I love or what movies I watch or both) but I probably don't agree with everything they believe, either, and if we stand there glaring at each other counting all the ways in which we are different, we're never going to have a chance to find any common ground or any reason why we should love and accept each other. I'm realizing that expecting other people to understand and accept me hasn't worked in the past because I haven't been willing to understand and accept them, either. That hurts, because a lot of hurtful things have been done to me in the name of religion, and I feel like I'm trying to minimize the damage that's been done to me when I say that I need to try to look past their insults and understand them as people, but the truth is that no matter how badly I've been hurt, that doesn't give me an excuse to expect the worst from people, because I can't control what any other person does, I can only control what I do, and what I need to start doing is recognizing the beauty and importance of every person I meet, even when we disagree on just about everything. After all, I spent years wishing someone would look past all the labels and try to see me and love me for who I am; how can I refuse to at least try to do that for other people? This attitude has made it easier for me to at least try going to church and to at least try to understand people. It's helped me to understand myself a little better, too. That douesn't sound earth-shattering or monumentous, but it sure is a good place to start.