When I came out as a lesbian at the age of 39 I regretted all the years I’d spent feeling out of place in the world and different from everyone I knew. I wished I’d come out sooner.

When I lost the first 100 pounds of my excess weight at the age of 42 I regretted all the years of humiliation, shame, and discomfort I’d lived through with an overweight and unhealthy body. I wished I’d lost the weight sooner.

When I met and fall in love with D at the age of 43 I regretted we’d not met when we were both younger so that we could have had more years together and perhaps a child or two along the way. I wished I’d found love sooner.

I hear it all the time from others. Regret about lost years. Years lost to living a life that never seemed to fit, lost to a marriage that should have never been, lost to the isolation of the closet, lost to submitting to a God of judgment and condemnation rather than freely loving a God of mercy and grace, lost to fulfilling others expectations rather than living into their true selves. I’ve received more emails than I can count that begin with “I came out as a lesbian…..in my late forties, at the age of 53, at the age of 64, at the age of 68, after 25 years of marriage, after 3 failed marriages, after 36 years spent as a conservative Christian missionary, after being ordained in a denomination that condemns homosexuality,” and hidden somewhere in between the lines of all those emails are waves of sadness and regret that the truth couldn’t have been revealed and lived into sooner.

While I haven’t grieved the years I could have spent between first and seventh grade enjoying the weekly serving of apple crisp served up in the Bridlemile Elementary School cafeteria, I’ve spent time grieving that I didn’t come out sooner, lose the weight sooner, and meet my beloved sooner. I’m sad for the years lost that lacked the depth of joy, contentment, purpose, and love that I now so gratefully enjoy. At the same time I’ve come to accept the truth that I came out, lost the weight, and met my beloved at the exact times that were right for me. Looking back on my life I could never have survived coming out to my family in my youth. Even two years earlier than it happened would have been too soon for me. Though being overweight for so many years came with tremendous physical limitations and emotional misery, I wasn’t ready to commit to the journey that would bring about change until I hit bottom 10 years ago. And though I love to imagine D and I falling in love in our twenties I would never have been ready to love someone so deeply and receive love in return so eagerly had it happened a moment sooner than it did.

Wholeness, in whatever area of our lives we yearn for it, comes into our lives when we’re ready to receive it and for that reason it never comes too late. If you’re 68 and are just coming out then trust that this is the very right moment for you to come out. If you’re just begun a path to transformation in an area of your life then know that now is the time; not three years ago or three years in the future.

I want to encourage you not to tangle your heart in regretting lost years because no years of your life have ever lost to God but those were the very years God was preparing you for this moment of your life, for the grace you’re opening your heart to receive, for the love you’re daring to risk embracing, for the freedom you’re eager to walk into, and for the wholeness you’re at long last ready to fall into. This day isn’t wasted because you aren’t where you think you should be. This time isn’t a time to mark with regret. Every single hour and day and year of your life is filled with possibilities you might not even be able to believe for but that God is working to bring to fulfillment in your life. With every tick of the clock God is bringing you one step closer to living into the fullness of life God has planned for you from the beginning of the ages.

In the meantime and until that time arrives, don’t say no to apple crisp. Learn from my mistake.

Click on the image for an apple crisp recipe.

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OT:     “So it’s been three weeks and one day since your surgery….”

Me:     “Wow, how nice to know someone else is as obsessed with my surgery as I am!”

OT:     “Oh yes, your surgery is all we talk about around the office. After all, what else is
………..there?”

Despite the playful banter, there’s truth in what I said to her. I’ve been obsessed. From the minute the  date was set on the calendar all I could think about was my surgery. I researched the internet for every little detail on the procedure. I spent hours watching similar surgeries being performed on The Discovery Channel with my hands in front of my eyes to avoid viewing the more gory aspects of having massive chunks of fat and skin removed with a knife and then plopped in a bucket. I stood in front of our full length bedroom mirror and wondered what I’d look like after my surgery. It’s no better now that my surgery is a thing of the past. This one thing is foremost in my mind and even when I need to focus on other things I struggle to do so for any length of time. I was in the middle of reading a couple great books before my surgery that I can’t get my head and heart back into. I’m lost to come up with anything to blog about that’s not surgery-related (as witnessed by this post,) and every conversation D and I get into ultimately leads back to my surgery. In a way I suspect it’s understandable that it continues to have so much of my attention given all the reminders that linger from the surgery; the discomfort I experience when I move a certain way, the undergarment compression suit I wear 24/7, the itching from the incision scars healing on my body, and obviously the physical changes to my body that I’m still trying to take in during my daily spin before the mirror. I’m tired of being obsessed with this one thing and I’m sure everyone else is too, from my beloved wife to my Facebook friends to you.

This place where I am today following my surgery reminds me of an earlier day when I was at the beginning of coming to terms with my sexual orientation. When I was first coming out to myself and then to others I thought about little else but being gay.  I woke up  every morning to thoughts about my sexual orientation and that one thought never left me until I fell asleep at night. I continued to function in the world. I did my work, spent time with my family, and ran my errands but through it all my sexual orientation was playing in the background. I spent hours on the internet searching for anything I could find on being gay and being Christian. I went to bookstores and poured over the gay and lesbian section, or to be more accurate I should say I poured over the books in the gay and lesbian section over on the floor of the home and garden section where I had carried them to avoid being spotted and identified in front of such a scandalous section of reading material. Driving to appointments or on errands I’d have imaginary conversations with family and friends in my car that always began with the words “I have something I need to tell you.” When I was leading a Sunday School teacher’s meeting or sitting in church I was thinking what it would be like if the person in front of me knew I was gay. How would they react? What would they say? Would they still love me? No matter what I did or where I went I could think of nothing else other than my sexual orientation and it got no better after I had come out to the world and in a way it’s about as understandable as my surgery obsession since there were constant reminders. Everyday there was something that brought my little gay obsession back up again in my mind. I’d pick up the paper and read a news story about a lesbian couple murdered in Southern Oregon. I’d turn on the television and be assaulted by the latest diatribe on the sin of homosexuality by a tele-evangelist. The silence from friends was a reminder.  The pained  and troubled expression on my sweet father’s face was a reminder. The search for a new church that would welcome me was a reminder. Even when I didn’t want to think about being gay, even when it got old and I just wanted to get back to life as normal, there was something or someone who was there to remind me of it all over again. Eventually though, after all the interior reconciling with myself and with God, after all the coming out and the fall out that ensued, after listening to Melissa Etheridge sing “Yes, I  Am” until my ears bled, life settled back to normal. A new normal that included the integration of my sexual orientation into every other aspect of who I am and all the changes that the awareness, acceptance, and pronouncement of my sexual orientation had brought to my life.

Later on in my conversation with the occupational therapist I related how I was getting frustrated with being so obsessed with my surgery and she responded by telling me that what what I’d been through was no small thing and she wasn’t at all surprised that I was finding it difficult to read a book or focus on writing. She explained that it was a common post-surgical experience to not be able to concentrate on other things but she assured me it would all balance out in time and I believe her. I just need time to integrate the experience of my surgery and the changes that came with it into my life.

Trust that life always comes back into balance, but until it does be patient with yourself and with the journey you’re on. Life will return to normal. A new normal. A normal of wholeness birthed by your courage and integrity and God’s grace and faithfulness.

Spread the Word!

]]> http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/my-little-gay-obsession/feed/ 18 http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/have-you-heard-the-great-news-every-day-is-full-of-trouble/ http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/have-you-heard-the-great-news-every-day-is-full-of-trouble/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:19:22 +0000 anita http://www.sisterfriends-together.org/?p=3832

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-34)

I came out to my parents as a lesbian and had them reject me 3465 times. I came out to my church and was told to repent or leave 2582 times. I was removed publicly from ministry 4395 times. 632 times my closest friends said they wanted nothing to do with me. I visited more than 568 different congregations but none of them welcomed me because I was gay.

Yes, it all happened that many times. In my head. Prior to coming out to anyone I imagined over and over again how it would be when I finally came out to my family, my friends, and my church. I’d lay in bed at night and play out one scene after another in my imagination. Every scene began the same way. I would be standing there facing someone I loved and I would haltingly say the words, “I need to tell you something. I’m gay.” And every scene had the same ending. I would lose a relationship. I would lose love and respect. I would lose my ministry. Night after night I’d lay there and play out each story line and though none of it had yet happened all the emotional turmoil I was going through was absolutely and gut-wrenchingly real. I would weep, sobbing over the loss of my parent’s love. Humiliation would sweep over me in waves as I’d think about what it would be like to be called before the church and publicly condemned for my sin.

During the day I’d go to my office at church and do the ministry I loved. Through the morning and afternoon I’d enjoy conversations with co-workers and take a phone call or two from a few friends. In the evening I’d meet my parents for dinner and while we waited for our meal to arrive they’d ask about what I was doing at church and then listen with such joy and pride it was written all over their faces. But under the darkness of night the day I’d just had would disappear and my imagination would take me to that day in the future after I had said the words and everything and everyone would be gone or lost. My stomach would be tied up in knots, and my cheeks flushed with fear. The agony I went through was almost unbearable.

All that agony and yet nothing had happened. None of it was real. None of it but the pain. The pain and the fear of future pain was as real as the cat napping on my lap at this moment, only a lot less soft and fluffy.

When i finally did come out some friendships were lost and some familiar doors of ministry did close. I couldn’t remain at the church I had loved and the initial reaction from my family was heart-breaking. For the first time in my life the relationships I most cherished felt tenuous and I had no way of knowing if they’d survive the storm that followed my coming out. Now at night when I laid there in the dark sobbing out my heart the pain I felt wasn’t in what might be but in what really was. I had feared the aftermath of coming out and now my coming out had come and gone.

That experience taught me something. When I worry then I’m living my life in a future day with events that may or may not come and not in the reality of the present day. I’m not in the day God has given me to live in. I’m not engaging in the life around me but in the life inside my head. Living life out in my head had me stuck in the traumatic moments of first coming out but my imagination never took me beyond that. My imagination could only take me as far as the pain and rejection and turmoil. It couldn’t take me further down the road after God in partnership with time returned joy to my life. My imagination lacked the creativity to see relationships that would heal and new doors of ministry that would open. My worst mental soap operas never envisioned the day my mom would write to tell me she was proud of what I was doing in ministry and happy I had found someone who loved me and who I loved. It had no problem replaying over and over how I could be removed from ministry but it could never believe for the day when I’d stand before another congregation fully as myself and break the bread and bless the cup. My imagination had foreseen the most excruciating encounters in coming out but was utterly clueless as to the countless spirit-filled moments woven into those first hours and days that were overflowing with grace, love, and affirmation. My imagination took me to the pain of rejection and loss but had no power to give me a taste of the freedom and joy that would come in walking into the wholeness of life God had for me.

I remember all this when gay men and lesbians write me with their fear of coming out and how it might be for them. In my jumbled way I try to encourage them to prepare for tomorrow, whatever the outcome, but not to worry about tomorrow because whatever happens God will be there. I tell them it will be hard. I tell them there will be pain. And I tell them they will survive. I tell them truth brings freedom and freedom brings joy. I tell them no matter how heart-wrenching others reactions might be, it can be well with their soul if they move forward with integrity and place their trust in God. “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” I say echoing Jesus’ words. “Your heavenly Father knows what you need and will provide.”

The truth of Christ’s words were burned into me through the firestorm of my own coming out and in turn I share what I’ve learned with others who find themselves facing the uncertainty of their own coming out, but then wouldn’t you know it, something else comes around the corner, looming ahead in my future and what do I do?

I worry.

I’m having surgery on Wednesday. Today is Monday and on and off throughout the day I’ve been worrying in bits and pieces about how quickly I’ll recover even before the surgeon has touched the blade to my skin. Today I’m completely pain-free and yet I’m worrying about how much pain there will be following surgery and how long it will last. I don’t have so much as a scratch on my knee and I’m worrying about how visible my scars will be. I’m anxious about waking up nauseated from the surgery. I’m obsessing about leaving the hospital the following morning and how difficult it will be to get in the car and how long the ride home will seem. Will I get sick and throw up? Ugh. I hate to throw up. I hope I don’t throw up. Oh please, keep me from throwing up.

In the passage above Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Yes. I’ll experience some physical pain following the surgery. Yes. I will have visible scarring. Yes. It’s going to take me time to recover and regain my strength. Yes. There are going to be inconveniences and frustrations and limitations. I might even throw up.

But all that will come tomorrow and worrying about it today will do nothing but increase my suffering by causing me to live in the future discomfort before it even comes. And worrying about tomorrow robs me of living in today. Today I have no pain or discomfort. Today the woman I love is sitting three feet away from me. Today one of my adorable cats is looking up at me with a “Give me treats Mom!” look in his eyes. Today there’s food on the table, a roof over my head and shoes on my feet.  Today is what God has given me and today and what it holds is all I have and all that matters. I can worry and fret and tangle my stomach up in knots over the concerns of tomorrow or I can choose to live in this very moment. Here I am. At my computer. Talking to you. Encouraging you not to worry about tomorrow. Don’t worry about what will happen when you come out to your family. Don’t worry about whether your relationship will endure the roughest storm. Don’t worry about the poor decisions your teenage son or daughter might make. Don’t suffer future loss. Tomorrow will take care of itself. God will give you tomorrow tomorrow but for now God has given you today. This is the same God, the very one, who keeps the smallest sparrow well fed; the very one who clothes the wildflowers on a remote mountain top in colors more splendid than the finest robes of the wealthiest king; the very one who holds you in the palm of His hand and will make a way for you and will provide for you and will see you through whatever tomorrow may hold.

I’ve been obese all my life. I spent my life transitioning from baby fat to chubby to overweight to obese to morbidly obese.  I only knew what it was to be the biggest kid in every class and the largest woman in every gathering. There were limitations on my life because of my weight. There were things I wanted to do that I didn’t have the physical health to do. There were places I wanted to go I couldn’t go because my physical girth made it too difficult to get there. Being big became my place in the world and while it wasn’t easy and make for some agonizing moments of humiliation, it was all I had ever known and so in the way that humans do I found a way to be comfortable in what was familiar even if at times familiar was painful, embarrassing, miserable, and inconvenient.

Over the past dozen years I’ve lost nearly 160 pounds, the last 50 since January of this year. I’m at a weight I haven’t weighed since high school when I was merely passing by that number on my way to a higher weight. My entire life I daydreamed about what it would be like to be within a normal weight range and now at the age of 52, I’m there. I’m at a place with my body and health I never dreamed was possible and now that I’ve arrived, I’m understandably thrilled and grateful, and at the same time it’s totally unnerving and just plain weird. I look in the mirror and think to myself, “That’s not me. This isn’t who I am.” When I’m standing at the store counter buying size 12 pants there’s static in my head telling me, “They’re too small for you. They don’t belong to you.” In a way that’s hard to explain I feel at times like an impostor in the world because this body I’m in isn’t the body that I’ve always known and lived inside while relating to the rest of the world. I don’t want to go back to life before my weight loss but at the same time, that life is definitely more familiar to me and this new one has me a bit rattled and unbalanced on my feet.

And I’m not the only one reeling from the changes. People who have always known me as “the big girl” are acting a little disoriented too.  I was with someone recently who has always related to me as someone much bigger than she and so throughout the day our conversation was interrupted with random comments of “I just can’t get use to you looking like that!” and “You’re nearly the same size as me!” And that’s the thing. Not only are people getting use to seeing me in a differently-sized body but the changes in my body are making them aware of their body which is why their conversation is drifting more and more frequently toward their own interest in losing weight and getting in shape.

There’s a lot of crazy thinking that goes on in the head of someone, at least this someone, after losing so much weight. I’ve gotten to know a number of former abundantly-padded people who share the same experiences and feelings and so I know I’m not the only one who goes through an adjustment period in getting the old head and heart matched up to the new body. It just takes time. It takes time to learn how to relate to the world in a different body and to get comfortable with how the world relates to you.

I imagine the same would be true for anyone going through any major life transition where they leave what’s familiar for something that’s entirely new to them. Maybe that’s part of what increases the internal tension many of us go through in coming out as queer.  We spent a good number of our days relating to the world, or at least believing we did, as straight women and men (and just imagine for a moment, if you dare, how it must be for our trans brothers and sisters!) We had our place in the world, knew how we related to the world and the world knew how to relate to us. And while we might have felt less than who we knew we really were and felt the pain of not being fully whole and fully alive, most days we were okay because at the very least the life we were living was familiar.

Coming out to ourselves changed all that. We came to see something about ourselves we’d never seen before, maybe for no other reason than we had refused to look at that part of our lives and if we had happened to catch a glance of ourselves had pretended we didn’t see what we saw. Accepting we were gay was difficult for a number of reasons including conflicts with our faith teaching, but it was also uncomfortable simply because it was “the unknown.” We knew what it was like to identify as straight because we’d done it for so long but accepting ourselves as GLBT or Q was like free-diving into whole new territory! It wasn’t familiar and so that made it uncomfortable for us in the beginning. I look in the mirror and see a normal sized person but my head is still saying “This can’t be you. You’re suppose to be bigger than this!” and in the same we might have always known deep within we were gay but our head was still saying “This can’t possibly be true. I’m suppose to be straight.”

A huge shift in self-identity and how we see ourselves in the world is always bound to come with some pretty dramatic internal upheaval, and then just for good measure, go ahead and ratchet up the intensity off the charts by notifying the world around you that a part of your identity is different than it appeared and was presumed to be. Just like people who’ve known me all my life are temporarily relating (and reacting!) differently to me as a normal-sized person, people relate (and react!) differently to us when they’re put into the position of leaving their ideas of us as a straight man or woman behind for that of a gay woman or man. We’re changing how the group (church, family, friends, society) identifies with us and anytime anything or anyone in the group changes, there’s going to be transitional chaos for everyone. Did I emphasize that last sentence enough?

It’s going to take some time for me to grow accustomed to the new reflection looking back at me in the mirror. I’m going to have to buy a few more size 12 pants before I can let go of my plus-size clothing brain. When this body becomes more familiar to me then I’ll be more at ease in it because the head will have finally gotten in sync with the body. And other people will need time too. People who have always known me as morbidly obese will need to spend more time with me in the smaller body I’m now residing in to adjust to the idea that a smaller Anita is still the same Anita. It just takes time.

If you’ve just come out to yourself or have taken the next step to come out to others, it’s a little more complicated than all that. There are all the religious and societal considerations that complicate our own internal acceptance and other people’s reactions but there’s still this one basic aspect of shifting identities underneath it all that will naturally be resolved in due time. You need to give yourself and others time to adjust to the changes. You need time to get comfortable in your own skin. As a lesbian. As a gay man. As bisexual. As a man. As a woman. And others need time and usually they need more time than we do because we have the advantage of embodying the changes 24/7 while they’re trying to make sense of it from the outside looking in.

My physicality and your sexuality might have taken on a different form but we need to remember, as they need to remember, that at our heart and soul we’re still the same as we always were, and that these shifts we’ve gone through in our self-identity will only be for the better; allowing us the freedom to be more fully who we always were but was held back from fully expressing trapped in a body or identity that never really fit us to begin with.

While Jon’s archive is filled with wonderful pieces on homosexuality and being gay, this most recent one was especially moving because while reality for most continues to fall short of Jon’s three panel sequence, we continue to hope for the day when affirming words and a gentle embrace will be the norm and not the exception. May that day come soon for every GLBTQ young person or adult who continues to linger in the closet because they fear losing relationship with those they most love.

Thank you Jon for reminding us of what should be now and what might be one day in the future if we continue to believe and pray and work for it to come to pass.

Are we on the same page now?  Fantastic! Now turning back to the email…

Anita, I realized I was a lesbian last year and have been struggling ever since with my faith. I know God still loves me but I’m having such a hard time finding any peace with the idea that it’s okay with God that I’m gay. I’m so afraid that when I tell my family they’ll reject me and my church won’t want me there anymore. Is it really alright with God for me to be in love with another woman? The reason I’m asking is because I met an amazing woman online a couple months ago and what started out as a friendship has become so much more. After exchanging emails for the few first weeks we started talking on the phone. Anita, we talk for hours at a time and I’m sure I’ve met my soul mate. I feel like I’ve always known her and we tell each other everything. I love her and she loves me. She says that she wants to be with me. If loving another woman is a sin then does that mean I have to spend the rest of my life alone? Why would God make me gay and then not let me have a relationship when that’s all I’ve ever wanted as long as I can remember? I’m so confused and would appreciate any advice you could give me.

Come Out as Gay Before Going Into a Relationship

It’s not all that unusual to fall in love with someone before going through the process of coming out to our immediate circle of family and friends. The reality is that for some of us falling in love with another woman was the very thing that led us to finally begin to come to terms with our sexual orientation. Life has repeatedly proven that we don’t always get to pick the timing of how events in our life play out but being in a relationship with another women before coming out to your family adds a complication that would seem at least worth considering.

Whether we’re coming out to our families as a single woman or as one already in relationship with another woman, coming out to our families brings a radical shift to the entire family system. It’s a weird but common principle that when there’s a dramatic change within one member of a family or any group of people, it forces everyone within that system to reconsider their own relationships and role to the other members. In a family, whether it’s ever spoken or not, every family member has a role to fulfill, a role that has been largely defined for them by the other members that they in turn live into. There’s the dependable one, the funny one, the troubled one and if we held any role in our families outside of the rebellious troublemaker chances are we no longer fit into the expectations and role we had in the family and that upsets the whole school of familial fish.  Whatever family configuration we’re talking about (with our parents, with our adult children) the family needs time to come to terms with our new identity within the family and with any other relationships and roles in the family that might have flipped in the process.

For those of you who have already come out to your families can you relate to any of this? Did you see roles change in your family? Did people relate differently to you and to each other after you came out? I’m not saying any of this is a bad thing. Some families only benefit from breaking free of their traditional roles and establishing new places within the family but whatever the end result it’s an agonizing process for the entire system and my concern is that bringing a girlfriend into the mix in the eye of the storm has the potential to increase the upheaval to the family because it doesn’t allow the established members of the family to fall back into place (or a new place) before being forced to come to terms with a stranger in their midst.

Can I raise one more thing to consider? Oh wait. This is my blog. Of course I can!

Let’s make three assumptions that I know might not apply to everyone and while I’m going to refer to parents, you could easily replace that with children, as in yours if you have any. First, your parents are strongly opposed to homosexuality for either religious or societal reasons. Second, your parents feel like they did a relatively good to great job in raising you. Third, your parents love you. And let’s make a fourth assumption I wish we didn’t have to make but one that tends to be true more often than not given that the first assumption is true; when you tell them you’re gay their first reaction isn’t to hang a rainbow flag from the front porch. However they react to the news there’s bound to be a barrel load of mixed emotions in play when the words come out of your mouth and those emotions can be so overwhelming in the moment that they’re going to be desperately searching for someplace to channel the intensity of their emotional feelings. You’re their flesh and blood, they know they didn’t raise you to be gay, and so they begin scrambling unconsciously to make sense of it by finding the reason for why the unthinkable has happened to you and in turn to the family.

Here’s what I can tell you from stories I’ve heard. Take them for what they’re worth. There are several couples I’ve known over the years who in coming out to their parents and/or adult children chose the moment of their coming out to tell their families they had met a wonderful woman who they loved and who loved them in return. This other woman brought into the initial conversation when the emotions were running full tilt then became the one who bore the blame for luring their daughter into the homosexual lifestyle or changed their mom into something they had previously been taught was sinful. No matter how much the woman in your life loves you, that’s a big target on her back to carry and it can take a long time for the arrows to be removed.

Okay, it took me five paragraphs to say this. . .Whenever we come out to anyone with whom we’re in relationship with, whether it be God, our parents, our children, or our closest friends it would seem more productive to keep the focus primarily on the relationship between you and the other person in the relationship rather than complicating it by adding another relationship into the mix. I’m not saying dump your significant other until you come out to all these people. I’m only suggesting that when coming out to each of the people in your life you share a cherished relationship with, you consider keeping the conversation on you and the other person, allowing you both to work through the love and relationship held between the two of you. Chances are the conversation dealing with your newly discovered or accepted sexual orientation provides more than enough material for everyone to work through initially and that includes you.

The new 2.7 version of Wordpress included a complete redesign of the user interface.  Nothing. Looks. The. Same. Everything. Is. Different.

Wordpress changed everything and here’s the real rub. They didn’t warn me or even ask if I was okay with them making some changes. Apparently the Wordpress developers could care less about my emotional well-being.

For the average bear changing things up with a new design and updated features can be a good thing. They get excited and inspired by the shiny new bells and whistles. I tend to get momentarily overwhelmed. Though I adapt given enough time, it still bristles against my core axiom; change bad, same good.

I can’t help it. I like being comfortable and I’m most comfortable with what’s familiar. That’s why it took my computer building genius of a brother until late 1996 to convince me to upgrade to Windows 95. Actually, he didn’t convince me. In essence he broke into my church office with a floppy disk in his hand, pushed me out of my desk chair and said, “You’re getting upgraded. Deal.” It was not a bonding moment. More jarring than going through the change of the enforced upgrade was the agony of admitting to him several weeks later that I loved Windows 95, that it was the best operating system yet and I couldn’t imagine using the older Windows 3.1 ever again. Memories dim with the years but as I remember his eyes rolled. Significantly.

I’ve heard tell that there are some members of the human species who are just fine with change. Their feathers don’t ruffle. They don’t convulse, gnash their teeth, or have their stomach lurch until their lunch revisits their tonsils. I am not naturally one of them. No matter how small the change my natural inclination is to resist it. I’ve always clung to what’s familiar because when things are the same I know where my place is within it all. The same-o same-o makes me feel grounded and assured. I handle change better now than I once did because, to put it simply, I’ve grown up. The years have taught me to accept that change is inevitable but I will never be able to stress enough that this was not a lesson that came easily.

And yes, it was a lesson that began when I realized I was gay. It was more than a lesson. It was like a pop quiz. “I need everyone to close their books, take out a piece of paper and number to 10. Do so now. This quiz will account for 50% of your overall grade.” I was just there, minding my own business and showing up for my familiar comfortable life every day and wham-bang, everything changes. I had it all figured out and by all, I pretty much mean all in the all-inclusive sense. I knew who I was and what I was to do in the world. I knew who my friends were and where my place was in my family. And to some extent I was fairly convinced I was on the right track when it came to knowing God since I counted myself among those who had nailed the truth of the Christian faith.

Coming out to myself knocked everything out of whack. Nothing remained the same even as I went through the familiar routines, engaged in day to day interactions with family and life-long friends, and sat in church singing the same songs and lifting the same two hands in worship. Before any change in my life became apparent to the rest of the world, everything inside me was swirling in a hurricane of internal change and the impending change to everything and with everyone that was to inevitably follow the moment I opened my mouth and let the words “I’m gay” come stumbling out. I don’t need to provide an inventory of everything that’s changed in my life since coming out. Chances are you know all about it first-hand. You’ve lived the change.

As humans we know change is inevitable and the writer of Ecclesiastes nailed it. Everything changes. The physical world is set up for change. Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring. Day. Night. Situations change. We move from one place to another. We lose a job, earn a promotion, or switch careers. Old friendships end and new friendships begin. The aging parent who grasps our hand to steady their walk today once held onto our child-sized hand to steady our tenuous first steps. We change. We can’t stop it from happening no matter how hard we try. Wrinkles highlight our eyes. Gray hair frames our face. Things once perky turn their attention to the floor. As the years pass we become more or less cynical, forgiving, loving, tolerant, hopeful and possibly annoying. Our core values might evolve and our priorities shift. We accept that change happens. There are times we even long for change. And still we resist it. Why?

I suspect primal survival instinct plays a significant part. Familiar, safe. Different, threatening. We know what’s in our cave but there’s no telling if a woolly mammoth is lurking in wait in the shadows of the cave next door. Cave relocation is scary business. If you’re somewhere in the coming out process there’s plenty going on that feels scary. You’ve wandered into a whole new cave that has you wondering “Where am I? What the heck is going on? Where is God in all this? How is God with all this? What do I believe now? What am I suppose to do now? Who am I, really?”

We often talk about the struggle to reconcile our faith and sexuality, and as Christians how it is that being gay impacts our relationship with God and our theological understanding is of utmost importance to us but what’s going on here is even more fundamental to our humanity in that our sexuality is an integral component that shapes our core self-identity. The process of coming out involves not only our spirituality but is the struggle to reconcile the entirety of our lives as we understood it with what we know now. Given the huge nature of such an undertaking it’s understandable that some of us experience a range of emotions including fear, dread, relief, worry, anger, confusion, grief, excitement, and depression. When we’re smacked with all those emotions and all the questions there’s a tendency to interpret the turmoil as a sign that we’re doing something wrong. We wonder if we’re miserable because God is making us miserable. We ask ourselves “Is this what they mean when they talk about the conviction of the Holy Spirit?”

I want to offer another suggestion but don’t ready yourself for a profound spiritual insight least you add disappointment to the rest of the package. I simply want to suggest that maybe the turmoil you’re in right now is nothing more or less than a primal human response to change; not the day to day kind of change we’ve come to expect from life, but something that could potentially bring change to every area of your life including the most basic reality of who you understand yourself to be in the world. Beyond what’s happening at the spiritual level between your heart and Gods’, is simply, though not easily, going through the process of grappling with the possibility of impending monumental change in coming out; whether to yourself only or to others in time. Sometimes it helps to parcel the pieces out because it put things such as our emotions in perspective so we can accept them for what they are saying and just as importantly, for what they are not saying.

I was thrilled years ago with the benefits that came from changing my Windows software to a newer version. I’m fairly certain I’ll be equally thrilled with this whole new bells and whistles version of Wordpress after I’ve had the chance to take it for a spin a few times, and I wouldn’t want to go back to using all that software anymore than I’d want to go back to my life before I came out as a lesbian. I was grateful for that life while I lived it but I’m ever more grateful for the life I’m living today; a life God brought me into through a season of agonizing change. Remembering back to that time, the fear and pain of venturing into a dark and unexplored cave was nothing compared to the joy of what I found when I got there. And just so you know, there were no woolly mammoths. Not even one.

Now say it with me.

Change good. Change good. Change good.

Now say it like you mean it.

No. Wait. I’m probably the only one.

Or am I? Maybe I’m wrong.
Do you think I’m wrong?
I wonder if you think this is a weak opening. Do you think it is?
Maybe it’s not good enough and I should start all over again.
Should I start all over again? Do you think I should?
Huh? Do you?

I admit it. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life seeking approval from others to validate just about everything about me from the decisions I made, to the way I thought, to the person I was. No matter what I did if someone else noticed and gave a positive response I ended up feeling a little more smart, talented, interesting, funny, or insightful than I did before someone noticed. I loved that my mom and dad were proud of me as their daughter, that the parents of the church praised my ministry with their children, and that I received glowing feedback following workshops and various speaking gigs. I’ll even confess, since it’s just you and me here and I know you won’t tell anyone else, that it was a major ego-rush when I’d get a room full of children giggling and one of them would look up at me and say with an all too adorable, sweet, and adoring face, “Teacher Anita, you’re so funny! You make me laugh!” Maybe it was the clown costume, or the time I tossed a ball up in the air and a ceiling panel came crashing down on my head, or running around the room pretending I was an ape in the jungle complete with sounds and accompanying gestures and gyrations….so many choices to choose from.

People-pleasing, to one extent or another is a normal human quirk we all share but in my own life growing up in the church seemed to crank it all up another notch. Et tu? It wasn’t just about feeling a little smarter or prettier or funnier, but when people in the church approved of my actions and agreed with my words it meant they were not only validating my worth as an individual but my worth as a member of the community. I was one of them and I belonged. I was living in a way that matched the way they were living and believing as they believed, and should I have questions about what we believed, when our answers didn’t seem to fit the questions, I brushed my doubts aside. After all, everyone in my world, a very conservative evangelical world, were all on the same page with their answers and because I admired and loved them, then surely they must be right which could only lead to one conclusion; I was wrong, and if not wrong, at least weak for being uneasy with the certainty of the answers.

It’s funny really, or tragically sad that the Christian faith, supposedly centered in an individual’s personal relationship with Christ in reality seems to judge the personal in comparison to the community norm. What I mean to say is that our relationship with Christ and the way we flesh it out is expected to conform to the rest of the community and when it doesn’t conform, that’s seen as a red flag, a signal that something isn’t quite right with the one who does or sees things differently. Could it be that the church has come to be more interested in the individuals relationship to Christianity (their group) than to Christ? I’m just wondering this out loud.

So all that to say, there was a message that played around in my head as I confronted the realization I was a lesbian, a message that argued “Everyone in your world, all the people you love, your family, your friends, your church, and kabillions of Christians believe homosexuality is a sin. They read the Bible and say it’s message on homosexuality is clear. They can’t all be wrong so you must be wrong.” Of all the old messages this is the one that stayed with me the longest and played the loudest and I came to realize over time it plays for a whole lot of people in the church, gay, straight and polka-dot, and it continued to play for me until I came to recognize that a vocal majority of Christians (and the institutional church) have historically have been wrong about a boat load of other issues beginning with the prohibition of Gentiles into Christian community, enforcing slavery, second-class status for women, segregation and apartheid. Anyone heard of a little oops known as the Crusades? The thing is, we can vilify past and present generations of Christians for their wrongs or recognize that most were and are good and sincerely-motivated people, guided by their commitment to the Christian faith and grounded in their understanding of the Scriptures and sometimes they were simply wrong, individually and corporately. As they are today. Just as committed to their faith and just as likely to come to mistaken conclusions. I say that without judgment but with the understanding that I’m just as human and open to being in error as anyone else.

The message that plays telling you must be wrong because they must be right also disregards that the church (other people) aren’t the only source for guiding us to truth. Yes, we give attention to church tradition, past and present, but we hold it along with consideration of the Scriptures, human reason, and our personal life experience. Residing within evangelical Christianity I wasn’t familiar with John Wesley’s Quadrilateral or utilizing this method to guide my theological reflections. Truth had always been limited to the first, that being what my denomination and church espoused as truth, and while they referenced all they believed as being established in the Scriptures, it was according to their interpretation of the Scriptures. Reason was viewed as a lack of faith and human experience was seen as untrustworthy and corrupted by emotions and human desire. Reconciling my sexuality and faith was the first time I knowingly considered other factors apart from the view of the church and their interpretation of Scripture. It was the first time I paid real attention to my own life experience or brought reason into the discussion. I might have posted this before so stop me if you’ve already heard it but during a seminary discussion on biblical authority, the professor said “If as Christians we’re willing to give our lives to Jesus, why aren’t we willing to give him our mind at the same time?” I love that and give it to you as a freebie. No charge kids.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. What am I trying to say? Just this.

My long answer to this outworn message is that yes, a whole lot of Christians can be wrong about the same thing but regardless of whatever everyone else is saying I can’t build my life on their convictions and expectations. I have to base my life, actions, and words on what is the truest and most real thing I believe in faith.

And my short answer is that of Paul’s in Galatians 1:9-11.

Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

When I wrote the other day that I believe we are who we are and we love who we love because it’s by God’s design and for God’s purpose that we’re GLBTQ people; when I called being gay a divine calling, a holy vocation and for the sake of the Gospel, I was saying I believe all that today but I haven’t always.

I didn’t believe being gay was a gift when after 15 years of full-time ministry as a children’s pastor the senior pastor called me into his office and said “For your remaining two weeks as the children’s pastor at the church, I need to ask that you not be alone with any of the children; that you do what you can to avoid being with them at all.”

I had no confidence that being queer was a divine calling when the Christian publishing company called to inform me that while they still wanted to purchase my Christian Education program for national distribution it could only be under the condition that my name not appear as the author because they couldn’t risk having their evangelical market discover the material had been written by a homosexual.

I couldn’t have imagined it was God’s plan I was a lesbian when a Christian educator’s organization passed along word to me that despite having been one of their most popular workshop presenters over the previous six years, they were putting me on notice that they knew I was gay and therefore never again would be asked to speak at their annual conference or participate in any manner whatsoever.

I didn’t dare believe my sexuality was for the sake of the Gospel when it came time to receive the annual application to renew my denominational ministerial license in the mail and my mailbox remained empty; when a loved one who had supported my ministry from the beginning coldly said I should never have entered the ministry at all; or when I closed the door for a final time on an emptied church office where I’d counseled with parents and loved on their children through the main part of my adult years.

For all these reasons and for others held too close to my heart to openly share, I know that calling our sexuality a divine gift, a holy calling, God’s plan, and our purpose can be a challenge when the internal messages and external circumstances seem to reflect a different reality. I really do get it which is all the more reason why I admire you for taking on the challenge to believe something different if only for four days or for two.

All that I mentioned above came about in the first two months following my own coming out as a lesbian. While I had already come to peace concerning being a Christian and a lesbian, I understood my sexuality at that time as something more akin to a burden than a blessing, an oops of God rather than a gift of God. After all, it was coming at such a high price and then there was all that had been lost around my ministry. I had loved the ministry and that my greatest responsibility in my call had been to simply love people and tell of God’s even greater love for them. I couldn’t help wonder if the most meaningful and rewarding years of ministry were behind me.

Haman had tricked King Xeres into issuing a decree that would lead to the destruction of all the Jews. When Mordacai learned of Haman’s plot he sent a messenger to Queen Esther his niece, a closeted Jew, that she should petition her husband the king for the salvation of the Jews. When fear caused Esther to resist the idea, the message Mordacai sent back to her was this:

Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

Uncle Mordacai dares to suggest that the reason Esther had ever become queen, gaining privilege and renown might well have been for this very moment by placing her into a position where she could save her people, bringing relief and deliverance to the oppressed.

I read this passage one evening during my personal devotional time and something about it grabbed hold of me. Several weeks later I went to a GLBTQ Christian gathering where Marsha Stevens was the keynote speaker. Marsha told of her early years in Christian music when the Jesus Movement exploded and we (the currently middle-aged we) were all listening to Christian groups like Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, and Children of the Day. She’d written the song, “For Those Tears I Died” while still in her teens, a song that was part of my own youth, playing it over and over again on my clunky 8-Track, strumming it’s simple chords on my acoustic guitar, and carrying the alto line in the church youth choir. Marsha recounted how after coming out as a lesbian she began to receive packages in the mail from churches around the country, filled with copies of her song torn from church hymnals and song books in angry protest upon learning the song writer was gay. In the midst of what must have been a devastating time in her life, Marsha turned to the story of Esther and the words “For such a time as this” rattled inside her, and rather than grieving the past success in ministry she’s once experienced, Marsha continued on to sing and proclaim the Gospel message as an out lesbian Christian and to establish a ministry that’s taken her around the world, healing and blessing the lives of countless GLBTQ and straight people. Marsha believed that all her past successes and accomplishments had been to prepare her for such a time as this.

For such a time as this. The phrase bounced around in my heart for days and then months and when it came to finally rest the idea that being gay was the purposeful intention of God for my life replaced the sense that my sexual orientation was merely a fluke or a flaw. I could never have imagined doing anything in ministry more rewarding or meaningful than all those years of pastoring children and their families, but then I could have never imagined the utter joy of the opportunities I’ve been given in recent years to proclaim God’s unconditional love to GLBTQ people or to anyone for that matter who needs to hear the message of the love of God, the message of the Gospel.

So many doors closed years ago but even more have been opening ever since. I’m an ordained clergywoman. I officiate at the table. There have been opportunities to preach in church and lead workshops designed for GLBTQ Christians. Every Sunday morning, I scrunch down onto a small carpet circle in the front of the church and gather another generation children around me to tell them how precious they are to God and how great is God’s love for them. And then there’s this online ministry. How would have thought this up but God? I could never have imagined or thought to ask to be part of anything like this nor can I ever tell the joy I feel when even one woman writes to say that something here has helped her draw a little closer to God. It makes my knees weak every time. In the end I lost nothing in coming out that wasn’t given back to me in extravagant abundance.

Everyone is called by God and we spend our lives seeking to live into that calling; to discover our way of being the presence of Christ in the world. The calling doesn’t stop the day we come out. The voice of God isn’t silenced even in the closet. God’s hand is on you. God’s spirit within you. God’s anointing upon you. Who you are is the very person God needs for you to be in this world. You have a way of speaking and living God’s love that will touch someone in a way that my life and others lives simply couldn’t do. Your life reflects a particular angle of God’s character and being that’s the exact angle someone else needs desperately to see. These might sound like sentimental words but they’re also very real. Nothing in your life is unusable to God. Nothing is less than a gift when devoted to God’s glory.

Whatever you’ve done in the past, wherever the present finds you, God has called you…for such a time as this.

Spread the Word!

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