By "Blyth"
Imagine a Journey
Imagine you are Noah. Not only are you a few
hundred years old, but you have been asked to build a large watercraft.
Somewhere in the middle of Kansas where the largest body of water is the
neighbor’s brackish pond that the cows drink out of. Now imagine this
colossus emerging out of an empty field to the lighthearted amusement of
your small town. No doubt, you are the talk of the sewing circle and the
central focus of discussion at the barbershop. Finally, a child asks you
what you are doing in the direct way of the innocent. Now there is a new
topic. GOD told you to build this ship. In the middle of Kansas. In a field
where you should be planting your corn instead of wasting your time building
a boat that will not sail on dirt. The talk has it you said there is going
to be a flood. It will rain for forty days and forty nights until the whole
earth is covered, including your little corner of Kansas farmland. Of
course, everyone knows there hasn’t been a good rain in some time, so this
might be a good thing. Water bills are sky high, and it looks like crop
prices will be a little higher this year.
People go on with their lives, but still cast a wary eye to your nearly-built ship in the field. A woman two farms down the road says you ought to be committed. She told you this in the hearing of a lot of other people at the A&P who laughed with embarrassment as if they didn’t quite hear. The feed store clerk has another story to relate at the bar that night; you have been buying animal feed in bulk. And storing it away in the recesses of this land-locked vessel. He knows because he delivered it himself and it took all day. He also says that it is so big now that even three eighteen wheelers could not move it, even if it could be lifted onto them. And then the man at the pet store has an even odder story about your orders of late; not just a couple pets, but two of everything he has, plus more by mail order. They all agree that you should be put away, but a drunken lawyer says there is no cause for arrest. Unless you threaten to harm someone, or harm yourself, you cannot be locked up by law. Even the exotic animals that you have bought are legal, with papers to prove it.
Time comes and goes. Other newsworthy items and outright gossip fill the empty hours. Then the clouds come. Then the rain. And it rains, not little droplets like a summer storm, but a pouring rain obscuring everything a foot beyond your site. But you are in the boat - with your family, and a cacophony of animal voices. Suddenly, other people wished they’d built a boat instead of planting corn. The water rises, slowly, then more quickly, and the ship begins to rise, well sealed against the cry of the storm and the pounding of the water. Imagine.
We see Noah’s call from God as an historical event; some would even call it as myth, even in light of the fact that the earth WAS once covered with water. But Noah’s story was more than just an account in the Bible; it was his own personal journey with God. Most of our own journeys will not end up in a holy book. They probably will not even get beyond the four pages of our autobiography buried in what spiral notebook we can’t remember. Regardless of this, we are all still on a journey with God that is beyond our imagination, beyond our understanding and often, even beyond what we planned for our lives.
My first recollection of God was in a vision that I have never forgotten. I was, perhaps, maybe four. The vision consisted of the night sky, a great black sky ablaze with the all the lights of the universe. But it was more than that; within this vision was a Presence that I would one day identify as God. The home I grew up in was not religious. In fact, it was anti-religious. Woe to anyone who showed up at our door with a Bible in hand. A friend of my mothers convinced her to send me to Sunday school when I was in the second grade. She was lulled into thinking I would learn the “Golden Rule” and be a good and obedient daughter, so there was no harm done. When I was old enough, I could choose my own religion. But what I found in that church was strangely compelling. I would often choose to go to church over going to the House of Pancakes for breakfast on Sundays. I would look at filmstrips of the Dead Sea Scrolls and I was entranced. This was the foundation of my spiritual childhood. At my church, you did not have to make a formal declaration of belief. I even went through a deep, thoughtful time of unbelief there, where I looked at the people outside after church and wondered who wrote the Bible they were talking about. Perhaps it was the Holy Spirit that pointed out to me that God was not an impossibility; I was, as a human living in an impossibility - the Universe. If I was obviously living in a space that could only be defined by matter or lack of matter, how could I explain the Universe as something that had no end? How was that possible? This made God seem a little less impossible. My doubts began to fade in the light of that knowledge.
My church was definitely a mainline church, but if you searched, you could find what you were looking for there. It was an attraction that brought me to the church next door. I knew a couple of my school cheerleaders went there, and I wanted to be around them so I showed up one day. I never got into the exalted circle of those girls, but I did find something else; a relationship with Jesus Christ, though at that time, it was neither deep, nor joyful. I discovered that in order to baby-sit at that particular church, you had to accept the Lord and be baptized. At the time, I was entranced by babies, and loved to be around children, so I decided to join the church, much to my mother’s chagrin. These were the type of people that showed up on doorsteps and actually wanted you to have something beyond a solid knowledge of how to be a good girl. My mother, by that time an alcoholic, though I did not realize it, was not pleased. At all. I accepted the Lord in that church and got a moment in the spotlight as I was baptized. I didn’t feel much different afterwards, but it seemed like a good thing to do, especially since the girls that I followed to the church saw me being baptized. I never did get to baby-sit though. I don’t remember the reason why. Maybe because everything started to go terribly wrong.
I started getting caught stealing, which I thought I had mastered. My home life went from barely tolerable to insane. I was in the midst of teenage angst. Within the year, I would be in a group home, not knowing at the time that I would never come home again. The thing I most remembered about that time is how my mom wanted me to be punished. She wanted the worst consequences for the smallest crime. Mostly because I had told about the abuse in my home and she wanted me to pay. She was not the type of woman you crossed, even if you were her daughter. This was not forgivable. I knew her character enough to know that only I would be blamed for what happened. She would never accept responsibility beyond saying that she should have never adopted me. I did well in the group home. I did well in school, but I never received any encouragement from her, just an undercurrent of hatred that I could not quite figure out. When I graduated from high school with honors, my parents were not there…even though I had somehow managed to rise up from the 1.5 G.P.A of my freshman year when I was at home. At my graduation party, I broke down and cried. I had no idea why I was crying. The tears just came and came. They were not there for me and would never be. I tried to argue back our relationship. I tried blame, I tried to take all the responsibility.
What I did not know is that my mom was an alcoholic. I found out when I was in my late 20’s and had to sit down and digest this. Everyone had known but me. It would have helped if someone had told me. How a bottle had taken a perfectly fine woman and turned her into an unlivable shrew. Throughout my childhood the gallon jugs of burgundies, the flats of beer and the gin and tonics were simply nasty beverages that adults, for whatever reason, liked. That my mom seemed so often to have a glass of wine in her hand did not seem ominous to me. I did not have enough experience with alcohol to understand that it affected behavior. My mom never laid about in a drunken stupor so I could not connect it all. Alcoholics were drunken winos who laid on street corners begging for change; they were not housewives and Fullbright scholars who had been sucked slowly into the abyss of the bottle as their personality inexplicably became violent and erratic.
The last time I really spent any time with my parents was in 1981. I went home for Christmas. It was my Grandmother’s last Christmas and I was grateful for that time with her. But my mom treated me like a stranger that had invaded her home. It was crazy; she seethed with bitterness and anger and made sure I knew anything and everything was my fault. I never went home again because I could not take that kind of relationship. I tried to take the blame for everything and tried to understand why everyone hated me (at least she said they hated me), but I also understood in some realistic corner of my mind that it was her and not me. Later I would be able, with God’s help, to take my part of the responsibility and let the other parts go, but then, I was just devastated. It just got worse when my grandmother died. A week after she died, I received a letter saying she had died and been cremated. It was like a form letter, void of emotion. My mother and grandmother had not gotten along, possibly because she had been able to see things that I could not see, but had to accept as a child. This was the end for me. I could not handle having my Grandmother ripped away from me like this. I could not handle having my mother once again tell me how I felt when she stated “You did not love her that much anyway” in a terse phone conversation searching for answers. Hatred became the bones that held me up. A dark cloud obscured my heart and sucked me into its depths. I had a relationship with God, but it was outside of me. I felt I had a right to hate this woman who had stolen my childhood and had nothing but vile words to say to me.
In was in the midst of this pain that I became aware of a secret door in my mind that I was not ready to open. I was not interested in men. When I looked back, although I had boyfriends and some degree of attraction, it was not the same passion I had for women. Everything in my life was making me face what I did not want to face - and the terror that if I was this way, I would be a total abomination to God. I redoubled my efforts in trying to be “normal,” but the more normal I tried to be, the less I was sure. I did my best to be a good Christian girl. I went to the right churches, hung out with wonderful believers, read the right things and struggled to maintain my relationship with God. Yet it was not a balanced God that I knew; I was more attuned to the type of God Who smote, destroyed and rejected His Children for the smallest infractions than a God Who was also Love, Mercy and Grace Incarnate. This was a God Who strangely mirrored my parents in His delight of punishment and smoldering anger. This was a God Who I would need to appease, but could never be trusted as He would eventually disinherit me. As they had. When I read the Bible, I could not quite apply the love and the mercy to myself, instead being repelled by the verses that condemned and judged me. Reading the Bible was at times a fearful chore. God, however, not intent on my total destruction, stayed faithful in spite of my warped ideas of Him, waiting for me to discover Who He truly was.
When I finally admitted to myself that I was gay, there was no relief, just a fearful expectation of final destruction. If it had been a choice for me, if I had been extremely attracted to men beyond a light physical or emotional attraction, I could have withstood it. Then an “ex-gay” ministry visited my Christian college group. I was elated, compelled, released. There were people just like me and they were now straight. Or at least tried to be. I put all my energy, all my heart and all my soul, into my new salvation, the god of heterosexuality. I say this because it would not be Jesus’ sacrifice that saved me, but whether or not I was deemed straight enough, by myself and by others. Only other gay Christians can truly tell you what an idol it becomes because becoming straight obsesses you; first you must be straight, pretend to be straight or pretend you can joyfully spend your life alone and then, and only then, can you have a true relationship with Jesus. The process possesses you, too; nothing else matters but becoming straight. If you are greedy, envious, a gossip, a liar or anything that directly affects your relationship with God and others, it does not seem as important as your sexuality. So I read “ex-gay” literature, called them, wrote them, followed their instructions, read my Bible, went to counseling, repented and repented again. I attempted relationships with the opposite sex to “heal,” prayed, then prayed some more, confessed to God and to people, prayed for the spirit of homosexuality to be cast out of me, avoided anything “gay,” sought healing, sought the key to why I became gay in the first place; was it birth, was it my upbringing, was it a spirit of homosexuality in my family? Slowly, insidiously, seeking after Jesus Christ became instead seeking after heterosexuality in His Name; the focus is not Him, but myself and heterosexual feelings.
For me, those feelings never truly came. I claimed to be straight because the “name it and claim it” belief was in vogue at the time. I also had never had a true relationship with a woman, so I could sort of say that I was not gay in that respect. But I also felt like I was lying on another level; that I was indeed gay, playing straight because I knew my own heart. I felt like I was constantly overriding my conscience and my integrity. However, in the views of the Christians that I surrounded myself with, I needed to be straight or lose God forever. I knew they loved me and supported me, standing in for the family that refused to be there for me, but also truly believed that homosexuality was something I needed to be delivered from. Or just forget about. Or get married and replace.
There was a time in my early twenties where I “came out” for a short time, but suffered such debilitating panic attacks that I just as quickly went back into the closet. And there was finally a time, in my late twenties where I came out for good. One day I felt hopeless, joyless, depressed and filled with self-hatred. The day after I came out, hopelessness and the pervasive desire for a fatal illness to release me from this life disappeared. The light began to dawn. The night was ending. I say “ending” because it would take many years to come to terms with myself. There was nothing more I could do but fully accept myself. I had tried or sought out all the other avenues and the road had ended. The depression and anxieties I suffered from were caused by a chemical imbalance not by homosexuality, but could be exacerbated by it. I continued to struggle with that.
But then I made a mistake. I decided that I no longer needed the faith that had brought me so much anguish and self-hatred in the past. So I jumped from my Christian life into the maelstrom of the gay party scene. I went from chastity (Where doctors asked me “Are you SURE you’re not sexually active?” like I was some abnormal species.), to sexual promiscuity in a very short time. My libido went wild. I was very proud of my sexual ability that had not physically surfaced until now. But I was also very, very ashamed before God. If the hopeless, joyless person was not who I wanted to be, neither was this woman.
Slowly, I came back to God. It was not an easy road. Christians who had loved me and supported me in the past I felt like I could not stay in contact with as I was sure I would be judged and pressured. But I also have to admit that I had not done well in keeping in contact with people whenever I moved simply from the pain of missing them and that had more to do with psychic pains than being gay. Both those things contributed to me isolating myself from the good in my life. I got into horrible relationships that became sexual early on, but felt I could not back out of because sex was for marriage. Somehow, the ups and downs of a rollercoaster eventually come to an end. I was at that end. I went to a gay church, but did not feel especially challenged in the Lord; more like I was at a lecture, punctuated by a “God” here and there about the homosexual lifestyle. Finally, I found my church home in an Open and Affirming Congregational Church. I also found a wife. But I found something more important than all of that; I found myself in God.
I do believe that there are sins you must repent of. I do believe there are changes you have to make in your life. But during this time, God has chosen to reveal His balanced Self to me; the One Who is angry with sin, yet is faithful and bounding in mercy. The God Who will never leave me nor forsake me. The God Who is not a mirror image of my parent’s rejection. A God Who loves me, too, and not just the “good” Christians.
I think being gay has forced me above all things to seek Him for Himself and not just to blend into the mainstream of Christianity, believing because other people believe. I believe I have been forced into the very Courts of God to ask Him what He wants for my life and not just assume things because that is how other people interpret our faith and scriptures. It was the most terrifying experience of my life; to seek Him on what seemed like a tightrope but with the net of His Hand under my journey over that precipitous chasm.
In retrospect, I saw myself as a self-righteous “ex-gay” who had little or no compassion on what others were going through; if “fabulous I” could do it, then everyone else could do it, too. I saw my faith as a precarious, joyless existence that I did not feel “Good News” enough to want to share with others lest they join my hell.
I did finally find freedom in Christ, but through the humility of being a gay person, outside the walls of the Christian Jerusalem with no salve for my sores. Until Jesus, Himself, brought me that salve. And I began to understand His Sacrifice; that my sacrifice of homosexuality was not what saved me, but His agonizing death on the Cross. I began to understand the Bible, and not just see myself, personified in all the verses that called for judgment and condemnation, but in the Isaiah 41:9-10’s, the Jeremiah 29:11’s, the comforts of the Psalms and in the faithful promises of Jesus, Himself. He became real to me and when there WAS judgment because of my actions, I was now able to accept and ask for change by His Power and not my own.
I believe in Jesus now, not because of the fear of hell, or the reward of Heaven, or what other people say about Him, but because of Him and who He continues to be for me and all others on this journey. Imagine yourself on this journey. Perhaps it will not end up in a holy book, but it certainly will end up in the Palms of His Hands. Don’t imagine a life without hardships because God uses hardships to mold you; promising you anything different would be a lie. Imagine you are walking through this life with Someone there for you, willing to listen day or night. Imagine looking out into the vast heavens and feeling Him touch you. Imagine that you are never alone. You don’t have to imagine. Ask Him to walk with you on your journey, into your heart, where He works and makes the changes and into your life, where He will live in you. I don’t have to imagine that He will surely get you home from there.