Month: February 2016

To My Younger Self

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Dear 15 year old Timmy,

I just read a book that you would love and hate. Morally, you would be so utterly opposed to this young adult novel that I just read. You’re so young and naive and you think you’ve been wired incorrectly, that God did something wrong to you in the womb. You think you know how you’re supposed to be, to live, to act. But, you’re wrong. You’re attempting to live out a lie, a falsehood. You are, in fact, rejecting God’s good creation when you keep trying to change yourself, make yourself different than the way you were created. Oh Timmy, how can I make you understand?

Read this book. I know, two young men fall in love, and you’re going to be so intrigued and turned on by it, and at the same time you’re going to be disgusted with yourself for feeling that way and therefore, hate the book. But please, read it. Give it a chance. Give love a chance. Give yourself a chance to be a normal teenage boy. You’re growing up too quickly because you’re dealing with pain even grown people shouldn’t have to deal with. You’re trying to ignore and change and tamper with the very fundamentals of who you are. Please stop hurting yourself in the name of God.

I want you to know that there is hope. There is hope when love is shared. There is hope when you learn to love yourself. There is hope when you learn to let that love flow through your freckled face that hates the way the sun kisses you, through your strong legs that run your pain away, through your wrist that you try to keep strong and straight. There is hope when you learn to love the things about yourself of which you are so ashamed. There is hope when you learn to let out those things which are hidden, when you usher them out of the closet no matter what anyone else might say or think.

I want you to know how brave you are. You’ve got more bravery than you know. Let me tell you about all the times you will tell a family member, a friend, a professor, a complete stranger about your sexuality, about your future husband. Let me tell you about the hard conversations that you plow through in the name of love, because that’s what God does, plow through in the name of love. Let me tell you about all the change and growth and goodness that are in store for you. Let me tell you about how it will be so much easier and so much harder than you think. Let me tell you about how beautiful your wedding is going to be, and that you’ll marry a handsome, funny, charming man that you grew to love as more than just a college friend. Let me tell you about how hard it will be to introduce him to your extended family who only knew you as a ‘good little Christian boy’ (implying that Christian and gay don’t go together, which I have now come to believe they most definitely do). Let me tell you how you’ll read this book I’m giving you and it will give you courage to be more yourself than ever before.

You have it in you. And you have it all around you, little Timmy. You have love and compassion and passion and courage and bravery all bottled up inside you for everyone else. Drink deep from that bottle for yourself, for you’ll need it to face the world with all its love and hate. You have all that you need inside yourself and from those around you. You have some strong friends and family to lean on and you’ll find even more friends with an uncanny ability to love, ones that lift you up rather than tear you down. You have people who are going to celebrate with you and mourn with you like you’ve never imagined. Drink it up, because they are good, good people and they will love you well. You have a loving, passionate God who wants nothing more than to see you whole and well and it might hurt like hell sometimes, but cling to God, for God will give you strength. When you want to walk away, remember to always come back (I know you will, since I did), but just know that God loves and heals and mends and makes whole that which is broken. God won’t change your sexuality, because it’s not broken. But, God will mend your broken heart and will heal the hurt from the Church so much so that you’ll go to Seminary and hope to find leadership in a church some day.

I know high school is wonderful and shitty at the same time. That’s okay. I want you to know that it will take time, but life does get better. Just keep learning how to love all the parts of you that you’ve grown up learning to hate. It might take a lifetime to love yourself and be yourself fully, but it will be a life well spent.

I love you dearly,

25 year old Tim

On Being White and Loving Beyoncé

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I am a white male. And I love Beyoncé. I fell for her back in 2008 when she released “I Am… Sasha Fierce.” Yes, I know, I was way late to the game. But I only listened to Casting Crowns and Steven Curtis Chapman the first 16 years of my life. I lived a sheltered life. However, If I Were a Boy, Halo, Single Ladies, Diva, Sweet Dreams all got me going, but after hearing her pipes on Ave Maria, I about lost my mind every time I hit ‘repeat.’ Then she released 4 with Run the World and Love On Top and Best Thing I Never Had. Watching her video for Run the World was like watching your favorite heroine kick ass, but then watching her in Best Thing I Never Had almost turned me straight. Friends of ours like to say that everyone is Beyoncésexual. I have to agree.

 

Then she did the unthinkable: dropped an album without any promotion and it went to number 1 on the charts overnight. It wasn’t just any music album, it was a video album, complete with a video for every single song on the album. And I would argue that it was her best album to date. Many claimed she explored ‘darker themes’ in this album, but I just called them ‘real life’ themes. She sings about depression, motherhood, unnatural beauty standards this country places on women, feminism, women empowerment, and making love with her husband. She brings her full self as a woman into this album and it is Flawless. I remember listening to that track for the first time driving to dinner with the same friends who say everyone is Beyoncésexual and thinking, “This is everything.” She critiques patriarchy in Flawless and explores the depth of depression caused by patriarchy in Pretty Hurts. And while I am not a black woman, I am a gay man and I have suffered from patriarchy in my own ways, from the need to be the ‘perfect (straight) man’ and the need to be someone I am not. Her lyrics, melodies and videos affected me deep in my bones because I either found myself in them or raised my fist with her in protest and danced in celebration.

 

A week and a half ago, she dropped the new song and video Formation the day before the Superbowl and it is spectacular. It is woman. It is black. And she is unapologetic about her womanness and her blackness. Thank God. Then, she performs a part of it at the Superbowl and she is both praised and ridiculed. Her outfit pays tribute to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, a black man. Her backup dancers wore outfits that paid tribute to the Black Panthers, a group often villainized during the 60s and 70s by the media and government for empowering black people.

 

Beyoncé’s performance evoked images of blackness at the Superbowl and it upset people, mostly white people. While some white people will say they’re upset because Beyoncé brought politics into the Superbowl or that her performance was anti-cop, I believe they are mistaken. They are upset that Beyoncé brought her black woman body into their presence and had to acknowledge her. They are upset that Beyoncé showed up and didn’t pretend to be white. Her lyrics have nothing in them about police, about being anti-cop. Only her dancers’ Black Panther attire could be referred to as being anti-cop, and that too is a stretch because they were an activist group, not an anarchistic group.  Her video points towards ending police brutality with images and writing on a wall that says, “Stop shooting us,” but her lyrics do not. Also, allow me to point out that being anti-cop is different than wanting police reform and refusing to accept police brutality as a norm. Furthermore, people accused her of making her performance political. If people mean that she brought politics into it by singing about her blackness, then yes, she brought in politics. But it’s disturbing to me that singing about one’s skin color and culture and heritage is political. It’s disturbing to me that when a black woman decides to sing about being a black woman, she is villainized and accused of being political (in a negative sense). When a black woman is asked to sing in front of millions of people on television, we are going to see a black woman singing on t.v., and that means she’ll show up with all of her black woman experiences.

 

It’s time for white people to calm down and actually listen to the stories black men and women and children are telling us. It’s time for white people to stop being afraid of losing their privilege and power so that everyone who’s at the dinner table can have a bite to eat. It’s about damn time white people in the U.S. stopped hating on a woman because she’s a woman and a black person because she’s a black person and a black woman because she’s a black woman.

 

Thank you Beyoncé for being you. Here’s Formation in case you haven’t seen the video: https://vimeo.com/154783794

Thank you Jessica Williams for your spectacular account of Beyoncé’s performance here: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/j79s76/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-beyonce-s-halftime-show-message

Thank you SNL for this laugh that is simultaneously sad and hilarious and insightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ociMBfkDG1w

Proposals are for Memory Jars

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A year ago today, Reed asked me to marry him on a cold, sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey amidst the snowy woods near the canal. It was picturesque and I had no idea it was happening. He asked if I wanted to go on a walk and I was thrilled with the prospect. I had so much to tell him about. As we walked outside, he walked one way and I walked the other. He said, “Let’s go to the canal.” I said, “It’s muddy.” He said, “Let’s go to the canal.” I pointed at the mud by the sidewalk and said, “It’s muddy.” He said, “Let’s go,” and started walking. I said, “Fine. But, if it’s muddy, we’re turning around and walking on the sidewalk!”

He soon got me busy talking about something else while we winded our way back to the path behind the woods. On occasion I complained about not having my boots or different shoes with me, but I eventually forgot about it until he veered off the path to a place in the woods. “What’s this?” he said as he traipsed off towards a scene of chairs in the distance. I shouted my complaints and displeasure at traipsing through the inches of snow. We got to the edge of a carpet laid upon the snow and there I stood with my arms on my hips. Reed walked onto the carpet, leaving snowy footprints behind him and plopped himself in a chair. I pointed at the carpet and exclaimed, “You’re getting snow on it!” I thought it was someone else’s that they had set up for a photoshoot (something I would have done in college). He chuckled.

Then I saw it: a memory jar we had made together on a date at the beginning of January. Then my eyes hit the picture of the two of us at a Christmas event in college. As it dawned on me what was happening, I whipped around to see a camera disappear behind a tree. My mind raced, my feet stepped back, my mouth gasped and I couldn’t believe that I was being proposed to. It was everything I had ever wanted, surprise and intentionality and love and affection. He finally asked if I would sit down and so I did. He handed me one of the most beautiful letters he had ever written and then got down on a knee and asked me to marry him.

After I said yes and we reveled in the moment, our friends came out from behind the trees where they had been waiting, taking photographs. We rejoiced together and then packed up the picturesque arrangement Reed and our friends had worked to put together. Then, we went by another friend’s place to “let her know that I had said yes.” When she opened the door, a group of some of our closest friends in New Jersey shouted “SURPRISE!” Reed had not only planned an intimate engagement, but then planned a gathering of my favorite people to celebrate with us. It was more than I ever could have imagined for a proposal. I rode that high for weeks.

It has now almost been almost 5 months of marriage and I could not imagine doing engagement, wedding planning, and life as a married couple with anyone else. We are constantly learning how to love each other better because neither one of us is the same as we were a year ago. We are ever-changing, moving and growing and being molded into new people each day. It takes work and effort to grow together, to be shaped and molded in a similar fashion together. It takes perseverance and honesty and putting the other person first to learn how to love this ever-evolving person beside you each day. It means making decisions together on the trivial things and having long conversations about how to spend our money and what’s important to us to invest in. It takes love of God and people and each other and ourselves and we’re doing our best. Thank you to friends and family who have surrounded us with love and laughter and celebration. You have made our journey into marriage lighter and filled with more beauty than I ever could have imagined. Thank you to my handsome husband, you have given me life and laughter far more than I could have asked or hoped for. You are my best friend and partner in crime, always.