Month: May 2016

Turning 26: Lost Time & Life Crises

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If I write out twenty-six, it doesn’t feel as bad – wait, no. I was wrong. 26, twenty-six; they both seem terrible. It’s not really the turning twenty-six that’s daunting. It’s not the one year closer to the big 3-0. It’s not that half of my twenties are over. It’s nothing to do with the actual progression of another year or of feeling older. It’s everything to do with my past, with my accomplishments, with my time spent. What have I done? Where has the time gone?

Some days I start thinking about twenty-six and think ‘I have so much to do!’ I start berating myself for wasting my twenty-fifth year of life. I see people from my childhood when I’m at work and then I see myself through their eyes, “He’s working at Target. He was valedictorian.” I can just feel the disappointment and smugness float off them as if they’re the president of wealth and the queen of luxury. Then it’s down the rabbit hole for me, rushing around screaming in my head, “No time to say ‘Hello, Goodbye’! I’m late! I’m late! I’m late for a very important date!”

I start getting down on myself because I work at Target. I start thinking about how I haven’t written enough, how it’s been 3 week since my last blog post. THREE WEEKS. Every blogger knows that to be well read and keep readers coming back you’re supposed to post regularly and consistently. Things which I am not good at doing. Then I think about how I’ve barely touched the novel I’m working on in the past month. Then I think about the friends I haven’t talked to or seen in far too long. Then I think about how I haven’t written my husband a monthly note to continually confess my undying love for him. Then I think about ALL THE WASTED TIME. And I have no idea where it goes.

Except, I do.

It went into planning a wedding with the man that I love. It went into that one day, that one event in which we gathered our family and friends and made a covenant with each other. It went into throwing the biggest and probably the best party we will ever get to throw. It went into starting a marriage. It now goes into starting a blog and attempting to write for it and for a novel. It goes into playing games with my husband. It goes into dinner parties with friends and family. It goes into hosting, into planning, into creating a space that we love and cherish and exist beautifully together in. It goes into walks with my husband in the evening, talking over our days, growing closer, intertwining our lives one walk at a time. It goes into working a job to make money. It goes into travelling to visit friends and old places we called home. It goes into dreaming and planning and scheming our way into people’s lives and homes and travelling the world. It goes into watching tv, reading books and books and books, and then some more books. It goes into walking by myself and listening to where God might be speaking in my life and in the trees and leaves and little chipmunks skittering to and fro. It goes into slowing down and paying attention. It goes into noticing the way the clouds look when they storm in during the spring. It goes into learning how to love myself and take care of myself in this new space of life, of marriage, of no school for the first time ever.

Time has not been wasted. Time has been cherished and lived to the fullest. When it wasn’t spent planning or putting dreams into action, it was stretched out into hours on the couch relaxing or talking our way through walks and hikes. Time has been well spent. Just because I don’t have a shiny new car and a job making six figures (hell, I barely make 5 figures), my time is not wasted. My life is not wasted. I am thoroughly enjoying this stage of life. And, I have to remind myself that it’s what I want that counts, not what others expect of me. Neither is it my own insecurities and childhood baggage that I should pay attention to. Because, let’s be honest. Most people probably aren’t thinking too much about me. They’re probably just as self-absorbed as I am. And that, my friends, can be the biggest blessing at times.

Growing Up Gay and Christian

Posted in Faith, Love, Sexuality3 Comments

I recently read The God Box. It’s about a young man in his senior year of high school coming to terms with his sexuality in the context of his evangelical Christian faith. My husband has been wanting me to read this book for a few months now, and he finally got it from our library so that I could read it. I loved it. Besides the main character’s identity issues as a Mexican American, I resonated with other aspects of his story, like his struggle to reconcile faith and sexuality and his inability to tell anyone about his same-sex attraction. It felt both healing and jarring to enter back into that particular way of thinking, of thinking that I’d go to hell for accepting the “homosexual lifestyle,” of thinking that all gay people did was sleep around with each other, of thinking that my attraction would never go away so that I could fully be with a woman.

I remember nights writing in my journal, angst strewn about the pages: angst about my sexuality, angst about the boy I liked, angst about my looks, my weight, my hair color, angst because teenagers are already full of angst. Throw an evangelical Christian boy in a small, Midwestern town and the recipe for angst is overwhelmingly potent. I remember too many tears, too many fears, too many nights wondering how I could go on praying for change and yet continuing to feel the same attraction over and over. I remember two different people living inside of me throughout high school.

I remember being preached about or talked about at church when no one knew they were talking about that good little Christian boy who was a leader in the youth group. Gay people were always somewhere else. They were always somebody else. And they were always infringing upon the sanctity of marriage, the greatest threat to the family in the U.S. (No, we never talked about adultery or physical abuse or rape within a marital context or a crippling notion of masculinity or femininity as the greatest threat to the family.) I remember the derogatory names whispered and coughed at me in school from the select few who couldn’t deal properly with their own masculinity, so they took it out on others. I remember trying so hard and fighting my attraction with fervor only to find it growing stronger in response to my prayers and petitions. It’s as if God was saying, “You say, ‘Take this away.’ But I say, ‘Love yourself for who I created you to be.'”

I have also been reading Rachel Held Evans’ Searching for Sunday in which she talks about leaving the evangelical Church. It’s continuing to heal me from the hurt and pain inflicted upon me by my faith growing up. She also talks about loving what evangelicalism gave her. While I’m still trying to figure out what I love about evangelicalism, I do know that I’m thankful for growing up in the Christian faith. While I have deconstructed that childhood faith, I wouldn’t have the pieces to begin constructing a faith life now if I didn’t first have it given to me from my parents.

The most important part of my journey in faith and sexuality has been to love myself. I walked away from faith in high school and began learning how to love myself, how to say “no” to destructive forces in my life. It was my first lesson in saying “no,” and thank God I did. As I learned to love myself, I came to find God again. And I found God where God had always been, right beside me loving me for all that I am and smiling that I was finally on the road to accepting myself for who I was created to be. For anyone struggling with understanding and accepting their sexuality, their gender identity, who they feel they are on the inside, especially in the context of faith or particularly evangelical faith, the best advice I can give is learn to love yourself for who you are. You are deeply and fiercely loved by the God of the universe just as you are.

Thank God I’m no longer where I was in high school. Thank God for the saints in my life who led me down a Christian walk that allowed me to find my identity as a Christian and as a gay man compatible. Thank God for the people who have loved me through my faith journey, who have loved me through coming out and coming to terms with my orientation. Thank God for the people who have stuck with me every step of the way. Thank God for changing hearts and minds and opening up people to love me better. Thank God for my husband and for our story of friendship and love. Thank God for young adult fiction with gay characters who tell our children that it’s okay to be different, that it’s okay to be gay or transgender or anywhere on the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity. Thank God that people are starting to pay attention and that LGBTQ people’s lives are being rescued from suicide. Thank God for love that wins out at the end of the day. Simply, thank God.