Category: Friendship

New Year Reflections

Posted in Friendship, HopeLeave a comment

Starting a new year brings me such excitement and exhilaration. So often people get caught up in the rush of starting over, but I’m far more intrigued by the notion of a refresh. It feels gentler, somehow, less rushed and more intentional. I rarely like the idea of starting over. Notions of being ‘born again’ come to mind with this phrase and that really makes me shudder. Starting over seems to imply that you’re neglecting all the previous years of mistakes and mishaps just so you can feel like you have a clean slate. I hate to break it to you, but none of us have a clean slate. We’ve all got baggage we’re carrying with us into the new year, whether we want to admit it or not. We’ve all got a past that creeps up and haunts us from time to time. We can’t run from our problems, as much as most of us would love that.

The important thing, though, is how I’m responding to that baggage. Am I gentling going to set it down, pick out the bits and bobs and try to start saying good-bye to them? Or am I going to toss it down, run to my flight and fly off into the new year only to find that my baggage somehow ended up in the same destination I did? It’s rare that you can just forget your baggage and move on. Usually, it needs some attention. It needs some tender loving and care. It needs to be told that it’s not forgotten, but that it’s time to not be dragging around so much stuff. It needs a gentle reminder that more baggage will come along the journey and you simply don’t have room for it anymore.

That’s what I’m attempting to do this year. A couple events happened at the beginning of the year already that have triggered quite a bit of self-reflection. I have come to find that I’m not nearly the same person I was in college. So much of college was wrapped in my insecurities and the desire for everyone to know me and like me (which has not totally gone away). I thought I had friends galore. What I’m coming to find about myself now is that I don’t make loads of friends everywhere I go like I used to. I hold people at an arm’s length, and I do this for a number of reasons. I already have friends who are my life-long friends. Why do I need more?! As a gay man, it’s not easy for me to trust people. Not just a gay man, but a gay Christian man, I find the scope of people who will understand me narrows considerably. And call it cowardice or prudence, or both, but I am less willing to put myself out there than when I was a teen and in my early twenties and trust that people will respond with kindness and reciprocity.

We’re starting to read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown in our church Life Group, and I can already tell I’m going to hate it, but it might be good for me. We talked vulnerability to death in college and I’m interested to revisit vulnerability in lieu of my latest self-reflections. I’m scared that it might mean some difficult work on my part. And I’m tempted to say, “No thanks,” and move on. But usually good writing and discussion with close friends works magic on me, so we’ll see.

With all that said, I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other this year. I’m not trying anything new or trendy. I’m trying to do my old stuff, but with a little more attention and intention. If I can pay attention to people and to myself, I can hopefully be more intentional with both my words and actions. And that can make all the difference. Here’s to a new year and the same old me just trying to make myself and the world better with thoughtfulness and introspection.

Gay and Christian [High School Part 2]

Posted in Faith, Friendship, SexualityLeave a comment

I apologize for the lengthy delay in posting. The summer has gotten away from me more than any other year. I’m used to being a bit more relaxed in the summer, even if I had a job, because it was between school years. This summer has seemed particularly busy to me, though. For one thing, I had been getting up the past four weeks at 3:30 a.m. for my 4:30 shifts at Target. Thank God that’s over because I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep, not working out enough because I didn’t have the energy, and not cleaning up at home so our apartment was a horrid mess. Then, add in that I bought the Sims 3 with some leftover birthday money and most of my free time, along with my husband’s, went towards leading our double lives on the Sims. I created roommates who fell in love and worked hard in their careers while raising three children and my husband (who had never played it before) created a single sim to play who after some time began the search for immortality. Tells you a little something about our personalities, eh?

This post, however, is a continuation in the series on growing up Gay and Christian, and it’s fitting that the Sims came back into my life since the last time I had played it was in high school. As far as senior year goes, it began the same as all the others. A renewed promise to God to let go of lust and to embrace piety. And like every other year, I failed. And to top it off, I began to like a guy. It was the first time that I wasn’t simply in lust over another boy. I was in like and the bug had bitten me bad. He was my first real crush, and as anyone can remember of their first crush, everything about them can melt your heart. His smile, his laugh, his mischievous eyes,  the laundry detergent smell from his clothes all enveloped themselves into my psyche as the only possibility for my life. Suddenly, my desires didn’t seem so bad, so different from everyone else’s. It seemed so normal and so natural for me to like another boy. I felt the flutter in my stomach when our hands touched, when he smiled at me or talked directly to me. I felt the world flip on its side when I’d do anything for him over and above that which I’d do for my friends. Yes, I was naive in my affections, but that’s how first crushes come to us. They come in unexpected places, through unexpected people, and they almost always don’t work out the way you want them to.

This was the tipping point for me. I accepted that I liked this other human being as more than just a friend, and it was another boy. I began to walk away from the concept of God that had been given to me and that I had cultivated over seventeen years of life. My concept didn’t change, but rather I did. In my anger, I decided that since God did not change me, I wanted nothing to do with God. So, I walked away. I ignored the presence that continued to walk alongside me. And through this walking away, this ignoring of God, I began to find myself and to acknowledge who I was. I began the long, arduous journey of learning to accept my sexual orientation and to love myself. I cut for the last time senior year, the emotional pain had begun to lessen as I let in the feelings I had so desperately been fighting with all my being. It’s amazing to note the healing that occurs in a person when they begin to accept their sexuality. I stopped binging and purging on a regular basis. It still happened once or twice over the next year because my self-worth was still far too entangled with achievement and whether or not I was ‘doing enough.’ I wasn’t instantly healed, but that’s not a surprise. Overnight healing doesn’t happen with things like this. It takes plenty of time and lots of love, from both other people and from oneself.

The last half of senior year was one of the happiest and healthiest times for me in high school. I remember the night I told one of my best friends about the boy I liked through a text. (I never came out and told my friends I was gay. I simply told them I liked a boy.) A few nights later we stayed up late one night on a porch swing in her backyard, talking, telling things we hadn’t told each other or other people before. I talked about this boy, about the depression and the cutting and the binging and purging. We spun our stories late into the night, weaving our friendship together in a way I hadn’t with anyone yet before.

It was magic and it was healing and it was the seed that gave me courage to begin coming out to my closest friends that summer after high school. Some were shocked and others were not, but all met me with open arms and love big enough to fill the hole in my scared, vulnerable heart. I think it was my hometown friends who began to shape me in a way that left me open to the theology that would enter my life in college. Their unwavering friendship and support was a shaping force in my faith once I returned. For I believe that God enters into friendship with us, in all God’s otherness and bigness and smallness, God chooses to be friends with God’s creation, which we are but a small part. And in that friendship, God shows us unwavering love and support. God is loyal to us even when we can’t find it in our hearts to trust. God loves us when we can barely hold ourselves together. God gives us grace and forgiveness for hiding a part of us we were scared to share with others. God opens the door for us to be vulnerable and then God gives us strength and courage to love ourselves and to tell the world who we really are.

Thank God for honesty and vulnerability. Thank God for friendships that are strong and courageous and tender and supportive and enthusiastic. And thank you to the friends who heard my vulnerability, my confession, and stepped in to say, I love you no matter what. You changed my world with your hugs and your listening ears. I could not have begun to accept my sexuality and learn to be myself without you, dear friends. You gave me courage and love when I so desperately needed it, and so I raise a glass to you and to all the friends who have ever given a young queer kid the space and the love to be themselves.

Previous posts in this series: Gay and Christian [High School Part 1], Gay and Christian [Surviving Middle School], Gay and Christian [The Early Years]

The Dark Ferret Society: Friendship, Family, and the Importance of Fighting Injustice

Posted in Friendship, WritingLeave a comment

The past few days I have found my thoughts growing darker and darker as Trump continues to win primaries and people continue to cling to their racism instead of giving it up for a chance at a better home for future generations. I stock shelves thinking the world is going up in flames, that some people like to watch the world burn (and not the good kind of Bern). Then, when I feel most hopeless, I remember that my friend Emily wrote a book! A book filled with mystery and adventure. A book filled with friendship and family. A book filled with injustice and the teenagers who right the scales of injustice through mischief, through pranks, through targeting those at the source of the injustice.

Friends, Emily Humpherys (who also blogs regularly at www.emilyhumpherys.com) wrote a book called The Dark Ferret Society and it’s for purchase right now on Amazon. Here’s the link:The Dark Ferret Society. Go buy it right now because it’s truly delightful! I had the privilege to read and review it before it was published.

The Dark Ferret Society is a coming-of-age story about a redheaded (my kinda family) girl by the name of Ruby Fink (great name, right?). Ruby’s the daughter of famous photographer, Frank Fink, and that means they move on a regular basis, going wherever Frank’s work takes him. Therefore, Ruby’s family is grounded in rituals, routines that bind them to each other and their temporary homes as opposed to a particular location or town. Each new house means a new dining room table, a new school, new people that Ruby barely comes to call friends, until she attends Desert Academy in Snowflake, Arizona and that all changes.

Over the course of her time at Desert Academy, Ruby is initiated into The Dark Ferret Society. The DFS is a secret group at the high school who prank both the school and specific individuals. The nature of the pranks are to right the wrongs that have occurred at Desert Academy, to bring justice to the students who are picked on and to the teachers who are tormented by wealthy students who can get away with anything.

The book is full of secrets, adventure is around every corner, and whimsy is throughout. It wouldn’t be an Emily Humpherys novel without whimsical characters, without hilarious pranks, without the love that binds friends and family together. This YA novel will warm your heart while making you shout in surprise (and often in outrage, too) at every twist and turn. If you’re looking for the next best book to read, look no further: The Dark Ferret Society is just for you (or your kids)(or both!).

This quote is taken from the beginning of the book and gives you a taste of the ritual, of the adventure, of the Ruby Fink I have come to know and love:

“Ruby Fink sat on a bench across the street from Desert Academy writing on her canvas tennis shoes. Ruby considered herself a professional at beginnings, so much so that she started all of her first days the same. She brushed a strand of her long, red hair away from her face as she inked Snowflake, Arizona in an arc near Copenhagen, Denmark and Istanbul, Turkey on her left shoe. She didn’t remember when she started turning her favorite pair of tennis shoes into a passport, but the Shoe Tradition was important. This way, every place she lived traveled with her, every place her parents dared to call home collected on her feet…Ruby took a deep breath and whispered “Geronimo!” to herself as she stepped over the sidewalk and onto school grounds.”

May you take a deep breath and whisper “Geronimo!” as you step into adventure and into Ruby’s trusty, traveled shoes.

Phone a Friend

Posted in FriendshipLeave a comment

Growing up I would watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and think to myself, “If I won a million dollars, I’d go on several vacations. One with my family, one with my friends from school, one with my friends from church, etc.” I didn’t want anyone to be left out from one of my Caribbean vacations (because what 12 year old from the Midwest doesn’t want to go to Jamaica and the Bahamas?!). Every time I watched it, though, and someone would “phone a friend,” a sense of dread would overcome me. “Oh no,” I’d think, “They’re entrusting their chance at a million dollars to a friend. Bad idea. What if they get it wrong? That’s going to ruin the friendship.” Inevitably, some got it wrong, but often the person they called got it right because the contestant chose the smartest friend or the friend best versed in history or 80s rock bands. I would sigh with relief and continue dreaming about what to do with my imaginary fortune.

Life now feels like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, except the million dollar prize is now just living life well and not losing my mind, and phoning a friend seems like the best option. Granted, I have my best friend with me all the time (I’m married to him). But, sometimes, I just need a little comfort outside of that. Yesterday I woke up to pictures on my Newsfeed about all my Jersey people’s day off because of storm Jonas and the piles of snow he dropped on them. They were watching movies together, playing in the snow drifts together, and partaking in general merriment of which I could not enjoy because I was getting dressed for church 900 miles away.

I didn’t realize how much it was upsetting me until Reed and I were debriefing about our first visit to a church in St. Louis. He had generally positive things to say about it and I could barely acknowledge any of the positives. We got back to our apartment and I broke down crying. Surprise, surprise, my feelings about that church weren’t exactly about that church. I missed our New Jersey friends. I missed church in New Jersey. I missed being known by the people stopping by the service desk at the library where I worked and by the friends in my classes. I missed being known by people at church. I missed the liturgy and lectionary of churches in New Jersey. I missed being totally and wholly accepted as a gay man (and gay couple) in church.

Then, on my way back to the apartment from an errand later that day, Amelia called. My friend phoned me. And, it was exactly what I needed. We spent most of our conversation bemoaning our lives and situations and why we weren’t living in the same place because it would be easier going through the same things together. We are really good at lamenting together (one could also read complaining in place of lamenting), but we laugh and joke our way through it. Laughter and grief go hand in hand many times and it’s almost always better when done with a friend. It was a brief call because she had to go minister to college students (because she’s a boss like that,) but that short call made my day a whole lot brighter. Not only did I get to talk to her, but Reed and I had a package waiting from her and Andrew on our doorstep with the fantastic mugs pictured above. Friendship for the win!

Next time you’re missing someone or something, or the next time you’re not sure how you’re going to make it through the day, phone a friend. When you know someone else will know just how to meet you where you are, phone a friend. When you need someone to hang out with because life sucks or life is great, but your day is terrible, phone a friend. I should have phoned a friend, but I didn’t. Instead, she phoned me, and it made all the difference. Don’t forget the community of people you have waiting at your doorstep, if only you open the door and let them in. Some are waiting patiently for you to open, some are knocking politely, and others are ringing your doorbell profusely every time they come over (you know who you are). Do yourself a favor and open it. You won’t regret it.