So there’s my long rant and ramble about why gay is okay.
Here’s a great link sponsored by my church: http://www.sometimeschurchhurts.com/
No, that is not a subtle plug to get gay people to convert and come to church. It’s pretty much a statement saying that some Christians (and others) have been dumb in the past.
I’d like to stop being dumb.
So here’s this great guy who said this to me: “To tell me being gay is a sin is to tell me I am worth less than you. It is to tell me that I am not allowed to love the one I love as passionately as you love the one you are with. It is to deny me the right to love and be in love. It is to tell me that there is something inherently wrong with me because I’ve felt this way since I was little.”
Now, I don’t understand the being born or becoming gay thing, but that’s a moot point for me. My first point is, this guy is gay now. The second point point is, I love him. The third point is I’m only a human, and if I can love and feel compassion for him as an imperfect human, then how on earth can God NOT?
So here is my take on why so many Christians are still so anti-gay. Go with me here for just a minute:
Christians are taught a (unfortunate) fundamental principal: God loves you, IF.
So our whole lives we are taught to fear the loss of God’s love.
We are taught that if you lose God’s love, you can’t get into Heaven and will suffer for eternity. And damn, y’all, they make that SCARY.
I believe that many average Christians today are simply afraid that if they befriend or “accept” someone who is gay then they are guilty by association and are going to hell.
It’s sad to me that we think God’s salvation is so delicate that it is so easily offended and so easily broken. If we truly believe in and follow Christ, and if God’s spirit dwells in us and among us, should we not stop to consider this instead of discounting the humanity around us because of a sexual preference?
Can I really not love someone who is gay without worrying about their soul or mine?
Fortunately I can. I can see beyond a list of rules and reasons. I can see that everything God has made He has made perfectly. Lady Gaga beat most of us to the punch on that one – you are perfect. Period.
I’ll be honest, I’m still nervous around gay people. Mostly because I am afraid I’ll offend them by saying something stupid. Also because I’m a Christian (even that word represents so much of what I do NOT want it to represent). Saying “I’m a Christian” usually means “You’re a sinner and I’m here to brow beat you into my belief system.”
Dear gay, bi, trans friends: please love me while I try to reprogram my mind that has been – even if in a small manner – intolerant or fearful. Please don’t lump me into a group who would try to save your soul to the bitter end. Please know that I believe God IS love by definition, and you are made up of the same stuff and God that I am. And if you don’t believe in the same God I do, that’s okay too because still you are made of the same flesh and bone that I am, and I could never throw a stone at you.
Having said that, I’d like to address my Christian pals. I know some of you will think I’ve gone off the deep end, that I’ve become a liberal or I’ve lost my own salvation by my heresy. It’s cool – you can choose to continue in a world of fear and anxiety, you can choose to alienate others, you can choose to harm and hurt others.
Someone said to me on Twitter that Christians were one of the main reasons for the suicide of many gay people. How sad. Whether it is true or not I don’t know, but what is true is that we’ve given off that perception. If it is true, that’s even worse.
I challenge you to rethink your thinking. I challenge you to pray and meditate and seek out a different truth. Stop being afraid of losing your own salvation because you can accept something that has been ingrained in you as being so bad.
I’m afraid this writing sounds all too fresh, too juvenile. Well, that’s because this is a truth I’ve only recently (in the past 5 years or so) come to believe. And I don’t say I love gay people to be trendy or cool or progressive. I’d actually like to drop the gay part. After all, I also love chocolate-loving people and dog-loving people, and people who go to the gym. I don’t know if I love skinny beautiful model-esque people but that’s only because I’m jealous.
I love people.
I hope this is a lesson I will continue to pass along to my two children: to accept and love everyone and anyone. I don’t even want to teach a message of “tolerance” – for me, tolerating is doing your best to not be annoyed by someone or something. Loving someone who has a different anything than you do should be the norm, not something you need to work at.
For sake of not wanting to write a ten thousand page blog, I’m going to skip a bit here to the not so distant past.
I’ve really come a long way in my own Christianity. I’ve done away with most of the things I learned at church – trying to please God all of the time – and to neglect my humanness – was too difficult. Impossible really. Everyone messes up. We all do something that is a “do not do” in the Bible. Who can be perfect?
I had to accept that we all “sin” – we all do stuff that according to traditional Christianity isn’t okay. So the whole “gay is a sin” thing stopped making sense to me when I realized something about the teachings I’d heard growing up: “gay is a sin and so is lying but lying doesn’t automatically make you ineligible for Heaven, only being gay.”
That made zero sense to me. So Jesus died for ALL our sins, but not being gay? I had sex before marriage, so am I excluded too? After all, aren’t both a “sexual” sin?
Do you see where I’m going here? It just didn’t make sense to me.
I’ve had to rethink a lot of this, especially after I sat down one night with a super cool guy who is gay. He’s a big burly man who is a great big old bear. If you are gay you should smile at that comment. So yeah, big guy. He’s not skinny and into fashion and doesn’t walk around with his hand flapping around and he didn’t have hair better than mine. I was actually a little surprised to hear he was gay.
I was honest with a mutual friend, and I’m going to be honest here: I wanted to be okay with gay. I wanted to be this guy’s friend. Unfortunately, the years of “gay is wrong” had me wired to believe that. It was all I could do to not cry and ask this guy to stop being gay so that he could go to heaven. I didn’t want to be THAT person.
He agreed to meet at my place, and I told him how I felt about “gay.” He listened and understood that I wasn’t attacking, but that I was trying to understand what being gay meant to him, why did he think he was gay, or know he was gay, and why was it such a big damn deal?
It felt so good to talk about it. I’d hate to ever offend someone but let me say this: if you are struggling with the concept of gay, talk to a gay person. They will have all of the answers you need. More importantly, they’ll put a human face on being gay and suddenly you realize one of a few things like I did.
The first thing that went through my head was this: okay let’s pretend gay is a sin. Mr. Gay is a sinner. I am also a sinner because I’ve lied before, I cheated a few times in high school, I’ve been mean to people, and I stole a $3.99 ring at Claire’s when I was 15.
Now Mr. Gay and I are on even ground. His gay “sin” was no worse than my unethical “sin.” Already I felt better.
The next thing that dawned on me was this simple fact: he chose to have sex in a different way than I did.
Say what?
Yeah, that was my big fat profound moment: his lifestyle of choice is simply to love a man. The same way I’d probably like a guy with brown hair and muscles or a blonde haired dude who likes dogs. It’s what he is attracted to. Can that be bad?
I had to kick my theology to the curb here – I was having a hard time here – but didn’t the bible say that it’s really bad? Well, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to sit outside of city limits when I have my period but you don’t see me doing that, and the Bible says that, too.
I’ve been debating on going back to school. I haven’t been able to pin down what I wanted to do though, no idea what classes to take or what degree to work toward. It was driving me crazy. In between applying for and looking for jobs, I have spent hours on the Dept Of Labor Statistics website reading their Occupational Outlook Handbook. It’s a nifty tool – it tells you – by occupation – what the job outlook is gonna be, how much median income is, what training is needed etc for tons of jobs. I knew I wanted to find a job that would pay enough for me to support the kids without worrying whether or not child support was coming. I want there to be money in the bank for school pictures, yearbooks, and if my kids want to go to a birthday party I want to be able to afford a gift for them to take!
Let me tell you – I didn’t know that it would be hard to pick what I love, what I CAN do, what I WANT to do. I have been researching and reading for probably a good month and a half if not more.
And finally now today, a little breakthrough (major maybe!?). I found a great job working for the Air Force (as a civilian). It was helping coordinate services for families who have suffered domestic violence or child abuse. It was more than that, but I don’t feel like writing the entire job description.
Long story short, I wondered what degree it would take to do this job well. I could probably pull it off now, but I want more training for my future. Multiple tests have me scoring high in Social Work, Criminal Justice and Law and Education – three things I love! (Writing was one but I doubt there’s money in that for me (although I have lots to say don’t I!?) as was hair stylist and truck driver). 
Oh, I forgot I said long story short. I’ll skip to the good stuff.
I’ve decided to go for a double major: Sociology and Criminal Justice. Many of the requirements are the same: one particular class is required for both degrees, so you don’t have to take two classes, just one. It’s totally doable. If I work to the masters level, I can teach. I can also find more jobs that I’d be qualified for. I’m still debating on a minor, it’s a tossup between anthropology or psychology. I’m leaning toward psychology because it will factor in well when dealing with people in many legal or social service need based programs or situations.
So that’s that. I’m really excited about it! I’m calling a few universities tomorrow, and then it’s off to enroll and start school sometime very soon!
I’m a little nervous about full time school (esp if I do the double major) and any potential jobs that come up. I’d love to just stick to school full time but I’m not sure scholarships/grants will cover it all. It could, especially if I start applying now. You’d think a single mom would qualify for a lot but not really – many programs I’ve found are for high school students.
However, I’ll be a first generation student and that helps. There are other life-situations which may help out too, but we’ll see.
So yay! I’m very, very excited. This all feels like exactly what I’d like to do, and doubling up really opens the doors for many more job opportunities.
Cross your fingers for me! And seriously, if you want to adopt us and let us live in your finished basement while I go to school, that’s perfectly fine with me!!! 
♥ to you.
Dear Mom:
Somehow we’ve made it through the past 10 years without you! It still hurts – it makes my throat burn – to think about you and what you went through, how unfair it is that you were so sick and had to go.
On a happier note, we’re cared for by people YOU knew. Want to hear a funny story?
In October about 4 years ago I was looking for a church to go to in Raleigh. Not a religious church who pushed their own agenda down my throat, but a place I could go and find God apart from religious rule and domination. I tried out this one place that felt like it was the place for me to be.
It wasn’t but 10 minutes into my visit that it dawned on me that holy heck, this was the church YOU had attended, and that pastor guy talking is the guy who did your funeral!
It didn’t take long for them to realize who I was, and we were drawn into a family full of love and care. They’ve loved us and cared for us countless times. I can’t help but think that you did that, that you are up somewhere watching down on us, sending people our way to help us the way you would have wanted to.
Every year I blog or post something telling you how proud you’d be of your grandkids. They’re amazing. Your granddaughter makes faces like you did, she has a laugh that sounds like yours sometimes, she even stands like you did when you were on the phone, one hand hooked on the back of your pants. And your son, he’s amazing and brilliant. He has your talent for drawing and thinking things through as black and white!
I do my best to help them through hard times, and boy has it been hard. I could have used you around many times, but somehow I find it in myself how to move on, push through, and make it. I know you’d be awful proud of all of us here. You’d have loved your son’s wedding (omg after 10 years!!!), you’d have loved that your sister came for us and was there when you couldn’t be. We’ve met up with friends from high school! You’d LOVE facebook, Mad Men – I can see you working in their phone switchboard room.
We’d visit you every day if we could, and you could bake all the cookies you wanted with your grandbabies, and take them shopping and to the park.
I wish you were here oh so much, and I wish I could go back and undo things that cannot now be undone.
But this is life as we will know it, and perhaps it’s true that we’re only in each other’s lives for a season, for a short time. And while we didn’t get along, probably really hated each other at times, I’m thankful for the time we did have. I remember fondly the good times and how you created a childhood of magic and wonder for me. I remember the movie marathons and the munchy food binges. And I remember hiding the dirty dishes in the oven when company showed up unexpectedly.
I can pretend you hear this as I write it and it offers me some comfort. Please do go talk God’s ear off and ask Him to send a little help our way. We could use it!
We love you, we miss you.
It was my birthday in February, 2000. My mom was exhausted after baking a special cake for me. She’d taken some cake decorating classes and was quite the artiste when it came to decorating. She made me a killer Hello Kitty cake – it was awesome. But she was SO tired at the end of the day, more tired than I’d ever seen her. She was on oxygen 24/7 by now, more than ever before. She hated the cannula (the part that fits under your nose for oxygen to flow in) and yanked it off every time we took pictures of her and the baby. She didn’t want us to remember her that way.
She wasn’t able to go with us to the museum in Raleigh and stayed at home instead. She was too tired to help bathe the baby or do anything strenuous and when I left I realized the trip wasn’t as nice as it could have been.
I returned to Colorado, worried but I put it out of my mind. How many times had we heard she was really really sick, or that things were taking a turn for the worse? This surely was another short-term setback; she’d be fine soon enough. I went back to my troubles in my own life and got a job to help get my mind on better things.
In August I got a call that she was very ill. My dad was leaving for work at 6 am and returning home around 8 or 9 pm to take care of her through the night. My brother would help as he could during the day, but he was busy with his own work. I decided I’d come out with my daughter, now 15 months old, and I’d help take care of her. At first I wasn’t “allowed’ to, but after begging and pleading to help care for my mom, my husband consented to let me go.
I was shocked by what I saw. To this day these memories have been as painful as the original experience, and I hope with time, and retelling our story, that the pain will lessen and that I can focus only on the good times.
My mother was practically immobile. She sat in a wheelchair or some other chair in the living room. She was unable to sleep in her bed, it was too painful and uncomfortable. She had water developing in her lungs, her heart, and her body puffed up with the water which would sometimes seep out of her pores. It was horrible.
We had to bathe her in a chair in the bathroom, she had to use a potty chair to use the toilet. She was humiliated and embarrassed to say the least.
One day she was trying to rest in the guest room while I cleaned up some dishes. I heard a crash and ran to the room to find her on the floor in a seizure, her pill tray knocked over and her medicines spilled all over the floor. Two feet away was my 15 month old, hand reaching for the brightly colored pills. I didn’t know who to grab first or what to do. I grabbed my daughter, shoving her out of the room while calling to my mom. My mom came out of the seizure, unaware of what happened, and I helped her to her bed. She assured me she was fine and I realized my mom was really sick this time. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. How do you begin to prepare yourself to walk down the path where there is no life at the end? How do you spend the final weeks, days with someone you know will soon be gone?
I would lay in bed at night, listening to my mom cry out in pain as my dad tried to bathe her. I was so mad. I cursed God for being so horrible to treat her this way, after all the years she’d shared her faith in Him, her belief in Him. He was cruel, unkind and unfair. I told Him that if He didn’t heal my mother or relieve her of her pain soon, then I’d never tell my daughter about Him, I’d never allow her to set foot in a church to worship such a loveless being.
A few days later, I got a phone call from Colorado. My husband was having an affair, there was mention of a pregnancy, and all at once my world as I knew it was as bad as it could possibly be. My brain paused all that was around me. I think I could have wandered into a busy street and not have realized it I was so upset.
I had to go back to Colorado. I wasn’t equipped for this hardship. I couldn’t take care of my mother. I couldn’t administer the new drugs directly into her heart through a experimental procedural machine thingie that my brother was trained to help clean up and monitor. I didn’t know what to do if she had another seizure. She was in and out of the hospital, I couldn’t take it anymore. And now this other mess, what to do?
I left her is what I did. She begged, she pleaded, she threatened. She even said if I returned she’d have social services come after me for bringing my daughter back to Colorado and back to the unknown. I told her I’d never speak to her ever again if she did. It was horrible. But I left.
We didn’t talk much. I moved in with a friend for a few weeks til I got my head on straight.
I was at Wal-Mart on the morning of September 30th when I got the phone call.
My mom was dead.
I wasn’t sure how it was possible, maybe she was asleep. Why do our brains think that it is possible to receive a death notification as an accident?
I’d just talked to her a few days before. She was out of sorts, unfocused. She hadn’t slept for days and I was mad that she didn’t sound interested in our conversation. The last thing I ever spoke to my mom was “Why don’t you call me back when you aren’t so busy with something else?”
She was afraid of being alone when she died. We promised her she wouldn’t be. But even my dad and brother needed SOME sleep, and one night while she was in the hospital, they left. The doctor’s gave her some medicine to help her sleep. At some point in the early hours of the morning, her lungs filled with water and she pretty much drowned in her sleep. Alone.
Somehow I made it back to North Carolina. Somehow we made it through the wake and the funeral. Somehow we made it through the awful realization of what had happened. It was fast, so fast. Surely for her it was not fast enough: the pain, the medicine, the horribly painful procedures and tests that left her sore and bruised for days. The apathy her family had for her condition, how we thought it was just another bad round that would end up just fine.
Somehow we made it through those days, weeks, months. Somehow we still make it through the years.
Every year I think about my mom a little more than usual both on the day she was born and on the day she died.
On the anniversary of her death, I usually like to “write” her a letter, telling her how much I miss her and how much she would have loved her grandkids. She knew my daughter, my oldest, but I didn’t have my son until about a year and a half after she died.
This year, however, I thought I’d sit down and share a little bit about my mom with you all. Those of you who are my facebook friends and come read my blog often, I’d bet on it that my mom would have friended you on facebook too as a mutual friend of mine. She was like that – she liked to be friends with my friends!
My mom was born in New Jersey – I think. I’ve had a Benadryl before bed tonight and my brain is fuzzy. Well, no matter. She was born in New Jersey or New York, new something but not New Mexico.
It was from my mom that my brother and I developed our love of reading, writing, arts, travel, history and old movies. She introduced me to Rogers and Hammerstein, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, and numerous other classics. She could whip up a bedtime story to rival any storyteller; I’ve often heard her siblings share memories of her character Mr. Nobody which was so sad they’d be left in tears.
She made moving an adventure, which must not have been easy for a young mom traveling with two young kids to and fro Germany and around the US so much that it seemed it was almost every year we had to move. She’d make it exciting for us and we’d get books from the library about our new destination and she’d save shoeboxes for my brother and I and fill them with treats and goodies ONLY for the plane ride or car trip.
My mom is also responsible for my spiritual upbringing. My mother grew up Catholic and her personality and the way she was wired deemed she’d be the judge of your soul only second to God. She meant well and just wanted everyone to find the same hope she believed she had, a hope for life eternal, a hope for the expectation of answered prayers. Until her dying day she *knew* God would heal her sick body, even if that healing came in the form of her passing from this world to the next.
I’m sure she offended many with her black-and-white thinking. There was no grey for my mom, and she’d argue her way through without budging on her own beliefs. She wasn’t very skilled in accepting others beliefs when they differed so much from hers, but she loved those even more fiercely than those who had like a like mind about religion and spirituality. It was those she prayed for hours and hours into the night, hoping that they would some day catch a glimmer of the God she served.
My mom was pretty healthy to my recollection until 1988 or so. I have bits and pieces of her getting sick, I mostly remember her mentioning her shoes didn’t fit much and she was in and out of doctor appointments. Then one day we got the news: she had a disease – Arthritic Systemic Sclerosis, or Scleroderma. I remember them telling us she was sick, that sometimes people with this disease only lived for a year, some maybe longer, and that we would be reassigned from our post in Germany to a base in Aberdeen, Maryland.
I don’t recall being terribly upset, it was a hard pill to swallow either way. I was probably more upset about moving (again!?!?) and leaving my good friends (again!??!) than my mother’s impending death.
It was for the next few years that we lived with the stress of tests, test results and doctor visits and the never-changing prognosis “you could have about a year left to live.” After a while none of us really cared, and at some point it was declared that the disease was in remission. While my mom didn’t get better, she didn’t get worse, and that was a good thing.
However, she couldn’t climb stairs or walk long distances without becoming incredibly winded and out of breath. She didn’t have much physical stamina and coughing spells plagued her constantly. But she plodded along and was overjoyed when my daughter – her first and, at the time only, grandchild was born. She couldn’t travel to Colorado for the birth but sent treats and gifts in the mail. 3 months after the birth, she met my daughter and fell in love instantly.
In February of 2000 I was visiting my folks. I was young, married, a new mom and was struggling with an abusive relationship. I wasn’t sure what to do and I didn’t want to tell my parents the whole truth of my situation. Instead I tried to enjoy our visits as much as I could. This time would be different, this would be the last time I’d see my mom in this good of shape.
I’m leaving
I’m going away
I’m getting in a taxi
heading to the airport
He doesn’t stop me.
My heart breaks.
Feeling rather lost, lonely, wandering. Where on earth am I going!!??
Feeling overwhelmed. Frenetic voices in my head. Coming. Going. Staying.
Can’t connect the dots. Don’t see the design in the tapestry.
No rest in my sleep, no life in my day.
Alone yet consumed by others. Giving giving, waiting to receive.
Not understanding, heart breaking at the torment that is loss.
I thought I was. I thought we could.
I am not. We cannot.
One of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The more I read her writing, the more I think we would have understood each other very much.
Irreparableness
I have been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,–and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counselors, dear friends ? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more ?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I !
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.