Queering My Faith - The Long Road Home

 "Who hurt you so deeply?"  His words cut right through the facade, straight to my heart.  And they started a long overdue healing process in my life.  Paul could read the pain in my eyes when he asked me the question.  I couldn't answer, my tears spoke for me.  I don't remember the service that day, but Paul's words stuck with me and I knew I needed to make a change.  The life I was living was miserable, lonely, and hollow.  

As I sit here it feels like it all happened in the distant past, in another lifetime. But in reality it wasn't that long ago. It was about 4 years ago that I really started putting in the work to bring myself back to life.  I knew I needed help; the wounds were too deep and had gone untended for too long for me to handle them on my own.  The thought of asking for help terrified me.  I had been in and out of counseling at various points in my life and the thought of going back made me cringe. The choice to enter counseling had always been made for me, I went begrudgingly and skipped out at the first opportunity. At this point Aimee and I had been together for almost 6 years, many of those years I had been lost in a haze. She stuck by me and loved me, even when I hurt her with my actions.  So when I made the phone call to my doctor and to a counselor, it was as much for her, as it was for me.   It was the love of my Aimee and a desire to finally rid myself of the wounds in my past that carried me to my first session.

I strongly dislike taking any kind of medication, even Advil when I have a headache.  I walked into my doctor's office seeking help for depression, fully expecting I would be leaving with a prescription.  I had been on anti-depressants before and had always ended up taking myself off of them without telling my doctor.  So I was honest and open with my doc about my lack of love for meds, of any kind, and my history of ditching them when I thought they were not working anymore.  She was awesome and open with me.  She let me know that it was important that I take them, but if for any reason I wanted to go off, to call her first.  I had never been given that option before and knowing that I would not be on them forever was what I needed to hear.

Next came counseling.  In many ways this was more difficult than taking a pill.  But I also knew it was necessary for any healing to take place in my life.  This counseling experience was life changing for me. For the first time in my life I allowed myself to truly share what was going on under the surface.  I was very aware of my tendency to say what my counselor wanted to hear and to bail as soon as I could.  And honestly there were times when I wanted to do that, but I didn't let myself. I stuck with it, through the dark and difficult, so I could start growing again.    

As I started to heal, I was able to start exploring the role of religion in my life.  What started to emerge was so different from anything I had experienced.  This time around there was no denying my queerness, there was no putting an essential part of my life back in a box and hiding it away.  If Christianity was going to have a role in my life, it had to mesh with my queer identity.  Some of you may read this and cringe.  I know exactly what you are thinking, that I can't have both; that there must be a choice between the two.  I respect that opinion, I respect that is the truth that you hold.  I respect that is the faith tradition to which you cling.  For me it does not ring true.  I lived through a "pray the gay away" experience completely denying that part of me existed.  I also lived through a period of completely denying any role of Christianity in my life.  Both experiences lead me into serious darkness and if I was going to live an honest life, a life of integrity I had to make room for both experiences.  

I have come to realize that I walked away from Evangelical Christianity, not from God.  I walked away from a way of seeing the world that is so full of fear.  I walked away from an "us v them" mentality, that can only divide and never bring people together.  I walked away from a black and white world and stepped into a world full of color, full of light, and full of love.  There definitely is a comfort that comes from living in a worldview that is prescribed and laid out for you.  It is awesome to not think and not be challenged. I totally get it, I lived it, I knew it.  Living in such a prescribed way is too confining for me and I believe too small of view of God.  We have made God into our image, rather than the other way around.  If God created us in hir image, then we are far more expansive and amazing than we can ever imagine, because God is far more expansive and amazing that we can ever imagine.  We are far greater than we will ever know and far greater than we can ever envision ourselves to be.  

We are limitless if we allow ourselves to fully live into that calling on our lives.  We unfortunately have setup systems of comfort and control.  We live is boxes because it is far more comfortable to live in the known than the unknown.  There have always been people who have lived outside of the box; they have been called mystics, heretics, saints and other things.  They lived lives beyond the average experience, not because they were somehow better at communicating with God, but because they got it.  They understood the expansiveness of God and tried to capture that in their own lives.  It was through the exploration of my queerness, from stepping outside of my own prescribed boxes that I was able to start to "get" that understanding of God.  My lived experience as a trans queer person informs my view of God and in turn as my view of God expands so does my understanding of queerness.  God will never live within a prescribed box, no matter the size or shape of the space.  We can try and try and try to fit God down into our image but ze will never fit.  Ever.  So if we can't get God to fit in our box, maybe we should try to live without the box.  It can be uncomfortable, but trust me when I tell you, that living into the fullness of who you are, is a truly spiritual experience.  As I continue to accept myself for the fullness and wonder that I am, the more connected and in tune I feel with God.  

So find your passion my friends, live into the fullness of who you are, and connect with something greater than yourself.  You don't need to use the same language that I do.  I use God because that is what I know, that is what I have experienced.. You can use whatever language that is comfortable for you to express your spirituality.  Again, I can hear some of you wanting to call me out for not toeing the party line of Evangelical Christianity.  And again I say, I get it.  Call me what you will, pray for me all you want, live in the boxes that are comfortable, that is your choice. And this is mine.  I choose to live an open, expansive, inclusive, powerful life.  There is no box that can hold me now; I will never go back into a black and white world.  I invite you to step out into the world of color, into a world that is full of mystery and wonder, and a world that is ready for you. The question is, are you ready for it?

Queering My Faith - Walking Away

I was exhausted. From the beginning of December to the beginning of February, I had been in the fight of my life. After giving my resignation, a weight lifted but a deep sadness also started to take hold of me. That sadness clung to me for years and even now as a write this there are still remnants remaining in my heart. I loved working with young people. I loved watching them interact with their world in amazing and powerful ways. In an instant that world was gone. Not because I was horrible at my job, not because I had committed a crime, but because I had the courage to finally accept myself and live an honest, open life.

From my birth to the point I left my job, my faith had been the central identity in my life. Everything that I thought about myself and the world was in relation to my Christian faith. I was a Christian woman, a Christian lesbian, a Christian (fill in the blank). It was the core of my identity, my entire world was built upon that foundation. So the rejection I felt from the church was more than just losing my job. To me it was aimed at the very core of who I was and if other Christians felt that way, the rejection must therefore extend to the way God felt about me.

I had a few loose ends to tie after my resignation, there was a big program at the end of the month that I was committed to seeing through, but that was it.  The Sunday after my resignation I did not want to be in church in Moscow, I didn't want to face a bunch of questions as to why I was leaving, so Aimee and I went to Spokane.  We were still just really good friends at this point.  I had poured my heart out to her for months, telling her how I felt about her and she always replied with I like you as a friend, but nothing more.  So for me, leaving the church also meant I was potentially losing a friend.  I had no intention of staying in Moscow after I resigned.  My plan was to move back to Spokane and start a new chapter in my life. But that weekend in Spokane was amazing and changed everything. (Even if I didn't know it at the time). We hung out at my mom's house, I read Aimee children's books from my childhood, we stayed up late talking and we found our second home, Bethany Presbyterian Church.

We were a little nervous about going to church that Sunday, I wasn't sure if I was ready to step foot in another church so soon.  My heart was still breaking and my wounds were so raw.  I almost started crying in the parking lot. A sign out side the door read, "Black White, Gay Straight, Rich Poor, It's All Good."  Those words were salve to my soul.  Walking in the door, being met with joy and love was almost too much for me.  We walked in an Paul, the pastor, immediately recognized me.  He had known my family for years and as he gave me a gigantic, massive, wonderful hug, my world melted around me. Trust when I say there is nothing in this world like a hug from Paul Rodkey. Aimee and I sat in church that morning surrounded by love, surrounded by grace, and surrounded by amazing wonderful people.   When the service ended we sat stunned at the awesomeness of Bethany.

That experience was the beginning of many, many wonderful friendships and a second family for us.  Words are not adequate to describe my love for the Bethany congregation, we may be small, but we are mighty!  But at the time, the awesomeness and the warmth was not enough to heal my heart.  I had been wounded so deeply that I just could not let myself be vulnerable again in a church setting.  We attended church when we were in Spokane, but I wouldn't let my guard down and fully engage with the community.  After a while we just stopped going to church.  We came up with plenty of superficial reasons for not going up to Bethany, but for me I had buried my anger, my hurt, my feelings of betrayal, and not dealt with the wounds so the simple act of going to church was painful. I just couldn't do it.

At the same time as we were venturing to church on a increasingly irregular basis, I had started my grad program in Anthropology and was heavily involved in the Gay Straight Alliance.  I had always had a community around me, that was one of the things I loved about be in a church.  So getting involved in the LGBT community in Moscow was very, very, important to me.  It was through this community that I started to come into a full acceptance of my sexual orientation.  I had a certain friend in the community that I hung out with a lot, we were always at her place, my place, or at the bar.  Talking for hours about nothing and everything.  She was also openly hostile toward Christianity and fueled my anger and frustration towards the institution.  She could see no distinction between the type of Christianity that wholly rejected LGBT people and the type of Christianity that was open, supportive, and nurturing. The more time I spent with her, the less I could see that distinction and the more distant I grew away from my roots. There came a time when I didn't even call myself a Christian.  I wanted nothing to do with the church and I was completely fine with the separation.  At least that's what I told myself.  I left it all behind and walked away.

This was a particularly dark period in my life.  I used alcohol to numb my feelings and when that didn't help I returned to cutting as a means to get the trapped feelings out.  I would not talk about what I was feeling with anyone.  I packed on the pounds over this period as well.  I had so much internalized self hatred that I just didn't care.  I was lost without my safety net of the church.  My life was by no means perfect when I was entrenched behind the walls of the church, but at least I had ways of pretending that it was.  Outside of the church walls I had nothing to fall back on. My friends were all so new that they didn't really know me, or they only knew what I would allow them to see.  I was dying on the inside and it was starting to take its toll on my health and well being.