Thursday, June 27, 2019

Coming Out/Happy Pride Month

You know those moments where something is very wrong and you feel your entire body begin to clench? Your fists are strong and your muscles are tight, you are prepared to fight or flee.
And in the next moment, when you are finally safe, you begin to release all of the tension that you didn't realize was building within you. Your heart rate steadies and your body begins to feel like your own again.

That's what coming out feels like for me. It's the process of releasing pressure that has built up for too long. It's finally taking deep breaths and letting myself be.

It's been almost a year since I began telling people I was gay. Sometimes through whispers and tears, other times through laughter and excitement.

I've received the full range of responses.
Some told me I was still welcome in the Kingdom of God, others told me I made them question if the Kingdom of God still exists.
Some told me I was going to hell while others loved me completely as I am.
Some were shocked and others said they always knew.

It's been a journey, my friends. There's been a lot of heartbreak but a hell of a lot more healing, a lot of loss but so much more love. I have discovered so much about myself and the kind of life I want to live.

What I have learned is that I must always choose to be brave in the face of fear, I must choose to be myself instead of who I was told to be.
I have learned that I am made in the image of God, and to destroy or repress any part of myself is to put limitations on God.
Most of all, I have learned that coming out is more than a moment. 
Coming out is a way of living, it's constantly choosing to be myself. Not only as a queer woman, but in all aspects of my life. I am going to be bold, I am going to love out loud, I am going to speak truth to power, I am going to push through discomfort, and I am going to chase healing.

Coming out is announcing to the world that I refuse to be anything less than all of myself. 

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Breaking the Temple

There is a temple in Cambodia called Ta Prohm (ប្រាសាទតាព្រហ្). It is one of the most beautiful temples I have ever seen, not because it is ornate or glamorous, but because it is falling apart.

You see, this temple has trees all around and throughout it. For centuries the trees have twisted and contorted, using the temple as their template for growth. Their branches reach through the windows and across the walls, certain rooms and alleyways are more living wood than ancient stone. It's hard to tell where the temple ends and the trees begin.

Until recently, the trees that once grew within the temple are now growing beyond the temple. In the process the structure is beginning to fall apart. Entire sections are inaccessible because of the inevitable wreckage these trees have caused.

I've felt a lot like those trees lately.

The structures that once told me where to turn and how to grow have now become constricting. Every step toward healing destroys more of the structure I was born into. I am grieving the loss of a clear path, uncertain about what lies beyond these walls.

I'll keep going though. Trees know nothing but growth or death, maybe humans aren't so different.

And besides, I have to believe God exists more in the vastness of the Sun than the boundaries of the temple. 

And there will be some wreckage. Because we are breaking through the very structure that guided and contained us for so long. But it is a holy destruction, tearing apart all that made us small and allowing our limbs to stretch toward the Sun.

I can’t help but remember a middle eastern man who burst into a temple tearing apart all their false belief, claiming that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it. In the end he was killed for those words, he came into new life through that death.

So here we go, through the dying and the breaking, into new life. 

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Where'd you lose it?

I lost my faith on the mission field. I saw the devastation of child trafficking and typhoons. My heart broke knowing that there are people who hurt more than I ever will simply because of their birthplace. I realized that they didn't feel god in the same ways I did. I decided that any god who favors me over the marginalized was not a god I wanted.

I found my faith on the mission field. When I went across the world to help and realized I was the helpless one. When "the least of these" were my best friends and I realized I was so much less than them. Everything I was taught to fear, atheists and prostitutes and mentally ill and impoverished, they knew God more than I ever had. I learned that God is the force that always stands on the side of the marginalized and broken, I found that was the God I wanted.

I lost my hope for love in a relationship. I felt used and misunderstood. I decided that no amount of romance was worth being made small. I embraced being single and decided that was exactly what life was meant to be.

I'm finding my hope for love in a relationship. I'm learning that true love makes you more of yourself instead of taking from you, I feel anything but small. I am embracing what it feels like to be seen and known and realizing that life was always meant to be full of love.

I lost my voice when I was a child. In a world of rigid rules I became exactly what was expected of me. I created a life that filled the void in other people's lives. I abandoned myself in the hopes of becoming someone others wouldn't abandon.

I am finding my voice in going back to my childhood. In reliving the moments where I was bruised and bloodied, in remembering the times I fell apart on a bathroom floor. In looking at the memories that hurt the most, I am finding I am stronger than I ever realized. I am realizing I have a lot to say.

I'm learning that we always find what we lost in the same place we lost it. 

On days like today when I feel like I am reliving the same pains time and time again, I have to remind myself that I am simply going back to where I was lost. I am not moving backwards, I am healing. The path to healing is a winding road. I am doing the hard work of finding myself again. And even though the terrain looks familiar, I am altogether new.