133. Insert Title Here

I was recently reminded by a good friend that I haven’t blogged in a while. I didn’t even debrief after the GCN conference (which was awesome, by the way…). But as I’ve said in pretty much every one of my more recent blog posts, my life has become rather full. Working with preschoolers full time, fun as it may be, kind of takes it out of you, you know?

But I still have thoughts… I just haven’t written them down. So, I’m going to attempt to now.

The conference was great, I may write more on it later… but I’m not going to make any promises. What I’ll elaborate on here is one of the more significant things the conference left me with. Community. It felt so good to be in Christian community again. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again. I’ve sort of checked out of my church of late. Being at the conference, being among Christians, worshiping in community… it all felt like a drink of cool water after a long walk through the desert. The gay thing was kind of secondary. The last night we had a ‘sharing time’ and one of the things I shared was that I was feeling convicted for having abandoned my community. That God was reminding me that the Christian life was never meant to be lived in isolation. And I meant it. But… confession time… I haven’t done a thing about it. Oh, all I have to do is start going to church again, but I didn’t do it today (it’s Sunday as I write this) and I didn’t do it last week… or the week before that…). It’s hard to motivate myself to go and be among people who I feel I have to hide myself from. And I’m not just talking about the people who don’t know I’m gay… even the ones who do know don’t really want to know, you know? They don’t want to talk about it, they think I should be over it by now (I had one person actually say that to me… oh, not exactly in those words, but that was the gist). I don’t mean they think I should be straight by now (although some of them certainly think I should be trying for that), I mean they think I should be done thinking about it by now, I should have moved on to other things.

I was talking with one of my dearest friends about this right after the conference and I actually ended up in tears as I explained some of this to her, and I ended up saying something to her that I hadn’t said to anyone before (or since)… but I think I’m going to write down here. I say ‘think’ because I’m nervous about it, nervous to put this on my blog when so many of my friends know about my blog. But pretty much none of them read it anymore… which is kind of what I was crying about. Oh, not that I expect them to keep up with my blog (especially now that I hardly write anymore… but to be fair most of them stopped reading probably about 2 or 3 years ago) but… okay, how to explain this. I suppose the easiest thing to do is to just say it plainly. I’m hurt. My friends hurt me. Not by reacting badly to my coming out, or by anything they said or did… but by what they didn’t do. It sounds so selfish as I write it out, but it’s what I feel. I feel like I have had to do this whole thing alone. No one would come along side me and try and ‘think this out’ with me. I leant people books, printed off papers, and while some of them were read, no one really gave them a second thought. Most of them had already made up their minds what they thought (Side X with a dash of Side B to make it palatable) and, well, you can’t have a real conversation or actual productive discussion with someone who is not going to concede that they might be wrong. And it’s not like I thought they were wrong, I just needed to be able to think the whole thing through as clearly and honestly as I can, and that means looking at both sides with as open a mind as possible. I tried to engage people in the conversation, and without going into it too much, there is one person who I was extremely hopeful about because of how they presented themselves to me when we first discussed the issue, but nothing ever came of it. It hurts. And as I mentioned before, the Bible study I led sort of pushed me over the edge… it was so nice to talk to people about this whole thing, people who were (or seemed to be) willing to look at things from both sides and acknowledge possibilities, and wanted to look at things in depth. But they did it for one week. (well, two actually, but I wasn’t there the second week) There is no reason for them to dwell on it, they aren’t gay, it isn’t their life. And afterwards it felt like a slap in the face to go back to being all by myself again.

The thing is, I get it. I don’t really expect straight people to spend their time thinking about what life is like for gay Christians, and working out how the Bible pertains to us and how we live our lives. But… well, I really hoped someone – a friend, some friends – would do this with me, and no one really did. And it hurt. And I’ve withdrawn.

Funny thing is, I think my friend may have mentioned our conversation to another mutual friend of ours, because I got an email from them the other day asking to get together and to borrow the DVD I brought back with me from the GCN conference – “Through My Eyes” (I can’t find a link to a trailer or anything, it’s a DVD of kids/young adults just talking about what it is like to be gay and Christian) – which kind of felt like it came out of nowhere, so… I don’t know. Maybe things will change now. Who knows. I find I’m kind of gun shy now. I don’t really talk about it with my friends at all anymore, because I don’t want to feel that feeling of being alone. I don’t hide, and I’m not at all careful about my pronouns (not that I’m dating or anything, but still… pronouns happen), but I don’t bring up what I’m thinking about in this vein at all.

Maybe actually having written this out will help. Maybe I’ll go to church on Sunday. Maybe things will change. Maybe I should actually do something to make them change.