What Makes a Man____?

I've been trying to figure out a way to write this all down.  And I've been avoiding doing it all together because that somehow makes it more concrete.

October has been a strange, strange month.  This year has been a roller coaster, and no point in time has encapsulated that more than these past few weeks.

Everyone seems interested in telling me how they feel about this.
The excuses they have to feel as they do.  The justifications they've made for the decisions they've come to.

I feel like I've had a death in the family.  As if there is a piece of my life I can no longer reach on this plane.

Enough of the waxing.  Let's cut to the chase.

After telling me more than once that my sexuality would not change my role in leadership or ministry with the youth, session had a secret (not really, but achieve nonetheless) meeting about a "hypothetical" leader with such sinful same-sex attraction and what should be the course of action.  The final verdict was handed to me last Friday.  The following Sunday was the first Fuel/Refinery/SALT I haven't been to in years with the exception of being out of town.
It felt so foreign.  I couldn't sit in church that morning either.  Listening to songs of God's graciousness and receiving stares of much less was enough to drive me from the pew before Ralph even got around to the message.

I feel so conflicted.  My heart is breaking.  For myself and for WS.  I want to fight, but I don't want to be told over and over again how the traditional interpretation of scripture condemns me to a life without any sort of romantic love or deep connection.  I've read the scriptures, I've read the commentaries, I've read beyond them, I've studied context and hermeneutics and so what if I don't have a theology degree or MDiv.  Your viewpoint changes nothing in the Church, nothing in how it treats people or allows them to live.  Mine allows me to live a life loved by God and accepting myself instead of continuing the torturous facade that everything is fine and however much I pray will be enough to make me blameless in the eyes of the Church.

It is not the Church I should seek to please.

So you can keep me from the youth I've spent years getting to know and building community and fellowship with.  You can break my trust in the church I've come to call "home" and "family" and I will still be there for any one of those people on an individual level because that is life-giving.  But you will not take away the relationship that has been built between me and my creator.  My faith.  Only one person can break that--and that is the person the faith belongs to.

I will always love WS.  But right now my journey seems to be leading me away from there.  I don't know what's in store for me.

I just don't.

-KL