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

Hard Way Home

I read Psalm 31 this morning between rushes at the shop.  I can't remember if it's the exact one that Dave referenced in his talk Sunday night, but it was a comfort regardless.  I had been so down on myself again after what transpired yesterday.  And then came the realization that I shouldn't take it that way.  This "battle", if you will, does not change how God feels about me, does not change how I feel about God.  If anything, I think this will strengthen our relationship, though it will take a whole heck of a lot of trust and patience.

Nor do I think it will necessarily change their relationship with God.  I don't know at this point what this will all change, but I think it will be worth it.  Probably in ways I can not even name or think of at this point.
And they are not my enemy.  We are working through this together.  We just don't understand each other fully.

I just need to focus on staying positive, getting back to where I was.  Reclaim the sense of peace that only the Holy Spirit is providing me with the knowledge that it's out of my hands.

"Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth."

The Edge of Myself

Had the first of what appears to be a series of meetings with the Youth Elders today.  Everything in me wants to run away.  To make a break and run.  How much easier it would be.  Stop the pain where it is.

But I know that's not what I'm being called to do.  I am called to see this through.  To stand up for what I've come to believe.  For where God is in my life.

I'm tired, so tired, of pretending this doesn't exist.  And I was free.  For 5 glorious days, I felt so light and happy.  And I'm back in the dark, the weighted expectations.  

God, I hope this is all worth it.  Help me to put trust into what you are doing.  I can't live in this vicious cycle.  Intercede.  

Casually Cruel

1 Peter 3:8-9

⁸ Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters.^[a] Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude. ⁹ Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.

Hard words to put in to practice when you feel like you're always getting the short end of the deal.  That you do more for less.  When you see others go without consequence for doing something you know you would be judged for.  For seeing people you thought were your friends slowly slip away and you become so much less than.

Enough of that.  I need to escape the confinement of expectation and discover a new plan.

I went to Sunday School/Bible Study this week for the first time in a couple years.  It felt good.  I think I've been slipping down the slope of going through the motions of being a "good Christian" of late.  Especially with the rapid disintegration of the small group that I really felt God wanted me to create and be a part of.  That mixed with other reasons have made me feel more apathetic about actively spending time with or seeking God.  It all just seems so discouraging.

However, I am so thankful for the handful of true friends I have around me.  I always think it's funny how God tends to take the people I expect the least to ever have anything in common with and before I know it, they're the people who seem to be there the most.  So many of my really good current friends or people I have been closest to in the past have been people I never thought I would like when I first met them.  Shows what I know.

Not a whole heck of a lot.

-KL

The Longer I Run

So there I was, scrambling to catch up on reading for small group last week, and God went ahead and placed one word in my head:  lukewarm.  He did not, however, see fit to place any particular context with it.  I was reading about the will of God, but the author had made no mention of being lukewarm or anything that really even corresponded with it.  I knew it had to have been a word from God and I knew almost immediately the reference and what I thought he was trying to tell me.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  Revelations 3:15-16

 I'll admit, I did have to Google that. And it may have also brought up some Katy Perry lyrics along with it.  Regardless, I know what God was trying to tell me by pulling that one little word to the front of my brain.  I was lukewarm.  I believed in Him, but I did not trust Him.  I was not staking my faith, my life on Him.

What I mean by that is, when I acknowledge it, there are some very real and very potent fears in my heart.  Fears that fuel indignity and more so, anger within me.  Even though I have become inconceivably less angry and unhappy over the course of the last 5 months, I have still been hanging on to fears that I shouldn't be.  And the Big Guy was totally calling me out on it.  And it sucked.

He was calling me out on eternity.  You see, despite knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves me, despite reading texts such as Love Wins, despite being an affirmed Christian since the age of 8 or 9 there were times I would still bog myself down with the thought of being separated from that love.  Of an eternity in Hell.  I would get angry at God for his seeming injustice, unfairness.  For feeling like I was created to be abandoned.  I was so wrong, and God knew it.  Duh.

Lukewarm.

How could I be so blind?  He is omnipotent.  My God is all-powerful, all-knowing.  My God is good.  In being lukewarm on the issue of my salvation I was essentially rejecting these qualities of God.  I am so thankful that I no longer have excuse to be lukewarm about my ultimate fate.  His plan is my destiny and I know that as with all of his beloved children, my eternity is meant to be spent with him.

I originally wrote most of this in my journal this morning while sipping some delicious Costa Rican coffee and saturating my ears with some Liszt, yes, Franz.  I didn't really intend to share it with anyone, just let it serve as a reminder to myself and testament to God.  Then I remembered that testaments are meant to be shared.  Then I saw the Oreo cookie post.  Twice.  It was the second post with a link to actual comments on Oreo's Facebook page that changed my mind.

I like to think that I am open to other people's views.  That I don't write-off their opinions as I believe many of them would write off mine.  I think that I am a pretty open minded person.  But sometimes it is so hard to look at or hear those other opinions and not get discouraged.  To have a word that is used to describe one aspect of you in one context and in the common vernacular be used to describe something stupid, or lame, or  wrong.  I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer here.  Truly, there is so much love in this world that I feel like I am only really feeling for the first time.  There is so much that has changed and so much that will continue to change.  I am so thankful for the revelations of God in my daily life, in my friends' lives--I want to share it, I want to hear about it.  I am thankful for the 16-year-old homeschooled, child of Evangelic Conservative Christians who also happens to be a lesbian and out and willing to call out those who don't think she can be gay and love Jesus and like Oreos.

Mostly, I feel sorry for those people commenting such harsh things about rainbow Oreos right now...because we're going to spend eternity together and it's still going to be exponentially more flabbergasting than multi-colored Oreo fillings (which for the record look kind of disgusting).  Oh, and more incredibly awesome too.

-KL