There's a Reason For It All

While walking home from class last week, ridden with anxiety & just trying to get out of my head space, I came across the homeless man I'd encountered a couple of times in the past few weeks. His blankets had fallen on the ground behind his wheel chair so I stopped to pick them up and say a quick hello. This “quick hello” turned into so much more than I ever could have expected.

We chatted about my classes, the weather, Nam, just life in general... as I stood there talking it seemed as if the conversation was beginning to go on forever. Although I’m sure it was all in my head I felt as though I was trapped and there was no way out. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy talking to the man, I was just ridden with so much anxiety that day and just wanted to go home to my bed, where I felt safe. Finally, I found a way out and as I turned to leave he notice my jacket. Across my chest was the word LOVE. I had forgotten all about it. I've had the jacket for so long that I hardly even take notice of it anymore but as soon as he brought it up I remembered the organization that was so close to my heart. I explained to him that To Write Love On Her Arms was an organization raising awareness about depression and offering help for those who are suicidal. He then began to tell me his story... his amazing story of how he tried but thankfully failed to commit suicide!

On his first attempt he put a gun into his mouth, tried to pull the trigger, and nothing happened. As a result of inspecting the gun he realized the safety just so happened to be on. This problem was easily solvable so he switched the safety to its off position and as he was about to try again he heard his wife walk in the door. Not wanting his wife to see him shooting a bullet through his head, he put the gun away determined to try again later. Fortunately, his family got into some financial problems and he had to sell his gun to feed his family. Still depressed and life still playing out a rough hand, he bought a shot gun right before the uncertainty of the new millennium. Not being able to handle the unknown, he put the shot gun to his chest and pulled the trigger… misfire! At this point he put the shotgun down, and decided he would give up on this idea of killing himself. He knew God must want him here for some reason. He didn’t know what that reason was but he knew God must have a big plan for him.

After hearing this story, my anxiety subsided (at least for a little while). God has a reason and plan for everything. I’ve always known that but I never really got it until that moment. Maybe God’s reason for keeping this man alive was to bring him into my life and inspire some shred of hope back into my soul.

Simple Like God

After months of feeling disconnected from the world & God in an impeccable way, I decided to venture upon this world wide web of ours & try & dig my heels into a hard core devotional book. Finding a book that could really pull me back into a life of living rather than one of sad mediocrity was a little bit harder than I hoped for. I also wasn't so into opening up a book everyday just to have it scream at me for the entirety of the pages. Needless to say my search for this life changing literature took me quite a while to find. Finally I came across Blue Like Jazz...
I was almost reluctant to purchase the book because of the fad like presence that seemed to precede it. I can remember a few years ago when almost every person I knew was reading this book.... kind of like Harry Potter or Twilight. Nevertheless it really came out to be one of my only options & I figured sometimes there's a reason for a fad.
Now that I am well into the book I realize that that is definitely the case. The way that Miller presents his ideas about God feels like I'm just talking to a friend & I love that! It's helping me to find a more simple & level plain as far as understanding everything that has to do with my relationship with God. I'm also beginning to appreciate my world and everything in it a little more each day... That is a gift that I think anyone can relate to and hone in on, definitely making it a worthwhile reading.

Some Things Shouldn't Be Done Drunk

Some things shouldn’t be done in a drunken stupor. Some things you can’t take back. Things such as kissing your best friend or getting almost naked in front of a whole party of people, you can pretend didn’t happen. However, other things cannot be forgotten; things such as these have to be faced and dealt with eventually. I, in one of my so graceful drunken stupors, made the choice to come out to my brother. Though I wrote a very eloquently put letter, it was not the right time and I was definitely not ready for the repercussions. Coming out to someone who means so much to you is most certainly something for the brave and strong hearted. In that moment I was broken, lonely, and lost. I sought out my brother in hopes that I would finally have someone to confide in who understood my background and my faith. Instead what I found was the person I knew my brother to be but didn’t want to accept, a man whose faith completely goes against the whole idea of homosexuality therefore shows ignorance in every idea he owns of the lgbtq community.
My brother is an exceptional man who I admire in every way but it kills me that he is so ignorant in his ideas of what the lgbtq community is. First of all to him there really is no such thing as btq in the lgbtq community. I may have confused him a little by just telling him “hey I like women” but I did also say “hey I definitely still like men too”. I made it clear that it was something I didn’t know how to change and if I could I would (I know a lot of people say they wouldn’t but for me I feel like my life would be so much easier if I could just turn that part of things off) however, he still feels that it’s a choice for me to be this way but “if I choose to be a lesbian” he’s still going to love me. He wants me to try to date more guys for him. It’s like he didn’t understand my letter. I don’t get it! I still like guys A LOT. I just tend to look at girls more… Anyways, what would dating more guys do? I’m not going to be able to date the gay out of me.
Like I said before, if I could change it I would. My brother seems to think that if I just like girls but don’t date them then it means I’m not gay. Ok, so if I like boys but I don’t date them am I not heterosexual? I mean it’s not like I don’t think about girls when I’m not dating them. I meet girls that I think are cute and I think about how amazing they are and how awesome a life with them would be. It’s not even a sexual thing; it’s an emotional thing. How do I turn that off?
I don’t know… I’ve been thinking about going the dating guys route for a while anyways. I just feel like being normal for a little while & not being just the girl that likes girls. Though when I do assume that role of normalcy it makes me feel a little bad that I’m able to go back and forth because I know that my lesbian friends can’t do that. They can’t just decide they’re going to date guys for a while because they’re not remotely attracted to guys…. I have mixed emotions about it all but I do think it may be something I need to do for me for a little while.

Dreams Are Just Small Reminders

I think I'm beginning to realize that my weird dreams are just small reminders that things aren't really okay without Vincent on this earth. Over the past month or so my world has seemed to turn around in a way I can't even explain. It's one of those things where you look outside & all of a sudden you can see the beauty in God's creation again. I all of a sudden was thankful for everyday & every type of weather (not to say that I wasn't thankful for things before but this was different). It was the first time since Vincent's death that I truly felt blessed and truly saw how gorgeous my life really is. Everyday I would walk to the bus and have a dance in my heart, thankful for the blessings God has provided me with. As of late, though, I've felt that dance slipping away from me. The more I question whether I'm living my life in a Godly manner, the more I miss having someone to talk to about issues such as this... I have missed having an objective friend that can just listen and offer helpful advice not motivated by religious or sexual preferences. Because of this my nights have been filled with little to no sleep lately. The little sleep I have been getting has been ridden with strange dreams that constantly remind me how lost I am without my best friend in this world. When one experiences dreams such as this & begins to think & overthink everything, it's hard to know what exactly you can trust as being reality. I've recently started falling hard for a girl I barely know, and it's hard to know if these feelings even come from some place genuine. It's incredibly possible that they just derive from the desire to feel a closeness with someone right now.

I Died & Rose Again

So Easter Sunday was last week and which marked the end of lent. It was probably the most interesting Easter weekend I've had in my whole life not to mention one of the most interesting endings to lent (I gave up caffeine). On Good Friday I went through an experience that was like dying. I found myself in the park by what used to be my best friend's house late that night; curled up inside a slide on the playground there, I was all but completely broken. When I finally did get the motivation to leave the park it was for the satisfaction of a few drinks so that I could forget why I had come to that park. In a few hours, needless to say, I was hammered. I was finally able to kill that piece of me.

The next day, Saturday, my friend invited me to come along with her to visit my best friend's mom. It was such an amazing experience! I felt like I was then burying that piece that I had killed the day before. As the day went on I got to know her more and more and as we reminisced about my lost friend, her son, I was beginning to feel something for the first time in months. There were other amazing things that happened that day but that was the best of them.

Early Easter morning as I sat in Easter Sunday service the words of the pastor struck a special chord with my heart. I felt as if I had risen from the dead that day along with Christ Jesus! I had a miraculous weekend... I honestly I feel I haven't really been living for six months now and I finally died on Good Friday. I think that weekend was to show me that even though my best friend is gone that my life can truly go on for me as well as for others. To see how well his mother was doing really helped me in that.

... All theology aside, I delved too deep into caffeine last week which resulted in this...

I Am Second... Literature?

I found this literature on Iamsecond.com and was basically appalled by how ignorant it was. For a website that is supposed to be like we understand you, see there is some one else that has gone through what you're going through & they made it out with God on their side... I just didn't think they would be so "this is how it is and bam" with their literature. Of course the only one I've looked at so far is the one about homosexuality but it makes me not want to look at anything else.

WHAT FACTORS LEAD FEMALES INTO LESBIANISM?

1. Failure to identify with her weak mother
- Excelling in athletics and becoming a tomboy, thus hindering her the development of her femininity
- Rejecting her mother, thus parenting herself, creating a craving for a mother figure

2. Failure to bond with her non nurturing mother
- Viewing her mother as harsh and overly critical, feeling she can never please her mother
- Blaming her mother for breaking up the family

3. Failure to be drawn to males because of her abusive father or mistreatment from other males
- Refusing to trust men as a result of an emotionally detached, absent, or alcoholic father
- Recoiling from men as a result of sexual or physical abuse by a male

My mother and I of course had a rocky relationship during my middle school years but most people I know didn't have the greatest relationship with their parents back then. I thought that my parents didn't understand me and you know, I basically hated the world. I never got to the point, however, not even in middle school when my relationship with my parents was at its worst, where I "rejected my mother and parented myself."

And since when has involvement in sports hindered femininity? Plus who says being a lesbian means you have to be un-feminine!? Just yesterday I was wearing a sparkly, leopard print top, skinny jeans, & white, beaded heels. Plus I spent about an hour fixing my hair and doing my makeup. If my attraction to women has hindered my femininity please tell me how!

My mother is pretty critical about some things but she's also very encouraging at other times so I don't think that's "the reason" (because you know there's always got to be a reason) I'm attracted to women. I definitely don't think that she's broken up my family! We may not be happy all the time but what family is? I think it's morally wrong for literature like this to blame mothers of queer people for "doing something wrong". If they are extremely religious parents they already feel bad enough without relating the cause of it all to something that they must have done!

And of course the third point on there is just ridiculous. Though I know many people whose fathers have abused them or just been absent/detached from their lives, my father was not like that at all. We have always had our disagreements and I don't get along with his ideologies most of the time, but when it comes down to it I can sit on the couch, cuddle with my Daddy and know that he loves and supports me. My father has been there for most everything that is important to me. (To add onto that most of the people I know that have been abused or their fathers just weren't there, they're straight as can beeeee!)

So, obviously this whole system is a little bit flawed. The rest of the literature is elaborating on the acronym FREEDOM which is an acronym that basically is supposed to guilt someone into giving up the homosexual lifestyle. All I gained from reading this literature and looking up the scripture references is that lusting after someone is wrong and sinful in nature, sex is sacred and should be treated in a sacred way, God loves us forever and ever, and God knew me before I was even formed in the womb. If I'm fearfully and wonderfully made and I'm so special that God even knows the number of hairs on my head, could it be possible that this may be a part of how wonderful I am to God?

Could it be possible that maybe we all need to look at those verses and reanalyze them as not verses to preach against homosexuality but verses to take back the holiness of sexual relations. Everyone in the religious world has this distorted view that as queer people we must obviously be having sex with anything that can walk and for me I know that that's not true. I won't have sex with anyone unless I know I could spend the rest of my life with them.

Even in literature that condemns me to hell, I am able to find some good in it through the scriptures listed. What's kind of funny is that brings me a substantial amount of joy as well!