broad strokes of light

Lately every time I open my mouth I find myself surprised. Surprised by the volume and conviction and tone and passion with which I have been saying things. This is not the voice of that same person who used to carefully weigh each word to make sure it pleased all of her listeners. This, rather, is the voice of someone who has learned that she has something important to say, and that not everyone (or even most people really) are going to agree with it, but she is going to have to say it anyway. Because it is true, and truth is beautiful.

Today my dear friend M and I drove to a Christian college not so far from here and shared our stories in a Human Sexuality class. Had you known us in college, this would probably be a shocking statement. We were not the kind of people you would expect to go around talking about our sexuality, or much of anything controversial for that matter, in front of crowds of people. But it seems that is exactly the kind of people we have become, and I cannot tell you how liberating it felt. Afterwords we were so full of the power of our own voices that we wanted to burst into classrooms all across campus and announce that we were there to talk about being gay, and share with them our winding journeys of how we came to peace and then even thankfulness for that. Then, we wanted to drive right on back to our undergraduate campus and start shouting our stories from their podiums too! That’s how empowering it was, just to stand before a crowd of students not unlike those we sat silently next to during all those years of Christian education, and tell them that we are gay and we love God and women and life and yes even ourselves, most of the time anyway. Our elation wasn’t so much about the student’s reactions, which were entirely a mixed bag with some peeking out from their own well guarded closets to thank us shyly, other smiling warmly, and some smirking and refusing to look at us as they brushed past us at the end of class. Nobody stopped us to say their life was radically changed by what we had to say, but I think that’s fine because our elation was not about what they heard but rather about what we were able to speak. With conviction and grace and even a good bit of humor we stood up there and said this is who we are, and how we have come to be here, and we are not ashamed. And even more, we are grateful.

It had been raining all day, but as we were driving back home and celebrating our voices the clouds lifted and this incredibly soft but brilliant light broke through the clouds and reached down towards the ocean beside us. And maybe it was because we were feeling sentimental and maybe even a little tender towards our faith and all the bumps it has taken these past few years, but I swear we both noticed at the exact same time that it was almost as though God was painting those broad,  brilliant strokes of light across the sky in celebration with us and our triumphant speaking of our truths.

Raise the bar again

I want to raise the bar again. When we were first coming out, we learned to lower our standards and take what we could get. We tried to look grateful when you said “I disagree, but I still love you.” Hell, most of the time we even were grateful. But right now I don’t give a damn whether or not you agree with me, or with us, or with any of this. Because what I want to know is, the next time you hear somebody saying that I am somehow less because of who I love, will you speak up for me? What I want to know is, if I raise my glass in a toast to her will you celebrate with me? If I march for our chance to have the same legal rights that you do, will you march next to me? If I grow weary of this fight and need a place to mourn all that it has cost, will you cry with me? If your church says there is no place for us in heaven will you stand up for me? I want to raise the bar again. I don’t want to know your theoretical beliefs about my sexual orientation. I want to know that when you look at me, you see a human being and not a theological debate. If we throw another party in celebration of our love it’s not enough for me that you show up and look dutiful. I want you to dance. And if you can’t dance with us, or laugh with us, or speak up for us… if I haven’t ever seen you smile when you look at us together, then I don’t want you there. Do you hear me? Are you listening? I don’t want you there. Because your silence may not be costing you anything, but it is costing us everything.

Saving Liz

I was seventeen when the Holy Spirit called me to the high mission of saving Liz. This was not something that I took lightly. She was the first atheist our little Christian high school had ever seen as far as I knew, and rumors followed her like gnats on horse shit.  The most common one was that she’d been kicked out of her Catholic all-girls boarding school for making out with the other girls on her rugby team behind the bleachers. I didn’t care. I knew my mission and I was not backing down. She was Sicilian with olive skin, short hair, and even shorter plaid skirts. On Wednesdays we always had to wear our hideous blue plaid uniform skirts to chapel because it wasn’t right for girls to worship god in pants. Liz always came with hers hemmed up to the soft curve of her butt cheeks so they would send her home to change and she wouldn’t have to go to chapel.

It was around that time that the sight of her started making my heart jump around inside my white polo uniform shirt and my stomach tie up in strange unfamiliar knots, and that is how I knew that I had been called… guided by the holy spirit to the mission of ensuring Liz’s salvation. I left my old circle of friends who ran a “Lambs of God” Bible study during lunch on Thursdays, and ventured out into the world of Liz. She taught me how to sing Your Body Is a Wonderland back before hardly anyone had even heard of John Mayer, and also all about the advantages of driving under the influence of marijuana compared to alcohol. She never convinced me to try either, because my school had done a fine job of teaching me that there was only one quicker way to lose your salvation than drinking and doing drugs and that was sex, but I believed what she told me about driving under the influence for a long time after that. I believed just about everything she told me that year.

I started spending nights at her house, to advance the cause of Christ of course, and she started fixing my hair for me and spraying me with her perfume before we went out. God, I loved how she smelled. At night, she couldn’t fall asleep unless I told her a story, so I’d stay up watching for her breathing to grow slow and heavy as I told her some variation of the story of us.  Her bedroom was lined in Absolute adds and mine was filled with Bible verses and I could not imagine a more perfect union. She was raw and dark and angry and she didn’t believe anything they taught us in Bible class, so instead we sat in the back row and I tickled the soft skin of her arm because it was her favorite. And also because I believed that if she couldn’t hear the love of God, then the next best thing was for me to show it to her. Or at least that’s how I justified it to myself anyway. One day our Bible teacher made us stop because she said it wasn’t right for two women to touch like that, and I didn’t understand but I also didn’t argue because I wouldn’t start arguing with Bible teachers for at least five more years after that.

Our physics teacher was from Zimbabwe and didn’t speak much English yet, so every day we would tell him we had some sort of meeting or appointment and he would let us leave class early. We’d sneak into the girl’s bathroom and sit on the floor under a painting of the Fruits of the Spirit and talk until the bell rang. One day she told me that she felt like she was walking around with a huge hole in her heart, and I wanted to tell her that sometimes, I felt that way too. But I didn’t because I knew that good Christians were always supposed to have it all together. Besides, they had taught me how to respond to this very thing in Bible class, so I parroted back the answer they had given me and told her that it was a God-shaped hole, and only He could fill it. Secretly, though, I think I believed that I could too.

I never did learn anything about physics that year, except that every action has an equal but opposite reaction. A little while after that, they started teaching us that Catholic families like Liz’s weren’t really Christians and wouldn’t go to heaven and that’s when I stopped listening. I didn’t know a lot about theology back then, but I already knew enough to know better than that.

By then, my Spirit-led mission was really getting complicated because I couldn’t remember exactly what I was trying to save Liz from anymore. That was also about the time that the fighting started between us. This went on for months until our English teacher, who was also the school’s 100% unlicensed, untrained “counselor,” decided to intervene. He locked us in his tiny office and left us there, telling us he wouldn’t let us out until we worked it out. I don’t remember much of what we said except that I was crying and she was not, and that at the end she told me: “This isn’t going to work. I can’t give you want you want from me, because in two months when I graduate I am going to leave this place and I am not ever going to look back, and you aren’t ready for that yet. Do you understand me?”

I nodded that I did but really I didn’t, because I couldn’t figure out what it was she thought I wanted from her. I decided she must have meant that I wanted her to love Jesus, and I didn’t realize until much later that she had probably understood long before I did that what I really wanted from her didn’t have anything to do with Jesus.

I saw her only once after graduation. She’d gone to Wellesley and I’d gone on to yet another private Christian school, but I drove the three hours home as soon as I heard that she was back home. Wellesley had kicked her out for trying to slit her wrists one day after class, and although this didn’t scare me, the way it made me feel to see her again certainly did. We met for coffee and made small talk while we both tried to pretend that we weren’t terrified. She called once more after that, to say that she was doing better and had been trying to help out a friend who was sad, and that it had reminded her of me. I knew enough by then to be grateful that that was the way she remembered my misguided high school mission.

The next time I tried to call her the number had been disconnected and a few weeks later our English teacher told me that Liz had joined the marines and was driving Humvees in Iraq. I think he loved her too, though I am pretty sure neither of us realized it at the time. That was at least four years ago so I don’t think she could still be deployed out there, but a few months ago I saw a movie about a woman soldier who had her hand blown off while driving a Humvee in Iraq and it made me cry anyway. I’ve come out since then, and finally learned to tell the difference between falling in love with a woman and being called by Jesus to convert someone. I don’t really even believe in the later anymore, or at least not the part about converting someone to believe the same things I do. But I still wear the same kind of perfume that Liz used to share with me back in high school, and every time someone tells me that they like the way it smells, I tell them thank you and I remember that before it was mine, it was hers.