December 24, 2018

Changing in Front of Others

Posted in Kat, TEDxCLT tagged #tedxcharlotte, acceptance, bible, christian, lgbtq, pflag, TEDxCLT at 9:37 pm by jimazing

It has been about 2 months since I did my TED talk. I shared our story in hopes that my experience might help folks who (like me) find themselves struggling to accept a loved one who has just revealed their secret.

A friend asked me if I thought my talk would have been helpful to me when Kat came out. Yes, I do! Just one trustworthy voice in my life with an alternative choice it would have helped me greatly.

My Hope

I want to be the voice now that I needed then. My hope is that people who are struggling to accept their LGBTQ loved one will see my TED talk in private. In private they can hear my story without pressure.

I heard someone say, “People don’t like to change in front of other people.” It’s true. We don’t like to change clothes in front of other people and we don’t like to change our minds in front of other people. Changing our minds where others can see is just too vulnerable. It was certainly true for me. Vulnerable is not strong enough of a word for what I felt. I felt like a failure as a father because I couldn’t keep my own child on the “straight and narrow”.

How do you go from hiding in shame to speaking out with confidence? Not in one step I can tell you. 

My faith community was clear with no room for interpretation on the issue. We believed gay people were choosing to live a sinful lifestyle. Accept it, hide or leave. If I had been brave enough to ask my questions, I would have been immediately shut down. There was no place for a message of acceptance. But in the beginning, when I needed a safe place to ask questions, fear kept me hiding in the dark. My feeling of failure kept me in my place, with my mouth shut. (When Kat came out of the closet, I went into the closet)

Secret

My journey of questioning began in secret. As I said in my talk, “I was no longer satisfied to repeat what I had been taught. I needed to know what I believed and why! Kat was my reason.” That journey didn’t happen in front of other people. The hard work of asking questions, studying and ruminating was private… and it took years!

Around the time Kat came out, I spoke out in a very small way for the first time. I was in a Bible study group. Someone asked the question, “Can a person be gay and saved?”

I answered confidently, “Yes!”  I added that there was no place in the Bible where a person’s sexual orientation as a qualification for salvation. (Salvation was a 3 or 4 step process in our world-depending on who you asked). In my thinking if we were actually using the Bible as our guide then we have no right to add arbitrary requirements to the list. Understand that I’m talking about the early part of my journey to being an ally. I was not accepting of Kat’s sexuality, but I had doubts and questions. I’m telling this to show what was important to me and how I was adamant that we answer questions about our faith with integrity. Either we believed the Bible had answers for that kind of question or we didn’t. I think that demand for integrity was important to my transition to becoming an ally.

Q&A

At the end of the TEDx Charlotte event, all the speakers gathered on the stage for Q&A. Someone asked me how my experience affected my own spiritual journey. It was a fantastic question (and a tough one to answer). Although I have made a complete 180 degree change on my thoughts regarding the LGBTQ community, when it comes to my faith, I’m in a way different place than I was then. But then again, I’ve always been pushing back and asking questions. That’s who I am. Wherever I am in my faith journey today, I don’t think I was “wrong then” and “right now” about faith. 

I don’t believe what I did 20 years ago and 20 years from now, I’ll know things and believe differently than I do today. Knowledge and experience helps us grow and change if we allow it. There’s so much I don’t understand. Experiencing and learning that fact has been an unexpectedly wonderful gift.

My hope, my wish, my prayer is that many who are struggling to accept a loved one will hear Kat’s and my story in an unpressured environment and that our story will inspire and influence them while adding a sense of urgency. We do not know how long we have with our loved ones. We simply must find a way to love while we live.

Selfish Wish

One last selfish wish is that I get to hear some of those stories of our story’s influence. The day of the TEDxCharlotte event, at least 15 or 20 people approached me and told me their stories. It would be so encouraging for me to continue to hear how our story actually influenced others and contributed to healing relationships.

In case you haven’t seen it yet…

Until next time…

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