March 20, 2018
Why Is Jim an Ally?
I was asked recently why I’m an LGBTQ ally. Here’s what I said…
I LOVE MY DAUGHTER more than I loved my dogma
I am an ally because I love my daughter more than I loved my dogma.
The youngest of our four daughters, Kat, came out to my wife and me around 2001 when she was 15 years old. At the time, we were very committed, conservative Christians, and to say this was uncomfortable would be a huge understatement. We were devastated!
Our first thought was that we needed to correct this problem. I got lots of literature from a group that was committed to fighting the “gay agenda” and we sent her to counselors who we hoped could “fix” her. I am not proud of that first response, but it was motivated by love and was the best response we could manage at that time.
After much anguish I realized that if she were ever going to change, it would not be in a pressured environment. I decided that the best thing I could do would be to accept that this is who she is and not try to change her. In this way, I hoped that she would be able to stop fighting us. Then she could see the error of her ways and begin to change back.
I was partly right. When we stopped trying to change her, she did stop fighting us. However, it is we, not Kat, who changed. Her confidence in who she was remained constant. Everything about her said unequivocally, “This is who I am and it has nothing to do with you.” We had convinced ourselves that if she were gay, it reflected badly on our parenting. Much of our journey was coming to understand that it was not ‘our fault’.
The first part of our journey was accepting Kat. The last leg of our journey was embracing her exactly as she was and that there was no ‘fault’ with which to be concerned. The reward was realizing that she was still the same wonderful woman we always knew.
Sadly in 2011 she was struck by a very rare cancer which she fought against bravely for a year and a half. We lost her on September 23, 2012. It is still hard to write those words. Three years ago (at the suggestion of our wonderful grief counselor), my wife and I joined PFLAG to help us focus our grief in a way that helps us and helps others. Each time I am there, I am inspired by the love and raw courage of the folks who show up looking for support.
Many of our former community think we have been deceived and gone off the deep end. We have jumped into the deep end of the pool for sure. However, what I have found in the ‘deep end’ are many people who are deeply full of love and pain; people who are too busy loving their LGBTQ family to pretend they have their life together; and real people who just want a friend. This is the community I have longed for my whole life!”
June 21, 2014
Swinging Trees
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
~Chinese Proverb
When we moved into our house 15 years ago, the backyard was a steep, grassy hill. I didn’t have to mow it too many times before deciding a wooded backyard would be a lot more fun. I was right! Little by little I have replaced grass with shade trees.
One summer about 10 or 12 years ago, I was mowing the grass and dreaming of a shady yard. The idea to have a majestic pin oak tree in the middle of the yard seemed like a good idea. These are the beautiful and mighty oaks that you see in the older Charlotte neighborhoods that are probably hundreds of years old. Not too long after deciding to put an oak tree there, I fortuitously noticed a stray pin oak seedling coming up in my bushes. Having the dream and now the tree to fulfill the dream I waited for cooler weather. That fall, I moved the seedling to the chosen spot. While planting it, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “One day, my grandchildren will swing from this tree.”
This week, my dream was fulfilled when I hung a swing from that very tree. My grandson , who is just over a year old was visiting so I picked up a baby swing and some rope and the rest is history. This was the second swing I have hung from trees in the yard. The first one was for my granddaughter and hangs from a maple tree that I also planted. I cannot fully explain the depth of feeling I had watching both of my grandchildren swinging together from swings I hung in trees that I planted.
December 25, 2012
Kat’s Ashes
So many challenges and questions to be answered when a loved one dies. None have been so heart wrenching for us as deciding what to do with Kat’s ashes and then following through with it. Kat’s wishes were to have her remains cremated, but she did not have any preference for what should be done with her ashes. It is a decision no parent should ever have to make for their child. But like all of these challenges, it had to be done. I could never have imagined the heartache and the unbelievable beauty we were in for that day.
Just north of Morganton, there is a mountain peak named Table Rock (NC). I have fond memories of climbing Table Rock (SC) many times, but this is not that Table Rock. Since Kat’s sister moved to Morganton, we see the outline of this spectacular formation fairly often. Recently on one of those trips to Morganton, a forgotten memory returned to me of a trip that Kat and I took soon after we moved to NC in 1998. She would have been 13 years old and entering the tunnel of teenagedom. She and I drove up into the mountains for a day and hiked Linville Falls and Table Rock. I don’t remember many details of that trip, but what I do remember was a good bonding experience at a time when bonding experiences were hard to come by.
I suggested that we spread her ashes on Table Rock because of my memories of that trip, it will be a landmark that we will have occasion to see often and the mountain actually looks like a monument. Everyone agreed that this was a good choice.
Timing was an issue because we are spread all over the country and are rarely all together at the same time. As it turned out, there was a single day that we would all be in town when nothing else was planned, so it seemed that the date was set for us; December 24th, Christmas Eve.
Family dynamics are never simple not because there is something wrong, but because everything is right. People are different. We all have our own desires and these good desires frequently clash which causes friction. Family histories can complicate matters by making it feel like the same thing all over again, which does not help resolve things. On this day in particular, all of our emotions were on overdrive. It would have been challenging enough to plan and execute a fun trip to the mountains. This trip was the anything but a fun trip. Our purpose was to spread the remains of our daughter, our sister. To paraphrase one of her sisters, none of us wanted to go, but none of us wanted to be anywhere else. So in spite of the friction, we pressed on.
The next big challenge was the miserable weather. It was a chilly, gray, rainy day. It rained the whole hour and a half drive to Morganton, where we stopped for lunch. After lunch we started up the mountain, which is another hour drive on a good day. The rain soon turned to rainy fog as we entered the clouds. To all appearances, this was a really miserable setup for a miserable job. Finally we reached the turn off which is about five miles of narrow, gravel road followed by a steep series of switch backs that were paved (thankfully). When we arrived, the parking lot was completely empty. Who would want to come out to hike on such a miserable, Christmas Eve? No one! This was a genuine blessing-in-disguise because it gave us the whole mountain to ourselves!
We arrived at the parking lot exhausted mentally and emotionally. Everyone one looked to me to be the leader, but I had no real plan. I only knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to hike the one mile path to the top. I was also agreeable to something less than that. After a moment, Kat’s sisters and Justin all began hiking up the trail to the top. Jeanie followed and I brought up the rear.The fog got thicker as the winding mountain road got steeper and curvier and we got slower.
Since our purpose was solely to spread Kat’s ashes, it goes without saying that the ashes needed to be carried to the top. Jeanie was not keen on climbing to the top, but she was determined to be the one who carried the ashes. She said that she carried Kat for the first nine months of her life and she was going to carry her to the top of this mountain to finish the journey. I wanted to help her, but I could sense her resolve. She saw this as her task alone. Along the way, I thought of how Frodo was the one appointed to carry the ring of power in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It was easy to compare Jeanie to Frodo. In my mind, I purposed to be the best Samwise I could be for “my Frodo”. When she stopped, I stopped. When she talked, I listened. When she climbed, I climbed. Several times, through tears she said, “I can’t do this.” This reminded me of Kat’s words when things were at their worst.
As we neared the top, the view became clearer as we came out of the lower layer of clouds. There was still a layer above us with us between the two. The mountaintops became islands in a sea of rainclouds with a gray, overcast sky above. (By the way, other than the first photo of Table Rock, all the photos in this post are actual photos from that trip). After the rain and fog we had been experiencing all day, it was a welcome relief and absolutely beautiful. When I finally arrived at the top, everyone else was patiently waiting for me. I walked around and marveled at the stunning gray beauty in every direction. A sea of fluffy white clouds below with mountain-top islands poking through.
None of us knew quite what to do next, but we chose a spot where we would do this grim task and walked over to the far side of the mountaintop. Danae looked to the north and pointed out a sundog. It was pretty and lifted our spirits a bit. I could not put my finger on it, but something did not seem quite right about this sundog. However, we were there for a purpose and this sundog felt like a distraction.
Kat’s ashes were in a small plastic box wrapped in brown paper. Earlier that morning the thought flitted through my mind; wondering how we would open the box. I dismissed the thought, figuring that they would surely have make it easy to open. There on the summit of the mountain, the box was unwrapped and we found that it was a bit of a struggle to open it. It was not super difficult, but not a piece of cake either. It took three of us to do it. One held the box, one squeezed it to force a gap and a third wedged a car key in the hole to pry it open. Finally it was opened.
Inside this box, Kat’s ashes were sealed in a plastic bag. We pierced the bag with the key to tear it open. By this time, we were all crying. I had not cried so hard since she died. Knowing that this stuff was once her body was too much.
Everyone agreed that I should go first so I took the bag in my hand and reached in for a handful of Kat. Through my tears, I said, “This just feels so wrong.” My meaning was that it was so unnatural to be doing this for our child. In the “normal” order of things, we go first, then our children. I tossed the handful of dust into the air and handed the bag to Jeanie. One by one, each of us took turns tossing her ashes into the breeze. The way the ashes fell had a beauty of its own. The heavier pieces fell like sand and the lighter dusty fragments blew away on the light wind. One of her sisters described it in such a beautiful way…
Her ashes looked like a peach-hue on crushed bone so that when you free them into the mountain air, the wind makes a spirit cloaked in flesh and beaming with life. She dances again.
When I looked up again, the upper clouds had parted and the sun was shining through brilliantly. It was marvelous to see! It was then that I realized what was wrong with the sundog (nerdy guy that I am). It was in the wrong part of the sky. A sundog is always exactly 22% from the sun and exactly at the same height or directly above the sun. This was on the other side of the sky and nowhere near the sun. This was no sundog, it was a real rainbow! A short stubby rainbow to be sure, but a real rainbow! As soon as I said this out loud another rainbow appeared on the southern side. If we could have seen the complete bow, these would have been the bases of both sides.
Earlier that morning, as we were packing, we decided to leave the cameras. The very thought of bringing cameras on this trip just felt sacrilegious or disrespectful, after all, this was not to be a pleasure trip in any way. At that moment, I was sure wishing I had a nice camera in my hand. Fortunately, there are phone designers who thought it would be a good idea to include a camera in our phones. The photos you see here are from my phone on that day. You can also click this link to more photos of our path up the mountain and the view we had at the top. (I suggest the slideshow button to see them full screen). It includes a short video sweeping around the incredible vista.
By this point in our story, the sun was preparing to punctuate the day with an exclamation point as it buried itself in the clouds again on its way to the horizon. So we hurried down, quickly loaded up and began the grueling drive through the fog in the dark! We were pretty hungry after all that activity, but found most restaurants were closed for the holiday. We found a Japanese steak house open in Hickory where we had a relaxing and enjoyable meal together before finishing our drive to Charlotte.
The story of Kat’s ashes is not over. We saved back some because Kat had a dream of flying. She also had a dream of skydiving. I have a friend who has his pilot’s license. We were actually trying to arrange a flight for Kat, but she left us too quickly. Wanna guess what is on my to do list now?
December 2, 2012
Loving Kat, Changing Me
This is a story about my daughter Kat and just one area where she had a profound impact in my life. Actually although Kat is at the center of this story, the story is about me. Many who did not know Kat were made aware of her existence because of her tremendous fight with cancer. She was, of course, in my life long before she got sick with cancer. There will be more stories about Kat in the future, but likely none more pivotal for me than this one.
When I was a kid, I was a loner. I preferred spending time alone to playing group games. I have a vivid memory of playing alone during school recess with a magnifying glass. I don’t know if I did that often, but that one moment stands out clearly. Magnifying glasses are wonderful playthings. Everyone knows how it magnifies things. That is after all what they were made to do. When you examine a thing long enough, you find out a lot more than you imagined on the surface. I found that if I held the magnifying glass away from me, it turned the world upside down and best of all it can bend light to a sharp focus. That day on the playground, I was focusing sunlight to a tiny dot so bright I could hardly stand to look at it. Focusing that dot of sunlight on a leaf caused that tiny bit of the sun’s energy to be so intense that it burned the leaf, nothing huge, just enough to have some good fun.
Kat’s influence in my life was like that magnifying glass. Seeing the world through her eyes frequently turned my world upside down. It is easy to have a surface understanding of someone that makes them all good or all bad, but such an understanding is always surface; never deep and never fully true. Our house was normal and Kat and I had more than our share of difficulties. Through them, I learned how to be more patient and forgiving… the hard way. The last year and a half, Jeanie and I have devoted our lives to helping Kat fight for her life. Every facet of her impact in our lives is burned deeper than I ever imagined possible, as if the very struggle itself were a magnifying glass focusing her life on us. My hope is that Kat’s life energy will continue to influence others through her story.
To speak about her in past tense feels so awkward and unreal. It simply does not seem possible that she is gone.
Most of us do not discuss our sexuality in public and Kat’s sexuality would not be a relevant topic in most circumstances. But it is pivotal to this story; a story about one of the deepest, most profound influences Kat had in my life, a fundamentally life-changing journey that I might never have taken except for my love for her. Kat was a lesbian and she was not shy about saying so. As an evangelical Christian, this was a tough pill for me to swallow. Her sexuality shook me deeply and challenged my world view to the core. I am telling my story because my silence on the subject allows others to make assumptions and “speak for me”.
This story is about how I dealt with Kat’s sexuality and how it changed me. It is not an attempt to preach or to convince anyone of anything. While my story will undoubtedly affirm some people and irritate others, that is not the point. This is very simply a vulnerable, intimate part of my story and the story wants to be told.
Kat growing up
Katie was a happy little girl. She was mischievous and loved to have fun. From the start, she was more masculine than her sisters. It seemed as if she needed to make her own place in her world. Unlike her older sisters, she never ever played with dolls. She preferred toys like cars and tools. She loved to follow me around with her shovel and rake to help me in the yard and I loved having her along to “help”.
She was tough too. When she was about 4 years old, she fell and cut her cheek pretty badly. Jeanie and I took her to the our family doctor, Dr. Leventhal who decided he needed to stitch the wound. When they gave her the shot to numb the area, she did not cry. She did not even flinch! I can still remember that stoic set to her face that said, I can endure this pain. Dr. Leventhal said he had never witnessed such a thing from a child. He said he has adults that cry from that shot.
When Katie was around 10 – 12 years old, I had a business at home repairing musical instruments. She helped me in the shop by taking instruments apart for me. I would get her to look at them closely to diagnose the problem and tell me how she would fix it. She was very good at troubleshooting! She also loved working with the tubas. She took a lot of pride in wrangling those huge instruments, taking them apart and giving them a bath so I could fix them. It was good for her to do the work and very helpful for me to keep up with the never ending queue of broken horns.
The next period of her life was not so pleasant. When Kat hit her teen years, they hit back… hard! The middle school years were very difficult for her. It seemed like she was sucked into the depths of depression overnight. It was right in the middle of this turbulence that we moved from Charleston, SC to Charlotte, NC. Kat was agreeable to the move, but it put her in a totally new school system with all new friends. I won’t tell all of her embarrassing stories, but I will tell you this one…
Kat was a daredevil. Her boundaries were rarely what we would have chosen for her. During middle school, Kat had pretty long hair with bangs. One day when she came home from school, Jeanie was talking to her when she noticed a flash of reflected light from under her bangs. She asked what it was while she pulled her hair back. There, to her amazement was a safety pin attached to Kat’s head! Someone at lunch had asked her if she wanted to have her eyebrow pierced! Kat agreed and so this friend stuck a safety pin through her eyebrow. Jeanie was furious. She took Kat to our new family doctor. He took a look at it and laughed. He thought that was pretty funny and let Jeanie know she didn’t need to worry about it.
Kat’s escapades were many, like bungee jumping while on a trip with her friend, Karyn. And who could forget the night Erin and I picked her up at the police station at 2:00 AM, but since she cannot give me permission, I will not share them publicly. I firmly believe that if it had not been for the influence of her sister, Erin, she would have been sucked into a dark hole where we would never have been able to reach her.
Kat had never been much of a talker and was not likely to start opening up as a teenager. So knowing what was going on inside her was a virtual impossibility. It was a troubling time for Jeanie and me; not knowing what was going on with her nor how to help.
It was in the middle of this turbulent time that Kat came out to us as a lesbian. To properly tell this story requires a little backstory about me. Please bear with me…
Jim growing up
Church was a big part of my story, but church means many different things to people. When I talk about church, I am talking about a weekly event at a place with a steeple and a system of belief that is agreed to without question by its members. My experience with church was that it was a place where we had all the answers and were evangelical about bringing in others who were not already a part of our congregation. In retrospect, the focus was not so much on loving God and and loving people the way we love ourselves (as Jesus taught). In practice, loving God was about praying and reading our Bible daily and getting our act together, loving ourselves was about keeping up masks so no one would see our flaws, and loving others was about bringing them to church events with us. This description of church may sound critical. That is not my intention. My intention is to define an ambiguous word in order to be able to communicate my story. If we all read the word, “church” with our own understanding then my story becomes something very different. This description is merely my “grownup view” of the church that played a major formative role in my life.
When I was a young man, I was as evangelical (in your face) about my faith as an introverted person could be. Like everyone else on the planet, I was learning how to get by, learning how to find love and acceptance. Unlike everyone else, I came to the conclusion that if I could learn the rules and follow them, I would be set and have no problems. I was looking for black and white rules for life, and the church was glad to feed them to me. As an obedient disciple, I studied my bible and did my best to live by it. When I messed up, I covered up. I considered myself to be an ambassador of Christ; possibly the only representative that some people would ever see. This was a very important appointment. It was important to me that I did not let Jesus down. If I screwed up, it made God look bad. I was setting up my “game pieces” for a life of hiding my true thoughts and feelings… the unique things that only I can bring to this world. I know now that we are all different for a reason. At that time, I thought the point was to be the same.
If you knew me then, you would have thought I was unquestioning in my faith. But under the covers, I was full of questions and doubts. I was looking for security in my faith and since questions and doubts did not add to my feeling secure, I mostly kept them suppressed. The church reinforced my silence by letting me know that all the important questions had already been answered. Anytime I asked a question, I was given the “right answer”. The underlying message was, “Don’t worry about such things. We already figured this one out. This is what “we” believe. All you have to do is learn and obey.” Another factor in keeping me silent was that voicing questions would have made me into a trouble maker. At heart, I was a pleaser. The more I learned and fell in line, the more praise I got, which made me feel more secure… I still had questions but I continued to stuff them. These questions were buried so deep under the “unquestionable truths” that they hardly had a chance to surface.
I was compliant, but not the epitome of compliance. I could not ultimately suppress the questions burning inside me. Finding a balance between the safety of acceptance and honoring my own questions was difficult. I knew the boundaries of my denomination well and pushed right up to the edge without crossing the line. When I went to college, I met other faithful followers of Christ who were from other denominations. I made sure that none of my new friends were involved in any of the “cults” that we were taught to avoid. This list is the same one that was recently changed due to the presidential race (sigh). My friends and I became friends and formed a small and tight knit community of believers.
Befriending people who are different than we are is a recipe for changing our world view. These folks in my community had already earned my respect as brothers and sisters in the faith when I was shocked to learn that they openly practiced expressions of faith that were forbidden by the church I grew up in… behaviors that I was taught were “of the devil”. For the first time in my life, I found myself on the other side of “the line”, confronted with a challenge to the fundamental teachings I grew up with. These friends were clearly not “devil worshipers”. They seemed like honorable followers of Christ to me. What to do with this? Fundamentally, I believed that the Bible was true, so someone’s interpretation of it must be off. This began one of the first big times I found myself wrestling with conflicting “facts” in hopes of finding a clear explanation and the right answer.
I talked to people I trusted from both sides of the issue to learn the facts so that I could decide for myself which side had the truth. What I found out was that truth is not so easy to figure out. Well meaning, godly people disagree about important things. As fundamental as that statement sounds, it was news to me. In my isolated existence in my church, we all believed the same things. So I thought that was the truth.
At that time, I thought I needed something concrete that I could count on. What I learned instead was that I was receiving personal perspectives. I was looking for the ultimate authority to give me objective truth. What I got was views of people whom I trusted, but who disagreed. Each of us sees the world the way we do because of influences in our lives and because of who we are. More perspectives are important to know, but not to pick the “right answer”. The really important questions rarely have an easy answer. Rather, I learned quickly that I have to do my own wrestling and that it rarely ends with clear answers.
Coming out
I honestly don’t remember the conversation with Kat when she came out to us. Things were so upside down, it must have seemed like “just another issue” to deal with. We were already concerned about her on multiple levels. She was depressed and having such a hard time with life in general. She was basically and fundamentally unhappy. Added to this was the fact that she was abandoning the faith that we held so dearly. As if this were not enough, adding homosexuality to the mix was overwhelming for Jeanie and me.
At first, we felt an overwhelming sense that we were complete losers as Christian parents. Everyone else in our circle kept their families intact in the faith. What was wrong with us? How could we have messed up so horribly with Kat? Unspoken and unwritten community standards caused us to feel shame. We were sure we didn’t measure up so we went into hiding. We could not talk about what we were going through for fear of people wondering what was wrong with us. Hiding kept us in the dark about the truth that lots of parents have to face the fact that they have a child who is gay. The truth that “good Christian” parents are not immune. Our self imposed isolation added to the community perception that there is something wrong with parents who have gay children. This shameful silence of the community keeps others hiding in their own sense of unworthiness.
Our initial focus was on what we had done wrong and how we had failed Kat. Ironically the questions we were asking had very little to do with Kat. To be sure, she was the reason for the questions, but rather than focusing on what was best for her, we were focused on how to “fix” her so we could feel better about ourselves. We were so caught up in the shame of being horrible parents that we could not see or think straight. The largest part of our journey was to be the removal of the focus from ourselves and getting back to our fundamental love for our daughter.
Fixing
Shortly after she came out, I got a communication from Focus on the Family that they were beginning a new ministry to help bring people out of homosexuality. They were bringing their “road show” to Charlotte, where we lived, for an abbreviated Saturday session. I immediately signed up for this event. I felt that the coincidence of her coming out with the timing of this event was an appointment from God Himself. At the event, I heard all about the conspiracy of the pro-gay faction to infiltrate our culture through media. This abomination was being shoved down the throats of good Christian people. I was told how we needed to be vigilant and ready to fight this horrible movement. I heard success stories of gays who had been healed to encourage us that our loved ones were not beyond saving. I left the conference, still shell shocked, but with notes and books I purchased in hand. I was now ready to begin reading, learning and wrestling in earnest (and in private).
I was ready to take on my share of the blame and all the rest too. What had I done wrong. How did I fail her? Kat had always been more masculine than her sisters. When she was a little girl, I frequently referred to her as “my boy”. (Side note: Unlike the stereotypical dad, I was not trying to have a boy. I was perfectly content having daughters. So to call Katie “my boy” carried no negative connotations or wishes whatsoever. It was simply an observation of who she was). I began to feel guilty for having referred to her that way and beating myself up for having encouraged her masculine behaviors. I blamed myself for unknowingly influencing her to choose to be gay.
A Space of Grace
Over time, I was able to let myself off the hook. I gradually came to a deeper understanding that Kat, like me, was a complex person. No one person could take full credit for her positive characteristics. Similarly no one could properly carry the blame for any of her negative characteristics. This understanding helped me give myself more grace. I did not hold all the cards with Kat and I was not to blame. By this point in my journey, I knew I was not responsible for Kat’s sexual preference. I still believed it was a poor choice she made, but it was no longer solely my fault.
Coming out of this self blame stage helped me to remember that this was not just some ‘issue” I was wrestling with. This was my daughter! My daughter who I loved completely. I understood that in the next phase of my wrestling, I needed to separate my love for Kat from any conclusions I might draw concerning homosexuality. The most important thing I wanted for Kat was for her to be healthy emotionally and physically. Selfishly, I wanted her to be a heterosexual Christian woman too, but even then I knew that was a desire I might have to give up. As much as I wanted her to be straight, I did not want my daughter to be a shell of a woman who pretended to be someone she was not, just so she could be accepted and make me look good.
I know that I am at my best in every way when I am in a safe place; a place where I can feel free to be myself. When I am accepted as a person just as I am, regardless of what craziness I might feel or believe, I can stop investing so much energy in managing the way others feel about me. In that space of grace, I have the freedom and the opportunity to wrestle with the questions burning inside. If this was true for me, it maked sense that it would be true for others too. I reasoned that if there were any chance for Kat, it would happen inside a cocoon of love and grace. As long as we were trying to change her, she would not have the freedom to be herself. Without that freedom, she could never get better. I was becoming resigned to the possibility that I might not win this war against her sexuality. But if Kat were to ever find her way out of her depression; if she were ever to embrace our faith again, if there was any chance that she would ever be straight again, it would happen most likely if she were loved and accepted for who she was.
This was a turning point for me. My purpose changed from trying to get her fixed, to loving her in spite of how I felt about her choices and her situation. I stopped saying things like, “She is struggling with homosexuality,” which wasn’t true. Kat was not struggling with homosexuality. She knew exactly who she was. She was struggling with feeling accepted for who she was.
I was struggling with her homosexuality.
Now that I had addressed my relationship with her, it was time to deal with the part that really was solely mine to deal with. Without regard to any personal relationships, what did I believe God has to say about homosexuality?
Ruminating and learning
Every one of us has to adjust in some way when our experience does not match our belief. Some things just will not be ignored. Will we hold onto our dogmatic beliefs without question, in spite of the fact that it does not match our own experience. Will we abandon our beliefs and simply following our senses and experience wherever it might lead. Will we explain away the discrepancies in an attempt to reconcile the two? Don’t we all do these behaviors? I know I do. Usually though, when real life does not line up with my beliefs, it will not easily let me go. I tend to start a sort of wrestling match in my mind. The internal wrestling match that was triggered by Kat’s sexuality took many years and much heartache. I did not know it at the start, but my world was beginning to get much larger and my life much richer.
The Bible was the place for me to begin. It is the foundation for the faith that I held dear. What I found there were two key pieces of information: 1. There are only a very few places in the Bible where it even mentions homosexuality and Jesus himself never even mentions it. This tells me that it was not a pivotal topic in the Bible, no matter what you believe it says. 2. The places where homosexuality is mentioned seem to be absolutely and unequivocally against it. This realization caused me to fear that I was going down a road that could only end in choice between accepting Kat’s homosexual lifestyle or the Bible. It felt like watching a fight to the death where I cared deeply about both the contestants. I avoided this topic as long as I could and I never talked about it.
The word, ruminating, comes from the way cows digest their food. They swallow it for a while then bring it back up to chew on it then swallow it again. Pretty disgusting, but it fits. I found myself ruminating on this frequently (and silently of course); reasoning and arguing for a time, then putting it on the back burner to let it simmer for a while. Just when I would forget about it, something would remind me, and I would pick it up where I left off. As much as I tried to avoid it, I could not let it go… or maybe it wouldn’t let me go. I loved my daughter unconditionally. Nothing could change that, but there was something in me that made me feel like this issue was bigger than my relationship with Kat. As much as I loved her, I was a committed follower of Christ and I was not going to walk away from that so easily. So I ruminated.
I began to trust my intuition that this attraction to other girls was not a choice Kat made, but was the way she was from the beginning. As I thought about the notion of choosing to be gay, I reasoned that if it were a choice, then any gay person could tell you when they made the choice to be gay. So if a homosexual chooses to be that way, then I reasoned a heterosexual must also choose to be straight or at least choose to not be gay. I knew that I never made such a choice and I have a hard time imagining that I somehow missed such a developmental milestone. As far back as I can remember, I was attracted to girls. It was the same for Kat. I now believe with every fiber of my being that she never chose to be a homosexual woman. It was simply one of her characteristics. To put it another way, she was born that way.
This assurity that Kat was ok bothered me. It felt too convenient. I was afraid that, because I wanted it so badly, I had convinced myself that she was ok. Was I succoming to confirmation bias? Was I naturally looking at things in a way that confirmed what I already believed? I was afraid of buying into a conclusion of convenience with no depth. I questioned that my desires for a clear answer to this problem were clouding my judgment. It had happened before. Ironically, the fear that my love for Kat was clouding my thinking was making it harder to accept the very conclusions that would eventually draw me even closer to my daughter.
Beliefs about Faith
Over my lifetime, I had my own set of preconceived notions about even the idea of faith. I expected my faith to be strong enough to see me through any situation. The Christian leaders I looked up to were firm and dogmatic in their beliefs and could quote chapter and verse why they believed what they believed and why they were right; right meaning correct and also on moral high ground. I admired that ability. In my eyes they seemed to have their acts together. I felt that the path to maturity in the faith went something like this… learn objective truth, practice it, add new truths, rinse and repeat. This process would build a structure of faith that would weather any of life’s storms. I reasoned that a mature faith should be strong enough to see me through any crisis or decision by simply applying what I know to be true.
However, this particular “storm” seemed to be too much for my faith. There were no easy outs that I could take with integrity. I wanted desperately for my desires for Kat to align with my childhood faith, but the pieces would not fit together neatly. The thought of changing what I believed in order to fit my own circumstances went against the very fiber of my being. But the very idea of abandoning my daughter whom I loved for a rigid stand against an idea was appalling. I was disappointed in my faith. I thought surely that it would see me through this.
There are many things about life that cannot be fully explained and comprehended. This mystery of life is fascinating to no end. There is so much to be learned. It would be nice to have easy answers to all the difficult questions, but not reasonable. I am a learner. As a learner, I naturally ask questions and question answers. Even though I do not always voice my questions, they are always there. There are too many things I don’t know and I am naturally curious. Trying to align belief and experience frequently causes me to get tied up in knots. It is just who I am.
Where’s the Humility?
Inevitably, those of us who accept the official answers without question end up looking for ways to defend these answers against the evidence of our experience. It is a humbling experience to find that what you have been taught has been scientifically proven incorrect. What do we do with that? To illustrate, one evening many years ago, I joined a church group on the beach with my telescope. I love showing interested people a view of the universe that most never get to see. Some of these folks that night believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Some of the objects they observed are hundreds of thousands of light years away… When I mentioned that the light we see when we look at them is hundreds of thousands of years old, one of the ladies without missing a beat marveled at how amazing it was that God could create the universe with everything already in motion giving the illusion that it is much older than it is. Really!?! This statement was made up in order to explain away the contradiction between the scientific facts with with what she already believed. That is dishonest and arrogant. What is so wrong with saying, “I could be wrong, but I believe…”?
These kinds of dishonest explanations caused me to begin questioning everything. Did anyone really have an objective interpretation of the Bible. Is that even possible? Back to the question of homosexuality, I knew that there were a lot of people who believed that they did not have to abandon their sexuality to follow Christ. As I read what they had to say, I found a few themes; the Bible is too antiquated to use as a guide, our interpretation of the Bible is wrong, or we are simply picking and choosing what we want to believe. There is plenty of information and misinformation out there to be read. It is not my intention to defend one side or the other here, but I will tell you where my own story landed on this question.
Conclusions
When Jesus was asked what was the most important command, he replied to “Love the Lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.” Most people don’t seem to know that they asked him a follow-up question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered with one of his famous parables. We know it as the story of The Good Samaritan. To his audience, Samaritans were the worst of the worst. Jesus was saying our neighbor is the one who is hardest to love. My interpretation of this encounter is that the best way to love God is to intentionally love the people we find hardest to love. Nothing is more important than this. Love is becoming the plumb line against what everything else is measured for me. Where is the love in my action? Where is the love in my faith? Having the right answer is rarely about loving someone else.
One evening Kat and I were alone together and I told her that I was glad she was gay. I was not saying that I was just ok with it. I was actually glad about it. The reason, was that this was no longer just an “issue” for me. This was personal! I told her that I had searched for the right “Christian” answer to the question. I had not found one, but I knew without a doubt that I loved her just the way she was. I was not sure what she thought about what I had said because, true to her nature, she didn’t really visibly react.
It is a risky business to love others from the heart. Loving actions are not always received the way they were intended. Most of the time, like that night with Kat, we do not even know whether we succeeded in helping the other person feel loved. One evening, after Kat got sick with cancer, some good friends (a gay couple) brought dinner over for us. Kat was feeling well enough to join us and she engaged with us in conversation about many things. During the conversation, she related her experience of my telling her I was glad she was gay. She talked about how much that meant to her. What a gift for me! I was so glad to know that she felt loved by my statement.
I loved Kat from the moment I first laid eyes on her. I loved her when she was easy to love. I loved her when I was angry with her. I loved her when she hurt me, when she called me names, when she rejected everything I believed in. Ironically, even when I rejected Kat’s sexuality, even then my motivation was love. That love burned its way through layers of of self-protective lies and became a much purer love that was
on her, rather than my own righteousness. Kat had a rough journey through life. During much of that journey, she did not feel loveable nor did she feel loved. I know without any doubt that when she died, she felt loved; completely and unconditionally loved.
This journey began with a conundrum between my faith and the issue of homosexuality. It ended with a new love and appreciation for a group of people who see things differently than I do. I am a richer person for it. The journey continues…
November 23, 2012
More so
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Getting through the day was not as hard for me as I feared, (speaking only for myself). Maybe it was because I steeled myself for the “big day”… the first holiday… By “steeling myself”, I do not mean that I turned off my emotions. I mean that I prepared myself to accept whatever came, to fall apart or not. My default behavior is to try to make other people feel comfortable. I recognized this and decided I did not need to do this. I could let those around me deal with my emotions however they needed to. But the big emotional crash didn’t happen. To be sure, I thought of Kat often and I missed her terribly, but yesterday was not overwhelming for me.
Today, however, the grief feels particularly tender. I am not sure why. It has been two months since we walked her home and the date kind of sneaked up on me. I am sure the slower pace of the holiday weekend has played a part as well. For whatever reason, I am missing my baby girl. Sure, she was 26 years old, but she will always be my baby.
I have written before how this grieving process seems strange and unfamiliar. The unfamiliarity is mostly about how it comes when I least expect it. As time goes on, I am finding a familiarity too. I have felt these feelings before. Kat’s death is not my first loss. It is by far the most significant loss ever in my life. The feelings resulting from the loss of Kat are echos of much smaller, less significant losses. And why not, I am the same person I was. I did not change when Kat died so much as I became “more so”. The little things feel bigger. The irritations are more irritating. The time flies by quicker. The joys are more precious.
Seeing the view from the end of Kat’s life made the important things so much sharper for me. I still get lost in the daily activities of life, but I don’t stay lost for as long. I recognize the BS more quickly; the “important” have to’s and ought to’s. I am reminded that life is short and precious. May that awareness be ever present.
November 13, 2012
Bananasaur?
If I don’t write it down I’ll forget it… Silly as this is…
Kat showed up in my dreams last night. She was about 5 or 6 years old. I was sitting beside her bed. She was on the bed on her knees with her head hanging down over the side. She asked me to explain to her again how bananasaurs evolved.
November 7, 2012
Voting for Kat
I value quiet.
I value thoughtful, heartfelt words whether I agree with them or not.
I abhor the noise of commercials on TV or radio. When I watch network TV, which is rare, I skip the commercials. I rarely listen to commercial radio. So I haven’t seen any political ads. None!
BUT… I do read Facebook and the senseless vehemence from my friends on the left and the right has been ridiculous. Do folks just turn off their brains when they talk politics? (Interesting TED talk on why).
I did my homework, taking time to read up on the candidates from the local judges to the national offices. I thoughtfully created my cheat sheet and had it ready today with all the choices clearly marked except President. I simply could not decide who to vote for for President. That statement will likely cause half of my friends to be shocked one way, the other half will be shocked the other way and the third half won’t even read this, so they will never know.
On the way to the polling site, I thought of my good friend, Dawn, who is suffering from cancer. (Have I told you how much I hate cancer)? I wondered if Dawn had been able to vote. It is impossible for her to get out these days, but I hoped she was able to cast her ballot. My thoughts drifted to Kat and how she would not get to vote in this election… another addition to the long list of injustices from cancer.
Kat was passionate about a few topics and some of them were political. As ambivalent as I was about my choice, there was no question about who she wanted to be the President of the United States. Right there in my car on the way to the poll, I decided that I would let Kat decide my vote for President. I never felt better about a political choice.
Kat, I miss your passion about making the world a better place. I miss you.
October 16, 2012
The Pause Thing
This grieving process is so strange, so foreign to me. Much of the time, I just feel hollow… empty… Jeanie said it felt like someone drilled a hole in her and sucked out all the life energy. I feel that too. It is as if my blood is water. Do not get me wrong. It is not always like that. I am functioning. I put up walls to compartmentalize my life so I can keep moving, but inevitably the walls that seemed so sturdy melt away like so much warm wax.
So many things remind me of Kat.
Reading time has been a premium for the last couple of years, and now that I have more time to read, I can’t seem to focus for long. However, tonight I finally finished reading The Source, by James Michener, which I started months ago… maybe even a year ago. Like the other Michener books I have read, this one takes place in a singular place and tells stories of the peoples who lived there over time. This book is set in the land we now know as Israel beginning about 12,000 years ago and coming up to “modern times” (the 1960’s). I highly recommend it.
As I was reading tonight, I was reminded of a fond memory of Kat. When the kids were young, it was my job to put them to bed. That generally meant telling them a bedtime story or reading to them. Kat (then Katie) had just graduated from “short stories” to her first chapter book! We were reading Riverboat Adventures by Lucy Kincaid and when we finished the chapter for the night, Katie said, “Wait and I’ll get the pause thing.”
Wondering what in the world she was talking about, I simply replied, “Okay,” and watched to see what she would do.
She left the room for a moment and returned with a bookmark, also known as a “pause thing”. She had cleverly compared in her mind the idea of stopping in the middle of a book with pausing a movie on the VCR.
I miss you, Katie.
October 7, 2012
Finding Tag
We didn’t make a grand public announcement, but sometime the week after Kat died (9/23), her kitty Tag went missing. We were not happy about it, but having never owned a cat, we relied on the word of the “cat people” in our lives. We trusted them that he had found a good hiding place somewhere in the house and that he would come out of hiding as soon as it got quiet. There had been so many people coming and going and making lots of noise, so it was understandable that he would be hiding.
After Kat’s service, Tag was still missing and it felt like a double whammy. Several of us went on a thorough room to room search and did not turn him up anywhere. At this point we were pretty sure he was no longer in the house. We were both pretty upset about this. Tag was a part of Kat that we were looking forward to keeping with us. On top of that, we were feeling guilty for not taking good care of him like we promised. There was nothing good about this turn of events.
We followed all the advice that friends had given us: I found the info on Tag’s microchip and reported him missing. We put some of Kat’s clothing and Tag’s toys on the front steps and in the sunroom. We posted his picture and story on our neighborhood’s Facebook page. We were grateful for friends who covered our neighborhood with fliers. Jeanie decided that he’d be more likely to come into the sunroom than the front porch, so she put his litter box, toys and Kat’s clothes back there and we left the door ajar so he could get in. He wouldn’t be able to get all the way into the house, but he’d be under cover. We put water out for him, but no food. I’ve seen ‘possums in the yard and I wasn’t crazy about the idea of feeding them.
Days passed with no sign of him at all. I mentioned letting Kat’s landlord in Asheville know in case this became one of those stories where the pet found its way back home. In actuality, Jeanie and I had both just about given up all hope of ever seeing him again. Then on Thursday, October 4th just as I was drifting off to sleep, which had not been very good the last few weeks, in the wee hours of the morning, Jeanie texted me, “I just saw a black cat in the sunroom.” I came downstairs and she told me when they locked eyes, he beat feet out of the room and back into the wild. I suggested that we add food to the enticements, so she put some of his dry food out. The next morning some of it was gone. I replaced what was eaten with a single layer of food on the bottom of the dish, so we could tell how much was gone and added a floor lamp so that we could see him better. At this point, I was pretty sure we had Tag and hopeful we could catch him.
Thursday night, we were out at the store and when we returned, there was a little food missing. I was looking at the dish through the sliding glass door and telling Jeanie, when he came out of hiding under the sofa and darted out the door. It was then, that I decided we needed to shut the door to the sunroom while he was in there. The problem is that he didn’t stay in there very long and he would be able to see us sneaking up on him. The one time I saw him in there, a neighbor turned on their porch light and spooked him. I let him have Thursday night to get comfortable and I learned how to watch for him better. The best vantage point was from the upstairs bedroom. Oh how I wished I had night vision goggles. Watching for this black shadow to move was tiresome. I felt like we should be playing the Mission Impossible theme.
On Friday, we borrowed a humane small animal trap to get him. Jeanie bought his favorite wet food (nasty gross stuff) and I baited the trap. Jeanie had driven up to meet Danae and bring Molly to our house later that evening. I was hoping to have a kitty in the trap when she arrived. I watched for him and when he went in, it was clear that he was not going in that trap. The trap was a small, confined cage and there was no way he was entering it. He ate the other food that was intended to lure him into the trap and left. I got this on a video with my phone.
I realized that plan A was still our best option. The whole sunroom would have to be the trap and I would have to be the one to spring it. I put some more nasty wet food out and rearranged things to try to get him further into the room, then I went upstairs to wait. As soon as I saw him go in, I ran downstairs and was just about to go out the front door when I heard the garage door open. Jeanie and Molly were coming in! Rats! So I stopped them and tried to get around, but Tag was already gone. Sigh! Not sure if it was because I took too long, or if the sound of the car pulling up or the garage door spooked him. In any case, we still didn’t have a kitty.
After we got Molly in bed, I put some more food out and setup in my perch to watch for the “fuzzy little bastard” (Kat’s nickname for him). I saw him prance around the yard a bit, but it was well over an hour before he approached the room door again. When it was clear he was on his way in, I ran downstairs, out the garage door (which was still open), around the side of the house and into view of the sunroom. I couldn’t see him, so I wasn’t sure if he was still in there. I crept slowly towards the door and then we saw each other. He was so surprised, he didn’t know which way to run. I ran for the door and shut it. He went ballistic! Poor thing was frightened completely out of his wits. Our sunroom is attached to the house on one side and the other three walls are simply sliding glass doors, which were open to the screens. He climbed up the screens to the ceiling twice (ripping them as he went) the second time he jumped from the ceiling into our Ikea lamp (it’s the droopy one with the paper shade) and it disintegrated from his claws.
Jeanie was watching the whole thing from inside the house. Her response was, “I saw it happen, but I still don’t believe it!” As soon as he stopped flying, I opened the door and stepped in. I spoke very calmly to him as I walked around the room shutting the sliding doors over the screens. Jeanie was desperately trying to get my attention to show me that I had not completely shut the door when I came in. I finally saw it and Tag trying as hard as he could to open the door just a little more. I firmly closed his final opportunity for escape. Then I sat down and Jeanie came out. We just spoke softly to him for quite a while without trying to approach him, just letting him calm down in his own time.
After about 15 minutes, he was crouched behind the couch and I reached out to touch him. I was surprised that he let me touch him. Not too much later, I scratched him behind the ears and before long, he was actually climbing in our laps! The whole time I was posting a play-by-play on Facebook, so I know exactly how long it took. At exactly 11:05, I posted “I win!” That was after I caught him and before I went in the sunroom. By 11:45 he was eating the rest of that nasty food he loves so much and was climbing in our laps by 11:49. I was very surprised. When I saw him freak out, I thought it might take days to get him inside.
He seems to be glad to be with us again. He is climbing on the back of the couch while we watch TV. The one thing that seems to disturb him is when the people in the house are in different rooms. For instance, Jeanie was downstairs when I came up to the office to type this tonight. He came up here and gave me a piece of his mind!
It might be completely irrational, but it feels like we got a little piece of Kat back.
September 20, 2012
The Room Built With Love
In order to setup this story, I offer this extremely abbreviated version of a very long and arduous journey: Our youngest daughter, Kat, has been fighting cancer for the last year and a half. If you want to know more about that journey, click here.
Last week, in the hospital, Kat’s legs and feet began retaining fluid and swelling. When she saw this and remembered last year when the swelling prevented her from walking well, when she had to be carried up and down the stairs. She cried softly and said with resignation, “I can’t believe this is happening. I do not want to be carried up the stairs again!”
Each of us has emotional triggers; words or situations that cause us to predict what is coming based on our past experiences. Then we feel based on what we believe. Kat believed this was coming and was upset because there was nothing she could do to stop it. I have my own emotional triggers, but this was not one of them. I could see the passion in her desire and I resolved to never carry her up those stairs again! But how? All of our bedrooms are upstairs.
The key was to prepare a room for her downstairs. The room I had in mind has been transformed several times already. First it was a computer room, then a formal living room, then a playroom. The room was wide open to the foyer, so it offered no privacy at all. I imagined that if we could temporarily wall off the large opening with a closeable door, it might just work. I imagined how that might be done and thought of how to make it happen. I planned to start working on it as soon as I got home, but on Saturday, Kat decided it was time to stop the chemo and come home with us. Suddenly I was out of time. It could not wait until I got home; this remodeling project needed to be completed right away!
Sunday morning, I sent a text to my best friends explaining the situation and asking if they knew anyone who could help. They immediately went into action. I was excited to learn that one friend’s father-in-law was visiting (his reputation for craftsmanship precedes him). I described the ultimate goal as being privacy for Kat without having to go upstairs and trusted them to make it happen. After some quick brainstorming and a few questions back and forth, the plan was complete, the materials were purchased and the work began. They thoughtfully sent photos so we could enjoy the progression of the work. I told the story and showed the pictures to Kat’s nurse. Word spread and the staff was just amazed. The phrase I kept hearing was, “No way!” In a few hours, the work was done!
Now Kat is home. She is comfortably settled into what is now the largest bedroom in the house. The representative from the medical supply came to install her hospital bed and other sundry equipment. He said he has seen a lot of modifications made for family members to be comfortable at home. However, he had never seen anything of this magnitude.
Sometimes when somebody loves you
Miracles somehow appear
And there in the warp and the woof is the proof of it
– from Charlotte’s Web (the movie)
Building a wall is not a miracle. The miracle is in the loving friendship of our community. This is just one miracle story among many. So many folks are weaving their threads into our lives to support us with gifts of grace, prayers, well wishes, lawn mowing, meals, moving help… Much thanks.
Jimazing Thoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.