My Name is Courage “An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.”

John Steinbeck, East of Eden



Everyone's afraid of something.

As I have pondered for almost a month (jeesh!) what my second blog post would be, I've decided to address my fears. Fears that have surfaced now that I have finally decided to walk down this path holding my gay orientation openly in one hand and my faith in the other and seeing what's going to happen.



And I have A LOT of fears about this new turn in my life, some are ridiculous, some are relatable:

=I'm afraid that I won't be as open minded with other peoples views as I expect them to be of mine, especially if it's something I don't want to hear.



=I'm afraid that I will find only what I want to find and sweep everything else under the rug.



=I'm afraid that what I had with God before all this happened, the quality of relationship I had with Him during my childhood and late teen years was just that, childhood. That maybe all that is just innocence lost and that it's not realistic to expect that again.



=I'm afraid of being considered less of a child of God and being dismissed by other Christians because of the views I have.



=I'm afraid of how living my life as a gay Christian is going to further affect my friends and my family and my life.



=I'm afraid of being wrong that I'm gay. What if I'm wrong and I miss out on my potential (male) soulmate?



=I'm afraid of putting a label on myself and living by the constraints of that label instead of just who I am.



= I'm afraid of what I will find.



In all honesty, I think that all these fears can be summed up by saying that I'm afraid of moving forward: moving forward with my questions, moving forward with my faith. When you move forward, you are never kept in a comfortable state. You risk the loss of stability that you have set up for yourself. You risk having your worldview, your proven "truths" and beliefs, coming completely unraveled before your very eyes (a very painful process). You run the risk of having your entire being coming undone. And all this is happening because you are forcing yourself to move forward.



Sounds crazy, right? Why move forward? What's the point?

Would it be too clichéd to say that it was all in the name of Truth?



Here's a short story for you:

I can remember driving home one night, flying down the highway, windows down, music blaring, the buffeting wind knocking me about, competing with the music. I can't remember what specifically made me so upset, if it was a conversation with someone or what, but I do remember feeling a lot of confusion and worry, and fear- an overwhelming sense of fear.



My mind was reeling, everything was hitting me all at once: the pressure to figure out what I was going to do next in life, the stress of never having enough money to get my education, my trying relationship with my father, the recent admission that I was probably, most likely, like 99.9 % sure, gay. Everything that I had held as solid, was crumbling underneath me. Who I was, what I thought I knew, was unraveling, like someone tugged at a loose thread, and all the "permanent" knots I had made that wove into my worldview were coming undone.



With the base bumping and my hair flying and my emotions gone to hell, a thought hit me: "My name is Courage."



I said first in my mind and then out loud.

"My name is Courage. My name is Courage." I tilted down my review mirror, looked in it and said with steady conviction to myself, "Your name...is Courage."

I shouted it; I whispered it; I said it until I believed it.



At that point in my life, driving in my car, unsure of even where I was going at that moment, I realized that in the face of crippling fears, all you can do is have courage. Because even the weakest, the most terrified, those that have no confidence, the doubters, the undecided-even they can have courage.



And what is courage but moving forward? And what is moving forward but enduring new truths, new perspectives? Doesn't the world look different from the bottom of the mountain than from the top? Yet, we have to go forward to get there.



I guess that I want to see what the view's like at the top of the mountain. I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking my current outlook here at the base is all that there is.



So I will brave my fears, grasp for the quick holds, stumble in the dark, search the foreboding caves, and toe the cliffs' perilous edges on my journey to the top.



Why? Because my name is Courage.



Steady on,

cBb

How I Came To Be "Discarded" http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/trynidada The name "Discarded Daughter" may seem sorrowfully pretentious in a look-at-me-I'm-a-victim sort of way, but that really isn't how I mean it. Let me try to explain.



I don't know if you know this, but there's this "culture war" going on between the Gays and the Christians. Sadly, there's been a lot of carnage of both the spiritual and emotional kind and the blood and gore kind (hate crimes and suicides). For me, the experience has been of the emotional and spiritual kind. The kind that happens when, all the sudden, who you are, who you were created as, becomes an unsuspecting wedge that, when driven down by the unbending theology of the masses, splits an individual from his family, his friends, his church, and most importantly, his God.



I feel like part of the carnage of this "war."



I feel discarded.



I feel abandoned by this community I was once part of. A community that prayed together, that encouraged one another in their walk with Christ, that was there for accountability for whatever their members struggled with. It was a community where there was grace and love and hope. I went to church services and I felt closer to God. I didn't go to church services and I still had amazing encounters with God. I carried my Bible with me wherever I went. I was part of the Evangelical in-crowd. A real Jesus-Freak, you know?





I knew the lingo; I knew the prayers; I knew the theology.



Then I guess Life, the life that hits you hard, that punches the rose-colored glasses off your face, happened. I admitted to myself that I was most likely gay.



And the crumbling ensued.



Relationships were gained and lost. My family does not agree with me, although I am still very close to them and visit often, I've noticed that there hasn't been anymore, "So have you met someone yet?" questions. My best friend and I don't really talk anymore. I have extreme inner turmoil about who I am on the inside. Now that I've accepted this part of me, what does this mean? How do I live? How do I describe myself to someone?



Who am I?



And that's the pivotal question. Once upon a time, I would've answered that with an unwavering response of, "God's own daughter," but now?



Now the thought of reading Scripture makes me physically sick to my stomach. What used to be a fount of Life and Truth, now is like a death. Now when I see Christians holding Bible studies in coffee shops, and hear them arguing over century old debates like predestination vs. free will or their discussions of the Second Coming and the pondering of, "Are we in the End Times?" or hear them casually talk of "Hate the sin, love the sinner," I want to shake them fiercely and tell them to open their eyes, to ask the hard questions and be honest with themselves. I want to knock off their Peace, Love, and Jesus glasses so that they can admit to how their easy answers don't really work in the face of the real world, and how their flippant beliefs can have soul tearing effects on those hurting and searching.



But the worst of it all, the real devastating result from all this (aside from me wanting to punch Christians in coffee shops, which really is a horrible thought to have, albeit an honest one), is my relationship with God.



My God, My Love.



Jesus really was my first (and only) boyfriend.



I try to peer back through the haze of time and change and see our relationship and I catch glimpses of real joy, of real Love, the kind stronger than Death. I remember once when I was 10, I had gotten mad at God about something and told Him I wasn't going to speak to Him anymore, like a child does with a friend she's mad at. Later on that day I caught myself talking with Him about the sunset and begrudgingly told Him we could talk again. What I had with God was like Brother Lawrence's book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Everyday was real; everyday was God. He was more of a reality than the chair I'm sitting on if you can believe it... but now? How did I move from something so real and alive and embracing to something so not?



I once knew God. We were bound; it was a marriage, a blood-covenant. We were truly One. But over time, this confusion and hurt that came from this Gay/Christian war, well, the cornerstone of our foundation was being chipped away at slowly until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was angry and torn. I no longer wanted to make excuses for God. I was done with the disagreements of the Church. I was done with the God who would allow this confusion to abound and who was responsible for making me this way....



So I divorced myself from Him. We were finished.



But as I tried to live a life without God, I found that I could never really be separated from Him. He's more a part of me than I can easily admit. Through the parties and the drinking and the just not giving a flip, I have found it impossible to live as if I never knew what it was like to love the God of Everything. As a result, I am stuck in-between, in that place that is not the Heavenly High Ground where so many Christ followers dwell, nor is it in the lowlands of the World. I try to act like part of the world, but I can't shake this heavenly limp, the shadow of what remains of my eternal birthright.



So that's me. The In-betweener. The Not-belonger. The Discarded. I don't belong to either place.



They don't tell you when you go to have that heavenly heart surgery that Paul calls the "circumcision of the heart," that you can never go back. I can't reattach that foreskin. I am forever changed and so I feel forever lost right now.



Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe you went or are going through the exact same thing. Maybe the way I write with all these analogies is really throwing you for a loop. (Sorry for that, by the way, that's just the way my brain works.)



This is the purpose for the blog. I'm trying to recover what I've seemingly lost with God. I want to know the Truth, whether I like it or not. I want to go the Bible and be able to read it again.



This blog is for the discarded, the in-betweeners, the disillusioned, the seemingly forgotten, and for those who just have enough time to read the ramblings of an ex-evangelical, gay, college-kid.



Steady on,

c.B.b





