"My Chosen Family"

When I was in my twenties Banana Republic came out with an ad campaign that, even for back then, pushed the envelope of societal norms.  The tagline of their three page photo spread was “My Chosen Family”.  Those words highlighted pictures of chiseled, male models holding hands with perky, yet elegant female models.  As one turned the page there were guys holding hands with guys and girls following in their same sex steps.  Those pages were life to my dead, lonely, closeted soul.  It was veritable buffet of emotional porn that the enemy used to entice and ensnare simultaneously.  They led me to believe I belonged somewhere. I don’t know if you are tired of hearing me pine on and on about what life was like back then, but frankly, I don’t care.  Today, in a world where modern technology prevents us from being alone on a toilet for more than two seconds, people are still love starved and desperate for meaningful connection.  People are still dying of interminable loneliness.  I was that kid.  I was that teenager.  And somedays I am still that adult.  A statement came to me last week that reverberated through the last 45 years of my life.

"I've never had a moment where I was alone, yet I've spent most of my life lonely."

As I hit the send button on each one of these blogs I feel like a scientist sending messages into outer space, waiting and wondering if I will get a response.  There are times I know that I am sending out a literary cure for loneliness.  Other times I know that I am letting someone know that Jesus has not forgotten them.  That God will never leave them, forget about them or leave them alone.  Then there are times that I feel this blog goes up like the Bat Signal performing multiple purposes using just one source of light.

I have been experiencing an awakening my friends.  Like the feeling generated when you feel the first gust of a fall breeze or see one tiny, unexpected snowflake delivered by the wind.  It has nothing to do with the physical seasons and everything to do with the spiritual season of my heart, my calling, God’s timing.

You may or may not know this, but I was born with a super sensitive heart; a blessing from God; a perceived weakness by some.  I have suffered great damage to my heart and that sensitivity at the hands of family and those close to me.  I couldn't choose my real family.  So when the idea that I could actually belong to a loving family, a family of my choosing came along, it tripped every sensor in the “YES, PLEASE” portion of my brain.

I have long since forgiven those closest to me for the atrocities, real and perceived, that were perpetrated on me.  Moving beyond the hurt feelings and the need for revenge prevented those who hurt me, from damaging me further.  On the other side of forgiveness though, I emerged a different man with responses and reactions that had nothing to do with who God created me to be and more to do with the broken man shaped by the world.  I spent the biggest part of my life wanting people to see me as smart, attractive, fun and accomplished.  And an even bigger part investing so much time in trying to look like I had finally ARRIVED that I quickly lost sight of the journey and the ever changing destinations.

This past week as hurricane Irma devastated island after island and eventually my home state, I was safely tucked away in Oklahoma visiting my father.  I was also blessed to connect with one of my oldest college friends.  We hadn’t seen each other in 13 years.  Our only knowledge of one another were the snippets of info and blurry pictures scattered across social media and the occasional search engine.  Sitting down with my oldest friend, I was confronted with just how much life has passed me by.  The passage of time revealed to me that neither one of us are the boisterous, boy crazy fools we were at Oklahoma State.  I realized that out of every other person in my life, Scotty knows me better than any human on the face of the planet.  That is partially because he has known me so long, but mostly because I decided long ago, he could be trusted and I let him in.

There are Sundays that I am feel like I am being more truthful than every other person in church.  I can spot BS from a mile away and smell it from 5.  I don’t make friends easily.  I don't trust easily either.  I feel like someone always has ulterior motives.  I imagine that most people as characters in a bad English spy movie.  I look for inconsistencies in their stories.  Every once in a while the Lord leads me to good people.  The Holy Spirit gives me the go ahead and I start a long and meaningful relationship.  satan is always stirring up the microscopic seeds of my past to spawn a fresh batch of sh...shtuff.  New people who remind us of people in our past, can often trigger old thought patterns, habits and responses.  I fight daily to maintain these new relationships with the newly elected members of “my chosen family”.

Different than the people in those Banana Republic ads, the chosen family of my life nowadays are 3 dimensional.  They have encountered sickness, heartache, divorce, rape and other atrocities.  Some of them have been crushed under the weight of it.  Their hearts may never love the same again.  But the God we serve is the same yesterday, today and forever.  The God we serve will always be by our side, and hold our hand even as He sees fit to allow us to walk through the fires of our everyday Hell.

I do my best to honor my father and mother as the scripture commands, but I will be damned if I will stay silent, keeping a lid on my pain and anguish, because those who have hurt me are now embarrassed by the truths that I share in the open.  It is often the victims who suffers fresh, daily death, even after the perpetrators have long since forgotten their crimes.

I wrote a piece of poetry once that dripped with crimson rivers of vengeance.  I would never physically harm anyone in real life, but I could murder my foes a thousand times over in my literary ramblings.  When I laid down my right to vengeance and asked God for forgiveness and to cleanse my heart from the harm I had wished on my enemies, my chains fell away.  For the first time, I could look long and hard into the lives of my tormentors and feel a compassion and an understanding for a life of familiar despair.

God is not my co-pilot as an 80’s bumpersticker once decreed.  God is my life support system.  Jesus tells me this, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."  I sit here in the 2am dark of my Florida living room, praising God not that I found Him or He found me, but instead praising Him because I was never misplaced.  Each and every step,  each disappointment, each oopsy poopsy was known by my Father in heaven.  He saw fit to allow each member of my family and my chosen family to shape, mold, chisel and sculpt the man you see before you today.

I am reminded of a song I used to sing when I was a little boy.  “He’s still working on me.  To make me what I ought to be.  It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars.  How loving and patient He must be.  He’s still working on ME.”  I most definitely have not arrived my friends.  Some days, I hand out more apologies than accolades.  Yet, as I sit here, in the wonderful space of Big Fish Ministry that my Father God provided to me as a refuge, I hear him whisper nightly to  “You are My son.  You are loved more than you know.  You are cared for.  You are my precious child.  You have not been forgotten.  And you will always be MY CHOSEN FAMILY.  Love, Dad"

Voices in My Head

Our reading today took us to the pool of Bethesda.  The bible said that “here a great number of disabled people used to lie- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”  The focus of the reading this morning was one particular fellow that had been an invalid for 38 years.  Wow.  That is exactly 4 years less than I have been alive.  In the grand scheme of things, this guy had suffered half a lifetime with disability. 

John 5

            5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”  8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked...         

            14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

            The man was in his current state for many years.  Chances are he had grown accustomed to living this way.  He knew of no other way to live so he made the best of his circumstances.  He made a life “near the fires of hell”, because there seemed to be no other option.  Then Jesus shows up, as he occasionally does and starts asking investigatory questions.

            “Do you want to get well?”, Jesus asks.  Interesting question.  Who wouldn’t want to get well?  But Jesus still asks.  Surprisingly enough Jesus doesn’t get the Yes that we all might expect, but instead he gets what amounts to be excuses.  He tells Jesus, maybe I did way back when, but at this point, it’s hopeless.  Then Jesus, once again, doing what Jesus does, calls the man up and out of his bondage.  He calls him to “Get up!” Pick up his mat and walk.  The bible says at once the man was cured and picked up his mat and walked.  Can you imagine what would have happened if the man would have just said, “No thank you” or “How could you do this for me?”  Or worse yet, “It’s simply not possible.”  “How dare you suggest that there is anything wrong with me.”  Thank goodness, the man was obedient to the call of Jesus on his life.  Obedience allowed for his healing. 

            Later on in the story, I find it interesting that when Jesus finds the same man again in the temple, he gives him a spiritual reminder of sorts.  Jesus says, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”  It leaves me to wonder what happened if anything.  Was the healed man sinning in the temple or was Jesus just reminding the man that his newfound freedom would need care and maintenance.  That he should guard it and tend it and grow it.  I also like that Jesus said, “…you are well again.”  The man had the prospective of being well, then being sick and then being well…again.    

            Much of this man’s story parallels the life of some of the gay men I have mentored.  I have met some men who have struggled with homosexuality most of their natural life.  Some of these men are in their 50’s and 60’s.  They, too, have identified with the hopelessness the man at the pool felt after being afflicted for 38 years.   They fear that they have been gay way too long for God to be able to help them with their struggle.        

            When I walked away from homosexuality I was 27.  There was a huge span of history and beliefs that Jesus showed up and begin to question.  As a young man just discovering my gay attractions I fought not to accept them.  I never chose to be gay, but there was no explanation at the time other than genetics.  I prayed for God to take these feelings away night after night.  He didn’t.  At some point, I would imagine just like the man at the pool, I began to give up and accept that I might have to live as a gay man for the rest of my life.  I stopped fighting the feelings.  I built a life around homosexuality, because I felt that I was destined to live that way for the rest of my life.  It was either adapt and accept or spend the rest of my life apologetic and mopey.  I couldn’t do the latter. 

            When Jesus’ voice became louder than everyone else’s at “the side of the pool” I finally began to listen.  “Do you want to get well?”, He asked. 

            “It isn’t possible.” I said.  “Leave me the eff alone.  I am going to be gay no matter what.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”  “I don’t even know if ‘getting well’ is possible. 

            Then, for whatever reason, a spark of hope began to burn.  The hope of not being gay and having a wife and kids and a God filled life grew within me.  When Jesus called out to me, he told me to get away from all the random voices in my life and focus on His.  It was at that point that I packed up my car and got up and began…to walk. 

            Healing didn’t come immediately.  I slept with an old boyfriend on the move back home.  Then when I moved home I tried to connect with an attractive guy I saw in Tulsa.  It was at that moment though, that I heard the Holy Spirit’s voice loud and clear.  “What are you doing?”  I look back now and hear Jesus’ voice as well. “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 

            I fear for young men who have known the truth of Jesus’ call on their life out of homosexuality, but have decided that walking this out is too hard.  So they return to homosexuality.  Homosexuality was a sin that did nothing, but take from my heart and life, sinking me deeper onto the “pavement by the pool”.  If I could offer a word of encouragement to those of you struggling with whether or not to continue this fight, I would simply say.  Freedom from homosexuality is not the absence of struggle.  It is the daily surrender of our broken sexuality to Jesus Christ. 

            Asking Jesus Christ to be Lord of your life is the first step my friends, but the battle for your life begins there.  Satan wants nothing more than to ruin your life and destroy your testimony.  A true, spirit filled walk with God is not a one time transaction at the International Bank of Hypergrace United.  It is a constant daily maintenance and surrender in an effort to “stop sinning” so that we won’t be worse off than we were before we met Jesus.  Walking away from homosexuality was the hardest thing I ever did, but Jesus Christ called me to be obedient to his Word not my feelings.  I know now that I was born sensitive, artistic and creative, not gay.  God’s call is as fresh and fulfilling today as it was back in 1998. 

            I trust Jesus and believe in His complete healing for broken sexuality.  I found my hope in God’s word, not in the fickle misgivings of human belief and emotion.  Are there too many voices in your head right now for you to hear God’s?  Then step away and listen to the call of Jesus today.  He is asking you today, “Do you want to get well?”  How will you respond? With the spark of hope for a new life or Out of vast expanse of your fear, because of the passage of time?