War

One of my friends got online tonight to tell me that she is joining the army so she can pay to continue to go to school. I was stunned, shocked, silent, and finally managed to tell her that I would pray for her and for her to let me know how it goes, etc.

But see there is this one thing.

I believe war is wrong.

Incredibly wrong.

Really, really wrong.

There is never an excuse for it wrong.

and I didn't say anything.

because, obviously, she doesn't feel that way, or she wouldn't be joining the army.

I went to school with her, and I know that she is a deeply committed Christian. My faith has lead me to believe there is no just war, while her equally Christian faith lead her to believe that there is such a thing. 

Just as I don't want people pounding me over the head with Bible verses that I've already examined, I have to assume that she has thought about this, prayed about this, etc, and any convincing I try to do will just hurt.

But I wonder... should I tell her that I'm anti-war?

Should I tell her that I pray every day that this conflict will end?

Should I tell her that I cry every time I hear of anyone, American or not, dying or being horribly injured in this stupid war?

Or do I just silently add her to the list of people that I pray and cry for?

Oh Lord, Why do the nations rage?

Bravery and Cowardice

So, I finally got up the nerve/self realization to start blogging, and meet lots of really nice people, and a few really nasty ones, and etc, y'all saw that.

I felt kind of like someone who had come out into the sun, was discovering that it was nice, and then had a bucket of fish heads dumped on me.

That, plus fears that people would somehow discern who I was if they stumbled upon my blog and actually know me. 

So, that's why I haven't written recently.

I'm not sure how to resolve these issues.

I'm in the process of getting a new job, that I really want, and am afraid that in some freak of technology, that the people hiring me will find this blog and somehow know it's me, which is rather irrational I know.

I kind of want to curl into a ball and say "you can't see me, you can't see me..."

Oh Lord, help me to be brave in You.

Enough already!

I'm all for discussion - with me - once you start addressing comments to other people leaving me comments  - basically having an argument THROUGH me, I get tired of it.

and Anonymous, even if I don't post your comments, I do read them, but since you're basically saying the same thing, I didn't see the need to repost them, and continue the fight in my comment log. And really, choose a name, even if it's TrueVoiceOfTheMostHigh. You don't have to have a blog, or an account with blogger, to post under a name. If you believe in this so strongly, why not give me a name to identify you with?

and btw, your "I know all the answers, I have two degrees in theology." attitude doesn't impress me much, it just gets my back up. There are people with MDivs who think God is dead. A degree is not a guarantee of theology. Some people think it is a hinderance to it.

So, anyways, this week.

It's not been good, this week. It's been confusing. It's been depressing. It's been anxiety-ridden.

I'm waiting for a very important piece of mail that has not come yet and is driving me to distraction, so that's why I'm anxiety-ridden.

This monday I was at a thing for church and a woman shared her testimony - which featured her being "saved from homosexuality" She is now "happily married" and has three children.

I came out to another friend, who I thought would understand. She wanted to pray for me to be rescued from temptation for 30 minutes.

I flirted with a guy today and enjoyed it. I wish my pheromones would make up their minds.

Part of me longs to return to the quasi-fundamentalism of my childhood, where there was no grey, just black and white. No thinking was involved, just following the rules.

And part of me is afraid of no longer being the little girl who always did what was expected.

sigh

Ah, the irony...

So, I'll get back to deep history and other stuff which is percolating in the back of my head at the moment, but today I want to talk about my day.

So, there is a girl at my church that I have a crush on. We are fairly good friends, and for the past couple of weeks have hung out together after church. We can talk about almost everything except politics (and... well... do I have to spell it out?) and have a lot of the same hobbies and interests. And did I mention that she's beautiful?

Anyhow, she has no idea I'm lesbian, and we have a very satisfactory friend relationship. She is fully convinced that being gay is a sin, although she has several gay friends (more than she knows...) 

I don't know which is worse, to not spend time with her, or to spend time with her and know that I don't want to risk our current relationship by letting her know what I would like our relationship to be.

She treats me like a sister, and I *behave* like a sister with her.

Oh, and what did we spend at least an hour talking about today?

Men.

Don't Worry

Just to relieve everyone sending me comments today, I do not plan on coming out to my mother over the phone!

Mama

My mother and I are a lot alike temperamentally. We say that my sister is like my Dad and I am like my mother. I think it is rather that I am more like my mother, while still being a lot like my father. For example, my mother cries when she gets upset, my dad yells. I do both... with interesting results :P. 

My mother is an artist. Even though she works as a school teacher, that is the defining characteristic that I think of to describe her. As a child, I didn't understand why people would be so impressed by the paintings in our house. Didn't every mother make several watercolors and acrylic paintings a year? I think the only piece of framed art in my parents house that was not made by a family member is a print of a Monet that I needed for a report in high school. My sister and I both continue this artistic tradition when we have the time. 

I think one thing that my mother has taught me is that determination is really the key to success. When my sister and I were young my mother stayed at home with us. After my sister started school, my mother went back to college to get certified to teach, and started teaching when I was in high school.

She had an absolutely horrible time that first year. After staying at home for over ten years with children that were fairly well behaved naturally, the wilds of a public middle school were quite a shock to her. She had very little classroom management, and often came home after school crying. Her principal started an aggressive observation and mentorship program with her, and after drying her eyes, my mother threw herself into it whole-heartedly. Now, ten years later, she has become a teacher that other teachers are sent to learn from, and leads her group, or "team" of teachers. I have seen my mother go from being a shy, sensitive housewife to an assertive professional. Her "teacher look" is particularly well developed. I have seen her make grown men stop the annoying behavior they are participating in and apologize with just a glance.

Growing up, whenever I had any questions about boys, or relationships, or childbirth, or just about anything else, I could ask my mother, and after a blush or two, she would tell me what I needed to know. The one thing we didn't talk about - anything I thought might make her upset. I can't stand to make my mother upset, or disappointed with me. For years I suffered from depression without telling my parents, because I knew that my mother would take it to heart and think it was her fault. 

How do I know that my mother would react this way? When my sister had to get treatment for panic attacks, my mother called me up on the brink of tears, convinced that she must have caused it by eating something she shouldn't have when pregnant. Despite the fact that my father has asthma, and my paternal grandmother had it, and that my paternal aunt, one cousin, and her son all have asthma, my mom is convinced that I have it because one of her coworkers smoked next to her when she was pregnant with me. My mom is great at accepting guilt for things that are not her fault. 

My mother and I have actually talked about the whole GLBT thing, because a friend of mine came out to her family a couple of years ago. Her parents basically flipped out, joined a fundamentalist church, and tried to sign her up for deprogramming counseling. They have told her that she is not welcome to visit them as long as she is still a lesbian. My mother and I both agreed that this was an absurd and painful reaction. She said she couldn't think of anything that me or my sister could do that would make her not want to see us any more, and basically thought that my friend's parents' reaction was cruel and extreme. I had just finished thinking that my mom was the coolest ever when she said "But regardless, I'm so glad that you and your sister are straight, and I don't have to worry about that."

I'm not sure how to take that, especially now.

I talk to my mother every day on the phone, and some days it seems that I just want to say, perhaps in passing, "Hey Mom, I'm a lesbian." but even if one day I get to the point where I think I could handle telling my parents, I'm pretty sure the phone would be a bad way to go about it.

My Daddy

Some people I know think that people become lesbian or gay because they have a dysfunctional or broken family. I guess I break that stereotype. My parents have been married for thirty-six years, and are more in love with each other than ever. Neither of them is violent or addicted to drugs, and never, ever abused me, my sister, or each other.

That's just to set the record straight. If you want to read some tale of abuse and neglect, find some other blog.

I am going to try my hardest to have one summary blog about my dad, and one summary blog about my mom, but they are so much alike, and so often together, that there will be a lot of overlap... I just didn't want to set out to write the world's longest post by attempting to write about both of them. 

I really was my Daddy's little girl. I remember "helping" him in the garage with whatever he was working with, be it a car, a woodworking project, or some sort of home/appliance repair. Looking back, there are plenty of funny stories, although at the time I'm sure they were terrifying for my dad. Once, after showing me how to put a tire back on a car, he had me tighten down the bolts... but didn't come after to make sure they were down all the way. I think I was four or five. I'm really glad my dad was driving in the right-hand lane when he noticed something odd with his tire, since after he pulled over it fell off... My dad has always had ultimate confidence in me, although I think he did realize that a small child does not have the upper-body strength of an adult after that incident. He encouraged me in school, with full confidence that I could do anything, learn anything, that I set my heart on. When it turned out that I had asthma like my dad, he showed me how to take my medicine, and I felt so excited that our inhalers looked exactly the same.

My family has a love of the mountains, and every summer we would head out on an expedition to Colorado, where we would hike, climb, jeep, and occasionally boat over or on anything we could find. My Daddy and I would always acclimate to the altitude a lot faster than my mom and sister - possibly because we're used to less oxygen than the average person, and it would always feel so good to me that me and my Daddy would be running right up the mountains, while my mother and sister would be lagging behind... an occurrence that only happened two weeks out of the year. 

As a teenager, my dad became my protector. This was occasionally embarrassing, like when he showed up at a prayer walk my Christian club at school was doing - to make sure we didn't get in trouble, or like the time he convinced my homecoming date that he had an AK-47 (he doesn't). I always knew that he would always be there, and that whatever the situation, he could make it right, could rescue me from my mistakes, or cheer me on, if that was what I needed. He had/has a tendency to want to fight my battles for me, but when I need someone in my corner, he's where I go.

When I was in college we set off sparks. I'm still not sure why. We couldn't be in the same room together without it exploding into an argument. I don't even remember what we argued about, but I remember dreading coming home for breaks, or even talking to him on the phone. After some counseling, hard discussions, and maturing (I know on my part) we got through it, and while my dad and I have had disagreements in the past few years, it hasn't been anywhere close to the yelling, crying, cursing fits of yesteryear. I hope and pray those never come back.

Now that I'm a neophyte adult, my Daddy and I seem more emotionally close than ever before. We talk about things as adults and friends, not as a small child filled with Daddy-worship, and the paterfamilias explaining how things are done. After I was diagnosed with depression, he opened up to me about his struggles with the same illness (I already knew which parent I got it from) and as I have worked on setting up things like retirement accounts, and tried to figure out how nice of a car I could afford, he has been there to share not only what worked for them, but what didn't work, too. When people ask me why I haven't gone on a date in over a year, I tell them I can't find a man as good as my dad... and while I might be using that as a cover, it's also the truth.

So why haven't I told this loving, supportive man that I'm a lesbian? It's fear. I'm afraid that he won't understand, will be completely bewildered, and that our relationship, which suffered so much during my college years, will never be the same. My dad is not a fundamentalist, but I don't think he's ever thought about gay and lesbian issues that much. I've only heard him talk about such things once, and that was about gay marriage. He's against it. He doesn't think it's fair that gays should get a tax break when they aren't even raising families. When I mentioned to him that a lot of gay and lesbian people have children and that a lot of straight couples don't have kids he kind of ignored it. I didn't press the issue - at the time I didn't know I was a lesbian. That was a few years ago, I don't know what his current views are. I'm glad that he didn't pull out the "sanctity of marriage card." I would have been very surprised if he had, because most of those uber-religio-political people make him mad.

I think my biggest fear is that my dad would think it was something wrong with me, and that it was somehow his fault.

What door?

So, I'm a teacher in a small town, in a southern, "red" state. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church. I became a Christian when I was seven. I was at the church just about every time the doors were open. I was in children's choir and GA's (girls in action), later youth choir, which enabled me to go on several mission trips. I went to a small Baptist college, and am still an active member at a Baptist church (although not a Southern Baptist one). My faith is very important to me, and so is my church. It would break my heart to leave my church. I guess for most people this wouldn't be a problem.

The problem for me? I've come to the conclusion in the past year that not only am I not that attracted to men, but I am very attracted to women. I am not straight. I am a lesbian... and only four people in this world know, and they are all either gay, lesbian, or bi. 

While I know that God made me the way I am, I am afraid of rejection, disappointment, isolation, loosing friends, and possibly even loosing my job if I came out about my sexual orientation. I don't feel like I have the courage to be a pioneer in this arena, at least at this time, but I'm praying for change.

As of right now, I have no plans to even look for the door of the closet, much less come out of it.