Chapter 8: New Year, New Project (Sort of...)

          Happy new year!
          Things aren’t looking so good for the nation right now, but I’m pleased to say my new year is off to a good start. Sticking to my resolutions has been pretty easy thus far, especially the first one. Thanks to the Bible app on my phone and iPad, I’m able to keep up with my daily devotions on my lunch break. I also bought myself a Bible and a cover for it on Amazon as a Christmas present to myself. While I normally enjoy reading books on my Kindle or iPad, I decided that I prefer to read my Bible the old fashioned way. So I use that one for my devotions right before bed.
            This week I also began work on one of my other resolutions. Last month, as I was browsing Amazon, I stumbled across a book titled “Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity”. It’s by a young man named Gregory Coles. Both the title and synopsis intrigued me, so I bought it for reading later. This week, I decided to use my lunch break to read instead of just playing games or surfing social media on my phone. I started Greg’s book on Monday and finished it by Friday.
            And…wow.
            This is the synopsis from Greg’s website:
Let’s make a deal, you and me. Let’s make promises to each other.
I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I’ll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I’ll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I’ve whispered a thousand times since: “I’m gay.”
Is it possible to be gay and still follow Jesus? And if so, what happens next? If you believe the Bible calls you to celibacy, is it possible to embrace that calling without feeling like a divine typo?
      ‘Single, Gay, Christian’ is the story of one person’s journey through these questions. It’s about acting like your own alter ego, about getting epiphanies from mosquitoes, about singing happy birthday to yourself while literally hiding in a closet. It’s about being gay, loving Jesus, and choosing singleness in a world that fears all three.
          Greg is only thirty years old, and he published his story just four years ago. I was immediately captivated by his writing as he put into words so many thoughts, feelings, doubts, questions, and fears that I wrestled with in my teen years and, again, have started grappling with after reaffirming my salvation and faith in God four months ago. Like him, I was terrified of anyone discovering my secret. Like him, I questioned why God had made me this way. But unlike Greg, the only way that I could reconcile my conflict was to reject God, the church and the Bible altogether. I chose to walk into adulthood on my own, living my truth as I saw fit.
            Greg, however, stuck it out with God. The end result is that he came to believe it was God’s will for him to remain celibate. He’s currently serving as worship leader in his local church while teaching English part time at the university as well as writing a second book. As for me, I’m about to start the very same journey that Greg just completed.
            Four months ago, when I finally surrendered to God in a heartfelt, pleading, somewhat awkward prayer on a quiet car ride home from work late one night, I knew in the back of my mind that I was going to have to return to the very same issue that I had wrestled with in high school. That was one reason I created this blog, and I’ve spent the last four months mentally preparing myself by slowly opening various doors to my past and peeking hesitantly behind them. The first door was episode two of this blog.
            This week, as I read Greg’s story, I slowly realized two things. One, it was time to tell my story, and two, it needed to be more than just a blog. One of my new year’s resolutions was to tackle the issue of homosexuality and Christian faith, to reconcile this once and for all so that I could move on with the rest of my life. Greg’s story gave me the realization that the best way to tell my story was to also write a book. So that’s what I’m going to do.
            But then something else occurred to me. I don’t want to tell just my story. I want to broaden the scope of the book to discuss this issue in more detail. I want to interview pastors and church leaders of different denominations to hear their interpretations of God’s view on this issue. I also want to talk to others like me who have been struggling with reconciling their faith in God with being gay. I want to deep dive on Google and Amazon to find books and other resources that will help me learn the history of the church and its relationship to the issue of homosexuality. My story is going to provide the frame. All of my interviews and research will be the painted portrait. I’ve even come up with a title: Living Beneath the Rainbow: Reconciling my Homosexuality with my Christian Faith.
            Early in my senior year of high school, as part of a joint assignment for my Bible and English classes, my teachers assigned my class a religious topic that we had to research and write up in a term paper. In addition to the usual library research, we were required to interview the pastor and other leaders in our church. As with everything else in high school I did the absolute bare minimum required to complete this assignment. I loved English but despised Bible class, and I can’t even remember the topic my partner and I were assigned. I think it was predestination. Whatever the case, I did the library research, we both sat down for all of 10 minutes with the pastor, and then I wrote the paper. I have no doubt that our teachers gave us a “B” at best, or, more likely, a “C”.
            Mrs. Tutty, I know you’re a regular reader of my blog postings, so I want you to know that I’m here for my makeup assignment. This time it’s just me, and this time I promise to do more than just the bare minimum. This project will require my heart and soul. In addition to the various research methods, Bible reading and prayer, I will be returning to my own past. There’s a scared, angry, frustrated, lonely – so desperately lonely – kid that’s been waiting 25 years for me to talk to him. I am going to have to peel away the faded scars of old wounds that I assumed were healed long ago. I need to reconcile with myself before I can start reconciling and building my new relationship with God. I know already that this is going to be painful, and part of me really doesn’t want to do this. I would rather just focus on the main issue and go from here.
            But, in the last couple months, as I’ve been reading my Bible and learning all over again how to pray, I have felt God strongly reminding me of that burden that I thought I had thrown away years ago. In many ways, I’m right back where I started as a freshman in high school. How do I reconcile my faith with being gay?
            But that’s not the only reason I need to write this book. Last year I decided that I wanted to get a boyfriend. I was tired of living the single life, and I had felt a need for quite some time to find that “special guy”. That was back in June when I created the Tinder profile and I met “Alfred”. And those of you who read my blog already know how that turned out. But that didn’t stop me from continuing my search for true love.
          But, right about that same time is when God started to actively work within me, flipping all kinds of switches that woke me from my 23-year-long selfish complacency. I gave myself back to Him started this new journey.
            Sometimes irony can be a real kick in the balls.
          After finishing Greg’s book, I have been having all kinds of new inner conflict. The main question now is, what if God’s will for the rest of my life is that I remain celibate? Just when I have begun experiencing a new kind of loneliness and the accompanying desire to satisfy that romantic hunger, I am now faced with the prospect that that hope will be forever denied me. My secret hope for this new project that I’m embarking on is that I will find the answers I’m looking for. That I will find a new peace with God and I can finally put to rest this issue once and for all.
            But, deep down in my soul, my super-secret hope is that not only will I resolve and reconcile this issue, but that I will also be rewarded with finding love in a lifelong relationship with another Christian man. I desperately want to experience that love that my parents and all my brothers and so many other people in this world – especially other gay Christians – have already had the joy of living and experiencing.
            But…
            But what if I reach the end of this particular journey and I get the answer I don’t want to hear?
            I promised God four months ago that I was His completely – heart, mind, body and soul. I will do whatever He asks of me. And in my head I know that He will give me the strength and resolve to follow through on that promise when He finally gives me answer to His will. But in my heart, I just don’t know if I can accept the answer if it’s one I don’t want to hear.
        But I’m getting ahead of myself. In my typical, type-A personality fashion I’m listing all the things that can wrong with the car before I even begin the road trip. It’s time to just get in, turn the key, and start driving.
            There’s also one more good reason to embark on a project like this one. I came back from Christmas vacation transformed. Not only did I feel well rested and refreshed, I also felt a very distinct sense of inner calm and centeredness as I jumped right back into a full time work schedule at both jobs. I hadn’t realized until now, looking back over the last seven months, just how angry, frustrated, and downright hostile I’d become, thanks to all the shenanigans of this country’s citizenry. I spent most of my free time surfing social media, arguing with strangers, ranting and raving like Chicken Little on speed and steroids, and most of it was for very little real result, except maybe fueling my own warped sense of righteous indignation and moral superiority. (But, for the record, I was right about almost all of it.) It also didn’t help that I was charging through most of my days on just 4 ½ hours sleep per night, thanks to the two full time jobs.
            My ten day vacation was a Godsend, in more ways than one. Not only did I catch up on sleep, but I also took the time to do some serious reflection and prayer. When I returned to Las Vegas last week, I felt an eerie mixture of calm and peace, as if my whole self was enveloped in a nice, warm invisible blanket. Even that whole, crazy shitstorm on Wednesday at the capitol didn’t ruffle me. I completely ignored the TV in the break room at Walmart as I devoured Greg Coles’ story on my Kindle app. Even my interactions with the customers at both jobs were different. The old me would have been silently judging and cursing all the annoying people – the ones who take forever to do a simple task like printing off a bank statement for a loan application, or they ask dumb questions about common sense stuff, or they want to give me their whole life’s story while the ten people in line behind them silently glare at both of us.
            But not the new me. I came into the new year with a new attitude. I knew I needed an adjustment. That’s why one of my resolutions was to be more kind, sympathetic and understanding to the people I interact with daily. But I think my calm, peaceful state of mind is also due to my renewed faith in Christ. I know that no matter how shitty the world around me is going to get, I have faith in the One who’s really in control of it all. And now, thanks to my new writing project, I have something into which I can pour all of my free time, my energy, my passion and my creativity.
            I don’t know how long this will take. I’m hoping no more than a year, at most. I’ve already made contact with someone I found on Twitter who runs a ministry in Nashville, TN, that helps churches to create their own ministries specifically to help LGTBQ Christian teens who are struggling with their sexual identity and their service to God. I also contacted Greg Coles via his website to thank him for his book and I asked him if he would be willing to correspond with me to discuss his story – and my own project – further. No response as of yet.
            But now I have a special request for all you out there reading this. If you know of someone like me who’s going through this same struggle and is willing to talk about it, or if you belong to a church that is either gay friendly or not, or if you know of any resources that you can point me to that will help in my study and research on this topic, I would greatly appreciate the assistance. I especially would like to speak to pastors or church leaders of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Methodist denominations. (I already have a Baptist pastor in mind for my first interview, hopefully later this week.)
            Happy New Year, folks! It’s going to be a good one! I can feel it!
            As my brothers would say, “Hoo-Rah!”