“You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Excerpt from Psalm 139
Growing up, I’d say I was a pretty typical kid. I was raised in a small town outside of Knoxville, TN, where driving to the city to go to the mall was considered a big, full day. I was pretty nerdy, loved to read, and tried to be nice to my classmates.
I also hated it when people were left out. When I started playing community basketball in first grade, I hadn’t yet become competitive. In one of my first games, I demonstrated my lack of competitiveness by intentionally passing the ball to a girl on the other team.
I don’t remember what happened next, but my mother says that my coach called a time out and asked me what in the world I was doing. Apparently I said, loud enough for all the parents to hear, “but coach, she hasn’t had the ball the whole game.” Adorable, I know.
Don’t worry– the longer I played, the more competitive I got. Just ask my wife how ruthless I am whenever we play Rummy 500.
A few years later in that same community basketball league, I developed what I think was my first crush. She was a year ahead of me and easily the most talented player in the league. She didn’t go to my elementary school, so the only time I saw her was at games on the weekends. She was quick on her feet and took shots that an elementary school kid shouldn’t be able to make, making them almost every time. I could watch her play for hours.
I remember one game in particular when she took my breath away. My team was watching the end of the game before ours while we waited to do our warmups. My crush’s team was battling in the final seconds of the game, trying to make one more shot. As she took the ball and started running from the far side of the court, she knew that she wouldn’t make it to the other side of the court –to her team’s basket– in time. She flung the ball from behind the half-court line just before the buzzer sounded. We all held our breath as the ball flew through the air, then hit the backboard– just to the left of the basket.
Even if she had made the shot, though, it wouldn’t have counted. The silence of the court was broken by the ref blowing his whistle and calling “traveling!” Regardless, I was impressed that a kid so small could throw the ball that far and would have made the shot had she aimed just a little to the right.
What can I say? I’ve always had a thing for talented women.
The thing is, I didn’t know to call it a crush when I was a kid. We never talked about being gay at home. A few years later when I joined my best friend’s youth group in middle school, my youth pastor didn’t talk about being gay either. I don’t remember any homophobic sermons or any volunteer youth-group leaders saying we’d go to hell for being in a same-sex relationship. Even so, we all knew. It was in the air we breathed. Being gay was a “choice” and a “sin,” so why would any of us choose to sin?
As a result, I was so deep in the closet I couldn’t see the walls. If I couldn’t see the walls, why would I have ever thought I was trapped?
Photo by Rene Baker on Unsplash
Even though I didn’t realize I was in the closet, I remember feeling like my preteen experience wasn’t like that of my friends.
Dating just wasn’t working right for me. The handful of guys I dated from middle school through undergrad are guys that I agreed to go out with because I knew they had feelings for me. It seemed like what I was “supposed” to do, based on what I’d seen on TV and read in books. We kissed, but never did anything beyond making out. I just figured I was an A+ Christian dater because I wasn’t lusting after these guys. I genuinely enjoyed their company, but I wouldn’t say I was attracted to any of them.
The first time I agreed with my friends that a guy was hot was when we watched the animated film Howl’s Moving Castle at a sleepover. As they swooned over the title character, I agreed that he was rather attractive.
If you haven’t seen the film, you need to take a moment to look at a picture of him to understand why it’s amusing that I actually agreed: Howl’s androgynous at best. In fact, Howl and his love interest Sophie are most often cosplayed by lesbian couples at anime conventions.
But as a preteen, I didn’t know that; I hadn’t even heard the word androgynous. I just felt relieved that I actually agreed with my friends about the attractiveness of a man. I felt like I was closer to getting this “crush and dating” thing right, like the barrier that stood between me and what my friends were experiencing was a little thinner than normal.
Running parallel to all of this typical dating-crush-love preteen-to-teen saga was my spirituality. As a small child, I desperately wanted to go to church. My parents didn’t take us, saying repeatedly “that’s just not the kind of family we are.” So, I took it upon myself to have church in my bedroom. I’d stick a children’s gospel sing-a-long CD into my boombox, line up my stuffed animals, and read (preach) to them out of my children’s illustrated Bible (foreshadowing much?).
When I finally had the chance to join my best friend’s youth group in middle school, I was beyond excited. I read my Bible and prayed regularly. I worked hard to develop my relationship with God. I enjoyed being with people who wanted to learn more about God the way I did.
But it wasn’t all great stuff that I learned. I got deep into evangelicalism. I listened to contemporary Christian rock almost exclusively, which only reinforced the not-so-great theology I was learning.
That theology also gave me a way to stifle the queerness that was budding in me. Whenever I felt “intimidated by” (read: attracted to) one of my female classmates, I’d just tell myself I was attracted to the Christ I saw in them. Again, being gay wasn’t an option for me, so the thought that I actually had a crush on a girl simply never crossed my mind.
Photo by Felipe López on Unsplash
Seeing this narrative written out, the road signs of my queer journey might be obvious to you– and maybe they were obvious to others at the time. I was simply too deep in the closet to see a mirror.
But in reflecting on my childhood, I think God taught me a lot in those years. I genuinely believe that when we reflect on our childhood – the times before the world hits us with tragedy, heartbreak, and crisis– we get small glimpses of how God knit us together in our parents’ wombs.
First, it’s clear to me that I’ve always had a desire for justice and inclusion. The child in me might phrase it as “I don’t like it when people are left out,” but, at its core, that’s the crux of what justice work is. It’s doing the work to make sure that everyone has what they need to not only survive, but to thrive; that includes community. It’s living like the Church in Acts 2, where all members shared their resources so that no one among them was in need.
Second, God designed us for connection. From a young age, I understood that there’s something bigger in the universe that connects us to one another and to the earth we inhabit. Call it the Divine, Mother Earth, Universe, God, whatever, but there’s a force bigger than all of us that draws us together. As a kid, I could feel the pull and I wanted to be part of it.
I believe we’re all designed for that kind of connection from a young age. As we grow, we experience hardships, conflicts, maybe even traumas that inhibit our ability to reach for those connections. Afraid of getting hurt again, we sever our ties and isolate ourselves. If we aren’t in relationship with people, then those people can’t hurt us, right?
But all we’re actually doing is limiting our capacity to love. When the barriers we set up to protect ourselves are topped with barbed wire and laced with electricity, we end up hurting ourselves through our efforts to protect ourselves. I believe we’re meant for more than that.
Next week, I’ll talk about rediscovering connection in the midst of hardship and how queer resilience fits into it all. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it.