Category: Choices

Turning Blue Babies Pink

Turning Blue Babies Pink

In the summer of 2013, a doctor died in Memphis named Sheldon Korones. He was 89 years old and had dedicated his life to fighting infant mortality in that city.

He was once asked, what gives you the most pleasure? He answered, “Turning blue babies pink.”

Brett Trapp relates that story on his blog, “Blue Babies Pink” (I listened to the podcast version). Brett is a gay Christian who grew up as the son of a conservative Baptist preacher in the south, and the blog explores what that was like and relates his coming out journey.

When I heard Dr. Korones’ answer, I started crying. Distracted by the stereotypical colors of gender, I’d missed the significance of the blog’s title until that moment.

As a straight, cisgender woman, I’ve never had to struggle with so many of the things Brett and my LGBTQ friends have had to face. I listen to their stories and I am heartbroken, awed, and humbled.

But I do know what it is for a part of who you are to be invisible, smothered by contexts that don’t know how to acknowledge who you are and don’t particularly want to. And I know what it is to face rejection and pain so deep that part of you dies, because it truly is too much to bear. Sometimes that isn’t even a choice – particularly when we are children.

Sometimes it’s how anything at all survives.

I also know what it can take to let yourself come to life again. The pain is still there, waiting to devour you, and beginning to come alive again means feeling it. All of it. It can look endless and impossible. Unthinkable even.

But there’s no other way to life but through it, and for me at least, there came a point (a series of them actually) when finding life was worth it, even if it killed me.

Too many don’t make it through.

There is one thing stronger than death.

Love is stronger than death.

As I have walked alongside LGBTQ friends, over and over again I’ve watched love turn “blue babies pink.” I’ve seen so many find the courage to face the pain and come alive.

A friend of mine said once that courage is doing really scary things really scared. It was the first time I could relate to “courage.” And the only times I’ve ever seen real courage in action in my own life or anybody else’s, love was behind it.

Because love is stronger than death.

Death keeps us locked up – afraid and numbing ourselves to all the pain we can’t bear. It keeps us isolated and lonely, even with friends, because there is so much of us they can’t know. It makes us pretend and protect, because we can’t bear to think of the consequences if we don’t. Death will eat us alive.

But love won’t stay locked up. It won’t stay silent. It will stare down pain and death of every kind, if we can find the courage to let it.

I love the stories of “blue babies,” strangling on the hand life has dealt them, beginning to turn pink. Finding the strength to take deep, full breaths – the courage to love and be loved, with all the risks that entails. Coming alive to grow and thrive and walk and run and fall and get back up again and lose and try again and grieve and keep moving forward.

Where the Spirit of Love is, there is freedom. Where the Spirit of Love is, there is joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Where the Sprit of Love is, the dead walk out of their tombs.

Where the Spirit of Love is, an army of dry bones – blue babies – are covered with pink living flesh and breathe again.

Where the Spirit of Love is, there is life.

Messy, complicated, painful, glorious life.

Like Dr. Korones, I will fight to see blue babies turn pink.

The Shapes and Spaces of Love

The Shapes and Spaces of Love

Love changes us, or at least it does me.

Being loved has changed me. It’s helped me recognize who I am and dive deeper into who I’m meant to be. Seeing myself as capable of inspiring love, regardless of how life may get in the way, has been profound.

It’s impossible to quantify, but sometimes it feels like loving has changed me even more.

Loving someone makes room in my heart for them, a space that grows to accommodate and welcome a particular person. And the thing is, that’s not a generic space – it’s a space uniquely shaped to who they are. Other things get adjusted and changed to make room as the space takes shape.

And it goes beyond the person themselves.

I notice things I would have missed before. I ask different questions – of myself as well as of the world. I’m continually inspired to try to see things through a different perspective that is not my own.

And in the process, how I see changes. What I see changes, and how I understand it. I’m stretched and grow into – not someone else – but someone who is both a broader and a deeper me. I become more myself in ways I never imagined, and I find things in myself I never knew were there. I love that journey (even while it’s scary as anything).

Venturing into love is always stepping out into the unknown. It will always show us things we didn’t know about ourselves and the world. And all those things won’t be pretty.

I’ve discovered things within myself I’ve wanted to look away from and forget, but love means facing them and dealing with them, as hard as that may be. I’ve encountered things in our world, things that wound and shape others, things that should never be. But love doesn’t look away. Love steps up and steps in closer to embrace it all.

Kiss the demons and name their lies.

But I also discover profound beauty, both in myself and others. Strength, kindness, generosity of spirit, courage, forgiveness, hope, longing. Minds that are dreaming a better world and turning those dreams into reality.

Love is always an adventure. If you’re in it for an outcome you already have all the architectural drawings for? Well…then you’re in love with an idea that’s dead. Life is always changing – growing and fading and creating something new along the way.

Love creates shapes and spaces that weren’t there before. It recreates our lives and it recreates the world. We can enter and embrace that with wonder or with fear (mostly we can’t help but have a mix of both).

But if we can let the wonder win out…the possibilities of the journey are glorious.

The Art of Riding the Wave

The Art of Riding the Wave

I have a secret ambition to be a beach bum – a Sea Doo rental shack with a hammock in back. Living with the rhythm of the waves and the sun and the seasons.

It’s completely unrealistic. I love the beach, but that would never be enough for me. I’d get restless and antsy for something new all too quickly, for something that mattered.

But there’s still something there that draws me. It’s the reason I have a collection of surfing movies – mostly documentaries. The waves and the sun and the laid back thing are all part of the appeal, but it’s more than that.

There’s something that connects with me about the predictable unpredictability of life.

We plan. We read the tides, the rhythms of the waves, the seasons, and our own capabilities. But in the end, we have to dive in and just ride the wave we catch, and this – now – is the only moment we have to catch it.

We’ll never control the wave, but we can learn the art of dancing with it. Learn to feel the water and how to meet it. Sometimes we will wipe out, overwhelmed by something impossible to plan for.

But sometimes…sometimes we get it just right, and the curl of the wave comes at just the right place, and it propels us to greatness, to something beyond what we could ever do on our own.

There are tides to learn, and seasons, and reefs just below the surface to beware of. But the ocean will always be the ocean, and it will always surprise us.

I’ve never actually been surfing. I’ve never had the chance, and odds are I’d be terrible at it. But there’s a reason I love those documentaries, that dream.

Planning is important – you’re not going to get far if you show up without a board or with a sprained ankle. You need to know the beach and what’s below the surface and how the waves brake. And never surf alone, without someone to know if something goes wrong.

But at some point you’ve got to stop planning and just ride the wave.

Life, as consistent and unpredictable as the ocean, will never fail to surprise. And all the planning in the world won’t teach you how to improvise with the waves.

I planned for a long time. I planned for waves that never came and for wipeouts I couldn’t control. And I learned something from all that planning and observing.

But that’s nothing compared to what I’ve learned since I dove in and started trying to catch some waves.

Messing Up

Messing Up

I’ve messed up the past couple of weeks.

I messed up in a relationship. I let what I wanted blind me to where someone else was and what they needed. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I messed up.

I also messed up a story I told at an open mic. I’m new to this storytelling thing, and it’s scary. But I want to learn to do the stories and the people in them justice. I tried winging a story I’ve been thinking about, and I got something important out of place and messed it up.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other things I messed up this week. And I’m guessing you probably did, too.

But something has shifted for me.

This week, when I messed up, I didn’t freeze and I didn’t hide. I owned it.

We talked about what happened, and I’m figuring out what moving forward and growing looks like.

I kept telling the story, and when I got to the end, people were still with me.

I used to be so afraid of messing up, of getting something wrong. If I’m honest, I still am sometimes.

But now, I’m more afraid of getting frozen there. I want to keep living, as messy as that is. Because as much as I mess up, good things keep happening and good gifts keep coming.

Don’t misunderstand, there are real consequences to messing up, consequences I have to own up to and live with. And sometimes they’re pretty devastating.

But I’m learning, and living.

I can’t remember when I first heard that failure is part of success. It’s pretty ubiquitous. But that came with a parallel lesson that everything mattered, that every choice and decision had consequences that could affect the rest of my life (if not eternity).

I’m not sure I don’t still believe that, but I certainly see it differently. It’s those choices and consequences that make up a life. That’s what actually living looks like.

I know people who are haunted by lost opportunities and dreams, marriages that ended, careers gone. But I see other opportunities opened up for them, new possibilities, hard won strength. And I’m awed by the possibilities of their lives.

I’m learning to see my own life the same way. Everything that ends isn’t a failure, and trying and failing doesn’t make me a failure. My feelings have had a hard time catching up with what I know, but they’re starting to come around.

There’s something I’m far more afraid of these days than failing or messing up or getting it wrong – and that’s not trying.

There’s so much more, so much to explore and learn and grow into. And sometimes I’m going to get it wrong, but I’m going to deal with it and keep trying anyway.

I may mess up, but I don’t want to miss a thing.