Category: LGBTQIA

My Father’s Voice

My Father’s Voice

I turned forty-five a couple of weeks ago. I’m fourteen years older than my father now. He died from ALS a month after my third birthday. He was just thirty-one.

I don’t remember the sound of my daddy’s voice, but I remember how it felt. He had a deep bass voice and a rounded, barrel chest I loved to snuggle into and lay my head on. I remember the feel of that rumbling bass.

I have other memories of him, but they are all the memories of a small child. The book he read me every night cuddled up on my Bambi sheets. (The same book. Every night. Buzzy, the Funny Crow.) Looking for him early one morning to get him up to make my breakfast, only to find him already in the kitchen at the stove. When he lost the strength to pick me up any more, but I could still crawl up into the big green recliner our church bought for him. The day he fell and couldn’t get up, and I went and got my big stuffed bear to put under his head while someone went to get the neighbor boy to help get him up.

There’s a short clip of tape from an interview the local news station did with him. I managed to find someone to record the reel to reel on VHS years ago. I only watched it once. He could only say a few words before he had to work to breathe for a few more. It hurt too much to hear – there was so little to recognize in his voice.

But there was one time I’ve heard his voice. It was around fifteen years ago, and I was working at the small, fundamentalist Bible college where my parents met. I was helping prepare for our big donor event of the year when my boss introduced me to an alumnus who was there to help with the decorating. We shook hands, and as he heard my name, a startled look crossed his face. “Are you Gene Ould’s daughter?” he asked, and when I said yes, he started to cry.

Will* had been in school with my folks in the 60s, and had known them even before they’d started dating. He’d been friends with Daddy, and they had long conversations in the dorm talking about life and theology – the things most college students talk about but with a good bit more Bible and religion in the mix.

Eventually, they also talked about the fact that Will was gay (though I doubt he used that word then, and when I knew him would describe himself as “same-sex attracted”). “Your daddy was the only person I told who didn’t treat me any differently,” he said with tears in his eyes. “He didn’t need to leave the door to his room open when I was there. He didn’t change the way he talked to me.”

And I heard it. I heard my father’s voice loving his friend, accepting him just as he was. I don’t know what my daddy thought about homosexuality – though it was the 60s, and I know he had a conservative sexual ethic. But I do know that whatever he thought it didn’t change the way he loved his friend.

Nothing anyone has told me about my father has ever meant more to me.

On my birthday this year I was surprised by a message from an old friend of my parents from those Bible college days, a man I knew as a child and haven’t seen or spoken to in over twenty years, though we’ve been connected on Facebook for a bit. He wrote to wish me a happy birthday and tell me how proud he is of what I’ve done with my blog. He talked about how Daddy was always asking questions and about his courage. And he said he was glad to see my father’s DNA in me.

My voice is my own. And my journey has gone far beyond where my daddy’s life allowed his to go. But I hope that somewhere in that undeniable DNA, when I speak, the echoes of my father’s voice still rumble in this world.

 

*Name changed    

Too Much to Bear

Too Much to Bear

“God won’t give you more than you can bear!”

No. Nonsense. Hogwash. As one of my heroes, Fr. George Clements, would say, bull excrement.

If you’ve ever personally told me something like this, I’m not holding it against you. I’ve learned to hear the care and desire to encourage it’s intended to express.

But…no. Just no.

God – or life – gives people more than they can bear everyday.

The ones bombarded and decimated by war, running from one nightmare to another? It’s too much to bear.

That child being molested by a trusted adult? It’s too much to bear.

The five year old whose mother just died? It’s too much to bear.

The child who knows their body doesn’t fit who they are, forced to pretend year upon year they are someone else? It’s too much to bear.

Those parents who lost their child in a terrible accident? It’s too much to bear.

The kid being vocally rejected, mocked, and bullied at school every day? It’s too much to bear.

The one watching their mother trapped in an abusive marriage by abusive religious rules? It’s too much to bear.

The litany could be endless. The things life does to us – the things we do to each other – can be unspeakably brutal. Adults and children in this world are given too much to bear every day. And it’s different for each of us – what destroys me may leave you relatively unscathed. But whatever the cause, pain, unrelieved, is too much to bear.

It crushes us. It kills something in us, part of who we are. Something goes dead to avoid the pain that is too much to bear.

Jesus felt it. In Gethsemane, praying again and again for relief, for a way out. But he didn’t get it. His friend betrayed him. He died excruciatingly, and in the end, while he didn’t lose his love for others or his compassion or his ability to forgive, he did lose his faith that God was with him.

It was too much to bear.

Even for Jesus.

The Bible says that eventually angels came and “ministered” to Jesus in Gethsemane. I don’t know what that means. I know it didn’t change anything. But maybe, when his friends fell asleep on him, it just helped not to be alone.

Too many of us stay alone – because either no one comes or because we’ve been so hurt we refuse to let anyone get that close.

But we can try. We can try to stay with each other.

And then there’s Jesus’ resurrection three days later. Too many people never get that either. Never get to feel the pleasure of the breath of life filling every inch of their lungs again. Never get to feel a heart beating for all it’s worth again.

But sometimes they do. Sometimes things that were dead come alive again. Too many times they don’t, but they can. We can hope for that, if we can bear to. And we can work for it.

The longer I live the more I think that if Love and Life show up in the face of what is too much to bear, in the face of all the deaths, it’s because we show up for each other and bring them.

Because, yeah – sometimes it’s just too damn much to bear.

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.

Here (a monologue)

Here (a monologue)

So many years
Trying to live as someone other than who I am

Because I didn’t know

I didn’t know I wasn’t who everyone told me I was
(Or didn’t)
Who else was I supposed to know to be?
When the only language you hear (know)
Doesn’t fit
Collecting a piece here
Catching a glimmer there
And finally taking a leap
To see what I could find
(It wasn’t where I was)

And you were there
Here
Wherever it is I am
You were always there
(Here)
Wherever I wasn’t ready to be
But getting there
(Here)
There
Where when I pinch myself I can feel it
Now

Maybe I’ll need to leap again
Ask the questions of becoming
Wonder
Wander
Off the path (another one)
And you’ll be there
(Here)

Won’t you?