Christianity

Do you speak love fluently?…

/ Lesa / 13 Comments

I realized in high school that I did not have a knack for learning a foreign language.  I was required to take two years of a language that was not my own in order to graduate.  I decided to take French.  I quickly learned that I did not have the patience it was going to take to master this language.  I wanted to be able to have normal conversations.  Unfortunately, the curriculum was not set up that way.  I was taught individual words, but the teacher focused more on phrases.  Things I would need to know if I traveled to France like…  “My name is…, What time is it…I would like _____ to eat, Where is the rest room?” I found this very boring.  I managed to make it through the first year, but if I don’t use something, I loose it, and I did not use the French I learned over the summer.  I mean…who was I going to talk to?  And what if I wanted to say something other than the phrases I had learned?

Year two came along and I realized I was in big trouble the first day of French II class.  The teacher was not speaking English at all.  I had no idea what she was saying.  Honestly I think this was really unfair…shouldn’t this be saved for French III?  I guess she figured it was the best way for us to “catch on.”  I was totally lost.  I was sitting at my desk one day with a bad headache.  I guess my teacher could tell something was wrong so she asked me something in French.  I thought she asked if I had a headache so I responded “Oui – yes.”  She responded in English, “I should fail you for that.”  Uh oh.  “Why?” I asked. “Because I asked you if you were bored and you said YES!”  oops. (smile).

Unfortunately, today there is another language that many do not understand.  It’s the language of love.  I have learned over this last year that people do the cruelest things in the name of love.  The results of this misuse of love, or lack of love, are tragic.  If Jesus’ greatest command to us is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40), don’t you think we should learn how to love better??

…Especially as Christians…

…sadly we are failing.

There have been 5 suicides of LGBT youth in the last 15 days.  In addition, there was one suicide attempt, and one close call (someone found a note and was able to stop the person in time).  And these are just the ones I know about.  I’m sure, unfortunately, there were others.  The unnerving part of all of this to me is that these kids report in suicide notes that they are leaving this world because of the rejection they feel from their families and from the church. This makes my heart hurt more than I can even put into words. At times I find it hard to even catch my breath at the thought of it.  I’ve been grieving these last two weeks for these young souls who felt life was too hard to endure.

Where is the love that Jesus speaks of?

Despite the bullying, discrimination, and hate that they experience, the LGBT people that I have met are some of the most loving people that I know.  Their ability to forgive and love the people who hurt them the most amazes me.  We could all learn something from them.

Do you know how to truly love?  Could you make improvements?  Is there more you could learn?

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Love matters…but how we love matters even more.  Learn how to love fluently…

Hold on loosely, but don’t let go…

/ Lesa / 5 Comments

My church is moving, and since I’m on staff I’m pretty involved.  Moving is one of my least favorite things.  I don’t like the stress of the timing of everything. The whole process also messes with the perfectionist part of my personality.  So, things have been a bit crazy.  I’ve been thinking about this post for some time now.  I’ve briefly mentioned it before, but my pastor did a whole series on it recently so it’s been on my mind again. It’s allowed me to look back on my journey to see how far I’ve come.  It’s good timing as I’m growing weary of the journey lately.  The series that we just did was “Letting God Out of Your Box.” It’s funny because I had a dream last night that reminded me of the incident I’m going to write about.  I hadn’t thought of it in a long time, but my dream brought it back to life.  I haven’t really talked about my dreams here, but oh lordy do I have some doozies.  I almost never feel like I sleep because my dreams are so vivid.  Now I’m rambling…which I warn you now may happen again as I mentioned…my church is moving…stress, busy, brain overload.  I just need to get these thoughts out of me so I can stop thinking about them (smile).  Oh, and the events below are real life…not a dream.

When I was 16, I started dating a boy in my neighborhood.  He had just gotten out of a pretty long relationship, but they had broken up and the girl was actually dating someone else as well.  It was a warm summer day and there was a little league baseball parade followed by a game down at our neighborhood park. My friend and I were at High’s (our neighborhood store) getting some supplies for our picnic at the park to watch the game.  As I was leaving the 6ccaclflstore, a pickup truck filled with people pulled into the back of the parking lot. My boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend got out of the truck (her current boyfriend’s) and called my name.  She told me that she had something for me to give to my boyfriend and was holding out her hand. I was carrying a six-pack of glass Coca Cola bottles in my one arm so I held out my free hand.  When she got up to me, her hand that was once outstretched like she was carrying something turned into a balled up fist.  Before I knew what was happening, she was wailing on me.  I was getting punched in the head, the face, and upper body.  I was trying my best to fend her off while holding the glass bottles, but as you can imagine it wasn’t easy.  I had two thoughts…I didn’t want to drop the glass bottles because it would make an awful mess, and more importantly I was concerned about my contacts.  I was getting hit in the eyes and I didn’t want my contacts to get damaged.  I know…but if you’ve read my other posts you know how much I hated those glasses and how long I had waited for my contacts.  They were really expensive back then and I knew if I lost them or they got ruined I wouldn’t be getting another pair.  As these thoughts were going through my mind, I was trying to use my free arm to push her away.  I eventually was able to step back enough to kick her off of me. That was enough to stop her and some words were exchanged, but that was the end of it.  She basically didn’t want her ex with anyone else.  My friend who was with me…she was still in the store…afraid to come out.

I’m not sure why, but when I remembered this incident from my childhood it reminded me of this journey I’ve been on these past almost eight years.  With the above incident, I didn’t put my safety first. My first thought was to protect things….the bottles and my contacts.  I was holding onto those bottles for dear life because I didn’t want them to shatter.  In the beginning of my journey, I was holding onto my faith for dear life so it didn’t shatter.  They say hind sight is 20/20, but man I wish I would have gone about things differently.

I had God in a box…neatly packed away…out of sight.  I thought I was doing all the right things.  In fact, I would have told you that I had sprung God from the box in a big way.  I was asking for BIG things…out of the box things.  I remember walking my dog Lucy begging God for a “do over.”  Apparently I had screwed up royally and I wanted a chance to make things right.  I wholeheartedly believed that God could give me a “do over.”  I knew that He could make that happen just for me. That somehow I could relive the last 16 years my child had been on this planet.  I knew God was big enough to do that…and I asked Him to…and I was dead serious.  God can do anything…right?  Of course He didn’t answer that plea…He didn’t need to…He knew it wasn’t necessary.  I however had not gotten to that point yet.  I went to three Christian resources for information about homosexuality.  I didn’t stray from those resources.  Anything else would be from the world…right?  That would be bad. These resources were full of stories of change.  I had found the answers I so desperately was searching for all this time. So, I rearranged my God box with the things I was learning from these resources.  I packed them up and neatly tied a bow of hope on them.

For five years I carried that box around. I would peak into it wondering why the stories I had read about weren’t happening for my son.  I prayed everyday for the change that I had read about in others for my son.  There wasn’t one day that I didn’t say those prayers. Not one.  For five years.  Why God?  Why, why, why???  And then it happened.  A friend gave me a book.  A book that was outside of the “Christian” world that I had created for myself.  The author stated that they too were a Christian…and they were gay.  This went against what was in my box.  I unwrapped the bow, but I put the box down.  Could this be what I’m supposed to do?  Am I supposed to expand my resource list that I had so carefully selected.  I picked the box back up and gently lifted the lid…just a little bit.  I peaked inside afraid to disturb the contents.  Am I doing the right thing?   I carefully lifted the lid off of the box and instead of telling God what I thought He should do, I instead asked Him what I should do.  Imagine that.  I was so busy bossing God around and hiding Him in my box that I neglected to ask Him what HE thought about this subject.

The book that sprung God from the box was Torn by Justin Lee.  I will be forever thankful to Larry Dennis who gave me that book.  I had to take a hard look at my theology…or lack of it.  I realized that I was just repeating what I was taught or what I had read without any thought.  I never looked into it myself, or more importantly hadn’t asked God what He thought.  Now I don’t for a minute think I know what God thinks.  He is too big for that thank goodness.  But I do feel that the Holy Spirit has led me through this process.  Going along with what I thought I was supposed to be doing hurt me and it hurt my son. I’ve had conversations with him that I desperately wish I could take back.  I have to move forward from that and thankfully he has accepted my apologies.  The resources I had put so much faith in later turned out to be lies.  I don’t at all think that they were being malicious.  I don’t think they meant all the hurt that they caused.  They were trying their best to do what they thought they were supposed to do.  When they couldn’t pretend any longer, and when they saw all the hurt they were causing they finally came out with the truth.  Public apologies were made by some which I think is really important.

I said I wish I would have done things differently.  I wish I wouldn’t have been so afraid to go straight to God with my questions.  I was so afraid.  Fear isn’t from God.  I would have looked at those resources differently.  Not the be all and end all. I should have put my trust in God.  In the end, He surprised me and my faith is so much stronger because of it.  It’s definitely a balance.  One that I continue to learn.  I haven’t discarded all that I’ve learned about God in my lifetime, but I hold it loosely.  I instead rely on the Holy Spirit to guide me to a greater understanding of who God is and what He wants from me.

And with that I remind you that love matters….but how we love matters even more.

HOW we love matters…

/ Lesa / 6 Comments

It’s been snowing on and off the last two days.  We were supposed to get a couple of inches of the white stuff overnight, but alas woke up this morning to just a light dusting.  Yea!  No driveway to shovel (smile).  I’m sure there were many disappointed kiddos this morning when they discovered that they had to go to school today.  I even heard grumbling from my college age daughter when she heard her college was one of the only colleges that didn’t at least have a delayed opening.  Welcome to adulthood dear (smile).

I remember those snow days as a kid.  Even though I lived in the city, we had some awesome sledding hills.  They were streets though so we had to have a system set up.  We always had kids “stationed” at various points to make sure there weren’t any cars coming.  It was tricky sometimes navigating the cars that were parked on those streets, but we had some fun times.  Of course the enemy in those days were the snowplow drivers.  There were always some kids that let them know their presence wasn’t welcome by whirling snowballs at their trucks.  On one particular day when the drivers came through and ruined our fun, my cousins and I came up with an alternate plan.  We were at my grandmother’s, and across the street from her house was a steep grassy hill that was parallel to what we referred to as “the big hill.”  Since the streets were plowed, we decided to try out this hill.  There was just one problem…at the bottom of said hill happened to be a large grouping of bushes and trees.  We weren’t going to let them ruin our fun though.  We came up with a plan.  We would go up the hill one at a time and the remainder cousins would stand at the bottom by the treeline as a shield.  Brilliant…or so we thought.

The first couple of runs went perfectly.  My turn came up again so I took the saucer and trudged my way up the hill.  I got to the top and yelled down to see if everyone was ready.  I got the thumbs up so I put the saucer on the snow, plopped down, and gave myself a good push.  Things were going great until the saucer turned around and I was going down the hill backwards.  There were many problems with this, but the main one being I couldn’t see when I was sleddingnearing the end of the hill.  To help stop ourselves, we would dig our feet into the snow to help the other cousins stop us in time.  This method didn’t work as well going backwards and suddenly I felt their arms at my back only to break through them right smack into a branch.  Crack!  I thought for sure that stick was actually in my back.  It felt like it!

Luckily the damage wasn’t too bad.  I had, as you can imagine, one nasty bruise and lots of soreness in my back.  In fact, it’s only been the last five years that I haven’t felt that old injury thanks to some physical therapy.  We thought we had the perfect plan to keep each other safe.  It didn’t quite work out that way.  We knew it could be dangerous, and we knew we needed to be mindful of that, but we didn’t think of the consequences if it didn’t work.

I think love can be like that too.  Love matters…but how we love matters even more.  This seems really obvious, but I think sometimes we think we are being loving when actually to the other person it doesn’t feel like love at all.  I’m becoming more and more aware of this fact as I meet more LGBTQ people and hear their stories.  People do some awful things in the name of love.  Ask the LGBTQ youth that’s been kicked out of their home in the name of love.  “I love you and because the Bible says it’s wrong I can’t have you here thinking that I agree with what you are doing,” are some of the things they are told.  I find it interesting how people pick certain things in the Bible to stand by while ignoring so many others.  For instance, there should be many Christians in church on Sunday’s missing their right eyes as Jesus describes in Matthew 5:29.  It’s in the Bible…right?  When confronting someone with what you think is sin in their life, you need to ask yourself is this my truth – something I perceive  or is this God’s truth.  Do you know the person’s life story?  Do you know what’s in their heart?  All too often we take words from the Bible and use them to condemn others…in the name of love.  This has caused deep-rooted pain and scars in God’s people.

My cousins and I thought we had a good plan that would keep us safe.  If we had consulted with an adult, things may have turned out differently.  When you are faced with a situation that involves another person and could cause harm if not handled correctly, consult God.  Ask Him how you should respond. If a person walks away from you feeling shame, you have failed to show love.

Love matters…how we love matters even more.

Crisis diverted…

/ Lesa / 6 Comments

It was a normal school night.  I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework.  Both of my parents were out for the evening so I was watching my little sister.  She was downstairs in the basement watching television.  All of the sudden I heard a loud “boom” and we lost all of our electricity.  As I sat in the dark wondering what happened, I heard a panicked voice from the basement say, “Lesa, I’m blind!”  My poor sister thought she had suddenly gone blind.  Now you have to know her to understand this.  She was/is a worry wart.  She is the person you tell not to read side effects of medication because she will have all of them (smile).

I got up from the kitchen table and walked over to the basement steps.  “You’re not blind,” I said.  “We just lost electricity.”  I told her tomaxresdefault stay put…that I was coming for her and I carefully made my way down the steps to get her.  When we got back to the kitchen, I picked up the phone and dialed my uncle’s number who lived just around the corner from us.  To this day, my sister will say how amazed she was that I could dial the phone in the dark.  Impressionable little mind (smile).  My uncle came to check on us and let us know that someone hit a telephone poll and the transformer blew up causing everyone to lose electricity.  Crisis diverted.

I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a crisis lately.  Not a crisis of faith in God….more of a crisis of faith in humanity.  I’ve been having a hard time being at church recently.   I feel guilty that I can be there when so many of my LGBTQ friends can not go to church….or don’t feel comfortable or welcome in church.  I’m part of a private FB group of moms who have LGBTQ kids. Moms desperate for help, guidance, and answers.  I hear story after story of rejection…from their churches, their friends, their family.  There are times that I have to step away from the computer…for days…because I am overwhelmed by their pain and their children’s pain.  I’ve driven hours to meet some of them for lunch.  Total strangers…with a deep connection that can’t be explained.

It’s also hard to sit in church with people who think terrible things about my son (if you say something about a gay person, you are saying it about my son).  Most of whom have never even had a conversation with him…don’t know him at all for that matter.  Things that are said always seem to have a way of coming back to me.  I wish people would actually say these things to my face so that I could at least have a conversation about it. Sometimes I wish God would protect me from the things that people say, but that burden is so small in relation to what LGBTQ people themselves have to deal with everyday.  I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His…and He answered that prayer.  I also asked God to help me to love as He does.  I love these people tremendously.  People that I just meet…it’s like I’ve known them my whole life.  And I love them.   How lucky am I that I get to be a participant in the demonstration of God’s love?!  The love I feel is just a glimpse of the fierce love that God has for them.

So when I wonder “Why in the world am I doing this?  I am just a small fish in a really big pond,” I remember that I’m part of God’s plan.  When I worry about whether or not I’m making a difference, or if I’m doing enough, in the quite moments God reminds me that I’m not alone in this and I’m exactly where I need to be.

This past weekend was the GCN Conference.   I wanted to go SO BADLY, but it was in Portland.  A little far for me (smile). There were some Westboro Baptist protesters outside of the event.  I wouldn’t have a problem with people standing up for their beliefs if they did it in a respectful way.  The signs that they were carrying were disgusting.  I won’t even repeat what they had on them.  The most shocking thing to me was to see young children holding the signs.  When the local churches heard that WB was going to be there, they decided to come with their own signs and they formed what they called a “wall of love” protecting conference attendees from the protesters.  They were signing praise and worship songs so loudly that the protesters couldn’t be heard. Tears.  And to top it off…God provided a rainbow overhead (smile).  (Rainbows are symbols for LGBTQ)  Faith in humanity slowly being restored…Crisis diverted.

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Love each other…because love matters.

Exciting things coming this year…

/ Lesa / 4 Comments

Happy New Year everyone!

2014 was quite a year.  It was my first full year of blogging and although it can be a bit nerve-wracking at times…it is also a therapeutic way to share my heart on the things that God has been teaching me.  I challenged myself to write a post a week and I posted 49…not too bad (smile).   Here are my top posts of the year (the posts that received the most views)  If you didn’t see them, be sure to check them out:

More Than Just a Peanut (written January 2014)

Say It Isn’t So (written March 2014)

Does Love Really Matter? (written September 2014)

A Mother’s Heart (written October 2014)

Beauty in Ink (written September 2013 – continued receiving top views in 2014)

Thank you to those who have shared my posts over the year.  I appreciate your help on getting my message of love out there (smile).  The year was full of many ups and downs…some progress and some set backs.  I think this coming year is going to be very exciting.  Along with the help of another mom of a gay son, I am starting a support group for LGBTQ folks and their parents.  We hope to get it launched very soon in this new year.  Things are already starting to fall into place and I’m looking forward to sharing God’s love with those who are hurting.

I’m not sure how much writing I will be doing this year as I would like to focus on the group, but I feel like God is telling me I’m not done yet so we shall see.  I do know for sure it will be less than last year.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank my followers for their support.  It means the world to me.

This year, I’m hoping to meet people face to face to let them know that they are loved.  People like Leelah Alcorn who took her life this weekend.  This can’t continue.  You can read Leelah’s story here.

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Because Love Matters…