What a relief. Here, like with God, I can be totally honest. Anywhere else, I have to be so guarded. Not because I'm ashamed but because I'm trying to protect my heart. To be honest with people is dangerous. And then again, if you don't tell people "someone I love is gay so don't say anything stupid and hateful" then too often....they say stupid, hateful things. You don't even realize how conditioned Christian culture is to fear, avoid and ridicule gay people until you look at it from the other side.
I've been on the other side longer than this past year (since my son told me he is gay). Ironically, around the time I was pregnant with Daniel, my brother told me he was gay. I'll never forget where I was, where I was standing when he told me, and the feeling of being kicked in the stomach. Back then I believed that homosexuality was like the worst thing ever. I was so sad, SO SAD. I love my brother so much. Still do. I was sad and scared for him. So I said stupid things. And I did stupid things. Like, for years I kind of ignored Marc's partner, Howard. I wasn't outright rude, but I sure didn't go out of my way to show him love.
Then, God changed my heart. One year, at Christmas, after years of praying "God, get Howard out of Marc's life," I heard the Lord say that He loved Howard too, and that I was not being loving. Well, once I hear God tell me something, I can turn on a dime and get with the program, so to speak. I apologized to my brother and then I started treating Howard with love and respect, and praying for him instead of against him. I'm so ashamed of how proud and judgmental I was back then. Lacking in love, mercy and grace for people different from me.
But even though I had a gay brother, it was fairly easy to avoid the whole controversy before Daniel told me he was gay. Oh how I hate controversy. But now I'm moving forward unafraid. No more avoiding. No more hiding. It's right here in my lap. To avoid and hide is not the loving thing to do. Not to mention that I'm grieving and I am so aware of the pain every day. I am not happy my son is gay. I am not happy to think he will never have a son or daughter of his very own. Sure, he could adopt, but I mean flesh of his flesh. I don't want him to be without his very own family. Alone. Thankfully, I know longer care what people think, so that's not the issue. But what mother doesn't want her daughters and sons to get married and have children of their own?
And other people make it impossible to avoid as well. In our culture, with all the social media, other people and their opinions are in our faces constantly.
Like my sister-in-law.
She is one of those uber-conservative Christians who has strong, unyielding opinions on all the hot topics and--lucky everyone else in the world-- she cannot keep from sharing them. She even tried that excuse in her defense: "I can't not give my opinions, and it's been my downfall at times."
It was on my daughter Rachel's birthday this past February. R is the only one of my three children who live here in the same town as I. She and I were out celebrating her 27th. A mother-daughter night. D texted and said "Aunt Diane is going crazy again" or something to that effect. I right away had a good idea of what it was about. Anyone who is her FB friend knows what she thinks about everything because of the daily barrage of opinion in her status updates. But I wanted to be with R and continue our fun evening so I just let him know that we were in a movie and he, being the polite, kind person I raised him to be, let it go.
On our way home from the movie I started getting these frantic, pseduo-apologetic messages from SIL. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I've upset your children" and blah blah blah. She was freaking out, obviously. But I still didn't know any details.
I put her off a day by replying that I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt anyone.
Next day, I talked to my daughter Sarah. She filled me in on all the details. Details to come....I must get ready to go to work!
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