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Re-stitched

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

One one hand, the ER was not where I’d imagined spending the evening of our 9th anniversary. Sure, the colored reflectors on the operating room lights scattered a certain romantic sparkle through the air, and we had some special moments answering the doctors in two-part harmony. “Which one of you is Bassett?” “We both are.” “Yes, but which one is here for treatment?” “We both are.” Still, we probably wouldn’t have handpicked the emergency room for our anniversary getaway.

On the other hand, how better to commemorate this perpetual adventure of a marriage than to get matching stitches for our matching arm wounds which will be matching badass scars by this time next year?

Yeah, I’ve got nothing either.

It started at midnight, the first moon-slivered seconds of our anniversary, with a tremendous crash just beyond our bedroom door. We (I) were still skittish from the night before when our television had started blaring in the opposite end of the house leading us (me) to imagine burglars hiding in every sock drawer, so I felt totally justified in jumping up and brandishing the first weapon available. Which was… our sheet. I must have looked very fierce indeed, terror-frozen at the foot of our bed with a fistful of linens.

Dan, possessing all of our collective presence of mind and movement of limb at that moment, dashed out of the room to investigate and soon reported that, contrary to popular opinion, we were not under mortar attack. I surrendered my sheet and came out to see what would only ever under those exact circumstances be considered a welcoming sight—a bathroom covered wall to wall in foamy brown liquid and shards of glass.

To those of you still reading, it’s not as gross as it sounds. Promise. My husband brews artisan beer as a hobby and had recently bottled a batch of lovely dark stout to finish fermenting on a bathroom shelf, not realizing that the temperature would creep up to dangerous levels. A bottle had exploded, and despite making a royal mess, it smelled delicious and wasn’t a grenade-launching burglar. I’ve never been so happy to scrub down a bathroom at midnight.

We crawled into bed an hour later, kissed sleepily, and closed our eyes just in time for another explosion to rock the house. Crap. We checked on the damage—at least three bottles this time—and decided to just cordon off the crime scene for the night. By the third explosion, we barely even stirred on our pillows. Any number of home invaders could have blown down our door that night without encountering so much as a single belligerent bedsheet. Prospective villains, take note.

We didn’t really want to spend our anniversary cleaning double malt off the bathroom ceiling, but sometimes life requires maturity. Which is why we waited until nearly suppertime to start. (Why else did God invent second bathrooms if not to allow for slovenly cleaning habits?) Now, some people might have reasoned that walking into a room full of spontaneously exploding glass necessitated flak gear or at least a healthy sense of caution, but then again, some people don’t get to experience unforgettable 9th anniversary bonding moments like the one just ahead.

It happened while I was kneeling over the bottom shelf of bottles hosing away glass chips and yeasty goodness. I didn’t realize that the shelf above it was getting nudged off its pegs until I suddenly found myself trying to catch a dozen beer bottles as they exploded. In my face. Demonstrating the same quick reflexes and superior thinking that I had the night before, I froze in place… that place being a front row seat to my own dissection.

Fortunately, survival of the fittest is trumped by survival of the married, and Dan yanked me onto my feet and toward the door. Just as I was registering that my arm kind of maybe really hurt, he made a sound indicating that some part of his body kind of maybe really did too. We stumbled into the other bathroom where the following half hour remains a bit of a blur. At some point, a pair of blood-splattered jeans ended up in the laundry, and we found a red scatterplot across the mirror the next day, so you know it had to be fun.

My arms, legs, and shoulders were peppered with tiny nicks, but there wasn’t a single splinter of glass lodged in my skin—a mercy. Even more remarkably, my face was untouched. Not a mark. I didn’t recognize the miracle of this until much later because that was about the time Dan realized that a few Angry Birds Band-Aids and wishful thinking were no match for the slices on our biceps. Always a people pleaser, I myself was reluctant to head to the hospital. In my mind, the ER is for head injuries and heart attacks; wouldn’t the doctors frown on us for taking up their valuable time with something as mundane as cuts?

As it turns out, there’s a generally accepted rule of thumb about this very situation: If you can see your own muscle, get thee to the ER.

A mere hour and a half later (I know!), we were sewed up and headed back home, five stitches apiece and gratefulness all around—for the neighbor who took in our girls with thirty seconds’ advance notice, for the friend who cleaned up every bit of broken glass in our absence, for the spouse cracking jokes and grimacing in sympathy across the triage room, and for the divine current of goodness carrying us not only through our 9th anniversary but to it as well.

This last year has been one of our hardest as a couple, and I know that probably sounds worth an eye roll or two in light of the marriage letters and the Dear Nearlywed and the happy Instagram feeds. None of that is an act; we are happy, but some days, it’s a happiness hard won. Some weeks, life pressure turns into a geyser under our feet and we jump in opposite directions without meaning to. Some months, we can’t really tell whether the intensity we’re channeling is primarily push or pull, both instincts being so strong and our minds so weary. We’ve spent so much of the last year facing obstacles and scanning for miracles that we’ve often forgotten how to look at each other, how to look and really see.

This is why our 9th anniversary came as such a gift. Fresh out of the emergency room, twinges of pain reminded me of the pain avoided—the deep mercy of an untouched face, of blood beating soundly inside our two skins. And then this interpersonal rawness after an intense year… it floods me with gratefulness for the new bonds we’ve forged throughout, the promises kept, and the sacred still of forgiveness.

I’m not used to picturing us with scars, and my mind keeps reverting back to the way we used to be like a dog who can’t understand its owners have moved. I can never adjust to new realities without a ridiculous amount of head-swiveling. However, the new us is quickly growing on me. This is the year we start rocking the scars, and honestly, I love that we share these testaments to coming undone and being restitched. Even the ones on our arms.

(All pictures by Dan, who had the presence of mind to take them)

5Jun

Dosing

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

I’m fighting it hard today, the smothering despair simultaneously manufactured and feared by my own mind. Yesterday, I couldn’t fight. With the slow approach of rain, my inner world drained of color, and I only knew how to mimic the motions of the living… vocalize polite response, bring fork to mouth, place one foot in front of the other. This morning, the sun rose again, a diluted but obvious yellow, and I’m breathing instinctually again—a mercy, this. But what if tomorrow dawns gray again? What if the next wave of this infernal springtime virus is already gathering speed? There are so many unknown days ahead, and I’ve rarely felt so utterly tapped out of resources.

We’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming around here lately, sketching out possible paths down which to channel our energy. This freedom to chart our own course is one of the luxuries we have as a freelancing family (other “luxuries” include paying a million percent in self-employment taxes, just in case you were toying with jealousy), but it also scares me into an off-kilter pendulum swing between hope and despondence. On the hopeful upswing, I start to catch some of my husband’s optimism and see the intersection between creativity and success. I fill notebook pages with ideas that energize me. I put days on end into researching how I can best use this word-besotted brain of mine to benefit both the world and our bank account.

The downswing seems inevitable though. At some point in my reading, I suddenly start to see others’ successes as intimidation rather than inspiration. It occurs to me that everything worth writing has already been written and that pursuing any of my projects would be like trying to nose my way into an already-overcrowded party. My old friends Self-Doubt and Shame see their opportunity here and jump in to convince me that not only do I have nothing special to offer the world, I’m a burden to it. Dead weight. Dan offers to make me an iced coffee, and I have a minor crisis because what have I ever done that makes me worthy of a coffee? That’s at least ten cents in ingredients right there, not to mention preparation time, and what about the labor that went into picking the coffee beans, what about the sun or rain or slow seasonal whisperings that coaxed them into growth? What about the electricity it takes to freeze the ice? How can Dead Weight Me warrant even a single drop?

This kind of thought degeneration would be comical if it weren’t so devastating to live through. I would never in a million years tell a fellow stay-at-home mom that she didn’t deserve the roof over her head just because she wasn’t bringing in as much income as her husband. I would never tell her that her significance and value were tied to her career, much less that only a self-made, wholly unique, preferably award-winning career would count. I would never expect her to view a cup of coffee as unjustified.

Instead, I would bust out the metaphorical pompoms and deliver one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes with a few high kicks and some glitter paint: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” I would assure her that her interests and ideas do matter and that, unless her life goal is plagiarism, she absolutely does have something unique to offer the world. The way she talks, creates, and thinks are a gift—unless, of course, the way she thinks leads to a biannual spiral of self-loathing, in which case she really might want to get that checked out.

I hold myself to a different standard than I hold anyone else though, and in my own cramped construct, sick days are failure, brain fog is failure, clutter is failure, mood swings are failure. It’s all failure, all the time on the mental channel that’s been blaring on and off for the last few weeks, and oh lord, what I wouldn’t give for silence. I’m in honest-to-goodness awe of those of you who know how to quiet your minds; I only get about five seconds in to a meditation exercise before my failure alarm starts screeching about how laughably bad I am at achieving inner peace, and then a second alarm joins in to berate me for letting that first one disrupt my serenity, and by the thirty second mark, I can’t hear myself think a single distinguishable thought.

If you’re nodding your head in commiseration right now… I’m so sorry. I have nothing in the form of advice and only the faintest inklings of how to steady my own incomprehensible self against the pendulum. So far, I’ve ruled out chewing tobacco and daytime TV, but only just. In fact, I only have one idea right now that strikes a chord with both mind and heart, and it’s this: over on Instagram and Twitter, I’m going to revive my outdated experiment in capturing a #dailydoseofbeauty. Snapping pictures with my phone is the kind of meditation I can rock right now, and my hope is that even this fragmented focus on gratitude and grace will grow into something larger than myself with its own steady pulse of joy, something that can slip me silent past the alarms and the fight and back into this beautiful land of the living where I belong.

Starting… now:

Opening our front door is so sweet this time of year. #dailydoseofbeauty

~~~

What do you think? Would you care to join me? (Please do!)

1Jun

Anti-Humanitarian Effort

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Hello there, world.

So. These past two weeks of lifestyle reevaluation have not gone exactly according to plan. The Plan, you see, went something like this: I would wake up early, all self-imposed pressure having evaporated overnight. I would read an inspiring book over coffee and then journal my way to self-actualization. It would take two, three hours tops. After an invigorating run, I’d start the pasta water for lunch and, while waiting for it to boil, whip out a manifesto or two. That afternoon, I would make serious headway into some new, affirming, revelatory project—while having plenty of mental energy left over for my family of course—and I might not even need to sleep that night, so profound would be my invigoration. By dawn the next morning, I would have replied to all the emails I’ve been so delinquent about lately (sorry!), conquered the ironing pile, and come up with a portfolio of new business plans. Who knows? I might have even switched to decaf.

Reality, however, went more like this: Wake up. ANXIETY ANXIETY ANXIETY. Breakfast, with a side of ANXIETY. A lengthy meditation on panic followed by escalating stress. Sprained ankle. (For the record, I no longer recommend jumping up from your computer chair when your leg has fallen asleep. It may look funny, but… well, it is. But still.) No workout. No revelation. Foot turning purple; water-boiling is no longer on list of known abilities. ANXIETY. Can no longer locomote. Can no longer see beyond Cage of Failure. Will never be able to write anything again ever. ANXIETY ANXIETY ANXIETY. Repeat to varying degrees for several days. Ankle mends. Head cold descends. Life ends.

These haven’t been the best of weeks. I’ve been letting everything slide—my writing, my friendships, those five freaking kilometers I’ve worked so hard to be able to run—and I’m feeling the void keenly. I thought that by taking the pressure of my own expectations out of the equation, I would find instant peace and clarity, but it feels more like I accidentally removed myself from the equation. When I’m not nurturing the creative or communal parts of my life, I become a shell… and maybe that’s the real revelation I needed from these weeks of navel-gazing.

Or maybe it’s not so much of a revelation as it is a truth that I discover over and over in different ways. The negative and deprecating voices in my head have been doing a number on me lately, assuring me that I have nothing of value to offer the world, that the world would actually be a better place if I weren’t contributing to it, and that the only respectable course of action for the good of all mankind would be to slink into a quiet corner somewhere and try very, very hard not to be noticed. (Now you understand that my blog is at heart an anti-humanitarian effort.) Going through life as a shell of a person though… Nothing is worth that. Nothing.

I do have some other projects percolating now (should I thank the sprained ankle or the head cold for that?), and I’ve confirmed in the space between my heart and my fingertips that this blog is meant to be sanctuary, not money-maker. The ads are gone now, and coming back to the page now is like opening my front door after sending away guests who had long overstayed their welcome. The air is lighter, the ambiance softer. It feels like home again.

And now that you know I’m not here for you and am actually here in flagrant disregard for your wellbeing, how are you? What have you been up to these past two weeks? Any fellow sprained ankles enjoying their restored dignity?

18May

Meevaluation

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

The last couple of days were for holding my breath, playing the undercover researcher to my own life, and sometimes just hiding under the blankets for an hour or, um… four. Some days are just this way, and it’s probably due to a combination of late nights and early mornings and too much not enough coffee and hormones and the weather and any number of swiftly colliding circumstances, but in the murk of it, all I can reason is that I have finally, irrevocably failed at existence. (People who are not me would call it a bad day, shrug, and move on. To those people, I ask—Where is your commitment to suffering? I mean, really.)

The funk had been creeping up on me for a while—see here, here, here, aaaaand here—and my husband and I both agree that it’s time for some lifestyle reevaluation. The fact that we missed an episode of Sherlock to talk through this just goes to show how badly we need a change. More specifically, how badly I need a change. This year so far has looked nothing like I thought it would; my Ready, Set, Write! expectations were strangled by a months-long situation I couldn’t share about here, and I’ve been getting up each morning at the last possible minute without a glimmer of creative purpose.

Some mornings once the coffee is stirring my veins back to life, blog entries land decisively on my heart to be typed out in a heady glow. This compulsion to write is why I started blogging in the first place. It’s one of my favorite processes in all the world. But many other mornings, far too many, I stare at my computer screen trying to force sentences out of a thick silence and spiraling by the minute toward self-disgust. If I can’t conjure up the inspiration for a mere blog entry each day, how can I consider myself a blogger? And if I can’t hack it as a blogger, how can I even hope for the infinitely vaguer and cooler title of writer?

Here’s where the lifestyle reevaluation comes in. See, I have an idea of what is required of a successful blogger—a personal brand, dedicated networking, and frequent content that manages to be both familiar and engaging—and I chafe against all three points. I have no agenda for my blogging, and I honestly feel claustrophobic at the thought of limiting myself to one theme or niche. I’m just me, folks, and I write because I can’t not write, and I share that writing here because I can’t not share it. This blog is my community. However, I don’t think it was ever meant to be my career. All those mornings spent glaring at a blank “New Post” page should have clued me in long before now. This space here is a place for inspiration and outlet, an aviary for my thoughts, a personal lounge for kicking back and drinking in beauty. It’s not my nine to five.

Which means it’s high time I stop letting misdirected stress over branding and networking and commenting and posting schedules keep me from asking myself what projects I’m truly meant to pour my energy into for the second half of this year. Ergo, I’m going to be taking some much-needed time to figure myself out, starting in approximately eleven minutes when I hit the running trail and the horrible, agonizing pain of exercise stabs my stress level to death. I’m not abandoning this blog, never fear, but posting might be sparser than usual while I get reacquainted with me. Either that, or this space will soon be overrun with blurry snapshots of my navel and esoteric questions about the meaning of life. Either way, you’ve been warned.

~~~

How do you go about lifestyle reevaluations? Do you have any tips for ditching unnecessary stress and honing in on a direction that will bounce me out of bed with the sunrise? (Drink recommendations totally count.)

15May

Pinterest Parenting

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

I have a confession to make: I dislike taking my children to the park. So strongly do I dislike it, in fact, that I agree to a maximum one hour a week at our neighborhood playground and sigh in relief when inclement weather lets me off the hook. All that changing of clothes, applying of sunscreen, and filling of water bottles so that I can hover near my daredevil four-year-old while craning my neck for my seven-year-old who is playing hide ‘n’ seek with her friends and may no longer be in the country for all I can tell? Goodness, it is so not my favorite thing.

I feel like I’m admitting to some heinous crime against parenthood here, but wait—it gets better. I also strongly dislike showering the girls after swim class, organizing their birthday parties, teaching them to ride bikes, and doing crafts with them. Don’t even get me started on that last one; there is little in this world more unsettling to me than glue in the hands of a preschooler.

Keep in mind that I’m not exactly glowing with pride over this. I’ve absorbed enough parenting magazines, mommy blogs, and Pinterest boards to convince myself that the ideal mom would help her children mix up eco-conscious finger paint as they rode their bicycles from an all-day picnic at the park home to the lavender-infused bubble baths they’d brewed the day before. I have a glossy image in my mind of the ideal mom: creative genius with infinite patience meets soccer mom with sex appeal, something like June Cleaver and Maria von Trapp rolled up in a sugar cookie crust and pretty much nothing like me.

I’m embarrassed to be writing this, any of this, because I don’t want to add any credibility to the Mommy Wars. I want to proclaim in bold, confident type that if a mother is invested enough in her child to worry about how many months she should breastfeed, she’s doing a good job. End of story. Yet… I’ve known many parents who earnestly believed that physically and mentally abusing their children was the best strategy. Even now, I often notice parents letting their children hang out the passenger window on the highway, their kindergartners go on violent rampages, and their children’s teeth rot from hygienic neglect, and I have to admit that there’s something to be said for holding up a standard. We parents need humility and accountability just like any others in a position of power. We were never meant to do this job in isolation.

At the same time, the comparison game can quickly turn into the shame game. Having access to so many inspired ideas at once can make us forget that we’re looking at a collage of unique personalities and talents, not one composite superhuman. I see a mom who creates whimsical food faces for her children’s lunches and think I should be doing that. The next mom knits stuffed animals for birthday gifts, and never mind that I don’t know how to knit one, purl anything, I should be doing that too. Living room chemistry labs, French idiom flashcards, Mommy & Me Karate, I should be doing it all.

Clearly, logic has no place in my compare and despair routine. The karate mom, chemistry mom, and knitting mom are not the same mom, so why do I feel like a failure when I can’t master all of their individual strengths? I can’t really blame the media for this one; it’s all me. I’m the one focusing on pinboards meant for the karate mom and the chemistry mom and the knitting mom and the loves-taking-her-children-to-the-park mom and taking each one as a personal attack.

Here’s what I should be doing instead of browsing Pinterest for reasons to feel unworthy: I should be piling a dozen oversized pillows on my bed, calling the girls in, and cracking open a storybook. I’m great at reading out loud—did you know that?—and contrary to busting out the bikes or the glue (shudder), reading together is an activity that the girls and I love with equal enthusiasm. It’s one of my personal mama-strengths. Family travel is another, and if I were pressed to come up with a third, Sophie could tell you just how much fun we have baking cupcakes together.

I think that the main reason we moms take up arms against each other is in misdirected self-defense. We feel like other women’s successes are a commentary on our failings, and we bristle, desperate to believe that we’re not screwing up our children as thoroughly as that snide little voice in the back of our minds says we are. As a realist (code name for pessimist) and a chronic internalizer, I struggle with that mindset more often than I’d like to admit. However, I’m finally fighting back against it by trying to give the most attention to my strengths rather than my deficits. The key word here is “trying.” Self-congratulation feels like such a taboo, but honestly, why wouldn’t I work on celebrating and cultivating the ways in which I love my children best? It’s the quickest antidote against my own mental Mommy War that I know of… and? It lets me return to browse the eco-conscious-lavender-bicycle-karate-supermom pinboard without an ounce of guilt.

~~~

Your turn! What are your own awesome talents as a parent, a child, a friend, an artist, or a Pinterest-browsing human being? What are YOU especially great at? (No cop-out answers now; your strengths are worth a little celebration!)

10May

How to Grocery Shop Like an ISTJ

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

When Dan and I met my junior year of university, we immediately decided against falling for each other. I had long ago determined that I could never marry an engineer, so the nerdalicious man leaving my apartment for an all-nighter in the biomechanics lab was automatically out. He had made a similar determination about psychologists, so the stack of behavior theory textbooks on my table did not exactly work in my favor. Did you know that? That I once majored in psychology? Not many people today would guess it, and I can understand why; the subjective science behind analyzing and treating minds suited me about as well as a Pancho Villa mustache (which, to be clear, suits no one). Here’s my motive for studying psychology in my own journal-scribbled words from 2002: “I want to travel the world and pen my thoughts and make as many relationships as this life allows.” And somehow I thought memorizing Jungian archetypes would be the way…? The week before Dan and I admitted we actually did rather like each other, I got my ass into the English program where it belonged.

Some of what I learned in the psychology program stuck with me though, and I remain especially fascinated by personality profiles. My own analytical mind revels in lists and organizational strategies, so cordoning the vast spectrum of humanity into categories helps me take our individual quirks in stride. For example, my Myers-Briggs personality type is ISTJ—introversion (I recharge by withdrawing), sensing (I’m detail-oriented), thinking (I tend to make logical rather than emotional decisions), and judgment (which sounds horrible and arrogant but basically means I just analyze the heck out of everything)—and while I get defensive over a few of its points (judgment!!), it really does explain a lot of how I tick. Even better, it means I’m not alone in the funny little mechanism of my brain… so this is for you other ISTJs out there, or for those with an ISTJ in your lives, or for those who would simply like to walk a mile in our over-thinking but psychologically validated shoes:

How to Grocery Shop Like an ISTJ

Step Pre-1: Plan a time to sit down and work on your grocery list. This shouldn’t be hard; just pick a time when you’ll be at 62-65% mental capacity with few people around and no other pressing responsibilities for the day. You may need to schedule an out-of-town trip to make this possible.

Step 1a: Jot down all the food you currently have in the house. Try to give exact amounts whenever applicable. (Don’t forget spices!)

Step 1b: Thumb through your grocery store’s current offers and write down any sale items that interest you. Calculate price per weight.

Step 1c: Open your budget spreadsheet and determine how much you will be spending on groceries this trip. It may help at this point to write down the names of everyone who will be attending each meal so that you can determine a price per capita.

Step 1d: Figure out your nutritional goals for the upcoming days. Do you need more protein? Has your diet been lacking the full color spectrum? Is it Vegan Week?

Step 2: With your lists, goals, and spreadsheets open in front of you, start researching recipes that make the best use of all the variables. Be prepared for this step to take a while, though it shouldn’t go much over 48 hours (unless, of course, you’re having company).

Step 3: Assign recipes to specific meals on specific days. Take probable expiration dates and refrigerator size into account. It wouldn’t hurt to check the weather report while you’re at it.

Step 4: You’re finally ready to write your grocery list! Don’t forget to note the desired quantity of each item and order the list according to your grocery store’s layout. Really have fun with this part!

Step 5: Schedule your grocery trip. You’ll want to make sure it’s soon after the store has restocked but not when it’s likely to be crowded. (If you’ve been diligently updating your chart of the delivery truck’s route, this will be a breeze.)

Step 6a: Estimate the number of reusable shopping bags to bring. This should only take some medium-level algebra.

Step 6b: Adjust wardrobe according to the climate and terrain of the store. Settle the sunglasses debate before you head out.

Step 6c: Shop! If you’ve done all previous steps correctly, it shouldn’t be too harrowing an experience, though you’ll want to maintain a certain amount of flexibility just in case, say, they’re out of your preferred brand of laxatives.

Step 7: You’ve just successfully bought groceries; give yourself permission to kick back and celebrate! (After putting everything away, obviously. Also allow time for pantry reorganization, power naps, and crossing the trip off of multiple to-do lists.) Just don’t party too long. After all, somebody’s got to start pre-making the dinner.

9May

Trumped

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 9 Comments

I decided years ago that I was done with the creation vs. evolution debate. As a Jesus-follower, I often hear earnest sermonizing that God created all life forms in six literal days and that science is trying to undermine the truth of our Bible, but I no longer take on that conversation. My personal belief is that the creation story in Genesis is highly figurative and that God in science are on the same team, but I could be mistaken. Honestly, I don’t care. I see a divine fingerprint on the world around me, but the method of its origin has no bearing on my faith. It’s simply a non-issue to me.

I’ve taken the same approach with the sexual orientation subject too. Nearly all Christian denominations openly condemn the homosexual and transgender, but I never saw the point in getting worked up over it. After all, I’m straight. I can hardly claim to understand, much less consider myself an authority on those with other sexual orientations. Yes, there are passages in the Bible decrying homosexuality, but the Bible is a complicated book, and I didn’t see a personal need to delve into the linguistic and cultural nuances behind those passages in order to polarize my stance. The issue simply didn’t affect me.

That was before someone very dear to me shared the story of her husband—a conservative pastor and Quiverfull dad—admitting that he actually identified as female and of their transition to a same-sex marriage. I was stunned. My lack of a position on the whole subject left me in a philosophical no man’s land as I tried to wrap my mind around their story, and my own longsuffering spouse can attest to the many hours I spent talking myself through it. I kept trying to put myself in Melissa’s position, but I just couldn’t imagine finding out that my husband had always felt his deepest identity to be female. More, I couldn’t imagine coming out myself and continuing our committed, affectionate relationship as he became a she.

It finally dawned on me that I was trying to understand things from the wrong angle. My body and soul genders match each other, and my romantic inclination is as conventional as it comes; I’m not going to be able to conjure up the transgender or gay experience any more than I could picture myself a tsar. But I don’t need to. I don’t need to feel what my friend is going through in order to hear the emotions of her story, see the awe-striking love she and her spouse have shown each other throughout, or understand the way people’s reactions affect them. I don’t need to twist my mind around in search for empathy. It’s been right here all along… and so has my stance on the issue:

Love matters most.

Jesus said that when a religious leader asked him for the greatest commandment, and it’s one of my favorite things in the Bible. All those lists of laws and thou shalt nots are both summed up and solidly trumped by love. You would think, according to some sermons I’ve heard, that Jesus accidentally forgot to exclude homosexuals when he said “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But this same Jesus met with scathing criticism from the churchy crowd for his habit of hanging out with prostitutes, cheats, and other flagrant sinners. He had dinner with outcasts and approached people considered too vile for interaction, and you know, he never once remembered to launch an anti-gay campaign. He was too busy teaching how to cultivate peace, live authentically, and stop burdening our fellow human beings.

I realize that unconventional sexual orientation has become a huge moral issue to many people, and it’s often seen as grounds for terminating friendships. In the case of Christian communities, many adopt the strategy of trying to shun the offending person into repentance. Bullying can take the form of anything from hate crimes to prayer meetings to constitutional amendments, and we’re only kidding ourselves if we claim that our repugnance is rooted in the Bible. The Old Testament puts pride, eating pig meat, and doing things to gain popularity in the same category as gay sex, but the cultural stigmas on those actions have long since been lifted. If you pick up a clam on the beach today, you’re not going to face a religious firing squad even though touching shellfish is listed as an abomination in the same section of the Bible most often used to bash homosexuals. Like it or not, every single Christian interprets the Bible through a cultural filter, so I think it’s about time that we acknowledge our prejudice for what it is.

I imagine that some people are ready to jump down my throat right now with theology books in tow, but I’m less willing to join in the debate now than I was during all my years of disimpassioned neutrality. It really all comes down to this one truth beating in my heart:

The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination!
But love matters most.

God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman, period!
But love matters most.

If I remain friends with gay people, they will think I’m condoning their behavior!
But love matters most.

They’re unnatural and perverted and mentally unsound; they need to be cured!
But love matters most.

What if my child turns out gay?
Love matters most.

No matter our fears or aversions, our power as a majority group to put others down, or our arsenal of theological ammunition, love matters most. Jesus summed up centuries of religious law in this, and I don’t believe for one second that he meant “love” as an abstract semantic device that we can claim over the people we’re shunning. Jesus’s love was always hands-on—touching the sick, embracing muddy children, tearing off hunks of bread for the hungry, washing his followers’ feet—and he charged his believers with carrying out his heart for people. He charged us with grace, freeing us forever from the responsibility of judging or condemning each other. His is a legacy of radical community, beautiful in its unconcern with convention or religious respectability, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be a part of it… right alongside my friend.

~~~

I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth a second read: A Mountain I’m Willing to Die On

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