Thought For The Day

"You haven't seen the last part of the best of me."
~ Serena Ryder

I'm riding these words all around my world today, and probably for some time to come.

How about you?

~

Cause Something to Happen

- I did not write the following words, but they I think they are some of the best words I’ve read lately. Maybe you will too.

You come out
of a meeting
and someone asks,
“What happened?”
And you answer,
“Nothing.”
You sit in a
legislative gallery
and someone sits
down beside you
and asks,
“What’s happening?”
And you say,
“Nothing.”

Maybe that
meeting room and
that gallery
should have had
the same sign
hanging on their
walls that –
so the story goes –
a college football
coach pasted in
his teams’ lockers:
“Cause something
to happen.”

He believed that
if you didn’t make
something happen
with a good block,
your runner would go
nowhere – and if
you didn’t tackle,
the other team would
run all over you.

He sure caused something
to happen. Bear Bryant
won more than 300 games.

- I hope you cause something fabulous to happen today.

~

The Survey

On the counsel of someone wiser and more possessed with awareness in these areas than me I recently took a test or survey, if you will, to determine my spiritual gifts. According to Romans 12 we all have them. We all have different ones and we all use the ones we have in different ways.

This survey consisted of 84 questions that I answered on a scale of 1 – 5; 1 being “almost never” and 5 being “almost always.” I have to say I was quite pleased with myself as I began to answer and I was able to answer with lots of 4s and 5s. Then inevitably the 2s and 1s began to creep in.

I won’t tell you the results of the survey – I am still deciphering what it all means and what exactly I am to do with my new found knowledge of myself. But I will tell you that I scored rather high in a couple of areas, err “giftings,” and much lower in other gift areas. (There are lots of spiritual gifts but this survey was geared towards identifying the strengths of Perceiving/Prophecy, Teaching, Encouraging, Showing Mercy, Serving, Giving, Admin./Ruling/Leading).

The thing that surprised me the most is not finding out what my gifts are but instead the freedom in finding out what they are not. I cannot tell you what a joy and a relief it is to know that I do not have a God-given gift for certain things. It so explains why I do not enjoy certain tasks. It explains why certain things are not on my radar. It explains why I get bored so easily when I do particular things.

God taught me about one of my non-gifts early in my working career. I learned a long time ago working in sales was not a talent I possessed. But, Lord love me I kept trying, I waited tables several different times, I worked in wholesale sales and retail sales. I just cannot make people buy something they do not need/want or sell something that I do not believe in or work for a company I know is not giving a fair deal to the customer.

Well, that pretty much rules out sales of all kinds – even waiting tables – as I was always selling the “daily special” or pushing dessert or the wine list. Just thinking about it now is creating all sorts of anxiety in me!

And that’s how we know we are not working in our gift. We get easily frustrated. We become bored with our task. Doing a particular thing causes us to become anxious or fearful. Now, there will be times that we feel these things even though we are working in our gifts and talents – life is what it is and frustration and anxiety come with the territory. But we can be aware enough to know the difference.

When we are in a close relationship with God, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we become Spirit-aware enough to discern the difference between our area of talent and our area of “God-gave-this-gift-to-somebody-else.” And boy, we and God are happy when that day arrives.

Knowing what God has called us to do is vitally important. He has possessed us with certain abilities, talents and gifts so that we may live our lives to benefit others to His glory. If we do not know what those gifts and talents are we cannot do that to the fullest.

But at the same time it is just as important that we identify what we are not called to do. God does not want us wasting time serving Him in some capacity that does not suit us because that would not bring Him glory. Living our lives in frustration and boredom does no one any good – especially God.

So the next time I am buying shoes at Nordstrom I am giving my salesperson a big ‘ol hug – because I know that person has been called from a mighty high source to be putting that shoe on my foot.

And is there anything more glorious than a new pair of shoes?

~

Standing Up

It has been several weeks since I have written on this site. I have had a great deal on my heart and God and I have been working it out. He tells me that if I’m going to have a site in which I talk about my love for Him and His love for me then I have to tell my whole story; our whole story actually – His and mine together.

This is not easy. Telling my story is risky. It opens me up and exposes me and creates an opportunity for others to judge. I don’t like being vulnerable. But He has asked me to trust Him in this. If I stand up, He will stand beside me. So, I am standing up – for Him, for me and for His beautiful sons and daughters.

My name is Dee and I am gay and God says I am okay.

I have loved God ever since I can remember. My earliest childhood memories are of playing inside the sanctuary and on the grounds at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church. I grew up in that church. I continue to grow in that church. It’s where God first grabbed hold of my heart. God’s had a hold of me for so long I cannot remember a time when He and I were not holding hands.

While I hated getting up at eight A.M. on Sundays (the crack of dawn for a child) to make it to nine o’clock church, I really liked Sunday school, my church friends, my teachers, going on youth retreats and E.Y.C. as a teen. As a high-schooler we put on Godspell each year in the sanctuary for the congregation – what a blast to sing and dance all over God’s house.

I remember in the nave there used to hang the most glorious portrait of Jesus I had ever seen. It was huge, or maybe I was just small. The painting depicted Jesus surrounded by little children, like me at the time. He was smiling and His love was radiant. I just knew He loved me like that too.

I felt so safe in that church. So secure. So loved by God. That feeling has never left me.

I have also been a lesbian ever since I can remember. I have always felt a certain compulsion towards females. A closeness and bonding that is difficult to explain. I never told anyone about it until I was an adult, after college. But my homosexuality was there, always, and I knew it.

I have never been molested. I have never been sexually assaulted or abused. I grew up in a loving family with two devoted parents. My parents recently celebrated 48 years of marriage. My childhood was about as close to Leave it to Beaver as you could get. I had normal relationships with boys growing up. I always had boyfriends and I like guys – I find the male form beautiful and desirable. I don’t have the typical “societal-markers” for being gay – I just am because that is who God created me to be.

At no time in my life have I ever felt that these two constants – God’s love for me and my homosexuality were mutually exclusive. They are not. And society and the Church cannot make them so.

Let’s be clear on one point – being homosexual is not all about sex. It goes far beyond the merely sexual; that fact is something that is paramount for people to understand but many don’t try to or care to. Homosexuality does not begin and end in the bedroom. But it is that 1% of our lives that the world focuses on. What about the other 99%? Why does the world so easily try to throw us away?

Too many of us, my beautiful gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have had terrible and sad experiences with family members and/or with the Church. Some believe we can be loved by God or we can be gay but we cannot be both. (I use “gay” in a unified way from time to time referring to both gay men and lesbian women). Many believe that God does not love us for who we are, as we are. God has asked me to stand up and tell my story so that everyone will know the truth. So that the lies can be broken and the healing can begin.

Here is the truth as it has been taught to me and I have the God-given authority to pass it to you – God loves you just as you are, right where you are, just as gay as you are.

That is a truth many in society do not want us to believe. Make no mistake; there is a battle raging that means to stop us from knowing God and knowing who we are in God. However, our battle lies neither with misguided legislators nor with the far religious-right or others like them for they are but flesh and blood and know not what they do. No, our battle is with the Enemy which uses them and their weaknesses to do his dirty work. The Enemy is cunning and relentless. He knows how to hurt and how to inflict the most damage. His attacks are effective no matter how brave we try to be on our own.

I know the attacks had an effect on me. I took on a healthy, or I should say unhealthy, sense of shame for being a lesbian. Now don’t misunderstand, I didn’t intrinsically feel this shame or feel that there was one thing wrong with me. But I took in the shame that society laid upon my doorstep.

Tell someone they don’t measure up, that they don’t matter, that they are an embarrassment, that God hates them and won’t love them unless they are different from who God made them to be – they will eventually believe those lies. And those lies do so much destruction.

I have news for society, I am not an abomination. I am not the “greatest threat to America.” God does not punish the world because I exist. God does not punish what He created for He would be punishing Himself. God is a part of all creation.

I am not a trained theologian; I’m not a minister, priest or pastor. I don’t need to be. My religious and spiritual training comes from my life experiences. From growing up in the Church, being educated in religious schools, attending bible studies, and spending time in God’s word and in His presence. Which means I’m nobody special, I’m like everybody else; just a girl crazy in love with God who God is crazy in love with in return.

God has never withheld His love from me because I’m gay. God has never withheld His blessings from me because I’m gay. God has never turned His back on me because I’m gay. I cannot say the same things about people.

Because of the sense of shame I carried inside me for who I was, I prayed to God more times than I know to please “heal” me and make me different, make me straight. I prayed for this because I believed it would please my parents and family, it would please society and it would make my life so much easier. (I didn’t make that prayer because it would please me.)

God did answer that prayer and He did heal me but not in the way I expected. And God did make me different. He healed me from the shame I had accepted for being gay. He healed me from the guilt I carried for not measuring up to someone else’s ideal of who I was supposed to be. He healed me from the fear of living my life as He created me to be. He taught me who I am in His eyes. And what a difference that has made.

God has told me in no uncertain terms that He is not ashamed of me and I am not an abomination in His eyes but that I am His beautiful beloved. He told me loud and clear in a way I was sure to understand, “I am proud of you, Dee.”

Those are some of the greatest words a girl could ever hear from her Father. But they are words that so few of my brothers and sisters get to hear. The safe and loving feeling I felt as a child and continue to feel today is the feeling everyone (whether gay or not) should feel when they enter a church or approaching God. But they don’t and God is grieved by that.

Not all, but the majority of our churches are not safe and loving places for homosexuals. (Even right now my Episcopal denomination is in a life and death struggle within itself over how to deal with us.) In most churches we are welcome but only if we try to “change.” They say God wants and demands that we change. This prevents some of us from even entering the door of God’s house. Or others of us stopped seeking God long ago believing the lies that God does not love us because we are gay. These lies are heavy and can make a person question God’s very existence. These things stop so many of us right in our tracks from ever seeking our Heavenly Father.

Society and the Church have it all wrong. The reason they have it wrong is because they cannot know what I (and we) know. A straight person cannot tell me that God hates me because I am gay and that He demands that I change. First, God cannot hate – anything or anyone. Second, they don’t have the authority. I am the one who is gay. I am the one in my relationship with God and God has told me personally that He loves me “with all His heart and all His soul.” He has also told me that I am no surprise to Him, who created me. He has told me that “I know you are gay, and it’s okay.”

And He wants you to know that if you are gay, God says you’re okay, too.

That is not a message the world wants you to hear – but it is one God wants you to hear. Like every human, I am not perfect, far from it. I am a sinner and God leads me through my sins and from them everyday. But I have something no human can ever take from me and that is the never ending love and approval of my Heavenly Father.

God wants every one of His beautiful gay and lesbian sons and daughters to know that love and approval too. So many feel unworthy, so many are thirsty, so many are wandering. That has got to change. God wants that to change. He so desires a deep and abiding relationship with each of us.

When our heads and hearts are filled with lies, when we are kept from knowing and having a relationship with our Heavenly Father we are kept in a world of darkness, of shame, of guilt, of brokenness, of fear. Then we are weak, we will not put up a worthy fight – and the enemy knows that.

Luckily, we will not be denied by the God who loves us. Society can try and bar the doors and crowd the windows but they will not keep us out. Just as the four men carrying their paralytic friend had to go through the roof to get past the crowds to reach Jesus (Mark 2:1-5); so too God’s love will let nothing stand between us and our Heavenly Father and the life He died to give us.

Love will no longer allow me to sit down – my love of God, His for me, my love for my beautiful gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. My story is not a special story. It can be your story. God is waiting to sweep you off your feet and have an eternal love affair with you. You only have to ask Him into your heart – and you can do that right this second, sitting right where you are reading this. No fancy words required.

When you do your life will never be the same. That is one thing the world does have right. When you enter into a relationship with God you will be forever changed, but not in the way they think. You will be cleansed and freed from all the hurt, anger, bitterness, shame, fear and bad things that ever happened to you. You will be restored to the complete person God created you to be and you know you are.

When we are complete in Him and know who we are in Him we are strong. And we are filled with His abiding love – forever. That love is the most formidable force in the universe.

And love does not sit down.

~