A Small Protest Against Hate and A Push for Love Instead

Chick-Fil-A has become my new favorite hangout. Not too far from school, not too far from my counselor, not too far from anything in this little town which is 45 min away from my home. The coffee is decent, (although my standards have plummeted since drinking Folgers on a daily basis in EMS) and the food is lovely. If I'm honest though, I come here because I am gay, and they disagree with me.

 Call me what you will, but I love this country I really, really love it, and what I love the most about it is that I am free to be gay, and Chick-Fil-A is free to disagree with me. I know that the Chick-Fil-A controversy is long dead, the reporters are done hashing it out, people, as people will, have long forgotten it. I have not though; I have not because I am slightly ashamed of the way it was handled. As a lesbian follower of Christ, I am ashamed of both sides. We say we are fighting for the same thing—the Love of Christ, and we show our love by picketing, shouting, and calling each other dirty names. Really? Could we not have left this behavior in grade school where it belongs? Although when I hear the way grade school children speak at times I think they have more pride than to stoop to what we have stooped to.

I wish that instead of picketing the LGBTQ community had massed at Chick-Fil-A all wearing shirts that said, I’m gay and I support Chick-Fil-A #freedomofspeech. Now that would have made a statement this country would never have forgotten. We want the right to publicly and legally marry, but we do not want the right for a CEO to say whatever the heck strikes his fancy? Am I the only one who sees the flaw in this logic? Whether we like it or not, we are a community, the internet has made distance in this country negotiable at best, and as a community we have to learn to get along. We cannot pick and choose our freedoms, either we are a free country, or we are not. Either we are free to choose our spouse, and free to say whatever we want to say or we have neither.

I support the LGBTQ community, obviously, I am part of it. I support freedom of speech, I exercise this right every day, and this is why I will continue my silent protest against the way people treat one another in the name of freedom, and eat at Chick-Fil-A. I might even order my t-shirt and wear it here one day.

I also support loving those who hate you. Recently, the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church died, and although I do not know any of the details that surrounded his death, I heard one of his last requests was that no one would protest at his funeral. I assume that request was not honored, although later I heard that there would be no funeral at all. I wonder though what would happen if instead of picketing a dead man’s funeral if LGBTQ community, and frankly the Christian community who was horrified by the choices of this Church, flooded the church with condolences.

A man who was loved died. No matter what he did in his life, and what hate he perpetuated, there are people who deeply grieve his loss. I know what it feels like to lose someone who is loved; I also know what it feels like to be hated for loving someone, has not every gay person felt this at some point in their lives? Instead of returning hate with hate, perhaps we should return hate with love. Love always makes a more powerful statement than hate. We want our love to be accepted, whether gay, or Christian, perhaps it is time we start being known for our love rather than our hate.

Although I have stayed out of these controversies and avoided social media when they happen, I will not be doing this in the future. I will be seeking out ways to show love in these situations. I eat at Chick-Fil-A, not because I agree with what they believe, I do not have to, I agree with their rights to freedom of speech. I will be sending a card to the Westboro Church family, not because I agree with anything their leader did, but because I am truly sorry for their loss, death is hard no matter how old the person, or who they are death is death, and death hurts, these are small protests against hate, but I hear every great movement starts with a small protest. 

My Story 1

This post contains abuse, if abuse stories trigger you, this one might. This story is to encourage myself that what is past, happened, is past, and no longer has to affect me, and to encourage others that perhaps they are not as alone as they think. This is the first story in a series.

Fear. So tangible, so constant, the taste on my tongue, the feeling in my gut, the panic in my mind.

I watched as it happened again, I was running in circles, circles, circles, trying to get away, I couldn’t because someone was holding my hair while everything that could be hit was being hit with a dowel rod.  I was running because I was panicked I was running because I could not stop. Eventually, I collapsed onto the floor and I was thrown up onto the bed, and I was spanked, until I guess mom just couldn’t hit me anymore. I had to lay there and catch my breath before I could move, and even then I was limping. For once mom did not give me a lecture, I just limped out of the room. I told myself I wouldn’t cry ever again. I tried to fathom what I had done wrong, what had caused this spanking and I just couldn’t. I simply did not know what I had even done.

Spanking involved being repeatedly hit with a dowel rod or a paint stick or a carbon arrow, when mom was in control it involved being hit anywhere from 3 to 20 times, with slight pauses in between each blow. When she wasn’t in control, when she was just infuriated she would hit until she was tired. Most of the times when she was in control was when I was in trouble in a group context like, when my sister closest to me and I both did something wrong. Somehow I, above all the other kids could make her infuriated with me.  

I was walking through the house the hangers clanking on my arm, trying to get some fun out of the house work, when she yells at me, “Stop making so much unnecessary noise!” Quickly, quickly for a five year-old I stopped the hangers. She turned towards me infuriated, “I TOLD YOU TO STOP.  I GUESS YOU HAD TO JUST DO IT ONE MORE TIME.” Then more quietly, “Come on you’re getting a spanking.” It was the first spanking of the day, and for some reason that day sticks in my mind because I literally think I got spanked about every five minutes, and not once was I even aware I was doing something wrong, or I was actually trying to be helpful, like when I spilt the food on the floor because I was trying to move it for my oldest sister who was cooking.

I tried to figure out how to be a better child, and realized I was simply doomed to be a horrible person, no matter what I did, I was wrong and in trouble. I decided then to try to be invisible.

When I was 10, during George W. Bush’s first election counting I got caught for not doing math. I stopped doing math for at least a solid year. I hated math, I hated school for that matter. I’m not the type of child who can just learn from a book and teach themselves, I don’t learn that way, I need to be taught. My mother gave us our books, gave us our schedule, gave us our chores, and expected us to complete them. She spent her time either on the computer, or in her room on the phone. When she got a laptop she was pretty much inseparable from it. When she came to “check” our work, either our chores, or our school work she was always random, and we never knew when it would happen.

I got called into her room and asked to bring her my math book that hadn’t been checked in a year. I frantically tried to cover it up by changing the dates in my previous math book, but that didn’t work, I was in trouble and I knew it. I know that I got spanked by mom and I don’t remember it, at this point in my life anything that was traumatic to me seems to have been simply edited out. I have a vague knowledge that she was intensely angry, that she called me lazy, and that I was told I would never finish school, I don’t remember the spanking. Which means it wasn’t three swats on the backside, it was brutal enough to be removed from my memory. When my father got home he was told what happened and that I hadn’t been punished for it. So he spanked me too, I don’t remember that either, and it had dawned on me recently that I do not remember a single spanking my father gave me, not one, and I know he gave me quite a few.

From then on I was supposed to do twice the amount of math work every day so I could catch up, and I was supposed to do it in my mother’s room, and I got spanked for two weeks every time I was supposed to do math. Each time I was hit 20 times. To this day doing math causes me to feel panicky, and I have to talk myself through the entire process.

I don’t remember not being bruised, or having a hard time sitting for long periods of time because it just hurt, the entire time I was growing up. I once thought I wasn't afraid of anything, but now I realize, that I was always afraid, and fear just became a normal part of my life, and when something is normal enough you forget that it's even there.

Memory loss is something that became common after about five, I remember being three, and four pretty vividly, my mom taught first grade at a Christian school and I was kept by someone else most of the time I was four. From then on anything that was traumatic was simply just edited out. Now I know that I disassociate when I feel like I’m in a traumatic situation. So in essence these things did not happen to me, they happened to that little girl over there who is an idiot and who also happens to look a lot like me. To this day when I remember something happening, I don’t remember it from my perspective; I remember it as if I watched the entire thing, including me from the opposite corner of the room. In other words when I picture a memory I picture myself along with everyone else.

I just now am coming to the realization that to remember things like this is not normal.

Now that I’m an adult I’m trying to re-connect with the parts of me that hold the edited out memories. Now I have a confusing pile of cut out pictures, like someone cut a picture out of a book, and without the context of the page they don’t make any sense. In the telling of these stories, I am trying to put the cut outs back into the pages they came from in my story, the problem is some of them are simply so brutal and disturbing I’m not sure how they could have really happened, and some of them involve people in my life that everyone else, including my siblings still hold in high regard. So the question I am constantly faced with is Real, or not real? And the answer is becoming more and more often, real. I’m just desperately trying to remember that not only is it real, but also far in my past. 

An Old Story Never Told

I have spent countless hours reading a new website that I have found—Homeschoolers anonymous.

After reading their stories and being broken hearted over their lives I know it is time to tell my own story. I begin to realize that I am not alone that what I experienced was not a one-time experience, there are a lot of other people who experienced the same thing.

See I grew up in this great community of homeschoolers where everyone had great experiences and they all planned on homeschooling their own children one day. I just thought there was something wrong with me, I was flawed. Now I know that my experience was not the only one, and that even if for them homeschooling was a great experience and not a suffocating trap at home, for me it was never great.

Right after I wrote the last post on this blog promising to write more often, my life was bombarded with thoughts images and struggle. You see my memories are a stained glass, fragmented thoughts, if you’ve read the Hunger Games I feel a lot like Peeta unsure what is real and what is not real. I couldn’t write for fear of slandering someone in a way that wasn’t true.

I can’t not write anymore.

I’m going to write what I remember, leaving the fear of “disrespecting” and “not honoring my parents” out, I’m not sure how long it will take me to post the story or if anyone will read it, it will be what I remember, and it will be for me. I think it is high time I allowed myself to accept the memories and accept that they are all in the past. I’m writing not to hurt anyone, I am writing so that I might move on.

Here's to writing the past out so I can recognize that it has passed and move on.

No Longer Strangers

I have finally settled into my job, and I think into my life. Please refrain from laughing, I plan to write here again once a week, whatever God makes heavy on my heart at the moment, or whatever He causes my heart to sing over.

Today it's about healing.

"One day you will be healed." They said, and I laughed, "Yeah when I'm dead."

I'm warning you that this post will not end with, and today I look back as healed. Nope. Hasn't happened. I'm still pretty broken, and I still laugh bitterly sometimes at those who say I will heal. I have spent hours curled into a little ball and told myself to breathe because the pain of all this will pass, it will pass, it will pass. Then I have woken up days later and found that I haven't a clue what I did in the time that is now just marked with blackness.

I have DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, when I was young and my brain could no longer handle the trauma it was undergoing the coping mechanism it chose to use was to create personalities inside myself that could handle them. Literally, new people in my brain with names, developing histories of their own that I am not privy to.

This is Wikipedia's article on the topic, and what it has to say, is that no one really knows, and once you become like this you will most likely stay like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

I have done things that fill me with shame, I only know I've done them because others have told me, and I trust them. Or in once case I guy asked me if I was coming home to sleep with him again, I was a little baffled I barely knew him, and then it dawned on me, perhaps I had slept with him, perhaps I just didn't remember. Then I realized that I didn't take birth control because I wasn't actually in the habit of sleeping with random people, and there were several weeks of gut wrenching fear, pain, anticipation, and wondering until my cycle came again. The consequences of this disorder reach far and wide.

It makes for a lot of loneliness, it makes for a lot of people who want to love you, but aren't sure if they can stay for the pain you continue to fling at them yet can't even remember. I'm not sure how my brain thought this was supposed to be helpful, but it did, and it's not backing down.

I'm seeing a therapist now and mostly she frustrates me and makes the people in my head angry, at least that's what she tells me. She also tells me that I can heal, that I can learn how to break down the walls and communicate with my alters, and perhaps we can work on this life together. The only problem is I believe in God and they don't. I think that healing comes from communion with people and accepting love from them, they believe in damage control which means isolation and staying away from people. I think they might kill to protect me, and this terrifies me.

However, yesterday, I had a very long talk with God, and then I curled up on my couch closed my eyes and started walking the halls of my brain. There is a great hall with lines of doors, and behind each door lives a personality, until now I didn't know how to open the doors. In fact I wasn't even sure if I could get into them, or if they could open from the outside. Yesterday I tried, and yesterday, I finally figured it out, I can communicate with my people, I can ask them why, and I can tell them what I want, and I can ask them for memories. It made my brain feel chaotic, it made me feel weird, because when I opened those doors I opened myself to their emotions, emotions they have carefully sheltered me from, but I spoke to them.

I am not healed, but the strangers in my own brain are no longer strangers. We are on first name basis and this is something. There is one room in my brain that has no doors, and I have yet to figure out how to get into it, but I feel that eventually I will, and I think whoever is in that room can tell me the most about what happened when I was a kid, and holds the keys to my healing.

I'm not healed but I am healing, and this is something, and if I can, you can too, even if that statement makes you laugh bitterly at me. 

To Life

Today I sit at work and I look at the people around me and I am happy. They are far from perfect, I am far from perfect and we are perfectly okay with that. I like them they seem to like me, and so we get along. It is so much easier, peaceful, and more joyful to live this way. I don’t have anyone telling me I’m doing it wrong, they don’t have anyone telling them they are doing it wrong. We just are who we are. Why can’t Christianity be this simple?

Yes we cuss; no we do not offend each other. We are professional around clients. We do our jobs, we work ethically. When we go home we have a beer. Yes we have problems. We have pasts, not all of us are on our first marriage, but we have accepted that life has its ups and downs, and sometimes a bottle of Jack Daniel’s can help you up from the down or make the up better. We realize that it isn’t wise, but we also realize that it isn’t a complete catastrophe to be stupid.

For the most part we accept our flaws attempt to make them better, or tell the other people they’re just going to have to live with it. The other people grumble, and guess what; they learn to live with it. Being flawed does not mean that you aren’t perfect. You can be perfectly flawed. People who think they aren’t flawed are just plain crazy. Why have Christians decided that they need to be like Christ? Christ was perfect; we will never be perfect, so why are we aspiring to something we can never reach? That has only proven to make people miserable.

Mat 5:48 “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Is the only time Jesus commanded us to be like Him, all the other times, He simply said “Follow me.” When Christ commanded people to be as perfect as God He was adding guilt onto an already guilty nation to show them that to be perfect was impossible. This was so that they would accept His sacrifice without question, His fulfillment of the law with celebration. They would be a tired nation, a nation who needed a savior. Christ fulfilled the law. We are no longer to be perfect; by His grace we are perfect.

STOP trying to be perfect. Live life, have fun. Love people. You will fail. This does not mean that you have failed God, He expected you to fail, He expects you to dust yourself off and keep going. He sees you as perfect, Christ did that for you. Why does it seem so impossible for most Christian’s to enjoy their life?

Enjoy yours, yes we were promised that we would be persecuted, we were promised that life would be rough, we were also promised that His yoke would be easy and His burden would be light. Enjoy being made pure, enjoy His love, enjoy His grace, enjoy life, enjoy the gifts He’s given. 

Smashed Hearts

My brain is always writing, forming sentences, paragraphs and ideas, attempting to communicate to the world. Today, I had my head down on my computer, and slowly it dawned on me that I wasn’t breathing. I was holding my breath because this was the only way I could make the writing stop. At this point I decided it would be a good idea to actually write ongoing monologue down. I swear I have a disease.

The idea I couldn’t put to rest in my head was this, of all my friends who call themselves Christians, and I can only think of one friend who doesn’t, the majority of them cannot seem to see past themselves. Today, after perusing facebook I wanted to curl up into a little ball and cry. Literally. My heart ached so badly I wanted to scream. With the coming elections, and the Chick-Fill-A debacle one would think facebook has become a political board, plus I read recovering grace, which I must say never helps with the warm fuzzy feelings.

Can we even see one another? Are we so caught up in rights, legality of actions, and right and wrong, that we cannot even see the drowning people? If Christians were really following Christ, would it matter if abortion or gay marriage was legal? Jesus changed the heart of a man, Zacchaeus by simply going to his house, eating his food, drinking his wine, and loving him. I cannot find a place in the scripture where Christ actually reprimanded Zacchaeus in love. Would it matter if abortion were legal if there were no doctors willing to preform it, and no women who wanted to have it done, because of the Love of Christ? If gay marriage is really such an abomination to Christ would its legality matter if no one wanted it?

Christianity has put up such a fight for what is right and what is wrong, that they have run over the hearts of the very people they claim to be trying to save. Make what humans desire illegal, and they will simply find a way around the law, capture their hearts with love, and they will give up anything for that love. Have we forgotten that the law was instated that sin might abound? Has the love of Christ been lost? Has its power been forgotten? Where are the people weeping over lost-ness, as He did? All I see are angry mobs yelling, and fighting for what they want. To both sides of these debates, you look like children, you should be ashamed of yourselves. To the Christians you make me sick, literally nauseated by the way you treat the hearts of the people you claim to love, and that you want to ‘save.’

Christians I know who you are, you are holy, perfect, loved, perfectly able to love, sanctified, the very righteousness of God, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Stop acting like you are sinners, stop acting like you don’t know how to love, you are better than this. Go eat with someone you disagree with, drink wine with them, and show them who you really are, and watch while laws become un-needed.

Chick-Fil-A Bandwagon

Facebook will show the world’s trends like nothing else, the current trend seems to be Chick-Fil-A and the anti-gay sentiment. Christians are getting angry because they feel like they are being unjustly told they are too judgmental, and gays and their supporters feel like yet again they are being stepped on in a country of “freedom.”

I hate jumping on the bandwagon of current trends, everyone arguing, no one listening, frankly I like to sit back and laugh at all those angry self-righteous people. However, I once again have reached the point where my words will threaten to rise up and strangle me if I don’t type them out. I have to say that I agree with neither, and both sides at the same time.

First off, I do not understand the argument over the word marriage, or the argument over “biblical family.” If Christians want biblical family, and if Christians think fighting in the political arena instead of fighting over the hearts of people, can get them what you want, why aren’t they fighting over divorce? If Christians would actually care to talk to the young people of America they would find,  young people’s hearts haven’t been wrecked by a “sex saturated” culture, or a place where gays are prevalent, their hearts have been wrecked by divorce, by the separation of their own parents. Biblical family, is just that, biblical, it no longer exists in this country, if someone wants to change that, they should start with their own marriages, and teaching their children about healthy relationships, instead of screaming about what they see as unhealthy while their marriages rot unnoticed.

Marriage. “MAR'RIAGE, n. [L.mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity,and for securing the maintenance and education of children.” Websters 1828.

This word no longer speaks what Webster set down for it to speak. Marriage now means this.

Definition of MARRIAGE

1a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage> b: the mutual relation of married persons : wedlock c: the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage

2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially: the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities

3: an intimate or close union <the marriage of painting and poetry — J. T. Shawcross>

If this is all the word, marriage, means in today’s culture, I want nothing to do with it. I would give my own definition; Marriage is the joining of two people, a partnership, for the duration of their feelings of generosity, and attraction toward each other, after which it is terminated in a court of law. Christian marriage is the joining of two people of the opposite sex, the man to be the ruler, the wife to be submissive in all things, as long as their mutual feelings of generosity, and attraction last, where it can then be terminated in a court of law.

This is not the biblical definition of marriage, but words, like everything else, change with time. I will never “marry” I want nothing to do with the word, or its current idea. No matter how much Christians want marriage to mean what it did in 1828, their divorce rate reflects that they do not want it enough. I want a partnership, an equal, mutual lifelong commitment with someone, something that binds us stronger than law, and therefore cannot be terminated in a court of law. Would it be nice to have the perks that come along with a marriage license, yes, but I’m not going to fight for those perks, my partnership doesn’t have to be sanctioned by my government, and I do not need any handouts from my government to keep it afloat.

I do not think that the majority of Christians are judgmental; I simply think they are fighting in the wrong arena. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, if the Chick-Fil-A owner does not support gays, then he shouldn’t be afraid to stand up and say what he wants to say. I like him. I like people who say what they believe in and stick to it. Frankly, I have never felt more loved by the people who disagree with me, and still talk to me than I do now, and I KNOW they disagree they’ve made that clear.

Please, believe in something, please, stand up for what you believe in. Just remember this, this is a free country and I am entitled to believe the opposite of what you believe. I do not think Christians should try to get in the political arena, that is not where they belong. No-where in the New Testament does it call Christians to storm the government, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render to God what is God’s” I believe is the only comment Christ makes on the matter.

Should they stand by idly while babies are being murdered, or their definition of the marriage bed is being defiled? Absolutely not, believe in something and stand up for what you believe in please. Christ spoke, not to the government, but to the people. Speak to the people, speak to their hearts, speak to the women, who don’t know what to do with the mistake they made that created a child, and speak to the people who you believe are wrong. Show them why they should want a marriage like yours; show them why they should want to protect it. Honestly, from where I sit Christians have nothing I want, nothing I envy, I am not destroying marriage, or family, they are doing that efficiently without my help.

To Mr. Chick-Fil-A, I respect you sir, I respect you for standing up for what you believe in. I respect that you close on Sunday’s I respect that you are willing to stand up when you believe in something. I respect your opinion that gay marriage is not biblical and should not be supported.

I respectfully disagree with you, but I still respect you, and your right to have an opinion. I love your food, I will continue eating your food, not because I agree with your political stance, but because you make a mean sandwich, and I’m pretty sure that chicken couldn’t care less that it’s being eaten by a gay person.

I wish there were more people like you. People who stand up for what they believe in, I’m sorry for all the hurt angry people who are throwing verbal tomatoes at you, as long as you refrain from throwing them back, you have my respect. Not that you care, not that this will ever even reach you, but here’s my voice to add to the mob, and if God actually wants it heard, it’ll be heard.

To the Christians, if you want us to respect you, if you want us to allow you to teach your children what you want, if you don’t want Church, homeschooling, and the amount of children you have to be regulated by the government, then don’t try to regulate us. If you want to be able to pray in public places, if you want law to respect your pickets, then respect our right to picket, and respect our right to pray in public places, even if it’s two gay chicks. If you want to be able to speak publicly and have Mr. Chick-Fil-A be allowed to believe whatever he wants, then we get the same right. From where I sit, Christians want freedom as long as it lines up with the bible, and at the expense of the hearts of the people they claim they want to save.

Christianity is losing this nation, not because of sex, gays, or anything else, Christianity has nothing this nation wants. Christ had something His nation wanted, perhaps Christianity should try following Him for a change, then they might see the nation following.