I'm gay. And couldn't come up with a better title.

Disclaimer: within this letter, I make references to church, ministries and religion. I do not make any of these references by name. This letter is not intended to speak ill of anyone, to blame anyone or to be used as evidence against any particular people or organizations. I have had the great experience of being a part of many organizations and churches that provided love, support, friendship and community during so many times in my life. I am not anti-God or anti-church. In fact, I was in church on Sunday and loved being there. This is my experience. That is all it is intended for.

Hello my friends. Some of you, I have known for as long as I can remember and some of you have only recently come into my life. I have always considered myself to be so fortunate that despite the many times my family and myself have moved or transferred or started over, I still have people around the world who care deeply for me.

The last 5 years have been a lot. I don’t even know if there are words for the amount of heartache and change and joy and growth that I have experienced since I graduated college. I have let go of dreams and embraced all new ones. I have changed plans, made course corrections, had crushes and thought I was in love a few times, picked up habits and broken them. I have gained and lost friends. I have forgiven and I have held grudges. I have changed my mind, switched sides, flipped loyalties, and outgrown my old opinions. I don’t see this as a betrayal to myself but rather an effort to continually grow, learn and embrace. Changing, admitting you’re wrong and grieving your mistakes is not about denying yourself or who you were, but rather allowing the full you, the real you to continue to thrive and to always break through to the surface.

That is what I have done. I have faced every change and every trauma and every heartbreak. I haven’t done it all perfectly. I can’t say that I haven’t left casualties in the wake of my grief. I can’t say that I never grew angry and that hatred never became my motivation because it did. I have been angry and I have been hurt and I have been truthful and I have been miserable and I have been wrong and above all, I have been myself. I have always, always been the most honest version of myself that I could. For that I am proud.

Many people have watched this journey. I somehow manage to be a private person who tells everyone everything. I usually face every change with a season of withdrawal and reflection before once again emerging fully confident in the person I am, unashamed of all the words I have to say. I know I’m probably getting it wrong most of the time but I would rather be wrong. I would rather get it all wrong and make messes that need to be cleaned up than live in a tidy world of being afraid of making a mistake. My mistakes have been many and my sorrows considerable but the overwhelming confidence I feel is undeniable.

Here I am at a new season of change. One that has been coming for a very, very long time and one for which I am relieved is finally here. I have spent my entire life, childhood and adulthood believing in the traditional Christian values as they have been taught to me. I have had so many beautiful experiences in the name of that faith and in the pursuit of that life. I have also faced significant rejection and heartache as I have stumbled through my twenties, desperately trying to understand what being a kind, loving, open, changeable, truthful, normal, vulnerable, strong human means.

Along with many of the commonly taught principles of the Christian faith, I for a long time have believed that homosexuality and same sex attraction were sins. They were struggles some were plighted with, all were susceptible to but everyone could overcome. This is something I now know so emphatically in my heart to be false.  I cannot express my sorrow for all of the ways I unknowingly and blindly contributed to the repression, rejection and suffering of so many people.

I had always, always been sensitive to the suffering of people around the world. Hunger, war, disease, lack of education and access in Third World countries would drive me to tears as a child. It was not until I went to college and began studying social work that my eyes became opened to the systematic, built-in injustices that we have created in my own country and the ways that my religion has contributed to those things, no matter what the intentions were. In was then that my heart towards the LGBTQ community began to grow and I just barely started looking at things I was being taught. However, like most things that poke at the foundation we have built our identity on, this was far too painful to truly examine. If the church could be so obviously wrong about this. If I could have been so, so plainly wrong about this, what else, what other “truths” that I had spent my whole life clinging to could also be so, so wrong. It was realty too painful to examine with any amount of truth so shoved the questions deep inside myself until it became a wound of betrayal, festering in its desperate attempt for air.

Like all festering wounds, this could not be ignored. So I would reexamine this. I would dress it up and present it in a new way that allowed me to love people the way I desperately wanted to without feeling like I was betraying what I had been raised to believe. I twisted it so I could feel justified holding onto my idea of being a Christian because that was something I simply did not know how to let go of. I twisted myself and my thoughts and my desires and my ideas into a shape that would fit the Christian size hole that barred the entrance to the community and family and identity I had always known. That hole never used to feel small or confining. When I was a child, I passed through that hole with ease. Like walking into the church building on a Sunday morning, the doors were wide open to me but as I grew, the hole became smaller and more defined and more confined until I had contort myself into an unrecognizable shape in order to fit through. Like a messed up game of Alice in Wonderland where the fate of your very immortal soul in this life and the next was all dependent on how well you could make yourself fit.

Not everyone seemed to be struggling with this ever shrinking hole of acceptance. In fact, for some people it felt as if the older they got and the more time went on, the wider the hole became, the more accepted their shapes were. This religion made room for their growth and their gain. I watched with envy as the friends I knew continued to walk through the doors and cried myself to sleep as I began to realize what worked for them would never, ever work for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to fit and didn’t want to follow the rules and didn’t want to be everything I was “supposed” to be. I wanted to do all of those things. I tried for years to be all of those things. But something inside of me simply could no longer fold itself up into something that it wasn’t. The cost of making myself into a convenient package for others was losing parts of myself. Fitting into the ideas of my religion I had always believed was like standing in front a tiny church looking in at the half-maimed people inside. “It’s okay,” they said, “You don’t need both arms. Just chop off a limb or two and you will fit in just fine.” How sad that no one ever told them they could make a bigger door.

I am going to take a moment here to say something that needs to be said. This overwhelming feeling of not being able to fit was not the result of things other people had said to me. I was never verbally rejected or told that I did not belong. In fact a lot of people have probably been confused on why I pulled back so much, which is why I am here, writing this letter. I have been very, very, very loved and I am very, very, very grateful.

I have spent the last twelve months standing on the outside of that door, that hole, looking in. Confused at why I don’t fit anymore. Desperate in my attempt to figure out what is so wrong with me. “Why isn’t this working anymore?”, was the desperate scream inside my head. Begging the void to answer me. The thing is, I am not angry. I have not been bitter. I have been so very sad. And then it happened, the true break. When I was faced with the decision to choose a side and I did. What caused this final break? A friend of mine was told he could not be on church leadership because he was gay.

He is gay and he loves Jesus. He is gay and is single. He is gay and he has been doing everything he can to stay within the rules so he can fit in the hole; so he can get through the door.  And because of who he was, he was told that he could not participate. That he could not offer his praises and his songs and his service and his sacrifice to the Lord. I was leading a ministry that I had started at the time that was connected to a church and because of this, my friend never asked if he could participate because he assumed my answer would be the same, “No, we don’t have a space for your kind”. When I found this out, I was distraught and heart broken. I wept. I wept for many days.

I kept my struggles to myself and did not share them with very many. To stand up for the victimized sometimes means to become a victim yourself and I was too afraid to face the rejection of being pro LGBTQ and pro God and pro church. So for a while I said nothing and all of these feelings and thoughts and hurts and doubts stirred inside as I wrestled with what kind of human I wanted to be. The kind who would say nothing or the kind who would say everything.

I stepped down from church leadership a few months ago. It was devastating for a time but has healed itself slowly. I was so saddened by my need to leave but resolute in the conviction that I could not be a part of something that didn’t make room for everyone. And I mean everyone. At first I kept quiet about my reasons for stepping down and stepping away. I would share half-truths about the reasons I left. Partly because I was afraid of the rejection I would face and partly because I didn’t know what to do with the painful looks back on the faces of those who loved me but didn’t know how to love my ideas. I am not very good at staying silent so of course the real reasons and my anger and my frustrations have been making their way to the surface as I have been sorting through the voices crowding my own head about what is and is not a sin and what sin even means and who God actually is and what it actually means to be loved by Him.

So I pulled away, as I normally do. I stopped going to church. Not because I didn’t want to go or because I didn’t want to believe but because I was so tired of feeling like shit all of the time. Because I just wanted to be happy and not have to worry about not fitting or what I was standing for or against and because I was just so tired.

In the months since I stopped going to church, I have discovered a lot of things. First of all, I love sleeping in on Sunday mornings. Seriously glorious. Secondly, I discovered a whole group of people who are amazing and who want to talk about real things like sex and fears and that shit that happens in the world. And I really like these people. And lastly, I have finally, finally let myself say out loud and admit to what I have always known. I am gay.

After months of therapy and tears and panicking feelings of trying to figure out why going on dates left me feeling petrified and why I could never stomach the idea of intimacy with a man or why after spending my whole life within a system I couldn’t fit anymore, I realized that I had been miserably trying to force myself to do something that I couldn’t do; that I would never be able to do. And the relief of this revelation is indescribable.

I am gay and I’m so freaking ecstatic. For the first time in I don’t know how long, a future with someone actually seems possible. Love actually seems possible. Marriage actually seems possible. I had long resigned myself to single life because the sick feeling in my stomach I got whenever I tried to date a man was such an anguishing feeling, I simply couldn’t do it anymore.

I’m gay and I’ve never been prouder of myself. The day I came out, I wept with such joy and such freedom. I felt God in my tears. I felt God in my freedom. I felt God in the sweet, sweet redeeming feeling that there was nothing wrong with me. That I didn’t need to fit into anymore holes or anymore doors or anymore more systems or religions or churches or groups that need me to shut down a part of who I am to appease their best interpretation of what “goodness” looks like.

For those of you who are shocked or saddened by this news, I wish I could tell you I was sorry. But I am not. I’m not sorry. I can tell you that my wish for you is that whatever you choose to believe, you believe so with your eyes wide open, conscious to the consequences. My wish for you is that you might feel the depth of my love and gratitude for you on the part you have played in my journey so far. My wish for you is that wherever you are reading this, you find comfort and joy in knowing that you are not responsible for me or the choices I have made.

I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe anyone explanation. I don’t owe you my story and I have no plans on giving you those details. I am not interested in giving you the gory details of “how I know” or “when I found out” because quite frankly, that is none of your damn business. So I don’t offer this letter as an explanation but rather an invitation. An invitation for you to explore all of the reasons within your heart that you believe the things you believe.

I am gay. And I am so happy and so proud and so relieved.

Everyone is Engaged

Everyone is engaged. Except for me.

Here I am talking about singleness again which is one of my least favorite topics to discuss but here it is, coming back up in my heart.

Let me explain why it is one of my least favorite topics to discuss. This weekend, I managed to hang out with friends, shovel the mountains of snow out of the driveway (at at least half of it before I had some help 😉), do all of my laundry, clean my room, participate in our church’s prayer meeting, knit a whole bunch, do my grocery shopping and cooking for the week and wear the heck out of my new lipstick. All of this done while battling through some pretty bad back pain and a migraine. To be honest, it was kind of an unproductive weekend for me. 

My point in all of this? I have a beautiful life. In the middle of this productivity and resting off back pain and headaches, I was overwhelmed by an immense sense of gratitude that I was near tears. I did all of those things and felt all of that joy, without a man by my side.

That is why I hate talking about being single because there is so much more to me than my relationship status and I don’t feel like I am living in lack. That is my truth. I don’t live in lack.

On the other side of this truth is the fact that in the last three years of living in Fargo, I have moved four times, the most recent of these moves was about two weeks ago. Of those four times, three of them have happened because at least one of my roommates have become engaged. 

I have moved three times in the last three years because of other people’s engagements. 

Being a forever bridesmaid sucks sometimes. Being a bridesmaid a bunch of times while being single? That really sucks sometimes. I have felt some bitterness about it before. But to be honest, it’s also one of the most beautiful parts of my life so far. I have been a maid of honor once. I have been a bridesmaid four times. I have been a personal attendant twice. I have been the wedding scripture reader once. I have been in charge of decorations and the food table at another wedding and coming up next month, I’ll be running the coffee table in another wedding. 

I have spent countless dollars and time and energy celebrating other people. I have washed potatoes in bathtubs, picked wildflowers, had things waxed, polished and curled. I have hung lights, bought dresses I only wore once, walked through muddy fields in heels, stood outside with bees on my arms. I have ironed ties and napkins with hair straighteners and melted down candles so they would stand up in candle sticks too large. I have stayed up late and gotten up early. I have met people in small towns to pick up flowers, taken car rides with wedding cakes in my lap and set up chairs. I have held tissues, addressed envelopes and made floral arrangements. I have written speeches, I have cried many tears and I have flown across the country to be in weddings. I have handled meltdowns, stress, passive aggressive behavior and overbearing family members. I have done all of this in the pursuit of other people’s happily ever afters.

I am sitting here prepping to be the maid of honor for my baby sister’s wedding a few months away. I bought my dress, I am saving for my ticket and I am making invites for the bridal shower.

I have done all of this while being very, very single. 

In spite of all the unfulfilled dreams in my heart, celebrating other people’s big days have been some of the best, most joy filled memories of my life. 

I have heard friends make promises that the world says are out of date but I know they mean them with their whole hearts. I have cried with them. Laughed with them. Hugged them and danced with them. I have gotten all dolled up and had my picture taken. I have eaten LOTS of leftover wedding cake. I have beautiful dried wedding bouquets hanging in my bedroom. I have been privilege to the most intimate parts of the biggest days of people’s lives. 

I have seen and known and met single women who have struggled so much when their friends or family members become engaged. I empathize with their struggles. I have had my moments. And if you are one of those women then listen to me when I say, I feel you! It is so hard to get excited when your friends seems to be getting all of the things you have been hoping for. But can I be honest with you? Being single is actually not an excuse for making someone else’s happiness about you.

There I said it. Sorry if that stings a little but if so, you probably needed to hear it. Somewhere along the way, we bought into this lie that life only holds so much happiness. Believe it or not, joy is an endless resource. The earth doesn’t have a limited supply of happiness and we don’t have to fight to preserve it and hoard it for ourselves.

When someone else receives joy, it doesn’t have to take away from ours. Turns out, there is more than enough for all of us. And the more you give, the more you receive. Your dreams are not automatically delayed because someone else’s are fulfilled. You, just like myself, are capable of grieving your own disappointment while also rejoicing along with someone else. Maybe not at the same time, maybe not on the same day. But just like there is time to celebrate them, there is time for your heart to grieve as well. (In case you are wondering, this whole endless joy applies dream jobs, children, success, not just engagements).

Take the time to grieve. You need that time. Make room. But your friend’s bachelorette party or the first hour of their engagement is really not the time. And, honestly, if you are feeling sad because you’re single while everyone else seems engaged, trust your engaged friends and your friendship with them enough to talk to them about it. 

For two years, I lived with my best friend Katie. The entire time we were roommates, I played the part of third wheel to Katie and her boyfriend Blake. I was overjoyed when they got engaged. I was so excited on their wedding day and I sobbed like a baby when I packed up the room Katie and I shared afterwards. I loved Katie with all I had during that season. Her wedding day was one of the best days of my life. And I really grieved afterwards. 

Blake recently told me that he feels bad about taking my roommate and I told him that still missed living with Katie but I would never for once let my own wants keep me from loving her wedding day, loving her husband or loving the woman she has now become. I miss our single days together. I miss when she had more time to spend with me. But because I chose to love Katie well and embrace the honor of being her third wheel we can talk about my grief and my feelings without awkwardness or bitterness. I fully accepted all of her feelings of joy and she can fully accept all of my feelings of sadness.

I have never been rejected from engaged friends by including them into that part of my heart. I have had amazing examples of friends who haven’t treated me any different because of my singleness or because of my pain. But unfortunately that isn’t always the case.  If you are engaged or married, love your single friends well. They need to know you’ll be there on the other side of their grief. And guess what, their sadness, grief and disappointment doesn’t have to take away from your joy. There’s enough to go around remember? :) 

Huge shout out to the friends who have loved me well!!! 

Let this be the year you embrace your single heart with gentleness and your engaged friends with joy. Love your engaged friends. Love your married friends. Love your dating friends. Love your single friends. If you’re having a hard time celebrating them, let them know. And if you’re feeling sad, let them know. Give your heart the space and room to grieve so you can be fully and joyously present at every bridal shower, bachelorette party, engagement announcement and wedding ceremony this year. 

Let's Talk Failure

Let’s talk failure. Sounds really fun right?

We are officially in the season of resolutions and goal setting. People are inspired by the new year and feel that this is the perfect time to do all of the things they weren’t able to do last year. It sounds nice in theory but let’s be honest, suddenly expecting to become good at things that you weren’t before because the date has changed is basically setting ourselves up for failure.

Some people really love resolutions and goals and some people thrive with health on pushing themselves all of the time but I don’t know very many of those people. In 2017, I learned a lot of things. I learned a lot about myself (enneagram, holla). I learned a lot about the way I process and I learned a lot about the lies that I have believed and the shame that has run rampant in my life. 

A few months ago, I woke up and the first thought I had that day was how much I had already failed. It was before 5:00 AM and I had already failed. How is that even possible? My mind was running through the to-do list I had made the day before and all of the unchecked items on it. I had just woken up and already my mind was filled with all of my inadequacies. Last September and into October, I completed the Whole30. It was much harder than I had anticipated and yet like everything I take on in my life, I threw myself into it with a force that could rival a hurricane. I lost over seventeen pounds, my acne almost disappeared, I swear my hair even looked better and I received more compliments than probably any other period in my life. Those were not the goals or aims of doing Whole30 and yet, with every pound I gained back and every zit that reappeared on my face and every compliment I did not receive, this overwhelming sense of failure weighed heavier and heavier upon my life and heart. Whole30 is expensive and trips and holidays and stressful days led to just making sure I was fed,not being able to care if it was sugar, dairy and glutton free. 

Day 2 of Whole30
Eating pizza because I can

For weeks, I struggled with this almost overpowering sense of failure. It left me feeling insecure and caused me to avoid my responsibilities with an even greater frequency. The shame of “failing” at Whole30 caused me to hide away in fear of failing again at other things. I am 25 years old. I have the confidence and tenacity of someone young enough to not know what I can’t accomplish but I’ve also faced enough disappointment to understand how much work dream fulfillment can be. However, this is not the stage of life that I anticipated I would be in at this stage. For example, I just moved into the basement of my friend’s house with three lovely roommates. To say that I am grateful is a gross understatement. I love my new home. However, this is my fifth home in the last three and half years, three out of the five because one of my roommates became engaged. Did I expect that at 25 I would have neither the financial security nor the relationship statues to procure my own home? No, I did not. And because I have not been able to will my dream job or will my husband or home into existence, I have struggled to believe in the measure of my worth. 

Oddly enough, once I saw myself as a failure, I soon saw evidence of this everywhere. I saw myself as a failure in my finances, my job, my relationships. I was sobbing on the couch on the phone with my little sister, crying about the fact that I couldn't afford to buy a new bra. Looking back at that day, all I can do is laugh but at the time this felt like the epitome of failure: not being able to take care of myself. My sister sent me a gift card to help me out and I cried even more. She sent me this gift completely out of love and generosity but all it did was cause me more shame. My little sister who I had always taken care of emotionally and otherwise was now taking care of me. That in my mind was unacceptable. I was talking to my counselor about this (yes, I go to counseling regularly). I spent basically the entire session crying and telling her about all of the ways that I was failing. She stopped me and said, "Why is that failure?". I was so taken aback by this question. I had no idea how to respond so she said it is again, "What if that is not failure?". 

What if that wasn't failure? What if gaining weight wasn't failure? What if running out of money wasn't failure? What if needing help wasn't failure? What if quitting wasn't failure? What if that thing you are really ashamed about isn't actual failure?

These questions completely altered my thinking. I decided to make a list of all of the things that I expected myself to complete in a twenty-four hour period. When I counted all of those things, I realized that it was completely unrealistic. There was literally not enough time in the day to complete all of those things, much less complete all of those things, sleep, retain my mental health and you know, laugh. 

There are so many messages we receive all day along about who we should be and what we should do. 

Do more. Be more. Eat healthier. Work out more. Cross more things off the to-do list. Clean your room. Do Whole30. Become paleo. Run marathons. Do your makeup. Fix your hair. Wear fashionable and unique clothing that keeps up with the ever changing demands of style. Make enough money to retire because social security is all gone and the housing market is terrible so if you haven’t saved a million dollars by the time you are thirty you will live a terrible life and work yourself into your death bed. Make sure you make friends and have parties and take really good photos and travel the world and throw your hands up in protest at everything. And while you are doing all of these things, be really chill and really cool and make sure that it is Instagram worthy and epic and for goodness sake, always, always make sure you are surrounded by really good lighting. 

And if we don't do all of these excellently at every minute while also looking flawless then we are failing. 

Seriously guys, it is freaking exhausting. And yet, we do this to ourselves every single day. The truth is, your productivity does not prove your worth. Your accomplishments does not prove your value. And your Instagram following does not prove your significance. 

There is a new thought that I have told myself every time that I feel my life is less. Every time I feel inadequate or somehow behind where I should be, I ask myself a new question. What if the greatest accomplishment and the biggest achievement of my twenties has nothing to do with the  job I get, the person I marry, the loans I do or do not pay off, the things I cross off of my bucket list, the epic things I do. What if the greatest thing I am meant to do in this stage of life is simply to live everyday believing the truth that my worth is not built on the things I do or the things I accomplish? To let life’s events happen as they may and let the truth of my value as a friend, a daughter, a leader, a woman remain constant and unmoved no matter the circumstances I find myself in would be an accomplishment indeed and well worth it, even if it took me a lifetime. 

This new thought has brought so much healing to my heart. It has beat down the shame lies. It has opened the doors for more dreams and more love in my life. I have been more productive in the last few months of not trying to. I have accomplished more, tried more new things, been more hopeful and have loved my life even more since I stopped measuring the significance of my life upon the effectiveness of my time management skills and stopped negatively comparing my life in present to everything my 16 year old self thought it should be. 

Let's pretend for just a second that I am a counselor and you are telling me about all your perceived failures. Here's what I have to say. What if that isn't failure?

My wish for you in 2018 is that no matter what circumstances surround your life, you would have joy, love and you would know the value of your own soul. 

These are my New Year’s resolutions for 2018; 

1. to take more naps
2. to have more fun
3. to take care of myself
4. to be on time for work every day (for practicality’s sake).

I know we are only a week in, but it has been really great so far.