A Letter to my LGBT friends

Dear brothers and sisters loved by God,

Today is a day of celebration for you. I feel your pride and sense of victory. This is a community that has endured much hatred and stigma, has fought for love and freedom, has come so far. I recognize with deep remorse the atrocities that have been committed against you over the course of history. I am contrite to acknowledge the failings of the Church to respond with grace and love. I am so sorry that we who have been sent to represent God's love to the world have at best awkwardly stumbled through this topic which is so central to your sense of identity, and at worst have piled on repeated injuries in our ignorance. Today is a day that you celebrate overcoming. Friends, I am the last person in the world who wishes to take that sense of joyful victory away from you.

That is why I find myself grieved, torn on this day. I am SO GLAD the LGBT community now has a voice is society when it was shamefully silenced before! I DO want you to feel proud and beautiful and loved and valued for being who you are. I desire for you to continue to live in the sense of belonging you are experiencing today. So please stay with me at this point, dear reader: please hear me.

While part of me rejoices, I can not celebrate that which carries a person or a culture further away from a life which was designed for our good. I simply can't ignore the clear message that an active homosexual lifestyle is not God's good purpose for humanity. My disagreement is not hate speech; it is a conflict of conscience. Honestly, I don't expect you to understand my position or agree, because you and I recognize different sources of authority. But thank you for hearing me. The concern of myself and my evangelical community now share is that of our freedom to practice our religious conviction. Thank you for hearing that concern. I hope and pray that continuing a loving dialogue can prevent further injuries.

But that's not even my main point. You see, the Bible is not a book about how to live right. Jesus' message isn't even about how to love one another. That's all part of it, yes, but love as this world defines it is like watered down apple juice compared to the rich red wine of the whole story. The main message of the bible is this: that God gets glory by dumping Grace and Love and Forgiveness on Sinners (of whom I am the worst!). See, we were all in the same damned boat, sinking down under the wreckage of our broken lives and the evil of our own hearts, completely helpless in bridging the immeasurable distance between ourselves and God's awesome perfection. So instead of watching us sink, Jesus saved us by joining us. He drowned under the weight of human depravity, giving us the opportunity to escape. Not only that, but now He helps us to live in the complete joy and freedom of friendship with God, the creator of everything. You feel victory and joy and belonging on this day? All that is PEBBLES compared to the wonder of knowing you are forgiven and accepted by God.

That's the true joy I want desperately for you to experience, because I've found it and I want to share it with you. Knowing God will change you completely, but not into someone you don't want to be. Once you offer your life to Him, He will make you more and more like the person you were intended to be. It's not about being straight, its about becoming completely and freely You, perfected, restored, and healed in every way. And God will perfect that work he began until you don't recognize yourself in all your shining glory, because He made you to be glorified like Himself.

So, friend, we disagree about today. I want you to know that I love you. The reason I can't celebrate with you today is because I see something far more worth celebrating. I hope you can understand.

Haiti in Retrospect, pt. 3

My last Haiti reflection was on the liberty of allowing others to say "I can." Stepping back and helping only where our help is asked for provides opportunity for empowerment and is a sign of respect. I realized on my trip that this concept of empowerment is essentially my job as a counselor. My calling and all of my training can be boiled down to helping people reclaim ownership of their own lives. "I can" is more than optimism, positive psychology, or a nifty catch phrase; it is the foundation upon which we build our lives. Beginning in toddlerhood, psychologists affirm that a sense of self-efficacy is an integral aspect to a human being's mental health and wellness. Affirming "I can contribute something" is part of being human as God designed.

There's a flip side to this statement, however, that is equally true, and equally part of being human. "I have limits. I can't do everything." We have all experienced this. There is no one on this earth who hasn't tasted the bitterness of failure of frustration. Self-actualization, or the process of becoming all you can be, is what God intended for each person, but it blurs into idolatrous humanism if not for that honest and humble assertion, "I can't do this...alone."

This is where the diverse body of Christ comes in. 

On this trip, everyone had their role to play. We had a medical team treating children and adults. We had pharmaceutical specialists helping children get the medicine the doctors prescribed. (Not to mention the gracious donors who helped cover our flights, housing, and the medical supplies we brought with us!) We had translators who spoke French, Creole, and ASL. Those that were not gifted in these areas were still needed to escort the blind or young children to the next station.One team member was especially gifted in caring for the young or severely disabled children who were unable to join the rest of their classmates. I had no gifts to offer the medical team, but my job was to support and aid my friend Minda, and her very presence was undoubtedly empowering and impactful for the people we were serving. I was surprised to meet a young woman who is an aspiring counselor, and hopefully I was able to encourage her on her journey; so I felt used on the trip even if for that encounter alone.

I saw the same interdependence among the children we were serving. I saw the deaf leading the blind, the hearing passing on explanation and instruction to the deaf; the blind teaching Creole to us clueless Americans. Each student at this school had their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and these were made actual potentialities only by the interdependent community which allowed them to learn and grow.

Being friends with someone in a wheelchair has taught me more about the Body of Christ than anyone else. It is a deceptive illusion for me to imagine that I am more independent than she; that I somehow don't need people in my life as much as she does. I need her perspective on the world. I need the grace of giving; I need the patience she has cultivated; I need the joy developed only when the clutter of Things and the tyranny of "Me, Now" is removed; I need the spiritual wealth that can be found only among the poor in this world. I need the people around me to be unashamed of using their gifts, whether its loving children or speaking Creole, whether its teaching or leading worship or washing dishes. I can't do it by myself. I'm missing out on something absolutely precious if I try.

I find it beautiful to remember that this interdependence is not our compensation for being broken individuals, but this need was woven into creation by God himself. The one thing that God said was "not good" was for his new man, image-bearer, to be alone. Adam needed Eve, and Adam was perfect! My limitations won't disappear when I get to heaven--and praise God for that! Serving each other isn't something we do while we wait for heaven to come make everything right. It does bring us closer to heaven on earth, though. I can't do this life alone. I need you, too.

Haiti in Retrospect pt 2.

I've been back at "normal life" now for six days. I'm astonished at how quickly all the details of LIFE grab at my attention, pushing my meditations from the forefront of my mind like football players jockeying for position. Suddenly tasks like getting a job or finishing this assignment become more urgent than wrestling with what has been shown to me a week ago. As the infamous "tyranny of the urgent" grows stronger in this "Me, Now" culture, I struggle even to sit and focus on my notes from the week and grasp at something to take away. God, I know emotions come and go, but please don't let me leave this experience unchanged. 

So that's where I find myself today... Now, for, what I actually sat down to write...

The Liberty of saying "I can" 

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I caught myself repeatedly wanting to speak for my handicapped friend as we traveled down to Haiti. I've known this dear and inspiring woman since college and I'm no longer surprised when she does things that others estimate as beyond her ability. (I even find it humorous, seeing the fascination and surprise on people's faces when my friend feeds herself without hands or climbs stairs without legs.) But something about pushing someone around in a wheel chair triggered in me the instinct to speak for her. At the hotel counter, in the airport, on the bus and with our team members..."She wants this, We'll take that, It'd be best if we go here or there." Being the more mobile one made me feel "in charge," as if I temporarily forgot that my friend is an adult, capable of making her own decision, expressing her own desires. I didn't mean to belittle my friend; I simply found it easier to speak before listening, to act on my assumptions because I was the one in control.  Thankfully my patient friend lovingly reminded me of this fact when I overstepped my role.

I guess it goes to show, sometimes when our help is needed, we can "help" too much. 

I'm needed and able to contribute one piece, but that does not mean I am needed to take over, even if I am able. I'd go so far as to say that my taking over in these instances was actually dehumanizing to my friend, if even in a small way. These micro-invalidations add up over a lifetime to strip someone of personhood, and over time they limit and cripple a person's perceptions of their own self and capabilities. In addition, when I take over I silence my friend, and thus lose the valuable perspective she brings to the situation. 

There were times on the trip when I was mildly embarrassed to be reminded of this. Then there were other times when I was intensely relieved and grateful. I don't have to juggle all these things while pushing the wheelchair; Minda can carry something. If I needed a nap, she wasn't completely stranded without me. There is so much that she can do, and both of us were freed by that assertion.

The same is true in our treatment of the poor.

Do we see the need and rush to fill it? If we're honest, giving out of our abundance is not difficult for those of us who have been handed more than our basic necessities. It's true, the need will always be present somewhere. But in our ability to "help," do we overlook the other's assertion of their own ability? Our eagerness to be helpful is combined with our refusal to be inconvenienced, and we overstep our role and invalidate those we seek to build up. In these cases, our "gifts" are as considerate as handing out quilts to the blind on a July afternoon in the Caribbean. We may have good intentions, but we overlook the Person when we're so focused on the deficit. In addition to dehumanizing the one we're trying to help, we then loose all opportunity to gain from their valuable perspective and contribution. So what do we do instead?

It's about Presence and Listening. 

 I am becoming increasingly convinced that, in a world full of demands on your time, attention, and wallet, your full and undivided presence is the most precious thing you have to give to another human being. The children we served last week are all wicked smart. Some spoke about half a dozen languages, played musical instruments, and had dreams of a career, as well as complaints about schoolwork, just like American kids. We were NOT needed to come teach or correct or hand out our leftovers. We did not come to give pointless stuff, or to change them to look or live like us. The art we brought was instead an opportunity for them to express those life-giving words, "I can do this." Poverty and disability want to beat those words out of a person. Presence and listening have the potential to stitch up the wounds and hand the opportunity right back.

The Hatian airport staff displayed the single most helpful response as they brought out the wheelchair before Minda and I could exit the plane. Instead of jumping in and doing what they thought was needed, they simply asked, "How may we assist you?" I felt ashamed that in all my years of being her friend, I can't recall a time I've sought to listen so respectfully, to wait to hear her express her needs in her own terms before stepping in to assist. Maybe this world would be different if we learned to do that for each other. Maybe our definition of poverty would change if we listened respectfully to those we served. If we took a position of Empowering, rather than simply providing; if we desired liberty over the comfort of things, then together we could make a difference.

You can visit Minda's Blog, read about her book, or purchase her artwork at www.mindacox.com