There are so many voices, so many books and I couldn't be more happy and sad at the same time. You see, never in my life have I seen or heard so many people talking at the table with regards to gender and sexuality. It's in the news, on social media and most likely a topic that everyone of us will enter into with someone.
Maybe it's with a family member or friend who struggles with their sense of gender identity or sexuality and it could be with someone who doesn't struggle but fully embraces an orientation or identity within the LGBTQ descriptive.
I get it! Having struggled with gender identity issues and unwanted same sex attraction, and then coming out gay identified, I get it. I get the notion of needing and wanting to have a sense of congruence with how I felt in regards to my orientation. I wanted to carry the card that said, "I AM GAY...and if I want to transition to a woman...that is my RIGHT! Just get over it already!" I spent years trying to fit in with what I thought a heterosexual man was, and even more, what a Christian Heterosexual Man was supposed to be. I tried not to show any signs of 'gayness!' or that I might secretly desire to be wearing women's clothes, and the more I tried to hide, the more I struggled to find normalcy. I definitely wasn't living authentically or true to my 'feelings' but how was I supposed to live my life?
So eventually the hiding stopped and I came out. GLORY BE, I WAS FREE!! I could breathe, I could relate to others with similar stories and I could finally say..."This is how I was to be all along!" I lived like this for almost 8 years, with a strong sense of my orientation. This is how I was created, this is how I was called to live my life. I wasn't acting, or playing gay and I was no longer trying to act as a heterosexual man.
I was orientation CRAZY!
You couldn't tell me that I was anything else, because if God didn't eradicate the 'unwanted feelings' toward the same gender, then they should really be my authentic self. Sigh of relief. In my many circles of friendships this was often the mantra. We didn't 'talk' about why we might feel this way, we just always said 'this is who we are'.
Then God did a funny thing. Well, it wasn't necessarily funny, but it was life changing for me. He spoke to me! In a moment when I was at a crossroads, I allowed myself to 'crack' just a little...I asked him for help and he spoke clearly. He didn't say in a booming voice, "Thou Shall Not be GAY, Thou Shall Not be Transgendered!" He said, "You don't have to go back to Egypt!"
What resonated was my orientation. I knew God was saying I don't have to be gay identified, nor transgender identified nor heterosexual identified! I knew God was saying; "Kenn, your orientation is me! PERIOD!" The joy of the Lord in that moment was my strength, it filled me completely and was probably overflowing all over the place. I would love to see that moment from above...what did I look like? Was I glowing? All I knew is that it felt like scales falling off my eyes and I could see clearly and know that this was HUGE!
I became crazy about orienting my vision and my identity in Jesus, allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal more and more of Jesus, who in relationship with me, revealed my heavenly father who had always wanted my gaze to be on HIM ONLY. Not on my life, my own sense of orientation, my desires etc. He was saying "Come follow me!" Will you lay down everything to follow me?" Absolutely!
I knew as well that my journey would be hard. It wouldn't be easy to swim upstream. When I laid down the gay orientation label, it was by far, way easier in culture to be gay identified. What was I thinking? Couldn't I just be a gay celibate Christian?
The temptation was there, yet it now felt in-congruent with who God was saying I was. I was a new creation, created for his glory. I was slowly being transformed more and more into who he had created me to be and that was toward his Holiness.
So, my orientation shifted and so did my language. All things were being made new and this is good news. Culture dictates and even many Christian's say: to be authentic with how one thinks and feels is critically important. To life healthy is to not deny your 'orientation'. Yet, one can authentically say, this is how I feel, this is what I desire, Jesus help me in the journey and point me to my heavenly Father whose love is so radical and sweet...so much so that I'm compelled to lay down my life and find it in Christ, and in the body of Christ. Relevancy is not in becoming more and more like culture, but rather more and more like Christ, who denied himself and took up the cross to set us free, to live fully present, fully aware within the body of Christ.
I write this because this story is not uncommon. Thousands of men and women share a similar story and we are part of the make up of a diverse society. A society that would like to say, our voice is not to be heard. That we are 'acting' rather than 'being' authentically ourselves and yet we can honestly say, "Who the Son sets free is free indeed!"
