A gay friend of mine recently asked me for advice. (I’ll call him Todd.)
Todd was getting ready to see some relatives who live across the country, and he knew what he would be walking into. Ever since he came out to his family a few years ago, he’s received a seemingly endless barrage of email inquisitions, telephone interrogations, and remote sermonizing from his conservative siblings, parents, and grown children.
These communications are often quite clinical in tone, usually religious in subtext—and always infused with the expectation that Todd is eventually going to come to his senses and realize that this “experiment” of his isn’t going to work out.
Even with a physical buffer from his family, being the object of this continual internal dissection at their hands has been exhausting. Now the prospect of enduring such microscopic investigation face to face was overwhelming him and he wanted to know how he should respond.
You may understand a bit of Todd’s experience, friend. You may know well what it’s like to have your identity or your inclination to love be a barrier between you and the people you so want the greatest proximity to. You may feel similarly burdened to explain yourself or defend your conclusions or to cross the relational divide.
Thinking about my friend and about you today, a couple of things I hope you’ll remember:
You know your road.
You know the path you’ve walked; what you’ve felt and seen and experienced that has led you here, in ways no one else ever will. You can try to help the people you love understand that road, but you don’t need to justify it to them or to anyone. You don’t need to defend your identity or to earn their approval.
I know that this isn’t a premeditated choice you’ve made, it isn’t a phase you’re going to suddenly grow out of, it isn’t an experiment you’re going to one day wake up and decide to conclude. This is the very heart of who you are, of who you’ve always been—and honestly it isn’t up for debate.
I know you desperately want to find the right words to broker peace; the ones that will allay their fears, ease their discomfort, and satisfy their theological quandaries, but this may not be possible—and it far too much to place upon your shoulders anyway. This isn’t about you. This is about their capacity to love you well. I imagine you don’t require such personal acrobatics from those you love in order for them to feel they belong in your presence. It’s likely you rarely if ever ask them to prove their worth or explain their hearts—and you should remove this burden from yourself.
The desire to be fully embraced by our families is one of the strongest gravitational pulls we experience in this life, and so I understand how much this means to you, why you endure so much; why you’re still engaging, still trying, still exposing yourself to such hurtful words and such debilitating cruelty from those you so dearly love.
I’m never going to tell you to stop seeking understanding there or to ever give up on anyone—but I want you to remember that you are not debatable.
You know far more about yourself from the inside, than anyone ever will from the outside, no matter how well-meaning they are, how deeply held their religious beliefs are, how insistent they are that they want the best for you.
Maybe they do want the best for you—and this is it.
You are the best for you; your most authentic, unapologetic, unwavering self, received without caveat or condition. And it is this you that I hope you’ll protect and defend and embrace, as you work to bridge the distance that exists because of them.
I pray that this truest version of you will ultimately be enough for those you so want it to be enough for, but it proves not to be, this is not your error, your sin, your mistake—it is theirs.
Remember your road, my dear friend.
Respect it.
Honor it.
Don’t apologize for it.
You know who you are.
You love who you are.
Take pride in who you are.
You are so very worth this.
