Hey Little Buddie,
presented at Connecting Generations: LGBT+ People of Faith, 12 Nov 2018, during Scottish Interfaith Week
We’ve been hanging out a lot lately and I’ve got to say, you’re pretty great. You’re still so little and you probably won’t remember any of this- but when you’re big enough to understand it I can’t wait to help tell you the story of you.
For you, the whole world is new and exciting and wonderful and it’s so awesome to watch you figure it all out for the first time. So far you’ve figured out you like strawberries, you don’t really like wearing shoes, and you love swings. So much so that sometimes you throw your whole body back and stare up at the sky and squeal. It’s mildly terrifying because you also don’t feel the need to hold on and it makes me super nervous you’re going to fall out- but you never seem in the slightest bit concerned. To you, new is still the most incredible thing in the world.
But see, somewhere along the line, in our stupid adult brains, we forget that new is brilliant. New starts to feel scary. Somehow new no longer fits with the story of ourselves we’ve been telling, so we try to push new away- to do everything in our power to fight it back. We carve our half-finished stories into stone: Christian, evangelical, straight…So when you’re thirteen and the new feeling that you might kind of like the pretty girl in your music class starts to drift in, it feels like to ram this revelation into your story would be to take a hammer and chisel to your very soul. After all, you’ve been told, God doesn’t change. There’s no room in His story for lost, scared little gay kids- so you’d better get your story straight. So you slap on a smile and swallow your story until the words start to choke you.
But here’s the thing- all the best stories have twists. You see, it turns out that not only had I got the story of me wrong, but the story of God was way more complicated and way more exciting than I’d ever given it credit. This God refuses to have His story bound by words on a page, or chapter and verse, or by any of the stories you might have been told about Him. Because it turns out God loves lost little gay kids, and stupid change averse adults, and every other kind of person out there very, very much. That doesn’t change. Ever. But what He’s willing to do to get you to understand that? That’s the shock. That no matter how hard and fast you try to run from that love, it’ll pursue you every step of the way. That when you finally get tired of running, when your body is weary and breath feels hard to come by that love will pick you up off the ground and hold you close. Love is the thing that smashes up tablets of stone telling you who you have to be. Love is the thing that makes all things new.
And maybe new never stops being scary- because sometimes learning the new you means letting the old you go. But having the courage to push through the fear and speak out a new story of you- that feels a whole lot like resurrection.
Maybe I can tell you the first few pages of the story of you, but all your best chapters are yet to come. I don’t know what your twists will be and I can’t help you write those parts- but here’s what I can tell you.
I’d tell you that you contain multitudes of stories all just waiting for their time to be told. That each of them is precious, each of them is holy so please- even if they don’t turn out to be the final version- treat your stories gently.
I’d tell you that new is wonderful, and new is scary, but that there’s also love, and it won’t ever let you go.
So that’s what I’ve got- stories and change and love. And a promise- that however your story unfolds, I love you little buddy.