Thank you,
Urban Abbey family and friends, for allowing me to share a small piece of my
story today. Here is what coming out means to me and I hope there is something
in here that can inspire you to live more fully as you.
I love
scars. Anyone here have scars? Scars say that you’ve faced danger and lived to
tell about it. Scars show the reality of healing. Scars tell a story, and in
the end, scars don’t lie. Scars are, in essence, authentic. I’m here today to
talk with you about being your authentic self. I laugh at myself when saying
that aloud as I am still trying to figure that out some days! But in all
seriousness, I do know a bit about trying to be, act and live authentically.
The hard part is that almost always does it involve getting scraped up,
bloodied, bruised and scarred, proverbially that is, hopefully. Living
authentically means becoming bed fellows with pain. So where is the buy-in? Why
on earth should anyone strive to become authentic? Why should a person come
out? I guess that is what I am
attempting to answer today.
Brene’ Brown
is another one of my favorite authors and speakers. Many in this room know her.
She is my social work hero. She found
through her research that the only difference between people who felt a deep
sense of love and belonging and those who didn’t was that the other group
believed they were worthy of love and
belonging; therefore felt it. That belief alone changed the course of their
life, for if they felt loved, they felt secure. And if they felt secure, they
could be vulnerable, even amid pain, hardship and life struggles. Vulnerability
is the heart and soul of authenticity. However, it is also where the pain (and
shame) enters. This is the hardest part of coming out, in my opinion. This is
the point where people come to a crossroad. Do I stay and face this pain? Work
through it? Or do I run, hide and continue to wear this mask? Ultimately, the
choice is yours.
So what do I
know about being authentic, you might ask? Well, my authentic-self and my,
let’s say, conditioned-self had to battle it out a few years ago. A battle makes it sound pretty,
actually. It was more like they had to
beat the crap out of each other every day for the sake of survival. To summarize a very long story, let me just
say that a few short years ago I entered into what became the most painful
years of my life. And actually, in one year, ONE year, the following
happened: divorce after a 14 year relationship,
coming out as bisexual, losing family and friends because of coming out, changing churches, changing jobs, changing
names, changing families, changing pets, moving houses and unexpectedly losing
my father to a toxic medication reaction just after my parents had moved 3000
miles across the country to be with their grandchildren. All true. (Insert explicative
of your choice here!) Just one of those things is traumatic enough to go
through, yet alone all of this in one year. The processing of those events took
years to work through and I am still working through them to this day. Coming
out for me was not an empowering process. It was painful and scary and
filled with rejection. And yet, I found love in the strangest and most
unexpected ways—Urban Abbey was actually one of those ways! People have asked
me how I got through, or at the time, were getting through, and I would always
say because of my strong faith, my family and friends. That’s true. But looking back, I discounted
something in that process. I discounted me—or
rather God working through me at the time. At each turning point in those
years, I had to face my worst fears, I had to choose to be vulnerable or not,
and I had to persevere. Every day was
painful. It was grueling and it was bloody. I developed wounds and scars. I
cried a lot and I even had days where I didn’t think I could go on living. But
something surprising happened too. Every day that I chose to get up, to keep
going, to keep fighting for me, layers fell off, facades shattered, and a
beautiful, broken vulnerability started to emerge. This is also known as the
“ain’t nobody got time” metamorphosis. I
became the most real version of myself that I had ever been. I was becoming authentic.
We, in the
Midwest, see the ever-changing Nature in our weather, don’t we? (Aka. Winter
sucks!) There isn’t a thing in nature that stays the same. Ever. Yet, we, in
our humanity, fight that change constantly. We get whiny when someone “moved
our cheese” or when someone loaded the dishwasher “wrong”. If changing those
trivial items upsets us so, imagine the actual pain our souls experience when
something huge and life-altering happens? Scripture says, “the Holy Spirit
prays for us with groaning that cannot be expressed in words.” (Romans 8:26). I
believe that’s what happens when we are stripped to our core and cannot explain
how we feel or think or even have the energy to get up the next day. Something
inside our spirit changes—and God, intervenes in a way we cannot imagine. Soren
Kierkegaard once wrote, “God creates everything out of nothing. And everything
which God is to use, he first reduces to nothing.” This is where we find
ourselves, where I found myself—at the foot of the Cross. The Cross re-creates.
I experienced this and it changed me.
When your heart and soul experience the actual you it’s as if they are unleashed for the first time—to
dance, to sing, to laugh, to be angry, to disagree, to agree, to be real—freely
and fully. Once that is experienced it
is hard to go back any other way. It’s like everything is aligned and you are
coming into your true self. You are no longer a false version of yourself.
At some
point the pain will be over, the fear will be conquered (or at least lessened) and
life will march forward into a new normal. So why should you buy in to being
authentic? Why is coming out so important (or even supporting those who are)?
Here is what I am learning for myself and want to pass on to others. Because
you were created to be authentically YOU, not anyone else—to live your
life, to touch the lives of others that only you can, to share the
stories of your perseverance and your faith, to live in your
own identity and your own soul, to step into the paths and purposes that
are yours alone. You being
someone else will do the world no good. Coming out is a process, a journey that
takes time. I feel I am coming out over and over to every new person I encounter.
It gets a bit easier over time but I still hold my breath each time waiting for
a reaction of acceptance, ambivalence or rejection. Reflecting now, however, I
guess I realize if I wanted a different life outcome, I needed to come out. And in the end, I am glad I
had the courage to risk making a new scar and coming out as my authentic self.
Thank you and God bless you.
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