What if parenting became less about telling our children who they should be and more about asking them again and again forever who they already are? Then, when they tell us, we would celebrate instead of concede.
It’s not: I love you no matter which of my expectations you meet or don’t meet.
It’s: My only expectation is that you become yourself. The more deeply I know you, the more beautiful you become to me.
If someone tells you who they are, consider how lucky you are to be graced with that gift.
Don’t respond with an eviction notice, a permission slip, or a concession speech.
Un-God yourself.
Gasp in awe and applaud with gusto.
Tonight you and I are in a minister’s office, somewhere in Texas. We’re chatting before I go out to speak to the waiting crowd. You don’t like these steepled, echoing rooms. You come with me anyway. You sit in the front pew and listen to me talk about God and the hunches I have about her.
You think I’m wrong to believe there’s a God. But it’s what you love and need me for. You borrow my faith like we borrow our next-door neighbor’s Wi-Fi.
This minister said something that made you feel safe. You looked down at your hands. You said, “I don’t feel comfortable in churches. When I was little, I knew I was gay. I had to choose church, my mom, and God. Or myself. I chose myself.”
“Damn right,” the minister said. She cleared her throat. I smiled at her. But “Damn right” wasn’t exactly it.
I turned to you. Touched your hand. I said, “Babe, wait. Yes. When you were little, your heart turned away from the church in order to protect itself. You remained whole instead of letting them dismember you. You held on to who you were born to be instead of contorting yourself into who they told you to be. You stayed true to yourself instead of abandoning yourself.
“When you shut down your heart to that church, you did it to protect God in you. You did it to keep your wild. You thought that decision made you bad. But that decision made you holy.
“Abby, what I’m trying to say is that when you were very little you did not choose yourself instead of God and church. You chose yourself and God, instead of church. When you chose yourself, you chose God. When you walked away from church, you took God with you. God is in you.
“And tonight—you, me, and God—we’re just visiting church. We three came back for a visit, to offer the folks here hope by telling stories about brave people like you who fight their whole lives to stay as whole and free as God made them. When we’re done tonight, you and I will go, and God will go with us.”
I thought you’d looked at me every way possible. But now. The way you look at me, in this minister’s office, is new. Eyes wide. Watery and red. The minister disappeared when you looked at me like that. Just you, me, and God there.
“Wow,” you said.
Like that time your “G” necklace got a knot in it.
You stood there, by the bed, grumbling.
Threatening to throw it away.
I asked you for the chain. Held it in my hand,
Almost invisible—delicate white gold, impossible.
You left.
I kept at it for a while.
Impressing myself with my patience.
And then—one tug in the right place—it all came undone.
You walked back into our room,
I held it up, proud.
“Wow,” you said.
You bent down, and I clasped it back around you.
I kissed your cheek.
May we lay more elegant ideas around our children’s necks.
When I was a young mother, exhausted, isolated, and dripping with children, I got a postcard from a local church offering free babysitting during the service. My then husband and I attended the following Sunday and found coffee, breakfast, music, a nursery, inspiring speakers, and welcoming couples everywhere. This church had identified every challenge in a young family’s life and fixed them all for an hour. It felt like heaven. At first.
Then one Sunday, the preacher started discussing the “sins” of homosexuality and abortion as if they were the pillars upon which this church was built. My insides caught fire. After the service, I contacted the preacher and set up a meeting. I asked him, “Why—if your church is based on the Jesus who spoke incessantly about orphans and widows, demilitarization, immigrants, the sick, the outcast, and the poor—are you choosing abortion and gayness to hang your hat upon?”
After many circular arguments, he looked at me, sighed, and smiled. He said, “You are a smart woman. What you say makes sense—in the ways of the world. But God’s ways are not our ways. You must not lean on your own understanding. You seem to have a good heart; but the heart is fickle. Faith is about trusting.”
Do not think. Do not feel. Do not know. Mistrust your own heart and mind, and trust us. That is faith.
He wanted me to believe that trusting him was trusting God. But he was not my connection to God. My heart and mind were my connections to God. If I shut those down, I’d be trusting the men who led this church instead of trusting God. I’d be relying on their understanding.
The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question. I won’t passively outsource my faith and my children’s faith to others. I am a mother, and I have responsibilities. To all children, not just my own.
When hate or division is being spread in our religious institutions, we have three choices:
Remain quiet, which means we agree.
Loudly challenge power, and work like hell to make change.
Take our families and leave.
But there is no more silently disagreeing while poison is being pumped from pulpits and seeping beneath our children’s skin.
So many parents have come to me and said, “My kid just told me she’s gay. We’ve been sitting in this church for a decade. How must she have felt hearing what our leaders thought of her and assuming her mother agreed? How do I undo what she heard there? How do I convince her that I never really agreed with any of it, and that she’s perfect just the way she is?”
The God memos we get as kids are carved into our hearts. They are hard as hell to buff out.
Everybody owes it to herself, to her people, to the world, to examine what she’s been taught to believe, especially if she’s going to choose beliefs that condemn others. She has to ask herself questions like “Who benefits from me believing this?”
After that preacher told me to quit thinking, I began thinking harder. I did my research. Turns out, the memo he was trying to pass me—“A good Christian bases her faith on disapproving of gays and abortion”—started being issued only forty years ago. In the 1970s, a few rich, powerful, white, (outwardly) straight men got worried about losing their right to continue racially segregating their private Christian schools and maintaining their tax-exempt status. Those men began to feel their money and power being threatened by the civil rights movement. In order to regain control, they needed to identify an issue that would be emotional and galvanizing enough to unite and politically activate their evangelical followers for the first time.