Every Night I Pray:
I’m proudly Christian, but sometimes I worry that I’m a bad one, because I’ve got questions for My Lord and Savior.
Lord, I love you, but why did you let me go through the hell that was my childhood? Was it character-building? Because I feel like it was more like character-breaking.
And Lord, I love you, but why did you let my grandparents die before I could become Christian and even have a chance of getting them saved?
The idea of my sweet, sweet grandmother, who showed me what it felt like to feel seen for the first time in my life at seven years old – the idea of her being in hell for eternity brings me to tears each time I think about it.
And Lord, is it really true that everyone who doesn’t believe in you will be in the lake of fire?
Because that doesn’t seem fair for the preemies and child soldiers in Africa and children in Gaza who never even had a chance to hear Your name
Because Lord, You are Great and Your Name is Great and You are Love and Light – so how can people who spew hatred but supposedly “believe in You” end up reigning at Your side,
When my grandmother and those children and people in the queer community – good, loving, kind, compassionate people, who may not know Your Name, which I know is a shame –
They may not know Your Name, but they live You out in their lives, by loving the ones around them and taking care of their siblings and giving a child lost in the dark the smallest semblance of hope to keep moving forward
How can these people, these wonderful loving people who live You far more than any far-right Evangelical Christian conservative who hates immigrants and calls innocent people “animals”
How can You, as the Almighty One, the Loving One, the Just One, the Righteous One – how can you condemn them to an eternity of pain and suffering,
When they suffered already so much in this life? When they suffered so much but still lived You out and were Jesus our Lord and Savior to the humble, the weak, the downtrodden, the heartbroken
Who loved and saved and cared for and held out a hand to, and fed and watered and sheltered and LOVED
How can they be the ones who are condemned?
And am I a bad Christian because I love You and want desperately to understand and know You and reconcile the One I love with what some of the things in the Bible say about You?
Because the Bible says that all who do not believe in Your name are condemned – but how can that be?
How can you condemn the weary and the weak and the humble and the meek when those are the very ones whom You ask us to care for?
Those children in Gaza, the child soldiers in Africa, the queer community everywhere, the women and children and husbands and daughters and brothers who do not know your name but live You out as well or better than half the Christians who confess Your name as Lord –
They are meek and weary. They are brokenhearted and downtrodden. They are humble and weak. They have been hurt too many times by the Enemy of this world,
Will You condemn them too? Will You condemn them to an eternity in hell, when their life on Earth was already one? Will You truly see their suffering and not reward them in the coming age for it?
My Lord and My God, I love You and I worship You and I praise You, but more than that I want to KNOW You. I want to understand this One I love.
How can I carry Your name proudly, and then not know what to say when my friend who’s gay asks me what I think about their identity?
Lord Jesus, I just want to know You. Because if there is one thing I have learned here during my time in this world, it is this:
To be seen, to be known, is to be loved.
This Giant Earth-Ship
Why is it that we as humans require a touch with death in order to know what it is to live?
Why is it only when someone is diagnosed with cancer, or some terminal illness, or attempts to kill themselves,
That we are suddenly jolted awake, as if all this time we’ve just been sleeping.
We’re all just sleeping.
Why is that when someone we love dances with Death that we are all suddenly so aware of what it means to be alive,
Floating on this giant earth-ship with oceans and rivers and mountains and meadows,
With people that make our hearts race or make us laugh until we can no longer breathe or make our minds settle when all the time it is so loud
Why only then do we become aware of the miracle that is life?
I say this as someone who battles with depression and anxiety, who gets caught up in the ever-turning, twisting, spirals in my mind,
Who has spent much of my life wanting to die,
Why can’t I appreciate life?
Why is it so hard for me to recognize that I have been given this gift that is a objectively a miracle,
On a rocket ship flying through space with metal contraptions that race through the air at speeds no human had ever imagined, much less experienced,
Inhabited by people who create such works of beauty with their hands and their bodies and their voices that we weep with awe and emotion,
With colors so vivid my eyes sometimes can’t take it in, and with sounds so wonderfully melodious that they tickle my ears with joy
With these little boxes of metal and glass that contain more information than the entire Library of Alexandria, right at my fingertips
Why do I still get depressed?
Why do my friends still get anxious over the boys who do or don’t text them back,
Or others who get stressed over what their bosses said to them last week at work?
Why do we get so caught up in the minutiae of every day life,
That text we don’t feel like sending or the fridge we don’t feel like cleaning out or that guy who left his shopping cart in the middle of the aisle so that you have to move it out of the god-damn way just to get to the flour and sugar
Why are we not in awe 24/7/365, when our lives are objectively miraculous?
How do we become those who can appreciate the miracle of this life on this earth in this galaxy and universe?
Who don’t need to touch death in order to live?
How do we become children again?
Because children, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, are awestruck all the time, by everything
There’s this quote I like, paraphrased from Terry Pratchett, that says “just because you know how it works, doesn’t mean it’s not magic”
And I didn’t get my letter by owl when I was 11, but I hope that doesn’t mean that I am precluded from witnessing the everyday magic –
The feeling of water running over my skin, that first bite of watermelon on a hot summer’s day, burning a candle while I’m journaling…
I want to etch this quote into the very windshield of my brain, live and breathe and chase this quote to its very end:
“Just because you know how it works, doesn’t mean it’s not magic.”
The Tapestry
Sometimes I like to imagine my identity as a tapestry,
Woven threads of different colors complexly intertwining to make me who I am.
Some of these threads can be seen running through every inch of the piece, winding its way throughout, pervasively mingling with local threads
While others may make up almost the entirety of one small area, then fade into mere traces as your eyes move on
In my childhood you would find a lot of fear, a lot of premature growth and independence,
Colors that mark the self-taught survival skills I was forced to develop,
Owing to the abuse I suffered at the hands of my father, and neglect at the hands of my mother.
But there would also be love, often entirely hidden by threads of anger and rage, but there nonetheless,
Invisibly running alongside these other threads that are loud and blatant and indelible.
Certain threads would start off bright and brilliant, only to darken to the color of storm clouds,
And the hue of my father’s eyes when he was drunk and furious and threatening my six-years-old life.
Here, the strand of industry and diligence, firmly hammered into me by my parents who knew only how to work hard,
There, the strand of whimsy and childlike wonder, which disappears around age 4 but returns with a vengeance in adolescence, forcefully and intentionally revived against all odds
The strand of worthlessness, of feeling subhuman, would wrap around and encompass every single other thread that wound through my identity
Perhaps in some places it almost disappears, overshadowed by pretty blues and pinks and pastel oranges,
The color of sunsets and long days at sleepaway camp and late nights on the quad trampoline my freshman year of college
And you might almost think that it had disappeared entirely,
Only to rear its ugly head once more and entwine with the lonely 3 AMs and nights spent crying myself to sleep
The tapestry is not yet finished, and there are threads hanging, waiting to see if they will be woven into the years that are my future,
Or if they will be cut off here and now, in the present
Some began as one color but have transformed into another one entirely,
While others have remained stolidly the same year after year after year (even despite efforts to change them)
There are certain threads that I hope to bring with me as I continue to weave my tapestry,
Threads of vulnerability, which only recently joined the picture,
And threads of courage and of hope and of love and of compassion,
Of intelligence, and thoughtfulness, and faith, and strength, and integrity,
Some of which were present at the very birth of my story, and others which have been nourished within me by others,
And even some that I have slowly, haltingly, cautiously, gradually cultivated in myself
My identity is like a tapestry, and it is as yet unfinished.