Through My Eyes

I really was not expecting to tear up and cry while here at work after seeing this again.



My own story rings clearly for me and while I hear clips of their stories, they sound so much like mine. (see "Suicide and the Porcelain Punisher").

I suppose I teared up this morning because I've been feeling kinda alone in recent weeks - for a lot of reasons, really. But after seeing the trailer for Through My Eyes, GCN's recently released project documentary of young Christians wrestling with the issue of being gay and of homosexuality in the Church, I found that it stirred up a lot of those familiar emotions and memories of searching for connection and never seeming to find it.

These days, I busy myself with helping others to connect. I've been working non-stop on the Catalyst Community (www.GoCatalyst.org) and the Green Long Beach! Festival (www.greenLB.org) the past three months. Not to mention my other project, the Two World Collision Collaborative Christian Community site (www.TwoWorldCollision.com) as well as many of the other collaborative communities and coalitions that I've been trying to help catalyze. These are all reasons why I haven't blogged here so frequently.

But in working so hard to help others connect, the heart of where that comes from is my own desire and need to connect - to feel connected. I long for reciprocity. And I appreciate the few truly mutual friendships that I do have in my life. It's just hard when relationships seem to come and go or fade before a root takes hold. What's harder is trying - really trying - not to internalize this pattern as my fault. Or perhaps it is. Or some of it.

Regardless of the reasons why or what the pattern means, at the end of the day I still find myself alone.

In thinking about these stories of young Christians who live and/or wrestle with being gay, what resonates for me is the fact that we want to connect. We want to live in faithful Christ-centered community. But when our churches reject us, what more do we have left?

A pastor asked me once regarding me not having a home church and asked if there was a community of believers who missed me when I wasn't present. The interesting thing is that after attending services at that church, no one acknowledged that I was present in the first place. And after subsequently discontinuing attendance at those services, I've not heard from the pastor. It's hard to miss someone you didn't realize was there.

So I suppose the answer to the question is "no."