We Did It: A Nationals Thank You

For this Oregon boy, the sun was scorching, and the air was humid. It was an hour before the championship race of the 400-meter hurdles at the NAIA national championships in Marion, Indiana, and I could hardly keep my head on right. He and I were jogging over to the indoor facility to warm-up, and my disoriented thoughts shifted from the race in an hour to all that has happened the past few days. He read my nervousness, and affirmations overflowed as he jogged at my left:

“You’re the best.”

“You know that, right?”

“No one on that track is faster that you.”

I believed him, sort of. He’s my confidence when I don’t have any. Right before I’m about to slip away, he keeps me grounded, but as I tried to focus, I couldn’t get over the fact that he should be in this race with me.

The day before, he was rounding the end of the final curve the first heat of the semi-finals, and I just finished setting up my starting blocks for my heat to come.

Coming into the semi-finals, he was ranked third, I was ranked first, and our main competition was sandwiched between us in second. I came into the semi-finals knowing I just needed to make it to the final round, not an ounce of nervousness touched me.

Watching from my starting blocks, he came out fairly slow. He has this energy reserve for the last half of the race, and I waited confidently for it. He picked up his pace and moved from fifth place in the race to second and started chasing down our main competition who was in first.

I lost him behind the bodies that occupied the throwing event arena, and then moments later, I saw his body laying on the track. He hit a hurdle and went down. That’s when anxiety hit me. “We’re gonna go one, two. I don’t care what order, but we’re going one, two,” he’d been saying all season, but now, I realized it might only be me that runs in that championship race.

Pulling my hair and cringing, I turned to a teammate in the crowd who I had talked with earlier. By the time I had turned around, he had gotten back up trying to catch all who had passed him. He lost too much in the fall and couldn’t make it back into the race to qualify for the next round.

I wish I could have switched places with him. I much rather have my teammates perform well rather than myself, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen. A teammate who could have easily finished in the top 5 for her heptathlon made a slight mistake and got disqualified. Another teammate had a bad first day in the two-day decathlon event, far from what he had done before. Another teammate has been on her way to the 2012 Olympics but has been battling injuries the last two years and fought for her opportunity to make it to nationals and get tenth. Now, my partner-in-crime for the hurdles wouldn’t be coming with me to the championship race.

Before the race, I wondered, “Why me? Why should I make it to this position, this opportunity? They deserve it so much more than I do.”

I ran for those who deserved it, for those who worked hard and yet missed this opportunity, but what I accomplished isn’t solely my own. Without the deserving, without you, my determination would be faltering. Your efforts pushed me to do my best, and whatever happened was because of you. I wasn’t running. We were running.

We often forget the power of influence in our lives. I could not have made it to where I am without the people in my life. God gave me a gift, and my coaches cultivated it, making it stronger than it would have been any other way. You, my friends, encouraged me to offer my best, walking or maybe even running with me along the way.

We are compilations of the people in our lives, and the impact from others is incredible. The times when we win and the times when we’re lost, people are there, nudging us and telling us that we can do it. There are the few who break us down, but we can’t neglect the significance of those relationships where others tell us that there’s more that we don’t see. Unfortunately, we lack the ability to calm our minds and listen to the voices saying, “You have this. Keep going. Don’t slack off. You’re better than you think you are.” They’re there, but we have to stop yelling over them.

Thank you all for whispering in my ear. Whether you told me I could do it, gave me good conversation, or showed me what I couldn’t see, who I am is composed of each of you. We did it. We won nationals… and so much more.

I'm proud of you.

The road to love

Whether it is teaching that the Bible is a scrapbook or that water expresses emotions, professors and speakers at Point Loma make an effort to help us question things, inviting us to know things for ourselves, rather than regurgitate a worldview that isn’t necessarily our own.

In the spring semester of my second year at Point Loma, I experienced grueling challenges in my faith. I remember my prior beliefs—cultivated by my small private fundamentalist Christian high school in Boring, Oregon (yes, Boring is the name of the town)—constantly being called into question as I was challenged in discussions, both in the classroom and by a friend. But the real icing on the cake was when the ASB Director of Spiritual life came out.

By the end of the semester, my beliefs had been sufficiently and effectively called into question. Unfortunately, that’s where it left me: faithless, godless, and broken. Challenges arose from all directions, but there was no hospitable environment for me to wrestle with beliefs.

Being gay on Point Loma’s campus made this process exceptionally difficult. How am I to reconcile my faith when a key contributor to my belief system is the “hush-hush” topic on the campus? It’s like Point Loma seems to think everyone else is living in less sin than I am, making my sexuality a fault. When I was eight-years-old, it wasn’t a fault that I liked the shirtless men in the movies instead of busty women. When I was twelve-years-old, it wasn’t a fault that while holding Hayley’s hand, I secretly wanted to kiss Jake instead.

When something—a truth—is discovered to be applicable to one’s life beyond a superficial level, people grow as individuals. Those experiences allow the questions of our hearts—wrought out of who we are—to be directly addressed. Without them, these central questions of our lives remain ignored. And as Christians, we are called to be without ignorance.

Point Loma is neglecting to foster a community where our experiences can be shared fully and without censorship. I fear we have preached so much that Jesus is the Way but have disregarded that there are many roads.

What is making that unbelieving student want to learn about our faith? Or that struggling gay Christian to say, “I still want in on this thing you call Christianity”? Where can our experiences be heard without the questionable smirk on her face or the reprimanding glare in his eyes?

Fostering the areas in which we already believe ignores the importance of investigating the areas in which we doubt. Too often Point Loma leaves its students where it left me, broken and aimlessly wandering a road; hoping that in the end, we find something that brings us back to the faith, back to the church, back to God. Until then, we walk.

Gift of Life

She and I had just enough room to sit and talk. We were in the nook of the stairway of the coffee shop, the spot where the stairs go up mid-level and then switchback-like the trails I hiked back home in Oregon during the summer. A few days ago, she emailed me about some research and needed some friends' influence for her social work, and ironically, sharing my story excites the once fearful child inside me. She pressed the record button on her iPhone, and our conversation rolled.

“When did you first know?"

“Why did you decide to come out?”

“What has changed since then?”

These were fundamental questions which, to my surprise, rarely come my direction, causing the answers I spouted out to be insufficient. Consequently, our conversation neared an end, but she made one last request, “So tell me about the most recent date you’ve been on…” the interest and eagerness in her voice booming.

“Well, I haven’t really been on a date,” I responded, “… but here’s the closest thing I’ve had…” She stops the recording, and I began describing my day with that I-definitely-wouldn’t-hate-bringing-you-home-to-momma-Lewis-but-let’s-be-real-I-have-no-idea-what’s-going-on friend, who strikes my fancy just a little too much.

“Do you like him?” she playfully interrupts.

Pausing, “I think so…” I said reluctantly, fearful of the truth I was admitting to her yet more importantly myself.

She peered into the chapters of my life – both past and present – that passed like a freight train blowing through a railroad crossing, leaving one oblivious as to what was just seen. The barriers go up, and we cross the tracks to continue down the road.

Her questions brought me back to that train, where I noticed that the blur of a passing train was composed of countless carts with different colors and signs of graffiti, along with that one with the transient sleeping in that open door.

Moreover, the most important change since coming out became evident moments after our conversation: the newfound affirmation that never existed in my life. My life is my life. What shame do I have for my life and all the authentic beauty that accompanies it?

Up until a few months ago, I rummaged around for someone that I believed could bear the weight of my story, and to muffle my actual story, I filled conversations with heavy words dancing around spirituality – never giving my old friendships justice. I turned our moments together into a test of having them prove themselves worthy in my eyes. We deem individuals unworthy by holding onto presuppositions based upon the few who treated us poorly.

Girls, not all guys are the same.

Gays, not all Christians are the same.

Friends, not all people are the same.

Truthfully, most people aren’t like those few who made us think otherwise. While the words and actions of the few are crippling, the general community understands your uniqueness with some of the best gifts to offer, questions and listening ears.

Our lives, whole lives, are like that brook – as the Creator inspired from the beginning – in enriching relationship with the creation, with the Creator, and with one another. If we continue to withhold the areas of our lives where God's grace is necessary, how can we be a testament to God's grace? The words of our lives are those waters that which sink deep into the soil and give life and beauty to the forest around us. Friends, each life is a gift of life to the other. Share It.

Illusions: Let's Be Real

The summer following my senior year of high school, my youth pastor invited me to be a counselor at a Bible camp located along a beach in Washington. My good friend (who had done it the year before) and I would be sharing a cabin of eight rowdy six to eight-year-old boys. This would be my first experience entertaining so many children that I didn’t know.

There was one boy I remember in particular, standing in the check-in line with his orange long-sleeve tee, camo pants, and crocs, rotating from swinging on his mother’s arm to bouncing in place. Jarred was a handful to say in the least.

The first evening at camp, the counselors take all the kids to play at the beach as the sun sets. My co-counselor took the batch of seven to the beach, while I lagged behind looking for Jarred. I arrive to the cabin to find Jarred sitting on a bunk, looking through the Pokémon book that he brought.

“Come on Jarred, let’s go to the beach,” I request, holding the door open with one hand and signaling with the other.

“I don’t want to go to the beach,” he whines, flipping over another page.

“Jarred, we have to meet everyone else at the beach.” I urge, naïve as to how to really handle the situation.

“I don’t want to go to the beach. Every time I go to the beach, my dad yells at me,” he moans, lowering his head and almost shoveling out a tear.

Dumbfounded, I could only walk up to him, give him a side hug, and reaffirm, “Jarred, we’re not going to yell at you. We just want to play.”

My first two years at Point Loma were much like Jarred’s experience at camp. So many people told me that they loved me, that they cared for me, but those statements weren’t enough. There was a single obstacle I still had to overcome, myself, always looking back on those words my friend said back in high school:

“I don't like the way you live and don’t feel like associating with you. I was just blind to the way you are I guess. Sorry man.”

As humans, we have a way of nurturing our imaginations, fostering them until they become deceptively real to us. We start perceiving reality through the lens of these paralyzing illusions,

acting cautiously,

speaking quietly,

and responding defensively.

Eventually, life becomes a game of control, where we are trying best to avoid pain and lead a safe life. We try to live in this reality that isn’t true, where our biggest fault is giving these fantasies the characterization of truth, as though they were indeed real.

These fantasies provide us with the illusion that we know what will happen. We feel we can control each outcome, and we begin ignorantly, yet unintentionally, shifting ourselves to the place of God and becoming God. Sadly, the God of reality does not live in these illusions, because God does not live in anything that is not real. God lives and works in reality, cultivating that which is.

As our own god of these imaginations, we leave only ourselves to deal with them. Once these fantasies collide with reality, where God exists, what we thought would happen actually doesn’t. Consequently, we try to take the reigns once more, moving ourselves back to the position of God.

At some point, the pressing pains of loneliness and the fantasy-given crying desires for truth become too much to bear:

That he wants to kill himself,

That she sees no way from that emotionally and physically abusive relationship,

And that no one can sympathize with a gay friend.

Until these imaginations become understood for what they are and these emotions are encountered, they will continue to torment us, hiding God’s presence from us.

My two-year-old idea of Point Loma – that honesty brought more heartache and that the quiet life is the better life – came crashing down when these emotions like thorns could no longer be suppressed. I reconstructed my Point Loma and discovered the presence of God that I prohibited from flourishing before. The friends, teammates, and professors, that I believed would turn away, welcomed me back in and came alongside me and said, “I still love you.” Everything that I though was real was proven otherwise. This place is not what I thought it was. It was what I thought it couldn’t be.

Without these people, God’s people, we can’t see the godlessness of living in illusions or that God only exists in reality. Without realizing the illusions of imaginations, these fantasies become the focal point and create a false reality. But once that realization arrives, the time comes to move beyond imagination into reality, advancing from the absence of God to the presence of God.

The Invitation

“Emotionally, how does it feel to be wrong?” asked Kathryn Schulz in a presentation I recently watched on TED Talks. Peering out into the crowd, she listened for some responses.

“Dreadful.”

“Embarrassing.”

A thumbs-down from the girl in the background.

Schulz points out that these were great answers, but they were answers to a different question: “You guys are answering the question, ‘How does it feel to realize you’re wrong?’” She continued, “Being wrong feels like being right.”

Much of the time, we live our lives thinking we’re right, especially us as Christians.

Recently, a fellow Christian and I sent messages back and forth, aiming to resolve a conflict. “Sorry that I expected as a man of God you would…” she wrote, feeling my Christianity threatened. “Apparently we are in two different places spiritually,” the following sentence proclaimed.

The statements interrogated my spirituality deeply, as I saw her godliness surpassing mine, and suddenly, I sat astonished.

---
The other week, I was sitting in a small group meeting. Fifteen guys sat in a circle, discussing what it looked like to follow and Jesus and what that looks like in our life.

“I realized I don’t have to worry because God has it under control,” said one. “God just wants to spend time with us,” reaffirmed another.

With almost each self-focused statement, my heart pounded in my chest.

“It’s not about you!” my heart pressed but properly failed to have the audacity to say.

As Christians, we’ve started missing what’s important. We discover it’s so easy to point fingers and so easy to make ourselves feel better, but is it really about either? We look in the mirror declaring all the ways we’ve done right and denouncing the places where we’re just a little off.

Proud we reprimanded him,

Ecstatic we defended Genesis 1,

And thrilled we can honestly say we’ve never had a sip of alcohol.

We’re told to be humble, but we develop this pride as though we have the answers to all of life’s questions. Instead, we just end up pointing fingers at those who have yet to realize that Christianity is the antithesis of discrimination. Once we stop judging others, stop praising ourselves, and start stepping back, we realize what we missed before and see all that’s wrong with the world.

That we should not have a faucet in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the other bathroom, along with a hose protruding from the side of the house; and they should not need to walk five miles to find clean water.

That she should not complain about a soft overripe apple, and he should not be living underneath that bridge, hoping tomorrow brings a meal.

That I should not worry if he will text me back, and she should not sit in the comforting darkness of her own room, wondering about the best way to take her own life.

In neglecting something greater than ourselves, we make Christianity to be about morals and God to be our therapist. We forget the portion of our spirituality that is an invitation to be a vessel of God and a tool for God’s work among humanity. We think we have this whole Christianity thing figured out but forget the part where we’re saying we know the will of God:

Why she has cancer,

Why he had to die,

Or why I’m gay.

We were placed in a unique relationship to God, a relation that says, “I am God. You are human. I know. You don’t.” The words come back, and we are humbled and left with an invitation to work within community, seeing to it that this invitation does not end with me and reaches beyond you.

This invitation to participate goes to my uncle who denounces religion, to that guy I almost dated who called me ignorant for being a Christian, and to each individual who told us that we had to change in order to be accepted in this community. The invitation is a beautiful gift that catches us off guard when our heart breaks for them and melts for him, reminding us with the words, “You are well, but remember, they need you. Love them for Me.”

Fundamentals

My small private Christian high school could be described as decently conservative, maybe overwhelmingly conservative, practicing some of the you-say-a-swear-word-you’re-going-to-hell Christianity and turn-or-burn religion.

Detentions were handed out for saying the word “fart” and don’t even thing about saying “c-r-a-p.”

The Bible was taught as a science book, the key to all knowledge, and evolution was that bad “e”-word.

Bad things don’t just happen because adversity is God’s judgment and punishment for all the times you don’t follow the commandments.

Blessings are handed out to good people, but don’t worry, grace still exists… somewhere.

My sophomore year of high school, I was dating this guy. I would hardly call it dating, but at the time, we labeled it, so I’ll label it now. He went to a different school, but we would see each other at track meets. Between events, we’d leave the track, talk for several minutes, kiss goodbye, and walk back to the track.

Some of my good friends heard what had been going on, and news began to travel. Eventually, it made it to my track coach… some other parents… and some teachers. Sure enough, I became a big target.

Warming up for my district meet, a parent pulls me aside and asks me if we can talk in the bleachers. We sit down, and our conversation begins: “Sean, if you were driving a car, and I knew the bridge ahead of you was out, I would be a fool to not warn you.”

Not exactly what I was expecting, but she continued, “Other parents and teachers are giving me a hard time because they know what you have been doing...”

Caught, and my eyes began to water as I became more disconnected from the conversation, or lack there of. Amongst my anxious staring, foggy eyes, and sorrowful sniffles, I made out, “Sean, God has no reason to bless you.”

Images of my track career going down the drain began flooding my mind, and my please-God-to-get-good-things background began to solidify. Grace had no place because of course, I had to earn grace. I had to work hard enough, and then I would gain God’s favor because God only gives things to the righteous.

I put my shades on to cover my watery, bloodshot eyes and finished my warm-ups. I won four events that day, and I didn’t leave the track with my boyfriend at all.

God blessed me with a place that taught me the key to success: please God and gain the desires of your heart. Why offer your life as it is and allow God’s will to work in your life when you can work to please God yourself and gain self-righteousness?

Grace never really made sense to me there, but that’s all right. One extreme showed me the other extreme, and indecisiveness taught me to look for the median.

Sometimes God meets us where we are, where Christians are too afraid to go, working in the lives of the undeserving:

Saving an adulteress from being stoned,

Embracing a bewildered lost son,

And kickin’ it with the outcasts.

Jesus taught the futility of all people, the lack of ability to do it oneself. Sin is best manifested in the idea of thinking that one can live this life on their own, thinking that everyday can be handled without the presence of God, without the Spirit.

The debt has been paid, and we have been taught to love God and to love others. Too many times have I tried to understand God and save others. I don’t know why it didn’t make sense earlier: love others, embrace them as they are, and let the Spirit take care of the rest. It’s all I can do.

Relentless

I never really understood how I broke his heart, crushed as some would say. He knew my priorities from the beginning: “roommates, friends, then whatever else.” Despite my loneliness, I knew I did not want to find my comfort in a relationship.

He could always see that I was struggling, though. He could see I had feelings for him but could not abandon my beliefs. He could see that I was lost, not knowing between right and wrong, failing to just give up. This made some of our conversations heated.

We were in his car overlooking downtown San Diego – from where some would say “make-out point” – when the words “I envy you” slipped from his mouth.

“Why?” I said, sitting up straight, slightly raising my voice, and feeling him dig a little deeper into who I am.

“Because you’re a Christian...”

The shock eased me back into the seat of his car because there, at that moment, I remembered my beliefs are so deeply integrated into my being that to be apart from them is to be apart from myself.


---
Café Bassam is by far one of the best coffee shops to have a conversation in San Diego. Antique trinkets populate the shelves, and painted portraits decorate the walls. Dozens of round two person tables provide “spots on spots” for seating, and of course, the chai is choice.

A friend and I exchanged moments from the past few weeks with our mugs half-filled with Bassam’s regular chai. We hadn’t carried a long conversation for a little over a month, and much had happened.

After remembering claim after claim from smitten friends emerging from broken relationships, I complained, “I don’t get love. I don’t think it exists.”

“Of course you do!” His tone speaking to my doubt, and instantly, stories of his past relationship filled my mind.

“Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “You’ve seen it...”

“You know it exists,” he quickly interjected, and I had no choice but to confess,

“Yeah, I know it does. I just don’t get it so I’ll go with ‘I don’t think it exists.’”


---
The spring of 2011 was a rough time for me and my spirituality.

My philosophy class tinkered with my thought, and my friend – a philosophy and theology major – kept the questions rolling. Weeks passed, and the questions grew along with my lack of peace. One day, my confidence in God held strong, but the next morning, I would wake up doubting God’s existence.

As much as I tried to abandon God, I couldn’t escape. No matter what, I couldn’t escape the idea of God and my belief in God’s existence. Call it my background, what I was taught, or whatever. But as much I said, “I don’t think God exists,” somehow, I believed God was there. Somehow, I believed God was present.

Then, I encountered love. All the times I’ve been shown love are the times, I’ve been shown God. All the times I ran from the love of my family, the love of my friends, the love of others, are the times I have been running from God and God’s presence in love.

---
I had this dream once, one of those dreams where I was being chased – not by a dog, not by a bear, not by an alligator, and not by another person, but a dinosaur. A big-ass tyrannosaurus obliterated each of my footsteps behind me, ready to dismember my body bite by bite.

Approaching a cliff, the consciousness of the dream became aware to me, and I realized, “This is a dream, and once I hit the ground at the bottom of that cliff, I’ll wake up and be away from this monster.”

Flying off the edge of the cliff, I watched the ground from limbo. As the ground got closer, I anticipated the jolt that would bring me back to reality, and I hit the ground.

I didn’t wake up, and seeing the carnivore tumbling in the sky above me got me running once again.

Even when I thought I knew a means to slip away, my attempt failed, and I continued to be pursued.

Love is the relentless force out there chasing after me, and there is nothing I can do to escape from it. The more I pull away, the more it surprises me. It’s revealed moment after moment. It’s prolific. It’s everywhere. It’s God, God sweeping me off my feet and showing me there is something more, something better.