a straight girl's closet diary

When I was twenty-three, young, angry, and ready unleash my venom onto the world, I packed my car full of all my earthly posessions and drove it from Oklahoma to Boston to start a new life and find adventure. At that point in my life, I had way more spiritual doubts and questions than I had answers. I decided though, that I would give God a second chance and that we would start fresh in our relationship without any baggage. So when I got to Boston, I randomly visited churches near where I lived, which at the time happened to be Central Square in Cambridge. I didn't pay attention to denomination, other than to make sure that they were not Southern Baptist, because I was still so angry at the whole Southern Baptist culture that I wanted nothing to do with it. However, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it was astoundingly easy to find a church that met my criteria.

So one Sunday, I walked into First Church UCC in Harvard Square. From the moment I entered, I felt at home. They read more scripture during the service than any church I had previously been. The choir sounded like it could have been at my Southern Baptist church growing up and we sang the same hymns and prayed the same type of prayers. I think I came back for only a few Sundays until they announced who they were going to call as a pastor. The pastoral search committee had finally found a pastor and "her name was Mary." I was delighted at this news because I still hadn't actually heard a woman preach and I wanted to believe that God could use women too. I knew I had found the right church - until the speaker continued that Mary and "her partner Ann" would be coming soon to be voted on.

At this point in my life, I had never earnestly thought about homosexuality. Okay, so in college, when I got really mad at the Southern Baptists and decided to become a full fledged Democrat, I might have supported gay rights just to play devil's advocate. But I hadn't actually known a real live gay person, at least not one who was out. And I knew that this was the sort of thing that would make everyone from my Southern Baptist college think I was going to Hell (a place I also doubted). I knew my parents would never approve - so I just didn't tell them. However, this was a decision I had to make not on other people's opinions, but what I earnestly believed. I searched my heart for a prejudice I could not find.

Instead, I felt that a part of me understood what gay people go through. I remembered what it was like when my parents got upset that I wasn't sure I believed in God anymore my senior year of college. And I realized then that my worst fears hadn't been what God would do to me, but what they would think and the separation that would come in a relationship with them if I didn't share the same cultural context. I cannot think of anything more normal or human than to struggle to be yourself against what the world tells you that you should be. I cannot think of anything more Christ like than succeeding. I felt that the Jesus I knew would accept everyone for who they are and have them over for dinner. I could not then and I cannot answer today what changes Jesus might make in someone else's life, but I know that it always begins with acceptance for who you are as a whole person. I also felt convicted that if God made someone a certain way, He wouldn't turn around and limit what they could do, but want them to serve Him fully in their wholeness. So I found a home and I joined that church.

If you want to know how I got this title, it's because I realize that there are many closets, boxes, and chains on most people's identities. I'll confess to you that I briefly wondered if I was a lesbian for awhile when I was younger and it's because I felt different from everyone and didn't know where my place was. To be a lesbian, you have to actually find women attractive in a certain way that I do not. But to be a human being, you just have to struggle with feeling different and not knowing where your place is. Even when I was a little girl, I used to lie awake in bed at night and wonder "if my parents were as devout of Hindus as they are Southern Baptists and the missionaries came to visit me and then I wanted to believe in Jesus instead, what would it be like to have to tell them?" And then I would ask God if He were really there or if I only believed in Him because my parents told me He was there. Then, I would try really, really hard to imagine that I was alone in the universe and that God wasn't there. I couldn't do it as a child and I couldn't do it as a twenty-two year old agnostic wannabe.

Perhaps I should conclude this entry with one more tidbit. When I was seventeen years old and a high school senior and I wanted to know what to do with my life, ever so certain God would have an opinion, I remember getting a call one Sunday morning in a Southern Baptist church. I felt like God wanted me to be a pastor. I will never forget what I said back. I said, "I can't do that because I'm a girl and girls can't do that." I had never heard a woman preach before. It was so far outside my cultural context, I didn't even know who to talk to about it because I didn't think any pastor or youth minister or even my parents would believe me. So I settled for the things I was taught women could do and kept trying to find my closet.

Undefined

For me the hardest part about creating this blog was deciding on a title for it. The older I get, the harder time I have fitting my ideas into a neat little box. When I was a kid, my mother used to say that I "danced to the beat of a different drummer." But the truth is, I don't even want to dance - I want to write the music. Of course, like a lot of composers and artists, I have a tendency every so often to decide that everything I've "written" is crap and should be burned. I say that in quotations because I'm still on this metaphor for my entire life as opposed to any actual work.

So here I am, a thirty-something, female blogger baring my soul to the internet, wondering if five years from now, I'll read through all my stuff, roll my eyes, and think, "Did I really write that?" After all, if blogging had been more popular ten years ago, instead of pouring my youthful rage into pages and pages of spiral notebooks, I probably would have posted it all online for the whole world to read and about now, I would regret having said a good seventy-five percent of the things I wrote back then. On the other hand, maybe I'm too full of myself if I think that more than a few people on this Earth would actually want to read pages and pages of my opinions on everything.

I'd like to think that I've finally figured some things in life out. I think your teens and twenties are about trying on a whole bunch of outfits to see which identity really fits. I think your thirties are that time when you actually mix and match all those accessories to create your perfect outfit that's you. You finally know what fits and what you like and you can be yourself without really giving a damn about what everyone else thinks. Of course, I say that as an authoritative thirty-two year old, so maybe I haven't finished shopping yet.

So here I am, undefined. And sometimes I think that's the way it's supposed to be on the human journey. God is "I am what I am," the all-knowing, unchanging one. It has been argued that idolatry is the human attempt to define and label God. God is by very nature beyond our comprehension and understanding. Yet so many times we mere mortals say, "Well I am what I am," as a way to excuse our human shortcomings and limitations. But we are not meant to live life being caged, boxed, or defined by what we think we can or cannot do. It is God's place to be what God is and it is our birthright to be free enough to live undefined. And it is so easy for me to have deep thoughts about God and the nature of the universe at one thirty in the morning. But I wonder tomorrow if I will still have the guts to live undefined, or if I will wake up once again finding my identity in my likes or dislikes or my pain or my circumstances or my limitations. I hope tomorrow that I will live undefined.

I said I never wanted to dance as much as I wanted to write the music. Yet, I have gone through my life never liking what I wrote when I listened to it again. I think it was that I wanted to choose what labels I wore rather than letting someone else choose them for me. But maybe the problem all along was that I thought I needed a label.