Queer as Faith is a weekly column by Nathan Gunter.  Unconventional and thought-provoking, Nathan writes as a gay Christian struggling to live authentically in the real world.

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Week 8:
25 Months

I think I grew up today.

In the shower, nonetheless.

You see, it turns out it takes about 25 months, in all actuality (give or take a week).  People say it takes your whole life…no, just about 25 months.

25 months ago (give or take a week) I returned from Italy.  I'd been there for four months, and in Europe for six, and I felt like I'd left myself there, and had come back to a me - and to a life - with which I was unfamiliar.  There was nothing I could do to get back into the groove of the life I'd known.  Suddenly, it felt uncomfortable and baggy to be with myself, like I'd just figured out how much growing I really did have to do, and all of a sudden my life was a pair of pants about nine hundred sizes too big.

It was the most Grinchy experience ever.

That's when I came out.  Before I went to Europe, my closet was warm and comfortable.  I'd hang out in there with the coats and the moths and be perfectly safe, and my struggle was a project, an adventure God was leading me on in my journey toward Himself.

But 25 months ago was when the closet became a stifling, smelly, sweaty box, a prison from which I thought there was no escape.  I didn't feel like myself anymore, and to stay in there felt like a lie.  The lie had its tendrils all in my life: I was the Intervarsity kid, the Christian writer, that Jesus boy.  Problem was, it just wasn't fitting right anymore, and I wanted to rip the lie out of my life.

And when I did, the result was exactly as I feared: when the tendrils went, my life went with it.  I quickly became uncomfortable in my college fellowship, people began to write off the writing I was doing… even life at my church became hurtful and unbearable.  A lot of this was my fault, granted, but that didn't help the hurting any.

And today, for some reason, I began to really miss my apartment in New Haven.  I missed being able to spend so much time alone in that place. Mainly, I missed the bathroom.  It was very "20's apartment" with the claw-foot tub and the mildewy tile, but it really felt like my space.  So here I am living at home, needing a shower and all I really wanted was to take one in that apartment.

Don't ask me why.  Maybe I'm crazy.  That place certainly was like an opium den to a hopeless addict.  Every day, you have to go and take a bit of poison that's slowly killing everything about you that you ever cherished.  That part, I don't miss.  But I do miss that bathroom.  And here I am living at home and needing a shower and my bathroom has carpet in it, for God's sake and ugly-ass wallpaper and a leaky faucet that never gets turned off and the water pressure is so low sometimes "it's like the shower's going pee."  I was very, very angry at the bathroom.

But when you have a job interview in three hours, you need a shower.  So I ran the water, got in the shower, and just sat in there.  I was too tired to stand, so I just sat there in the shower, my butt on the tile, water running in my eyes.  Sitting there.

That's when it happened.  That's when it had to happen.  Because that wasn't where I wanted it to happen, or where I expected it to happen, and that's why it happened there.  I just let it all go.  I figured it would be this moment out on the plains in Oklahoma, which is usually where I feel most at peace, most ready to move forward in my life.  But it's a cloudy day and I have an interview at 1:30 so I can't go driving, so unconsciously I figured today wasn't the day.

But suddenly, it was all gone.  It wasn't a moment of tearful release or ecstatic celebration.  There was no realization of God's great love for me, or of Jesus' great sacrifice and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  All of those things were true in that moment, but the light wasn't suddenly turned on in my head to see them any more clearly than usual.

It was all just gone.

Everything.  The regret over wasting time in Europe, the cold hiatus to many friendships upon my coming out, the issues between me and my family over the past two years, the anger at myself for getting into a relationship with someone who never could've been any good for me, the spiritual confusion and sense of lostness in which I let myself live for the past 25 months, the breakup, the accident, the debt.  All lost there in the smell of soap and skin on ceramic.  I felt it wash down the drain, and there were no tears or laughter, just a simple, interested, "Hm."

I was always scared, in my immaturity, of that moment, because I think I realized what it entailed.  Suddenly I had passed into the sad freedom of my twenties, and the happy bondage of my youth was washing down the drain.  Suddenly all the things I once used to be good, all the ways I had of tying myself up to make life a little easier or more manageable… gone, and I'm free and it's kind of lonely and sad but dammit, it's free.

I caught up with myself again.  For 25 months I felt like I've been lagging behind while my life keeps trotting along without me at this crazy pace, and wham!  Here I am back from Europe before I even realized I'd gone, and bam!  Here I am coming out and getting way too into the mindset of your typical gay 21 year old, and bam!  Here I am falling in love and committing to way more than I'm ready for and bam!  I'm out of college, without a clue what I'm doing with my life, brokenhearted, physically scarred, living at home and why the hell is there carpet in my bathroom?

In that moment, all was forgiven.  I didn't have to work hard not to care just then.

It just didn't matter anymore.  It all caught up with me and I accepted it right there, in the shower, because there it all was, for me to reach out and take: me.  Hot water on my back, my face to my knees, naked, fallible, sad, beloved, human me.

And through the past 25 months, I asked myself, "What abides?"  And I knew. Me.  Me with the Holy Spirit of Almighty God buried somewhere, living deep inside and glowing softly in the darkness, whispering gently at the mouth of the cave while I wait, like Elijah, through every chaos the world has to give me.  And when I hear the still, small voice again, I come out of the cave and into the sunlight, 25 months later when he or she gives me the "all's clear."

25 months isn't that long, not really.  Not compared to how long we live or how long the Earth, the Spirit, the family abides.  But that's how long it's taken, and I can accept that I have a lot of growing to do still, but at least now I don't feel like I'm behind.  At least now I know where and who I am and for the first time in 25 months, I'm happy about what lies ahead.

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