"Queer as Faith"
by Nathan Gunter

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 13:
Again, and for the Millionth Time

I've been a bit worried about me lately.  I don't let it show, because I tend to be a pretty private person.  It may not come off this way, what with me writing this column and telling you all everything that's going on in my life, but in truth there are but a very, very select few to whom I'll actually speak about these things.

It's probably why I write.

I've been a bit worried, because I'm afraid I've gone numb.  I'm afraid that I don't feel much of anything lately.  And I'm worried that I'm driving people out of my life because of it.  There is someone in particular who likes me a lot - he's told me as much - and would like to see me, and part of me wants the same but part of me just can't muster the emotional energy to put forth the effort.  What's worse, that same part of me doesn't care.

It's a scary place.  I'm not sure what it is.  It feels as if all I'm doing lately is going through the motions of living - getting up, eating, working out.  I'm worried that I'm becoming the kind of person whose entire goal in life is to look good, make money, and make sure his TV shows get taped.

I'm really very disgusted by the whole thing, because I want to change the world.  I believe that there's something in me that can just explode out and fill the sky and everyone will look and breathe for a moment.  Maybe it's huge pride, because maybe changing the world shouldn't be my main goal in life.  But do you know that feeling, that feeling like there's something in you waiting to burst, given the right time?

I'm desperately fanning its flames right now, because I'm frightened that I'm becoming stuck here, in some job (which I finally FINALLY FINALLY got) or some life that will leave me unfulfilled and yearning.

I used to think I'd do it through missions.  I'd go live in western Europe or Africa and all I would need would be the Gospel.  Someone's life would be changed by the fact that God had put me there.

I've lost a bit of that, and now I'm kind of flailing around, like a garden hose that someone left on full blast but just set down.  Have you ever seen that?  The hose is giving off all this water, all this energy but it's directed nowhere so it ends up whipping around like crazy until someone puts it to use or turns it off.

I'm begging the Lord to put me to use, and I have to believe in His time.  I know that.  Watched pot, boiling, got it.  I'm not a patient person.

A bit of my wholeness was restored this week.  I drove to my dad's home in western Arkansas.  He owns 180 acres just over the Oklahoma state line in the Ouachita Mountains, and my half-sister Valerie had driven up from New Orleans to visit him, so I made the trip.

Val and I walked with dad around his land.  He can sound like a nature special when he talks about it, because he knows all the flora and fauna by name, where they grow, what they eat.  He knows where the deer on his land are from 5 AM to midnight because he's sat and watched.  He knows the best time to get a picture of the sunset and when you have to start planting clover and turnips in the meadow so that the deer will come graze there.

For some reason, walking the fence with dad and Val, I felt taller, I felt more grownup than I've ever felt around them.  They both looked me in the eye when they spoke, and we conversed like educated people.  I was a man in their eyes, and I felt closer to the sun.

Then my brother flew in from San Antonio this weekend.  He has a friend who shipped out to Saudi Arabia this week and John came to see him off.  We got pizza, drank beer, made plans for the summer, and agreed never to argue like schoolchildren over who pays the tab when we go out to eat together.  Our parents and grandparents have made this a terrible habit and we've decided it ends with us.

I'm almost 23 and I've no clue who I am, where I'm going, or what God has in store for me.  But this week, with my family, was one of the first times in awhile I haven't felt as though I'm simply going through the motions.  I was caring and receiving care, and it was natural and free-flowing, leisurely.

I began to feel something.  My dad looked at me with this expression…and I felt like he was beginning to see the man I'd become, even when I can't.  I felt his pride for me, and that energy inside that wants to reach out and change the world, it began to get stirred up again.  Maybe I will.

And maybe my contribution to the world will be to raise a family that loves even better than this one.  Dad said, "You always hope as a parent that your kids are able to get along in the world better than you can."  Maybe I'll have good kids, good love, good friendships and a good family, and that will be the way I change my little corner of the world.  Maybe that'll be okay, and enough.

It starts with me beginning to reclaim my wholeness, beginning to believe.  We're always beginning to believe, really.  We don't ever finish believing, and I'm not sure we're meant to really make progress.  We mature spiritually, sure, but I'm not sure that we can measure that, or that we're meant to.  We're called to believe, to be believers.

And I'm beginning to believe - again, and for the millionth time - that the Spirit of God is alive in me, with plans to prosper and not to harm, to give me a hope and a future.  Not to set me about going through the motions forever.  The Spirit of God will teach me how to be alive, how to "get along" in this world.

My Heavenly Dad looks at me through the eyes of my earthly one and says, "You may yet learn to get along in this world, son."

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