"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 27:
The Shrapnel Clan

My younger brother, John, turned 22 this week, and we celebrated his birthday, as well as his departure for his senior year of college, in our usual fashion. There were the traditional birthday dinners, and presents. And of course, no birthday would be complete without a tradition my family has observed for years off and on: two or more family members screaming at one another in the front yard, watched by at least three neighbors, while another family member huddles upstairs, praying tearfully, throwing his Bible at the kitty.

But, I suppose every family observes their own special little traditions.

See, ever since my parents split up almost 14 years ago, the three of us who were stuck living together under one roof – my brother, my mother, and myself – have had a pretty familiar pattern: we get along eighty-nine percent of the time. That other eleven percent, though, boy, is a doozy. It involves the screaming, the throwing, and it all begins with a week in which we feel like the house is filling up with natural gas, like from a leak. The tension comes out of nowhere and then goes nowhere, and yet it’s always there and always will be.

Then, out of nowhere, someone strikes a match. This week, that spark came the day after my brother’s birthday, on the morning we were set to drive to San Antonio to help him move into his new house. We had discussed leaving at eight in the morning. John showed up happily at ten. That was all it took.

Granted, it’s been building. I recently decided to spend a semester living with my dad in western Oklahoma while he comes out of retirement to teach freshman chemistry. He asked me to help him grade papers and navigate university culture in general. Also, he is 69 years old and has yet to learn to do a proper load of laundry. And he’s old and diabetic and I’m tired of the city. I’m yearning for fresh air and nights without bars and time to write, and I think I’ll get that living with him.

Little did I know that my relatively simple decision would reverse all the psychological progress my family has made over the last 14 years. When I was ten years old and my parents split, it fell to my brother and me to decide which parent got custody, and that is, to this day, the most miserable and twisted decision I’ve ever been asked to make. And yet, here it was: a simple change of address has the power to make my family act like a box of crack-addicted howler monkeys.

That wasn’t all that led to our big meltdown, of course. My brother can be a bit of a – what’s the psychological term – lazy ass. He likes to spend his summers partying and sleeping until late afternoon, and this drives my mom insane. So earlier in the summer, she told him that his leisurely lifestyle was unacceptable to her, and he had to find a new place to live. Things haven’t been without tension since then.

It all came to a head when my brother showed up two hours late, after we’d awoken at seven thirty to get ready. I could feel it beginning to boil over, because mom was trying to strike sparks with me, which I wasn’t having. I’d roll my eyes, softly say some rational bit of logical sense, and walk away, because I had a great deal of confidence that the situation was, for once, not my fault.

So there my mom and brother stood on our front lawn and shouted obscenities and accusations at one another – questions about the other’s relative sanity or accusations of drug use – you know, typical family stuff.

I read an interesting article last week that talked about the rats they use in psychological experiments. When they want to drive the rats insane, there’s a very specific regimen that they do. When the rats hit the button to get a pellet of food, sometimes they get a horrible shock. Other times, the button will do nothing for a full day. Still others, it gives them a food pellet. It is this kind of inconsistency which makes the rats unable to cope with life at its most basic levels.

That morning, I felt very much like an insane cage rat. Growing up, I grew to fear the sound of a slamming door or feet walking too loudly through the house. I never knew when the next blowup was going to be. My way of dealing with this was to become Perfect Person: never speak too loudly, make sure all the dishes are done, laundry is hung, and homework is finished before any cars roll up in the driveway. I believed that if I got into a good school, became a success, and never did another thing wrong, that everyone would be Okay. If I held up the family like some sagging canopy in a downpour, I'd never have to hear another slamming door again. Still, if it had been a bad day at work or someone had said something hurtful, chances were we were in for a big, ugly shouting match before the night was over.

So when I heard the screaming and the throwing begin, I ran and sat on the stairs, where it would be impossible to see me unless someone was trying to. I took my Bible, and I sat and read the Psalms, only comprehending about every other word because I was preoccupied listening to the shouting match taking place on my front lawn. From where I sat I had a view out a side window of the house, and I could see neighbors congregating in their driveways to watch.

The kitty got caught up in the energy of it all and kept running back and forth past me like a little white bullet. She likes to taunt me in my worst moments. I threw my Bible at her.

The words of the Psalms that I did get were exactly the ones I needed, however – LORD, refuge, help – which were pretty much the only words I was able to pray anyhow. A kind of weird mixed sensation came over me. See, normally it is my instinct to try to come between the two combative souls with whom I share DNA. Mom grew up fighting three other siblings and negligent, abusive parents. John grew up playing football. They fight. And I’m the one who gets in between, who jumps in front of the bullets they fire at each other so no one else has to get hurt.

David Wilcox has a line about that: “I used to run those battle lines, trying to smooth over what got said, trying to get a medal, trying to get some shrapnel in my head.”

That was what I was prone to do, sitting on those stairs, trying to comprehend how the Psalmist must’ve felt with enemies all around him. But as I prayed, a kind of grown-up peace came over me, and I heard, almost audibly, a voice telling me, Stay exactly where you are. Everything in my sinful nature – the part of me that thinks it’s up to me to make everyone Okay – was telling me to get up, to make it stop. Somehow, I just knew that my presence would make them all see reason. But the still, small voice was insistent: “You know how that never works?” The Holy Spirit commandeered my body and wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I sat, and I listened.

Eventually, the noise outside died down and I went out to see if they’d killed each other. The neighbors had lost interest and gone inside, thankfully, as I may have some lingering issues of what others think of me and my family. I helped load the cars and tie a tarp over the back of John’s truck. There was a polite, awkward, pained silence, and I had to step out of sight every thirty seconds or so to pray for the strength to make it through. Every time I did, I felt just like I am – old, and tough, and loved.

When we were ready to leave, mom and John looked at me and said, “Nathan, we’re sorry.” I looked them both in the eye and said, “I’m very disappointed in both of you.”

I never asked to be the adult in this family. But when everyone else lets their emotions run away with them, sometimes you get stuck with this role, and eventually, you may even be blessed enough to be somewhat effective at it. I don’t know if my words held any weight, and I am certain that the whole situation will repeat itself sometime in the future.

However. We got in the cars – me with mom and John by himself – and set out for Texas. I told mom about how I’d thrown my Bible at the kitty, and about the new guy that I like so much it makes me want to watch action movies and listen to Norah Jones a lot. We talked, and listened to music, and I prayed, and prayed.

And at some point, I looked at her, and I welled up with gratitude. I thought my heart might break with love for her. Most of the time I ask God what he was thinking giving me this family, when, clearly, I was made for some healthy, upper-middle class, Wonder bread family with no problems and a summer place in the Hamptons. Yet I got dropped in Oklahoma, with my weird herd, and I wonder why I couldn’t have chosen for myself.

But there, in the hill country of Texas, I was filled with gratitude for all the inconsistency, for this very thing that I think is wearing on my sanity and making me hard to love. I thought about soldiers who have pieces of shrapnel stuck in their bodies, and the flesh and organs and blood vessels grow around it, they adapt and let the body keep going. I thought about people with any kind of physical handicap, how they learn to work around it in a fairly consistent and normal way. In my case, nothing was ever there long enough for me to adjust, and so every time, it hurts like a new wound. And yet this has made me open, it has kept my heart or skin from becoming hard. And I am so grateful that they are not.

So I said the single best prayer in the whole entire world, right there in the car, driving through Lampasas, Texas: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

When we got to San Antonio, immediately began unloading John’s truck. He had a couch and a disassembled bed back there, and I was too tired, too hot, and too out of shape to lift any of them. I let his football player roommates get the heavy stuff, and I found a burden I could safely carry, with an amount of effort that wouldn’t require me to hurt my back or strain my arms. I helped in the exact capacity for which I was equipped, and we got him moved in. His new house is spacious and beautiful, right in the middle of a historical district just south of his school. The house is old with a new paint job on the inside, and when it gets hot upstairs they turn on the fans, open the windows, and let in a breath of fresh Texas air.

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