Here’s to Us.

Here’s to the mothers.  

Here’s to the mothers that always wanted to be mothers. Who wanted, planned for, and had children they loved more than themselves. Mothers like mine who put their children before themselves in every conceivable way. The full-of-joy mothers. The light-up-when-you-walk-in-the-room mothers. 

Here’s to the mothers who had motherhood thrust upon them before they were ready for it. Who gave it their all anyway. Who grew up with their children.  

Here’s to women who chose not to be mothers. To knowing it just wasn’t for them. To the ones who stand proudly in that choice, and who love their lives just the way they are.  

Here’s to women who wanted children but couldn’t or didn’t have them, for one reason or another. Here’s to honoring the heartache of what could have been, and to celebrating what is.  

Here’s to women who are still thinking it over, this whole “motherhood” thing. Here’s to the scared shitless among us, because they are right to be scared. They are smart to be scared. Scared is a perfectly appropriate emotion when it comes to raising another human being from the ground up. Here’s to their futures, whatever it is they decide. They’re enough on their own either way.   

Here’s to the women who just had a miscarriage. The women who choke back their emotion when the well-meaning morons asks if they’re ever going to start a family. Here’s to women struggling with infertility and smiling through every friend’s baby shower. Here’s to the silent sobs in the bathroom from a deep soul twisted-up ache and a desperation it seems no one else has ever known. Here’s to wondering if you’re alone. Here’s to knowing you aren’t.  

Here’s to the women who’ve lost themselves in their children. Who wake up and wonder where they’ve gone; who ask, “Where did you last see me? Maybe I’m there.” Here’s to retracing their steps; to their identities still sitting very patiently inside their hearts, waiting to be called forth again. Here’s to that day, whenever it arrives, and here’s to the season they’re living in instead. It’s just a season, after all. Another one always seems to come.  

Here’s to the monotony of motherhood. The same books, the same songs, the same questions and answers. Here’s to the unthanked and unnoticed, the taken advantage of, the worn the hell out.

Here’s to the tired moms. Here’s to the moms of small children - children don’t know better, and take what they give and give. Here’s to the moms of big children - children who should know better, but still take a lot. Here’s to asleep in 90 seconds. Here’s to waking up like someone shot a gun by your ear, covered in drool and wondering what day it is and which child is crying already. Here’s to laughing at the concept of “me time.” To moms who go to work, then come home and work some more. To moms who stay home. To everything in between. To laughing over drinks with the other tired and worn outs. 

Here’s to the guilt. The walking out the door to work guilt, the going on a date guilt, the spending the night without kids guilt. Here’s to the anxiety that every choice could be THE CHOICE and every sport could be THE SPORT and the what if’s? and the night sweats and the terrors and the elephants on our chests. Here’s to comparing your worst moments to the best of everyone else. Here’s to unlearning that habit. 

Here’s to feeling great about taking a night off. Here’s to we’re still people and we can pour into ourselves. Here’s to putting on your own oxygen mask on first.

Here’s to strength we didn’t know we had. To looking back a time in our lives and wondering how the hell we ever did that. To not having time to wonder how we were doing it while we were doing it. To just DOING it.

Here’s to the women who aren’t our mothers but might as well be. To the women who feel like home. To the deep knowing that comes with putting out your hands and saying, “Give that to me - I can bear that for you.” Here’s to the women who have taught us how to be us. Here’s to the missing puzzle piece found in them. 

Here’s to the women for whom Mother’s Day feels like a knife to the ribs. Here’s to the ones with complicated mothers who feel like they’ll never get untangled; who trip over roots that have sprung forth from the seeds of doubt their mothers have sewn in them. Here’s to unwinding the yarn ball and realizing the truth: mothers are just people, and sometimes they screw it up pretty badly. Here’s to living without resentment. Here’s to the cycle stopping with you. 

Here’s to our mothers who have gone on without us - to the benign betrayal of death. Here’s to the community of saints and the clouds of witnesses. Here’s to wondering what your mother would say. Here’s to wishing she could see this. To “gone but not forgotten.” And maybe, really, never gone at all.     

Here’s to the power and the magic of women in all our forms. To getting older and understanding with each year that women are the spark that keeps the fire alive. To the ways we carry the men and the children in our lives. To the ways we carry each other. 

To the million layer cake that is women on earth, who dream and can and do. To the twinkle in our eyes. To straightening our backs and setting our faces toward joy - not because it’s easy, but because it’s right. To ice in our veins and warmth in our smiles. To nerves of steel. To hearts bursting forth with love.

To us. Boy, do I love us all. 

Cheers!

There’s Always Been a Rainbow Hangin’ Over Your Head.

Last week, we delved into biblical rationale defending homosexuality and the church. This week, it gets personal.

I never thought homosexuality was a sin, and because I was brought up in a climate that believed that very fervently, I bucked against the idea pretty hard. My theology was lazy. I didn’t do a good job formulating my arguments. Instead, I relied on the old classic, “God is love, God loves everybody. I think God has bigger fish to fry than worrying about who we’re sleeping with,” or some version of that. You can read more about my beliefs and my grown-up reasonings here. 

 A few weeks ago, the United Methodist Church got together at General Conference to decide whether or not it was going to double down on its stance about gay people and their dealings with the church, which you can read more about here. Ultimately, their decision was that the opinions they’d already held were the right ones. Not everyone felt this way, but enough people did. 

Apart from my biblical reasonings, I wanted to talk about this as someone who is both a person of faith who believes in the important of scripture AND a person who is very close friends with a lot of gay people.  

And y’all, I honestly don’t know where to start. There’s a lot on my heart. So here are a whole lot of things from all the corners of my brain. Which I guess I can do, since it’s my blog. A warning that you are going to get non-sequitur whiplash!

—

The first time I ever knowingly met a gay man was when I was 10 or 11 years old. My parents were close to a man and his partner and they invited us for dinner at their house. My younger brother Parker was 7 or 8, and as we sat around the table eating cheeseburgers, he put down his food, looked up, and  asked, “So, are you guys related, or what?” 

He was trying to make sense out of why two grown men lived together.  

The men looked at my parents, at each other, and then one of them answered, “No, but people do say we look alike!”  

That satisfied my brother completely and we all went back to eating. It wasn’t awkward at all - we just kept on trucking.  

Later that week, on our way home from school (we were without Parker, so I felt comfortable talking more candidly with my mom), I asked, “Are ______ and _______  gay?”  

She asked me why I thought that might be true. And I told her it just seemed like that might be the case since they lived together and neither one was married to a woman. So she told me that they were.  

I remember that my first reaction was to feel a little shame creep through my chest. It was totally involuntary, and was probably the result of growing up the Deep South where homosexuality was very taboo and certainly not accepted socially or in church. It almost felt like I knew something I shouldn’t know; like I had walked in on someone naked. That shame had nothing to do with the way I was brought up, which was in a house where, even in the South, all people and all lifestyles were treated and discussed equally and fairly. I don’t feel that shame now, but that experience showed me that even if you aren’t aware you’re carrying it, shame is a powerful thing.

Over the next ten years, I would become even more deeply involved in my church, First United Methodist in Decatur, Alabama. I was a regular part of the Council on Youth Ministry and attended Annual Conference as a delegate. I went to Camp Sumatanga every time the doors were open and to this day cite it as a cornerstone of my spiritual and social belief system. I was borderline constantly surrounded by gay men, whether it was younger friends at Camp, older friends in the CoYM, men from church, or kids at school who would eventually come out as gay. Gay men have been a part of who I am for as long as I can remember. 

— 

For some of you reading, gay men and women may seem very foreign. What you know of them is what you’ve seen represented in movies and on TV, but you don’t know them personally, and because of that, all you can go by are the stereotypes you’ve been exposed to: gay men are promiscuous, girly, fashion-obsessed, over-the-top scream queens; lesbians are butch-y, masculine, and wear sensible shoes. 

But the real men and women who live their lives identifying as LGBTQIA are much more complex than those old tropes. These are individuals, no two stories alike. They’re academics, they’re coaches, politicians, doctors, teachers, librarians, choir directors, realtors, stay-at-home parents. They’re around you every day whether you see them or not. US Weekly could do a segment on them: “Gay people - They’re Just Like Us!” Maybe the key to de-mystifying the topic is to simply get to know the gay men and women in our lives.

There’s always room in our hearts to un-learn the things we thought we knew for certain.

— 

When I worked for Teach For America in Memphis in 2014, our manager led weekly check-ins. There were 7 or 8 of us on our team, with diverse sexual orientations, races, and ages, from all different places in the United States. Our manager asked that for the first 15 minutes of our weekly meetings, we rotate around the group and allow each person to bring in what he called an “artifact,” or something that represented our lives.  

On the week I was supposed to share, I remember walking around my room in Memphis for a long time deciding what to choose. I ultimately went with a stole that used to be my dad’s when he was an associate pastor at the church where I grew up.  

When I put it on the table that Friday morning, I felt my heart pounding. I said something like this: 

“So this is my dad’s stole, with one color on each side for whatever time of year it was per the liturgical calendar. And to tell you the truth, I’m really nervous to share it with you because of all the things that people who aren’t from the South look at Christianity and think. I feel like you may have a negative association with Christianity based on how you’ve seen it represented on TV or what you’ve read. I feel like I need to qualify right away that I am not a bigot, I don’t hate gay people, I don’t....”  

 ...and on and on I went like that, telling them all the things it DIDN’T mean about me. 

After I felt I had done a decent job telling them what I wasn’t, I went on to say that the Methodist Church has been hugely influential in who I am. All the things I care most deeply about were formed and reinforced by my involvement at church. But I feared my co-workers didn’t know that part of the story. They only knew the scary Christians who frighten everybody to death. 

It was the first time that I had ever acknowledged out loud to them that I was a Christian, and it made me nervous as hell.

We don’t have a particularly good reputation in certain circles. 

 —

Here’s the thing about gay people and the church. The line that’s often repeated to them is that the church “hates the sin,” but “loves the sinner.”

So many Christians who I’ve talked to over the years have compared homosexuality to lying, cheating, or lusting - also things that are identified as sinful, and usually things the person doing the comparing has been guilty of at one point or another. “Homosexuality is equal to all those sins,” it is said, “so I don’t have any judgment about it. I’m a sinner, too. God sees all sins as equal.”  

The trouble with that rationale, for me, is that it never really seems to be true. No one “identifies” as a liar, or chooses a life partner based on the fact that both people are cheaters. These smaller sins, the benign ones that we can admit we’ve been guilty of, don’t seem to equate to the way a person loves.  

I completely understand that using that logic is meant to be generous and open-hearted. It comes from a tender place. The reason this “hate the sin, love the sinner” thing was invented at all was to service a well-intended Christian sentiment, delivered in all sincerity: “I want to be clear that I do not approve. My faith tells me I must communicate my disapproval in order to be true to what I believe, but I will try my hardest to love you fully in spite of the fact that I believe this is wrong.” 

But for gay men and women, the idea that their gayness parallels telling a lie or cheating on an exam doesn’t track. To think that homosexuality is a tendency, one that could be a periodic mistake akin to telling a fib from time to time (as in, “Oops, I accidentally thought that man who I’ve chosen to spend my life with is attractive again!”) seems outlandish to the point of silliness. 

I’m a white woman, so this is the example I’ll use: it would be as if someone from my church approached me to tell me that while they don’t personally support that I’m white, and they never will, they will accept me anyway. That they hate my whiteness, but they can love me in spite of it.

LGBT men and women don’t see their homosexuality as something that can be corrected. It is intrinsic to the fabric of who they are. To “hate the sin” is to hate the person. 

— 

The problem with Christianity is that if we really wanted to follow Jesus - and I mean really, really follow him - it would look so radical that we wouldn’t be able to live our lives “normally.” I am bad at this. I spend lots of time justifying my choices on the ways I’ve chosen not to radically love people on any given day. 

There are a few people I know who understand true Christian living, and their lives do not look like my life. They are constantly, constantly, thinking of and serving others. Their free time is spent tutoring or volunteering at low incomes schools. They recycle any and everything in order to be stewards of God’s creation. They take up donations or collect items for people they overheard in someone’s casual conversation who might be in need. They don’t care about what they’re wearing or who liked their Instagram post. Their eyes are the eyes of God and they see everyone the way God sees them: perfect, equal, precious, worthy.

Let’s say you believe homosexuality is a sin. Let’s say that you can’t get on board, no matter how it’s presented, with the case that it’s not sinful. Okay.

Wouldn’t the radically Christian thing to do be to love the gay person in your life exactly as you’d loved them before they told you they were gay? Because, you know, they were gay. There’s always been a rainbow hanging over their head (thank you, Kacey Musgraves). 

To radically love them (really opening your arms and heart, not polite or “tolerant” love) wouldn’t be a betrayal of your belief - it would be the embodiment of it. 

—

If a gay man has never looked you up and down and lovingly said, “Sweetie, no,” go back to the starting line and begin again.

—  

There is room for doubt. I think saying, “I don’t know,” is one of the most important things we can do as Christians. No one is supposed to have all the answers. But we are called to be in constant pursuit of those answers, and to follow the Holy Spirit wherever it’s leading. And the Holy Spirit is TRICKY. Constantly up to something. Never still. Leading into places where we don’t want to go. Bending our rules and breaking our hearts. When we said, “Yes,” to Jesus, we might as well have set the roadmap on fire. This life of faith isn’t about having one opinion and one set of reasons for a lifetime, I don’t think - it’s about living into the truth that God shows up where we least expect it. Are we humble enough to say, “I don’t know.”? It’s hard for me.  

— 

I was watching an episode of Queer Eye the other day. In it, the guys had a conversation with a young, black, lesbian woman who was finding her footing. They talked about how a person’s “chosen” family can end up being the most meaningful. This young woman’s parents had thrown her out of the house - literally told her never to come back - after she’d been outed as a lesbian by someone else, and the guys were trying to explain that she can build her own family made up of people who love and support her.

While I was watching this episode, my 15-month-old son, Mac, was playing in the floor with his race cars. His tiny hands were turning the cars over and over again, his fat little legs were carrying him from one end of the room to the other chasing after them. His laugh bounced off the walls as our dog tried, unsuccessfully, to escape from the car onslaught. This baby, who I carried in my body, who is beautiful and perfect in all the ways that matter. I imagined this young woman as a baby Mac’s age; the pride and wonder her parents must have felt when they looked at her. And how somewhere along the way, they pledged allegiance to a set of beliefs that had them reject, or at the very least, hold at arm’s length, their own precious baby.

Before long, big, hot tears were welling in my eyes. I imagined Mac coming to me years from now to tell me that he’s gay. I imagined the party I would throw in our tiny conversation; the leaps of joy from the deepest parts of my heart. If we’re destined for that talk, I thought as I watched him, then he’s gay right now. It makes absolutely no difference to me. My job as his mom is to love and support and celebrate. To guide and provide bumpers when I need to. To have him see my eyes light up every time he walks into a room, just like my mother did for me. Just like Maya Angelou said we’re supposed to as parents. He’s the family I was given and will always be the family that I choose.

— 

Between the years of 2004 and 2018, five of my close male friends came out to me. 

The first time a friend came out to me in high school, I told him I’d always known. He knew I knew. We hugged and celebrated, and it was a beautiful moment.  

The second time a friend came out to me in high school, he sat on the couch in the upstairs of my parents’ house in Decatur. He was shaking with nerves and choked out the words. He told he he’d kissed a guy for the first time that weekend and was so racked with guilt and shame that he immediately threw up. I tried to make him laugh and squeezed him tight. 

I wish I could tell you I had perfect responses for these guys. I didn’t. I felt nervous and was trying so very hard to say the right thing, just in case my words were the only affirming ones they heard. 

Last year, I got a phone call from a very close friend of mine who I’d always thought might be gay. He confirmed what I’d long suspected. Even though we were states away from each other, I felt like I was hugging him through the phone. I full-throat sobbed with relief at the knowledge that my worst fears for him - that he’d never fully embrace this part of him and live a life that wasn’t authentic - were assuaged. He is now an even more perfect specimen than he was before, which is saying something. These days, when I hold his hand, I am totally electrified by him. It’s like standing near a firework and having a spark land on your skin. That’s how powerful it is to watch someone be who they are.   

Multicolored and beautiful.  

Dazzling. 

I hope, whoever and wherever you are, you have the chance to bask in the glow of just such a person. 

Because WOW.  

A Biblical Defense of Homosexuality.

For as long as I can remember, I have believed that homosexuality is not a sin. I’ve always been passionate on this topic. 

My theological position historically has been something like, “God is love, and that’s what we need to know. Our job is to love people, not to decide whether their lifestyle is ‘good enough.’ And frankly, I think God has bigger fish to fry than who we are and aren’t sleeping with.”

That line, while kind still broadly true for me, is just lazy. 

So I’ve been reading and re-reading, and I wanted to share not just where I stand, but why. I don’t flatter myself to think you’re sitting on the edge of your seat to hear my non-ordained opinions, but in this particular climate where so many feel unwelcome in a church I’ve grown up in my whole life, I feel convicted to write on this subject. This is certainly not the entirety of what needs to be said on the subject, and I am a mere lay person, so take it easy on me.  

-

The easiest way for me to talk about where I landed in all this is to walk through the rationale of the author who made it all make sense for me. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist preacher and scholar, lays all this out beautifully in Making Sense of the Bible, a book which aims to dig into tough questions and addresses the gristly, uncomfortable questions we ask in Christianity: is God inherently violent? What about gay people? Is the Bible truly God-breathed? I highly recommend it. It’s so, so smart, so academic, and so generously written. I’m going to cite page numbers so that you can go find it if you buy the book! 

Basically, he makes two big points that have really helped me.   

Point #1: There are certain passages in the Bible that we can all probably agree are not meant to be taken literally. If that’s true, we have to use prayer and careful study to decide what is an all-time commandment vs. what might be representative of a particular time and place in history.  

 Point #2: If you look at the verses in scripture which address homosexuality carefully, they may mean something a bit different than what they look like at face value. In fact, they may not actually be referencing homosexual relationships as we understand them today. 

—

Okay. Ready? 

Let’s get into Point #1:  

You may have read the Point #1 explanation above and thought to yourself, “Mary Catherine, I believe that the Bible is the God-breathed, literal word of the Lord, and that if it’s in the Bible, that’s because God wanted it there. God said it, it made it in, and we are supposed to live accordingly.” 

First off, let me say that I’m not here to discount the way anyone reads scripture. It’s deeply personal. To be totally fair, chances are, if you’re a more conservative Christian, you probably grew up with a closer relationship to scripture than I do. So I’m not throwing shade at your interpretation. 

In fact, if you’re a person who’s the Bible cover to cover, you already know that there’s more than a handful of scriptures that are violent, that discuss or condone slavery, or that discuss sexual violence in strange and uncomfortably casual way (which Hamilton gets into a little more closely in Point #2). 

A great example is in Exodus 21:20-21, which you can read below:

“When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.”

This is a pretty upsetting piece of scripture, and yet, it’s also in the Bible.

My gut impulse when I read a passage like that is to think, “NOPE! Not gonna deal with that. That doesn’t apply to us in 2019, obviously, and so I reject it.”

That response would fall into what many people call “buffet Christianity:” taking what we like and leaving the stuff we don’t want.

But that’s not responsible scholarship, and it’s not a responsible faith practice. If I want to walk with God, it means trudging right up to these problematic pieces and turning them over and over until I land on a thoughtful, prayerful conclusion about why they’re in the Bible.

So what do we do with these verses that are included in the Bible for a reason, but cannot possibly reflect the heart of God? 

Adam Hamilton suggests that “there are three broad categories that biblical passages fit into (273, 274):

1. Passages that reflect the timeless will of God for human beings. Ex: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

2. Passages that reflect God’s will in a particular time, but not for all time. Ex: the ritual law of the Old Testament. (*A caveat here that this category can be a little problematic in that Jewish people hold these rituals as sacred and, I believe, Christians should study them as well)

and

3. Passages that reflect the culture and historical circumstances in which they were written, but never reflected God’s timeless will. Ex: scripture related to slavery.

Not a person reading this believes that homosexuals should be put to death, but that’s exactly what Leviticus 20 suggests (we’ll talk a little more about that in Point #2). It’s in the Bible. So what do you do with that verse? 

I’m really asking. What do you do? 

Here’s what I do: I decide that it goes in category #3. 

The fact that a story makes it into the Bible does not, by default, mean that it reflects the heart of God. There is no world in which I believe God condoned slavery. Ever. Never, ever. There is no world in which I believe God supports our hatred of or violence toward each other. And any scripture that encourages that - those passages about slavery, or the story of Lot offering his daughters to be gang raped (which you’ll read below), or a handful more like that - are included because it reflects the writer’s culture and tradition, but I do not see their inclusion as reflective of who God is. 

I think most people I know would agree that a few verses, even if it’s only a handful, belong in that third category. 

People I’ve talked to in the past have often expressed the closely-held belief that the entirety of the Bible should be read plainly, memorized, studied, internalized, and lived just the way it is - what you see is what you get. I think that if you’re one of these people, the idea of bucketing scripture into categories, and particularly the idea of putting any scripture into third category, probably makes you feel like you’re disrespecting God’s holy book by using too much of your own authority to decide what’s what.

And that’s where Adam Hamilton gets brilliant on us.

He writes that people’s opinions on homosexuality tend not to be a matter of “biblical authority,” but instead are about “biblical interpretation.” In other words, it’s not about whether the Bible is important. We all agree that it is. It’s about what we do with it. How closely we’re paying attention. How thoroughly we’re willing to study.

It’s the difference between being able to quote scripture and actually knowing why that scripture is there in the first place.

Honoring the Bible and all it contains, for me, means studying it beyond a passing Bible study reference. I think scripture is beautiful, and challenging, and true, and I believe the way we please God the most is by using the brains God gave us to really dig in and analyze. That’s the way I learn best.

 — 

SO. Are you still with me?? If so, you must like me a lot, because this bad boy is a LONG POST.  

Let’s get into Point #2! 

It seems to me that scripture doesn’t actually come down on a side regarding homosexuality as we understand it today: close, meaningful relationships with a person of the same sex. But there’s no question that the Bible makes reference to homosexual sex. 

There are two instances in the Torah of “men lying with men as with a woman.” 

The first big passage and deep Biblical cut we have to grapple with is the story of Lot and his family in Genesis.

The short version is:

Lot, Abraham’s nephew who lives in Sodom, invites two angels to stay with him overnight. Upon hearing there is “new blood” in town, the men of Sodom surround Lot’s house and demand for Lot to turn the men over to them to rape (yikes, I know). Lot walks outside and persuades the men not to rape his houseguests; instead, Lot offers the men his two virgin daughters as an alternative (yikes, part 2!). They don’t take him up on it, but the offer is still made: 

“Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come to protection under my roof.” (Genesis 19:4-8). 

The question that Hamilton poses in this chapter is what this story is actually about. Is it about homosexuality, or is it about lust, greed, and rage? He writes, “Did the men of Sodom consider themselves homosexual? ...Or was their attack on these strangers a way of demonstrating their power over them...and violently gratifying their own sexual desires?” (268). 

The second time same-sex sex is mentioned in the Torah is in that Leviticus verse I mentioned earlier: 

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” - Leviticus 20:13

This kind of breaks down into two parts.  

1. With the Lot story as the backdrop for the Leviticus reference (which comes later, as Leviticus is a book that comes after Genesis in the Torah), Hamilton writes, “Is it at least possible that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 were condemning homosexual rape rather than anything approximating two people sharing their lives in loving relationship?” (269).

In essence, his point is that rather than seeing this verse as something condemning homosexuality, we should consider the possibility that Moses was referring to homosexual rape, and the lust/power dynamics that go along with it in reference to the story of Lot.

2. The idea of “clean vs. unclean;” “normative vs. abnormal.” The concept of something being within the “norm,” or ritually “clean,” is really important in Jewish culture, and comes up a lot in the Torah.  Again, Hamilton is suggesting that homosexuality as a lifestyle is very different from something that would’ve simply been outside the cultural norm and therefore deemed abominable. 

The tricky thing about leaning on the Leviticus verse in order to condemn a homosexual lifestyle if you are yourself a Christian is that by doing so, you also have to reckon with the rest of the things that are named an abomination according to the Law of Moses: eating pork, seafood, etc. We don’t consider those things to be “unclean” now, because they are culturally “normal.” Because this verse falls within that context, does it deserve a second look? I think Hamilton would argue that we’re too quick to see a verse and jump to conclusions about its meaning without using context or history to help us understand how it fits into a broader narrative. 

-

Apart from those two Old Testament (or Hebrew Scriptures, as I prefer to call them!) verses, we also have the questions of Jesus’ own words about marriage and whether they come down on a side regarding homosexuality.  

In Matthew, Jesus does discuss marriage between a man and a woman.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  - Matthew 19: 4-6.

I’ve heard this verse a hundred times, and until I started really drilling down into this research, I never realized that this quote comes because Jesus fielding questions about divorce. So fascinating for me to discover, because it’s often used in a vacuum, as though Christ started spontaneously monologuing about the joys of marriage. For me, it doesn’t really ring as an endorsement of marriage so much as a reinforcement of the sanctity of marriage once it is established.   

As Hamilton writes, it’s “important, given that Jesus is God’s definitive Word by which all other words about God are judged, that he does not speak to [homosexuality] at all” (271). 

—  

So.  

WHEW.  

That is a whole, WHOLE lot. I know most of you probably started and abandoned this post because of the length and the level of detail. I don’t blame you. It honestly took me about three weeks to research, write, and organize in a way that didn’t make us all want to drive nails into our eyeballs (and some of you still might). 

I hope this has been an interesting read. I hope, no matter where you fall along the progressive to conservative spectrum, you were able to take something away that you can use in the future.

If nothing else, I’m in prayer that your heart is open, and that while you ponder the question of your/your church’s particular relationship to homosexuality, you are rooted in the truth that homosexual people are not a problem to be solved; they are a part of the body of Christ deserving of love, respect, and arms thrown around them in acceptance. I have lots more to say about that in a separate post that you can read on Monday. 

The Holy Spirit is quite tricky. I pray we all are open to the moments it taps us on the shoulder to teach us something new. You guys teach me new things constantly, and I’m grateful you took the time to read a little about this particularly hot-button issue.  

Thanks again, friends.  

Mac's Birth Story, in which the Protagonist Learns an Important Lesson About Herself

This is the story of how I became Mac's mom. It's long and personal. Further posts will detail what a beautiful genius he is, but this one is about his parents. 

SO. Here we go!  

On December 14th at 4:30, Jordan and I took our pre-packed (way overpacked, by the way - hilariously overpacked) hospital bags to Mission Hospital, which is exactly 3 minutes from our house. In fact, we could nearly see our house from the window of our hospital room. Because we were there for a scheduled induction, it was bizarre to in like we were checking into a hotel, knowing we'd walk out with a baby. We were both so nervous and excited, but trying to downplay both of those emotions in order to appear cool and in-control. 

Jordan checking out the view. See how cool he's playing it?

The room we were put in was a beautiful mountain view room, which I was relieved about because I know it was a roll of the dice that we’d get an ugly room facing construction. We met our nurse, S (no names in this story because that just seems like the right thing to do) who was wonderful, warm, and friendly - so wonderful, given that I had literally never checked into a hospital and had all kinds of of butterflies in my stomach. She told me to put on a gown and hang out for my cervical exam to see how far along I was. They hooked the baby up to a heart monitor at that point and we saw that I was contracting every 10 minutes or so: irregularly, but definitely happening. It was comforting to me to know that those "muscle contractions" I'd been feeling were actually uterine contractions, and that I wasn't crazy. She "checked me" (cool OB term for "seeing how dilated you are"), and found that I was about 2 1/2 cm dilated, which was what I'd been two days before at my 39 week doctor's visit. 

My OB, who I am absolutely in love with, wasn’t on call until the next day, so I saw the on-call doc. She placed a balloon catheter to kick-start the process of labor. I'll let you Google what that is, because it's unsavory. You're welcome. 

Once the catheter was placed, it was pretty uncomfortable - especially trying to navigate getting up to use the bathroom with that, an IV, and monitors checking the baby's heart rate - I felt like the bionic woman. It was kind of hilarious.

With the help of the catheter, my contractions started ramping up in intensity and frequency. We visited with both sets of parents who had come to the hospital and were in the waiting room, despite the fact that nothing was going to happen that night. Even still, it was wonderful to know they were out there. My mom, of course, brought a giant bag of candy. I was eating everything I could because I knew they were going to cut me off at a certain point and I eat every three hours like a small child. While we were chatting, I was contracting pretty intensely - several times, I had to stop talking to let a contraction run its course. They were the real deal.  

Here's where I say: women who've done this whole thing without drugs? You are AMAZING. 

Our nurses changed at 8 PM and we got a cute young girl named...well I can’t think of what it was. Weird. She was so adorable! Anyway, Jordan will remember. She came in every thirty minutes to tug on the catheter (KILL ME) and the second time she did, it came right out, which meant I was dilated to 4.5 cm! Hooray! All three of us kind of looked at each other in shock when the catheter came out, like, “Was that supposed to happen??” (It was.)

So that meant I was dilated to 4.5! Hooray! It was about midnight at that point, and we were really excited because we’d been told that it could take up to 12 hours for me to dilate to that point. Around the same time, they started Pitocin in my IV. I was a little bit of a zombie because (since we thought it was going to take longer for me to dilate enough to start Pitocin), they'd given me a sleep aid to try and get some rest. I dilated more quickly than anybody had anticipated, so I was super drowsy, but also contracting like a beast.

The fetal heart monitor was probably the most annoying part of this process. Every time I turned to get comfortable, it would shift the monitor on my belly and this crazy alarm would go off signaling the loss of the baby's heart rate. (In reality, the baby was fine, but it spooked us every time!). I had to just resign myself to be careful about the positions I slept in to avoid setting off the alarm. Jordan slept in a recliner by my bed, and we got a little, but not much, sleep. We were too excited and neither of us was really comfy. 

Me. Geeking. Jordan. Sleeping.

At 6 AM or so, our nurse did a cervical exam and told me that I was about 6 cm dilated. Not as much progress as we’d hoped, but not nothing. She encouraged me to get up and walk around, so Jordan and I did a couple of laps around the hallway to try to keep things moving along. I was a little woozy after a couple of laps, so we came back in and got settled back in the bed.

Around 8 AM, our parents were on their way back to the hospital (Mom hadn’t slept all night - Jordan was keeping everyone apprised via text). We had another nurse shift change and met K, who was defnitely the toughest cookie of the nurses we'd had all so far. If I'm honest, I wasn't sure we'd totally get along, but I ended up absolutely loving this women, as she was my advocate in so many ways. 

I was dilated enough to receive the epidural at any point that I wanted, so they told me to give them about a 30-minute heads up when I thought I was about ready to have the epidural catheter placed. I labored for about 2 hours, still contracting irregularly, then went ahead and called for it. 

Our CRNA came in to administer the epidural. I was a little nervous about this process, mostly because I’d read that one of the possible side effects is a spinal headache which can last days after labor. Being someone who’s prone to headaches in general, I was really nervous that that would happen to me.

The CRNA had Jordan sit down in front of me and told me to round my back like a cat. She administered some local anesthetic first to help the pain of the epidural catheter placement, but when she started to place the catheter, I could still feel lots of it. It wasn’t just “pressure” (medical term used to cover all manner of sins), but actual pain and discomfort. She tried a couple of times to reposition it, but it still felt uncomfortable. Despite that, she felt confident about the placement and we decided to go ahead and have her administer the epidural anesthesia at that point. Once the epidural started taking effect, they laid me back in bed and I started to feel more numb on my right side than my left. They propped my right side up on some pillows to try to even out the pain medication to both sides, and eventually it did - more or less.

Jordan's parents came in to visit, and I had some Popsicles which I promptly threw up (my poor in-laws! That moment went like this: "Yeah, l'm feeling really good! I'm...actually, you know what? I'm about to throw up. I'm so sorry!! I'm so sorry!" Cue: them fleeing the room.). 

My parents came in to visit and I started feeling the sensation of contractions without the pain, which was awesome. I still had a little unevenness of numbness, but I could move my legs a little and that was kind of comforting and helpful to K (instead of being totally dead-legged from the waist down, I was able to help her a little in moving my legs). I took this uneventful opportunity to take a quick nap.

My precious parents visiting sometime around 10 AM.

It was at this point in the day that things started to ramp up and get a little dramatic.

My fabulous OB (henceforth referred to as OB) came on call that afternoon! I was so relieved to see her - I liken it to having a sleepover at a friend's house, and you get sick, and your friend's parents have to take care of you, and then you finally get to go home and see your mom and you're SO HAPPY. Yeah. It's like that.  

Anyway, she did a cervical exam and said that I was 10 cm! Finally! Jordan had gone to eat lunch with his parents in the cafeteria. I texted him that OB said we'd be pushing within the hour, and he RAN back upstairs as we started preparing to do the damn thing. 

OB had told us that the baby was "OP," which is medical speak for "sunny-side up." This is different from breech - his head was down, but he was positioned to come out facing the ceiling rather than the floor. K put a “peanut ball” between my legs (basically a giant yoga ball, except shaped like a peanut) and laid me on my side to try to get the baby turned over naturally. She flipped me from side to side working on that, and I could still help her at that point because I still had some use of my legs. 

Peanut pillow sticking horizontally out!

Sadly, the peanut pillow didn't quite do its job, and it was time to start pushing. Since we couldn’t get the baby to turn on its own, OB flipped it manually when she came in to start me pushing. At this point my epidural was doing okay - not fully working, but working enough that I wasn't in crazy pain. I pushed for about an hour starting around 2 - just Jordan, K, OB, and me in the room. Things were going well and I could really focus on moving the baby down. It's wild how your body just kicked into autopilot. I suddenly knew exactly what to do - once I got the hang of focusing on a particular spot to bear down into, I was off to the races. We were joking on and off and the mood was really light. OB kept telling me what a great job I was doing pushing, which was super motivating and helped me progress a ton. (Thank you, Pure Barre, for the endurance and the core strength!) 

At the Hour 2 mark, I started to have really intense back pain. The best way to describe it would be a deep-tissue, long-lasting muscle cramp that felt like it was in my left hip flexor, left butt cheek, and radiating around to my lower left back. It started out as something I thought I could work with, but quickly became unmanageable. Our poor nurse, K, kept having to readjust my leg (I was on my side, and she was holding my top leg for me as I wasn't able to labor on my back because it made me vomit) per my direction: "Let my knee fall in - okay, now out. Okay, now can you cross my left foot over my right knee so I can lean forward and stretch my hip out?" Nothing seemed to work and it was becoming extremely painful. (We later found out that I was in severe back labor, which is what happens when the baby is flipped face-up and is hitting your tailbone/pelvis as you try to push. The reason I could feel it is because my epidural had been placed poorly.) 

Our CRNA came back in and gave me a bolus (basically just a "boost" in my epidural catheter) of fentanyl and lidocaine, in addition to bumping my epidural anesthesia again. At this point, my legs were completely numb and lifeless, so K was holding my top leg up for the rest of our efforts to push (God bless her). Every push became more and more painful, and no position I was in could help. I was also vomiting every 10 minutes or so, so things were pretty unpleasant. The baby’s head was all the way down and OB could see its hair, so in addition to the searing pain in my side, there was tons of pressure to push and finish the job. Eventually the pain was numbed by the medication and I was able to push really hard, but still not hard enough to get the baby out. 

OB said that the baby’s heart rate was dropping significantly during contractions, so we should give it a rest and see where we were. The baby was fine when I wasn’t pushing, so she suggested that we give both me and the baby a break for about an hour.

They stopped Pitocin and I took a nap (super weird considering the circumstances) because I was completely exhausted. We waited about an hour and I was able to conk out pretty intensely. Around 45 minutes later, the pain in my left side came back completely and I started throwing up again. K paged the CRNA, who came back in and did another bolus of fentanyl, lidocaine, and the epidural anesthesia. They’d warned me that the first round of fentanyl is amazing, but every subsequent dose is less and less effective, and that’s exactly what I experienced. I was only about 50% numb at that point. When OB came back in, she said that we had about 15 minutes to get the baby out vaginally in order to keep the baby safe and asked me if I thought I could do it. I told her I wanted to try, but that unless my left side went numb again, there would be no way I could focus on pushing because the pain was so great. I never got more numb and tried to push twice as hard as I could, but at this point was borderline screaming with every push and totally unable to focus on moving the baby down.

OB gently told me that we needed to do a C-section in order to keep the baby safe. I knew how disappointed she was to make that call because she was so intent on getting the baby delivered vaginally, and I also knew that if she was saying we needed surgery, it must be the last-ditch option. A big part of me was extremely relieved to be going into surgery because I was completely exhausted.

Once she called for a C-section (and she stipulated a STAT C-section, so it was extra urgent-feeling), about 6 different nurses rushed into the room and OB left to get scrubbed. One whisked Jordan away to scrub in, one was unhooking/relooking my IV to different meds/machines, the CRNA came back to tell me about anesthesia options, people were filing paperwork, I was signing stuff, etc. It was chaos, but it was organized chaos.

They wheeled me down the hallway to the operating room, and all I could think about was how badly I hoped we didn’t pass the waiting room in the process because I really didn't want my mom to see me being wheeled into surgery, since, as far as our parents knew, we were back there pushing. Everybody had scrubbed in by the time we hit the door of the OR; OB and the CRNA were both already there and gloved. They moved me from my gurney to the operating table, put a cap on me, and started a scratch test. I remember making sure they grabbed my pillow from the bed because it wasn’t the hospital’s and it’s my all-time fave pillow (#priorities, obviously).

They took a needle and poked up my legs and abdomen, which I couldn’t really feel. Then they started the process of placing a urinary catheter, which was really uncomfortable and I could feel most of. Our badass nurse, K, realized that I could feel that and told the CRNA that it was clear the anesthesia wasn’t working well enough in the epidural alone to do the surgery with just that. The CRNA then decided it would be best to do a spinal block for the surgery, so she numbed the area and administered the block (which I couldn’t really feel).

At this point, my memory of this whole thing is really spotty. I actually had to ask OB (at my 6 week follow-up last week) how long we were physically in the OR, because I have no concept of how much time passed. The answer was about an hour and 45 minutes. I think the easiest thing to do is explain what happened from a medical perspective, then explain what it was like on my end. 

What happened (per my limited understanding of medicine):  

Apparently, the epidural catheter was placed really poorly, which is why I was able to feel the pain of back labor earlier. Ordinarily, they would have re-placed the catcher (epidurals have a catheter just like an IV port, and the meds are administered through the catheter) before the C-section, but since the baby was in distress, they didn't have time to do that. Once they realized I wasn't numb in the OR, the CRNA made the call to do a spinal block. Because of the back labor, I had had so much extra medication put into the epidural catheter that there was tons of anesthesia already in my spinal space, and when the spinal block was administered, all of the anesthesia in my body shot to the top of my spinal column, paralyzing me from the chin down and also paralyzing my diaphragm, making it impossible for me to speak or breathe on my own until the anesthesia burned off. It's what's called a "high spinal," and is really rare, so if you're reading this as a future mom, this isn't something you should worry about. 

My memory of it all:  

There's a long, bulleted list in a journal I keep of what this experience was like for me. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I want to share it here, and ultimately decided that there were details about this experience that are too grizzly and feel too personal to write about publicly. Suffice it to say that I was fully conscious and aware of taking shallower and shallower breaths until I wasn't able to breathe anymore, and was only able to communicate my panic to OB by widening my eyes to let her know something was wrong. For understandable reasons, the anesthesiologist who they paged (the CRNA was dismissed from the OR) wouldn't let Jordan come in, so I was without him for the scariest part. Lots of it I don't remember. Once I was coming back to awareness/consciousness, my first real memory is hearing Jordan in my ear saying, "It's a Mac!" (We had a girl name and a boy name picked out, so that was his way of telling me we had a son. So precious.) 

My second real memory is looking back over my shoulder to see Jordan doing skin-to-skin with the baby since he knew I wanted to but wasn't able to. He was singing to the baby and crying, both because our son was so perfect and because when he entered the OR, I wasn't responsive and it scared the hell out of him. 

The surgery itself went perfectly. Mac was born at 5:55 PM, weighing in at 8 lbs, 7 oz, 20 3/4 inches long. He passed his Apgar with flying colors, and Jordan brought him over to see me on the table. I peeked over the blanket to see the tiny miracle we had made for the first time, and all the emotions I'd been working so hard to control flooded out of me in full-fledged sobs. 

He was all at once a stranger and my most familiar friend.

After I the surgery was over, everything went just about the way you think it would. Our poor parents had been waiting without an update for a long time, so they were pretty freaked out to learn what had happened since all they knew was that I had been wheeled into surgery, then two hours passed with no news. But when they came back to the recovery area to see us (Mac included), we got this.

I have watched the tape of the day I was born more times than I can count - I could quote it all back to you. My favorite moment of the day is when my grandparents see their very first grandchild for the first time. My parents (like Jordan and me) decided not to find out the sex of the baby, and (like Jordan and me) didn't share any of the names they were kicking around until the day I was born. Had I not know that this moment was possible, it would've been a lot harder for us to go without knowing the gender - but what a pay-off it was. Easily one of my favorite moments of all time: 

Mac's delivery was easily the most frightening thing I've ever gone through in my life, piggybacking on the experience of childbirth, which is already momentous and life-changing in so may ways. Once everything was resolved, the anesthesiologist leaned down by my head and said, "You've got ice in your veins, girl. I don't know how you handled that so well." 

I'll take that with me for the rest of my life. I didn't know that I was as mentally tough as I was. I don't think I'm tougher than anyone else; that experience showed me that I think we all have ice in our veins if we can dig down deep enough to tap into it. Having Mac showed me that I can survive a great deal more than I ever thought possible, and that I can stand on my own in the face of a really harrowing situation. I have never thought of myself as a particularly strong person - kind and compassionate, but not tough. Now I know that I am capable of dealing with absolutely anything that comes at me, that I have the drive and grit to dig my heels in and finish the job when the going gets tough. I am proud of myself. I didn't know I had it in me.

The photo below was taken on the day we left the hospital. My mom snapped it hours before we were released into the real world, leaving the cocoon of the hospital for the first time in over 3 days. I was still swollen, sore, walking hunched over a bit. The first time I saw this photo, I didn't recognize the woman in it. The new mom, holding her perfect newborn son. 

I am getting to know her, too. 

She is all at once a stranger and my most familiar friend. 

Gilmore Gab.

Oh, Gilmore Girls. You're coming back. And I am REALLY EXCITED. 

People have a love-hate relationship with Gilmore Girls. And by that I mean that people either love it or hate it. It's a very polarizing piece of entertainment.

Though the release date for the four new movies hasn't been announced, the promotional photos have begun circulating. And for that reason, it seemed appropriate to do a post about Gilmore and company. I have too many thoughts about this show to possibly craft this post into a theme, so I'm just going for it: rapid fire, all over the board. Some will be big thoughts, some will be dumb.

Ready? Let's go. 

1. Logan is the best of the boyfriends.  

Anyone who knows me well know that I really have a thing for tall guys. And that's putting it gently. So this declaration about Logan may come as a surprise to people who've heard me say things like, "Sean Penn is only 5'8''?! EW!!!" But I stand by it, despite the fact that Matt Czuchry is reportedly only 5'9''. 

Logan, though panned by many for being a silver-spooned-spoiled-brat, was the best of Rory's three long-term relationships. I think we can all agree that Dean, while charming (except for when he CHEATED ON HIS WIFE) was nice and all, but he was too small-town for Rory's career aspirations. Jess, the moody, emotional, artist, was probably her best match in terms of likeness and compatibility. 

But LOGAN. 

Logan was a Huntzberger, which meant that Rory would have married into opportunity. Into open doors. And sure, he was petulant and childish a few times - but every single time that he made a mistake, he owned up to it. And by the end, he was absolutely dripping with charisma. That scene where he comes to Stars Hollow with Rory and ends up having late-night, real talk with Lorelai over pie?? (Wait, you don't remember that scene because you have a life and didn't just watch the entire series straight through AGAIN?) It's the best. He's also very smart, despite the fact that he didn't have to be. He knows what he wants, he can articulate it, and he goes after it. 

I'm not saying she should've accepted his proposal -- I think she was smart to put her career first. But I wish that Logan had kept his promise to "factor her in," and I hope that this reboot includes them finding their way back to each other somehow. 

2. Lorelai is kind of the worst. 

WE KNOW.

Listen, friends, 'cause this next part is important: Lauren Graham is NOT the worst. She's the best. She's wonderful, and she perfectly portrayed the character that was written for her. Lorelai Gilmore, on the other hand, is really tough for me to take as an adult. 

When you watch this show as a child, you think, "MAN, how great would it be to have a mom like that? A mom who's your best friend? Who stuffs you full of junk food and then you just veg out on the couch together gabbing about boys?" (...okay, well I have a mom like that, so I personally didn't think that, but you get my point. Also, happy birthday, Mom!!) 

My point is that she's the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of moms. She is the unattainable ideal. But with that spontaneous joie de vivre comes A. LOT. of downsides. Over the course of the show, she:

• Relentlessly patronizes and minimizes Sookie, her supposed best friend.

• Starts dating Rory's teacher, accepts his proposal, then dumps him.

• Secretly dates her father's business partner, one of the things ends up torpedoing her father's company.

• Passive aggressively stews over Luke postponing the wedding because of April, instead of just TALKING IT OUT.

• Casually sleeps with Christopher, RORY'S DAD the night she and Luke break up.

• Marries Christopher on a freakin' whim without Rory even being there.

• Trots Christopher out in Stars Hollow and plainly tells him she's worried people won't like him very much.

• Dumps Christopher mere months into their marriage, potentially damaging Chris and Rory's relationship forever.

• Gives a drunken toast at Lane and Zack's wedding reception accusing them of being too young to get married.

• Publishes a magazine article crucifying her mother, then asks Emily to just forget it ever happened.

• Doesn't tell her parents (either time) she gets engaged.

I'm quite certain there are dozens that I'm leaving out. More or less, she's a pretty self-absorbed pain in the ass that's fun to watch on TV. But if you're like me, and the people on TV end up becoming real people in your lives (there has to be some kind of psychotic name for this condition), then Lorelai Gilmore is one of the most annoying ones around. 

3. Alexis Bledel is a chronic huncher. 

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STAND UP STRAIGHT

This one has bothered me for years. Probably most obvious in the episode where Rory goes to that dance with Dean, and Lorelai makes her a blue off-the-shoulder dress that is basically a neon sign saying, "CHECK OUT MY BAD POSTURE." I have actually googled "Alexis Bledel scoliosis" to see if anything turned up, because obviously I don't want to be offensive if this is some sort of medical condition. (It isn't.)

It gets better as the seasons go on, and Alexis Bledel happens to be (in my humble opinion) one of the more visually stunning actresses out there. But girl? I'm about to snatch that hair up and MAKE you stand up straight. 

4. I am really going to miss Edward Herrmann.

Emily and Richard Gilmore serve as anchors for this show. The solid steadfastness of these characters are what allow Lorelai and Rory's lives to be as whimsical and free-form as they are - as viewers, we can handle the girls eating Pop Tarts for dinner, because we know that at some point during the week, they'll be balanced with Friday Night Dinners. 

I loved the chemistry that Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop (Emily) had. They really were a dream team. He was a fine actor and seemed like such a sweet man, and just brought this special kind of gravitas to the show. He wasn't a "Gilmore girl," but he was important, and I'm sad he died. 

5. This show is a feminist dream. 

Of course this show is about Lorelai and Rory. But it's also about a third Gilmore Girl - Emily. Almost every single episode features Lorelai's complicated relationship with her parents, or Rory's sweet and healthy (mostly) relationship with them. At the heart of this show, the story is about women - mothers, daughters, grandmothers, granddaughters, best friends, business partners - all supporting, loving, and showing up for each other. 

It's wonderful that the relationships are complex, because that's how real relationships among women are. The stories are meaty, heartbreaking, triumphant - they're real. Emily, Lorelai, Sookie, Rory, Lane, Paris...all the women on this show are completely different from each other, but tied together in friendship or by blood (or both). Gilmore Girls is a shining brick in the house of entertainment for women. It says, "Whatever you want to be is okay. Be the best at it." Punk rock Seventh Day Adventist turned mother of twins? Do it. WASPy corporate wife with a mind of her own? Yes. Independent, snarky, Manic Pixie Dream Girl who should weigh 3,500 pounds? Absolutely.

It's about family - they family you're born with and the family you make. 

MAN I can't wait for these reboots to come out. I'll be blogging them, but of course.