Conversation
So I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and my sister after dinner one night just talking and catching up on this and that and we talked about one of my sister's best friends from high school. They roomed together the first two years of college and were as tight as two friends could be. They agreed on so much and talked about their very open minded ideas and such. Since then, said friend went to seminary and began working for a very fire and brimstone church in Columbus as a youth administrator of some sort and has since pretty much broken communication with my sister because of her crazy liberal agenda and that's what we were talking about.
My sister had told us about this conversation they had in college about gay christians and how wrong the church had it and how closed minded it was. They were both good friends with a guy who was in seminary wanting to be a preacher for a church community who would never hire him because of his partner. She said they went on and on about the changes that needed (and eventually were indeed changed) happen. Well she recently ran into her and they spoke for awhile and my sister was getting updated on her marriage and new baby (now nearly 2 years old) and such and talked a little about church, if she still enjoyed her church and the changes in our hometown church which evidentally drove her family out of our church. They started to debate it a little and said friend told my sister that she couldn't believe she could be a part of a church community that accepted "those homos" they would destroy the fabric of the church and go against the bible and so on and so forth. My sister at this point ended the conversation and pretty much wrote off the friendship at that point.
Well this is where it gets interesting because my Mom starts to speak up. I'm putting it in quotes but I can tell you it is probably not word for word, but it's very close because it still sticks in my mind.
"Did you ask her what she would say if Henry (her baby) were to tell her that he was gay? Does she think she would stop loving him because of something as silly as being gay? What kind of mother would that make her? What kind of church is she working at anyway? It doesn't seem like a very christian friendly church to me"
She spoke more on the subject just basically supporting the above statements and such and to be honest at first I didn't even catch on to what she first said, but as soon as the conversation ended and we were all headed off in different directions I had gotten in my car and just sat there for a minute as it hit me and started to sink in.
Did I really just hear that? Did that really just happen? Was this all a set up to get me to come out to them finally? I'm now convinced they both know and are slowly trying to get me to open up about it and they are now working on the comfort level to lay some ground work to make it easier. As I was driving to my next destination for the evening I kept hitting myself wondering why I didn't catch on earlier and just take that opportunity, to finally put it out there and be done with all this craziness in my head. I nearly cried just running that conversation over and over in my head and to be honest have done it a thousand times since that day.
To hear the sincerity in her voice, to see the concern and passion in her face, she knows, she just knows. It feels like another message, another building block in not so distant future new relationship we are laying the ground work for without actually saying it. It still nearly brings me to tears. I haven't talked about it with anyone because it's just been bouncing around in my head trying to process and trying realize the depth of that conversation and what it means to me and how that will affect the timeline of how this goes, but it certainly brings me a little more comfort.
My sister had told us about this conversation they had in college about gay christians and how wrong the church had it and how closed minded it was. They were both good friends with a guy who was in seminary wanting to be a preacher for a church community who would never hire him because of his partner. She said they went on and on about the changes that needed (and eventually were indeed changed) happen. Well she recently ran into her and they spoke for awhile and my sister was getting updated on her marriage and new baby (now nearly 2 years old) and such and talked a little about church, if she still enjoyed her church and the changes in our hometown church which evidentally drove her family out of our church. They started to debate it a little and said friend told my sister that she couldn't believe she could be a part of a church community that accepted "those homos" they would destroy the fabric of the church and go against the bible and so on and so forth. My sister at this point ended the conversation and pretty much wrote off the friendship at that point.
Well this is where it gets interesting because my Mom starts to speak up. I'm putting it in quotes but I can tell you it is probably not word for word, but it's very close because it still sticks in my mind.
"Did you ask her what she would say if Henry (her baby) were to tell her that he was gay? Does she think she would stop loving him because of something as silly as being gay? What kind of mother would that make her? What kind of church is she working at anyway? It doesn't seem like a very christian friendly church to me"
She spoke more on the subject just basically supporting the above statements and such and to be honest at first I didn't even catch on to what she first said, but as soon as the conversation ended and we were all headed off in different directions I had gotten in my car and just sat there for a minute as it hit me and started to sink in.
Did I really just hear that? Did that really just happen? Was this all a set up to get me to come out to them finally? I'm now convinced they both know and are slowly trying to get me to open up about it and they are now working on the comfort level to lay some ground work to make it easier. As I was driving to my next destination for the evening I kept hitting myself wondering why I didn't catch on earlier and just take that opportunity, to finally put it out there and be done with all this craziness in my head. I nearly cried just running that conversation over and over in my head and to be honest have done it a thousand times since that day.
To hear the sincerity in her voice, to see the concern and passion in her face, she knows, she just knows. It feels like another message, another building block in not so distant future new relationship we are laying the ground work for without actually saying it. It still nearly brings me to tears. I haven't talked about it with anyone because it's just been bouncing around in my head trying to process and trying realize the depth of that conversation and what it means to me and how that will affect the timeline of how this goes, but it certainly brings me a little more comfort.
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