Let Me Live

As I lead our small congregation of three during morning prayer, I was struck by these words of the Psalmist:

Let me live, and I will praise you,
and let your judgments help me.

For a brief moment, I recalled the feelings of fear and depression that I had when I was a teenager trying to figure out who I was and how did I fit into this world that saw gay people as the butt of abuse and jokes fueled by the AIDS epidemic and so forth. It was as if a rip in the time-space continuum opened, and as these words exited my mouth and filled the room, it was a much younger version of myself speaking, like an echo from my past. I never said those words, or wrote them down anywhere when I was in prep school. At least not these specific words. But they reflect the sentiment of much of what I was writing at that time, prayers that were a plea for God to stop the pain and explain why I must suffer and why I was being condemned for feeling love.

The well-publicized deaths of gay teens recently has stayed very present in my thinking. And so as I reflected on this echo, I thought of how many others are still out there struggling against the very strong temptation to make an early exit. I know they're dodging bullies in the hallways and on campuses across this country. They're holding in a part of themselves, and learning how to perform "straight" so they can avoid abuse. They might even be doling out some slurs to show that they aren't "one of them".

But how many of them are hearing the words of the Psalmist, either in this way... or in some other way? Probably not much.

With National Coming Out Day just around the corner, I'm thinking again on how thankful and grateful I am to God for the chance that I got to live. I reflect on all the things, good and bad, that I have experienced along the way that have molded and shaped me into the person I am now: a lesbian who rejoices daily that through Christ I am free, in Christ I am loved, and with Christ I can live and share in the world. In other words, I feel as though the "judgments" of God have helped me. Now, I pray that I and other people who recognize the uphill battle gay teens are still facing, can be the incarnation of God that says, "Ask to live! You will make it!" God, may thy will be done.