Who Really Needs to Come Out of the Closet?

I stumbled, fell and cried out but my brother shied away

And I found myself alone in silence, wishing he would stay.

He quickly turned the corner, as if he hadn't realized,

I'd turned and looked to him in pain, with pleading tear-filled eyes.

I saw my brother stumble so I quickly looked away.

I'll ask him how he's doing on perhaps a better day.

I heard my brother crying but I quickly realized

He'd not be wanting me to see the tears that filled his eyes.

So we're just keeping distance till again it all seems right

And saying a little prayer or two before turning in at night.

No reason now to get involved, there's nothing much to say

Both blind; both fine; both better off this way.

-- Thom Hunter

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. -- Galatians 6:2

"Imagine, if you will," comes the Rod Serling voice, "A church in the middle of a very ordinary town, with stained glass windows, cushioned pews and friendly faces at the door.  We've arrived on a very ordinary Wednesday night, just in time for the pre-prayer-service meal.  Elaine sits in her usual place in the middle of a long table, in the middle of the fellowship hall . . . in the middle of it all."

"Did you hear about  . . . . ?" said Elaine, her voice trailing off a bit as she lowers it, looks side-to-side, and begins to share the news with those in hearing range.  Her fork is poised in the air over a plate of ham, sweet-potatoes, peas and carrots and a buttered piece of bread.  Elaine is one of the best of the best when it comes to church gossip and ears quickly bend her way.

"Elaine, you're just like a dog returning to its vomit, I see," says the pastor in a calm and steady voice as he approaches her table.

Elaine stops, puts down her fork, squirms in her seat a bit, gathers her plate and purse and moves on down to another table.

"Well . . . I never!" she says.  "Did you hear what he said to me?  You will never believe."

Again, the voice interrupts:  "Elaine, you gossip because you think it is fun, but you're just like a dog returning to its vomit."

Elaine, now in shock, sits, ponders, sets her fork gently down beside her plate and says "You're right, Pastor.  I confess to the sin of gossip and I ask for your forgiveness and help in repentance."

"Sorry, Elaine," he answers.  "This has gone on too long. You've confessed before and here you are, at it again.  I don't think it is possible for you to ever stop gossiping.  And, while I say this completely out of love for you, I think it's best for all of us if you just leave and not come back. We'll vote on it Sunday night, but basically, I think the tribe has spoken."

So Elaine puts out her torch, which means in this case, stifles her tongue, and leaves immediately.  Life goes on, post-Elaine.

Obviously, this is a greatly-exaggerated account.  Sin is more subtle; response more nuanced. The Elaines among us are not that blatant in their sin; the pastors not that direct in dealing with it; the church members not that silent an audience.  But, in real life, there is a great deal of confusion about how to deal with sin among the believers, particularly when the sin seems to have so firm a grip and especially when that sin is something that we can not easily dissect or dig down to the root cause. We see it flourish and, like a weed among the flowers, we want to pluck it out.

Of course the pastor does not intervene and Elaine is not removed.  She finishes her pie and her story with a flourish, confident that her words will be repeated by others, giving her a sense of belonging she can't seem to find any other way.  She keeps on top of all the latest because she needs to be needed and knows no other way. Her sin is gossip; her fear is loneliness.  We should start with her fear.

Andy gets antsy about halfway through the prayer meeting, looks at his watch and yawns.  The pastor noticed Andy was pretty bleary-eyed already when he came into the church, but Andy just explained that he'd been glued to his computer all afternoon, trying to get a big project done. Andy was anxious to get home and finish the project in his home office:  feasting on XXX pornography over the Internet.

Like a dog returning to its vomit?  Perhaps.  Extending a season of fun? Maybe. More likely feeding a secret addiction that has wrapped itself so tightly around Andy that most of life has now been squeezed from him and he is bound to meaningless images and fantasies that strip him of any dignity and slowly drain from him all the sensitivity he once had toward his wife and children.

Lindsey is 17.  As usual, she has worn her favorite long-sleeved turtle-neck pull-over to church and sits in a silent, pouty position at the far end of a back-of-the-room pew.  She is listening in, but looking down as she rubs her arms and twists her hands, fighting back tears, but smiling weakly whenever she's approached.

"Are you okay, honey?" a sweet voice asks.

"I'm fine," she answers, mustering her familiar weak smile, her bangs hanging over her dark eyes.

"Well, of course you are, sweetheart," comes the reply.  "And God loves you just the way you are."

Lindsey will cut herself in the bathroom when she gets back home, inflicting another physical scar for the pain she feels inside and can't reveal.  And then she'll give her mom and dad a peck on the cheek and lay in bed wishing for sleep, longing for peace.

Terrance skipped church altogether on this Wednesday night and is walking along the trails of the city park a few blocks from his home as the sun slowly dips behind the trees.  He collapses on a wooden bench and puts his head in his folded arm, looking every bit the part of a breathless runner who has pushed himself to the limit and needs to rest.  He is at his limit.  He hates himself because he is not like the other boys at his high school and he doesn't know why and he's afraid to ask himself or anyone else.  The dark descends like a comfortable blanket, hiding him.  He wants to cry.

"If I'm gay, I may as well just kill myself before my Dad does."

Prayers are wrapping up in the comfy sanctuary.  All the pending surgeries have been covered.  Missions have been blessed.  Traveling mercies extended.  All have confessed their weekly falling short, and everyone is ready for a little free time in front of the TV.  The DVRs are getting full and need relief.

Elaine and Andy and Lindsey and Terrance are sinners, awash in their own shame, hardened by the indifference of the Christians around them, those who are to be known by their love.  All four need surgery.  They're all a mission.  They're traveling . . . and they really need some mercy.  Their lives are playing out like the scripted dramas everyone is rushing home to submerge themselves in . . . but they're real.  And they're Christians . . . and God does indeed love them just as they are.  But if He loves them too much to leave them there, why don't we? If he can acknowledge their sin and respond with His grace, why can't we? If He can look straight into their hearts, why are we looking over their heads?

Maybe they should come out of their closets?  Elaine should just confess that she's a sad, lonely and empty woman who wants attention so badly she will spin tales for it.  Andy should just come clean and tell everyone that instead of having real relationships, he slips himself into naked fantasies, in vulgar opposition to the life he models in his deacon role.  Lindsey should explain that she is punishing herself at 17 because at 16 she gave her body away to a 19-year-old who said he loved all of her . . . and then left her to go love all of someone else.  And Terrance?  Terrance should share about his self-hatred, acknowledge the sense of rejection that triggers his misguided search for his masculine identity through improper same-sex interaction and his concerns about an eroding resistance to temptation.

Unsaved?  Not Terrance.  Not Lindsey . . . or Andy or Elaine.  Precious ones, never alone in their sin, but accompanied by a Savior who knows Elaine could spread blessings instead of gossip, that Andy could live and love in reality, deleting the addictive fantasies that have claimed his mind, that Lindsey could forgive herself and wash away the mistakes of her past, that Terrance could see himself as God sees Him, instead of seeing himself as the broken one with no choice but to submit to the world's definitions.

Christians all, but guarding secrets in what should be the most loving and healing environment on earth, the church.  These four represent so many Christians who struggle in secret with the things of this world, surrounded by people who should be safe and welcoming, known by their love, pouring out forgiveness, willing and able to hear the confessions, extending grace, offering a shoulder for comfort, a hand for support, a word of encouragement and a pledge of accountability through the walk of repentance. While he should be hearing "come on out," the sinner in the secret closet sees himself more like the spider who tiptoes through the space below the door only to find someone waiting with a broom and a dustpan on the other side.

For most sinners, the fear of what will happen if they emerge from the closet is greater than the fear of the sin locked inside there with them. In my decades-long struggle with homosexuality, habitual cover-up had a greater hold on me in some ways than did my habitual sin. The what-might-happen seemed more threatening than the what-was. I would do almost anything to keep from being discovered . . . and eventually I convinced myself that exposure of my sin would harm more people than the practice of it. Suffering through the struggle in silence was better than the risk of real-time retribution. In time, all of it -- the secrecy and the revelation resulted in an avalanche of epic proportions and seemingly uncountable victims.  There was no longer enough room in my closet for all the junk I accumulated. It was spilling out the door, leaving a trail of sinful crumbs down the hall.

Maybe we should all come out of our closets?  We who accepted the sacrifice of Jesus so we would not die in our sins.  We who praise Him for His love and hoard our own, as if He could not provide it amply to extend to others.  We who mutter "there but for the grace of God go I" and then stand by and watch others go there.  We who crave mercy but are too distracted to share it.  We who are so clean, washed as white as snow, startled into silence by the stains of others.  Snug in our eternal life, we watch others die around us.  We who walk in the light, but quench it in our closets of comfort.

Do we, for some reason, think our callousness about the ravaging toll sin takes on our brothers and sisters somehow shows us to be strong . . . because we are unwavering in our righteousness . . . and our determination to keep our hands clean?

God knows what the Elaines and the Lindseys and the Andys and the Terrances and the Thoms are going through, how they got there, and when and if they are going to get through it and beyond it. And He also already knows how He will use their struggle for His glory and to accomplish His will. Maybe they're not so happy about the journey on which He has allowed them to embark, but he knows how long the tunnel is and who can help them make it through. He also knows already whether you are going to respond or reject. He knows whether you will venture out of your safe closet to help them clean up theirs.

If "they," the observant non-believers -- whoever they are and we really should want to know -- are to know us by our love, then we may never be known.  Not if we cannot bring ourselves to embrace the broken ones that Christ has placed within easy reach:  the Elaines, Andys, Lindseys and Terrances that pull themselves together enough to come into this place in hope there will be more than peas and prayers.

We can only blame it on culture for so long . . . and then we need to unfold our shoulders and bear the load.  We need to stop giving in, declaring hopelessness, wagging our heads with faces curved by condemning grimaces, removing the sins that might taint us by driving the bearer from our midst.

In truth, some Christians do reflect the love of God and display His grace . . . but they need some reinforcements. The ever-increasing wounded who can only be healed through the love of Christ, shared without restraint by the redeemed.

As imperfect as our church may be, these sinners will not find something better beyond our walls. They do not wash away sins "out there," they celebrate them and proclaim them as identity, taking pride. If we see our brothers sinning, but dismiss even the slightest hint of a true desire to repent and fold our arms in front of us in  in defense instead of wrapping our arms around their shoulders, it is we who have surrendered, not they.  Will it be warmer out there around the fire of distorted acceptance?  Shall we just wish them "god speed," and give them no reason to even continue to believe there is a God . . . who lives inside us?

Come out of the closet.  Andy's pornography addiction will not defile you when you make a plan to call him up and check on him and set up some time to get together for healthy distraction.  Lindsey's past looseness will not topple you from your purity when you listen to her cry and tell her that not only does God love her, but you do too . . . and that you will stay by her side as she walks out of her past. You will not become gay by standing with Terrance as he searches for the person God created him to be and walk with him through the trials and struggles of seeking wholeness. You won't lose your reputation by loving Elaine and listening to the truthful needs of her heart as she shifts to sharing blessings. Your love might be one she shares.

Jesus was a gentle savior who reached out his hands to those in pain, who knew the secrets of the strugglers and did not turn away, who stooped down to lift up, who risked his own reputation to help others build a new one. He knew how to love . . . and He told us to be like Him.

We're so often not.  Maybe that's why we're in the closet.

In His pain, he freed us all.  In our pain, we bind others up in theirs.  Unable to share our own failings, we hide them behind our holiness and increase the intensity others feel by comparison.  In the light of our inflated righteousness, their wretched sinfulness retains a greater grip on them as they strive to keep it from being seen. In the discomfort of our own cover-ups, we overcompensate in pointing at others when their covers are pulled back. We didn't want to know . . . but well . . . now that we do . . . we've go to do . . . something.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. -- Galatians 5:22-23

In our closets, we store the fruit -- love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control -- that would nourish the broken souls that wander around the door.

God must surely wonder how we can be so blessed and so bereft of sharing it.  The abundance is unimaginable, but we bury it instead of investing it. Do we for some reason believe He can't handle all of this?

Some of us are in closets of cloistered Christianity.  Others of us are in closets of condemnation.  Whichever closet you are in, there is no reason to be there.  Not with overflowing grace, unlimited forgiveness, boundless mercy, unfathomable love, enduring healing, eternal peace.

Please come out.  Someone stands at your door and knocks.

Give Elaine something to really talk about.

God Bless,

Thom

The Day My Father Did Not Die

The Weight of Who I Am

Chapter Nine


Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; -- Proverbs 3:5

I told myself that June 2009 would be a new beginning, but it was more of a lingering ending, as if the writer of this chapter of life couldn't bring Himself to compose the page-turning sentence.  If this was a pause for dramatic effect, it was overkill.  Could we not move on . . . please?  I spent days counting losses; nights dreaming of them.  My pep talks were not working, and I was having a hard time swallowing the "somewhere God opens a window" happy pill.  

The calendar on our refrigerator held new meetings in the place of old ones scratched through, smudges of a former life.  

"Meet with attorney."  

"Potential court date."  

"Final retirement papers due to AT&T."  

"Visit new church."  

Not very social.  There was no penciling-in of pool parties, church picnics, summer vacations, grandchildren to babysit, birthdays to celebrate.

I tried to think of mundane things to place on the calendar, to fill in the blanks, like daily reminders that I had not died.

"Get a haircut."

"Mow the lawn."

"Write something."

A "new beginning" and a "starting over," are oddly similar, but they are not the same.  One sounds like you are going to do something different and the other sounds like you're back to square one. Positive words:  "new," "starting," "beginning."  Troubling word:  "over."  Just walking through the house to look out the windows to see if north, south, east and west are all still there falls a bit short of either phrase's expressed optimism. For me, there seemed no appeal in beginning again or exploring do-overs; too much was gone; there was too little remaining on which to build.  The views were familiar, but about as real as a Polaroid, smaller and flatter than I remembered. The familiar roads led nowhere because there was nowhere to go.  All the highways and byways that had seemed connected on life's road-map had been rolled up like carpet and put on a shelf.  Life's journeys had narrowed down to trips to 7-Eleven -- with the hope I would not see anyone I knew, though I wished I would -- and trips down the gravel road to the mailbox -- with hopes I would hear from no-one, though I desperately wanted to.  I was more than conflicted; I was equally-balanced between thinking life was revolving around me . . . and that life had stopped revolving altogether.

Lisa assured me I had not died.  "Yes, you are still a person," she would agree when I would say "I'm a person too," in doubt.

Even when we disappear to everyone else . . . we are still here.  The road that seems to connect nowhere else still knows the way to God.

The Early 70s

College Days

June 20, 1973

 Mr. Tom Hunter 

P.O. Box 5461

North Texas Station 

Denton, Texas 76203

Dear Tom,

Sure was happy to receive your letter today.  Made me feel pretty good, it has been quite a spell since you've wrote me a letter, and that was a very nice letter.

Sounds like your doing real swell in college.  I'm real proud of you Tom.  I'm proud of all four of you kids.  Just keep up the good work but don't get so covered up that you don't have a little time for pleasure also.  I think that the way of life that you have chosen for yourself or feel that you were chosen to follow is a wonderful way.  So let no one discourage you.

You say now that you are out on your own you understand things a little better.  I feel as you grow older you will understand and realize a lot more.

I'm going to try to get in a position where I can lend a helping hand when needed.  As I told Sue, that's what I'm for.  You kids have never asked me for anything and I think that's where I failed.  I believe I would have felt better if you all had but still I think that you all are just getting to the point where you will need it most of all if I can only give it to you when you need it.  Maybe sometimes I can, maybe sometimes I can't.  So please don't be angry or disappointed if I can't, but I'm going to try awfully hard.

So please write to me and I'll be seeing you soon.

Love, 

Dad

I wish I had a copy of a faded letter of my reply to him to assure me that I wrote my father back.  I'm sure I did not make him feel "better" by asking him for anything because I had, in my self-righteous college-kid arrogance, with dismissive superiority, foreclosed the possibility that he had anything left to give, further devaluing him at a moment when value is what he so needed.  Sure, in unexpected waves of emotion, I would find myself, as a 19-year-old, wanting to sit once again on the merry-go-round with my siblings while he pushed us in ever-faster, never-ending circles that went . . . no-where.  Late nights at my desk behind some perplexing book, I would let my mind drift back to memories of summer nights in his dilapidated one-room high-rise apartment in downtown Fort Worth where we would watch the revolving neon sign on the neighboring bank building and eat dime-a-can biscuits with grape jelly and he would slide his rough hand across my burr-cut head:  "My Tom-Bo."  But, Tom-Bo, and Susie-Q would always join Mike and Debbie on the bus in the morning and Fort Worth would fade.  And fade.

Some things, however, do not fade. They insistently persist, leaving stains that challenge all efforts to cover or color over, no matter how hard we try. With an obliging lack of awareness and the over-rated wisdom of a teenager, I declared that my past would not present itself as an encumbrance to my present or possess any power over my future. I shrugged off the abandonment and accepted my Dad's explanation that it was not what he had intended to do. I buried the sexual abuse by Mr. Hooten as "just one of those things" that happened, now irrelevant.  Shrug and dug; done and gone.  I was grown.  I decided I would try to trust again, though the list was an exclusive one, with Christ at the top, and myself second.  Others to be added later.

My high school years ended on the high note of personal freedom.  I worried about what would happen to my mother and little sister if I abandoned my bedroom-hallway to the right of the front door. Would they spend the rest of their years eating cupcakes, rolling their hair and doing their nails during Carol Burnett and kicking back to laugh at Johnny Carson before turning in?  I was afraid Sue would never leave my mother alone.

The worry was short-lived though, as Mother surprised really none of us when she announced she had met a "really good guy" one night while out dancing in Dallas with her friends, Lottie and Beverly.  I admit to some doubt, going on the assumption that in the past she had considered Daddy and "the man whose name we do not mention" to be "good guys" also.  Then George came to dinner.

Mother made one of her greatest meals -- the Saladmaster Waterless Cookware special -- a pot roast, potatoes, carrots and an upside-down pineapple cake all cooked in the same pot, without water, flavors un-mingled . . . magic. For the past year or so, whenever evenings or weekends were free, Mother had been hitting the cookware sales circuit, demonstrating Saladmaster in all the finest homes . . . and I had been her chief assistant and waterless cookware washer.  George could not have known how many times I'd eaten that very menu as Mother perfected it.

As it turns out, George would have eaten a raw onion and a glass of sour milk if that was all she had offered.  For the first time in my life, I saw a man truly in love.  And, of all things, with my mother, who had learned from her past, but had retained her determination to keep life interesting. George had nothing at all in common with Daddy or the unmentionable (Michael).

"So, what do you do for a living?" I wanted to know.

"I build and repair airplane engines," George said nonchalantly, beating a pipe against his palm to see if I might notice he was missing a few fingers.  "I've been doing it for a long time and it's a good job and a good company and I like it." George never left anyone guessing about whether he was telling the truth. His life was good enough to not need embellishment.

Not a tall man, George was strong, blonde-haired, smiled a lot and had kind eyes that did not look away.  He liked to work hard, talk, fix things, listen, help people, laugh at jokes, tell stories, hunt, fish, dance and . . . my mother. And he even liked me, which was fine with me, though I considered him about 20 years and a couple of mis-steps too late.  I did not want a father.

George did, however, turn out to be a good friend, a very good husband for my mother, and an important influence on me as I tried to catch up on the idea of what men are supposed to be.  Granted, I did not follow his example closely enough to learn how to build Civil War muzzle-loaders, hand-carve Meerschaum pipes or square-dance, and I never wore a fringed leather-jacket or Nocona snake skin cowboy boots.  But I did learn.

Not once did George ridicule or dismiss my interests -- reading, writing, listening to music, going to church -- or criticize me for not being able to tie a good knot, handle a knife, take down a deer, clean a fish, or rebuild any kind of an engine.  Not once.

Only one thing about me was unsettling to George.

"Tom," he said, a few months after my mother traded the last-name-we-won't mention for his, and became Mrs. George Oliver Thomas.  "Shake my hand."

I had already done that.  I shook it when I met him; I shook it at the wedding.  What did he expect?

Suddenly, my bravado of "being all over it,"  -- "it" being the past -- disappeared.  I did not like to touch or be touched, part of a protective bubble I had built around myself in the years beyond Mr. Hooten's abuse and my Dad's "Tom-Bo" head rubs.  It wasn't a phobia, just a discomfort, part guilt from having let someone touch me so wrongly, and part an awkwardness from self-inflicted solitude.  I wasn't good at touching or being touched.  I squirmed away when hugged. I flinched when patted on the back.  I ducked when someone tried to tousle my hair.  A peck on the cheek would produce a grimace. The aunt-hugs at Thanksgiving were like running a gauntlet . . . give me air. These were not predetermined reactions, just natural for me.

I had already shaken his hand twice and had done so pretty much voluntarily.

"Your mother and I will be moving to Irving soon and I want to teach you to shake hands before we go," he said, in that way he had of making every word count, leaving no doubt as to intention.

Teach?  You mean, I thought, I'm 19 and I don't know how to shake hands? "Well, yes," George would have said if I had asked:  "You're 19 and you don't know how to shake hands."  Unlike the stepfather who preceded him, he would not have added, "What in hell is wrong with you?"

Instead, he looked straight at me with the eyes that do not turn away and he locked in on my eyes that could not turn away, extended his right hand and said "I'm George.  How are you?"

My hand went in his. I may have outnumbered him in fingers, but he definitely had the edge in squeeze and firmness and would not let go until I responded with proper force, grasping his hand with acknowledgment.

"I'm Thom.  And I'm fine.  Thank you for asking."

George taught things the way he had probably learned them.  Once and done.  Check-ups would follow on visits to make sure the handshake routine had taken, acknowledged only once with a "that's good."

I decided my Daddy would have liked George and that the-one-we-never-mentioned would have hated him. Which seemed exactly as it should have been.

During my first year of college, I discovered two things, neither of which would have a positive impact on my grade point.  I discovered the Baptist Student Union on campus, where the doors were always open and someone was always expecting me.  And I discovered Rob, the BSU friend who would become my first dorm roommate . . . and the first real relationship challenge for me, the first sign that there were choices to be made and that I was not as personally-defined as I thought I was. I was teetering on the edge of change and did not know it, moving from the phase where things happen to you to the stage of making things happen, from just reacting to acting.

As the end of my freshman year approached, Mother -- known on the square dance floor and in George's heart as Mary Ellen -- moved to Irving to build a new life with her George.  Our duplex days had ended; my hallway lifestyle would enlarge to the expansive half of a Kerr Hall dorm room on the campus of North Texas State University.  I had decided that much; I was diving into the college scene. I just needed a roommate.

It was time to leave it all behind, even though I had learned by then that doors behind me never seemed to fully close.  I would walk through a new one, and the next room might be bigger, but it was always cluttered by the furniture of the past.  The new sights and sounds were exciting, the new people intriguing and appealing, but everything and everyone was always filtered through my memory banks. The caution signs would go up.

Like Jon before him -- but totally unlike Jon really -- Rob affected my emotions in a way for which I was not prepared.  I had trained myself to be a bit detached, in control, a step ahead, guarding my emotions against pain, walls ready to erect at a moment's notice. I was suspicious of anyone's interest.  What did they want? That reservation had not worked with Jon, whose true interest in me at a time when I felt there was nothing of interest about me, dazzled me in junior high. I learned about friendship and became border-line emotionally dependent, almost to the point of hero worship. At the same time, Jon's sincerity helped me believe there actually were some good things about me. It had been a healthy friendship, the loyal-to-the-end type, but, as usual, a move intervened and Jon and I had grown apart in recent years, seeing each other only a few times through high school.  He had new "best friends."  I never really did, until Rob.

Rob and I had little reason to be friends, as in nothing in common . . . that we knew of . . . when we were introduced by a mutual friend, an older girl at the BSU who knew both of us needed roommates for the summer. The meeting in the Student Union cafeteria would be one of the most puzzling moments of my life, to be replayed over and over again in the light of the tentacled events of life that would come from it as what promised to be healthy and growing would tangle and choke.  There were no warning signs flashing, so I threw myself in completely.  This, finally, was what I needed.  A friend who liked me as much as I liked him

It was almost as if I had met myself . . . and in doing so had found out that I was not anything like myself at all.  I had interests I had never known. Sitting across from me was someone who could sing, an artist, a guy from a stable two-parent home, a one-house-all-my-life guy who laughed easily and made others do the same, the instantly-popular personality, a person who seemed to know what I was thinking before I ever said it . . . and agreed with pretty much all of it.  And, even though my life had been nothing like his at all, it seemed like I knew how he had lived and what he had thought.

Our conversation overflowed with "Really?  Me too!" and "I know exactly what you mean."  "Oh yeah, that's my favorite too."  I didn't understand why I was sharing almost everything about myself with a total stranger and why I felt chilled and shaky as we talked eagerly over each other and on endless topics.  Was this friendship?  Why did I have any interest in this funny little guy who couldn't sit still for a second and who made a joke about everything and everyone?  And why was he so focused on me, sitting still like a stone, but babbling on about all the things I never tell anyone?

And then he asked me about my parents.

"Oh," I said, having heard all about his idyllic life.  "My father died a few years ago."  The words just tripped right out, nonchalantly, as if I had said them a million times before.  And then I heard them.

The shakiness and excitement vanished in the face of the lie.  I was caught but only I knew, because I realized Rob was believing me and if I told him it wasn't true, that "I was only kidding," he might withdraw, re-think the trust which had come so easily.  I was falling into a familiar trap, trying to please someone, to be something I was not, in order to gain something or keep someone.

"I'm sorry," he said . . . and I enjoyed the sympathy, thinking it had been way too long since anyone had actually felt bad about anything I had been through.  I had brought two-parent-perfect-home-Rob to silence.

All for the hope of acceptance, I had, in a sense, killed my father, pushing away the memories of the nights I had laid on my bed in the dark wishing he would come back into my life, knowing he was only a bus ride away down the freeway.

"He just died," I said.  "I don't really want to talk about it."

Besides, there were lots of other things to talk about.  Did we want a floor high up in the dorm?  Did I have a TV, even though they were forbidden?  Had I ever read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this Way Comes?


How could we have the same favorite book?

"He's not really dead," I finally said.

I think if Rob had rejected me when I revealed the lie, we might have saved each other some terrible pain, wished each other the best and moved on.  But he didn't.  He forgave me and said he understood, even though there was no way he could have.

"Let's get a dorm room on the highest floor we can."

The deal was sealed and life was taking a turn I did not understand and did not care to.  I needed a friend and now I had a friend.

I was a person too.

Where were my caution flags?

(Note:  This is chapter 9 of "The Weight of Who I Am."  The first eight chapters ran previously in this blog, beginning with Have We Finally Come to the End?, which was posted on August 11, 2009)

Christians and Sex: This is No Time for Silence

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- His good, pleasing and perfect will. -- Romans 12:2

I always wanted to sing, but never had any confidence in my voice, nor did I ever learn to read music.  Still, that didn't discourage me from joining the First Baptist Church youth choir.  The summer trips were great; the youth musicals inspiring, the snack suppers worth the effort.  The choir sounded great too, but I can take no credit for that.  I did not want to be heard, so I kept my voice so low it couldn't have added much,

If I got a little too loud in practice and Mr. Shadle would hear a bass off key, he would silence all the tenors, altos and sopranos and ask the bass guys to sing alone, walking back and forth in front of us, leaning in with a hand cupped over his ear.  He never found me; I would just mouth the words as he approached and let the other guys carry the weight for all the sound.  I made the choice to have no voice.  I didn't contribute much to the singing and, because I was hiding, I never got the instruction Mr. Shadle might have given me, so I really still can't sing on key . . . at least not on purpose.

When it comes to the chorus of sexual chaos into which this current generation is falling, I think a lot of Christians have made the choice to have no voice, opting to let others carry the tune.  Many Christians are choosing cowardice over courage; callousness over compassion; indifference over love; comfort in ignorance over strength in truth.

What are we afraid of?

Recent headlines paint a picture of a nation obsessed with sex, not in the way of the google-eyed fraternity beer-boys in weekend football commercials, but in a disastrous dead-end way diminishing individuals and dealing death.  Indeed, we're beginning to see life basically defined by sexual identity, a dwindling down of self-worth that leads to division and judgment . . . and endless pain.  And Christians, if they're not just sitting it out on the sidelines are too often speaking harshly and arrogantly, putting more distance between them and ones who need them. Sadly, some of the most judgmental people in public may not regularly be in church, but they often cite scripture and portray themselves as advocates of righteousness.

So, what is true?  The truth is that, scripturally, any sex outside of a marriage covenant between one man and one woman for life is a sin. The truth is that Christ died for all sinners, sexual or otherwise.  The truth is that people who are confused about their sexuality and think themselves gay, or people who find themselves addicted, or people who find themselves giving into temptations, having sex with the same sex, lusting after someone other than their spouse, staring at pornography on their computers, fantasizing . . . are people who, like you, were made in the image of him, and like you -- and all other sheep -- have gone astray.

The truth is, they are as loved by God as you are . . . and the truth is when one of them jumps off a bridge, or leaves a spouse, or hides in a closet, or moves into a dangerous and misdirected lifestyle, we should weep and pray . . . not point and parade in our own over-rated righteousness.

Maybe we're afraid of looking tolerant, so we settle for looking ignorant instead.  But . . . tolerance does not necessarily mean agreement.  Being tolerant of others is not a compromise of our own beliefs, it is a demonstration that we know and understand that sin can and will wrap itself around the mind and heart and soul, and only Christ can break those bonds.  We're not privileged to know how and when He will do so, so we continue on  in hope and love.  If we demonstrate our conviction that a relationship with Jesus is the only way to have a relationship with God, then we need to tolerate people we disagree with and be prepared to witness to them . . . and we can do so without endorsing their ideas. If our personal convictions are true and strong, they are not endangered.

When it comes to sex, we don't much teach and we don't much preach.  And we certainly don't reach, as in out.  While our pews on Sunday have their share of pornography addicts and same-sex strugglers, rare is the church where any effort is made at all to provide a safe place for confession, accountability and repentance.  To most of the sexually-broken, church looks more dangerous than a dark corner in a Mafia-run Mexican village.  Our message is simple:  "Just don't.  And if you already do, don't tell us."  We have some "don'ts" who will and will never look for help.  We have some "already do's" who would die before revealing.  And some of them are dying inside within easy reach of the light.

Are we obsessing about sex?  Consider these recent events:

A judge declared that "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" should not be enforced in the military, no matter what the military itself or the American people think.

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre, who is married, is accused of sending sexual messages and naked photos to a female sports reporter and other women.

Bishop Eddie Long, leader of a 25,000-member megachurch in Atlanta, faces accusations of sexual coercion from four men, former parishioners.

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a free speech case against Westboro Baptist Church, an independent "church" group that protests outside military funerals with signs that say "God Hates Fags."

A judge overturned California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, and Attorney General Jerry Brown declined to appeal, despite the will of the people having already been expressed at the ballot box.

New York Gubernatorial Candidate Carl Paladino is declared homophobic by his opponent for saying that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.”

At least five teenagers across the country recently committed suicide after being taunted as allegedly gay.  One young man in my own hometown of Norman allegedly went home after a public City Council meeting recently where an ordinance to celebrate GLBT month was debated and he shot himself in the head.  The remarks made at the meeting were demeaning and callous, with no regard for who might be harmed by the painful condemnation.

Authorities arrested 10 people in the Bronx, N.Y., in connection with the brutal assault of two teens and an adult who police say were tortured for being gay.

Porn filming has been put on hold because a major porn "star" is infected with the HIV virus. According to Family Safe Media, a new porn film is shot every 39 minutes in the United States alone, and more than 50% of Christians report that pornography is a significant problem in their homes.

Teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease rates continue to rise. Statistics show that more than 60% of teens have had intercourse before high school graduation.

The U.S. Customs Service reports there are more than 100,000 Internet sites offering child pornography.

Scan the Internet and you will find countless more headlines about sex.  And while the bullying of the gay teens has brought that particular issue to the forefront and created a sense of sensitivity, the underlying issue is the fact that the church has ceded sexuality to culture.  Christians may not condone what once would have been considered a sexual revolution, but has now become our sexualized reality . . . but we are accomplices in our silence, from the pulpit, in our homes, in our own lives. We're not adequately putting forth an alternative for those who are trying to find their identity through sex.  And we're not showing grace to those who have fallen into one of Satan's most attractive traps.  We leave them thirsting, we scrimp on forgiveness, we withhold entry on the only path to redemption because, why?  We're afraid we'll get tainted?  Misunderstood?  Labeled as either tolerant or intolerant or as moral bigots?  What tender hearts we have become toward ourselves, even as we have hardened our hearts toward others. Surely we cannot be satisfied to let Ellen and Oprah handle this. Let's not assuage our guilty feelings by watching coverage of candlelight vigils for the ones who took their own lives in despair, not when we are called to be the light.

Woe is me is not an expression of faith.

Too many Christians gather together to lament the fact that the world -- somewhere out there -- is going to hell in a hand-basket.  We shake our heads back and forth with pained expressions, declaring the sexual perversion of the modern day must be a sign of the end times. For some, sexual brokenness may well usher in their personal end time, as they find themselves drowning in sexual addictions down the street from the sanctuary door. If we really believe the end is near, should we not be working ever harder to take them with us?

Truth Should Trump Tradition

Some Christians have ingrained Leviticus 18:22 so deeply into their spiritual psyches that they cannot find any room to combine it with the slightest vision of love and grace and forgiveness and healing.  Dismissing the sexually broken homosexual with a lifted chin and the word abomination, they live in a world dominated by their memories of "Daddy says all homos go to hell" and that settles it.  Why can't they reach out to the ones they would so easily condemn and quote 1 Corinthians 6:11?  "And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

Toss the Winnie the Pooh Routine

There's too much head-scratching  "What's a bear to do?" and not enough "I love you."  Why do we find it so difficult to love someone who struggles with sex?  If we show love, we open doors.  If we open doors, we enter lives.  If we enter lives, we have a chance to speak the truth of God's grace to heal and restore all of the broken.  Why do we determine that some brokenness is beneath us and beyond God?   There's too much hand-wringing and too little hand-folding; too much pointing and too little praying.  And, when we pray about something, should we not also ask God what He might want us to do about it?  As in "do."

Quit Hiding Behind the Smokescreen of Indoctrination

We so often point fingers at the media, the entertainment industry, educators, liberal lawmakers, college campuses and say they are indoctrinating our youth. Why are our youth not already indoctrinated with the doctrines of our beliefs?  Why are they so easily taken down in cultural challenges?  We make jokes about having "the talk" with our children and yet, by the time some parents get around to it, the child has moved beyond the talk . . . to the touch.

We are too silent.

We have forgotten that a life lived well is a demonstration stronger than any indoctrination.  We have forgotten that personal demonstration day-to-day has greater influence than parades on Pride Day.  We have forgotten that we are to love our neighbor. We have forgotten that it is that very love by which we are to be identified.

If we are Christians and we are not hurting for others because of what we see, then we have allowed the influence of culture to make us indifferent. If we are hurting, and we are doing nothing, we have allowed culture to make us impotent.

How much longer will we pretend to be a mighty choir, but only mouth the words?

It may be that your church is an exception to the rule when it comes to providing a biblical, truthful and compassionate response to the sexually-broken.  If that is so, I hope you will leave a comment below to serve as an encouragement for other Christians to step forward and stand with no rocks in their hands, as Christ would.

What programs does your church have in place to help the sexually-broken?  Who in your church has been trained to counsel the boy or girl, man or woman, who struggles with homosexual temptation to help them find support?  What are the materials and where is the support for the porn-addicted Christians in your church?  What is your church's position on restoring an adulterer?  Who will you go to at your church for counseling if your son or daughter says "I'm gay?"  And, are you ready if your brother in Christ comes to you and says he is struggling with sexual addiction and needs your help?

Wait.  Is that silence?

God Bless,

Thom

Not Some Kind of Anything

Enough

Do we have enough strength to take down the walls? 

Do we have enough patience to rise from the falls?

Do we have enough love to walk through this pain?

Do we have enough hope to vanquish this stain?

With just enough grace, we could lift up our brother.

With enough truth to stand, we could stand with each other.

With abundant forgiveness, we could push through the sorrow.

And with fullness of faith, we'd rejoice in tomorrow.

But we'll fall short of grace as truth slips from our sight.

And hoard our forgiveness while hope fades in the night.

And we'll run out of strength, for the climb is too tough,

'Till we find in our Saviour . . . that we do have enough.

-- Thom Hunter

The Weight of Who I Am

Chapter 8

Not Some Kind of Anything

When it comes to the reality of life, it can be hard to distinguish between a plummet and a summit. A high and a low. A stop and a go. Forward and backward. Worthy or worthless. Arriving or departing. Even dead or alive becomes complicated in the sense of spirit and hope. Deciding if things are "going well" or "getting better" is not easy in the midst of overriding crisis. Are we growing, or have we just been ripped up roots and all to shrivel in the sun?


Such was May 2009. My May 2009. I realized fairly quickly that the world was going on and I was sitting by like a careless child thrown from the merry-go-round, lying in a heap while the band plays on. I had come undone. The only world I knew for certain was coming to an end was my own. If I survived at all, much of the life I had slowly and methodically built around me -- the world I depended on day-to-day -- would not be there. I did not want to be redefined anymore than I had wanted to come undone . . . but it was done.


Unlike God, who is aware of every final prayer of the people on a plane as it falls from the sky . . . and, at the same moment, just as aware of every first cry of a million babies being born . . . I was aware only of the crumbling of my own existence, certain that the last thread straining to hold it all together was in danger of snapping. It seemed callous that the rest of the world carried on so normally. TV was in re-runs. Grass was growing. Rain fell; the sun shined. They were solving the puzzles on the Wheel of Fortune. Day and night, dark and light. How dare the cycle of life be so unbroken. For me, there was no cause for even the most minimal optimism.


The calamity I was experiencing did contain some certainty: no church, no job, no connection between myself and the five children I had helped raise. Likelihoods emerged: no friends, no future. Unavoidable intangibles loomed: no hope, no voice, no way out. Not this time.


I also became very aware that while it seemed that the whole world had turned upside down, most people were just going on as always, or trying to. Mother's Day -- May 10 -- I sat at home while Lisa and her mother attended church, one week before my membership would be revoked in the evening service. It would be weeks later before the church pastor would ask Lisa to remove herself as a member because she had remained in our marriage and her presence made them uncomfortable. My mother-in-law would follow Lisa and our time at ----- ---- Baptist Church came to an official end.


Only Lisa, who still believed in me and believed my version of the events that had lead to my arrest, and believed God had answered her prayers with the word "stay," and Stephen Black, director of First Stone Ministries, who believed in the power of a mighty God to rescue, were with me. I was woefully short of people who could look me in the eyes without looking away.


I found myself willingly pursuing unpleasant tasks which might produce a result -- good or bad -- but at least evidence that life was continuing for me. Thus, I plunged into finding a lawyer who could advise me on how to handle the inevitable: an appearance in court to enter a plea and begin the course of accountability. As if it was just another external affairs project at AT&T, I sifted through the brochures and letters that came in the mail from attorneys offering their services.


As millions celebrated Mothers' Day, I spread out promotional pieces, trying to distinguish integrity and professionalism from slogans and promises. I chose my lawyer because he appeared to me to be the least-lawyerly, based on the bravado of promises and unrealistic sympathy some put forth. His brochure said "Do not despair." Even his name -- Bill Smith -- spoke of normalcy, something I really needed. I wanted representation, not a savior. He had an up-front honesty that portrayed to me the understanding that I was about to go through something necessary that would not be pretty, but we would survive. I admit, though, that I did like his comfortable usage of the word "we" on the phone. "We" will take it step-by-step and make it through.


Strangely, seeing my signature on a contract with a lawyer had a strange soothing effect on me, as if someone really wanted to help me walk through this. Hired help, yes, but help.


The first step? A court appearance on June 23, 2009 in courtroom number 3 at 9:30 a.m. The attorney would handle that one on his own. My job was to prepare a complete and truthful narrative. "We" were on our way.


Of course, I realized that "we" would not be in the same place when "we" made it through. I remembered the words on the lawyer's brochure: "Don't despair." But I also remembered the words of the song of surrender: "So here I am. This is my plea. My only hope is your love for me. I'm reaching out, so desperately. Come take my hand; take all of me . . . just as I am."


The real and the unreal were somehow tangled up. The real? Well before the arrest in the park, my decades-old struggle against homosexuality had dwindled down to only a shadow of the past battles. The unreal? I would face the judge to enter a plea on a charge for something I did not do. The tangle? My own past was the best prosecution witness against me; the charge seemed believable in the light of my own past character, which had arisen to cast a dark shadow. The future hung on "I am," but the present was being overwhelmed by "I was."


I also knew that I was not alone in this quandary. How many other men and women were coming to the truth, through trial and error, that their desire to change, if turned over to God, could be fulfilled? And how many of them were so tainted by their past that it seemed there was no hope that anyone would ever believe them if they did, indeed . . . change? How many were being observed by the culturally-driven masses -- Christians also -- who believe in their own hearts and minds -- despite God's omnipotence -- that people cannot change? How many were without encouragement in perhaps the greatest battle of their lives?


Could all of this -- this odd arrest, the continuation of family disintegration, removal from my church, the job loss, the great unraveling of my entire life -- be God's intention? Was there a benefit to be discovered? Even something valuable to share? Something God could work for good . . . for His purpose? Suddenly, in the vacuum of loss, I had time to search and share. I would do it through writing, pouring out the struggles of my soul, seeking transparency in the absence of relationships. It seemed this was the time for a total revelation of the struggle from roots through repentance toward hopeful restoration.


So, on June 4, 2009, 20 days after my career ended, and 20 days before my legal journey would begin in earnest, I began to write with the simple statement: The Struggle is a Sign of Life.

The Early '70s

Denton, Texas

Days began and nights ended in the duplex on Denison Street with a collective sigh of relief that "the man whose name we do not mention," had not returned, apparently believing my mother's final warning that if he did, there would be hell to pay. I relaxed and even began to see myself as less like a gypsy and more like the other kids in class or the other carhops on the Sonic lot. The repeated upheavals that had characterized our lives between Daddy's departure and Michael's -- oops, the name -- drunken rule, had subsided to only occasional "I think I saw him drive by" moments. Post-stepparent-paranoia, no doubt.


We should have known that if we relaxed, he'd return, which he did, sneaking in while Mother was at work and we were all at school, making his presence known by stomping through the house, overturning furniture, dumping drawers, breaking things . . . and slinking away. "Michael" to me is a metaphor for how sin invades our lives, cozies up, takes over, makes demands, confuses us into compromises and guilt trips, offers promises and then leaves us sitting like fools on a curb waving as the last car pulls out for Six Flags and we're left behind to fetch cigarettes for the evil stepfather.


I'm not sure what Mother told Michael after this last episode, but I never saw him again. Still, the collective sighs of relief did not return, and even years later when we heard he had died, I still wondered if he might drive by, or come through the door if we accidentally mentioned his name. After Daddy and Michael, I was pretty sure my mother would never marry again. One thing she promised: we would not leave Denton until we all finished high school.


Bearing the lack of bearing that was a natural trademark of our family's lack of stability, my older brother and sister -- Mike and Deb -- had already made their peace with high school, dropping out for different reasons. For Mike, it was a sign of rebellion and a quest for freedom. He ended his high school career with a ride through the halls on a souped-up Honda motorcycle, signing up with the U.S. Marine Corps not long after. For Deb, marriage was more appealing than home economics class, and, at 17, she became a Mrs.


I liked high school. I hovered somewhere just below the popularity line as the editor of the school paper, a position that would have brought more respect if it hadn't been balanced out by wearing paper hats on cruise-through evenings to cook countless Sonic onion rings and number two hamburgers, having been promoted to cook, at 90 cents an hour, which bought a lot more gasoline for the Falcon . . . which was also a bit of a drag on the popularity positioning. Still, I had friends and I had a knack for creating controversy with the paper, thus developing a reputation for quiet boldness.


Sparked by a hint of acceptance, I embarked on a round of materialistic self-improvement, setting aside my roller-skating carhop past for a job as a custodial assistant at First Baptist Church, which, for some reason was more socially acceptable, perhaps because it was a church? My hourly income soared above the dollar point. Soon after, my odd habit of reading the local newspaper during high school lunch breaks allowed me to be the very first person to respond to an ad a woman had placed to sell her son's 1968 Camaro convertible for a mere $800. He had gone off to Vietnam and she was sure he would want a new one when he got back home, so she made me a deal and suddenly I had a car all would envy.


I was still me, with all the same lingering doubts about my identity, all the inner fears and wonderings, but I sure looked better pulling into the parking lot. I was no longer invisible, nor trying to be.


My early journalistic standards varied from "strong" editorials about the meaningless effect marijuana laws were having on kids whose parents couldn't even get them to come home on school nights, to hard-hitting pieces about whether spirit ribbons were an effective way to promote football games or just put more money in cheerleader's pockets. Deep.


I wasn't beyond inventing a little news when things got dry around Denton High. High school sophomores in the early '70s wanted desperately to latch on to the college level peace movement, but we lacked the boldness required for marches and sit-ins, being young enough to still get paddled by a principal. In the curious way that teenagers elevate the meaningless to momentous, a couple of friends and I decided that since there was nothing more important to world peace than Denton High Homecoming, we needed to make a statement. Being an "editor," gave me easy access to the football field after hours. A friend's easy access to his dad's wallet provided the supplies we would need: sacks of rock salt, which we carefully and quietly poured onto the football field around the 50-yard-line in the shape of a peace symbol four days before the Homecoming football game. Each night the sprinklers would come on in the dark, watering the field, soaking the salt into the grass until, by Friday, the peace sign stood out in its withering brownness against the healthy green.


It was destined to be page one news in the Denton High Horseshoe, with a strong editorial to follow about whether the pursuit of peace justified vandalism. Deep stuff once again.


Which led me to Becky. Three rows back and one over in biology class. She was beautiful . . . and a Filly . . . a member of the drill team, which performed with precision at football games in high boots, short skirts and white cowgirl hats, twirling white mock rifles. Taking a Filly to a homecoming dance was a move that alone could mark a successful high school career. I didn't have a chance, even though we were good friends in class. I was an able partner behind a microscope, but not a part of her after-school inner circle. As the day of the dance came closer, Becky remained unmatched, the word going around that she was holding out for someone in particular. In a moment of self-inflated self-delusion, I stammered through an invitation, ready to run for the door.


"Yes," she said. "I will go with with you." I was in shock, responding with "You will?" Thinking back, she sounded a bit like a bank teller being taken as a getaway hostage, but . . . she did say "yes." I was apparently not the dream guy she was holding out for, but, with time running out, her only chance for a homecoming mum. I had moved up from a '60 Ford Falcon to a '68 Camaro convertible, a point in my favor. As the evening would prove, my dancing skills were clearly not the draw, which reached the height of awkwardness on the third playing of Chicago's "Color My World." I had an odd feeling that Becky was not actually in my world, but rather was looking over my shoulder.


"Want some punch?" was met with "I don't feel well," which led to "Can you take me home?" I might have been clumsy, but I was a gentleman, and, top up on the convertible, we made our way home, the hot dream-date ending with a pre-11 p.m. almost peck on the cheek on the front porch, a brief "see you Monday in biology," and a sad walk down the sidewalk. I couldn't go home. My mother and my sister would be in the living room eating yellow cupcakes, in bathrobes, painting their toenails while watching Johnny Carson and anticipating a full report on my dream date.


I had at least an hour to kill after watching her shut the door and turn off the porch-light, so I put the top down and, sighing solo in the bright moonlight, circled the block a couple of times, pining away at the sight of Becky's dark porch on every round . . . picturing her in her prom dress retching in the kitchen sink . . . until I noticed on trip three the light back on, Becky emerging -- wearing the mum I had bought her -- and taking the hand of Dennis, a senior, who had eyed her at the dance. She finally had her holdout in hand. Miraculous recovery. Dennis, two-years-older and half-a-foot-taller than me, clearly had intentions beyond sharing a cup of punch.


Monday would be a tough day. Becky and I would be back in biology; we had a frog we needed to dissect. I was determined she would label her own organs.


My fascination with Fillies came to an end a few months after the Becky less-than fling. My sister, 11-months younger than me and arguably the most loyal person I have ever known, tried out for the drill team, spending hours and hours hopping and high-kicking in arm-locked rhythm with all the other girls who wanted the validation the uniformity would bring. My position as editor of the paper got me into the final tryouts. Sue was super, matching kick for kick, twist for twist, deep bend for bend. In matching outfits and bright white cowgirl hats, they performed their routine for the judges like a long row of paper cutouts. Until, that is, that Amelia, a slightly-skinny girl on Sue's right, made a kick to the right when everyone else kicked left, striking Sue's boot-clad foot. Shocked, Sue turned her head to to the right, while everyone else looked left. Sue's cowgirl hat out of sync, which is what the judge's saw, with her long blonde links more apparent than Amelia's skinny leg.


When we returned to the school that night to see the names posted of the Fillies-to-be, Amelia's name was on the list, but Sue's was not.


Sometimes we find our rejection is no fault of our own, but there is nothing we can do. We don't make a list. Other times we find our rejection is because of something we did. And it goes on a list.


My Becky-date-disaster added to a confusion about girls that had emerged the previous summer, just before dawn on a Saturday morning by a lakeside in the twilight of my Sonic days. I had just turned 16. Having a single parent who worked two jobs, freedom wasn't something I had to strive for; it was thrust upon me. I realized that if I showed good judgment most of the time -- particularly as measured against an older brother whose motorcycle-riding-rebellion was reaching legend status with the local police -- I could pretty much make all my own decisions and do what I pleased.


I had come to know Darlene and her mother as part of the onion-ring making crew on Saturday mornings. I knew Lacy Dawn, the other daughter, as the popular night-shift carhop skating her way to fame, raking in tips and always finding a ride home from one of the late-night customers at closing time. Except Fridays. On Fridays, the boys on the night crew would rush to clean up after midnight and head to Lacy Dawn's and Darlene's big old crumbling house on the edge of a private pond about 10 miles out of town. When I turned 16, it was my turn to take the trip into the moonlight wilderness of loud music blaring out of car speakers playing 8-track tapes, parked around the pond, where as many as a dozen boys would spread out on blankets, guzzling Schlitz beer, while vying for the attentions of Darlene and Lacy Dawn. I was petrified, waiting for the real dawn.


All night I wandered around the edge of the woods that circled the pond, watching a mist rise from the water as boy after boy slowly passed out. I had heard the laughter, seen from a distance the sexual abandon with which the not-so-pretty-now girls entertained their guests, had even seen the mother sitting on the porch in the dark, identifiable only when she took a deeper puff of her cigarette. I was hiding, waiting for someone to start a car engine so I could get myself away.


As the sun rose, I heard a voice from the foggy edge of the pond.


"Tom," said the voice. "Lacy Dawn wants you to come over here."


I saw the older guy, clothesless, lying on a blanket. Lacy Dawn stood nearby, wrapped in a blanket, curling her pointing finger and laughing at me as I froze and slowly backed away, closer to the trees, refusing her offer to end my virginity.


He sat up, joined in her laughter and said in a drunken drawl, "What's wrong with you? Are you some kind of queer or something?"


I heard a car start.


In the days that followed, I would repeat his question over and over in my mind, adding it to the memories that will not fade, like Mr. Hooten's dismissive glance across the room on the day of my discarding. Shortly thereafter, I quit the Sonic forever and buried his question alongside many others unanswered.


"No," I told myself. "I am not some kind of anything. I am me."


My job at First Baptist Church provided a great deal of solitude and time for reflection as I vacuumed the huge auditorium, swept the never-ending halls, washed the countless windows and assisted with the setting up and tearing down of meals and receptions, and swept up the petals left behind from wedding happiness to funeral sadness. From the push-end of a broom, I had a panoramic -- and overall comforting -- view of the world the way it seemed that God had intended it to be.


My boss, Ray, was a rough, uneducated, uncouth and poorly-dressed man who smelled bad, had bad teeth and even a tattoo here and there on his huge arms. His grammar was bad, his comments sometimes off-color. In my post-Lacy-Dawn emergence of puritanical persuasion, I held a deep concern, not for Ray, but for First Baptist Church and the obvious mistake they had made in his employment. He just didn't belong.


I found my chance to correct the Ray mistake when I discovered him sneaking a smoke in the church supply closet. Following my self-righteous confrontation, Ray asked me simply and humbly to please not tell the church administrator . . . or he might lost his job. Smoking was absolutely forbidden, unless you happened to be a deacon on a Sunday morning grabbing a quick one between Sunday school and worship service. Smoking was one of the most rigid rules applied to all employees.


Now this was a dilemma. I was 17; he was probably about 47. Clearly I was good and Ray was crude; just look at me and look at him and it's clear. But I was conflicted and thought I should give my conscience a few minutes to clear itself before reporting his great deficiency. His shift ended and Ray gave me a humble thumbs-up sign as he headed out for the night, leaving me alone to walk the halls and later lock the doors. I will always remember how creepy and croaky the church could become when empty, the windows opaque and dark. Pondering my decision, I left the building, retreating to the parking lot to sit in my Camaro, which itself had become a sort of private sanctuary. I made my decision; Ray's discretions were too great.


The next afternoon, after parking my car in the lot, I walked into the church office to see Ray and the administrator waiting for me.


"Ray tells me that you left the building last night," said the administrator. "The doors were not locked and the building was empty. Anyone could have come in while you were gone, hidden, waited, and cleaned us out."


"But," I protested, wondering how Ray even knew. "I only went out to sit in my car. I need to tell you something."


"I'm afraid I'm going to have to let you go," the administrator said. "Ray and I are in agreement. Never leaving the building unguarded is our number one rule."


Later, I did get a chance to explain to the administrator about Ray's smoking and my crisis of conscience, which gave him a chance to explain to me that he had hired Ray shortly after Ray had become a Christian and that, despite Ray's rough edges, his need to be at the church was greater than mine.


"You'll be fine," he told me, handing me my final check.


Maybe as we grow up we become confused about who we really are because we so constantly come across people who are not who they proclaim to be and we're not really ready to figure all that out. A father who loves you but can leave you. Michael and his wide winning smile that hid an evil taking heart. Becky and her willingness to use me to get a night out with Dennis. A mother on a porch who watches her daughters give themselves away. Ray, a Christian who seemed anything but, but was perhaps just a little short of getting his footing.


Maybe all of these events are things that most people easily absorb and reason out to use as foundations for building their own character and for establishing a personal moral base, but to me they only added to the confusion and suspicion and prodded the nagging questions that come after "I am me." "Who am I?" "Who knows?" "Who cares?"


A biscuit with the affirming Aunt Bee at the Kentucky Fried Chicken might have been a good idea, but I considered myself grown up now. I would work this out my way. I decided those questions could wait. I was in high school; I had a Camaro; I carried cash. What else mattered?


In our one-bedroom duplex -- now on Congress St., right across from the park where I had been sexually-abused almost 10 years earlier -- life was good. Just me, my sister and my unpredictable mother who seemed always able to fashion a chaotic life into something more mis-manageable, but something we would eventually survive. Sue and Mother shared the bedroom and I had a single bed wedged tightly into a hallway that curiously went no-where, and had no doors. I crammed in a hippie-decal-decorated chest of drawers, hung beaded curtains on each end of the hallway and pretended to have privacy. It was my own space.


I also had my own dog -- the first of several Sampsons I would own through the years. A bouncy, rambunctious border collie confined in our tiny backyard, constantly barking at the neighbors and chewing on the trees. Undaunted by my memories of Emily Fowler Park, I took him there to teach him how to walk on a leash. I should have taught myself first, taking off in a trot, not prepared for Sampson's never-ending desire to show affection. He stopped, turned, ran towards me, yipping and jumping, ran around behind me, wrapping me in the leash. I tripped, landed on top of him and broke one of his legs. As I reached down to comfort him -- or really to try to stop the incredible howling that was drawing a crowd -- he bit my hand. A man's-best-friend moment had descended into mutual panic.


Fortunately for me and Sampson, a veterinarian's office bordered the park and I was able to carry him there, him yapping in pain and snapping at me all the way. Unfortunately, for me, the veterinarian's able assistant was out to lunch.


"You'll have to hold the dog down so I can give him a shot," said the vet. "Then we'll do the leg."


I had one hand on Sampson's neck and another on one hind leg, pulling it back to expose the other so we could "do the leg," which started with a nice, neat surgical cut with a scalpel . . . and a nice cut-length flow of bright red blood . . . which is the last thing I remember before I fainted and hit the floor, victim number two of the ill-fated walk in the park.


We both survived.


Our neighbors survived as well, though I could often see them peeking through their curtains as we would come and go. My mother's pink boat of a car had gone to the great salvage dock in the sky, but she now had something almost as ugly, a brown Dodge Dart with a push-button transmission. It seemed my mother was on a mission to rescue wayward cars, bad ideas from Detroit that should never have survived the drawing board. Her inability to choose a normal vehicle -- pink Buicks and push-button Darts -- was similar to her ability to choose husbands, though one stemmed from poor choice of character and the other a desperate balance in the checkbook.


Not to say I did not grow attached to the Dart, particularly after seeing my Mother's love for it in action the afternoon after the flimsy back bumper and thin metal trunk had been crunched into an arching v-shape from an untimely confrontation with a supermarket light pole "that just shouldn't have been there." Visions of the earlier Christmas-tree-dragging danced in our heads as we, like the neighbors, peered from behind the blinds as she wielded a sledge hammer and tried -- loudly and with repeated blows -- to re-shape her Dart. I considered throwing myself onto the driveway and wailing, "Mother, please don't!," but I knew by now that Mother would do what Mother would do, neighbors or no.


High school would not answer all of life's questions, but it was a brief pause between the pain of a rampaging, out-of-my-control childhood . . . and an adulthood to come, one that would be determined by calculated choices conceived from ill-fated attempts to avoid difficult questions, like "Who am I?"


Still, as I edged ever closer to adulthood, life had a familiar feel.


Mother announced that she was getting married.






(Note, this is the 8th chapter of my on-line book, "The Weight of Who I Am." The seven previous chapters are contained in earlier posts on Signs of a Struggle, beginning with "Have We Finally Come to the End?"

The True Victims of False Accusations

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. -- 1 John 1:7

I have discovered in the writing of my story that transparency is not a partial prospect.  I either am, or I am not.  Like truth . . . transparency either is or isn't.  Anything less is confusing and confounding and eventually undoing.  Holding certain things back while trying to paint a complete picture is impossible.  Discerning minds can  follow the dots and see that they don't . . . somehow . . . fully connect.  It's time to add a few more dots, fill in a blank and answer the question that has played in people's minds:  "If he has repented, then why are his children still not a part of his life?"

After last week's chapter of The Weight of Who I Am, I received an e-mail from a reader who asked a simple and reasonable question regarding my four sons. "Why did they not jump to your defense, as any guy would hope their sons to do?"  The question was in relation to my sharing the fact that two of my sons posted remarks in the on-line comments section of The Daily Oklahoman after the newspaper ran a story about my arrest.  In their comments, my sons detailed my past failings as a father, my homosexual falling, bragged about their own sting operation and used the opportunity to make other public accusations that are untrue and unimaginable.

False accusations.  

Like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, I have tried to roll this boulder up a hill for three years now, but the top of the hill is nowhere in sight and the burden of the boulder is crushing hopes for a future not overshadowed by a lie. It is not just my future about which I write, but also the future of the true victims of the false accusations.  Having become convinced that lies, like sin, grow stronger in secrecy, it seems the time has come to remove the remaining barrier to openness in the hope that light will nurture truth.

The most painful moments of my past -- the abandonment, the sexual abuse, my own sinfulness as I descended into the darkness of homosexual temptation, the arrests, the humiliation, the church discipline, my children turning away from me, the end of a prospering career -- all pale in comparison to the harm caused by a false accusation later made by one of my sons that I had inappropriately touched his then almost three-year-old daughter . . . my granddaughter.  I have seen evil unfold, but before three years ago, I had never seen it envelop so completely, choking hopes for reconciliation, feeding hatred, removing all reason, reinforcing barriers.

I have not, would not, could not, and never will touch a child inappropriately.

Clearly Satan knew what attack would produce the most devastating effects and pulled it from his arsenal and placed it in the middle of the pain and suspicion that was pervasive in my family because of my past sins.  He cleverly built on my past denials to create an environment where any accusation could flourish, but where only one could grow grotesquely, drowning out any remaining hope.  It was the crowning piece of his attempt at destruction, and three years of silence has only solidified his grasp.  Transparency on all my true sins has not matched the black veil of deceit he pulled between me, my children, my grandchildren and those who willingly believe the accusations, no questions asked.

Three years.  A child who was nearly three is now six.  Relationships with grandchildren abruptly severed.  Grandchildren since born who have never met their grandparents.

Three years with not one conversation between myself and the son and daughter-in-law who made the accusation, despite my repeated attempts to meet together in the presence of counselors or ministers or anyone.  

For three years they have hidden from the truth, clinging to a falsehood.  Maybe it makes it easier to not confront the need for reconciliation and forgiveness of things that were true and bad enough on their own, but the magnifying presence of the lie is the most destructive thing ever to happen in our family.

Despite an investigation by a Norman Police Department detective, a clearing by a district attorney and a voluntary lie detector test administered by the state's most respected polygraph examiner that declared a 99.9% likelihood of innocence, no effort has been made on the part of her parents to remove this lie from the family history under which their daughter will grow.  Had even one 10th of the effort put into compiling evidence for my homosexual sins been put into trying to produce evidence for this accusation, they would realize there is none.  It never happened.  In fact, after I recovered enough from the shock of the accusations to make an immediate and voluntary visit to the Norman Police Department, I thought the entire matter would be cleared up within three hours . . . not three days . . . weeks . . . months . . . or years.  It made no sense to the authorities then or ever.

To quote directly from the results of the polygraph administered Oct. 4, 1977 by Arthur D. Linville of Forensic Services:  "The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory algorithm analyzed your pattern of responses as, 'No Deception Indicated -- Probability of Deception is less than .01."

Rather than examining the evidence of innocence, On Oct. 9, 2007, three days after the polygraph test results were revealed, one of my sons, using a false name, e-mailed me articles he had searched for debunking the reliability of polygraphs. This same son, who posted the on-line comments in The Oklahoman, (May 2, 3 and 9, 2009) later made public accusations in an Amazon.com review (March 10, 2010) of a book I had written years ago.  Both The Oklahoman and Amazon.com removed the comments amid concerns about legal issues.  However, this son's pattern of using public venues to bring attention to the false accusations is one of the reasons I decided to become transparent about them.  He has told me directly he will do it again, despite my expressed concerns that the person who could potentially be harmed the most is his niece.

My opinions regarding pedophilia have been long known.  I was a victim myself.  Even though I forgave the man who did it, I have said many times I believe the sexual abuse of a child is a crime only one step below murder, deserving harsh punishment.  A pedophile takes the life of a child into his or her hands and bends it into a new form; an abused child will bear scars forever, the depth of which depends in part upon the support the child receives in the healing process.

The fear that I faced after the charges were made against me was short-lived.  I did fear, early on, that the false accusation could take on a life of its own in someone's zeal to prove a case.  That fear faded in the light of the interviews with the police and the complete dismissal of the charges by anyone with any professional insight.  I thought at one point that the whole incident was one of God's mysterious workings and that the healing from it might actually work to restore our family.  The fear and the naivety are long gone now.  While God may use this for His purposes, it's roots are evil.

Just as it is impossible to prove someone did something that they did not do, it is equally difficult to prove that you did nothing when people are determined to believe that you did.  Sometimes, however, the shadow of a doubt can loom large.  Why would they be determined to believe it?  I cannot speak for all of my children and their wives, but some of them have clearly stated their belief that all homosexuals are in fact also pedophiles.  This belief is rooted in ignorance and is not reflective of reality, similar to the belief that adultery with someone of the opposite sex is somehow less dangerous than adultery with someone of the same sex.  They both emerge from a brokenness and open the door to all kinds of destruction.  Adultery is adultery.  Sin is sin.  Pedophiles emerge among heterosexuals and homosexuals.

If I thought it would convince my children that I am innocent of these accusations and not subject to the addictive behavior of an abuser, I would wear a camera on my forehead and a GPS device on my wrist.  There's no indication that would matter, as they appear to not want their acceptance of the lie challenged by anything real.

I've wanted one thing over the past few years:  the restoration of my family.  I still do.  I can even forgive the false accusations and hope for repentance on the part of the ones who made them.  I accept the fact that it is my own sin that created the opportunity for more sin to creep in, taking advantage of the cracks that existed in our family's structure because of me.  Acceptance however is not justification for the charges or the persistence.

So, who is the victim?  It is not me.  Although I have days of sorrow and nights of anger, I know where to take those to stem the bitterness.  I no longer have a fear of repercussions, as the accusations have already taken what toll they can . . . on me.  My intention is that the devil have no more pleasure in all of this.

The true victim is my granddaughter and her cousins, deprived of grandparents who loved them and still do, but can only do so through memories or by looking at occasional photos sent to us by other relatives and friends.  I have great concern about how my granddaughter will react when she is older -- perhaps as a teenager -- and someone reveals to her why she was separated from her grandparents.  Her mother said, not long after the accusations, that her daughter no longer had any memory of the alleged event.  When it occurs, the revelation will be hard to accept, particularly since there will have been no evidence, no memory of such an event and no previous or follow-up events in my life to support the charge.  There will be no record of her parents' attempts to find the truth for her.  They accused, had not one conversation with me or Lisa and dropped the issue, leaving everyone in the wake. Lisa, who clearly stated she would never remain in a marriage with a man who would abuse a child, was and has remained stalwart in her total disbelief of the accusations.  My sons and my daughter are victims as well because the accusations were like putting a bolt on a door that was looking very difficult to open as it was. Their pursuit of truth has given way to their embrace of a hideous and absurd accusation that has them bound.

I believe that God will someday heal even this, as He is capable of bringing everything into the light in His way and timing.  In the meantime, what is required of me is the same thing that would be required of any Christian, regardless of what sins we have committed and regardless of what accusations we face, regardless of how far down we have been or how distant we might have traveled from God's will.  He takes us back.

Live a life of integrity.   Living out the rest of my life with integrity, honesty, and faithfulness is the best witness I will ever have.  It is the failing of my past character that made such an absurd accusation believable to some in the first place.

Keep doing what I believe God has called me to do.  My own brokenness is common to man, sending forth a great cry for hope and healing and a need for encouragement and grace.  I believe that's where God wants me and how He will use me.

Practice forgiveness.  I have been forgiven much by many.  I need to learn to quit replaying in my mind e-mails and conversations with my children that harden my heart towards them.  I need to "practice" forgiveness so I will be better at it. God will help me if I am willing.

Seek wisdom.  I have learned that when I strike out on my own and then check over my shoulder to see if God is coming along, I am prone to stumble.  "Wherever He leads, I'll go" is not just the refrain of an old hymn.  It's good advice.  I need to let God show me where I need to go.

Trust God with the future. He has it anyway; he holds it in the palm of his hand, just as He holds me.  Indeed, the only trust that can weather every stress and temptation, every assault of truth, is His.  He has plans for me, as he does for everyone.

Have faith; find joy. I've not been very joyful in the past few years.  Bright lights shining on hidden faults produce a lot of uncomfortable glare and heat in the healing process.  The truth hurt bad enough; the lie almost robbed me of joy altogether.  Perhaps it too being in the light will move something forward.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. -- James 1:2-4

As I said, transparency is not easy.  While this has been painful to write, it is a part of "The Weight of Who I Am."

God Bless,

Thom