Tell All My Friends: Part Two
One of the things I wrestle with most in my life is how much of it to share, specifically, the intersection of my Christian faith and my lived experience as a gay man. Especially this last year. It is something I have been extremely honest about the last eight years of my life. I have written extensively and taught on the topic, and I’ve humbly been a thought leader in the conversation about it in various ministry places/spaces. My struggles, doubts and successes, I’ve shared them all. At times, I’ve been very bold. Other times, I’ve been very scared to speak. However, at ALL TIMES, I’ve been very honest. And very open, which has sometimes been detrimental to my wellbeing.
In the last eight years I’ve grown up, wrestled, learned, adapted, and changed. The one constant though has been my UNWAVERING commitment and devotion to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. How I’ve lived that commitment out has looked different in different seasons. That’s part of life.
In regard to this topic, The last ten months of my life have been interesting. By my own admission, I will say that it has been a lot, and it has certainly been different. To people not versed in my daily life, it has been a departure in certain ways from things they were used to from me. I get that and I give that.
Navigating this last season of my life has been eye opening. I’ve been extremely blessed with a solid community. I had (and continue to have) many wonderful and trusted friends walking alongside me on this journey. However, some people in my life, specifically some fellow Christians have made this season frustrating and brought some pain and grief into it. There were incredible assumptions and accusations made about me. My intentions were questioned, ironically, by the very same people who didn’t even directly ask me a single question about things going on in my life. The silence and absence did not go unnoticed. I’ve never been afraid of hard conversations, and I did have a few that, however difficult, I found worthwhile because of the clarity received from them. I would like to say that I am and will always be happy to provide clarity about anything in my life to anyone who engages me charitably and in good faith.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, I would like to implore many of yall to understand that life is not and cannot exclusively be lived in black and white. Our faith and walk isn’t always going to be black and white. Yes, there are fundamental beliefs that are very straight forward, but there is a lot of room for grey areas. I have always believed that life is often lived in grey areas.
A friend of mine once called me Henry “grey area” Abuto when we met up for a routine lunch catch up. I don’t recall the specific thing we were discussing, but it led us to a conversation about our varying degrees of comfortability with grey areas in life. As we finished up lunch, he jokingly changed my middle name to “grey area’. My friend and I come from very different backgrounds, which no doubt played a part in how I can be more open to nuance, and why he can be comfortable in seeing life through a black and white binary/lens. I am a gay, black, immigrant. I EXIST inside nuanced identifiers.
As Christians, our savior exists in the grey. My friend Krystal and I recently talked about how Christ came into the world in grey. (Krystal, thank you; you helped me find language for things that had been escaping me!) I mean, an unwed virgin, the Holy Spirit, wise men, a barn, and shepherds? The whole thing is something most people did and still would side eye. I know I would! But Yet, it happened. His ministry was found in a lot of grey areas and spaces. Just look at some of the places he went and people he spent time with. A lot of their lives were not simple. Christ was firm, but never wavered on love. I’m afraid so much of Christian culture today insists on being firm at the expense of love.
We have fallen short in living out what it means to walk alongside someone faithfully no matter how uncharted the territory might be for you, no matter how uncomfortable. And again, I get it. Uncomfortable or unusual things can be hard to step into. We stick to what we know because it seems safe. We insist on trying to put everyone and everything in neat boxes, and we end up discarding them when they break out of the boxes we constructed that they never agreed to be placed inside in the first place. As I began to step out of some constructed boxes (to be fair, I spent a handful of years inadvertently helping people place me inside them), I was met with varying levels of hostility and doubt. All of a sudden, I became a stranger and an inconvenience to some of the very same Christians that I have spent the better part of a decade loving and pouring into. Pastors who used me for my story and connections were suddenly nowhere to be found. Baby, my neck still hurts from the whiplash! And just to be clear, if you are reading this and think that I’m talking about you, I am.
Not all of it was bad though. Some Christians really PLEASANTLY surprised me by their willingness to journey alongside me. They asked questions not out of judgment, but out of curiosity. They held me accountable in ways I needed, and encouraged me to be free in ways that were healthy. They locked arms with me and stood by me. (It truly is a shame that experiencing love from Christians is a surprise!) The compassion and grace I received from those people and SO MANY other friends really carried me through. I saw that not everyone can or will journey with me. But God, in his kindness, reminded me that I have an army of people who will boldly face life with me, and hold space for all the grey areas in my life. And to that, I truly say thank you!
Where does that leave me? By God’s grace and the incredible love and support of friends, I am on the other side of that season, and I am excited for the grey areas ahead that the Lord has for me. I was having a conversation with my friend Josh a few nights ago and I expressed to him that this version of me is my favorite version of me. Who I am today is the most I have ever liked myself. My dear friend Rani (who is a great philosopher in her own right!), has a quality that I’ve long admired. She has never cared to be palatable. I’ve known her for 20+ years and I’m hard pressed to think of someone in my life who is more comfortable in their skin than she is. I’ve spent a majority of my life being palatable. Being a palatable black man, being a palatable gay person, being a palatable immigrant, being a palatable Christian. But being palatable for the sake of being liked is a form of self betrayal. I’m done with that. It has been so freeing to slowly over the last six years learn how to operate outside of that. I feel closer than ever to the person who God made me to be.
Last fall, when all of this was starting to take shape, I expressed to a close friend that I was worried about what people might think. He said to me “Henry, forget what anyone else thinks. When you put your head down at night, are you at peace with the Lord and yourself? If you are, that’s all that matters.” He was right. And I am at peace. When I one day stand before the throne of God above to give an account of my life, no one else will be standing there next to me. So as always, I tell my story, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
