for K-----

I have this friend that is a lovely, amazing, funny, and weird (in the best possible way) person. There are a million little ways she reminds me of myself at her age. She is smart and funny. She has her shit together and feels a really great sense of responsibility. And she is completely and absolutely and very verbally disrespectful about God and religion. Exactly like me at her age. And, like I was, I feel that she is unable to separate God from religion.


I don't know what to do here, but I want to tell her a story she will listen to. I know her well enough to know that the odds are very stacked against me that she will take anything from what i have to say. But I want her (and other people like her) to read my story and maybe understand where people like me are coming from.


I had a very bad childhood. Abandoned by my father very early on, my mother never lifted her head out of the depression that has plagued most of her life. We were extremely, embarrassingly poor. My mom wouldn't or couldn't work. I was abused in more than one horrifying way by people I should have been able to trust. I was gay in high school in Mesquite, Texas. My father was in and out of jail and I felt a tremendous responsibility to take care of the one person who had the most negative impact on my life. I was a verbal, raging atheist. Looking back now, I almost had no other choice. There were so many things I didnt understand. My disturbed mother told me to believe in God, but would also tell me she was putting a curse on someone. I didn't understand how a loving God that was supposed to watch over us all would let a child be abused or hungry. I didn't understand how a loving God could take away my grandmother at age 65 when I still needed her desperately in my life.


I didn't believe and I didn't understand and i stayed that way for many years. i met a lot of people that meant well, but people i could see through. People who lied, gossiped, people that seemingly had no joy in their lives telling me i should believe. A part of me always wanted to, needed to, but I needed to see something real. Maybe someONE real. Then I met my friend Kirk, one of the most important people to ever happen to my life. Someone who not only talked the talk, like so many of my friends did, but walked the walk. Every day of his life. The more time i spent with him, the more i wanted to be like him. I wanted his joy. Everybody loves Kirk. And Kirk loves everyone. Every single person. He is, to me, the embodiment of joy. Of soul. He wasn't pushy, he knew how I felt, what I believed. And he loved me anyway. I think that he knew that all he could do was show me, practice what he preached. I have never met anyone that shines as brightly as him. And i wanted it for me. I could feel, and still do most times, around him God's joy and love, as absolutely cheesy as it sounds. That boy is the real deal. He would pray with us sometimes, me and my group of friends, and increasingly more as one of my friends became very very sick. I would stand in the group and hold hands, close my eyes and bow my head. To be respectful. Because I love Kirk. But eventually I began to FEEL things. This amazing tingle that I still get when I pray that tells me that someone hears. I started my games with God. I would pray and say "show me a sign, show me anything that you're real." And I ignored signs for a long time and asked for bigger signs. And God was the first person in my life that never ever gave up on me.

Everything fell into place one night... Good Friday 4 years ago, if you can believe that. I was driving around talking, asking for a sign, for anything. I was listening to Kirk's band on a CD as I drove. And nothing was ever more simple and more complicated in my life. I passed a homeless man on the side of the road with a sign. Even before I was ever "saved" (which is a term i hate) i could never pass a homeless person on the street. I tried that night. Got most of the way home and turned around. I bought some food and went to find the man. The look on his face is something i will never forget and makes me ashamed of the human race. The look that told me that people all day, and probably for most of his life, ignored him like he wasn't even a person. He took the food and water and said "God bless you. Happy Good Friday." #7 as my friend Kirk would say. Thats exactly what happened. I broke down crying in my car on the way home, my whole entire life changed. My conversation with God on that drive home went something along the lines of "ok ok i hear you. i get it". That was the best day of my entire life. I didn't have room in me to be cynical anymore. Or to try to be funny. It is what it is. So my first point in this, to my friend that I will always love wether she believes in anything or not is this: you scoff at the notion that if you seek God you will find Him. But no one said "If you seek God His first response will be what you want it to be." If you seek God, with all of your heart and without all of your cynicsm, you WILL find Him. I am one million percent living proof of that and i have friends that are, as well. You couldn't possibly be more outrageous and outspoken than me and my best friend from high school. We have been right there. And if you are looking, you will find Him. And I don't agree with a lot of things that a lot of pastors say, but I wholeheartedly agree with the statements that "only God can move mountains out of our lives" and that "pride disconnects us from God." I know for a fact that pride keeps us from God. Pride kept me from God for most of my life.

And I have experienced miracles. More than once. I was in a car wreck during rush hour traffic that I ONLY survived by the grace of God. There is absolutely NO reason I should have lived to tell about that wreck. No reason except that God saw fit for me to. If I had been rear ended, as i for all LOGICAL purposes SHOULD have been, there is NO CHANCE i would have survived. i know that everyday. I have had sick friends on the literal verge of death have complete miraculous turn arounds. I have seen what only God can do.


And there are a lot of things I don't understand. And i know that i am extremely radical. I don't believe in the bible at all. God didn't write the bible and i believe that God is the only infallible thing in the world. The bible is contradictory. And people pick and choose from it what they believe. And I believe thats wrong. And most of the people I meet that don't believe in God don't believe because they have had other "Christians" ruin it for them. All I can say is look at Jesus. He loved everyone. Every single person. And he spent the time he was here teaching and loving other people. That is historical documented fact. Thats what I believe in. I just believe in Love. And there are people who will tell me I'm wrong, but I know it in my heart. I feel it when I talk to God. I feel that He really is there and that i'm not alone. Thats all I can say. I just hate to see people turned off to it before they even get the chance to explore what it means, even if it is by people that mean well.

I don't care if I change your mind. Kirk didn't care if he changed mine. He would still love me and be one of my best friends to this day even if I had never listened to that voice inside of me. Just like I will still always think you're great and smart and funny. I just want you to know there's more out there than what you've been shown.



And, as I said, I don't believe in the bible, but sometimes I think it's a great work of fiction with some valuable life lessons. I have this passage taped to my computer screen and I read it everyday. I never ever want to forget: "May you become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."







"how can anyone see if you don't shine your light?"