I love you, Lloyd

And I lift my voice

I’ll never forget where I was when I learned that Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi had met their demise in a crumpled Mercedes, a car which met its demise early on a Sunday morning in a dark Parisian tunnel. I was in our driveway in Upstate New York, piling the bed of an inherited Ford Ranger with all the things I thought I’d need during my freshman year at Calvin College. It was 1997. Earlier that year I had affixed a large red bumper sticker to the back window of the cab of that Ford pickup.

“Your mother was pro-life,” the bumper sticker said. Several months earlier, after a Sunday evening church service, a few members of our church’s high school youth group and I had loaded ourselves into a bus full of well-meaning Christians. We headed to Washington D.C. where we shouted and Marched-for-Life. We held high our octagonal ‘Stop Abortion Now’ placards. We sneered scornfully at the women on the sidelines whose purple signs gave away that they were pro-choice and feminists and in—in my assessment, at least—sinful baby-killers who were at risk of eternal perdition in hell.

Twenty-four hours after our Sunday-evening departure, I returned to Upstate New York with two souvenirs. The first, the intangible sense of righteous accomplishment that I had marched on Washington and had spoken truth to power. And the second, the very tangible red bumper sticker that let everyone know that I was pro-life, and they should be too. After all, their mothers had been so as well.

And so it was that a quarter-century ago I drove to Grand Rapids in a pickup with a pro-life bumper sticker. I parked my truck in Calvin’s East Beltline parking lot, where I discovered a small blue imported sedan with Indiana license plates and a blue bumper sticker, the proclamation of which infuriated me: I’m a Christian and a Democrat.

Christians couldn’t be Democrats, I knew.

As my freshman year grinded on, I began to feel both antsy and depressed. I was down-in-the-dumps, but also restless. I called my parents, who recommended I seek counselling. Between classes on a weekday morning, I stopped in at Calvin’s Broene Counselling Center. I spoke for an hour to someone about how I’d been feeling and whether I’d contemplated self-harm. (I hadn’t.) I was quickly referred to a psychiatrist. A week or so later, I left the psychiatrist’s swanky East Grand Rapids office with no real sense of what my problem might actually be, but with the knowledge that the solution was already in my hands: a hastily scrawled prescription for Prozac.

I had the prescription filled and headed back to campus.

I decided, at some point during the spring semester of my freshman year, not to return to Calvin. I had decided to pursue horticulture—a major that Calvin didn’t offer. And besides, something about Calvin—or was it something about me?—made me feel so itchy and uncomfortable.

The following year I returned to Calvin for a weekend to visit the friends I’d made as a freshman. I learned that one of our acquaintances—another guy who had lived with us in Van Dellen Hall—had written a startling article in the Chimes. He was gay, he had announced, and (still) a Christian.

“How can he say that?” I asked. “How can they print that?” Nobody had a good answer. I was deeply irked. Christians can’t be gay, I thought. Christians couldn’t be gay, I knew.

I spent the next dozen or so years spiritually and socially adrift. Slowly, I woke up to the realization that No, the same-sex attraction I’d always felt was not simply a sinful temptation that all guys felt but just resisted. Eventually, I understood that my sexuality was not a part of me to be despised, repressed, or drugged beneath the plane of my awareness. Rather, gay is who I am. Those were difficult years. I hurt many others along the way.

Ten years after leaving Calvin, I stumbled in a Nairobi bookshop across Philip Gulley and James Mulholland’s book If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World. This discovery proved as pivotal as it was providential. For the first time, I was encouraged to consider that our Creator might be compassionate and gracious rather than vindictive and out-to-get-me with the world’s irresistible temptations. Slowly, I found the courage to come out.

In 2010, at the age of 31, I came out to my parents. (It is one of my greatest regrets that I came out to them in an email, rather than in conversation.) Shortly after I dropped this sudden bomb, we spoke on the phone. A week and a half later, I journaled about our conversation and about how I felt at the time. An excerpt:

Anyway, it’s going to be interesting to see how it all goes. I’m just thankful that [my brother] is supportive, because that means the world to me.

I should also say that I’m glad I’m gay because it has helped me to understand love and grace and friendship, with God and family and friends. Without this I would have had no challenge to my faith—in God or people—and I would have been another conservative Christian Republican meathead who spewed out Bible verses and judgmental bullshit without ever having to think about it. Now I truly appreciate the presence of God and the closeness of family and the support of friends. Now I just have to pass that love and joy and karma (or whatever it is) on to other people.

That was over 13 years ago. We’ve all moved on. My husband and I are happily married; my parents are fully accepting. When our family looks back, we shrug and roll our eyes at the things we used to believe. 

And now, from thousands of miles away, I’ve been following as closely as possible the developments within the CRC as it grapples—as I grappled—oh Lord, how I grappled—to untangle long-held beliefs about sexuality and the relationship (is there one?) between our sexual and spiritual natures. I’ve followed the progressives at Hesed, the conservative Abiders, and the Third Way fence-straddlers who seem ready tolerate everything, including intolerance.

When I’m not infuriated by the damage I know they’re causing to today’s Christian Reformed youth, I find myself mildly amused by the Abide Project’s YouTube broadcasts which often feature a cheerful duo: Reverends Tyler Wagenmaker and Lloyd Hemstreet.

I wish I could be as incensed by these gentlemen as I had been by an anonymous Indianan Democrat-and-a-Christian. I wish I could feel as indignant toward them as I felt, a quarter-century ago, toward the N.O.W. feminists who shouted back at me, on a freezing January day, in front of the Supreme Court. I wish I could despise them and all they have to say, but I can’t. I can’t hate Lloyd or Tyler because I see in each of them a previous version of myself. I see my 15-year-old self and my 20-year-old self and my 25-year-old self, an asynchronous trinity of folks who believed that one could not be both Christian and gay. Many of the previous versions of myself not only believed but also proclaimed the same things the Abide Project is saying now. Indeed, I have been my own worst enemy.

Only recently have I realized that my younger selves cannot be fixed or corrected or brought back into line. My mistakes, pulled by the passage of time beyond my reach, can no longer be rectified. The past can’t always be rationalized or justified or fully understood. The past can never be changed. The actions and beliefs of the past are bygones: non-existent yet immutable. They are there, over yonder, and they always will be. But they’re not here. Their effects can be here, though, if we’re not careful. If we don’t heal and forgive and move on.

I have learned that seeing my own past with indignation and regret and incensement will not help me evolve into a more joyful future. In fact, such negativity will only hinder my progress. Only when we treat our foolish former selves with compassion, empathy, and forgiveness will we manage to prevent the mistakes of the past from ruining the potential joy of the present.  

I have been my own worst enemy, and I have learned from that experience. I know that it is only when we regard our opponents with compassion, empathy, and forgiveness that we can heal and move on, onward into the joyful future.

I love you, Lloyd. And I lift my voice.