My Thoughts on Pride Month
I recently had a friend ask me what my thoughts were as a Catholic with SSA on Pride Month, with it now being upon us.
Truth be told, I feel as though I'm going to discover how I feel as I'm writing this post. As I lay here, and I ponder, and I pray, what to say might come to me.
The topic of homosexuality is so touchy, and I know that all too well. I poke the hornet's nest every time I bring it up. Even on nights like tonight, as it's just me and my thoughts guarded by four walls and a still tongue, I feel that weight on my chest.
I know that burden. I know that anxiety, that sorrow, that fear.
It's all so familiar to me. Maybe it's familiar to you, too.
I know for sure that my heart is heavy, and I'm deeply saddened. I'm afraid because I know and love people within the LGBT community, and I know what they think of my beliefs.
I know that they don't understand. I know that they become angry. And I wonder if I should hold my tongue.
I wonder what I should do. What I should say.
I wonder if I should be silent. But, I know that I would only be silent out of fear.
And it is times like these that I curse the fact that I know God.
I've been asked by people what my favorite Bible verse or verses are, and I'd like to share them with you now.
Jeremiah 20: 14-18
Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!
Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, "A son is born to you," making him very glad.
Let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon,
because he did not kill me in the womb, so my mother would have been my grave, and her room for ever great.
Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow and spend my days and shame?
I've carried anger in my heart because of my Same-Sex Attractions for such a long time. I look to these verses, and I see my frustrations so seamlessly put into words. I see my anger, my anxiety, my depression and my fears all there, coming forth from not only the lips of the prophet Jeremiah, but also from my own.
Even so, I also find a sense of peace. Calm comes and finds me where I am, and rests with me, and will often stay here for a while.
I know that I've been able to wrestle with God, and I know that He Hears my cries. I shout these words to the Lord and He hears me, and He answers me.
And His answer is what shakes me to my core.
I hear in my heart, "I could say the same."
There's an irony in the fact that the LGBT Movement also bares the name of the "Gay Pride Movement." Pride, by far the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins, is so present here. We see our pain, we see what it is that we want, and we place our own agendas before objective truth, and goodness, and beauty. I say this because I have done the same.
It is arrogant of us to experience pain, and not look before us and see the Cross. It is selfish of us to see pain and not look beyond it.
We must all look to and go to Christ Crucifed, and suffer with Him.
God Bless my Crosses! I praise God the Father in Heaven for the blood that has spilt from my body and some soaked the ground beneath me. I am thankful for all that I have suffered because it is here, it is now, it is for this reason that I can truly worship Christ Jesus.
I think about Pride Month, and I think that now, I am called more than ever to humility, and to carry my Cross, and carry it well.
I think about Pride Month, and I see myself on the Cross.
I am deeply saddened. But in my sorrow, in my deepest wounds, I see the Face of my Greatest Love, my Lord Jesus.
In these days, I am deeply humbled to be called to carry this Cross. In these days, and in the days to come, I pray that I could be the light that shows others how to do the same.