The Narnia Inside My Closet: Part 2

< Part 1  |  Part 3 >

In my first post, I describe how I lived alone with my questions of my sexual orientation. I had no one to turn to, no one to trust in; I was alone. So I hid it away, pretending it was not there. And anytime anyone came close to figuring it out, I gave them excuses that led them in the other direction.

I hoped that when I got to college, I would know what to do; hoped that something would have changed. But when I finally got there it was not like anything had changed, and now I started to run out of excuses.

What was I supposed to do? I had gone to a small publicly-funded university in a completely new area of my state, away from my Mennonite community. I did not have a church family there to trust in. So who was I supposed to talk to?

One of my early Photoshop projects.

By this time I actually knew some gay people. Being in Honor’s Choir helped out with that, as well as being placed in the fine arts dorm in college(I was a graphic design major at the time), which is where invariably all of the gay people were placed as well. But the problem was I could not talk about it with any of them. They had accepted that part of themselves—which is exactly what I did not want to do!

I had to find someone who knew how I felt; and I found him…eventually.

It was the summer after my second year of college. At that time I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ (which has since changed its name to “Cru”), and I was given the opportunity to go to France for one of their Summer Projects. For us, it was six weeks on an evangelical mission trip to the city of Montpellier.

While I was there I met a guy named Eric who had been placed there long-term. He was engaged to another missionary there long-term with him, and at one point he gathered all of the guys around for a little “guy talk.” He told us he at one time struggled with an attraction to men.

Furthermore, he claimed he had overcome it. He explained that he brought it up with us because he thought that homosexuality in the church was not often a topic discussed amongst circles of men—which was rather ironic since this was the first time I had ever been a part of a discussion amongst men about it.

Afterwards, I pulled Eric aside (a.k.a. we went to a local coffee shop down in the city’s plaza) and told him personally that I was struggling too. …It was the first time I had ever said those words—that idea—about myself, let alone with someone else around to hear it.

This was of course right around the end of our time in France, so right before we left Eric told me to keep in touch so he could help me work through my struggle. And I told Eric that was grateful and that I would indeed use him as a sort of mentor.

But after the trip to France was over, I never made a single phone call to him. It was not like I did not trust him or did not want to call him, but it just was never meant to be.

Coming back from France, I flew straight to the biannual National Convention of Mennonite Church USA which this time just so happened to be held in Columbus, OH (boy was that a culture shock; as if the original transition back to the United States was not drastic enough, I had to transition straight into a unique religious subculture that exists quite independently of the broader U.S. culture surrounding it).

While at Columbus ‘09, I did some processing. Meeting Eric finally gave me the courage to talk about my feelings with other people. But being Mennonite complicated things. I was not certain who else could understand my situation. So, I decided I needed to find someone in the Mennonite Church who would understand what I was thinking, what I was going through.

Therefore, I decided to transfer—at this time, I was about to head into my Junior year of college—to a Mennonite university in order to study Theology & Philosophy. I chose the university I did because I knew a few people there already and because one of the theology professors there had previously been a pastor at my home church when I was a kid; and I just had a feeling it was the right place.

This decision to transfer would turn out to be one of the best ones I have ever made.