I love it when I discover that someone I care about has a blog. I recently found my friend Derrick’s blog; we were floormates for two years and he is an amazing writer, pastor, speaker, scholar, and singer. Some of my best memories from commencement this year are of hearing his voice stream through various hymns, prayers, and songs.
Given that I’ve been thinking about marriage rights lately, I was really interested to read some of his thoughts– you can read them on his blog, Touched Enough to Speak, in a post entitled, “Answer to: ‘Why do They Want to Marry?’”
In part, he describes how LGBTQ life can be a matter of losing “proscribed ideals,” and needing to re-form identity. I particularly like the way he imagines the loss, the refashioning, and the way one lives in that process:
“In LGBTQ identity formation, those building blocks that are cultural, familial, and societal are the hardest to reframe because our input on their importance in our lives has been so limited. It is like the game Jenga-trying to build an identity while with each round of life you realize the pieces of your identity that culture and society takes away from your foundation.”
He continues, writing:
“I think marriage represents much of this foundational identity formation. Now that there is even the remotest of possibilities of putting this foundational piece of identity formation back in place, people are reclaiming the piece.”
I’m not sure what to add to this, except to say that I’ve been thinking about these ideas a lot since I first read them. I think one of the reasons it speaks to me, and maybe everyone, is that one part of being human is dealing with loss, especially of “pieces”– even large blocks–parts of our life that we expected, or took for granted, or thought would happen. A piece gets removed, and we have to continue to grow, live, and rebuild on a shifted foundation.
Yes.
Yes, meaning—I feel that, like we probably all do, that big chunks of my life have been wiped out or stolen or even ignored by myself, but you keep going and you keep building. You can start anywhere, really.
I agree. Everyday I tell myself that if I didn’t have expectations, I wouldn’t be disappointed. I expected to be calm and serenely poised with the advent of my 40th birthday. I thought it simply decended on a person
HA HA! Boy was I disappointed to find the lessons continue and peace is a process of developing a relationship with the One who fills in the gaps in the universe.
You go girl, keep building.
You know the idea of losing pieces of who you thought you were is kind of an interesting way to try to understand people who are different from you. I may not be able to relate to being LGBTQ exactly, but I can definitely relate to having a piece that I had counted on pulled out of my life and having to re-evaluate where I go from here or how I relate without that piece. This is why we need to keep communicating with other people and not sitting in a little box by ourselves. We can think and meditate and cogitate all we want but it is other people’s ideas and perspectives that move us forward give us new angles to look at things. I just wish we lived closer and could spend more time together just sharing thoughts and ideas.