The best path

I told the doctor to think of me as a nun.  She was doing the usual new doctor-y speechless gaping when told I am not, have never been, and have no plans to be sexually active.  My humor broke the awkward silence and allowed her to laugh and stop gaping at me while trying to form a coherent thought.  I should have said I was a free-agent nun.  I'll try to remember that line for next time.

I also said I was going to try to go off the thyroid med again.  I'm at half of the lowest dose, I have my eyebrows back, and I'm not losing copious amounts of hair right now.  I am ever-so-slightly less exhausted.  Part of me wants to stay on this ultra-low dose because it's working, but doctors keep telling me that if I do, soon my thyroid will get lazy (instead of just exhausted) and stop working altogether, and that's bad.  It's also, according to some doctors, probably not good to be taking the medication for a long time starting so young if I can avoid it.  But right now is not a good time to start losing hair and feeling even more tired.  I don't want to screw this up, but since I can't know what will happen this time I stop taking it, I can't know which choice will actually be more likely to screw things up.  Welcome to adulthood?

Since I've been tapering off the medication, I've been silently cheering my thryoid on.  "You can do it!" I tell it mentally.  "Go, thyroid, go!"  Now that it's had crutches for a little while, surely it can walk on its own.  Probably.  Maybe.  Eventually?  I think of it like the little thyroid that could, but in real life (outside of children's storybooks), sometimes the little train that thinks it can just can't.  Do I want the symptoms to return right in the middle of the stress of moving?  Can I trust my malfunctioning body to get this one thing right despite everything?  And if I do trust it, what if that trust is betrayed at the worst possible time?  But if I stay on the medication just until the moving is done (probably some time in August), what if that pushes me past the point of no-return, and, frustrated by my lack of trust, my thyroid locks itself up in its attic room and refuses to come out ever again?

Obviously, I could use more sleep.  (Most of the docs think that would actually allow the thyroid to function normally again.)  However, that's still the thing that just isn't happening here in my crappy apartment.  If I move to a place where I can consistently knock all the sleep-hygiene stuff out of the park, it's possible that things will improve.  If that doesn’t work, I may actually go to my last contingency plan (the one where I ask for, like, a three week supply of some drug that just totally knocks you out and then add that to the perfect sleep hygiene in a last-ditch, desperate effort to re-program my sleep [at least I'll have somewhere another person can sleep to make sure nothing wacky happens while I'm on that med]).  I'm pretty sure whatever decision I make will be the wrong one, but that just means that if anything works, I will be pleasantly surprised and very grateful.

Any thoughts?

What sex is like at its best

So I mentioned this awesome post by a homosexual Mormon not living a homosexual lifestyle and explaining his history and thought process and decisions along the way.  One of the things I found most interesting was what he said about his relationship and sex life with his wife.

"I knew that I was gay, and I also knew that sex with my wife was enjoyable. But I didn’t understand how that was happening. Here is the basic reality that I actually think many people could use a lesson in: sex is about more than just visual attraction and lust and it is about more than just passion and infatuation. I won’t get into the boring details of the research here, but basically when sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy. It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love. It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly. It is bodies connecting and souls connecting. It is beautiful and rich and fulfilling and spiritual and amazing. Many people never get to this point in their sex lives because it requires incredible communication, trust, vulnerability, and connection. And Lolly and I have had that from day one, mostly because we weren’t distracted by the powerful chemicals of infatuation and obsession that usually bring a couple together (which dwindle dramatically after the first few years of marriage anyway). So, in a weird way, the circumstances of our marriage allowed us to build a sexual relationship that is based on everything partners should want in their sex-life: intimacy, communication, genuine love and affection. This has resulted in us having a better sex life than most people I personally know. Most of whom are straight. Go fig." - Josh Weed

As a contented celibate/asexual person, I found this really interesting because it confirmed that some things I had thought could be true can in fact be true.  It seems a bit like arranged marriages: if both parties come in with their eyes open and the same goals, they can have a very rich marriage full of mutual love and respect.  Hormones and passion don't have to have much to do with it, really, and can, in fact, be detrimental.

Anyway, it provoked a lot of thought for me.  Doing anything for you?

Homosexual voices of faith

This blog post about a Mormon who identifies as homosexual and chooses to live the way he believes is correct even though it goes against his inclinations is one of the best things I've read in years.  Everything is so logical and clear while still being emotionally powerful and ringing with the truth of hard choices made.  I've wondered if these voices were writing somewhere because they are voices that need to be heard in the church.

"Why was he gay? What did God expect him to do?"  - Josh Weed

Does this mean I agree with everything the poster said/concluded?  Of course not, but so what?  It is a voice that is part of an important conversation we need to be having about homosexuality and religion so that thinking people who are homosexuals can see that they don't have to either "live a lie" or just give up on the church.

"One of the sad truths about being homosexual is that no matter what you decide for your future, you have to sacrifice something. It’s very sad, but it is true. I think this is true of life in general as well. If you decide to be a doctor, you give up any of the myriad of other things you could have chosen."
. . .
"I chose not to “live the gay lifestyle,” as it were, because I found that what I would have to give up to do so wasn’t worth the sacrifice for me."  - Josh Weed

A while back, there was a kerfuffle on one of the related-to-Publisher's-Weekly blogs wherein commenters got very vocal about the idea of different voices in genre fiction.  A lot of people who were not fans of religion said some things that made me sad in their call for inclusion and tolerance and such.  They didn't want any more lying religious propaganda where no characters are ever not-heterosexual or where any incidental homosexual characters are miraculously "cured" to live happily ever after.  They wanted stories that ring with truth (in their case, defined as not-mainstream, not-easy, not-convenient, not-limiting, not-church).

"It all comes down to what you choose and why, and knowing what you want for yourself and why you want it. That’s basically what life is all about."  - Josh Weed

I agreed with these posters in theory, that kids need to be able to read stories told well by realistic narrators they can identify with.  I disagreed with these posters because I think there are stories with religious and even Christian narrators who wrestle with their faith and homosexuality and find their way onto a path they can live with in both their hearts and their heads.  But who would ever publish such writing?  As my college writing professor once said, "Too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals."  But I can't help feeling that the audience is out there, listening to the sound of crickets chirping and feeling miserable and horrible and more sinful than those around them because that is the only message they really hear proclaimed loudly.

"I want you to stop battling with this part of you that you may have understood as being sinful. Being gay does not mean you are a sinner or that you are evil. Sin is in action, not in temptation or attraction. I feel this is a very important distinction. This is true for every single person. You don’t get to choose your circumstances, but you do get to choose what you do with them."  - Josh Weed

We need writers who have gone through this struggle to relate it to those struggling with it now to show that there is hope, intellectual integrity, faithfulness, and peace out there, not just despair.  The backlash could be tremendous, but those kids struggling now deserve that helping hand.

"You are no more broken than any other person you meet."  - Josh Weed

If you've come across anything written by those with non-heterosexual inclinations who have chosen to live what they believe is right according to their carefully considered faith, please pass them my way.

Neither asexual nor celibate? And the Church . . .

So I'm uncomfortable with both asexual and celibate labels.  Why?

I feel more like I'm being practical than sacrificial. If you don't have to get mixed up in the morass of romantic/sexual relations, why on God's green earth would you? I think all people desire intimacy, but some of us just realize that sex doesn't have the market cornered on intimacy, and sexual relationships are not necessarily superior in the intimacy department. Unfortunately, a lot more people don't realize that, so relationships in the church are skewed from the ideal just as much (if in different ways) as those outside the church.

The church, the body of Christ, should be about real love (intimacy), but nowhere do people get as hysterical about the idea of intimate, chaste, male-female friendships as in the current church. It's unconscious and systemic. The book Singled Out picked up on it and painted kind of a beautiful picture but stopped before going nearly far enough with the analysis and suggestions. I hope the authors are working on a sequel.  (Does anyone know of any other books that explore this practical aspect further?)

The church should be the place where people are a family, one body, intimately involved with each other's lives and not so LASER-focused on spouses and children to the exclusion of any other intimate relationships.

Yeah, I said it.  It's pretty radical, I know, and it's hardly well-developed and well-thought out enough to write a book about. But when I look at what I know of the life and example of Jesus and the early church, I can't help but think that maybe it's true.

What do you think?

Asexual Awareness Week?

Did you know it was asexual awareness week?   Neither did I.  How did people become aware of things before the internet?

Since I am now aware that there's an official category and stuff, I did a bit of looking at definitions, and it seems that I actually don't really qualify for the asexual category if it is strictly defined as a lack of sexual orientation.  In real life, however, (on the discussion groups and forums), it seems that people who identify themselves as asexual are sometimes indicating a preference or choice to not participate in sexual activity (though some who identify as asexual do have sex usually for the sake of other people), so maybe I still qualify for the label.

Random fact from Wikipedia: "Currently the US states of Vermont[49] and New York[50] have labeled asexuals as a protected class."  Who knew?

Conclusion: Since I've had crushes on boys, I think I'm technically not asexual.  I guess celibacy is the word for me.

Thing is, I don't always feel comfortable with celibate, either, as the connotation is clearly of one who sets aside these desires for a religious purpose, and I don't really think that's what I'm doing.   Wikipedia separates asexuality from it for that reason: "distinct from abstention from sexual activity and from celibacy, which are behavioral and generally motivated by an individual's religious (or other) beliefs. . .."


Not a eunuch from birth and not a eunuch for the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:12).  Then what am I?  And what should I be (doing)?

Is asexuality getting popular? (No, really.)

I have discovered that I apparently have a label.  There are even graphics one can post to proclaim one's proud membership to this group.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Maybe now that they've taken my term, I'll have to switch to another.  I'd hate to be painted guilty by association. 

One might wonder how that would happen.  Well, you see, apparently, this category is part of a new term people are trying to popularize.  Back when I was in college, the GLBT acronym was thought to span the spectrum (outside of straight folks, who don't count because they're in the majority I guess).  Now there's this new-fangled one I ran across while reading up on a controversy in the Young Adult novel world: QUILTBAG.

(I would hereby like to suggest that this acronym be made plural to include straight folks in the name of the diversity the folks who came up with the term claim to value.)

"Nurul says: September 13, 2011 at 10:19 am

"Ooh, is that A in your QUILTBAG stands for asexual? Because if yes then thank goodness, someone remembers us! It seems like the world refuses to acknowledge that we exist."

And have a Facebook group to prove it.  So what are other folks in this strange group like?  Feel free to check out some of their sites.

"S.O. says: September 13, 2011 at 2:36 pm

"there’s a few discussion communities on this topic:
http://group-x.dreamwidth.org/
http://asexual-fandom.dreamwidth.org/
http://asexuality.dreamwidth.org/"

So I'm part of an acronym that also contains labels for behaviors I do not condone.  What's a Christian girl to do?

I sometimes joke that the only thing worse than Christian young adults telling their parents that they're homosexual seems to be telling their parents that they're asexual.  In our culture (even in the church), being asexual is a kind of perversion reserved for the crazies and/or the most holy (monks, mystics, martyrs, and suchlike).  Mad people wired for self-sacrifice or self-destruction.  It's threatening to believers and non-believers alike for someone to look and say, "You know, this game you all play so intently holds no interest for me, so I'm just going to go do something else with my time and energy."

I'm not sure what I think about being in a QUILTBAG category.  In the church, we're taught that this lack of sexual desire is a spiritual gift, but spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to the Church to help us serve others, so where do a bunch of "secular" asexuals leave my theology?

Your thoughts?

Grace and consistency

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So, wow, unexpected article I thought I'd share with you.  Here are some of my favorite bits. 

"First, Christian institutions should be clear about the behavioral standards they expect from employees, students, and members, and then enforce them—consistently, but judiciously. There are legal reasons for this. If Christian institutions expect society to let them make religious belief and practice a factor in their employment practices, they need to provide clear and consistent accounts of their standards. "

"Consistency and clarity are essential. Consistency means not singling out those with same-sex orientation. The same standard should apply to all. Wheaton College's Community Covenant is a good model. It says, "[F]ollowers of Jesus Christ will … uphold chastity among the unmarried (1 Cor. 6:18) and the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman (Heb. 13:4) … Scripture condemns … all … sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage between a man and woman." Those standards do not make a special case of homosexuality. To deviate from God's ideal is to deviate from God's ideal."

"Grace does not always, everywhere, and immediately mean wiping the slate clean."

"Grace can be tough, but it always aims at the redemption of the offender."

This is a set of topics that has been on my mind for a few years.  When I realized that there were few examples of correct church discipline, a real inconsistency in the Christian community about moral failures in leadership, and a real double standard about sexual sin in the church, I started thinking.  I'm still thinking.  What are your thoughts?  Your experience with these issues in your church?
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Talking sex and celibacy in church (or, why I enjoy I Corinthians)

Things weren't nearly as awkward as they could have been when I lead the small group discussion about sex a couple weeks ago.  I thanked God for that.

We're studying I Corinthians at church, and I'm having a wonderful time, since I love me some Corinthians.  Some of the best celibacy stuff is in I Corinthians (not that it convinces my mom I'm not a deviant).  I love the fact that my pastor is addressing things most Christians don't even know are in the Bible.  Maybe next week here, I'll talk more about my concerns with the group/church reaction to the celibacy idea.  For now, back to sex.

Then the closing pray-er earnestly thanked God that a single woman would be brave enough to lead a small group in a talk about sex and lust.  I almost hurt myself not laughing out loud.  Bravery?  Seriously?

I mean, I suppose if I were a "normal" single Christian desperately longing for a spouse and praying that I hadn't been given the gift of celibacy if it was nonreturnable, maybe it would have been more awkward.  Or maybe if I were younger.  Or if I didn't live in a culture that tries to sell sex to anyone who is not blind, deaf, or sequestered in a far-out nunnery.

But, come on, they know by now who I am: an observant, thoughtful 30-year-old, informed and willing to choose something else. 

Sure, we were all a tad embarrassed: newly-marrieds, older-marrieds, and dating couple, along with single woman.  (I think it was a good thing the new guy didn't come this week, either.)  We're embarrassed partly because none of us have much experience talking sex with other people in the church.  It still has that slightly tainted status as a topic incapable of being included in godly conversation, which is silly.  God invented sex.  It's part of who most people are, and it's wrapped up in a lot of current cultural baggage.

Sex and sexual identity are a big part of who people are in America and possibly even more important in more conservative church culture.  We need to know how to talk about it biblically, compassionately, honestly, and rightly.

But with all this great biblical teaching about the benefits and goodness of celibacy, I can't understand why the church is so marriage- and baby-crazy.  It's absolutely ingrained, to the point where no one ever questions it.  When I asked if they ever considered not getting married, I got seriously blank looks.  They never thought about it as an option even when it was presented last week.  I'll bet other groups discussing this, groups that don't have a thrilled, celibacy-gifted member like me never really even went so far as to entertain the idea that some people actually choose it. 

Celibacy is not an embarrassment.  Let me rephrase that: a life style of celibacy should not be an embarrassment, especially not in the church.  But it is. 

Talking about celibacy with someone who is, in fact, celibate for one reason or another makes Christians uncomfortable, possibly more uncomfortable than talking about sex.  Truly it does. 

I've often thought that the only thing that would have traumatized my mom more about my sexuality would have been if I had told her I was homosexual.  My celibacy seems like a similar blow to her; she simply doesn't know how to react, how to process this ersatz sexual non-orientation.

It seems so unnatural to most people.  At least the folks in my MFA program were curious.  They asked questions.  Lots of detailed questions.  Their obvious befuddlement was refreshing.  They didn't understand, really, but they didn't pity me; they wanted to understand me as much as they could.  Believers seem to just feel sorry for celibate people.  I find the situation sad.  And, to be honest, pretty irritating.

For now, I'm just glad that we got through our discussions the last few weeks without anyone being too ashamed to meet anyone's eyes or flipping out too much.  The donuts probably helped.  Maybe the sugar low mellowed us out?

Have you ever talked sex and celibacy in your church or small group?  How'd that go for you?

Homosexual clergy

I admit that I do not know much about this debate, just that it is huge and in the news enough that I, with no newspaper subscription or TV, am a bit tired of hearing about it.  I'm far from fully informed of the intricacies, but I don't really get why this is such a big debate.  I mean, it shouldn't even be a debate at all, but it still is, and I wonder why.

I think it has something to do with how all the coverage never seems to cover the issue as a moral one.  The papers make it seem like anyone who opposes homosexual clergy does so for the same reason they would discriminate against clergy who don't like golf or who like to read mystery novels or who prefer chocolate almond ice cream.  But that's not at all what this is about.

I think most people who oppose homosexual clergy do so for the same reason that they oppose adulterous clergy or unmarried clergy having sex outside of biblical marriage or clergy molesting altar boys: this is a moral issue, and these things are immoral. 

In organizations based on morality, why is there such outrage over a moral issue being a determining factor in leadership?

Maybe I'm just missing something?