Big days always seem to bring the big feels for me. Recently, my eldest daughter, a high school freshman, attended her first prom. She went with some of her best pals who are juniors and seniors, one of whom had invited her to be her date. (They are, for the record, “just friends.”)
Standing on the back patio of her friend’s home that afternoon, taking pictures with a handful of other doting mothers and fathers and siblings and grandparents and one adorable dog under a perfect Michigan sky, I inhaled and held my breath: this was a milestone. A rite of passage. It wasn’t just the fact that someone decided my baby was apparently now old enough to be dressing up and going off in cars (!!!) with other kids (!!!) that, for some, marked the end of their entire high school career. It was that she looked happier and more confident and more beautiful than I’d ever seen her before.
And I immediately wondered whom I could share these pictures with…who would be sincerely happy that she was sincerely happy, without getting stuck on the gay thing. I texted my husband and middle daughter and, without missing a beat, they oooh’d and ahhh’d over how gorgeous she looked, decked out in her black dress shirt and pants with suspenders and a blue bow tie that matched her beautiful bright blue eyes. A fresh haircut from the barber shop that morning gave her a clean, stylish look that would come to earn her numerous “fleek” points.
After years of square pegging it, she was finding her people, finding her style and finding her groove. A row of cameras flashed like sparklers.
We’d come a long way from the not-so-distant past when “special occasion” automatically meant “dress,” and we would inevitably argue over clothing until possibly one or both of us was in tears.
We can photographically trace “crying in dresses” back to her second Easter, when what would become a classic family photo reveals the fervor with which she tried to remove her new threads, a timeless pink collared dress that I paid a little more for than I wanted to at Gymboree. But, she was a toddler and they cry about things. Maybe the tag was itchy. She was so stinking cute, even with a tear-stained face. Awwww.
Her deep disdain for dresses and anything “girly” continued for several Easters, Christmases and JC Penney photo sessions but it got less cute and more frustrating, for both of us, as time went by.
As I may have shared previously, I was raised in the evangelical church, and while we didn’t know very much about the homosexuals back then, we knew enough to be afraid of them and disgusted by them. They were definitely on the outside, rather than the inside, where we were. And we knew that they liked to flaunt their perverse lifestyles by dressing a certain way. So even though a little girl’s inclination toward more masculine or gender-neutral clothing is certainly not sinful (right?), and does not necessarily mean anything, our daughter’s passionate preferences and aversions sometimes caused my husband and I to meet eyes across a room and mind-whisper, “oh no, I hope she’s not gay.” She was just 3 or 4 when we each first acknowledged our concerns about where her strong preferences might lead. So much so that when she was in upper elementary, my husband once sent an email to a popular Christian question/answer website to ask for advice.
Should we let her wear “boy clothes?”
Should we be concerned?
I wish we had a copy of that exchange, but we recall that the person who responded to us said NOT TO WORRY about it; that they also had a daughter whom they considered a tomboy as a child, but now that she was in junior high, she loved wearing spaghetti strap tank tops and had achieved appropriate girliness levels, and it would happen for our daughter, too. (Or something to that effect.) We felt relieved.
I cringe even as I write this. If only I could go back and kick my own butt. I would care so much less about what she wore and so much more about how loved and valued she felt, no matter which section she wanted to shop from at Target. But I digress.
I think some of the pressure in church culture comes from its multi-generational membership, where certain traditional appearances are expected and rewarded by esteemed elders. MATCHING DRESSES?? YOU’RE CLEARLY A GREAT FAMILY! GOOD JOB RAISING THE NEXT GENERATION OF GODLY CHILDREN! It can be very mompetitive, too, especially where social media is concerned: let’s see those perfectly poised girls, let’s see those frilly frocks and handmade bows! I had two daughters close in age, and then a third a few years later, and the expectation was that they would follow the program and look darling, at least on special occasions. Was that so much to ask?
I once brought home two understated, only slightly sparkly dresses for an upcoming Daddy Daughter Dance, even though my fancy-from-the-womb second daughter is the only one who had expressed any interest in attending this event with my husband. My youngest was too little and my eldest wanted no part of it.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go, too?”
“No, thanks.”
“Will you at least try this dress on so I can take your picture?”
“No, thanks.”
“What if I gave you $20?”
“Ok.”
I got the pic I wanted and she was $20 richer.
But at what cost? This was the least comfortable item of clothing I could have asked her to wear, and I knew it. But … the image. The pictures. The elders. Social media.
The photo got a ton of LIKEs and 2 shares.
And she couldn’t wait to rip off that dress.
#MomOfTheYear
👎
I wish we recognized our blind spot sooner, that we had been focusing on the wrong things all along and missing what was important. That our fears were superficial and displaced, and inadvertently causing our daughter pain. That there was more the Lord was going to teach us about loving our children, and “fitting in” was not part of the program.
* * * * * *
There’s another reason this was a big day loaded with big feels.
Exactly one year ago to the day from this beautiful prom evening, my heart was in a million pieces and my husband and I were carrying those pieces to the pastor of our church to see if he could help mend them. It had been about three months since our daughter came out, and we were crushed. Though all along we expected the experience of having a gay child would be the thing that broke our hearts, it wasn’t; instead it was the reactions we received from some close friends, family and ministry leaders when we first started seeking support. It was the careless words that pierced. The ‘kick ‘em to the curb’ attitude. It became clear to us very quickly that some of them could not see past the “issue” to embrace a vulnerable girl, nor her vulnerable family. They were certain, but they were not seeing. And this was surely not the message they intended to send. I know they loved us, but their words (and underlying assumptions and attitudes) caused us tremendous pain. The church had a blind spot, too, and we felt compelled to point it out, an act that was completely outside of our comfort zone.
Our hearts pounded and mouths dried as we walked hand-in-hand through the church parking lot for our Friday afternoon meeting with the Wizard. It was one part yellow brick road, and one part walking the plank. Would this be the beginning or the end? A launch party or an exit interview? We walked past the spot where we had gotten married — the only outdoor wedding our church had ever held, we’ve been told — almost 18 years earlier. The people I grew up with were here. The people we loved and served with were here. We bought into the church vision and we were invested. And until this point, we had asked for nothing in return. Now we were asking for our church to become a safe place for our family to not be so certain, acknowledge the blind spot that existed, and commit to leaning in and learning together so that other families like ours might be met with more grace and understanding in the future. We did not want to lose our church family, but we were no longer willing to make our daughter pretend to be something that she wasn’t.
As we stepped through the door, we inhaled and held the breath.
#
Conclusion: Blind Spots 2 (The Pastor & The Coconut: You Are Wanted Here)
the thing she needed 