It has been almost three years since I last wrote an essay about my life as a gay Christian; for four years I had a column at the web’s best resource for gay Christians - gaychristian.net. Now I’m here at Open Salon; frankly this is because here, I can use the foul language of which I’m so fond.

Look; I never said, nor will I ever say, that I’m a good Christian.

I could attribute my absence to the events of the intervening time: I earned a graduate degree in writing, I got a full-time job that pays actual money, I adopted a dog, I started a garden and finished four novels (none published, yet). But none of those things would have been reason enough not to write about my awkward, club-footed pilgrim’s progress.

Look, I’m just going to level with you: I have almost no idea what it means to be gay, to be Christian, or to marry those two terms together in some kind of meaningful definition of myself.

When I first came out in 2001 – my official story is that the timing had absolutely nothing to do with our last President’s rise to power – there were a lot of very concerned people, good Christian people, who told me they worried I’d start to define myself solely by my sexual orientation. God knows I’ve known some people like that.

That same year I met a freshman at my university who introduced himself to me like this: “Hi, my name is J----, and I’m from gay hell, a.k.a. Kansas.”

So I could more or less see where my Christian friends were coming from. It’s off-putting when a person’s entire self-definition seems to come from being gay, as if that’s the only aspect of their existence that matters in any appreciable way. I think it’s off-putting because being gay is, at least in part, about sex, and really, most of us spend so little of our time actually having sex that to orient our lives around it seems maybe a little backward. At the very least, I think it’s fair to say that you don’t want to think about most of the people you know having sex any more than you want to think about them going to the bathroom.

Oh, I’m off to a ripping start, aren’t I? WELCOME BACK.

I think my adorable, caring, Jesus-loving friends needn’t have worried about me coming to define myself primarily as gay. If anything, the opposite has happened: the way I think of myself in practical terms has very little to do with being gay. It’s just this part of my life, this one thing about me, like the garden or the dog or the job or the dream of being a writer.

Being gay for me means that I have a husband, a man I love with all my heart, and that I send money and prayers to defeat that awful, awful Sally Kern, and Prop 8, and “Don’t Ask.” Other than that I don’t know, I don’t give it much thought. I have wonderful, supportive friends, family and coworkers who know and love Brian, and we don’t get hassled for being overly affectionate in public because it’s not like us to be overly affectionate in public. The problems that we do have are pretty great ones. A healthy, wonderful thing has happened: I’ve developed a sense of perspective about being gay and now it has its rightful place in my mind and identity.

As to my faith, I’m not entirely sure what has happened. To describe my faith as “just another aspect of myself” would be disingenuous, because I don’t think that being a Christian is – or should be – just another identity label.

That said, I have even less to say about how my relationship with God shapes me because it’s a relationship that’s deeper than words can go. When it comes to faith I’ve become more inclined just to listen, and wait.

This is so contrary to my personality that it’s not even funny. I’m not a listener, or a waiter. I’m a freaking writer, for God’s sake, someone who likes to talk into the void, and I’m about as impatient as it is possible to be. Add to that the fact that I have a degree in religion and philosophy, that I dropped out of divinity school, I devour books on theology and spirituality and that I have one or two pretty strong opinions, and it’s hard for me to just listen.

I got to spend some time last summer at the highest point in Oklahoma, a tall outcropping of volcanic rock called Black Mesa that is only 1,200 feet from the small border my state shares with New Mexico. Brian and I hiked to the top of the Mesa with a good friend. At the top I sat on the edge of a rock face looking out over the ancient plain below. It was perfectly silent – not a whisper of wind, no chatter of birds or humming of insects. It was if the world was sitting perfectly still. 

It was one of those moments where the veil was down. Time stood still and everything was perfectly quiet. In moments like these I find myself anticipating something huge – God finally waving His wand or whispering a three-word Secret that will allow me to float along through life with a beatific smile and a bright halo over my head.

As a young man my faith was marked by deep impatience. Every prayer session was marked by a sense that any moment God would – or should – reach down and make me Victorious over all that vexed me. I figured I’d struggle with this or that sin or challenge for awhile, then I’d experience a miracle healing, and my life would finally begin. Of course, this never happened and at some point I realized that my desire for miracle healing was less about faith than it was about no longer wanting to be dependent. I wanted God to come down and fix me so that I didn’t have to feel broken anymore, so that I didn’t have to be constantly reminded of my need for Him.

That day on the Mesa I felt my dependence, I felt small and suspended in something greater, something so great that in its reach I should be of no consequence, and yet here I was, this great prairie and its unending blue sky filled with something at once transcendent and imminent. I didn’t ask for anything, I didn’t wait to be struck by some bolt of religious inspiration. It was quiet, God was near, and for once that was enough.

That experience has stuck with me as the model of what my life as a Christian is supposed to be like. As a young believer I prayed about every inconsequential decision – where to have lunch, what classes to take, what music to listen to. My head was filled with the endless chatter of a nervous mind, and I over-spiritualized it all. I had no sense of perspective about any of my thoughts or inclinations. I began to see all of life as this nonstop spiritual warfare. It was exhausting.

Miraculously, I grew. I learned how to trust, just a little, just enough. I stopped worrying that it was my job to save the world, or myself, or anyone at all. I let go just a little, and then later, just a little more, and I’m still learning to let go. I haven’t arrived, but I’ve stopped expecting to, and that’s huge.

So now, I listen. I wait. It drives me crazy, but in a way that is contrary to every nervous and sick impulse I have, and this makes me think it’s the right thing to do. I only know enough about what it means to be a Christian, to walk with Jesus, to get me through today, through this moment, and while that never feels like enough, it always is.