I want you to know in your heart of hearts that you are okay.

Speaking with Stan over flapjacks and fried eggs, we talked freely about our week, our partners, and our friends in the local diner. But when we spoke of sex and faith we both got real quiet. Hardly hearing each other, lest we be heard by some nosy neighbor, maybe true believers just out of worship or bad boys just starting their morning this afternoon digging out from their close out at the eagle just 9 hours earlier.

“They can never know.”

As we parted we laughed at the range of our conversation, from secrets we used to hold from ourselves and our former wives, to facades we still maintain for our faithful family who have barely tolerated us coming out, and who might self-combust if they knew what it is like to be in our skin. That’s where his pain was today. You see, Stan still hides. Presenting the good boy to those from back home. Putting on the respectability of a man trying to earn back what he lost when he came out and ended a marriage to a good woman. Yet moments before lighting up when sharing about the particulars of what lights his fires in places they would never go, should never know. A cold curtain closes when he worried what would happen if some loose wire lover were to go public with what he likes. They could never know.

What would happen if they found out about you? Don’t you think they can handle who you are? No, it would destroy them. They would die. I would die….

I pushed a little bit on that wound, but it was not time to go there. Instead, I pivoted to wondering out loud how Stan feels about Stan in spite of what his family knows or might say.

How do you see you? I asked. Do you like you? Well yes, but….and the curtain closed again, for now.

Do you like who you are?

Do you let yourself know who you are? All of you? These are hard things, yet life-giving things that we can explore trying to find our place within ourselves where WE see all of who we are and WE lower our judgment of ourselves, even to the point of loving ALL of who we are. Then we find that we can choose to share more of ourselves with others. And if others find out things about us that are private, we find that neither they, nor we will die. We just are who we are. And that is okay.

Let us explore together as we map your journeys of faith, sexuality, and identity. You can know in your heart of hearts that you are okay.