Hey guys,
So I have to sincerely apologize to you all for not writing you in, oh, over two months! I’m so sorry! I regret it now. At the time, I was so busy with university stuff that writing on this forum dropped to the bottom of my list of things to do. I checked in from time to time though, so I wasn’t totally out of it, although I see from finally reading through threads that I missed out on some great happenings! Boo!
So lemme tell you what happened since my last post (which, you should note, is actually Oct. 27 since I’m behind you all in Australia. I really did come out to my dorm the following day, not that day). As with everything I seem write, this will be LONG but I assure you if read it all, it’ll be well worth your time. 🙂
I ended up coming out to my dorm on Oct. 28. Highly ironic for me, since I came out to my parents on May 14, 2007. May 14 is 5/14 and Oct. 28 is 10/28, and you should be able to see that Oct. 28 is two times May 14. I think that shows it was a God thing, since the timing of everything just clicked into place in order to put it on that day. I know sometimes people take numbers too far, but I just find that kind of stuff interesting when it appears in my own personal life. It makes me smile more than anything else.
I’ve found this story hard to explain to Australians since the residency system in their universities is apparently very different from what we have in Canada, or at least, in my university. I live in residence on our university campus and there are a total of 14 guys in our dorm. One of those is our Resident Assistant (RA) who basically helps us when we need it and provides leadership. Every week we have dorm meetings where we… well, we do lots of bizarre stuff…. one time we tried to catch a rabbit at our dorm meeting (failed!) and another time we had a Mario Kart 64 tournament (I got 2nd! Funny story actually since I’m not the best AT ALL and ended up winning the first two races I was in by way of total fluke! Haha!)
Anyway, so that should explain some stuff. So at one point, we decided to do a series of testimonies for dorm meetings. So what happened was we would go in order of the rooms in the hall to determine which week you would give your testimony. And because of when we started, I knew exactly when my turn was coming. Now, my RA has always been very supportive of me to the point where it boggles my mind how a conservative straight guy who admittedly knows very little about homosexuality can be so supportive. I came out to him about a month before all this was happening, so when I talked to him about the situation, he said I didn’t have to share my testimony if I didn’t want to. Not that he wanted to avoid the subject, but he really wanted to protect me in case I wasn’t ready to expose myself in that way. However, I knew that I wanted to come out, so I resolved to do it. I spent a few days typing up the best version of my testimony that I could, and it ended up being 17 pages. I then knew all I had to do was wait until my day to share.
Wednesday of my week came and I spent all day Wednesday quietly freaking out, but I came to Wednesday night and my RA said they had to postpone it to tomorrow. Disappointed, but tomorrow would work too. Then came Thursday and I spent all Thursday quietly freaking out again. Thursday night comes and it is time for the dorm meeting I had spent two weeks waiting for. Out of 14 guys, there are four there, including me. Where the heck is everyone? My RA is not there and I really don’t know where he is or why he didn’t show up. And suddenly, I just got really angry. I had been waiting so long and had been putting so much heart into preparing for this and now nobody’s even going to show up for it? So I did something that I had wanted to do for a long time. I ran away. I walked out of the building and began walking all the way to the other side of campus, which, at our school, isn’t that far. But still, I did it. I was so angry. I had been waiting so long for this opportunity and I thought it was going to be canceled again. I just sat on the steps of what I believe was the back of the science building and I just looked up at the sky and I asked God if this was his way of telling me what he wanted – if maybe he wanted me to just be closeted the whole semester and he was actively trying to thwart my coming out attempts. I didn’t know what was going on. Still I had to decide that even if that was what God wanted for me, I would be at peace with that and I would still love and serve him.
I was just about ready to stay out there for hours on end, but I felt like God was pushing me to start heading back after a while. So I started walking back towards the dorm and there on the path walking towards me was my RA! And as soon as he reached me he just put me in a big embrace, saying how worried he was and how glad he was to find me. We walked together backed to the dorm and he said how basically everyone was there now. (My roommate wasn’t there because he was out of the country, there was one guy who wasn’t there because he just never comes, and there was another guy who was just not there. This becomes important later.) So with almost everyone there and waiting in the lounge area, my RA and I sat in my bedroom. My RA gave me a pep talk, explained how sorry he was he got caught in traffic on the way back to campus, and prayed for me. I was still a bit scared to go out and do it, but I knew I had to, there was no turning back now.
Before we started, my RA and myself gave a quick introduction basically saying this testimony was a special one, and my RA prayed again, particularly that the guys in my dorm would be open-minded and supportive. (I think he was more worried for me than I was for myself.) Then, laptop open, I read all 17 pages. It took about an hour to read out loud. It was much easier to read than I thought it would be. I didn’t cry or tense up or anything – I just read and read and read. When it was over, I just looked up and waited for a response. My RA asked if anyone had questions. They asked some questions and I answered them, although I don’t remember what they all were. I do remember one question one of my friends asked and it was, “What can we do to make things better for you?” Generally, I think the response I got was better than what I hoped for. Looking at who was in my dorm, I thought maybe three or so of them would respond negatively, but I didn’t hear any negativity from anyone. In fact, one person came to me much later, and said after hearing my testimony he was more interested in learning about Christianity. How’s that for a response? I was surprised and of course, humbled that someone would respond this way. After the dorm meeting ended, we just want back to total normalcy and played video games. It was great to have everything so normal after something like that and it helped assuage some of the fears I had about what would happen after I came out.
Anyway, about the one guy who wasn’t there – I read a somewhat summarized version of my testimony to him one-on-one and it turned out to be really good for him, because as it turns out he has a gay relative who he has been trying to reach out to but has had problems with in the past. I tried to counsel him a bit about it, and it turned out to be a really great conversation for the both of us. I think it was really God’s choosing that he miss the meeting, because it allowed this other conversation to happen, so everything worked out in the end, I guess.
That’s basically what happened to my dorm. Things are really good with them now and I feel like such a part of the dorm as a whole. Nobody seems to have any major problems with me being gay, not that I’ve talked about it since, because, well, I don’t really need to. It’s not perfect and the guys still make homophobic comments (not aimed at me, just in general when they’re joking around) which I do not like at all, but I’m trying to let those slide. Maybe one day I’ll talk to them about it, but for now, I’m trying not to be pushy about it. We’ll see what I do next though.
So that’s my dorm. I feel like I should make the second thing a new post, since it will undoubtedly be just as long as this one, I think.
|
