This is the beginning of a series of posts on this year's annual Eden Invitation retreat, "Into the Longing". To read the other posts: Part 2
A bit of a mouthful, I know - but necessary, because the false (except when true) narrative exists that the Church wants people who are LGBT+ to sit down, shut up, and just be straight already. The reality is much more nuanced than that, and honestly the holiness of the individuals in this community is simply beautiful.
With that in mind, I'm going to spend the next few days covering my big takeaways from the retreat.
Aching
This year's theme, "Into the Longing", served as a reminder that we all have longing - aches - that will remain unfulfilled in this life. Especially in a secular culture that says the only successful life is one with a wedding (and a Church culture that often idealizes the vocation of marriage), people can feel like failures for being single, like God isn't calling them to anything.
In the case of people experiencing gender dysphoria, the ache can look like the pain of realizing you don't fit in women's groups because of your gender, and you don't fit in men's groups because of narrowly defined male stereotypes you want nothing to do with.
But on a wider scale - we all have aches, because this world isn't enough and was never meant to be.
Our tendency is to hide from that feeling, numbing and distracting to avoid being confronted with reality. The bad news is that leads to repression, emptiness, depression, and a disastrous binge/purge cycle filled with shame.
The good news is that the Church never asks us to repress. We aren't meant to pretend to be anything other than we are, and we aren't meant to fake a smile for the sake of the Gospel. God wants our hearts, not our slavish obedience, and that means the raw and unfiltered version.
We find connection and solidarity in a community who loves us and never shames us for describing our aches. We should seek out and open up to friends and family (biological or otherwise) who will validate our experiences and, hopefully, will share their own unmet desires from their own lives. In a sense, it is a gift to be painfully aware of our aches because of the introspection involved; because of the aches, we see ourselves more clearly and have a deeper love of others who suffer.
We also find that underneath those unmet desires, lies a deeper longing that should be pursued. We are being offered something better, greater, higher. Longing for a romantic partner sits on the surface, while desire for emotional and physical intimacy resides underneath; a desire for belonging; a desire for deeper recognition of the intimacy we can have with the Creator of the stars. Longing to transition demonstrates a deeper desire to see myself as beautiful; a longing to expand the tiny box that is societal standards for men; an ache to be authentic and to find integration.
Faithfulness is about love, an affirmation of the goodness of the Designer who formed us and gave us our human natures. Being willing to give up our own desires and dreams is a sacrifice - a gift of love - that enables us to imitate and unite ourselves to Christ, whose sacrifice of love came first.
Finally, we are meant to run out and meet Christ, presenting our pain to Him like Martha and Mary crying out that Lazarus had died. We offer our wounded and weary hearts to the God whose heart was pierced for love of us, and we find rest. We find union and an intimate connection with the one who wishes to draw us to Himself.
God never promises to satisfy our every desire in this life; rather, He promises to transform our desires and help us see that under each and every one of them, He is waiting to fulfill them in Himself.
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