Following the call

I took Clayton to the North Texas Pride Festival in Plano late last spring. While there, we saw a booth for a parent support group sponsored by and hosted at a Presbyterian Church in McKinney. I never really considered myself a support group person, but as a parent trying to learn how to be the best parent I could be to my gay child, I decided it might be helpful to meet other parents who knew what it was like. The next meeting was during our vacation, but I finally made it to a meeting in the summer. It didn’t take me long to feel at home there, with people who were on all different journeys on their paths as parents, siblings, friends and allies of LGBTQ+ loved ones, or adult members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

After about 3 meetings, I began to wonder whether there might be a need for this same resource within my own church and my own community. Many conversations with my pastor followed, which led to a conversation with the wonderful and supportive facilitator of the group in McKinney, which led to conversations with others in our church who had a place at the table for planning this group, which led to the forming of a core group of persons, that we named our Open Hearts Steering Committee. A part of our group met for the first time in January, and after presenting the idea to our church leadership, began the steps to move forward with both the support group and LGBTQ+ Ally training both for our group and for our church leadership. A second meeting followed in February where we discussed how to best support our LGBTQ+ youth, and things began to quickly fall into place with a group of committed, safe, and affirming adults, pulling together to be a safe and supportive place for kids who aren’t finding that place within their own homes or their schools.

And in the midst of creating that space for some kids, a group of adults has formed an incredibly strong, almost supernatural, bond that none of us expected, and most of us didn’t even know we needed.

But God knew.

Yesterday, 42 people crammed into our tiny ministry space to learn how to be allies for the LGBTQ+ community. 

Tonight we sat in a circle, the 8 of us who started this journey just 2 months ago, with three new additions, and made plans to open wide our circle to those who need to join us, beginning next month, 5 months sooner than we originally had planned. Less than one week after the decisions of the general conference which, although they disappointed us, did not devastate us because God had already created a safe place for us to land.

I have spent the last few days absorbing the magnitude of all that has happened within this group over the last few months. Only three months actually since we started making serious plans. I was thinking of all the parts that God moved into place during the time we were just trying to figure out how the heck we could do this. And God did it all while we were wondering.

And for the first time in the last couple of days, I think I really acknowledged my role in this.

Clearly this was work that needed to be done.

Clearly God was ready to do it.

But it wouldn’t be happening in the way that it is at the time that it is if God had not placed the need and the call within me to make this happen. 

God placed this need in my heart because there was a need in others.

I am humbled by that call.

For all the times that I have ignored God’s direction for my life, I am so grateful that this one time I chose to follow.

Because what God has done has been so far greater than anything I could ever have imagined or dreamed. 

For myself.

And for others.

Someone, somewhere, was depending on me to do what God had called me to do.

Someone, somewhere, is depending on you for the same.

Don’t miss it.

Because the blessings are great.

And if you’re lucky, you just might find a tribe you never knew you needed, but that you will soon realize you don’t want to live your life without.