Tell All My Friends
For the past decade, I’ve been pretty public and open about my faith, sexuality, and how they intersect. I’ve written about it extensively. I’ve spoken at conferences and taught at churches. I’ve done dozens of interviews, webinars, and panel discussions. I even co-host a podcast on this topic with five other people. In every way that this conversation can be had, I’ve had it. The Lord has used me as a vessel to tell a story about his grace, redemptive nature, and unending love.
I have made bold statements and declarations about God, his living word, and how that is to inform how believers ought to live. As a result of this, I’ve received an equal measure of positive and negative feedback from Christians and non Christians alike. When I’ve grown weary, the Lord has sustained me. I’ve truly learned to lean not on my own understanding, but to instead trust the one who uniquely made me. God has been faithful, but I would be lying if I said that the road has been easy. Narrow is the way. Like anyone else, I’ve traveled on that narrow road with fear and trembling, with reverence and awe. In the moments I’ve fell short of the Glory, God has met me and held me. Time and time again, God has shown me that he is good, that his ways are better, and that he has a plan for me.
As someone who loves control and doesn’t like surprises, I OFTEN want a complete map of how my life will look like. But as the saying goes, “man plans, God laughs.”
When I got out of my coma after my heart incident, I started analyzing my entire life with a renewed urgency. Facing your own mortality will do that to you. I have thought about my faith and sexuality a lot, specifically how that continues to shape my lived experience and what it means for my future. Through my reassessment, my theological views have not changed. I’ve wrestled, but time and time again, God has brought me back to the same place. The place of trusting him and not giving into the strong temptation of just taking matters into my own hands. In that place of trusting of him, he has brought me into an unexpected situation. This past fall, I met someone. They want to follow and honor Christ in the same ways that I am, and we have decided that we are better served by doing that together. While this was and is unexpected, it also makes complete and perfect sense for me, both spiritually and relationally. What that looks like lived out is something we are being very intentional about figuring out. Our first priority is honoring God, followed by honoring ourselves, and lastly, honoring the other person as an image bearer.
The past few months, I have wrestled with whether I share this part of my life as an update or not. While it hasn’t been a secret, I haven’t offered up much information about it. Like I said above, I’ve been involved in this topic in a public way for a decade. I landed at a strong “Henry, just live your life. You deserve to do it privately and in peace just like everyone else”. I was resigned to do that, but unfortunately, some of yall are hell bent on making sure I don’t know peace. Somewhat reluctantly, I have to admit that in order to maintain consistency and integrity, saying something publicly makes sense. So that brings us here.
I am happy to say that without compromising on my long held convictions, I am now doing this thing called life with someone by my side in a way that is permanent. How that looks and will look practically and functionally is something we are figuring out as things come. We are not doing this alone. I have friends who have found themselves in similar situations, and their counsel has been a huge blessing. While my life looks different than it did a decade ago, or even a year ago, my commitment to the Lord remains the same. I can understand any concern or slight confusion that could arise from this. Believe you me, we both do, and we have discussed them at length. However at 34, I am unwilling and unable to go back and forth with anyone about something I feel complete peace about. Fellow believers, your judgement about something you know next to nothing about isn’t helpful. At best, it’s unkind. If you are not a consistent and active participant in my personal or spiritual life and feel like saying something, I ask you to sincerely just pray for me and leave it at that. I’m good on the rest. I have enough faithful people who are walking alongside us and helping me navigate this.
With that said, I am now going to do what I landed on and live my life in peace. While I signed up for some of this by talking publicly about it for a decade, the other person never chose that and I will do everything I can to shield us from any unnecessary or unhelpful thoughts and opinions. I have always felt peace about my faith, and in my adult life, I have had consistent peace about my sexuality. For the first time though however, I have complete peace about the intersection of those two and how they play out in my lived experience. I am very hopeful about what the Lord is doing here, and I look forward to seeing where this road takes me.
