(continued from The Things We Overhear, pt. 1)

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We have a lot to learn

She wore a bulky sweatshirt and a baseball cap turned backwards. She sought me out, sat me down, and gave me an education. I had never heard gender dysphoria described in the first person—what any sort of girly-ness did to her if she made herself look in a mirror. We were talking about her earliest memories. She broke my heart.

She would like to think she might marry a man someday. She thinks she may need to spend her whole life celibate. Then this:

“My church isn’t talking to me. Everyone is busy making arguments against the ‘LGBTQ lifestyle,’ but that’s not what I need at all. They’re preaching to the choir. I know the Bible. I get it. It’s how I want to live. But no one is telling me how.”

She looked at me expectantly. Or maybe she knew enough not to. To my shame, on the things she came to talk to me about I was only an inch deep. I don’t think I’m alone, but that, as a church, we have a lot to learn. And we’re going to need some help.

First, she broke my heart, this diminutive girl. Then, she flat-out blew me away. She has no idea. There are no words. It’s the way she drinks the cup that’s been poured for her—“I’m willing, Father”—and the way she is ready to find the gift in it.

She was well-read, by the way. Impressive. A woman of depth. One way she and people like her can help us is to compel us to recover certain neglected teachings, things we may have forgotten or perhaps never knew.

Here’s one. Marriage is not ultimate, as if there were no true fulfillment without it. The meaning of Christian marriage is something like this: “There is a bond and an affection, a security and enjoyment of another. But I am not it. I only point to it, to the Bridegroom, the Christ.”

To add another. Christian celibacy points to it as well. In the teaching of Jesus, those who remain unmarried by choice signal the lateness of the hour and the rapid closing of the age. So soon he comes, when in a flash and twinkling we will be like him.

Christian church history is populated by those who have lived out this calling to celibacy. Their influence has been enormous: to find in Christ alone, in his beauty and majesty, that the one they desire above all else desires them above all else—is not this the very bottom of human desire?—and to come to know him in the ache. I mean knowing Jesus in the midst of the sort of loneliness that would smother a person outright if Jesus were not more real to them than any other good in this world, if Jesus did not “repay from his own fullness all he takes away.”

What do I know of such things? I am a beginner.

As for my young friend, she is asking us who lead in the church to remember to speak into her life about the particular thorn—in her words—that protrudes from her flesh. But, I hope that we listen to her at least as much as we talk, and that the listening, a lot of it, comes first.

We need to hear her and see her. We need to let her get to us.

If she ever gets tired of us, here in the church, Lord, we need to fight for her and to not give up, not without a fight. We need her at least as much as she needs us. We need to mentally cast her in the role of teacher, and ourselves as her student. She can help us to know how we sound, how our words land on her and on however many people she stands for.

And we cannot let her go until we’ve pressed upon her, no matter the cost, what a delight she is to the Father, and what a delight she is to us.

Talk that matters

Let’s go back to that random collection of believers chatting together in the fellowship hall. Someone makes a flippant remark about—one more time—“hot button issues.” Not mean—just thoughtless and uninformed. Then someone clears his throat. We’ll call him Bob.

“But you know, I worry about this. I really do. If Jesus is for all people, if he wants to redeem and restore everyone, I worry that we aren’t ready for the sort of people you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean, Bob?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I worry that they won’t know that we love them. I don’t think you could blame them. If they just knew that we’d love to embrace them if they’ll let us! That we want to know their stories, we really do, the good and the bad. Because God knows we’re going to need them!”

“I’m sorry, Bob. What . . .?”

“We need them! If we’re ever going to figure it out, you know, how to throw these doors open to everyone. I mean, wouldn’t that be something!”

Is it a stretch to think that someone—maybe the last person you would ever think needed to—could overhear that and think, So this is how they talk, the forgiven and redeemed?

This is how.

And something light and hopeful just sort of flickers awake.