Beside Me...

"Do not walk behind me; I may not lead.  Do not walk in front of me; I may not follow.  Just walk beside me and be my friend."  --Albert Camus, French Nobel Prize winning author, journalist and philosopher

Thanks everyone for letting me take last week off.  I was having trouble putting my thoughts together, and I value this forum enough to not publish sub par posts for the sake of posting.  This past weekend I celebrated my 32nd birthday with many dear friends.  Some drove hundreds of miles.  Some drove ten minutes.  One even flew in from Brooklyn, New York and dealt with bomb threats at the Birmingham Airport to be here.  This was a bright reminder of how great life can be when you surround yourself with people that walk beside you.

It was a quirky coffee shop.  Artbeats was the last type of place you would expect to find in small-town South Arkansas.  It was overflowing with all sorts of eclectic and brightly colored treasures that meant nothing to me, but you could tell they were the heart beat of this quaint hole in the wall run by quasi-hippies.  It was on a fall evening at this very place that I met one of the truest people I have ever known in my life.  Jen, like me was from a bigger city far from El Dorado, Arkansas.  She was a few years my younger, but there seemed to be a strange connection between the two of us.  After that first meeting, we began to see each other all over this small town.  Before we knew it, this strange chemistry had drawn us into a wonderful and loving friendship.  It was slightly ironic.  I was a Student Minister at First United Methodist Church and Jen, as my stepmother called her was my free-thinking "Agnostic friend with Buddhist leanings."  She was socially liberal, slightly communist and very open-minded.  Somehow, these things added tremendous value to our friendship in an intriguing way.  The thing I found most valuable in Jen, was her honesty.  She was blatantly truthful in every component of her life.  She lived life to it's fullest and never compromised this truth to appease the common thoughts of those that surrounded her.

Over the past few months, and especially this past weekend, I have noticed something very important;  I have amazing friends.  I wonder sometimes if I take that for granted.  In continued transparency, I have a confession.  Since coming out, I have had this desire to meet and develop friendships with the homosexual community.  Upon first thought, this doesn't sound like something worthy of the word confession, so let me explain.  There have been times where I have even felt without friends because I had begun to let my identity become wrapped up in my sexual orientation.  I began to forget all the amazing friends I had, because I didn't really have a group of gay friends.  I was doing the exact thing that I had committed not to do; let my homosexuality define me as opposed to defining it.  This doesn't mean I don't desire new friends in all walks of life.  It simply means I will no longer look past the ones that exist, nor will I continue to place friends in sub-categories.  I look back on that thought process and see it as a simple desire to know and relate to people in a similar way, which I think is a reality homosexuals and heterosexuals alike are prone to.  Just one more commonality that we all share as people with our own unique journey.  After going through a "whoa-is-me" night, dealing with these very struggles, I took a trip home to Mobile, Alabama.  Someone asked me why I was going home.  My response was simple; "I need something true in my life right now, and family is the only thing I can think of."  On this trip home, I began the process of realizing how fortunate I was to have the valuable relationships that are already present.  I began to see that a friendship is not something that should need forcing or pressure.  It does not require begging or even hoping.  A true friendship simply "is."  They are organic and honest.  Authentic friendship is strong enough to create itself.  It does not need our help.  Like a tornado, it develops and exposes everything in it's way.  It takes one's life back to the basics of a simple love for one another.  It prompts us to remember the value of life lived in community with one another. After it has torn through, in place of destruction, it leaves nothing but actuality, enthusiasm, and recollections that the best of photos and scrapbooks could never do justice.

I want to invite you to look around and be reminded of the value your friends bring to your life.  You will see them.  They are the ones still standing with you after the storm.  They are the ones that are were beaten and battered by the wind and rain because they stood in that storm with you.  They are the ones who have helped you carry your burdens, celebrated your victories, and embraced every moment of that journey.  

Jen and I, had not seen each other in about 5 years.  After I told her about my birthday weekend, she simply responded by sending me a copy of her flight itinerary from New York City.  I could not be more humbled to have such a friend as this and all the others who have chosen to walk this path in life right by my side.  Until next time...

Thank you so much to all of the friends I have had in this 32 years of life.  You have been supportive and loving.  You have embraced and loved me not in spite of who I am, but because of who I am.  Special thanks to the folks at Dram Whiskey Bar, Lake Heather Reserve, Innisfree and especially my dear friend Trip at Oscar's @ Birmingham Museum of Art for making it such a memorable weekend for all of us.