Between Sorrow and Schadenfreude: A Progressive Christian’s Response to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

I am so fucking sick of living through major world events.

If you’ve been on some remote retreat in the Himalayan wilderness and haven’t had access to literally any media anywhere, alt-right influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a college event in Utah. I saw the infamous video. It was pretty wild to witness. I’ll confess, a lot of emotions washed over me in that moment, some I’m not proud of. Did I feel a twinge of schadenfreude at the death of man who advocated for me to be put to death for being queer? I’ll admit, maybe a little. Did I feel a bit of relief that he can’t spew any more hateful rhetoric. Absolutely. Let’s get one thing straight — Charlie Kirk was not a good person. If you don’t believe me, I dare you to click that little link up there. He is not someone to idolize or even eulogize, the same way you wouldn’t write a sweet memorial piece for Scar.

“He was a loving uncle and fierce leader for his people.”

All of that being said, I want to make another thing clear: I consider myself a follower of Christ. I feel uneasy using the word “Christian” as of late because of how horrifically perverted American Christianity has become, but my theological beliefs line up most readily with Jesus’s teachings. The real Jesus, not the evangelical one. You know, the wildly subversive pacifistic brown-skinned Palestinian Jewish man who repeatedly preached against tyranny and the wealthy? I’ve always been fascinated by His life and ways, and while some of my personal theology contradicts the established dogma of most denominations, I consider Him to be my spiritual guide and savior.

And that’s what’s making this hard for me. The part of me that’s human wants to dance on the dude’s grave. Yet the part of me that has been redeemed by Christ, that divine inner voice, wants to honor the fact that he was still a person, and he was a child of God too.

Two things can be true at once. Charlie Kirk can be a truly despicable person and the world can be better off without him, and we can also mourn the fact that humanity has devolved to this point. We can mourn the humanity in him, the part he willingly killed in himself years ago for the sake of extremist politics. We can mourn for his kids, who didn’t ask to have him as a father and now have a disturbing core memory to contend with. We can mourn for our trans brothers and sisters, who will inevitably be scapegoated for this. And we can mourn the fact that we’re heading to a very dark place if something doesn’t change quick.

I recently read a post that said that the true test of a Christian isn’t whether or not they love Jesus. It’s whether or not they love Judas. Jesus is easy to love. Judas is much more challenging. And in a lot of ways, Charlie is my Judas. He is proving very, very difficult to show compassion toward. The man got what he had coming to him. To paraphrase the Good Book itself, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. But there’s another relevant verse:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

Matthew 5:43-44

We can’t fall into senseless hate. That’s what Charlie would have wanted. The best way to “honor” his memory is to fight back against everything he stood for, including violence and hatred. This isn’t to say there’s never a time when violence is the answer — we had to kill a lot of Nazis in the 1940s to ultimately save a lot of innocent folks, and even Martin Luther King, Jr. understood why folks lash out violently at times — but we also can’t become desensitized to this shit. This can’t be our new normal.

I’ve been worried about the state of the world all day, and I’m praying this won’t be a Franz Ferdinand situation and WWIII doesn’t spring from it. But I’m scared it’s too late. People have become so brainwashed already. I called out my first boyfriend on Facebook for waxing poetic about the man as if he were a saint, and he responded with some of the most vile, vitriolic, hurtful bullshit I’ve ever had directed at me. It was bizarre. He was such a sweet kid, but it goes to show you how effective these conservative influencers are in manipulating young men. We’re dealing with a lot of propaganda and disturbing messaging in the media.

My heart hurts for the state of the world and for the future. I always dreamed I’d become a rock star and have children and live to be a little old lady like the ones I work with. I don’t want to go to war. I’m a lover, not a fighter. This isn’t the future I want for me, and I hope it’s not the future you want either. I sincerely hope with every fiber of my being that we can turn this around. In the words of the late great Ozzy, maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.

Maybe the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Peace had more in common than you’d think.

All I know is I can’t handle much more of this. I was simply not made for times like these.

Holiness, Hustle Culture, and Why We All Need a Break

I’m coming to a terrible realization. I need to sleep.

Yes, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I can’t keep going at the rate I’m going unless I want to end up in the hospital — or worse. This realization comes on the heels of me being asked to work five nights in a row, including one 12-hour shift. I’m thankfully on the last of those shifts as I write this, but I’m already panicking about the fact that my other job is sending me out of state tomorrow morning and I still haven’t packed a damn thing and oh God, the plane boards at 10 and the airport’s over an hour drive from my apartment and…

It’s a lot.

I’ve also been trying to get back in touch with my spirituality to an extent, since I probably need to lean on a Higher Power to get me through all of this. I’ve gotten back into the habit of reading my Bible, and I figured I’d start with Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of ancient emo poetry. It was written literal millennia ago by one of the most powerful men to ever walk this planet, King Solomon. It would be like if Elon Musk had a single creative or introspective bone in his body. These writings come from a place of having had it all in life. But in the words of acclaimed Canadian indie band Metric, all the gold and the guns and the girls couldn’t get him off.

And so, he wrote about how futile it all is. At one point, he writes:

“There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. “For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?” This too is meaningless— a miserable business!”

-Ecclesiastes‬ ‭4‬:‭8‬ ‭(NIV‬‬)
‭‭

There it is. Like a flashing neon sign from God Himself, the problem I’m facing right now. The problem I think most of us are facing, to be honest. We’re so deep in hustle culture, we forget we need to take a break sometimes.

We got ourselves into this mess because of religion — think the Protestant work ethic that permeates American culture — but I don’t think this is the life God really wants for us. We weren’t meant to be working these grueling long hours away from our loved ones. Even experts are saying these long work weeks aren’t normal or healthy. We’re expected to break our backs at work, then come home to work on whatever side hustle you can hobble together out of your interests. Where’s the time for connection with friends and family? Where’s the time for working on a creative project to fill your soul, not your pockets? Where’s the time for rest?

Here’s the part of the blog post where I tell you my secrets to getting out of that awful work cycle!

Except if I’m honest, I haven’t gotten that far myself yet.

But I know this system isn’t cutting it for us. No one is happy like this, as much as we try to tell ourselves otherwise. Working ourselves this hard is simply not sustainable. Going back to the Good Book, even God Himself needs a break once in a while. Genesis 2:2-3 says “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” That’s why we’re supposed to take a whole day, once a week, to just rest. It’s okay to do absolutely nothing. It’s healthy — holy, even — to do absolutely nothing. Some especially pious Jewish folks don’t even believe in ripping off pieces of toilet paper on the Sabbath, as that’s dangerously close to doing a thing.

So here’s my advice, and I’m going to do my best to take it as well. Carve out some time every week for just you. It doesn’t have to be a whole day, but make sure you allot at least half a day. You deserve it. And whatever you choose to do during that time, don’t judge yourself for it. If all you’re doing is watching Netflix, that’s not wasted time. You’re refilling your soul the best way you know how.

It’s a sad fallacy that our culture perpetuates, the idea that we need to be productive at all times to be successful. There’s more to life than being productive, and we are more than just what we contribute to society. We have inherent value as human beings. I hope we can get back to a place where we can embrace that.

Because let me tell you, hustle culture sucks.

Something to Believe In: What Bon Jovi Taught Me About Deconstruction and Faith

Not so secret confession: Bon Jovi is my favorite band.

Well, I don’t know about absolute favorite. That honor probably goes to Heart at the moment, who I also seldom shut up about. But Bon Jovi my “comfort band” for sure, a nostalgic auditory bowl of chicken noodle soup when I feel most torn up about adult life. They were my childhood obsession, and if there was a “Jessa Don’t Talk About Bon Jovi For One Day” Challenge, I’d lose almost immediately. Richie Sambora is half the reason I play guitar (the other half being the fact that one-on-one guitar lessons were the only activity my then-undiagnosed ADHD ass couldn’t get kicked out of).

Yet despite my immense love of Bon Jovi as a youngin’, there was one single song that was always a “skip” for me. That song? “Something to Believe In,” a track from their wildly underrated 1995 flop, These Days, an album that, to Adult Jessa, has absolutely zero skips because it’s just that good.

Behold, Bon Jovi’s weird moody grunge phase that actually goes *hard.*

It certainly didn’t help the song’s case to be a power ballad, as that was an art form that would take me a few more years to properly appreciate. But the lyrics were what gave me the most pause, as a good little church girl. The opening lines say it all:

I lost all faith in my God

In His religion too

I told the angels they can sing their songs to someone new

Yeah, you can kinda see why this song gave me pause. It makes me think of my first time going to youth group, right in the middle of this huge campaign to gather up “ungodly” albums and other media for a huge bonfire. I was too attached to my beloved Bon Jovi collection to send it to the flames just yet, but it did make me rethink what I was listening to. And I could not, as a good little church girl, listen to something that so blatantly questioned God.

I struggled with this feeling for a long time, every time I put on the full album and heard the opening drum beat begin. I wanted to love the song — something drew me to it, despite everything — but the song seemed so anti-Christian and blasphemous.

I never appreciated it for what it was — a song about deconstruction.

In exvangelical circles, deconstruction is the process in which you begin to question and unpack the beliefs the evangelical church instilled in you. Now, Bon Jovi is not from an evangelical background. In fact, much of the band was raised Catholic to the best of my knowledge, with frontman Jon admitting to being a “recovering Catholic.” But I feel the exvangelical experience and the lapsed Catholic experience are very similar in many ways.

In re-listening to “Something to Believe In” as an adult, I realized one of my lifelong musical heroes had the same wrestlings with God that I was having. It was very similar to the feeling I got when I first re-listened to “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” as an adult and realized Jon may have had the same mental health struggles as me, even worse at times. It really humanized this guy I’d viewed as a god growing up. Like, I used to play make-believe that I was Jon Bon Jovi as a little kid, and here I was having this entire revelation that he’s literally just a human being like me.

With his own struggles.

And his own dark, depressive thoughts.

And his own religious trauma.

That’s what “Something to Believe In” started to represent to me, that funnelling of religious trauma into something beautiful. After all, it is not a sin to have religious trauma, nor is it even a sin to have questions at times. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, we are told to test everything and hold to what is true. That seems like a pretty big green light to, ya know, have questions.

The evangelical church discourages deconstruction as it can lead to the person believing in another faith, atheism, agnosticism, or perhaps scariest of all, a less oppressive, more affirming form of Christianity. That’s where I ended up falling in the end, but it wasn’t an easy road. There were definitely parts of my life where I felt exactly like how Jon describes himself feeling in the song. Sometimes, you have to reach that nadir in your relationship with God before you truly begin to unpack the toxic things the church has taught you in His name.

Listening to the song now is a reminder of where I’ve been in my spiritual journey. It’s a reminder that this feeling is universal and I’m not alone in this struggle. And most importantly, it’s a reminder that deconstruction can be beautiful.

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

CashApp: $TheJessaJoyce

Venmo: @TheJessaJoyce

More Than Words: Five Quotes I Live By

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

If there’s one thing I can take away from being a writer my whole life, it’s the fact that words are powerful tools. We can use them to build people up, tear each other down, spread information, spread misinformation, and evoke strong emotions. Something I’ve always been fascinated by is the use of mantras or affirmations for self-improvement. Just repeating a certain phrase to yourself can make an impact on your mental health. And here’s the thing — your affirmations don’t have to be anything in particular, so long as they resonate with you.

Like a favorite quote!

As I began writing this post, I realized I have a handful of quotes I constantly repeat in my head like mantras. They’re the words that shape my personal philosophy and the way I approach life. I never really stopped to actively consider and appreciate how these words have shaped my experience as a human being. But I wanted to share a few of these quotes I carry with me.

She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.

–Zelda Fitzgerald

This first quote comes from the iconic flapper wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who absolutely should have been absolutely as famous as him in her own right. She was a Renaissance woman — a writer, painter, and dancer, who went on to die tragically in a mental hospital fire. I see a lot of myself in her story. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but had she lived today, she would have received a bipolar diagnosis like me.

Zelda was a wild child with many diverse interests, so I can’t imagine a woman like her would ever be bored. That’s kind of how I want to be. I don’t enjoy being idle, and I don’t ever want to be boring. I always want to be involved in exciting new projects and opportunities. Life’s too short to sit around and be bored. You gotta actively make a life worth living. That’s kind of what the quote means to me.

Show love with no remorse.

-Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Dosed”)

I remember the first time I heard this song and being entirely floored by how beautiful it was. It was in the car with my former drummer Jerry and another short-lived bandmate on the way to our bandiversary date. I’d heard plenty of Red Hot Chili Peppers before that day, but this was the song that really made me appreciate them on a deeper level. I loved the guitar work, the harmonies, and perhaps most importantly, the words.

I’ve always said I wanted this exact lyric tattooed on me someday. I just think it’s a simple concept. You’ve got nothing to lose by giving love freely and joyfully. We need much more love in this world, and now is not the time to be stingy with it. You’ll never regret treating people with kindness.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

-Robert J. Hanlon

I hesitate to call this a quote. It’s technically a philosophical razor, which eliminates — or rather, shaves off — weak explanations for a particular phenomenon. The phenomenon at hand when it comes to Hanlon’s razor is “Why are people awful to each other?” And the explanation it offers is simple: people just don’t know any better.

Hanlon’s razor is why I still have faith in humanity, even after I’ve witnessed some of the worst of it. People very seldom intend to hurt each other. We’re all just big dum-dums that say and do the wrong things sometimes, and we really need to treat each other with more grace. That’s why I don’t believe in cancel culture — we need a grace culture. If you make an honest mistake and own up to it, that shouldn’t be held against you. No one is perfect, and we can’t hold people to impossible standards.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

-Romans 12:21

I struggled to think of just one Bible verse to include, since so many have been influential to me growing up in the church. But this one felt really relevant with some of my recent posts about loving your enemy and fighting the rampant dehumanization of marginalized folks in our society. It’s easy to lash out against the people who are hurting me and my loved ones. But you have to remember that they’re human and they’re hurting too. Hurt people hurt people. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation. And it’s why I choose love — because you don’t know what someone else is going through.

The verse immediately before this one talks about how offering your enemy water when they’re thirsty is akin to heaping hot coals on their head. The Good Book is telling us to kill them with kindness. I saw a post recently that said the true test of a Christian is not whether they love Jesus, it’s whether they love Judas. I’ll admit it’s hard for me to show love to the people who hurt me. The human part of me wants revenge. But the divine answer remains to be love.

Where words fail, music speaks.

-Hans Christian Andersen

I’ll admit I never knew the person behind this quote was none other than the Danish purveyor of fairytales such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Thumbelina. But I’ve always related to this quote. As a child, the signs of my autism were very apparent. I would often stim by pacing or making bird sounds, and I had sensory issues surrounding things such as loud noises and upsetting smells (looking at you, ranch dressing). And like many autistic kids, I struggled to communicate with my peers. My classmates thought I was from France for the longest time because I never spoke in elementary or middle school, so they assumed I had an accent or didn’t know English or something.

But then I picked up a guitar, and everything changed. When I learned to play music and started performing, that was when I truly found my voice. Music was my way of reaching out into the world. I call music my first language for good reason. It was the bridge that connected me to other people for the first time in my life, and for that, I’m forever grateful.

What quotes do you live by? Leave your favorites in the comments!

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

CashApp: $TheJessaJoyce

Venmo: @TheJessaJoyce

Worth the Fight: A Few Thoughts on Faith and Sacrifice

This blog post begins with a song. And it’s not a happy one.

This is a song I recently composed called “WTF.” The title perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the condition of the world right now, but it has a double meaning:

Darling, you’re Worth The Fight

Even if I don’t make it out alive

For you I’m ready to die

A girl like you is Worth The Fight

I was hesitant to put this song out into the world for a number of reasons. For one, it was unfortunately made from lyrics I hand-wrote and stupidly fed into an AI software, which I’m not proud of, but I feel like I’ve altered the melody and structure of the song enough to be my own original material at this point. And I’ve wrestled with this song for months now, trying to find some way to salvage it because of how personal the words are to me.

Because this song isn’t just any old song. It’s about how I’m absolutely willing to die for my girlfriend, and I mean every word of it.

And it’s all because of one peculiar Jewish carpenter who walked the planet 2000 years ago.

For better or worse, growing up, I attended church. My parents weren’t very religious, but my mom wanted me to have a basic understanding of the Christian faith because she felt it was important for me to have that spiritual experience as a kid. And I mean, what child doesn’t love vacation Bible school?

I was baptized at 14, mostly because I wanted to impress the really cute good little church boy I was madly in love with. To be honest, a lot of me attending church as a youngin’ was because I desperately wanted to fit in with my friends, who were mostly from evangelical families. But as I got older, I started making my faith my own. In my teen years, my OCD really started beating me down, and I felt really scared and alone in the world, but all of that disappeared when I was standing in the crowd at youth group screaming along to “How He Loves” (the “sloppy wet kiss” version, natch). I could feel the presence of Jesus in the music — I think that’s one of the reasons music feels so sacred to me. I always call music my first language as a shy autistic little girl who didn’t know how to talk to people, but it wasn’t just my way of communicating with my peers. It was also my way of communing with the Divine, and it made my relationship with Christ that much more personal to me.

I stopped going to church for many reasons, both personal and practical, but I still find myself going back to the holy scriptures and seeking comfort in the words of my Savior from time to time. And this morning was one such time, because it hit me.

If the world keeps progressing (or rather, regressing) the way it is, my time on this planet could be cut alarmingly short.

I don’t want to be a martyr, but I’m becoming increasingly afraid that might be my fate. I don’t want to go quietly into a world where my girlfriend has to move across the planet to get away from those who persecute her. And that is something that’s on the table, as she recently told me she can get Italian citizenship from her grandmother. But I don’t want to live in a world where she’s so casually and cruelly ripped away from me by the fucko from The Apprentice of all people.

I wish I knew how to protest in a way that means something, but I’m paralyzed by my fear of dying. There are literally people setting themselves on fire to take a stand, and I sincerely wish that was something I’m capable of, but I don’t think I’m that brave. I’ve considered staging a non-fatal hunger strike a la Gandhi and many brave suffragettes, but I’m also scared of being snatched up for being a political dissident and sent to El Salvador to have God knows what happen to me. To be honest, I’m almost too much of a coward to post this, as it’s probably the most personal and desperate thing I’ve ever written on here.

But with Christ, all things are possible, right?

I’m at a point where I don’t want things to escalate to the point where I feel the need to starve myself on the steps of the White House, but if that day ever came, I trust the Lord to guide me. I don’t want to die young. I want to get old. I want to be a grandmother someday. I want to live in a cute little nursing home with a bunch of other old people like the one I work at. I hope those are the cards I’m dealt eventually. I don’t want my last days on Earth to be uncomfortable and painful and scary.

That being said, if my time here really is to be cut short due to political violence, I don’t want my life to be in vain. I want my life to have meaning. I want my life to be marked by the kind of sacrificial love I learned from my Savior. In John 15:13, Jesus is quoted as saying:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

That’s the kind of love I want to be remembered for someday.

My Strange Addiction: Watching People Suck

Oh hey, a prompt.

How do you waste the most time every day?

I have a confession: I’m fascinated by the worst people. It’s probably detrimental to my mental health, but I often find myself looking in the comments section of absolute cesspools on the internet for hours on end.

In my more naive years, I’d often debate people like this. I’d craft some well-written argument about how yes, trans folks are valid, gay folks should have a right to be with who they please, and black folks should, ya know, exist. This is usually followed by guys with profile pictures that look like a frostbitten toe laugh reacting the post to hell. I’ve since stopped because it’s no use arguing with people who look like this:

Apologies to this man for using him as an example but like, do better bro.

I consider it a matter of knowing my enemy. I want to know what these asshats’ talking points are so I can watch for signs of that shit in everyday conversation. The second someone brings up TERF rhetoric or starts talking about how we need a “straight white pride” month, I know to run in the opposite direction as fast as humanly possible. But also, it’s just kind of fascinating to me. Like, what leads a person to that level of hate? What makes one devolve into posting bullshit like this?

Ahh yes, the worst thing a woman can be, the mother to a biracial child.

It costs zero dollars to not suck. Imagine if people just minded their own business and didn’t brigade random people’s posts because they shared a picture of a queer person having fun? The other day, I had to put one of my own posts on private because it kept getting shared to hate groups. Like, why though? What are people getting out of this? I wasn’t even that mad — haters make me famous and all that — but the notifications were annoying as hell, and I was tired of seeing Greg’s thumb-looking ass popping up on my feed every few minutes.

I guess to me, it’s a reminder of what I fight for everyday. I use my platform on here to humanize the queer experience. I realize a lot of these folks have probably never met someone who isn’t exactly like them. I was similar when I first went off to university. I repeated the whole “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” BS because my high school friends would say it — God knows I’d never admit to being bisexual in front of them. But a funny thing happened when I moved to my college town. I met other queer folks and even came to terms with my own queerness, and I changed. But these people have never left their hometowns. They’re in a white, cishet circle-jerk forever, and it’s actually pretty sad. There’s a lot of beauty in human diversity and the way we connect with one another. We’re just people, and we want to live and love too.

Imagine seeing something this precious and being like “wow, I hope they all die.”

I should probably cut back on my “patrolling” these ugly spaces though. Even reporting doesn’t do any good — the comments never get taken down (thanks, Zucc!). Maybe I should look more toward the beautiful things in life and focus my energies there instead. Even the Bible says so:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

-Philippians 4:8

Hmm, maybe the Good Book is onto something.

Self-Love Prompt #1: Connecting to the Earth

I was browsing Barnes & Noble when I happened upon these little cards. It’s a box of 70 writing prompts meant to inspire self-love and reflection. I need some fresh material for my blog other than giving life updates, and this seemed like the perfect way to spark some creativity. Sitting at a hookah bar with my wife, I drew my first card:

And I blanked immediately. How do I feel connected to the earth? That’s such a lofty concept, I’m not sure I know how to answer that. The first thing that came to mind was my dabblings in magic and witchcraft. I hesitate to call myself a Christian witch (which is not an oxymoron surprisingly), as I don’t practice nearly enough. But my personal religious beliefs align somewhere between Christianity, witchery, and science. And a connection with our life-giving planet is a crucial part of all of those philosophies.

When I lived by the lake, I liked to take walks and collect various things I found along the way. Little pinecones and flowers and such. I’d put them on my altar alongside my favorite crystals and religious symbols like pictures and statues of saints I admire. I took a lot of pride in arranging my findings to be aesthetically pleasing. It was soothing, and I felt like I was bringing a little bit of Mother Nature home with me.

Another practice I enjoy when it’s a little warmer out is grounding by standing or laying on the grass or dirt with no shoes. Someone once told me it’s a great way to feel connected to the earth, and I agree! Is there anything scientific to it? I doubt it, but it feels good. I like standing in water even more though, feeling the waves hit my feet and my toes buried in the sand. I think it’s the Pisces in me, or maybe the Michigander in me. I just really like lakes, okay?

On a grander scale, just existing alongside other living beings makes me feel like part of something greater than myself. We’re all part of this beautiful cosmic experiment called humanity, and it’s pretty awesome when you think about it. We’re eight billion interconnected stories, all unfolding at once. Someday, God willing, I’ll have kids of my own, and perhaps they’ll have their own kids eventually, and the great cycle of life will continue. It’s the same cycle that’s been happening since the dawn of time. I’m someone’s great-great-granddaughter, and maybe one day, I’ll be someone’s great-great-grandmother. It’s all very overwhelming and exciting to think about.

I think being connected to the earth is much more than just being connected to a clod of dirt floating in space. It’s being connected to each other, to flesh and blood, and it’s being connected spiritually. You can’t love the planet without loving one another. We’re all a part of this together. And that’s pretty dope actually.

With All My Soul

I’ll admit I haven’t been the best Christian this Lent. I didn’t give anything up, mostly because I know I’ll just slip up a few weeks in (great attitude to have, am I right?). I haven’t been to church because I’m too lazy to find an affirming church in Fort Wayne, and I haven’t even done my 40-day devotional every single day because, well…

But I had to learn a few worship songs for a client I have next week, and it got me in weirdly spiritual mood for once. So I decided to re-download my Bible app and pick a psalm at random, just for funsies. I was born at 1:08 pm (or was it 1:11 pm — I can never remember), so I picked 108. The opening verse hit me like a ton of bricks:

My heart, O God, is steadfast;

I will sing and make music with all my soul.
Psalm 108:1

And I cried. I cry at absolutely everything, but this cry was different. I cried because I think God was trying to speak something to me through that verse.

I am exactly where I need to be.

I was a bit discouraged this week about my music therapy journey. I had my worst session ever on Tuesday (which was my birthday, to add insult to injury). My supervisor had nothing good to say about it. No redeeming qualities. Nada. If I’d spent the entire session watching grass grow with my client, it would have been more productive. And it would be different if it were a one-off problem, but I’ve had ongoing issues with me just not being able to read client or parent behavior. I don’t talk when I’m supposed to, or I talk when I’m not supposed to, or I say too much. I’m positive it’s a neurodivergence thing, but it’s not very reassuring to realize that the problem is something inherently wrong with your brain wiring. I can’t fix autism and ADHD. I’m just sucking at this because I naturally suck at this.

As of writing, I’m at the annual music therapy conference of the Great Lakes region, and it’s disheartening to see all these certified MT-BCs that started their journey with me, or even after me. It took me twelve years to get where I am, in my internship, and during that time, all my cohorts went on to get their degrees and start their careers. I’m meeting people younger than me who are already established professionals. All of this, on top of the roadblock that was my Very Bad Session and my continual failing to people correctly, and it would be so easy for me to give up. I should just be a pharmacy technician, right?

But that’s not why I was put here. And that one little verse was the reminder I needed to keep going.

I wasn’t put on this planet to pass out Wellbutrin prescriptions. I was out here to make music, and more specifically, to heal the world through music. It’s in my blood. Music is as natural to me as breathing, and I want to use it to make the world a better place. Reading Psalm 108:1 was like the part in Moana where she remembers who she is and realizes her power. “And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me. It’s like the tide, always falling and rising. I will carry you here in my heart, you’ll remind me that come what may, I know the way.”

I will be a music therapist. There’s no other option. Just like Moana on her little boat, I’ve come too far to turn back now. I will sing and make music with all my soul, and nothing will get in my way.

Not even me.

Dear Cadence, Part Thirteen: Stand Up For What You Believe In

This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, and Part Twelve

While I was still married to Josh, the church we attended was a huge part of our daily lives. We were so immersed in the life of that church, we didn’t do much outside of it. I cut out most of my friends who didn’t attend, not intentionally for what it’s worth, but I felt I didn’t relate to those friends anymore. I even stopped talking to your mom as much, despite her being my best friend. She never as much as saw the inside of our condo.

But the church wasn’t perfect. I knew about its political leanings before I jumped back in, having been Facebook friends with many of its attendees. Many were diehard conservatives who’d eventually drink the Trump Kool-aid, some even progressing to QAnon conspiracies and the like. And most mourned the day gay marriage was legalized, which rubbed me the wrong way. But Jesus was bigger than petty politics, right? He didn’t care if I voted for Bernie Sanders, even if the pastor’s kid gave me the side-eye for it. This church was where I felt the most connected to Him, and that was what mattered most, I thought.

There was a small collective of progressive folks, mostly other musicians in the worship team. After playing, we’d sit in the break room and eat our breakfast, discussing whatever off-color joke about “those libruls” was said during service that morning. We were renegades in the sense that we didn’t adhere to absolutely everything the pastor taught, which was scandalous for a church that emphasized that their way was the “right” way and no other path was valid. We did wild things like have gay friends and believe in universal healthcare. Josh was a fringe part of this group — I think he had trouble letting go of the teachings of his family, which were even more reactionary than that of the church, if that can be believed. At least the church played rock music.

But for the most part, there wasn’t any tension between us and the rest of the church. We were able to coexist peacefully. In fact, politics and social issues were seldom brought up. There’s an insidious kind of evangelical church that preaches acceptance for all, that puts on a pair of hipster skinny jeans and plays guitar and pretends to be young and relevant, but as soon as you’re comfortable within the culture of the congregation, smacks you over the head with the classic line —“love the sinner, hate the sin.” Which is almost always directed at queer folks, mind you. But as long as no one brought up gay and trans rights, it was never addressed.

Until one Saturday evening service, that is.

I still remember the burn of the stage lights beating down on my face, the way my guitar felt in my hands, and the sound of the pastor’s voice as he announced it.

A conversion therapy class for teenage girls.

I thought I was going to be sick. I should have stormed off the stage. I should have made a scene. I should have stood up and told him, in front of the entire congregation, that what he was doing was fucked up. But I didn’t. I stood there like a good little sheep and did jack shit about it. But I knew the storm was coming.

And as expected, word got out that my church was hosting such a class. And people were rightfully furious. Like, “protesting in front of the church” furious. Here I was caught between these two worlds, the church I’d dedicated my life to serving and what I knew in my heart was right. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think these people I was serving alongside were evil, but they were doing something that was unequivocally evil. Love the sinner, hate the sin, as they always said, right? But I wanted to make a stand somehow. I had to show these girls I was on their side. That I was one of them.

So I came out. Publicly. For the first time ever.

Reactions were mixed. Most people weren’t surprised to hear I was pansexual — I’d already had a pretty homoerotic relationship with your mom. There was some pushback from the church elders, and the pastor cornered me to tell me how I was so wrong. I didn’t care. The blatant homophobia of the church should have pushed me further into the closet, but instead, it emboldened me to live more authentically.

I stayed at that church for a few more weeks, praying I could change it from the inside, but you gotta know when you’re fighting a losing battle. These people were stuck in their ways. As much as I hated to admit it, as much as I hoped their so-called love of Christ would soften their hearts, there was no saving them. So I left. I found a church out where I worked that accepted me — all of me. Most of the other secret progressives trickled out as well, finding affirming churches or abandoning religion altogether. I couldn’t blame them, for if my faith was any weaker than it was, I probably would have done the same. But I stayed strong in my belief that there is a God, and that He loves wildly, without conditions, and without prejudice.

In a weird way, I’m glad my old church showed its true colors the way it did, because it gave me the push I needed to stop lying to myself and everyone else about my sexuality. Had things continued the way they were, I would have never left, and I would have never come out, and I would have never married your mom or fallen in love with Olivia (I’m not sure what parental title she has yet, but she likely helped me create you, which is really cool!). I am where I am now because I took a stand. My only regret is not walking off that damn stage when I had a chance. I hope when you’re faced with prejudice, you’ll be even stronger than I was. Walk off the stage. Throw a fit. Make a scene. Let the world know that shit doesn’t fly. I pray you have courage where I didn’t.

Sunday Morning Coffee: Love and Fear

It’s been three days since my last argument with a Facebook asshole about LGBTQ stuff, and I’m still simmering from it. I think I let things like that affect me way more than I should. Maybe I really am a bleeding heart hippie.

Can’t we all just sing “Kum-Ba-Yah” together?

It’s not easy for me to sit back and just take it when randos are slinging homophobic/transphobic slurs, suicide jokes, and even pedophilia accusations against you and your favorite people. Why are some folks so eager to say disgusting, slanderous things about entire groups of people they don’t even know? It literally baffles me — I can’t wrap my mind around it. I wouldn’t say things remotely as heinous against strangers I simply don’t agree with. My momma raised me better than that.

I’m tempted to call these people evil, but I won’t. I will call it as I see it — their actions are evil —-but to borrow a phrase so often weaponized against the queer community, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” You see, the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s fear. And these people are lashing out like scared dogs at things they don’t understand.

The Bible itself says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). When you don’t understand something, the human tendency is to fear it. And often, that fear becomes hate. When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark because I didn’t know what was hiding in it. I hated being in the dark for that reason. But the dark was never bad — I just didn’t understand it.

I think these people who blindly hate those who are unlike them simply don’t know love. I understand that many people didn’t have a lot of love growing up — maybe their families were abusive, or perhaps they were bullied. That will lead to a life of fear, and a life of fear is a life of hate. The antidote is love.

Whenever I see transphobic memes online, I think of my girlfriend Olivia. I can’t wrap my mind around how anyone could possibly hate her. But they don’t know her like I know her, because to know her is to love her. I wish everyone had an Olivia to show them what love means.

So instead of letting fear win, let love in. Show love wildly, recklessly, with no remorse. Love your enemies. Love the people who persecute you. Love the people who call you names or make nasty accusations or tell you to kill yourself.

Love like Jesus did.