Pushing Boundaries

I have very distinct memories of thinking about be flung into a lake of fire when I was little. First, my grandmother was a Seventh-Day Adventist. They basically believe that we are living in the End Days and that at any moment we will see Jesus's winged chariot cresting over the horizon in the east. Those who were saved would rise with Jesus into Heaven. And those who weren't...

This apparently did many colorful, screwy things with my mother's head. So, when it came time to baptize my sister and me, my mother went with my father's religion, and we went to the St. John's American Lutheran Church.

After the divorce, my sister and I spent weekends with my father, which meant my grandmother took us to Sunday school. I remember Mike F. We were the same age and when I lived with my father we were always in the same class. We also were in the same Sunday school class. I can't remember exactly what the lesson was, but I do remember thinking that it didn't make any sense. I think it had something to do with angels dancing on the head of a pin. And then I half remember a lesson where they were talking about marriage.

I raised my hand and asked, "What if a boy wants to marry a boy?"

"He can't."

The answer was as simple as that. I was probably about seven years old, because I remember some lecture about having reached the age of reason. Up until that point if we'd committed a sin, God automatically forgave us. But after the age of seven you were on your own (I think the teacher actually used those words) and if you sinned, you would have to beg for forgiveness. Sometimes there were things that God did not forgive, but I could never get a straight answer as to what those things were.

"Well, what if a boy wants to kiss a boy?"

"He can't."

And I remember, as clear as day, thinking, "I can't wait until I'm old enough to kiss someone. I'm going to kiss a boy and see what happens." The bell had rung, and the rest is history.

Growing up, I had crushes on lots of boys. At around the age of fifteen or so I started to get an idea of what those crushes were all about. But I lived in rural Iowa and already was tormented on a regular basis. The last thing I could do was kiss a boy.

But I had these feelings, and I kept trying to see how they could be wrong. They just didn't feel wrong. I thought about killing someone. That felt wrong. I thought about stealing something. That felt wrong. I thought about kissing a boy. No thunder claps, no burning bush. It felt natural.

It was years before I kissed a boy. As I look back on my litany of sins, there are many things I wish I'd done differently. Kissing a boy isn't one of them.