not afraid to share

With five minutes each and instructions to share a story, each person climbed the steps to the stage and attempted to sum up their summer. What a clearly impossible task! Tales of triumph, misfortune, laughter, and love spilled out into the ears of the audience.

Two girls drank full glasses of juice concentrate because nobody mentioned that they should add water. Two attempted to sing a slow hymn with the wrong chords and a techno beat being pounded out on a keyboard in the background. A few experienced the unrestrained love and adoration of children; they told stories of a three-year old with alcoholic parents in Ukraine, a five-year old whose mother abandoned him in Canada, and endless numbers of AIDS orphans in Zambia. One girl left a clinic in the pouring rain with a borrowed umbrella, only to have an old man come to her home a few minutes later, in the middle of the downpour, to retrieve the umbrella so somebody else could use it.

As I listened to the stories, my heart wept, laughed and felt deeply for each person. Only the most miniscule portion of their joys and sorrows would I ever know about. I’m continually blown away by the magnitude of the human experience and what a small part we are able to communicate to others.

The room was filled with family, friends, a few apostles and even the president of the church. But as I mounted the stage, it didn’t matter whose faces I was seeing; I’m not intimidated or impressed by power or position. Given five minutes, I would share the same thing with any person on earth. This summer I’ve been given a gift: I’m not afraid!

Not afraid to say what I think,

Not afraid to be wrong.

Not afraid of being judged or not liked,

Not afraid to share who I really am.

Not afraid to speak or listen.

Not afraid of not fitting.

Not afraid of disappointing or offending.

I’m not afraid!

I’M NOT AFRAID!

It’s hard to pinpoint who the giver of the gift was. I’ve been yearning for my own liberation for a while now but was never able to quite attain it. I’m grateful for the internet for letting me communicate myself, to Zoe for being so affirming, to my loving community for loving me with real love, to myself for taking the first step to sharing all of myself with other people, and to all the young men in Gorlovka because they listened in person and provided a safe place for me to share.

While I stood up there, painting a picture of my summer for all those people, I cried. How could I recreate the myriad of colors I saw, felt, tasted, and heard each day for two months? Can anyone paint a rainbow in black and white? So I confessed my former fear (of being judged or kicked out of my loving community because of what I did or didn’t believe) and focused on the beauty of the gift of having that fear released, and that was enough.

Afterwards, the father of a guy I dated for two years came up to me and bear-hugged me. He thanked me for sharing. He and his wife both work for the church and the whole two years I knew them closely, I was never able to say what I really thought about God or the church. He said, “Man Allie, you must have just been terrified of me.” And I cried again, soaking his shoulder, because it was true. I just feel so glad that it’s not true anymore.

I really am not afraid.