Henry and I had a great, heartfelt talk. But a realization hit me as we were talking: I don't want to share this conversation with anyone else. What we talked about that day was personal. Vulnerable.
We finished the day by taking silhouette pictures with the blazing orange-and-pink sky as our backdrop. My siblings lovingly kissed their spouses and lifted them up in the air as some of the most romantic and precious images I'd ever witnessed. I stayed to watch for a little while, knowing that no one would ask me if I wanted any pictures by myself. That would have been absurd, right? It didn't take long for me to reach the end of what I could handle with my family. So, I ran away.
I was single with no children, free from almost all responsibility, and I realized I could move anywhere in the country and totally start over if I wanted it. The idea appealed to me the more I thought about it.
MANLY MONDAY returns after a month's hiatus! Join me as I tackle the question (that used to be) on everybody's (or a vocal few's) minds (or not).
I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't get a feel for how my friend felt. Was he upset, angry, weirded out, touched, happy, confused? Henry gave no clue to his thoughts. Only one emotion registered in my own gut: fear. Months prior . . . The first few weeks after Henry left our church were actually harder than I expected. Entering the office each day, I caught myself instinctually looking at his desk to say hello. I found myself wanting to turn around to chat with him about the latest blog I'd just read. I began to feel an ache around the time each day when we used to go away from our desks to read the Bible together and check in with each other. I wanted to fill Henry's absence -- but my options were nonexistent. For one, I was now the only guy in my office suite....
Several of our authors recently attended the inaugural Revoice conference in St. Louis: a gathering for sexual minorities in the church. Here are our thoughts on the (controversial?) conference we experienced together.
The slog of waking up to my drab mundane life takes a sharp turn for the better, and I am suddenly filled with hope and optimism. The world is not so scary anymore. How on earth did I live without this hope before? I attended this year's YOBBERS retreat, and my mind is spinning over what I just saw and experienced.
We recently celebrated our faithful Patreon community, our YOBBERS, with an inaugural retreat. 47 guys from literally all over the world united for a weekend in the mountains, and we had a fantastic time together. Several of our core authors attended the YOBBERS retreat, and we recently debriefed our weekend together.
My biggest fear was that my best friend was going to force our friendship to end all because of this girl, pushing me away from his life. It was the fear that whatever friendship we'd built in the past he was willing to tear down, trample to the ground, and pretend that I never existed at all.
It's the final episode of our Five Values series! Our editor, Tom, discusses his personal journey of vulnerability from attending a conference to writing a book to cofounding this very blog. Additionally, he affirms the role vulnerability plays in each of our stories — whether we're publicly "out" or not.