growth Archives • Your Other Brothers

Here and Queer: Redeeming My Sexual and Gender Identity

by Dean Samuels | Aug 13, 2019 | Lifestories | 14

I’m queer. That is how I now identify my sexuality. And it’s how I can best define my experience of gender, too. In my pursuit to grow more like Christ, I was setting aside part of my life as a mystery spot. How could I submit my sexuality to Christ if I didn’t even know what it was?

Saying Goodbye to Emotional Dependency — and My Best Friend

by Ben Rutkowski | Aug 9, 2019 | Lifestories | 34

A point came in our relationship when I realized just how dependent I was on him and just how one-sided our friendship was. For my own well-being, I needed to step away from the relationship. What follows is the lament and reflection I wrote in saying “goodbye” to our friendship.

YOBcast Episode 050: Emotional Attachment

by YOB | Aug 2, 2019 | Podcast | 9

We’re back! After a brief summer hiatus, we return with our landmark fiftieth episode. Join Tom, Ryan, and Jacob sharing stories of emotional attachment: the good ways we attach to other men, and the not-so-good ways we attach. It’s a callback to a previous episode on emotional dependency. We differentiate between “dependency” and “attachment” and share both our positive and negative experiences in relationship with other men.

Straight Men are Scary

by Thomas Mark Zuniga | Jul 31, 2019 | Lifestories | 32

Straight men have always been scary. They’ve long been “the other,” going all the way back to first grade. We may not share the same tastes for sports and media consumption, but we still share a common masculine heart. One fraught with hauntingly familiar masculine thorns.

Is Being “Side B” Just Internalized Homophobia?

by Eugene Heffron | Jul 23, 2019 | Lifestories | 27

Do I live the way I live purely because of the way I was raised? Do I still harbor any internalized homophobia of myself and others? Is that why I’m “Side B”? Is this all coming from a place of pious self-righteousness?

I Was Fifteen Minutes Away from the PULSE Shooting

by Eugene Heffron | Jun 12, 2019 | Lifestories | 9

In my pre-YOB days, I still felt a lot of self-loathing and internalized homophobia over my sexuality and had yet to come to terms with it. I spent that whole day unsure what to think or feel about PULSE. Dismayed by seeing so many people brutally murdered, of course, yet conflicted about how I felt about my convictions with my own sexuality.

Receiving Brotherhood at the YOBBERS Retreat

by Dean Samuels | Jun 10, 2019 | Lifestories | 3

I realized that these guys had come to this YOBBERS retreat for the right reasons. They came to honor Christ, love one another, and encourage each other. And that included me. I realized that I had come expecting to work and only work, with no expectation to receive anything.

Finding Humility Through Beauty at the YOBBERS Retreat

by Ryan Burger | Jun 4, 2019 | Lifestories | 5

Humility is not about being hard on yourself; it’s about fighting the urge to stand at the center of it all. As I stood there at this year’s YOBBERS retreat, an observer rather than a participant, God reminded me I wasn’t there to get as much as I could get, or even give as much as I could give. The YOBBERS retreat was bigger than me. I didn’t need to stand in the center of anything.

Please Don’t Let Our Second YOBBERS Retreat Suck

by YOB | May 28, 2019 | Conversations | 13

We recently held our second annual YOBBERS retreat: a weekend gathering for our financial supporters and community members on Patreon. Several of our authors attended, and we discussed our time together — both highs and lows — in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

My Sexuality is a Gift from God

by Dean Samuels | May 14, 2019 | Lifestories | 29

God could have prevented my attraction to men. Whatever your beliefs on causation, I believe God is powerful enough to have adjusted whatever needed adjusting to have prevented my attraction to men. Since this did not happen, I can only determine one reasonable possibility: my sexuality was something God wanted for my life. Therefore, I see it as a gift.