Brandy’s Wedding

When Brandy told me she was going to marry her girlfriend I began an additional new leg of my journey.   I was thankful that in Colorado, gay marriage is not legal.   I had been fully supportive of Brandy when she was engaged to Josh.  We made a big deal of his surprise proposal, with lots of pictures.  We threw an engagement party and some of our family came from out of town for the celebration.  We quickly went out and picked out a beautiful wedding dress.  It was a very joyous occasion, with lots of celebration.

It was quite different when Brandy wanted to have a wedding ceremony with a girl.  It was more like morning the continual death of my dreams and expectations for my daughter.  I had told her I didn’t know if I would even come to the wedding and that I was certainly not going to pay for any of it.  Even though I loved her very much, I felt that by me being involved with or helping pay for her wedding, that I was somehow condoning what I saw as her “choice” to not only continue in sin, but to publicly renounce God’s divine purpose of a marriage between a man and a woman.   It seemed to me to be another moral issue.  It upset Brandy a great deal that I was not supportive of her wedding and pending marriage.

As the months went by, I wasn’t involved with Brandy’s wedding preparations.  Brandy became very resentful of this, even resorting to using my credit card (without my permission) to make online purchases for the wedding.  There was major drama between us when all that finally came to light.   We both felt a great sense of betrayal on various levels.

With time, I began to get to know Brandy’s fiancé better and actually started liking her.  As the wedding approached, I softened up to not only the idea of going to the wedding, but also helping a little bit.  I recognized that even though I didn’t agree, my daughter saw this as one of the most important days of her life.  My heart tugged at me to not let the wedding pass by without being involved.  I offered my home for the wedding reception and helped with some minor purchases.  I bought and wore a dress Brandy wanted me in as the mother of the bride.  

It was still all very odd and awkward for me.  I didn’t even know the words to use when discussing the wedding.  I was informed that they were both “brides”, and later would refer to each other as their “wife”.   Brandy didn’t like the word “partner” to be used.  She also didn’t like to be called “homosexual”, but preferred “lesbian” or “gay”.  When talking about my daughter and her wife with other people, I always felt like I needed to explain that I didn’t like her being a lesbian.   Even that phrase I stumbled over.  I was still struggling with the label of “lesbian” and preferred to say that my daughter saw herself as a lesbian, since I wasn’t so sure it was such a permanent state.  Having such a difficult time with just the words, you might be able to imagine how I struggled with the whole situation.

For the wedding, Brandy wore a beautiful wedding dress.  She looked gorgeous.  Two of her bride’s maids wore bridesmaid dresses.  Her fiancé wore pants and a vest, because that was what she was most comfortable in.  And her bride’s maids also wore pants.   My daughter Jenise, was a bridesmaid and had decided she wanted to wear pants, so she did not stand on the side with her sister, but with the other “pants wearers”.  She didn’t ever have a problem wearing dresses before, so even this minor detail was uncomfortable for me.  Did it mean Jenise was “butch”?

My daughter’s wedding wasn’t what I had dreamed of when she was a little girl.  But, I did my best to put my feelings aside and to see it from the perspective of my daughter.  I wanted her to be happy.

One Journey Was Not Enough

I have two daughters.  The oldest, and the one I’ve shared about my journey so far coping with her homosexuality, is Brandy.  Brandy says she is a “femme”.   She looks like every other young feminine lady, except she is more beautiful, of course.  Brandy was always a strong willed child, and was certainly the most difficult one to raise, especially during her teen years.  She is an extravert.  She is very easy to get close to, sharing easily what she thinks and feels.  She is also very emotional.  Fortunately, she is able to talk thru when she is sad and usually feels better as a result.  She is charming, very loyal and affirming to those she loves.  I absolutely love spending time with her. 

My second and youngest daughter is two years younger than her sister.  Her name is Jenise.   She is like me, an introvert.  While Brandy was living at home, Jenise was much more compliant and was very sensitive about pleasing Mommy.  She did great in school and had strong ethics, especially around lying.  She was one of the most honest teenagers you would ever meet.  She continues to have very good ethics.  She is very supportive, compassionate and sensitive.  She is very smart and has a unique, silly sense of humor.   

I knew Jenise had kissed girls, but she would avoid the subject when I would try to talk to her about it.  Brandy had told me Jenise thought she was bi-sexual, but Jenise would only tell me she liked boys.  She didn’t want to disappoint or upset me.  She had somewhat long relationships with boyfriends, so it was easy to downplay the significance of her kissing girls.  Wasn’t that a new fad, like Brittney Spears and Madonna kissing each other during a show?  Besides, I had to hang onto the dream of the typical grandmother scenario and vision I had for at least one of my daughters.  Denial comes so easily. 

A few years into my journey around Brandy, I began an additional journey that had a new twist.  Jenise came home with her hair cut to her ears.   She looked like what I thought was the stereotypical lesbian, which is referred to as “butch”.   My denial took a strong slap to the face.  I would’ve never dreamed that I would be so upset about a haircut.  I had seen my daughters with various styles and hair colors that I didn’t particularly like, but this was so different.  I unintentionally started rejecting Jenise and I became depressed again.   You would’ve thought  I had learned enough with Brandy, but no.  I still had much more to learn.

I learned that I had been in deep denial about Jenise, and also had some left with Brandy.  I had somehow, somewhat convinced myself that if they kept it to themselves and didn’t appear outwardly gay, that it somehow made it different, better.  I learned how embarrassed I was about my daughters being gay.  I had deep rooted prejudices against gays.  I didn’t know it was so deep.  After all, “I had a few gay friends”.  You cannot unconditionally love someone and be prejudice at the same time.  I had much more growing to do.

The Beginning of My Journey as the Mother of Lesbian Daughters

My journey in this arena began in 2006.  As of this writing, that was 5 years ago.   At the request of my oldest daughter, Brandy, I am going to try to recount the process and struggle I've been thru over these years.  I also will write about the continual struggles I am going thru at this time.  Our prayer is that it may help someone else that is also in that journey.  I also expect that the Lord will use this to continue deepening my faith and walk.  And, I pray that it will also help some other people to be more welcoming and loving towards everyone, including homosexuals.

I am not proud of the way I responded when my daughter first poured out her heart to me and revealed her sexuality.  Brandy came crying to me, needing my comfort.  Instead, I rejected her.  I pushed her off my bed and said that she was destroying her life.  For the next several weeks, I experienced a turmoil that I never would've believed, if I had not lived it.  I would wake up in the mornings thinking it was an awful dream.  I became very depressed.  It took me several months to even begin to cope appropriately to this major change.

It’s difficult to explain to someone that hasn’t gone thru it, the difficulty of this type of journey.  I had a lot more expectations of how my daughters would grow up than I had ever realized.  The realization that these were not going the direction I had expected was somewhat similar to going thru a death of your child.  It was a death of some of my hopes and dreams that I had taken for granted.  I also had the fear that my daughter was going to be ostracized and hurt by those around her.  I had many fears and misconceptions about the gay lifestyle.  And beyond that, as a Christian mother, I had the struggle of initially thinking my daughter’s salvation was in grave danger.  And, as a mother, I believed it was my responsibility to repair this.  However, she was a young adult, and I couldn’t force her to go the Christian camp that addressed this problem.  I could however, try other means to change her, which in my repressed codependent, “I can change other people” mindset, I tried to do.  I told her if she refused to go to the camp, then she needed to move out.  She promptly moved out.  And, my depression deepened.

I had seen the benefits of support groups, with my progress out of codependency (or so I had thought).  So, I searched for a Christian support group for me regarding this particular issue.  I called many different churches.  Eventually, I found Where Grace Abounds and I began attending their weekly meetings.  I also read every Christian book I could get my hands on for this subject.   Initially, I wanted to understand  how best to influence my daughter to change.  I was also trying to figure out how to cope with this and not go crazy.  I eventually learned that the best thing I could do for my daughter, and for me, was to unconditionally love her. 

Journey of Unconditional Love

I’ve always thought I unconditionally loved my daughters.  However, thru this journey, the Lord has deepened my understanding of the meaning and benefits of unconditional love.  And, by his grace, he has given me the gift of truly being able to love my daughters unconditionally.  And, he continues to use this to cause me to have a deepening love for others going thru similar struggles. 

I had been a single parent for most of my daughters’ lives.  We were very close and had a great relationship where we could talk about anything, or at least I thought so.  However, this new subject of being a lesbian was something I could not deal with.  I went thru all the phases of grief… denial, negotiating, anger, and acceptance, often all in the same day… well, not the acceptance phase until months later.  For the first several months I couldn’t talk about the subject, or see my daughter around her girlfriend.   I was rude to her girlfriend by not acknowledging her at all.  And, when talking to my daughters, I often pretended like it wasn’t real … denial.

By using books, Where Grace Abounds support groups, and speaking to me thru the Bible, the Lord eventually broke thru my pain and stubbornness and brought me to a new level of love.  I first came to the place where I could “hate the sin, but love the sinner”.  I began really seeing how conditional my love had been, and how this needed to change.  It’s easy to say you unconditionally love your children, until they continue to do something that you vehemently disagree with, something that seems terribly wrong.   I couldn’t have learned to unconditionally love my daughters without the Lord.  It is a continual process since we can always have our love deepened and widened.  I believe God has a purpose in this whole struggle, to teach me to love more fully, not only my own daughters, but others also.  What greater gift could I be given than love?

What my daughters needed most from me was my love.  It wasn’t my place to try to change them.  The Holy Spirit’s job is to convict and bring inward change.  It wasn’t my place to judge.  That is God’s job.