Early Thirties Crisis

I'm officially 31. Which, to my disappointment, I'm neither flirty or thriving in the way that Jenna in the famous 13 Going On 30 film. I feel like the outlier in my graduating class. I'm not married, I don't have kids, no significant other, and I have an 11 month chihuahua.

I'm still creative and I'm still excited to live my life doing God's will. Yet, there's a new development in the Sopphey Vance story. I've danced around the issue of whether I'd be changing my birth name or not. I'm deciding that yes I will. I just have to do some important things first, like paying for my master's, bills, and debts.

The second most important development is that I'm going to have to be brave and live as a Genderqueer Hispanic. What does that mean? For starters, the Hispanic community is not super queer friendly. A lot of my extended family is homophobic: in general a lot of people in my hometown are very homophobic.

However, that is exactly why I need to live as open as possible. I can't go on hiding my true self in front of my peers when God knows exactly who I am. Perhaps it's time for us Hispanics to know what it really means to be Queer and Christian. I can show the world Christ's love just as I am without hiding inherent traits of who I am as an individual to become part of the tapestry of God's love.

Though I'm called to ministry to minister to others, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden I'm never going to me ever again. In fact, being called has been the biggest test of endurance so far! I couldn't have made it through the setbacks, hills, and valleys of life without having a high sense of who I am as an individual. In the end, God doesn't call us to be puppets. God calls us to be the living body through and in Christ.

Continuing to my early thirties crisis. I'm scared. I'm facing situations and demons left and right that I don't want to add a bulls eye to myself. In my fear I pray for myself as I prayed for the victims and families of the Pulse Nightclub incident and the most recent death of a Gay Hispanic Rapper. I regularly ask God, why me? Why now? One of my sisters says that it's because I've been chosen for the job.

If I've been chosen, so have you. You're coming along with me. Are you ready? I'm not.