On paralysation

This is not what I have been intending to post here. There should have been a fabulous post on my mother life, or more so the way I picture my mother’s life, a couple of weeks ago.
But then I had to study really hard for this exam, and while doing so let other things slip (i.e all that wasn’t my exam).
And recently I have been feeling quite down from being so far behind on my paper, I feel like I haven’t written shit, it’s true I haven’t and the deadline is Tuesday.

I don't know how I ever got to be in this pit, I was pretty chirpy about this all last week. I felt like I was getting my life together finally, I even got the flu shot.
And yes, due to that I had fever and couldn't get out to bed for my Doctors appointment on Thursday and then I was right back on the slope.

Today I experienced, even though I don't like writing it I must, angst. Real angst. I went to lie down for a bit and had set my alarm on my cell phone in order to get up and continue my reading for the paper. And the alarm rang and rang over and over again and I just let it do it. I couldn't make myself to get out of bed. I wasn't tired, and I knew very well indeed how much I needed to write that paper and read those articles.
I felt a sensation I haven't felt for years, that one when you feel like there is carbonic acid in your chest. And I just laid there and felt the tingle of angst in my chest, and there was nothing I could do about it.

So having tossed and turned for almost two hours underneath my duvet and having serious thoughts of just giving up and going to bed for real right then and there, I got up and hade a real late dinner (well, at least by Swedish standards..)


I am intending to make this an early night and try my best again tomorrow. I am not getting a B on this one people. Let’s just pray I hand it in.

I think it’s the theory that gets in the way. I could write a hundred thousand papers on clothing and external objects worn in popular culture that restricts the human body and their influence on the performance of their wearer, if it wasn't for feeling the pressure of always having to reference the most adequate theory that deals with that. Bloody academia, set me free!
Maybe that’s the way to do it, just ramble my heart out and look up theories that fit that later…God, I don't know.

I just hate myself for having procrastinated this so much, this is insane. Truly. I did have an exam for sure, but I have had five days!
I am going to pull it off, of course, I pull everything off. And furthermore, this is just the way November is, and certainly the way it is right now. I am just going to do it.
But I just can’t help but hate the fact that I am not doing as well as I could be.

And I wonder, this city, this new life. It’s has only been a semester and I try to convince myself of that, things will pick up, things will be working later. Still….
Ah, never mind, never mind. I should go to bed now, and try not to be paralysed by the mind any longer.

Saviour visit Thy plantation
Grant us Lord a gracious rain
All will come desolation unless Thou return again
Lord revive us, Lord revive us all our help must come from Thee

Keep no longer at a distance
Shine upon us from on high
Lest oh Lord of Thy assistance every plant shall droop and die
Lord revive us, Oh revive all our help must come from Thee

On crip concentration

I am trying to concentrate. Trying my best to write a paper of the notions of dressed and dressed up. It is going very slow, I have all week but I wanted to have it done by now.
The reason it’s slow is not my own, I have read up on all the literature I have made an outline, and I have written half of it already. No, it’s not me; it’s what’s around me these days.

You see a concentrating as a crip demands a different kind of attitude then concentrating overall. Right now I need to concentrate despite being confined in this apartment until I get my new taxi card, which I so slow I haven’t even gotten to sending in the applications yet. You see, before I actually do that I need a medical permit, and to get that medical permit I need to go see a doctor, and to see a doctor I need to leave the house, and yes when leaving the house I might need a taxi-card.

I have arranged things with my PA’s so that I at least can get my self to and from University for my lectures. Otherwise I have no idea. And all the people I call and ask about this, the people I assume should know how things work and be able to give me straight answers about when and how and why and where, they seem to know just as much as me or even less.
It always puzzles me how they can say things that are so bizarre you wonder if your life is a sitcom or it the person on the other side is an alien with no manners whatsoever.
Now follow, an authentic conversation just had today…

I: But how do I make this work? I am stranded in my apartment otherwise!
Bureaucracy of Babylon: Well I don’t know, people don’t move here often…..

What in heavens name is that! Well know I don’t know what to do when a hurricane hits, you know we don’t get that often. Oh you say you’re dying, oh well that has never happened before.
You are saying you are unable to leave your apartment other than together with your PA’s and only at the times that you have scheduled them to come and pick you up…oh well, you are saying there is from now on no spontaneity in your life. You worry about being isolated. Well you see, I couldn’t help you even with the simplest questions about that, people don’t move here often so I wouldn’t know.

Well, let me tell you why people don’t move here often. It’s because this bureaucracy of Babylon is a set of bondage ropes around my shivering arms, it’s because you cripple me and make me invalid. You make sure my studies are not worthwhile, you make sure my concentration is lacking since I need to take breaks to cry and scream with worry.
You make me question if my time is well spent in this city when there is nothing but trouble here. You make me stare at this screen at the black words hammered down on the electronic whiteness through a haze of tears and anguish.

I am not built for this, I worry too much anyway. My heart is that of a rabbits, jumping quickly under collar bone. My constitution is one in need of safety and warmth. Uncertainty makes me ill.

Somewhere I do realise that this is a dam breaking. I haven’t cried about any of the hardships I have encountered since I moved here, I have only pondered through stoically, so I should have seen it coming now. When am partially safe in my own home and most of the things work out for me, then there is a space for me to crash like this.

I came to this town with visions, and I do still keep them. I am sorry Babylon but there is now way in which you will break me. I know you aspire to do that, even if you haven’t verbalized it for yourselves yet.
You think that crip girls like me are satisfied with little. Well, dearest Babylon – listen up when I say I am never satisfied. That is also part of my constitution. That of the escapist dreamer who saw herself dressed in Victorian velvet walking through the vast room of a mansion when she grew up. You say that is way too much. You say I should settle in with a day job and a few swims in the heated disabled people’s pool for leisure activities.
I say give me that mansion. Give me that an apartment in the city. Give me spaces to write and perform within. Give me my lovers’ heated kisses on my neck, give me the traces of my presceans across their bodies. Give me whisky; give me the force of darn good song. Give me the softness of tea and milk and the warmth of my army.
Give me all the heavy scented perfumes there ever was in the world.
GIVE ME MY LEATHER!

Bless my family, my army, my muses and my flexible PA’s when all is madness as it so now.
And I know there are loving people above me, who brush away the clouds gently as they look down, there is a face that looks like mine, there is curly hair and swelling hearts and there is a great uncle.
Who looks at me as he smiles, because he knows what fighting is, and perhaps he wished he could have gotten all that I have know. I wish I could have met him, we could have sang songs; he could have told me it was going to be hard, this crippled life.
But now, as she his fringe falls in his eyes, and I recognize the shape of my own lips on his face I know that he’s saying.

På dôm lisch jänta!
(Go get them little girl!)

On this evening...

The wind is blowing up in the Capital, this evening the line between worry and reality is a slivery string of smoke. Crossed.

I don't want to to dwell in case I stir things up.
But I need to write this.
There is not much physical force in me but right now I wish there were, I wish I was taller, stronger, and able to split myself.

Like in my favourite story about the Hindu god Krishna who clones himself and loves some many women in one night that the world trembles and opens up.
I wish I could be anywhere were all of you are, and whenever winds blew up and Death draws near, for they are Death's little soldiers, and fear is what drives them, then I wish I would stand behind them.
Gently place my hands on their shoulders and whisper into their ears what their deepest longing was, all of their most intimate secrets...I would tell them I knew, just what they were after, and they would crumble and cry and my nails would bury themselves deep into the smooth adolescent skin on their necks. And I would pick them up and place them elsewhere. Where they could do no harm.

I don't have any force but I have words. They beat in my veins and the flow threw my fingertips. They are not as powerful as I would hope tonight. They are no nails or grips around cocky necks, but they are all I have for you and here they are. They are made up with all my love for you, all my deepest gratitude for all that you have taught me since I have known you, and they are blazing with anger and fury, the kind of fury that makes me want to grow tall and wide.

(This is a text called "Skinnygirl the return"- it's all I every want to be for any of you when thing like this happens, this evening it is slightly altered...)


We were one and one. Separated.
I waited to hear cautious whispers before the attack.
When together we would become a body, a longing, a strength.
When we would roam the streets and eat everything that had eaten us. Crushing those hands, that touched us without permission underneath our heels. Together we would hold hands. And the world would tremble, cause the world would know that there were fires underneath our skin. That it crackled and popped with faith and strenght. And the world would know that that fire would touch ground soon, spread through dry grass. The earth would be forced to reveal the words that were spilled. Tremble in fear.
For we will return, and we will regin. Look at us twice, cause it might be the las time you see us.

On my army

In my large novel style project ’The Mermaid’, which has rested this summer and rightfully so, I write about the gathering of an army. An army which sets out to fight death. Usually when people set out to fight death in fiction I just get the feeling they are really seeking it. All the dare-devilistic things that people come up with as exciting and assume is living life to its fullest is often just really stupid. Not to say that you wouldn’t be slapping death on its fingers now and then by doing really crazy stuff, but I would guess that’s mostly of out luck.

I have tried to focus the attention of that army that I am building on making the most of every moment and trying to build a collective that would withstand all deaths trials. And I think I have done pretty well in building an interesting mixture of characters that from the outside doesn’t seem to have any thing in common at all (that was also my major theme for the text, to show that even though we don’t think we share anything we all share as much as we are willing to admit we share…) but that ends up beings closely intertwined for one major reason.

They have all suffered loss: Loss of ability or an appearance that they used to have, loss of a beloved or loss of a place or time. Death is the one who possesses all these things, and hence, in order to, not so much regain them but to teach It that It cannot go around nicking other peoples abilities just like that, they set out to fight It.

Anyhow I wanted to say, that as I wrote that text I began to think that it would be really nice to be part of such an army (even though I do have a flare for taking the lead I wouldn’t have to be the rallying force ;) ) that it would be amazing to be part of such force and such determination.
I realise now that I was very foolish in having these thoughts. Since the truth is that I am already part of such an army.

These past days I have realised that even more. Since I struggled to be able to survive in the Capital I began to see that so many people cover my back. That even though I didn’t know if they understood truly what my life has been about they give me proof again and again of knowing just what I am, and loving me dearly for it.
In this maze that bureaucracy is and amongst all the vipers in the grass that the bureaucrats are I know they walk ahead of me and behind me. To smash their machetes against growing branches threatening to choke me and pick me up when I fall.

I am sorry if I am making it out to be like I didn’t trust you to understand me, it is not so! Just that when I deal with these people telling me my disability isn’t major or consistent enough I wonder if anybody sees that within me.
If anybody sees the struggling that this is. I have known all the time that you have, I am just so grateful to see it now. In my time of need.

So this blog post is to be about my warriors. Those who walk ahead and behind of me and the people that have made up the army I longed for but didn’t see until I was desperate for it.

I have already spoken about my brother in this space, but I will gladly speak about him again. My brother Carsten and his fiancée Emma deserve all the credit they can ever get for always sticking by me and telling me to keep my head up. My brother deserves multiple thank you’s for his never ending fire within, for taking time to ramble in anger with me about how unjust all of this is and for keeping me on the ‘take no crap’-path.

The following where already part of my army before I knew I needed one. They are spoken about as a unit because I really think we are.
Katarina, Kicko and Marie. Thank you for always being interested in what I do. For brining forth your righteous anger with me when it’s needed, for helping me lay down my burdens by the whisky-cokes and the throbbing dance floors of tacky bars. For laughing with me and making comparisons to other well known crips such as Timmy and Jimmy from South Park and the magnificent Andy Pipkin from Little Britain (if Andy get’s a PA as good as Lou then I must be okay in the end…)
Thank you for seeing above and beyond my disability but never neglecting the fact that it’s there. Tämmy! TäKåKå!

My soon to be land-lady Ulrika, thank you for opening your home whenever it’s needed and especially in such a desperate time, for allowing me to bring all the mess that this has been into your life too and welcoming me with such open arms. True generosity.

Vata-Sister, Hillevi. Thank you for understanding from just the same spot how important a well balanced body is. Thank you for allowing me to ramble for hours on end about spasms and anxiety. We are so alike it scares me at times, but it’s very comforting to know that whatever I say you have felt it too. Long live the achy-shaky vata-hearts!

Last but not at all least my muses. My and Josephine. (in a way you are all my muses but I like giving people titles…okay ;) )
Firstly thank you both of you for an ongoing feast of inspiration whenever I come to think of you. You both share an aura of force and vulnerability than intrigues me deeply and sparks all my artistic fires.

Thank you My, for all your love and your support. For understanding what the important things are and never minding sharing them. For including me in what’s important to you and cherishing my thoughts and ideas. Thanks for bringing me to lovely places to see lovely people for making me part of their lives as I have become a part in theirs. For believing me when I say that I can do this. And reassuring me when I doubt. For sharing faith and strength with me and making me tea when I needed it the most.

And finally, thank you Josephine. For seeing all the facets that make me up and telling me that they are valid. For bringing a somewhat holy wrath to this fight and offering a very hands on support, for sharing ideas, thoughts and memories and building me up. Thanks for allowing me to be vulnerable when I need to and for seeing the absolute force that is me too. Thanks for your never-ending support of my work and your brilliant witty mind.

I have faith; after all I was injected with a massive load of faith growing up, that we shall conquer this. If you stand ahead and behind me now I promise cross my heart that I will do the same whenever you need me! Thank you again – the academy, Gawd, my parents, and my army!


Xoxo, Kittin! (Timmy, Jimmy, Andy Pipkin, Sally, Anne Bonny!)

On cripness, gender and sex.

Haven't written anything here in ages, other writing has been consuming a lot of time, as has plain living.
Weeks ago I had a plan to follow up on cripchick and wheelchairdancer's blog posts on disability and gender, I wrote something but didn't think I did well. Today, as I was reading through old things lying around on my harddrive I realised it might have been okay anyway so here it is.

Following in the footsteps of cripchick and wheelchairdancer I will try my best to write about my take on ’crip’ as an identity, its relation to power and sex.

Firstly, I would like to say that it has taken me a while to find myself as a crip-girl. Honestly, my disability even though it is at times very crippling has not been a major issue for me and not until the last year’s part of my identity as such.

I credit this to my childhood and my ideas of myself growing up. Even if I knew there was something different with me, I was never told that different equalled bad.

Growing up in a very including Christian environment I was often told my disability was a blessing. Later I came to know that was not always the take on disabilities amongst other Christians and certainly not amongst other Pentecostals, as my family was.

Growing up in a Christian environment also meant that the ideas of sex and sexuality were different than others. I often found it puzzling that Pentecostals would devote themselves so physically to God and the Spirit while at church but be afraid to touch subjects that I thought alike, lust and pleasure. It was not rare when I grew up to see women hiss the name ‘Jesus’ between gritted teeth as their bodies shock. And when finding out about the Spirit myself I likened it to an orgasm.

Because I had always been told my disability was a blessing, meaning that God had greater plans for me and brother and had let us live even if it wasn’t possible, I grew up believing strongly, and still do - that all that is good within me comes from God. Hence, the love I felt for both boys and girls wasn’t a trouble.
Finding out I was both a crippled and a bisexual I started to asses myself at a very early age, thinking about what I like and disliked. Linking fantasises desires and wishes together I also discovered I was Dominant. (Will this odd-ness never end?)Again, seeing that it was in me and was a good thing since it sprung from love and also couldn’t exist without a submissive counterpart and a consensus from that person, I accepted it.

As a Dominant-crip-pseudo-lesbian I struggled to find an identity that fit me. Combining the weakness and frailness of my psychical condition with the force of my mind and my ‘sinful’ love for other women.

For a substantial period of time I was on growth-hormones since I was way too short for my age. I am still pretty short but without the hormones would have been even shorter. The hormones, a jolly mixture of steroids and testosterone, sent my body off on a post-adolescences joyride. I bulked up like I had never done before; I was longer frail in appearance even though my body was.
In an attempt to mend the gap between my physical appearance and my mind I went into a period of being a very butch girl. Shaving my head and trying desperately to find out where this rollercoaster was to take me I went from crazy unisex tops and shirts to dresses and back again. All the time feeling uncomfortable in an appearance that I didn’t know.

Getting of the hormones I dropped 8 kg to 38kg for my final 145 cm and finally recognised what I saw in the mirror. I went back to the clothes that I had worn as a girl, I indulged in skirts and flowery tops, flaunted my tits and tried my very best to make my body sexual and owned by me, rather than an asexual object owned by doctors and syringes filled with steroids.

As a crip-girl I believe that is my biggest struggle. To believe that my body can be desired through the eyes of others. That it isn’t something freaky but something hot, mostly because I myself through active choice in my appearance and manners make it so.
I thrive on being raunchy and outspoken about my body and my sexuality, since it breaks a long lived idea of crippled people as asexual, making use of it as I would like. Learning to make it work its best to give me and my lovers the most pleasure and so and so.

Through this process of ‘returning to the roots’ I discovered my last add-on identity so far. I was not only a Dominat-crip-pseudo-lesbian; I was also a ‘femme’.
Putting my ‘invalid’ body on display because I chose to, doing it with the tools of a feminine appearance altered to fit my needs (see crip-chick’s post on altering the tools of femininity, such as clothes, to fit the needs of our bodies) allowing myself, with very little physical force, to Dominate through the mind, and enjoying that, gave me the cornerstones of the subversion that now constitute my femme-identity.

However even though I am a ‘fiercely femme Lady’ according to beloved Sister Hillevi, I find I am rarely viewed as that by people who don’t know me. Again it’s that asexual image of disabled people and certainly disabled women that gets me. Also, my ‘classically feminine attire’ combined with a well expressed Christian faith often boxes me in as a sweet-Christian-girl. Not to say that I am not but there is certainly more to me than meets the eye in that sense.

In order for a discussion to take place around disability, gender and identity society needs to acknowledge disabled persons identities not only as homogenous disabled group but see that all kinds of identities fit within the disabled ‘community’ as well as in the able bodied.
That even though I am a disabled person it is not equal to my disability being the cornerstone of my identity.

My crip-identity as it is today took me years and years to build and it was through my other identities that a sense of subversion of my crippled body arose.
When I call myself a crip today, it gives me a space to joke about the quirks of my body, my spasm, my freakishly tensed muscles, a space where I can promote photos as the one here on the blog where I kiss the chrome on my walker.
Also, it gives me a space where I find strength in a world that is made to fit the able bodied, it gives me a sense of community and support, a renewed sense of what my body needs and strength to acknowledge that these needs are different than my able bodied friend’s.

(Might be brainy, might just be ramblings)

On Queer-theology

Having such a crap Monday as I am right now. Cramps, no work and rain. It was lovely to see my Bible Contemplations featured on http://www.queerteologi.se. The page is run by the Swedish Lutheran Priest Niclas Olaison (yes, he is queer) and he approached me last year at Stockholm Pride and asked me to write for it.
To be honest, I had forgetten that I did it and read the piece getting a more and more familiar feeling about- until realizing I had actually WRITTEN IT.
It can be found in Swedish on the link above, and translated here:

1 Book of Peter 5:1-4

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness
of Christ's sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed:
Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not
because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not
greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to
you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you
will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

In the text for the 4th Sunday of Easter time we talk about being the shepherd of a flock. To watch over it not by force but voluntarily as God wants, not by greed but by devotion. In my faith we are all both shepherd and flock to each other. In our faith we will be able to support others well as to seek support. In the certainty of Christ's love we are able to share all the burdens, big or small, and to share them even with those who are not Christians. In that we commit an act of love. We do God's will.

The importance of being humble is also emphasized in the text. That we do not make ourselves out to be "Lords", but only good examples. For me, it is also important that we dare to face each other in humility and humanity. Jesus came to us to show us what it ultimately is to be human and to sacrifice yourself as a human. In my previous Christian life, I often ran into these "Lords" rather than examples, which found it difficult to meet in the humility that I believe to be Christianity's core.

Why it is so difficult, I do not know. But I know that I try to be humble myself and I see that it plays a big part in how others will respond to and see me. It is not difficult to help if we feel that we can also get help when we need it. It is not difficult to lead if we feel that we can be led, not only by God but by people around us.

Therefore, we constantly have a responsibility to ourselves and others. To be humble so that others may be strong for us and to be strong for those who can not. The need to help or seek help does not always need to come from an explicit Christian faith, but often it can show the way to another way of looking at ourselves and others. A vision that springs from a grace and a freedom - in a sacrifice from God.

I will be featured two more times this spring/summer.

On Christiano-phobia

Due to a piece on this on Swedish Tv’s (SVT) program ”Existens” (http://www.svtplay.se/) I thought I would blog about the phenomena, if there is one.

In the piece they interview Swedish Pentecostal Christian politician Lennart Sacredéus who says he has experienced this kind of phobia. That he knows people who have been ridiculed and persecuted for their Christian faith.
Sacredéus says:

“It is when they have displayed a traditionally Christian point of view in
certain questions that they have experienced this kind of “critique” from
others, in their work environment, in their schools, amongst ‘friends’.”

As an example the program brings up the standard traditionally Christian “points of view” as pro-life and homophobic statements. Of course nothing about people being persecuted for what I believe is the most traditional Christian point of view: Love thy neighbour.

This made me wonder, is it so that when challenged for certain statements of their faith right wing Christians will now go around calling it a phobia? And have I experienced that phobia anywhere?

Firstly, I do well believe that when challenged in the more conservative areas of their faith Christians like Sacredéus (part of the Swedish Christian party which opposes gay marriage, gay adoption and abortion for a start) might well be crying wolf about a phobia spreading through the land. There is no phobia! There is critique on what kind of view on other people and their autonomy these kinds of groups present.
In the same program the former Arch Bishop of Sweden KG Hammar says:

“It is only ridiculous to assume there is a Christo-phobia, what is happening is
that conservative Christian values are given critique, like all other things are
critiqued. As Christians we must all be ready to take critique our self if we
critique others.”I agree, I think KG Hammar is actually one of the most
reasonable Christians Sweden has ever seen. If the conservative Christian
movement needs to go on about homophobic and oppressing ideas they can well face
up to being critiqued on that, as they critique the lack of “morality” in the
secular world.

I agree, I think KG Hammar is actually one of the most reasonable Christians Sweden has ever seen. If the conservative Christian movement needs to go on about homophobic and oppressing ideas they can well face up to being critiqued on that, as they critique the lack of “morality” in the secular world.
However, I find there actually exists an other kind of Christiano-phobia. One that has nothing to do with the ideas that specific Christian’s present but with the concept of being Christian.
A phobia that makes me, a highly progressive bisexual Christian, as bad as any conservative bigot ever was.
It has nothing to do with what I believe, only the fact that I do believe!
A phobia that tells me that it doesn’t matter how many autonomous choices I make in life. How much I try to break away from bigots and other foul “religious” people. The pure fact that I accept Christ as my Saviour (oh my- really?) is enough to make me a stupid and un-emancipated girl. One who is fooled by doctrine and patriarchy into submission and silence.
If the people telling me these things knew the least bit about me they would see how ludicrous there statements about me are.
(I use my vast knowledge of the Bible in ways they could never imagine- Hah!)

I often experience a stiff silence when I come out as a Christian (yes I really feel I need to come out about it.) When I tell people I was brought up in the Pentecostal movement it’s often even worse. I find I start every conversation on my faith with an excuse.
You see I am not….
Even if they say...
My point of view on this is not…

Now I wonder who gave the conservatives the right to patent my faith!?
Also, who makes it perfectly okay for non-believers to tell believers believing is a sign of weakness!?
(I will not speak about my “favourite” non-believer Richard Dawkins here; I think that man has had enough publicity already!)
In my life as a Christian I seek opportunities to actively do good for others, I seek opportunities to be friendly and help, to be supportive and to speak up in anyway suitable when things are not as they should be. I try to love my neighbour. Sometimes I fail, of course I do.

But I try my hardest to love the homophobes, the patriarchal oppressors, and the pro-life madness people.
I try; I really, really try to love the mad and mean Richard Dawkins. In my love for the people behind the arguments I find it natural to speak up about the wrong that they do.

All of you – YOU GIVE CHRISTIANITY A BAD NAME!

On faith, queer-ness and prayers

A text orginally written in Swedish for http://www.queerteologi.com.

To come to terms with our faith, we must examine our faith through ourselves. We must, in some way measure ourselves and find out what we consist of. I have done it many times. First as a child in a family of religious parents and relatives, then as a teenager in a group of other teenagers who believed, but not as I did, and finally as an adult all alone with only myself as a reference to how I wanted to live.

My birth is based on faith. It is a miracle or a mistake, a sin or a blessing, for both believers and non-believers. For my religious parents, there is meaning in mine and my brother's disability and that is how I am raised. Believing that God wished me well on that summer morning when I was picked out by a Caesarean-section three months premature. That he held his hand over us when we were fighting our way in to life. That he wanted us to live.

I was brought up to believe, without doubt, that:
"Jesus loves all children, all children on earth, red and white and yellow and black - doesn't matter, he said."
Therefore, my disability was an asset, a blessing and a gift to the world so it would remain diverse.

But in the Christian tradition which I am partly raised in, and which my father and mother belonged to, but left, physical shortcomings are often seen as an evidence of sin. Either I have sinned or my disability is a penalty for my parents' sins, whatever they might be.

As an adult, during a Sunday service in a Pentecostal church in a city where I lived, the members of the congregation asked if they could pray for me, I said yes. Then I thought we would pray for my studies at the time, and for a continued blessed life in the arts. Perhaps the members, which kneeled and put their hands on me thought that my career-choice was a pity. That the acting and the performing could lead me on paths away from the straight and narrow leading to the Pearly Gates.
However, they said nothing about that and when they prayed for me, in that charismatic way I have seen and heard so many times before I felt at home and secure. In these "excesses", in this sweaty jubilation and prayer, was a style of worship that I loved.

After the intercession one of the people who prayed for me asked me if I did not want intercession for "my legs".
I was very puzzled, never had I received this question before. It stood in contrast to all I had been taught in the past. That my legs were a sign of God's diversity, yes, a blessing from him, even. The man who asked me did it based on something he thought was right. He wanted me to be healed, and he thought it would be so. He justified his question by saying he "believed that Jesus wanted us to be healthy."
I replied that I believed that Jesus wanted diversity, and then we left the subject and he continued to play Christian tapes in his car while he drove me home through the sunny spring day.

But there in the car just that spring day, something happened. Something that I came to wrestle with a long time. The faith which I wanted to be a part of would not accept me as I was. My childhood-faith full of confidence in a good and accepting God who loved everyone
"and therefore gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" did not match anymore.
I feel most at home in what is called the Pentecostal Curch, that's where my my mum grew up and where my grandparents had their Christian faith. I have played there and glued Jesus pictures on cardboard, amongst lots of other children, sang songs and eaten cinnamon-rolls .

I have also seen a prayer and worship so strong that the people wept and spoke foreign languages. Shooked, laughed and rejoiced. All in the name of Jesus.
I wanted to dwell in that church.
But I also knew that I had to hide myself. I could not tell them everything about myself. I would be forced to sweep a big piece of my personailty under the carpet. Such as the fact that I sometimes fall in love with women. That I could imagine sharing a life with a woman I loved as much as if I loved a man. That it is perfectly possible for me to have children with this woman or this man and that I want our love to be blessed. Then there's a no-trespassing sign.

You can not live like that for the Old Testament says "you shall not lie with a man as a man lies with a woman because this is a sin."
Still I believe that all love must come from God since God is love. Still I believe that we must respect each other and not judge sinceJesus says,
"with the measure you weigh up for others it will be measured for you"
and as long as we act in love for ourselves and our fellow humanbeings, we do the work of God.
So, how to behave then if you are initially excluded, if the way that you love is not only unacceptable but a sin so great it is a as a cancer in the body of society, according to some.

I remained silent, it's stupid I know and to some extent un-Christian because Jesus says that "the truth shall set you free".
I did not lie, I just did not tell the truth.
Kept quiet and spoke only under my breath if someone asked something about boyfriends or so. In my bisexuality, I could of course choose to show the relationships I had with men, just mention them and everything was "normal". I remained silent in youth meetings and evenings, during the exultant praise meetings and Sunday services.
I had a great time with Jesus and loved to be so vibrantly and personally saved.

However, during all of this something ate away at me. I knew I could not continue to live in this congregation, not if I lied and certainly not if I told them how it was.
Fortunately, summer came and I finished my education and moved from the congregation without the need to come out.

Back home I made the decision to never lie about something in my life that I felt was right. If it was not possible to live in that type of congregation I had done in the past if I was open about everything about me, then I was not meant to. From now on "the truth shall set you free" became my favourite Bible verse and my beacon.

Under that guiding principle I was also "forced" to be true to my faith. Everywhere and everytime my queer orientation and my faith in Jesus came hand in hand. And it confused, not least other LGBTQ-people.
That somewhere along the way, had learned that the Christians were narrow minded and quick to judge. My Christian faith was something very exotic, and my yearning for the Pentecostal sweaty and charismatic worship left people very puzzled. I explained that it was the faith I had grown up in and that this was they way I wanted to celbrate
Yet I find that I often have to defend myself and sometimes even excuse myself for my Christian faith. Emphasizing that even if other Christians feel this or that, it is not my faith. That the Christian group is not at all streamlined but made up of individuals, as much as the LGBTQ movement (which I also belong to).

The Christian Church has a history marked by persecution and terror, the early Christian congregations were forced to hide themselves and to communicate with symbols to avoid the risk of being found out about and murdered. They were forced to hide and ridiculed for what they believed.
That also happended in the earliest days of the Pentecostal Church during the 1920's. The members were called heretics and gabblers and there were psychiatric examinations to assess their health.

Thus, both the early Christian movement, the Pentecostal Church and the LGBTQ-movement share a history (and a present experience)of being persecuted and hated because they chose to follow the only thing that seems important in life, to live being true to themselves and to show love!
For me the common ground is easy to see, even if I did not stand with one foot in the LGBTQ -movement and the other in Christianity, it would probably not take me long to see these similarities

How did I do then?
Why, good, thank you. I stopped being silent. Now I come out about as often as a Christian among LGBTQ-people as I do a bisexual among Christians. Usually the reaction is positive.
But still I havent told my former congregation. I presume they would like to pray for me and I would have to say: thanks, but no thanks, I think Jesus likes diversity because he loves all the children on earth.
I can imagine how they would respond but I do not want to speak about that now.