Pardon My Overshares

Pardon My Overshares
When I came out to myself, I came out to the world (and btw world, in case you forgot, I’m still gay!). And it was such a liberating and life-giving experience that it taught me to live my life openly, gladly, and as much as possible without shame or fear (or at least in spite of fears).

And so, I may “overshare” on occasion. I share my doubts, my challenges, my victories, my hopes, my joys. I share about my battles with (and various victories over) depression. I shared about my detached retina, long healing process, and the joy of finally having better vision than before the incident. I shared when loved ones passed from this life experience to whatever is next. I share about my long, complicated, and often dysfunctional relationship with the scale. I share about coming of age in the world of AIDS and living well as a long term survivor. Recently I’ve shared about a fairly brief experience of Bell’s Palsy (and the exciting and rapid improvement that followed).

I am not looking for sympathy (well, not from the masses...I have my personal sympathy providers and I’ll call them when I need them). I’m not looking for anything, actually. What I want to do is share that living a life of faith is not necessarily a life of constant ease, but it can be a life of constant hope and joy that is frequently renewed. I want to show that faith can help us find and employ tools that will enable us to conquer, survive, learn from, or reinterpret the challenges in life. Faith can even give us the power to laugh and laughter, as it turns out, is healing.

I simply want to be a credible witness to the truth that while experiences come and go, we always have the power to hope, to love, to laugh, to keep moving forward. We can demonstrate blessings in the middle of uncertainty, and we can experience love, peace, gratitude, and optimism regardless of the circumstances at hand.

I don’t always do it as well as I’d like. I can feel defeated or overwhelmed or afraid like everyone else, but I do try to remind myself that I don’t have to stay stuck in those feelings forever. And when I change my attitude about something, I almost always, to some degree, also change my experience of it. And I hope that is encouraging to others who may be facing difficulties.

So, forgive me for the overshares, but I offer them as gifts, and like all gifts, if they don’t appeal to you, “accidentally” leave them in the car and forget about them (possibly regift them later). But if they do encourage you, I am so glad and that alone makes it a blessing for me.

—Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
Sunshine Cathedral
Ft. Lauderdale