Facing the Music (23 page)

“Yes. It was a season . . . and I gave my all. I wrote about my faith and my experience as a Christian. But I had to walk away from it,” I found myself lamenting, “I was getting to the point where I didn't feel that I could be myself.” Apparently my plastic surgeon was becoming my therapist as well.

Again, scratching behind his ear with meditation. “If you've done your work to the best of your ability, then you have no reason to be ashamed.”

In that moment, he uncorked the years of torment I had attempted to bottle up inside. In my mind raced a thousand thoughts and sermons that I had failed to live up to. He made it all sound so reasonable and easy, essentially,
“
All you can do is be your honest best
.”

But I had. I had done my best, and it wasn't good enough. I doubted, I pined, I prayed, and I was still me. I was a gay woman, inspired by Jesus in ways beyond my ability to communicate, who failed to live up to the expectations of all that a Christian
was supposed to agree with, believe in, and reenact. I was certain I could no longer be the standard-bearer of an institutionalized religion, but I couldn't escape the fact that my faith seeped into my art.

Somehow, we were talking about the career I was trying to leave behind. I grew frustrated and tried to turn the tables to him. Internally agitated, I asked, “What about you? You're a plastic surgeon. Your whole career is about making things perfect.” I gestured to the trappings of subjective perfection that surrounded us.

I suppose he could have rightfully taken my question as an affront. I was flat-out judging him. All I thought a plastic surgeon wanted was to make people into his idea of perfection. I imagined that he was probably judging my B cup as inadequate in some way, even then. How could this man talk to me about appreciating one's best efforts and gifts when his entire world seemed built around changing anything deemed less than perfectly beautiful? His world made me feel stupid and poorly made. Another way to fail. I understood his idea of trying to be significant in the world, but I certainly wasn't seeing it through the lens of plastic surgery.

“Let me show you something,” he motioned for me to come around to his side of the desk and look at his computer. In an unexpected move of intimate hospitality, I sat next to this stranger, elbow to elbow, as he proceeded to show me his heart.

On the screen, he pulled up a particularly gory slideshow of disfigured faces. I don't know if he thought I was capable of handling such gruesome pictures, or if he was in some way disregarding their shock to my system as a form of punishment for my not-so-veiled judgmental inquisition.

“Here.” He pulled up a photo of an outback sheep farmer whose entire nose had been forcefully smashed and rearranged to the lower side of his jaw. Dr. Petros explained that the man had nearly died when an iron gate had slammed into his face. Truthfully, this before photo was an image of a man who was hardly recognizable as a human being. Of course, this man needed to get back into the form of humanity that made him somewhat socially approachable, but it was more than that; his nose was no longer a working nose. He couldn't even use it to breathe unless Dr. P. helped him surgically. It was hard to imagine anyone being able to recover from the state that I saw, but then Dr. P. showed me the after photo.

I could feel his humble sense of satisfaction. It wasn't arrogance; it was a profound sense of gratitude that he had used his hands and his skill to change that man's life. I couldn't help but share in his sense of amazement. The sheep farmer was a new man; he had his life back.

And so it was, picture after picture, of before-and-after photos whereby empathy forced me to recognize the challenge that many of these faced without the vision, skill, and passion of Dr. Petros. Not once did he brag about himself, nor did he present this display in a prideful manner. After nearly a mesmerizing half an hour, he closed down the screen, and simply and quietly said, “That's what I get to do. And I love it.”

He was full. Not as a puffed-up man whose coffers were amply filled, thanks to the misery of others, but rather as a man comforted by the irony of living in a confusing world, that maybe, just maybe, he had something to give others that would help them in this life.

I exhaled a peaceful, “Wow.”

“Now,” he said, renewed and on task, “Let's have a look at those moles . . .”

I had never felt such misplaced arrogance and vanity in all my life. It was starting to feel like there was a not-so-silent conspiracy happening around me that was forcing me to contend with the reality that I was missing my true calling. The hits kept coming.

All of a sudden, it seemed like half of America's touring artists had inundated Sydney. Bonnie Raitt came through. Kelli Clarkson was on a tear. Ani DiFranco was making the rounds through some of the best songwriter festivals and winery venues. It was like I was waking up and I was surrounded by musicians. Lady Gaga was bouncing around the streets in her underwear and making all the papers, while some poppy chick named Katy Perry was making the airwaves singing some upbeat song about kissing girls and liking it. I tried to block them all out, as my thoughts began to join in the litany of others' questions.

Why, exactly, am I not singing anymore?

One day I turned on the telly and I got the shock of my life. There, in living color, was the adult version of the young girl I had hoped to mentor back in the days of Alabaster Arts.

“Oh, my God, Karen, come over here, look. That's little Katy Hudson!”

“Get out!” she said, as she came closer. The shoe had finally dropped. Katy Hudson had changed her name to Katy Perry, died her blonde hair black, harnessed her boobs into a perky short dress, and taken the world by storm.

Once upon a time, the feelings that would have washed over me would have been laden with guilt and shame, but what was happening now was unfamiliar and new. I wasn't sad, or embar
rassed. What I felt wasn't grief. It took me a minute to put my finger on what I was feeling.

As the music played on and Katy strapped on her dainty Taylor guitar, it hit me. I was jealous! Mad, angry, climb-the-walls, stir-crazy jealous!

It came to me in a rush of adrenaline-fueled rage.

Your whole life you've always had music!
My thoughts barked and howled.

You are the only one keeping it from happening!

It's your gift!

Use it! Use it!

My eyes grew wet with tears. “I used to do that,” I said plaintively to Karen.

A pregnant pause, then she offered, “You still can.”

Through all my anger, all my tears, all of my self-loathing attempts to sabotage my own gifts, Karen never gave up on me. She had waded through years of silence, arguments, torment, excuses, and frustration propelled by the fleeting hope that, one day, I would return to the music that had fueled my soul. I had obsessed for so long about my own fate that it had never even occurred to me how sustaining her hope had been.

I began to soften.

I finally dusted off my old Taylor 810, twisted her knobs back into tune, and tempted myself to sing for the first time in what seemed a thousand years. I began to write. It was slow and awkward at first, but it was familiar. Like the old days, I'd wander around the house, guitar strapped on, singing this song and that. I let my voice open up and lead me, stringing nonsense words together until they formed a thought complete enough that I could chase it.

It was uncoordinated and cumbersome at first. My calluses held only a sliver of their former protective strength. My throat was weak and scratchy. I would fight my mind more than my body.

At times, the voices of the past would creep into fits of borderline schizophrenia.

You'll never do this again.

God will smite you.

You suck.

I fought them.

I will.

Let him.

I don't.

There were days where the exercises where less musical and more therapeutic sessions of reparative psychology. For every negative thought that entered my mind, for every good reason that I had to not proceed, I used my strength to counter with a positive reply. I took the idea of performing again off the table, trying to convince myself that all I was doing was just getting back to playing again for my own personal good.

I had joy in my life. Love. Energy. Hope. I couldn't pretend anymore that I had nothing to sing about.

Music was the gift of my life, the one thing that had given me courage, peace, and purpose. I didn't have to make a job of it; I just needed to sing again. Who cared what came of breaking out the guitar and writing a song or two? For the moment, all I had to do was let it fly.

Before I knew it, I had a decent handful of new songs. A door began to creak open, rusty though the hinges were. Maybe, just maybe, I could perform again?

With my partner's encouragement, I quit my job and dedicated three months to setting up a small home studio, writing, and recording a demo. I couldn't imagine where this was going to lead. If my mind wandered too far ahead, I got nervous and was taunted by the fear of failure. I had to block it all out and for now, simply play.

There were so many unknowable questions that challenged any hope for a comeback.

Would there be any interest? An audience?

What about being gay? Will it kill my chances?

Can a former Christian artist even have a mainstream career?

All those questions had to be put to the side. I put up a self-preserving curtain between me and any hoped-for future, dedicating my endeavor as a Christmas gift meant for my family. My Grandpa Gray had always said that he wanted me to make him a recording of just voice and guitar, and now was my chance to honor him. I had written a song for him many years ago that had never made a record. I had never dared play it for him, but now, I was finding that I finally had the courage to share it. The modest goal kept me focused and I completed the task in time to send it out for the holidays.

My family wasn't the only ones to receive it. I mailed a copy to a Nashville manager friend of mine, Mitchell Solarek. I put the CD in a plain envelope and stuck a Post-it Note to it, with the simple question: “Do these suck?”

His response was: “No. Get back to Nashville.”

twenty-two

I
had no idea what to expect when I returned to Nashville, either professionally or socially. For the first time, in a very, very long time, I was excited about the idea of returning to the music profession, but there was a lot that scared me.

Professionally, there was no guarantee that I'd have a career after a seven-year layoff. I didn't have any interest in returning to CCM, and the reality was that outside the Christian music industry, I was relatively unknown. Despite the years of experience and over a million records floating around the world with my name on them, I was essentially coming back as a new artist.

I was energized and ready to take on the career challenge, but as a real-life human being, I was freaked about how people were going to react once they found out I was gay. All those years ago, I had left Nashville under a shroud of darkness, unable to cope with what to do with my faith and terrified by the potential public shaming I'd receive if people knew I had fallen in love with a woman. I left many friends without saying so much as a good-bye. To many, I had simply vanished.

I was hoping that my seven-year absence would help me slide into town under the radar for a couple of reasons. The most obvious, of course, were the concerns I had about how gayness might affect my future, but it was more than that. All the questions I
seemed sure to face were deeply personal, and I wasn't certain how I was going to handle it.

Coming back was scary because it meant that I had to face my fear of failure. When I had left CCM all those years ago, I left defeated. I had never felt fully embraced or comfortable amongst the paragons of Christian culture. I never felt like I adequately lived up to the expectations of what it meant to be the so-called right kind of Christian. I truly believed that I didn't deserve to have the career that I had. Spiritually, I left feeling like a charlatan. I was supposed to be a role model of the faithful Christian woman, but I couldn't do it. What was worse was that I didn't
want
to do it. Then, to complicate matters, I fell in love with a woman. Even according to my mentors, I'd failed to honor the best of God's plans for me.

I suppose I had underestimated the length of the shadow cast by my CCM career, because part of me hoped I could erase it as though it never happened. I didn't realize it until I started plugging back in, but to the wider public, my absence actually took on a CCM cultural buzz. For the last several years, social media had been trying to solve the mystery of my supposed disappearance.

It's both hilarious and heartbreaking to see how the Internet has evolved into the thing that lets you eavesdrop on the people talking behind your back. What's even crazier is how some people think everything on the Internet is true.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Wikipedia . . . When I finally dared to log on, I was blown away how so many strangers were writing the so-called facts about my life that they couldn't possibly have known. I was so off the grid that only my family knew where I was.

Over the years, my mother periodically would receive calls from complete strangers who sought to get the lowdown. Despite the fact that I had spent the entire last year of my Christian career telling everyone who would listen, print, and record it, that I was retiring to a private life, there were those who ignored that request. Unable to find me, a few sorry souls invaded my family's privacy by pushing them to reveal my fate. My mom told me how one time she'd had to hang up on a persistent woman who called her place of business, telling her that God had a message for me and demanded to pray with her on the phone. “Let her be,” Mom said, and hung up. Without my having to ask, Mom guarded my privacy as if it was her own but, eventually, I was going to have to face what I had long tried to avoid.

There were so many interesting, highly detailed versions of my cyberlife that I wondered if I were the doppelganger of the so-called real Jennifer Knapp. Some reported that I had gotten married and had babies. There was one account that I had throat cancer and had to retire. There were threads that reported sighting me living a quiet life in Seattle, and a few swore that I was dead. The most gut-wrenching was the widely held conspiracy theory that I was forcibly ousted from CCM because I had been discovered to be gay.

What bothered me about all the ugly whispers and gossip wasn't the inescapable truth of my sexual orientation, but rather, how so many Christians chose to speak so cavalierly about a real person they knew nothing about.

“
I know Jennifer and she would never be gay. She's a true woman of God.”

“
Everybody knows you can't be gay and Christian. If she is, then
I'm burning every record of hers I own. The Holy Spirit cannot dwell in a person who chooses sin.”

I wondered sometimes if the people who wrote those things realized that I would end up reading them.

It hurt. As if it were only fitting that a gay person recuse themselves from the faith community due to the obvious disgrace of being gay. I couldn't deny being gay, but I wasn't a disgrace. I wouldn't have come back to Nashville if I had anything I wasn't ready to be held accountable for. Yet, at the same time, I wondered what the right thing to do was. Should I or should I not talk about being gay?

The hurt part of me wanted to shame those who spread rumors without true knowledge. Part of me wished that I weren't gay just to embarrass the know-it-alls who filled themselves with pride over information that wasn't theirs to relate. Daydreaming of it helped for a moment, but it wasn't lasting or reflective of the honor I had for my partner. No matter how things played out, I knew I couldn't lie about being gay. I didn't have a closet to run to. I had family (on two continents) that knew who I was, and a partner, and every single friend that I kept in touch with knew it. I wasn't prepared to change my life just so I could keep a secret.

The irony was that I was living with more integrity outside of CCM and Christian culture than I had been when I was immersed in it. Apart from my woeful conversation with mentors Rolly and Sandy, I had never lied about what I believed, who I hoped to be, or who I was. It's true, I definitely learned to kept my differences to myself, but I did my very best to live faithfully as a Christian. I aspired to lead well and with honor, but there's only so much that is appropriate to share in public spaces. When
I couldn't talk about the things that were private, I struggled under the weight of feeling ungenuine.

It was like being on stage, or how you don't walk the same when you're aware that you're being watched. All of a sudden, you start thinking about it and getting confused as to how your arms swing naturally at your side. You're overly aware that everyone is watching and it's hard to be your honest, free-flowing self. Away from the spotlight, I was more relaxed and less self-conscious. I wasn't constantly assessing my every movement and motivation. I decided to just live.

I lived openly, and it was good for my soul. I didn't spend time hiding my sexual orientation. I didn't advertise it either. It wasn't like I walked into every new room and introduced myself saying “Hi! I'm Jennifer and I'm a lesbian.” If it came up, great. If not, then, I let it ride. I was just me.

It was the same with my faith. I didn't hide my faith, but I didn't dodge it, and I stopped trying to manufacture an outward appearance for the sake of others. I didn't make a conscious decision to
be
Christian. I tried to live out my faith as though I were walking alone and no one was watching. What ever my faith was, it was.

The thing was, I was getting back to the stage, and the spotlight was starting to heat up. Word spread fast that I was back in the studio. We were getting calls from Christian retailers and radio stations asking when to expect a release, on the assumption that I was, of course, going to sing for Jesus. Churches began to queue up, requesting that I return to perform all their favorite, faith-inspiring songs. The mounting fervor left me with that unwanted, yet familiar, tension of failing Christian expectations. People were excited about my return, but at the
same time, spoke with a familiar nervousness, alluding to, but never fully daring enough to ask me the million-dollar question:
Are you gay?
In front of my face, everyone smiled, but when I turned, speculative whispers tickled the back of my neck like a zephyr.

What was I to do with the swirling vortex of gossip? It was a quandary yet to sort itself out. Did I proceed with my life as usual, as if there was nothing at all unusual about me? Or did I need to announce “Lesbian rock star! At your service!” every time I took the stage? Sarcasm aside, it was important to me to take time to consider what might be the reasonable course of action in being forthright.

Rather than speculate or force the issue, I decided to take things one step at a time. I had a lot on my plate in preparing for public life again. I hadn't performed in public in nearly a decade. My musical muscle memory was still there, but my calluses were microscopic. My vocal chords were weak and needed practice to strengthen. I had to finish writing and recording a new record. I had to figure out a business plan. I was also going to have to figure out how I was going to handle the Christians. I wasn't going to back to CCM, but my faith was a part of who I was, and I wanted to reconnect with the fans that were willing to come with me.

To get back in touch, I was going to have to knock on a few church doors.

To say that I was scared of the church is an understatement. I was terrified.

First, did I mention that I'm gay?

I knew what Christians thought of and did to gay people. Gays get pulled aside, special prayers “of concern” are said, and if
you're not careful, you get carted up to the front of the sanctuary and sweaty hands are laid upon you to cast out the demons.

All I had ever seen, known, been preached to, warned, and instructed echoed that gay is
wrong.
I'm not talking a little off the beaten path or unconventional—we're talking corruption of the soul. Good, God-fearing Christians are supposed to struggle against homosexuality and feel the turmoil of the Holy Spirit. As a woman, I was supposed to want to pray it away, change, be straight, submit to a man, and have babies.

I was afraid because, the truth of it was, I didn't want any of that. I didn't struggle to accept my sexual orientation, I struggled against the embarrassment that my nature was not what others insisted it should have been. In fact, it wasn't until I met my proper soul mate that sacred love even began to make sense. All of a sudden the fear of my own body, sex, and love came into alignment. I wasn't ashamed or suspicious of love; I welcomed it. The idea of being a faithful, healthy, and loving partner didn't seem as ridiculous or impossible now that I wasn't trying to squeeze it into gender expectations. Love is sacred. Love is love. Isn't it?

I was afraid because admitting my truth meant questioning everything that I had ever been taught by my church.

I was afraid because I feared what accepting my sexual orientation said about my faith as a Christian. All I had ever heard was how bad Christians lost their so-called struggle with sin. What did it mean that I wasn't interested in fighting? What did it mean if I didn't agree?

The Christian world sat poised to judge the validity of my entire spiritual life, experience, and personal character solely based on the gender of the person that I was most attracted to,
and there wasn't a thing that I could do about it but face the music.

I was scared because I was afraid that
they
might be right. I couldn't find a way to say out loud, “I am gay and I am a Christian.” Because, though Christianity is the mother tongue of my spiritual life, I had only ever been told that I had to be one or the other.

I was afraid, because I knew I was gay and, by that measure alone, I believed that I was no longer allowed to claim my Christian faith.

I was scared because I thought
they
had the authority to say so. Who was I to say otherwise?

It was so hard, because coming back to Nashville was drumming up my old personal, religious turmoil again. I was desperate to find a way to create some space for what was really true about my journey, but I didn't yet have the words to describe it.

I just knew I wanted back on the horse. I wanted to play, but I simply wasn't ready to make a theological defense of my existence. I knew that I was finished with the Christian rock thing, but I also knew that I was offended at the idea that my sexual orientation was the reason that I wasn't there anymore. It just wasn't true. I wanted to believe that if I was inclined to sing Christian music again, I would have done so regardless of being gay. I still secretly wondered if something in me had broken, because I didn't want to.

I had to keep reminding myself to focus and not be distracted. I was back because I was a musician, same as I ever was. Independent of my faith and sexual orientation, I wanted to sing, and that was it.

I wanted it to be clear that it wasn't altering my course from
CCM because I was gay. I wanted my intentions as an artist to be understood, and I wanted to be transparent in that what I hoped to achieve as a career songwriter lay beyond that world. My aspirations were not to just write songs about my faith; I wanted to write about everything. All of life's simultaneous beauty and brokenness. I wanted to be able to end a story in defeat if the narrative called for it. To be free to lose hope for at least three minutes of unredeemed free-falling. If Jesus were to ever inspire a lyric again, He'd have to hold his own without the predictable clichés.

I didn't want to speak ill of my past musical life, but I really needed to move on. I didn't just need to change my environment; I needed to change my language, too. The person who was returning was not capable of living in that place or speaking with that voice any more.