Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I’m struggling this year. Beyond being houseless, and my best friend’s entire nation being at war, which are huge things mind you, I am struggling even more, because I don’t really want to celebrate Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, it was my idea to get a tree, and it was my idea to have friends over to check out our new apartment, it’s a small group, but a group nonetheless, this was all my idea.

Because when things are good you’re supposed to celebrate them, and I’ve never had a Christmas – as an adult – with friends and family, in my own home.

Not in over 35 years, because we were in the church for all those years. Now we’re outside the church, and things have changed vastly.

I believe in Christ more now than I ever did when I was in the church. I’ve seen what it looks like when you have nowhere to go and you’re running out of options. I know what it’s like to be shunned by a community that you thought would protect you forever.

I also know what it’s like to have a whole wild world filled with people I’ve never met before helping me out so that I had options when it looked like I didn’t.

I have more faith in the universe then I’ve ever had before, and that’s because life outside of the church is exponentially better.

With the exception that I don’t have a job, or rather a mission anymore, I don’t miss it. I miss the folks who came to eat, who were looking for help, not because they were looking for help, but because they were my real teachers.

They were the ones who taught me what I didn’t know, so that I could share my thoughts on what I was just learning with others, and looking back, there’s not a single one of them I don’t respect. they’ll out of, except the one who hit my dog.

There are days I sit outside and smoke and I just thank the entire whole universe for my life right now. That isn’t to say I’m not still bitter as fuck about having gone through all that shit to get here, but that’s not the fault of the universe.

That’s the fault of the schools and churches that chose not to protect kids like me.

As a holiday, Christmas is supposed to be about protecting the legacy of Jesus Christ. In every church I’ve ever been in, that’s the rule.

But no one tells you whether you’re allowed to celebrate Jesus outside the church. I was always taught there was “The Church,” and “The Heathens” and the two only met when the heathens were in need.

No one ever told me that the people outside the church are wonderful, kind, brilliant, beautiful, brave, talented, wise, and weird, individuals who have all different ways of navigating the same world.

I’m struggling emotionally to find my place outside the church. Yup, still got all the same options I had a month ago and many more today, and that’s the problem.

So to simplify things, we will celebrate Christmas with our meager group of friends and family, and I’ll take the time to thank the universe for the good things, while I sort out what to do with the bad things later because right now that’s all we’re capable of.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall

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