Facing the Music

by Jennifer Knapp

  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.

  It was difficult to watch as people’s faces went from smiling to gloomy, once I confessed that my return was not the prodigal tale they imagined. It was my first round of experiencing the disappointment aimed at my spiritual character. I didn’t want to sing about Jesus anymore, and that made me suspect to some.

  I did several interviews with Christian journalists who sought to make sense of my departure and return. Reporter after reporter stuttered and stammered on the other end of the line, asking every question under the sun, probing to ascertain if anything legitimate remained of my faith, but when they would reach the moment where they had the opportunity to ask about my sexual orientation, no one was able to pull the trigger and ask me plainly. On more than one occasion, I was reminded that there were many rumors surrounding why I had left CCM. I always acknowledged that I was aware of speculations, but I offered no confessions. It was important to me that people understood the one thing I had left to say to a Christian audience—that I couldn’t work in a world where I felt pressure to be anything other than myself. I couldn’t believe that no one asked me what self I needed to be! I thought I was throwing the door wide open, but not once did anyone actually ask me to clarify whether I was gay.

  One of the CCM journalists printed that I had purposefully lied to him when I failed to offer a confession without a direct question to the effect. I was livid when Jesus R. Murrow reckoned it any business of his, or anyone else’s for that matter, to expect me to reveal personal information, if he wasn’t brave enough to ask the question in the first place. I’m not saying that I’m proud of that attitude, but therein lies the rub.

  Is it anybody’s business to ask something so deeply personal about someone else? When is it appropriate or necessary for me to disclose intimate details about my private life to a complete stranger? What difference does it make to my calling as a musician to reveal what genders I do and don’t find sexually attractive? By not publicizing the truth about my sexual orientation, was I complicit to a conspiracy that implies being gay is in any way something to be ashamed about? What should it matter whether I was in or out? Was there truly
a need to declare such things so publicly?

  I wanted to know if there were answers to those questions, but I had to live it out to start learning.

  It bothered me when that reporter called me a liar. I didn’t lie. I didn’t feel too great about taking advantage of his lack of skill either, but if he imagined using me to advance his own career, I figured he should at least have to work for it and ask the direct question.

  Here we all were, hemming and hawing, like we didn’t know the score. I wasn’t ashamed of who I was, so why didn’t I just say it? We both knew that Christianity, as a religious and corporate body, struggles with homosexuality, but if he wanted to write about it, then I hoped he would ante up and face the topic head on.

  My previous fears started to get pushed aside by the part of me that was itching for a good, honest fight. I was done moving sideways. If I expected people like Jesus R. Murrow to be direct with their intentions, then I needed to back it up by living up to my own expectations of honesty.

  That was the thing. Honesty. The rocky road to discovering myself had nearly loosened all my screws, but the time away afforded me the space to tighten them up again. I was comfortable enough in my own skin to be frank about what I saw. I knew that choosing to be honest had the potential to cost me a livelihood, but I wasn’t going backward and having it cost me a life. It was a hard path, but it was good to learn: I am me and I am not ashamed. Why should I keep that bottled up inside?

  I couldn’t.

  When I am set free, when I am myself, the truth of it shows up in my music. There have been times when I wished that I could hide it, but I’ve never been able to. The passions of my heart have always spun themselves into the fabric of the music. The God I see, the God that captures my amazement and imagination, always shows up. The God I doubt, the God I fear, heckles me and dares me to reach for a light in the darkness. The people I love, the dreams I dream, the person I am, has always flowered most in the fertile soil of truth.