Because it’s really rare that I’m asked a compelling question that I can’t answer right away, after some thought, I really can’t resist responding to this one posed to me tonight by a friend:

What are the top 10 things you’d tell your teenaged self?
1. By the time you’re 15, Texas will be a faded distant nightmare of a memory.
2. Publish that.
3. Your Internet addiction will someday pay off.
4. You are beautiful.
5. Your thoughts become things.
6. Like attracts like.
7. You’re gay and Jesus loves you anyway.
8. No day but today.
9. One day you’ll choose to have your real hair look the way you’re trying so hard to get it to stop looking now. People will love it (so will you).
10. One day the pastor that you exalt in such high favor even though he makes you feel like a possessed pervert for being yourself will be outed as a closeted homosexual pedophile sugar daddy that sends selfies in muscle shirts to underaged boys and then buys (most of) their silence for millions of dollars partly funded by the interest earned from those ridiculous exorbitant checks you’re writing out of your scholarship funds instead of paying your credit card bills and saving for the financial abyss that will be your life for the first few years after college. He will fall from grace like the hair from his head and yet people will still follow him blindly and ignorantly because they can’t see God past religion and the music is good. (That’s right, I said it. Burn in the hell you tried to convince me was reserved for me Bishop Eddie Long! I am a long way from forgiveness for you.)