It’s hard to know where to begin because it’s a story that encompasses my whole life and is still evolving.  There is so much that still has to grow and take root and develop.  It feels both healthy and risky to share this piece of my story, to risk myself personally, knowing I still have uncertainties and fears in the dusty corners of my mind.  I still have stuff to figure out.

I am a twenty-five year old woman, living in Ontario, Canada.  I was raised in a Pentecostal church, attended a Christian liberal arts university, and now work for a Christian organization.  Despite all that, I spent large parts of my teenage and young adult years struggling to call myself a Christian.  Even now I use the term with trepidation.

I know some gay people who say they have known since childhood that they were attracted to the same gender.  This was not my experience.  A gay orientation was so far removed from my experience of ‘normal’ that I wouldn’t have considered it for a second as something that might apply to me.  I had crushes on boys, and even dated a little bit, fully expecting to grow up and fall in love with a man and have at least a dozen babies.  But from an early age I couldn’t understand my relationships with some of my closest female friends.  I still don’t know how to describe what I felt other than a strong desire for more of whatever ‘good’ existed in the friendship.  My friendships with girls would inevitably get too complicated and painful and fall apart because of this tension, so I learned to play with the boys and built my closest friendships with them (which still felt confusing because I felt pressure to attract a guy and get him to fall in love with me).

I don’t remember ever being told explicitly that being gay was a one-way ticket to eternal fire, and at that time I had no label for what I now recognize as same gender attraction, but I know that I believed from my early teen years that something was deeply wrong with me.  Relating to a God that was supposed to be simultaneously all-loving and our eternal judge was confusing and left me feeling like God’s love wasn’t enough to save me from myself.  At times, I would have panic attacks believing that God’s presence would kill me, like Ananias and Sapphira, because of my sinfulness and my inability to change the parts of me that I thought were not whole.  The self-hatred that brewed within me as I realized I could not change myself only fed this fear.

Accepting myself, and healing this self-hatred and fear, has been a long (and not yet finished) journey.  Coming out as a gay person is a very complicated, delicate process.  It is not just one conversation.  And it always begins first with coming out to yourself.  It’s different for everyone, but for me it’s been 5-6 years of intentionally wrestling through my own questions of faith and sexuality, slowly coming out first to myself (which was by far the hardest step) and a few gay friends before I was ever able to tell a straight person, let alone my family and closest friends.  Being so immersed in a Christian context, I couldn’t imagine being gay and being a Christian.  I thought for sure I would have to choose one or the other.  It has only been in the last year that I have accepted that being gay and being a Christian does not have to be mutually exclusive, and within the last four months that I have finally taken the step of telling my friends and family.

In admitting that I am gay, I have finally felt accepted by God.  I have gradually stopped fearing God’s wrath and judgment, and stopped hating His creation (me).  Regardless of whether homosexuality is or is not ‘sinful’, I can now say “God’s grace is sufficient for me.”  In realizing I don’t have to change who I am, I am more whole, happy, at peace.  And way less afraid of God smiting me, which makes it easier to want to include Him in my daily life.

I still have dusty corners of my mind where the question lingers of whether loving another woman is wrong, or against God and nature.  What I do know is that my growing love for Kathryn is no less flawed or beautiful than any other relationship between two people.  No less full of sin at times (pride, resentment, selfishness) and no less full of beauty (grace, selflessness, growth).

These sins, for any of us, don’t stop us from coming near God.  That is the whole reason Jesus lived and died and was resurrected.

What if how we treat people is more important than the rules we do or do not follow, or the way we translate and interpret Greek and Hebrew passages?  Jesus hung out with beggars, hookers and junkies – and didn’t particularly like religious folk.  What if the motivations of our hearts matter more to God than our outward actions?  He did not exclude those who did not have all their spiritual ducks in a row.  What if LOVE is the most important thing?

Love is.  Nothing else matters.