When I was 25, I moved to London as a part of a one-year missionary programme to work with a Christian charity. Like all bright-eyed dreamers set out for a year of adventure, I was hopeful that this would be a life-changing experience. Little did I know just how life-changing, because it was during that year that I met my now wife, Chloe.

Before I met Chloe, I had never, not once, questioned my sexuality (which I assumed was straight). Upon lots of reflection, I have come to believe that this was due to a mix of being raised to believe that homosexuality was a sin, having very few queer friends, and being somewhere on the bi/pansexual scale. I was never confronted with my sexuality, because in so many ways, I had “fit” within the acceptable boxes available to me—cisgender, attracted to the opposite sex, feminine, etc.

At first, Chloe & I were just friends. However, over time I began to realise that there was something about this friendship that was unlike other friendships I had had with women in the past. One day, we were having a conversation and it got to the point where we couldn’t deny that there was something different going. After months of denial and suppression on my part about my feelings for her, she finally asked if I thought there might be something romantic happening between us, and finally, I realised what had been there all along.

I grew up in a very conservative Evangelical Christian home. The theology of my family and church community was very much woven into the very fabric of who I was from a young age. My identity as a “good Christian girl” was very important to me and guided a lot of my decisions and values growing up. Within my Evangelical Christian community, there was a high emphasis on conformity to the beliefs and behaviours outlined by their literal interpretation of the Bible. This meant that I was taught to “love the sinner, hate the sin” that homosexual orientation wasn’t necessarily sinful, but that homosexual lust, thoughts, and actions (the things that were said that someone had “control” over) were.

While this was what I was taught, I never fully embraced this theology. I always questioned it and would often debate it with my family and church leaders. While I was in a process of attempting to become more affirming in my theology and learning to be an ally, it became a completely different story once it was my life and my identity I was thinking through.

When I first realised that I was in love with Chloe and that I had the capacity to love someone of the same sex, I was a complete nervous wreck. Everything I had ever been taught about same-sex love was swirling in my mind— “this is a sin, this is not what God wants, you will ruin your life…” However, at the same time, this relationship that had been forming was so… good. So beautiful, full of depth and understanding in ways that I could have only dreamed I would feel in a partnership with another person. I knew that wasn’t what sin felt like. Right?

While my theology around LGBTQ+ affirmation had developed, it became a whole different ball game once it was my own life, which really tested what I really believed.

As I was coming out to my conservative friends and family, people wanted to talk theology, and I wanted to come into conversations prepared. I wanted to know it all. I found it was extremely challenging and painful to talk theoretically or theologically when I was trying to process all of it through the lens of my own lived experience. I found quickly that that aspect didn’t seem to matter as much to other people.

Over this time, I tried my best to listen to “all sides” and to read as much as I could about queerness and faith, sexuality, and gender from different perspectives. However, there was always something missing in the non-affirming perspective. None of it included the real, lived, tangible, beautiful love that queer people can have for one another and the good fruit that it bears in the world, the beautiful diversity of perspective that queerness gives to theology and to the church.

Where was that?

So often people point to the mental health or suicide rates of queer people to say “look: that’s sin, that’s brokenness.” But I am convinced that it is not the queerness that is broken, it’s the world's harmful response to it. It is the stigma and discrimination, especially from our religious communities.

I read a lot of books and listened to podcasts that helped me on my more intellectual/theological journey, as well as aiding me in bringing others along on that journey with me, which was an important part of my process.

However, I truly believe the most transformative thing for me was allowing myself to stop, to get quiet, and to listen to the still small voice of Christ in me.

When I truly began to listen to the Holy Spirit that had been drowned out for so long by my own fear, the opinions of others, and conservative theological interpretations of a book written thousands of years ago, everything changed. Once I listened, I knew I only had one choice; to follow love. Love is the most powerful thing. And if I believed that God IS love, and love IS God—that you cannot separate the two—and I was sure of my love for Chloe, I knew that God was there, present and in it with us. I knew that God loves me, my identity, and affirms my love.

My life now is full of more love and more freedom than I knew was possible.

Chloe and I got married in 2018, and our love has been the greatest gift of my life. The ways in which we care for one another, make each other better, and move as a team in the world are so good and true and fun. I feel like this love was made just for me and I wake up every day with such an incredible sense of awe and gratitude for this life we get to live together.

It has also been amazing developing a community of queer people of faith from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences and getting to know this whole new group of incredible people.

I am also now a coach who specialises in sexuality and spirituality, so I have the immense privilege of walking with people who have been on similar journeys. Being able to help others feel less alone and helping them to continue to discover the freedom, hope, and joy in their queerness and within their own spirituality. (Instagram: @allisontashmontgomery / website: www.montasherycoaching.com)

Moral of the story: I love being queer!

I am grateful for the journey I have been on—pain and all. I have become more myself and who I believe I was created to be.

I truly believe that freedom is contagious—the freer we are, the more we allow others to be free as well.