I could tell there was something different about me from a pretty young age—no one ever talked about experiencing the things i felt towards other girls. I was about 11 years old when i had my first legit crush on another girl, but of course I didn't have the words to describe that yet. At the time i didn't even know someone could be attracted to the same sex as theirs.

The first time I learned about what being gay was when I was 12 years old in an English class. We were studying a poem that had the word gay in it, and everyone instantly started laughing at it. When I went home I searched it up, and I for the first time could describe what I was feeling with a word. But I also knew that this was something people are mocked for and could tell it was something bad, since my church didn't let people of the same sex get married. So I really just thought it wasn't something you could be while being Christian, and I had a conflict between my faith and sexuality for a couple years.

Because I had a strong faith in God and a strong feeling that my sexuality wasn't something bad, I had this thought at the back of my head that we didn't understand the Bible's views about homosexuality right, and I just continued building a stronger relationship with God through that. I soon accepted both parts of myself, but then a while later, I found out about the research that has been done on how those verses were possibly mistranslated, so that was it for me: I am queer and Christian and there is nothing wrong with that.

Honestly, [the resource that helped me most was] just my faith in that God wouldn't ask people not to do something when it isn't hurting anyone. I could hear God's voice telling me what I was thinking was true the whole time.

I'm on the journey of strengthening my faith and relationship with God even more. I'm very accepting of my sexuality and working on changing my church's views on homosexuality.