Shane Rebryna

I became aware of the orientation when I was around 12-13. Prior to this time, I also knew I was different from the other boys my age. Never fitting in, the other boys were foreign to me. I remember when I started to notice the other boys in gym class during 7th-8th grade. It took me a while to let this settle in because at first I told myself I was just going through a phase.

Growing up, my family attended a mainline Christian denomination until the age of 10-11. The denomination started pushing different theologies, and my parents decided they couldn’t agree with those changes. One of the changes was moving to a place of affirming LGBTQ+ people. Therefore, I felt even more shame when I started to understand my orientation. Being gay was not an option.

For the first 35 years of my life, my orientation was a source of shame and something that needed to be hidden and denied like the orientation was my cross to bear. I got married to a woman, started a family, and became an ordained pastor in the Pentecostal Church of Canada.

I kept these beliefs in place for many years, and then around 2017, I started to realize how exhausted I was from the constant pretending. It was so overwhelming that I came out to my wife and told her I had no idea what to do.

After this I started a long journey of faith deconstruction and rebuilding. I had a deep experience with Love and felt that I was being held as I allowed every belief I held to be questioned and destroyed. The process has been long and deep, and now I have a deep faith that love is holding me close and that God blesses and loves me just as I am.

The resources that were of most importance to me were stories. I know there are a lot of theology-type books, but those were not the most helpful. I kept reading stories of guys like me to had started mixed-orientation marriages and had to acknowledge the fact that they couldn’t continue being false to themselves. I could not find any stories of people who could continue in such a relationship without being bi or allowing themselves to be less than themselves. Matt Nightingale has been a huge help to my journey.

Now that I’m out and living true to my internal orientation, I’m finally free to be myself and feel happier than I ever have in my life. I used to feel like I was trapped and I would always be trapped. Now I know that no one gets to determine my life’s direction but me.