My life is drastically different than what it looked like a year ago. I publicly came out a few months ago and I have since experienced so much joy and freedom. My entire life I was suppressing a piece of me and because of that, I walked around as only half of myself. I was never fully present. Now I'm able to offer all of myself. I'm able to be fully present because I'm not worried about hiding a piece of who I am. I have had so many people tell me how much different my demeanor and spirit is since I've come out accepted my sexuality for what it is. Though my life looks completely different, I would not change a single thing.
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The Liturgists Podcast episode 20 was a pivotal moment for me and the first time I came out to myself. God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines provided excellent support in bringing context to the verses I always understood to demonize anyone non-straight. From there, Twitter threads, blog posts, and YouTube videos all sharing the common thread of “I am ____ and I love Jesus” blew my mind and helped me realize I wasn’t alone.
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My life is nothing like I imagined it would be. I take life day by day knowing that I am who I am and God celebrates with me. I am learning to find my voice after so many years of keeping silent, I am using my story to be the woman I needed to see when I was younger. This is for you, young Kaitlin; your life is so precious and it is okay that you’re not like your friends. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you for a long time, and I’m sorry for the fear and shame you lived in. If you could see us now, I know you would cry with joy. I will be there for others in the ways I couldn’t be for you.
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I'm living in a fullness and freedom that I could have never told you I was missing. I have a beautiful girlfriend. My parents are cautiously affirming and have met her. I live in a town where I can walk down the sidewalk holding her hand. I have a small but precious faithfully LGBTQ online family and a strange and wonderful fellowship of misfits on social media. Accepting and integrating the versions of myself has given me so much freedom and grace to extend to those around me. I have never loved or been loved as fully as I am now.
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I started conversion therapy the very second I first felt feelings for the same sex. No one needed to enroll me in classes or call my parents or ship me off to camp. I started the work all on my own. As soon as I looked across the room, saw her*, felt that warmth in my stomach, I texted my friend and said, “Make me tell you something when I get home tonight.” Later on I called this friend and told her my entire history of being abused by both women and men and how I’d never really told anyone before, how I’d never handed it over to God to let Him deal with it, and how Satan must be using it to twist my affections toward a female friend. I later told all my college friends when we are back together after the holiday break. We made a pact right there over dinner at Chilis to get me out of Satan’s grips and back inside the will of God. They wanted to fix me, and I wanted to be fixed because it was either fix the gayness or spend a lifetime apart from God’s good and perfect plan for me by living in sin and depravity. It made for a pretty clear choice.
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While learning theology in the classroom and self-discovery in therapy sessions, I slowly began to believe that being LGBTQ+ wasn't a sin, at least it wasn't a sin for anyone else. For me, though, I had to fight my attractions. If I was LGBTQ+, especially if I actually allowed myself to pursue a non-heterosexual relationship, then I was sinning. For many years I was afraid that God and the church hated me, or at least would hate me, if they knew the true me, which included my attraction to women. Yet, I eventually realized that not being out was killing me, as I struggled with intense shame and suicidal ideation.
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I had to become affirming of LGBTQ+ Christians first and call myself a 'straight ally' and even then, I took an additional couple years before I could begin to allow my mind to 'go there'. It wasn't until I was sitting in a Buddhist temple on the other side of the world after leaving my job and on a solo trip where I found the space and presence of God Herself to say: yes, I am bisexual.
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I was forced to take a long and difficult look at my pursuit of straightness due to a deepening shame-filled depression and eventual emotional breakdown due to my inability to purge myself of queerness. The sense of failure that I felt was staggering and overwhelming. Every closed door and unfulfilled dream would point back at that failure and add more failure on top of it. Added onto that were layers of denial about what it meant to not be straight, and still be attracted to men. I realized that I could never be in a relationship, and never enjoy partnership with someone whom I loved. As I realized that was actually something that I wanted, I realized that, along with the shame and the depression, my current course was unsustainable. I needed to learn to love myself in my entirety if i was to survive.
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In our church tradition, there wasn't such a thing as an LGBT Christian. “Gay” was something that exclusively existed outside the church, and it was rarely talked about. Because being gay was so diametrically opposed to being Christian, we never even had to talk about it, it just wasn't a thing. I would even deny my own feelings because my identity was a Christian, and that couldn't coexist with being LGBT.
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