If I am being honest, I have been staring at this page for a long time now. And metaphorically speaking… seven years. It has been me attempting to gather the courage and the correct words to convey this. So, here we go…

During my sophomore year of high school, I began to notice something about myself. It was something that terrified me because of the way I was raised and at the time, societies view on it. When I was 15 years old, I began to realize that I might be attracted to girls. I grew up raised by my grandparents. They are, of course, baby boomers. My grandma, grandpa, and mom have very skewed views on what love looks like. To them, the only acceptable relationship is between a male and a female of the same color. I was once told growing up that if I ever brought home a black guy, I would be whipped. In high school, I dated a guy who was Asian, and I honestly was terrified to introduce him to my grandparents. But… they accepted him because he wasn’t African American. My grandpa is from southern Ohio and my grandma is from a small town in Arkansas. There is no surprise to me at all that they have those views. It was the way they were raised. That is what they know. They were taught it was wrong to date someone of the opposite color or someone of the same sex. I was taught this growing up. I had it engrained in my mind that it was disgusting and that it wasn’t okay. My grandparents are also members of the local Methodist church. They had this mold that I had to fit into. That mold was to be a good student, a good athlete, a Christian, to graduate college with a high paying degree, and of course to marry a man. I tried to fit that mold. To those who have been able to get a glimpse of my life over the past seven years, you can definitely see that. In high school I was a good athlete, a good student, and at the end of my junior year I got involved with Young Life and accepted Jesus. But at the same time, I was utterly depressed and suicidal. Looking back on it, I was never really healing. I was just putting this Jesus band aid on it. During my junior year of high school, I thought about doing something about my sexuality but that was too scary of a thought for me. Then in June of 2014, I started following Jesus, so those thoughts and feelings got pushed further down.

I have dated many guys, 14 to be exact. Many of those were very short relationships. Most only lasted a few months. During my freshman year of high school, I was molested by a boyfriend in a movie theater and from there I went from guy to guy to guy. I would put myself in sexual situations because I wanted to take back that control. I had my first serious boyfriend that lasted from my senior year of high school to the end of my first year of college. I was utterly in love with him and I even lost my virginity to him. He was the first person I fell in love with so when he broke up with me, it destroyed me. I honestly moved on so quickly from him. Five months later I started dating my second serious boyfriend. I dated him on and off for two and half years. In March of 2018, he proposed to me and I said yes. That was despite how toxic I knew that relationship was. I then broke up with him two months later. From August of 2018 to May of 2019, me and him dated on and off but that ended in a very traumatic way. Looking back on those two relationships I had, I was in love with the both of them. They both showed me what it was like to seriously be with another person and to love another person in that way. But ultimately, something felt off.

I would be lying if I said I never thought about what it would be like to be with a girl when I was with those guys. Here’s the thing though, I was a part of a culture that deeply condemned homosexuality and I was deeply invested in that culture. I read my bible every day, I went to church, I was a part of small groups, I volunteered, I led teenage girls to Jesus, and I even baptized a student of mine. I was doing everything that aligned with being a Christian and what it meant to follow Jesus. I will say I did really enjoy that time in my life and it kept me alive, but looking back on all of that… it forced me to put on a mask over who I really was and who I really wanted and needed to be as a person. Following Jesus forced this idea in my mind that everything would be okay. I would suffer along the way, but it would be worth it for His name. After I moved out of my ministry house on Ohio State’s campus, I started to notice some things about myself. I have been through hell and back over the past two years. I realized that I was never healing. I was suppressing it with a false healing that I thought was correct. I would read my bible and fill myself up with Jesus and the community around me when I was going through a hard time. Once I wasn’t in that community anymore, it made me realize how much pain I really was in. It allowed me to see some false ideologies that had been ingrained in my mind over the years by leaders and pastors who were above me. Ideologies that were surrounding mental health, sexuality, and sexual abuse and how if these Christians claimed to know Jesus, they wouldn’t be acting the way they did around these topics.

I can quote scripture and I know many different aspects of theology like the back of my hand. I deeply studied the Bible so over time; I began to notice some holes in what I was being taught and what the Bible actually said. There is this process of sanctification. Sanctification is essentially the process of becoming more and more like Christ. It is a lifelong process until you pass away and be fully in his presence. Now let me ask you this…if essentially the whole religion of Christianity is to do with sanctification, why do we have followers of Christ throwing hate onto groups of people who don’t align with what they believe and who they believe they are called to be as followers of Jesus? If the top commandments are to love God and to love ALL other people above all else, then why is this happening? I was a part of Young Life and the high school ministry department at a church. I saw firsthand what was being fed into these students. What I heard from the leaders around me had a common theme. It seemed like purity was being more heavily focused on than holiness. No fucking wonder I have seen so many people damaged by what religious leaders have said to them surrounding the topic of sex. It was designed to be this beautiful and holy thing. It was not meant to be tainted and to be seen as disgusting. It is a vital part to us as human beings. When that is tainted, it can cause devastating affects to a person. According to Christianity, sex outside of marriage is a sin. But also, God views all sins as equal. Think of it this way. When you look at a skyline of a major city, you see the buildings all different sizes. That is how the world views sin. Murder being one of the highest while lying to your mom being one of the lowest. If God is above all, he sees those buildings as equal heights. Which means to him, murder and lying are equal. Let me ask you this, why are Christian leaders deeply condemning and looking at one student different who had sex with her boyfriend last week while thinking it’s funny that their student lied to their mom about something dumb? Yes, I know that we will never be perfect people no matter how hard we try, but if this process of sanctification does really exist; then why are believers treating sin differently than what Jesus would? I felt so condemned and I felt so disgusting as a human being when I told someone I had sex with my boyfriend when I was 18. I felt that way because it was engrained in my mind that I was tainted because I had sex before marriage. This left this idea in my mind that when I started talking to a guy who followed Jesus, he wouldn’t accept that I have had sex and had been sexually active. If Jesus was alive right now and I told him that, he would embrace me with a hug and weep with me because that is not how his followers would treat me if they were actually following him.

I had felt this constant need to be perfect, but I also knew I never would be. When I would screw up and make mistakes, why was I being looked at differently by other Christians? I was willing to be open and honest about who I was and my “sins”. But other Christians made me feel less than and a step behind them because I struggled with those things. Here’s the thing my friends… purity doesn’t equal holiness and it never will. Holiness is about union with, while purity is about separation from. Jesus wanted to be united with those he came in contact with. He violated boundaries to be able to weave together that holiness. We all have baggage. Every single human being has baggage. Some have more than others but ultimately, we need to stop confusing all of this baggage with God’s will. Our pastor’s baggage and our church leader’s baggage surrounding the ideas of sex and gender may have devastating effects. God’s will is in the scriptures. It is not and never will be in the past and baggage of our pastors, church leaders, and the generations before us.

I wholeheartedly believe there is so much shame surrounding anything to do with sex in Christian communities. For one thing, it hardly ever gets talked about in an appropriate way that doesn’t feel condemning. I felt sooooo damn shameful and condemned by the Christians around me because I had a past of pornography, masturbation, being attracted to girls, and I had been sexually active with a few boyfriends. I heavily felt my past being condemned and I felt that I was looked at as a tainted Christian. If I told them that I still masturbated, I was still attracted to girls, and that I was being sexual with a guy I was dating, all hell would have broken loose. I would have been told I need to “acknowledge my sins”. The thing about shame is that it is so easy to manipulate. It is so easy for a youth group leader to weave in his or her own ideas about sex into a student who feels ashamed for having a same sex attraction or for having sex with the person they are dating.

I have come across many Christians in my life who don’t agree with homosexuality. They look at it as a sin and it wasn’t in God’s plan. They simply do not understand what it is like to look at someone of the same sex and develop intimate feelings for them. Here’s the thing, it is not the job of a professing Christian to understand. That is the last damn thing. Their job is to love as Christ has loved them. The love and care they give them may not be perfect, but it is loving them just as they would love their straight friend. It should never be different, and it is certainly not an invitation for condemnation and to look at that child of God as a project.

There is no right or wrong way to follow Jesus. There is not a set of instructions. At the end of the day, it comes down to interpretation and honestly, we do not know. That is why there is faith. I believe in God. I believe in the Bible. I believe in sin. But you cannot sit back and tell me that you know the way that God intricately design me in the womb. There is no “woman of God formula” or a “man of God formula”. If you think there is, I think it is outdated and honestly, I think you are wrong. I got so tired of people thinking I need to fit into this mold and once I walked away from it, I was finally able to feel and be who I am.

I am gay.
I love girls.
I have acted on it and will continue to do so.

But also, I understand what it means to follow an all loving God and I know what it means to be obedient. I know there are people I know who are going to tell me that this isn’t right or that I need to acknowledge my sins. Before you do that, please look at the log in your eye before you cast condemnation on me for the spec in mine.