The Day I Came Out to God

It’s the beginning of Pride Month, and given that Pride is still, somehow, something we are fighting to protect, I find myself returning to the power of storytelling. Our stories, and the stories of our queer ancestors, are what remains alive despite the efforts of a culture that calls our lives indecent. I have been living outwardly as a queer person for sixteen years, which is a profound thought considering I was 16 years old when I came out. If that kid only knew what an additional sixteen years would look like for us.

So today, I will share the story of coming into my queerness as a teenager in College Station, Texas, one who was actively involved in an evangelical church background. Church was a constant part of my life from the moment I was born, from children’s choir to church camp, Vacation Bible School, Wednesday night youth group. While I am no longer part of my home church community, there is a love that I will always have for that place that was instrumental in my faith formation. But I would be lying if I said there was not also hurt. Between the Left Behind books that everyone was reading, to the expectations that were put on me in the days of early 2000s purity culture, salvation was a concept that frightened me as a kid.

I remember being scared when I was baptized, or perhaps just nervous, but I don’t know many eight-year-olds who can confidently express their understanding of being saved. But I do remember that when I was finally allowed to participate in what we Baptists called the Lord’s Supper, I still felt in some way like I was missing out. During worship services, I would watch people lift their hands while singing, reaching with this almost uninhibited longing to touch the face of God. And I wanted to experience faith in this way. I would close my eyes and raise my arms, but every time my hands came back empty.

In my endeavoring to live faithfully, I never could just accept what was offered at face value. Like why is the Bible full of stories about wine, yet the Baptists refused to drink it? Or was it really forbidden for women to preach? And has God really chosen one man somewhere out in the world to be my husband? Well, if that’s the case, that must be why I’ve never had feelings for any of the boys I’ve met, right? Okay, well I guess I’ll just wait.

But then one day, she sat across from me in the cafeteria. The girl with the dark, unkempt hair, with splotches of paint on her fingers. I could feel my heartbeat in my palms. I felt the overwhelmingly warm swelling of my heart for the first time. And that was when I knew that what I was feeling was what I had been waiting to feel. And despite all that I had been taught, not for one solitary moment did that feel like sin. It was a moment of tenderness that brought an indescribable richness to my soul. And that, somehow, made me an abomination. Immoral. Detestable. Perverse. Contrary.

I couldn’t understand it. All my life I had been taught about love. All my life I had been taught about sin. And something just wasn’t adding up. I was angry, betrayed almost, by a God of mercy who created me so that I might experience the unyielding beauty of love, only for that love, for my love, to be something that was morally wrong. How? How does this hurt anyone?

I’ve since learned that to be angry at God is a sacred tradition. There’s an entire book in the Bible on lamentations. So, if God is love, then from where was my shame born? This was the moment I came out to God, and she looked at me and asked, “Who told you that you were an abomination?” And there in my deep well of grief, I was filled by the river of love from which I came, and there I was, and there God was, and it was good.