2023—0629
I ugly cried at the Pride Parade because of the church signs—
They said things like, “Jesus had two dads!”
“God uses they/them pronouns!”
But the one the really hit me was, “Your salvation was never in question.” I couldn’t help but cry. I let the tears run.
I remember the first time I realized my sexual attraction to women. I was 15, and I journaled, “I don’t think I’m a Christian anymore. I think I lost my salvation today.”
I remember feeling so terrified because that omniscient Father God had serious wrath, and I couldn’t hide this from Him. And maybe that God still loved me, but I was on the list with the murderers and adulterers and liars now. I remember hearing that as long as I didn’t act on my desires and instead, actively repress them, that it was okay to struggle with same-sex attraction. I remember a flamboyant Jesus hyperbolizing about gouging out your eyes if they caused you to sin. I remembered him saying that if you looked at a woman lustfully, then you’d already committed adultery in your heart.
15 year old Fran was doomed! Horny, gay, and dooooomed!!
And for years, I would hide by being a perfect Christian girl, reading my Bible every day and going to church as often as possible, leading worship and small groups, deeply engaging in apologetics, obsessing over all the right answers, so no one would suspect I was a sexual deviant! (lol)
Enter the grand irony of being told: “Wow! Frani is so studious! She’s so focused on her relationship with the Lord, that she’s not interested in boys. She’s so mature and Christ-centered, which is why she isn’t boy crazy.” I’d hear my youth pastor tell my mom, “You must be so proud of her.”
And she was. I believed everything she believed (and still believes) in the exact same way she believed them. I never argued or had any obvious doubts.
I hid everything so well. I didn’t breathe. I had secret panic attacks in my bedroom, in the bathroom. I had shooting pains in my ribcage. My body was always on edge, always frozen. My voice was stifled, and no one could tell because I’d say all the right things to keep everyone off my trail.
I remember believing that getting married as soon as possible would give me a valid outlet for my sexual feelings, and that once I had an outlet for sex that God approved of, I wouldn’t desire women anymore. Marriage was always portrayed as the “cure-all” in those environments. So of course, I got married as soon as I could to the first person who thought I was valuable, begging God to fix me, and fix me quick!
But I was lying the whole time, deceiving myself in order maintain this false connection and community based in self-hatred. I would write sad and angry songs about inaccessible love and live in a fantasy where I could mother children without being intimate with a man. I would dream about this unattainable world where I could finally breathe and be received as I am. So when I saw that sign about my salvation never being in question, I sobbed. I said to my friend, “Not me ugly crying at the Pride parade!” only to look over and see she was crying too.
Queerness is an aspect of the Divine in me, a part of the fearfully and wonderfully made part of me, part of my inherent goodness. I never needed to be saved from it, and it never separated me from love. Being gay has expanded my capacity for compassion, for joy, for kindness. (And that’s for everyone, even my mom, who actively refuses to receive or celebrate this integral part of me and loves to remind me that she cannot condone the lifestyle and that she hates the sin.)
I made the mistake of calling my mom on Tuesday evening because despite it all, I miss her sometimes. I still have a deep desire to be understood by her, but she doesn’t have the capacity for that, and she might not ever be able to hold space for me with her rigid beliefs and obsession with procreation. The more I speak with her, the more I realize that I’ve outgrown our relationship, and she can no longer have access to my most tender thoughts and emotions.
Instead of being confined by her perceptions of me, I realize that my love is spacious enough to contain everything she is— her beliefs, her sorrow, her desires, her confusion. I live in a world where my beliefs have room for her wholeness, somehow they can intellectualize and absorb her pain; but her worldview is inflexible, and no longer has room for me. Our connection must change in order to remain safe and protect my joy, so as to avoid sinking into that restrictive shell she calls home.
When I started healing my self-hatred, I began observing the ways I was projecting that loathing onto people who didn’t deserve it. When I stopped actively numbing my own desires, I became more emotionally honest with others. This made space for the resurrection and reintegration of parts of me I thought would never find their flourishing, deep breath. This softening into love and self-acceptance was true repentance for me. This awakening to myself was salvation, and I was taught that you cannot lose that awareness.
My salvation was never in question. I have never been separate from love. I have never been separated from the Divine.
