This story touches on themes of religious trauma. It’s not too heavy, but if that’s a tender topic, please proceed with care.
I didn’t realize my upbringing was strange until I moved 2,000 miles away from home.
Away from everything I had known, I finally had the space to realize who I was, and who I was in God’s eyes. For once, I let myself be loved for who God made me, rather than what people told me I was.
But it was a long road to get there…one I’m still traveling.
I grew up as a young girl in an ultra-fundamentalist, conservative household in the South, where faith was defined by what we didn’t do—no secular music, no cable television, no movies, no dancing. Bedtime stories weren’t fairy tales; they were harrowing accounts of people who suffered visions of hell and came back to warn us.
The ‘threat’ of the rapture loomed constantly. Church included “altar calls” three times a week, and I tearfully responded to most of them—because surely, I had sinned in the last 48 hours, and I didn’t want to be left behind.
Throughout all this, even as a child, my identity was ministry. Worship ministry. Street ministry. Preaching from the pulpit at the age of fifteen. It was all I knew.
So when I had developed innocent dreams of marrying my best friend—of building a home with her, spending my life with her and loving her—I thought it was a mistake. A fluke. After all, I liked boys too.
I couldn’t possibly be one of them. How could I, when I was so involved in “The Lord’s Work”? Just weeks earlier, I was participating in anti-queer protests with my family—so it couldn’t be me. The rest of the week was packed with prayer service, youth group, worship practice, and a revival service. That weekend, I taught Sunday school. And then Sunday night, I preached.
I preached, but I loved a girl.
I loved a girl, and it had to be a mistake.
I had to be a mistake.
So I locked that piece of my heart away. Stuffed it in a box and tried my best to ignore it. After all, there was work to be done. “The world was ending.” I had to leave the state, go to ministry school, study hard, prepare for life as a missionary “before the Lord returned”. But no matter how much I gave, I always felt like an imposter…always hiding something deeply broken and irreparable. Something that would always separate me from an authentic relationship with the divine.
Years later, after a dramatic church split, I left the ministry path to get my bearings. I eventually married my longtime boyfriend, moved 2,000 miles away, and—for the first time—stepped outside the evangelical bubble.
Outside, in the real world, people were suffering in tangible, practical ways—ways the church could have helped but often didn’t. My eyes were opened to how the church mobilized to defend its socio-political stances but rarely to care for the poor and the oppressed—the very people Christ called us to love. And I had been complicit in all of it, even to my own detriment.
The dam broke when my sister uncovered an old newspaper clipping and dropped it into the family group-chat—there I was, frozen in time, holding a deeply hurtful protest sign at a queer event, 20 years earlier. 2000 miles away, my heart shattered. I wept for that young girl in the photo: for her fear, her confusion, her borrowed convictions. I mourned the life she might have lived, and the harm she may have caused along the way. I prayed for the people on the other side of that sign—that somehow, they had found love, healing, and peace in spite of me.
At that point, I walked away from the church entirely; they were heading down a path that I, in good faith, could not continue to follow.
Over time, however, I began to cross paths with others on a similar journey, people determined to revisit scripture with open hearts—not through the lens of men who came before us, but through the words and life of Jesus. Through this process, I finally discovered three things:
- I was beautifully and wonderfully made.
- The way my heart loved was not a mistake.
- I belonged in His presence, just as I was.
And part of me stirred—almost bitterly—wondering what my life could have been, had I been allowed to live in love, rather than fear.
A lot has changed since that moment. Honestly, I’m still finding my way back. Though many walls have come down, the ruins remain, and I still walk their edges instead of stepping through.
To this day, I’m in the closet to my family back home. It’s an intentional choice. My parents, now in their 80s, might not survive the news. But I have such deep empathy for Christian parents—the panic and despair they feel when their child reveals they are LGBTQ; the desperate attempts to change them, because all they want is to see them in heaven.
But both children and parents are victims in this cycle. Generations of mistranslating and weaponizing scripture have convinced parents that loving their children, just as they are, means suffering permanent separation from them. And that torment—the mental, emotional, spiritual weight—is one I know too well.
So I made a promise.
If I can help even one child feel loved in their own skin—among God and those they love—then it will be worth it. My hope is that, little by little, more parents and children will come to know that the love of God has no limits.
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.” – Ephesians 3:18
– Sunny