I remain a person of faith for my younger self. In middle school, I began to realize my equal attraction to women and men. I was horrified. I prayed for God to stop these thoughts, for Him to take away my sin. I begged, cried, and at many points I thought the world would be better off without me, to the point where I made plans. I didn’t think God loved me, because how could I be queer if I was a Christian? I ignored my faith for years, equating God’s love with slurs that were spewed by other Christians. Then I stumbled upon a clip on social media that made me rethink everything: God doesn’t love you in spite of who you are; He loves you because of who you are. It was like something clicked into place that random day of doomscrolling: I can be queer, and I am still a child of God. Others will still say I’m an abomination, and likely over half the people I’m surrounded by at sermons think that I will be going to hell unless I repent. Ironically, that motivates me. I want to be the person who my younger self thought couldn’t exist: a person of faith who is loved by God. Not despite the fact that I’m queer, but because I am the bisexual person sitting in the pews, confident in my faith and my sexuality. I believe one of the reasons I’m here is to spread God’s word of radical love, acceptance, and forgiveness, all while being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m the Christian my middle-school self never got to see. I will continue to be the one who won’t allow other people of faith to ostracize those who love differently, and I will remind everyone that all forms of love are acceptable because God loved us first. Love thy neighbor; don’t yell at them for loving differently than you do. I may not be a traditional person of faith, but I’m loud about my queerness and my Christianity, so those middle schoolers (like my past self) who are discovering themselves don’t think they are alone, and that God has forsaken them. God loves us all, not in spite of our sin, but because we choose to follow Him in the midst of it all.
