Faith, Queerness, and Covenant Without Easy Answers

I don’t have all the answers about how faith and queerness fit together.

I never have.

I was raised to believe that being gay was a choice. Not just a choice, but a sinful one. So when I was twelve or thirteen and one of my cousins told us she was bisexual, I felt certain she was wrong. I remember wondering how she could choose that when she knew better. The adults prayed for her diligently. When she eventually married a man, the general feeling was that she had repented. That she had been redeemed.

At the time, I absorbed that framework without much question.

A few years later, I was at my grandparents’ house, sitting up late after they had gone to bed. My older cousin Erin was visiting. We were watching cable television shows I wasn’t allowed to watch at home and talking the way cousins do when the house is quiet and the rules feel looser.

Somehow we started talking about being gay. I remember saying I didn’t understand why anyone would choose it when it was a sin. Erin didn’t argue with me. She didn’t try to dismantle what I had been taught. She just said she didn’t personally understand it either, but maybe it was okay to let people live their lives. She mentioned that she didn’t think it was always a choice. Sometimes it was just what people felt.

I don’t remember what I said back. I just remember something shifting.

It felt like a window opened somewhere. I couldn’t see it or point to it, but it let in a little light and a little air.

I didn’t climb through that window. I didn’t suddenly change my beliefs. I loved God. I wanted to be faithful. Expansion felt risky. So I simply noted that there was air on the other side and kept living the way I knew how.

It never occurred to me that what I felt toward women might be attraction. Being gay wasn’t presented to me as something discovered. It was presented as something chosen. And a bad choice at that.

So whatever I felt must have been something else. Appreciation. Comparison. The way artists study form. Women were beautiful. That didn’t have to mean more than that.

I didn’t feel suppressed.

I felt like certain options simply did not exist.

Years later, when I met Thy, I wasn’t trying to undo my upbringing. I had kissed women before. I had slept with women. None of that was new.

What was new was connection.

When she kissed me behind the car that first week, I felt butterflies in a way I hadn’t before. But underneath the butterflies was something steadier. Our kids turned around in their car seats and said, “Eww, our moms are kissing,” and we both laughed.

It didn’t feel rebellious.

It felt ordinary.

It felt like family.

I had always believed marriage meant weaving lives together. I watched my parents do that. My mom was part of my dad’s family. My dad was part of my mom’s family. They knew each other’s people. They showed up. They stayed.

With Thy, I stopped thinking about gender and started paying attention to presence. To who showed up. To who stayed. To who felt like home.

We have been through very hard things. We have hurt each other. We have had seasons that could have broken us. And she is still my person.

That is not infatuation.

That is not rebellion.

That is covenant.

The same sacred word I was raised to honor.

Some people will say I have abandoned what I was taught. I don’t feel that way. I still pray. I still see God as Father. I still believe Jesus is the Son of God. I still believe salvation is grace, not performance.

I do not know how every theological piece fits together. I suspect I never will.

I miss church.

The way a room rises together and sings something older than all of us. The way harmony moves through your chest. The way shared worship makes belief feel amplified.

I can still feel peace at home. In the kitchen while dinner cooks. In the car with worship music playing. God doesn’t disappear from my life outside of church.

But it hits differently in a group.

There is something about singing alongside other voices that steadies me in a way solitude does not.

And I do not know where my family fits inside that space.

Families like mine are rarely welcomed without scrutiny. I do not want my children fielding questions about their parents’ marriage because another adult decided to make us a lesson.

And when I visit churches that openly affirm LGBTQ families, I sometimes find myself uneasy for a different reason. I still care about doctrine. I still believe some things matter deeply. I am not looking for a faith with no edges.

So I live here.

Between certainty and expansion. Between longing and belonging.

This is not a manifesto.

It is not an argument.

It is simply where I am.

A girl who once felt certain.

A teenager who felt a window open.

A woman who recognized home.

A believer who still reaches for God.

I do not have all the answers.

But I have my wife.

I have my faith.

And I am still walking.