To the Church…

Dear Church,

Oh, the countless hours that I’ve spent thinking about the ways you have hurt me and persecuted my body. The waking nights that I have cried in the quiet comfort of my room thinking about the damage you caused me. As a child you were my favorite place, my favorite people, and my favorite feeling. However, as I discovered myself and this queer body, I am in now began to take shape, your disapproving glare fixated on me and it activated my fight or flight. At this point, my only reaction was to run because I was afraid of what my parents would have said if I had stayed to fight you. The queerness inside of me shrank as I pushed it into the depths of my being, and I lost myself because of you. Your messengers were always telling me that I would find peace, love, and joy within your walls, yet at the same time they told me I was not deserving of these fruits of your Spirit because of my queerness. Every single day of my young life I put a mask on so that I could safely have access to community, yet little did I know that this “safety” came with the price of forgetting and repressing who I was on the inside. My soul wanted to burst with the queer joy inside me, and every now and then from the comfort of my own solidarity I would celebrate the person inside of me, making sure no one could see me.

As I got to college, I thought that you were the last place I would find joy on a college campus, so I decided that this was not where I wanted to spend my time. There was something else inside of me though, which I now have come to realize was the God I had never known calling me to give their people another chance. My entire being was pulled towards giving you another chance. In the new community I found, which was a non-traditional version of you, I met your God in their truest form for the first time. Within a greater community where queerness was celebrated, I found that a small part of you had begun to do the same. My soul found revival within your walls for the first time, and I began to realize that there was at least still some hope for you. It was a refreshing side of you that I am so thankful I was able to find at a time in my life when I most needed it. Throughout the four years that I have known this new side of you, I have been encouraged and reinvigorated. I have found what my passion and call is in life, and it is to show everyone this side of you, and work to standing up against the side of you I hated for so many years.

As I sit and write this letter to you, I am in the process of starting my new life journey, one that took me so long to understand that I was called to do. For such a long time, I ran from you and your grasps because I was afraid of the persecution that I might face within it. As I said, before, my fight or flight response always led to flight from you, but that is not the case anymore. I have now decided that it is my time to fight, and that is what I have fixated my sights upon. My new mission is to stand up to the side of you that tells people they aren’t enough, and that their existence is a sin. I want to tell the world that this better side of you exists, and that the side I used to know used their verses and lectures as fake propaganda to gatekeep our Creator’s children from the wealth and joy that they can experience within your walls. I aim to infiltrate this system as a queer person, to give representation for my community within your spaces, and to let people know the good side of you, because when the good side of you is at the forefront of conversation instead of the side that persecutes, overwhelming joy and emotion can be experienced. You can do better, and I want to show everyone that this is the case.

Queerly beloved,

J