My faith in God has gotten me through so much adversity that I doubt I would be here today without him. That faith wasn't there because of my parents, but because of my own yearning for God's truth and love. While faith has been an important aspect of my life, I will admit that I lost it for a period of time. I felt unfit to believe, because I am gay, and I finally realize how wrong that is.

While I love God, Christianity can betray me. The interesting thing about Christianity is that it should be based on love, but many people use it for hate. As someone who has called herself a Christian, I find it despicable. Just like in anything else, though, there are hypocrites. The very Church that preaches love seems to support the marginalization of specific groups. As detestable as ignorance can be, the Church has obviously not evaded it.

I can’t answer whether homosexuality is cool with God or not. Nobody can, but I can promise that God’s intention for Christians in this life is not to discern that. His plan is for people to love. When asked about the most important commandment, Jesus’s reply was this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12: 30-31). So, some Christians choose to ignore the most important commandments in the Bible and focus on marginalizing groups of people they disagree with instead. I’ve accepted that people are ignorant, and I’ve faced that ignorance first hand.

Of course, since I once considered myself a Christian, being gay was never a part of the plan. God was so extremely important to me until I realized my sexuality. In high school, I developed the best friendship of my life. We were inseparable, and things were going so well until things got weird. We would hold hands, cuddle, and hug goodbye for the longest time. I somewhat questioned it, but I didn’t want my doubt to strip me of the joy she brought. Later, kisses followed hugs, and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.

I didn’t care, though. I thought, ‘if this is wrong then I don’t want to believe in God.’ The one thing that I felt was going right in my life might have been the wrong thing for my faith which is something I couldn’t handle. So faith went down the drain for a while. I stopped intentionally building my relationship with God.

How could I possibly believe in a God who didn’t validate my love? This was the most real love I’d ever experienced in my life; so how could I turn my back on what was right in front of me just because the Church said it wasn’t valid? How can I be okay knowing that my God may not be proud of who I am?

Before continuing, let me clarify this: I would never choose this life. I am a part of a community that is stigmatized (Especially within the Church) and, as a member of that community, I feel uncomfortable talking about my faith. After years of struggling with who I was because of that, I finally realized that it wasn’t God who was making me feel unfit to believe. It was the church. The church, made up of people just as flawed as me, was the exact place where I felt uncomfortable believing! The church that forgets about love being our greatest command fails to consider that maybe loving another human wouldn’t be a sin.

I am not arguing here that all church’s fail to understand how trivial the matter of sexuality is in the scheme of things, but just that I personally have a difficult time putting trust in a community that has been inclined to use the Bible in ways that marginalize people.

So it’s obvious that I subscribe more to God than the church itself, and that is mostly because I hope that regardless of what many Christians may believe, I can one day build a relationship that is pleasing to God. Maybe my life isn’t the straight life I imagined it to be, but it can still be glorifying to God. I am done giving up on that hope just because I'm gay. Everything is the same except that my kids will have one or two loving moms, a super soft cat, and a better childhood than I got. They will still grow up to know God, they will see me glorify God in my work, and they will learn how to build relationships based on faith and trust.

If you are anywhere on the spectrum of LGBTQ, please know that you are loved. You can be what you always imagined you would be. Your sexuality does not define you or your faith. The church does not define your relationship with God. Only you can do that.