A Note for People Like Me

If you ever leave, please leave the light on.

I want to tell you why I’m writing any of this.

There are people reading this who know me—friends, former colleagues, people I grew up with. They’re going to wonder what’s going on as they see things change about my life. This is partly for them.

Also, I hope this reaches some people who disagree with my theology. Several posts coming up speak more to that. As you can imagine, I think the church needs to change. This is partly for those who disagree with me, too.

But there’s another group I’m really thinking about most. People like me. People who might need to leave.

Photo by Milo Bauman on Unsplash

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There is an amazing song by Flamy Grant, “If you ever leave, I hope you leave a light on. Just enough to see, the open door you left from.”

I've struggled to put this next part into words.

I just left a church that was the most sincere I have ever known in trying to help kids like me, and adults like me now. I adore these pastors. These pastors saved my life. These churches raised me. This part of my story is the hardest to write, because I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them.

Being critical of them can feel, I guess, like “betrayal.” And I'm going to do it anyway. I wrote a first draft with harsh language. Then softened it. But now I’m going to go more first draft because I think they can handle it, and because I want them to hear it from me.

The pastors I worked alongside are wonderful people. I have watched them—with the best intentions—cause profound harm to people like me. (And not just people like me…but me.) Not because they are cruel. But because the theological framework they’re working inside of doesn’t leave room for us—for the real us. I felt for many years that we were making progress, finding a better way to minister.

I was wrong. We were not, are not, and are getting worse.

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My theology has shifted. But it didn't shift in a vacuum. I've been given access to other lives, other stories of men and women with and without the church trauma I carry. And what I've seen in the younger generation especially, LGBTQ+ people who grew up with better theology, who never had to unlearn what I've spent years unlearning…they're thriving.

So I say to people like me: nothing is wrong with you.

God will not save you from it, because you are not lost. God does not place a universal call on you to be celibate. God will not take away what God meant to bring you profound joy. God will not heal what God meant to make his Church complete. Your design is not the flaw. It is the point. God doesn’t need you to change this part of you to be whole; God needs this part of you to make his Church whole.

So I say to the Church, you need these people.

Not as a project. Not as a theological problem to solve. You need their perspective, their creativity, their stories, the way they’ve learned to love at a cost, the way they’ve had to think harder about God than most people ever have to. LGBTQ+ people have been sitting in your pews for centuries, quietly carrying what you told them to carry. And the gifts they could have brought you, the truth they could have held with you, the beauty they were made to display—you let that walk out the door. You’re still letting it walk out the door.

People like me: God meant for you to display the beauty and diversity of his creation. God intends to use you to bring truth, justice, and love to his Church.

God is proud of you.

He wants to save you from shame.

I’m 44. I know what it costs to live a life that almost fits—to be in every room you’re supposed to be in, doing everything you’re supposed to do, and still feel one layer removed from your own life. I know the weight of carrying something alone so long you start to believe the carrying is just who you are now.

It isn’t.

I’m not trying to tell you what to do. You’ve had enough of that.

But you are not wrong about yourself. I prayed those prayers. I meant them. I woke up the next morning exactly the same. Not because I failed. Because there was nothing to fix.

And I want to be clear about something. I loved every day of my life. I was thriving. And yet, the life I have now is more full and more real than anything I lived before it. Even in the confusion and difficulty of profound change, I am whole. My life is integrated. (Several friends and family members have noticed. I’m lighter. My voice is different. My cadence. My posture and stride. Even my heart rate is down. I am physiologically healthier.) And it started the moment I stopped trying to live a life that I wasn’t meant to.

The other side of saying it out loud is more real, not less. More complicated, yes. More costly, sometimes. I won’t minimize that. But more real. I am more myself on the horizon of my forty-fifth birthday than I have ever been before.

I don’t know what you’re risking. I don’t know what you stand to lose, or how long you’ve been waiting. So this isn’t advice. Just another story of someone who left.

I left because, to paraphrase Larenz Tate, I realized at some point you have to stop begging for a seat at the table and go build your own.

If you ever leave—whenever you’re ready, on your own terms—we’ll leave the light on for you.

“Instead of fighting to be welcomed to a table of our former church communities that have so clearly abandoned the good news of Christ, many queer folks are heeding the voice of the Holy Spirit that reminds us that we are already the church, we are already affirmed by God, and we are already welcomed to God’s table, despite what our denominations or pastors or families might say.”
Brandan Robertson, Author of Queer and Christian

*Brandan showed me the quote by Tate. Thanks, Brandan, for all your help in navigating these waters.

“Never beg for a seat when you can build your own table.”
Larenz Tate