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I remember the night I kind of told God I was gay.
I remember I told him and I kind of waited for the lightning bolt to strike me dead
cause I was..I really felt that split, I really felt like..ok if I'm..I felt like I had to
embrace it by that point. Because everything else..my life had become
focused on changing and not on God and I had to change that. I had to go back to
focusing on my relationship with him. That's is just..it's the hardest thing I've
ever had to do cause I love God and I have no desire to walk away from him. I
also know what's going on inside of my heart, you know, what's going inside of
me. It says, "Yes you're a gay man." It was really conflicting when I began to
feel like God was affirming that saying, "No that is ok." I was really confused and
it tore me to point of almost depression..um..I was lying to all my
friends, because I couldn't tell them what was going on cause they wouldn't
understand. I love them and they love me but they couldn't accept me as a gay man.
It was just something that tore me apart for two years. I struggled with figuring out
who I was. I ended up meeting a women online through a chat group. Me and her
started talking a couple times a week and she is a lesbian and a Christian and that
was a new concept for me. I had never met anyone that was gay and also
Christian. And she started explaining things to me. Explaining what she
believed. She never told me I had to believe what she believed. In fact she
never even said..I don't..she said to me, "I don't know if you're straight, I don't know
if you're gay, I don't know what you are. That's something for you to figure out. I'm
just going to tell you what I believe." And so I remember having many, many, many
heated arguments with her online sitting in the library at school chatting. Just
talking to her. She'd say something like, "Well no it is ok cause it all comes back
to love and it's all about, you know, this is not what the bible is talking about and it's
been distorted." I would of course counter with things like, "No, no, no, no..
This is what it really says. You're wrong.. you're wrong." Finally after about a year
of that she started to kind of make since cause I started really thinking about it
instead of shutting her down. I started thinking, let's just look at this. What if I
applied that to my life. Does that fit cause what I got going on right now doesn't
seem to fit with scripture. So if I applied this, how does that fit? It fits so much
better. There was so much more peace about that. I just came to point where I
said, "Where I said God, ok, I don't know what's right. I don't know what's wrong. I
just don't know anymore. So I'm going to stop trying to change this because I can't
do this..this way anymore. And if you want to change me then change me and if
you don't then don't. But God you've got to help me cause I can't do this anymore.
And God really just gave me a peace about it and said, "No, this is ok. I created
you this way and I love you this way." It's a struggle at times. I like to think that I'm
making a difference, you know, one person at a time by living an honest life,
you know, as honest as I can be, I'm making a difference. But at the same time
it's really hard to live an honest life because it is south Georgia and there are
very ignorant people that live there. People that would hurt me just for being
who I am because they don't understand. It's always walking this fine line of, "Ok
I'm with my boyfriend. Can I hold his hand here? Is this going to be ok? Am I
actually going to have to worry that someones going to figure this out. If we
are standing next to each other or we're standing too close is someone going to
notice? Is this going to be a problem? Even in church.
Well interesting enough they want me there they just don't want me as a
member. They've told me just that, like, "Well, Joey we want to come here." More
importantly for me, it's just, I love church. I'd rather go to some place that doesn't
necessarily accept me and to still go to the house of God then not go any place at all.
I've have several run-ins with different
pastors, different levels of the conference. Starting back when I was in
college and I came out at the Wesley Foundation I was asked to step down
from a leadership position. The church I worked at or helped out with at the youth
group. They asked me to step down. The hardest part has been, I left Valdosta
for a little while then I moved back. When I moved back I decided to try a another
church and I really liked it there and I decided I wanted to join that church and
transfer my membership from another Methodist church in the conference. My
membership is still at the church I went to when I was growing up. I'm never there
and so I felt like transferring to a church I was actually at. So I went in and met with
the pastor and the pastor proceeded to tell me that he didn't feel it was
appropriate for me to join because I'm gay. I of course disagreed with him. I was
like, "I'm already a member of the Methodist Church. You're denying me
membership to something I'm a member of." He just.. he decided on the fact that
his pastoral discretion that he has the right to deny me membership based on
his decision that it's not appropriate. I wrote letters to my district superintendent
and to my bishop stating what happened and that I was upset with it. They both
contacted him or he contacted them. They basically said, "No we agree with his
decision. We think it is inappropriate for you to join at this time."
It's crazy to me..that I..the church that I've been a member of all my entire life is
telling me that I can't be a member. It just doesn't' make sense.
There's a lot of people who think they've never met gay people and so they have
this idea of what a gay person is. So when you come out in your church and
say, "No, I'm a gay person. I'm the guy that you know, that you love, that's apart
of your church. That loves God and doesn't do all these things that you think
of when you think of gay people." That changes peoples lives.
Well one of them was my pastor from back home who I came out to her, just so
when I finally came out to my parents they'd have somebody to turn to. She was
a family friend from growing up. She was a youth minister of mine at one point. She
surprised me because, I asked her to meet me for coffee one weekend when I
was in town and I remember I was sitting at the table. I had my head down, I was
embarrassed to be telling her this. I knew it was something I had to do though.
I remember she..the first words out of her mouth after I finished speaking was,
"Joey, first of all, I want you to know that I love you and I think it's stupid for you to
try and change." That was probably one of the first times I was really affirmed by a
pastor. You know someone had I known my whole life, had gone to church most of
my life. It was just an amazing experience for me just to have that affirmation from
someone I trusted so much. I think if I wasn't a Christian, I don't know
where I would be right now but I would not be..I don't think I'd not be the healthy
person I am today. When I was struggling with who I was I got into some dark place
just away from everything. If I didn't have Jesus there to hold me up I don't' know
what would have happened. There's so many LGBT people out there
who just love go so much but feel they have no place in the church. And if we'd
just look around we'd see we're missing a lot of people with a lot of great gifts cause
we've pushed them out of our churches.