A Personal Journey from Assumption to Study & Silence to Voice.

Is it wrong to be gay?” my 8-year-old son asked me one day.

I looked over at him and thought I knew the answer. I thought I understood what it meant to be gay, and I thought I knew what the Bible said about it. But I could only recall one passage.

“Well, I just believe what the Bible says,” I told him. “It talks about two cities that God destroyed for their sins. One of them being homosexuality.”

He turned to look out the window, and we drove on in silence.

The conversation didn’t feel theologically sound, but it still didn’t prompt me to study further.

I believed being gay was a choice and a lifestyle, and that the Bible said it was wrong.

Or so I had heard.

Whatever the case, I figured, it was between them and God.

It didn’t affect me.

My Barbie World

You see, I had always liked boys and never liked girls.

It wasn’t something I was taught. It wasn’t something I chose. It just happened. I was born heterosexual.

Playing with my Barbie and Ken, I would have her kiss, marry him and have babies with him. When I played Legos with a cute boy from church, I would make us play “prince and princess”, forcing him to save my Lego girl and kiss her. I was only 6.

In middle school, my girl friends and I would talk about who was cute, who would we marry. We came up with all kinds of ingenious ways to get close with the boys we liked. I recall the feeling of trying to get my knee as close to the cute boy beside me at a movie with the church youth group.

I liked flirting with the boys, a lot. And I loved when they flirted back. Oh the thrill, oh the fun, the romance, the excitement. The longing to someday be a princess and be loved by a prince.

And it was ok.

It was accepted.

I grew up in a straight world.

I watched Disney movies and loved the romantic and lovey dovey feeling I’d get when the prince came to save Cinderella. My knees went weak when Gilbert Blythe turned around and winked at Anne of Green Gables. I remember the feeling of giddy excitement every time the cute movie star boys would show up on the big screen to flirt with the girls

Everything catered to me.

I grew up feeling those feelings. I never considered them to be sinful.

Liking boys was not a sin.

It was all ok.

It was accepted.

But I never knew…

I Never Knew

I never knew there were kids around me that were not having that experience, who felt different, and felt afraid of feeling different.

I didn’t know there were girls who wondered why they were not attracted to the prince like me, but the princess.

I didn’t know there were people growing up feeling shame for liking the wrong person and hide that part of themselves.

While I grew up with adults smiling at my Barbie-kissing, prince-loving, boy crazy adolescence, these kids grew up seeing disgust and shame on the faces of those who knew about them.

Rather than words of cute praise and encouragement, they heard the words “abomination”, “hate”, “sin”. Some heard that they are better off dead and that God hated people like them. Some were kicked out of home and some out of the church. Most were bullied.

I didn’t know that some would try for years to pray it away. And when it didn’t go away, they were told they must either be alone for life or force themselves to marry someone they didn’t truly love.

So they learned they couldn’t be close to people. Because if they did fall in love, it would hurt all the more. Forced into lives of loneliness, rejection by the church, and sometimes abandonment by family and friends, many fell into depression, addiction, and, far too often, suicide.

I didn’t know that hundreds of thousands tried to get help through gay therapy ministries that promised to “take the gay away”. Not only did time prove they didn’t work, but people left shamed, abandoned, and even more alone than before.

I didn’t know many felt pushed out of the church and pushed away from God. I understood why many gave up.

I didn’t know.

I never asked.

I never looked.

at what the Bible said.

And then, people I loved told me their stories.

The Journey Begins

My husband had begun questioning years before me when he was the lead pastor of a church. But when he began studying what the Bible says, and does not say, about homosexuality, I did not want to join. Not only did I assume I knew the answer, but I felt unfaithful to questioning.

Limited time, ministry demands, a big move and the launch of a new business slowed his studies, the question never left him feeling settled on the topic. God kept tugging at his heart.

Over the years, even after we stepped away from full-time ministry during Covid, continued encounters with LGBTQ friends and family made his question increasingly difficult to ignore.

The Question Comes Home

One day, I found out why my 8-year old son was asking me those questions all those years ago.

He told us he was gay.

Suddenly the urgency felt real. It was no longer distant or abstract. It was close.

We could not afford to be careless with Scripture. Faithfulness to both God and our children demanded our full attention.

We dove in together. We studied. We prayed. We wept. We approached this subject with fear and trembling, knowing what was at stake, and with a deep commitment to study Scripture carefully and honestly, wherever it led. We chose to question human interpretations of the Bible, not the Bible itself.

We chose to examine what Scripture calls sin; not to justify sin, but to make sure we’re not calling something sinful that God never condemned.

We spoke with pastors, theologians, and trusted friends. We joined online Bible studies, traveled to conferences across the country, and read extensively. We immersed ourselves in Scripture, hermeneutics, theology, history, and science.

Along the way, we met and listened to LGBTQ-affirming theologians and pastors who had changed their views. We attended LGBTQ Christian conferences and encountered faithful, mature LGBTQ believers. We listened to their stories, witnessed their love for God, and watched them follow Jesus with courage and humility, often in places where they were not fully welcomed.

After much prayer and study, we could not find anything in Scripture that identified same-sex attraction as sin. We could not find anything that prohibited same-sex marriage, nor anything that commanded a gendered requirement for marriage. Instead, we came to see that God loves LGBTQ people, created them as they are, and that they are a vital part of the body of Christ. We also saw how the church has missed out on the gifts and faithfulness of people it has too often silenced or pushed away.

One morning, sitting together on our back patio with coffee in our hands, surrounded by trees, my husband and I admitted out loud to each other that our theology on this topic had changed.

We did not loosen our belief in the authority of Scripture. We changed because of it. We did not redefine sin. We realized that some things we had been taught to call sin were not.

We did not abandon Scripture.

We dug deeper into it.

And we realized that faithfulness sometimes means following Scripture even when it leads somewhere biblically unexpected and theologically uncomfortable.

We did not know what this shift would mean for our children, our community, or our future, but obedience to Scripture required honesty, even when the cost was unclear.

Faith Rekindled

This journey has reignited my faith, deepened my trust in Jesus, and opened my eyes to a God bigger than I had imagined.

The same God who met me in childhood curiosity and teenage certainty is the God who invites all of us into grace, belonging, and transformation. I cannot undo the silence of my past, but I can keep listening, keep studying, and keep proclaiming the good news that God’s heart is wider and more welcoming than I once understood.

My faith is not fragile. It is stronger than before.

For the Sake of the Gospel

If you are willing, come and look with me.

For the sake of those who are asking questions.
For the sake of those who have been hurt.
For the sake of many children who don’t dare to ask out loud.
And for the sake of the gospel itself.

Let us listen carefully for what God is saying through Scripture. Let us test what we have inherited. Let us be brave enough to follow truth wherever it leads.

Together we can seek the God who is greater than fear or tradition, the God whose truth welcomes every honest question.

Your presence here matters.