I recently read The God Box. It’s about a young man in his senior year of high school coming to terms with his sexuality in the context of his evangelical Christian faith. My husband has been wanting me to read this book for a few months now, and he finally got it from our library so that I could read it. I loved it. Besides the main character’s identity issues as a Mexican American, I resonated with other aspects of his story, like his struggle to reconcile faith and sexuality and his inability to tell anyone about his same-sex attraction. It felt both healing and jarring to enter back into that particular way of thinking, of thinking that I’d go to hell for accepting the “homosexual lifestyle,” of thinking that all gay people did was sleep around with each other, of thinking that my attraction would never go away so that I could fully be with a woman.

I remember nights writing in my journal, angst strewn about the pages: angst about my sexuality, angst about the boy I liked, angst about my looks, my weight, my hair color, angst because teenagers are already full of angst. Throw an evangelical Christian boy in a small, Midwestern town and the recipe for angst is overwhelmingly potent. I remember too many tears, too many fears, too many nights wondering how I could go on praying for change and yet continuing to feel the same attraction over and over. I remember two different people living inside of me throughout high school.

I remember being preached about or talked about at church when no one knew they were talking about that good little Christian boy who was a leader in the youth group. Gay people were always somewhere else. They were always somebody else. And they were always infringing upon the sanctity of marriage, the greatest threat to the family in the U.S. (No, we never talked about adultery or physical abuse or rape within a marital context or a crippling notion of masculinity or femininity as the greatest threat to the family.) I remember the derogatory names whispered and coughed at me in school from the select few who couldn’t deal properly with their own masculinity, so they took it out on others. I remember trying so hard and fighting my attraction with fervor only to find it growing stronger in response to my prayers and petitions. It’s as if God was saying, “You say, ‘Take this away.’ But I say, ‘Love yourself for who I created you to be.'”

I have also been reading Rachel Held Evans’ Searching for Sunday in which she talks about leaving the evangelical Church. It’s continuing to heal me from the hurt and pain inflicted upon me by my faith growing up. She also talks about loving what evangelicalism gave her. While I’m still trying to figure out what I love about evangelicalism, I do know that I’m thankful for growing up in the Christian faith. While I have deconstructed that childhood faith, I wouldn’t have the pieces to begin constructing a faith life now if I didn’t first have it given to me from my parents.

The most important part of my journey in faith and sexuality has been to love myself. I walked away from faith in high school and began learning how to love myself, how to say “no” to destructive forces in my life. It was my first lesson in saying “no,” and thank God I did. As I learned to love myself, I came to find God again. And I found God where God had always been, right beside me loving me for all that I am and smiling that I was finally on the road to accepting myself for who I was created to be. For anyone struggling with understanding and accepting their sexuality, their gender identity, who they feel they are on the inside, especially in the context of faith or particularly evangelical faith, the best advice I can give is learn to love yourself for who you are. You are deeply and fiercely loved by the God of the universe just as you are.

Thank God I’m no longer where I was in high school. Thank God for the saints in my life who led me down a Christian walk that allowed me to find my identity as a Christian and as a gay man compatible. Thank God for the people who have loved me through my faith journey, who have loved me through coming out and coming to terms with my orientation. Thank God for the people who have stuck with me every step of the way. Thank God for changing hearts and minds and opening up people to love me better. Thank God for my husband and for our story of friendship and love. Thank God for young adult fiction with gay characters who tell our children that it’s okay to be different, that it’s okay to be gay or transgender or anywhere on the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity. Thank God that people are starting to pay attention and that LGBTQ people’s lives are being rescued from suicide. Thank God for love that wins out at the end of the day. Simply, thank God.