Part 3 | What the Young Church Can Teach Us About Same-Sex Attraction
*names have been changed for identity protection
Having access to someone’s heart is a privilege I do not take lightly. Today I share one last story of a holy young woman I’ve come to know. I pray you do not read these stories as just “characters” out of a book, but as a real encounter with part of Jesus’s heart we may not witness again until the other side of the Kingdom.
Anna
Anna* was a senior in high school when I met her. She was a seven-time camper, frequent youth group attendee, altar server at church, and weekly Mass goer with her family. Anna fought to pray every day, even though it realistically turned into twice a week. She wanted to know more about who God was and was ready to fight for greater freedom. She was gentle, kind, and often wanted to listen more than share, but once you got her sharing, you better believe Anna had a story for everything.
I’m not sure how it came up but within 10 minutes of meeting my small group, they started sharing about their boyfriends. Anna shared that had started dating someone two months ago. All the girls started asking me about my relationship history and I shared that my longest relationship was actually with a woman for close to three years. I gave a brief summary of my testimony and used it as a space to let the girls know that all of their mess is welcome here. We are all just figuring it out together.
As the retreat went on, I had one-on-one time with Anna a few times as we talked about theology and faith. Anna told me about how she was living on mission in high school and how she hoped to continue mission life in college. One hour into this conversation, she began to stutter until the words she had been trying to hide finally stumbled out: “My girlfriend.”
As I normally do in these situations, I just began to ask her about her girlfriend: what she was like, how they met, how her family felt about her dating a girl, and how she has been reconciling this with her faith. She revealed in this dialogue the insane tension she felt with her feelings toward this girl. She said this had been going on for multiple years and she had been trying to figure it out alone. We ran out of time in this dialogue but I made sure to take my time and thank her for being so vulnerable with me.
I left our conversation hurt. Not at any specific organization or program or family, but still hurt. How could a young woman who is so close to the Lord and so involved with the Church not share this important part of her life with anyone? How was she missed all these years? The answer is simple: she didn’t feel safe.
What Can We Learn from Anna?
The Church is meant to be a home for the broken and bruised, the lost and forgotten, the depressed and ill. The Church is not where you go when you have it all together—it’s the complete opposite. The Church is for the hopeless, the despairing, and the mess. If you’re a mess with many questions, I have a place for you.
Sadly, however, so many of our brothers and sisters with same-sex attraction feel unseen and unsafe in Church environments. For some of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, church can be either a place where your sexuality is ignored or a place where it’s a cause for scandal. The Church should be the safest place they’ve ever been, but it often becomes a battleground.
As Pope Francis says, “I see the Church as a field hospital after battle.” Anna didn’t leave that week ending her relationship with her girlfriend, but she was ready to tell more people about it. She didn’t leave with every answer to her questions, but she was no longer afraid to go to the Source of every answer. Let’s be a people of truth, safety, and love.
You belong here.