Over the past few years I have felt my relationship with God grow and take a new and unexpected form. If I make you a promise, will you keep reading? ... I promise that this won't be one of those preachy blogs. Just a collection of what I feel and think, as if spoken to a childhood friend over a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
It pains me the way that my gay and lesbian friends disassociate from God and disconnect from Him as if He's the reason that people are the way they are. I wish that I could pull all of my gay and lesbian friends near one by one and whisper a great and beautiful secret in their ear "The day I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior, he accepted me as a lesbian." God is Love. It's the only real and complete truth about any religion or faith that we try to wrap our feeble minds around. Have you seen Dogma? Maybe we got it all wrong when we took a good idea and tried to make a belief system out of it.
It's gotten so that some people push God away so strongly that I'm scared to object, or to speak in His defense. I don't care if my friends share my beliefs, because faith is a very personal thing. I just wish that they didn't have to feel that alienation from God and what he can be in your life. I'm still growing, and my relationship with God is still evolving. But I trust it, and I know that it's something truly beautiful.
To my Gay and Lesbian friends:
I can say without a shadow of a doubt, with faith in my heart, that God loves me as a lesbian because he made me imperfectly. I'm imperfect, and he loves me just the same. Before you're up in arms, I don't mean that I'm imperfect because I'm gay. I mean that I'm imperfect because I'm human. God forgives me for despising people that act out against gays. God forgives me for the hate I let grow in my heart against them. God forgives me for the lies I've told and the hearts I've broken and the wrong I've done. And I don't believe for one second that me being a lesbian is very high on his list of concerns. God is Love. It's true, it's so very very true.
I wish you didn't feel the need to alienate Him to show those who act out against gays that the reason behind their hate means nothing to you. Those who act in hate on behalf of Him are wrong, and we know this to be true because hate and cruelty and bigotry are wrong on the most fundamental level. Please don't shun Him and banish Him from your heart because His name has been tainted on their lips. Draw Him near, draw near to Him. Hold him close in your heart and let Him be the place that you go when you need freedom from the slurs and the hate and the pain that they bring. Because God doesn't hate.
Much Love,
Stormi
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