Queering My Faith - Moving to Moscow...Idaho

I came home a little early from Egypt.  I was having trouble with one of my knees and I needed to see a doctor.  But I had a problem with this scenario, I didn't have a job or insurance.  So after sleeping for a day, I hopped in the car and went to Target.  I found the HR Team Lead and before I could ask about getting back to work, she asked if I could come in that night since they were short staffed.  I dug out my red and khaki and went to work.  Much had changed, many of my friends had moved on or had stopped partying.  I was promoted from sales floor grunt to recovery team lead then to cashier supervisor.  At the time I was content to be back and working, but I knew that I did not want to stay in retail for my whole life.  I had a calling and counting tills and dealing with angry customers was not my life's ambition.

Shortly after returning from Egypt I started having regular sessions with one of the Pastors of my home church.  We tried to work through events of my past and find ways of solidifying the changes that had occurred in Egypt.  I was a changed person, it was not God's plan for me to be gay, so I was going to keep working on it until I was fixed for good.  I was continuing to entrench myself in a conservative Christian worldview and anything that went against my beliefs was wrong, immoral, and I wanted nothing to do with it.    As much as it pains me to say it, I was extremely homophobic when I returned from Egypt and that homophobia was encouraged in the process of my healing.  I was never outwardly mean to people, but I would avoid them or pray for them, but I would not accept them as LGBT.

During the Spring of 2001 I started applying for youth director positions.  I had several interviews across Washington and Oregon.  As I was leaving for an interview south of Seattle I received a phone call from a church in Moscow, ID.  We chatted for a couple of minutes, I was asked to send a resume, and by the time I came home from Seattle I had a request for an interview.  It was a beautiful Moscow afternoon when I arrived.  I was early so toured the town a little and fell in love.  The interview went well and within a week I had an offer.    I was the new youth director for the First Presbyterian Church.  I was so excited!

I was a rad youth director, it made me so happy and I was so in love with my job.  I have always had a passion for working with young people.  I love the way they interact with the world, the way they push boundaries, and challenge me to think beyond what I know. It was a small youth group, but they were engaged and I had the opportunity to really get to know them.  I loved my job.

I fell in quickly with the congregation.  I didn't know anyone in Moscow so the folks at First Pres became my family.  I was happy.  I started working on getting myself in shape and watching what I ate.  I didn't have a car for almost the first year, so I rode my bike or walked everywhere. I went to Weight Watchers, I counted my points and I lost some weight. I kept my happy face on when I was at church, but I cried a lot when I was alone.  Deep feelings were starting to wake up in me and I was scared.  I had built a facade for people to see and admire.  I was a good strong, Christian, woman, you had a fantastic prayer life, read the Bible on a regular basis, and had my shit together.  Little did they know that I was looking up Exodus International meetings and scared as hell that I would be found out for the freak I was.  I was in contact with an ex-gay support group in the Spokane area and had I been able to get there my life may have taken a different turn.  But with no wheels I was stuck in Moscow.

So I turned to a friend at church, expecting to find the same rhetoric I had heard from other conservative Christians. But there was no condemnation or calls for denial of myself, instead I was met with compassion, grace, and a warmth that I had not experienced when I told people about my struggle.  She cried with me, not because I was broken, but because I had been hurt so badly by others who claimed Christianity but used the Bible as a weapon.  She cried because I had been told that in order to be whole I had to deny a beautiful and essential part of myself.  She was the first person to tell me that God made me who I am, all of who I am.

This sent me into a tail spin.  My world turned upside down, spun round and round, and did flips all at the same time.  My sense of self had been destroyed  and the rebirth process would take years and be very painful.  As I started to pick up the pieces I started the process of coming out again.  I had never come out to my family in college.  I think I came out to my sister first, quite unexpectedly.  I was in Spokane for the weekend and was going to a drag show. (Yes I was doing the double life thing again)  She asked why I was going and in her smart ass way said, "What are you, a lesbian?"  I said yes.  And the look on her face was priceless.  It was utter shock. It felt so good to finally say it.  Either in the same weekend or shortly there after I had a conversation with my mom.  We were at Riverfront Park, sitting on the steps of the carousel, looking at the river.  After much hemming and hawing I finally looked away and said "I'm gay."  Her response, "I know."  UGH!  All the build up in my head, all the anxiety and she already knew!  It was more than I ever hoped.  It would be a while before my brother would find out, but that came soon enough.

I was out to my family, but that was about it.  No one at church knew, except for that one friend.   I wanted to keep it quite.  It had no bearing on my ability to do my job.  I was a fantastic youth director, who happened to be a single woman who was a lesbian.  I figured as long as I didn't talk about it, everything would be fine.  And they were for a little while, but as I moved through the summer of 2002 I was starting to realize that I needed to think about a new career path.  I decided to go back to school and pursue my first degree choice.  I was going to be a teacher, just not a biology teacher. The University of Idaho is in Moscow so I was able to schedule my classes around my work and everything was great.

Everything was great until a couple of my students asked a question."Are you a lesbian?"  I answered with the best non-answer I could muster.  I said "I have never dated a woman and I have never dated a man."  Both were true statements, so I felt like I had not given away the biggest secret in the world.  I don't know that they believed me, but at the time I was relieved to be out of the situation.  We had been talking about integrity and living honest and open lives, so I felt slightly guilty for not telling the complete truth, but in the moment I needed to feel safe.   This question, as simple as it was, started a chain of events that were heart breaking, soul wrenching, and painfully liberating.