When our children were young, back in the mid 80s, my husband and I felt that it was important to live near their loving grandparents. We packed up and moved to our hometown. My husband was employed an hour away so he commuted on the train each day to work.
We naturally returned to the church where both he and I attended when teenagers and were married after college. It was a wonderful Episcopal church with lovely people.
The Episcopal church was one of the first to be outwardly supportive of the gay community. I had a very conservative upbringing and attempted to ignore this aspect of the faith, but, when they commissioned the first gay bishop, it became too much for me to ignore and we moved to another church, a non-denominational, evangelical church, where we remained for 25 years.
God began an amazing transformation in us. Our family thrived at our new church. We poured ourselves into church life, volunteering often and attending small groups. Then one day, my growing faith led me to start praying for God to help me to “love well”. I had no idea the impact that that prayer would have on my life.
“I had given much thought to what it looked like to love well. It seemed like such a simple prayer but it was answered differently than I anticipated. I expected that God would increase my number of lunch dates to encourage people, or have me support them through difficult life circumstances, but God had deep transformational ideas in mind in response to my naive invitation. So, when I prayed to love well, God presented me with three very unexpected and powerful experiences, over a few short months.
First, my husband was invited to consider a position on staff at our church to be the director of International Ministries. It was an amazing position, so after much prayer, he left a very lucrative position as a lawyer to go to a not so financially lucrative position at church. It was a calling. I joined him on staff a year later.
Then, my father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I stepped down from my new teaching position to help care for him, with my siblings, until he died seven months later. It was a heartrending experience.
The third experience took us to our knees. Our younger son, who was twenty-two at the time, told us he believed he was gay. He was not certain and invited our family to join him on a journey to discern. He explained that he had been experiencing same-sex attraction for ten years prior and asked us to pray for him as he questioned God about his identity. “Is this who I really am?” Our son chose to go through counseling during this process and spent the next couple of months in prayer and discernment with a young couple from the Christian organization that had mentored him in college. They walked with him through the Bible exploring original text to see what God had said about same-sex attraction. I was convinced that he would come out of this process believing that he was straight. That was not the result of his discernment. After months, of seeking answers, he believed that this was who God created him to be…a gay man. We were devastated.
How could this be? Both of our sons were raised in the church and had been very active in it as leaders. When they went to college, they found a home in the Christian organization on campus. Our younger son was president, for heaven’s sake. My husband and I began to pray for God to step in and show Himself strong, and He did… but not the way we expected.
I was raised in the church at a time where what was taught went unquestioned. And, what was taught about the LGBTQ community stayed with me for a very long time; that being gay was a wrong choice.
The months following my son’s declaration, my husband and I spent many hours with him sharing everything that we believed, everything that the church had taught us about being gay. We quoted bible verses and shared our opinions about something we knew nothing about, hoping that we could convince him otherwise. It was not our finest hour as parents.
Then, we began to examine ourselves. When something occurs in the life of your children you are forced to question if you were in anyway responsible. Our sons were raised in a Christian home. They went to Sunday school, went through all the youth groups, and committed their lives to Christ. What had we done, or not done, that had contributed to his being gay? It was a very humbling experience.
To say that our world was rocked does not even come close to the immense emotions that we experienced during this time. All the hopes and dreams that we had for our younger son were dashed in an instant…and we struggled for answers. We wanted to protect him from the world’s response. The thought of him having a lifetime of persecution was heartbreaking. What about marriage? What about grandchildren…our grandchildren?
Our older son, sixteen and a half months older than his brother, had just married a wonderful young woman a few months before. She was our younger son’s best friend in high school. Our younger son would never have this in his life. What about his future? Where was God in all of this? Wasn’t He supposed to be sovereign? Why wasn’t He doing anything?
Over the next few months, there were many conversations as a family and with God. There were many sleepless nights and many tears shed.
Then…one day…God spoke. He said that our response to our son was to “just love him.” God had plans. He would take care of him.“This is what loving well looks like.”
So, as God began to reveal more of His love for our family, my husband and I began to do research on same-sex attraction and our eyes were opened. “
Excerpt from Who Do You Say I Am? Personal Life Stories Told by the LGBTQ Community, by Carol Marchant Gibbs
Thirteen years have past since that time. Through the years, God has reminded us of His love for our family and taught us many things about justice and His deep desire for all mankind to experience love.
We have begun to understand the face of persecution as we have supported our son. The church we fled to 25 years prior because gay bishops were being commissioned became the accuser. How ironic. We chose love, left the church of 25 years, and found a more affirming church.
God created all people. Could He be using our differences, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, people with disabilities, man, woman… to teach us what love really looks like? Look beyond the surface and enter into a conversation with someone who is different from yourself. God will surprise you…no question.
I remember experiencing deep sadness after my father died many years ago. As I walked along a secluded beach, I found myself pleading for God to reveal His love for me. I prayed that on that very shell-less beach, I would find a symbol of His love, a conch shell. After walking a short distance, down at my feet was the conch for which I had prayed. But, when I stopped to pick it up, I saw that it was broken. Then, I felt God speak. “Life does not always look the way you think it should, but it is beautiful just the same.”
Look for beauty today.
