me again. Covid hit and the marriage didn’t happen. They lived together in England and it was a sad, ongoing, dull grief in the back of my mind. In the course of a few years, there were lots of things that happened, including graduate school for me and an intense deep dive into discipleship to Jesus— how to think like Jesus, believe like Jesus, and act like Jesus.
In the course of my graduate work, God changed my heart in many ways. I still hold to the traditional view of marriage between a biological man and a biological women, but I see the issues around gender and sexuality as much more nuanced and not all about sin. This article is not about sexual sin and right/wrong. I have done a lot of reading and studying, but that discussion is for another day. This article is about me deeply hurting someone and needing to be forgiven. So fast forward three years, to the time when my daughter calls to tell me she is sending me an announcement of her wedding. It isn't an invitation because she knows I am not coming, but she wanted me to see it.
I was in the last semester of my graduate school (Masters in Christian Spiritual Formation and Leadership) and we were learning what seemed like radical discipleship— how to love like Jesus in a secular world, how to participate in God’s mission of ever expanding love, how to hold space for those who don’t believe and behave like us to belong. The sadness and conviction I felt when I realized that my decision had likely deeply hurt my daughter and Quiche, her future spouse, was overwhelming. I sought pastoral counsel and lamented out loud that Jesus had not been invited to a gay wedding! I wanted to know what he would do— what he wants me to do. The pastor I was counseling with looked at me with love in his eyes and said, “Julie, I think sometimes God wants to know what we want to do.”
Fast forward again to the last day of our
time together in Cornwall, England. The two had been married two days before and my husband and I had witnessed it. Now it was the last day before we were to return to America. I asked the two if there were any questions or things they wanted to talk about. I wanted to give them space to talk about the elephants in the room. Quiche shared that my original decision had made him (new preferred pronoun) feel unwanted and unloved. Not just from me but from God. He had not been raised in a Christian family and he knew I was a Christian. My decision, as a Christ-follower, had made Quiche feel that God didn’t love him. My heart broke right in two. Tears streamed down my face as I realized that I had done the exact opposite of Jesus.