The Preacher’s Daughter

I was talking with coworkers the other day about dating and different cultures and religions… they started to comment on a couple one of them knew who had a long distance relationship in a very strict Christian culture. This couple had just married, and they hadn’t even kissed as part of their dating. As my coworkers commented on how unrealistic of a lifestyle that was for them, and what they had coming, I felt compelled to share an experience with them. One that I hoped would open their eyes, and show them how different religions can be, and how influential it can be on a person. Sometimes even when it seems oppressive, which in many cases, it does.

When I was 22, I began dating this girl. We’d met at a community PFLAG event and we seemed to have a lot in common. I connected with her eyes, very quickly. I knew instantly there was something about her from a past life, something at the soul level, that I needed to connect with here. We began hanging out and quickly became an item. She went by Jess, and she was the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher. Her family was very sweet and they welcomed me, until they found out I was her girlfriend. They kicked her out and left her homeless and struggling. Jess floated from place to place, also living in my car, until we moved into an apartment together. Her family came around, and helped support us in having a place to live and being able to afford being on our own. But through this whole time, Jules struggled with being Saved, and being a lesbian. She felt very strongly that we were living a life of sin, and this caused a lot of stress in our relationship.

She and I searched for churches who would accept us. We went to a United Methodist Church and were kicked out. It was a horrifying experience as they separated us, prayed over us, and tried to tell each of us that the other was dragging us to Hell with her. I remember sobbing in the narthex of the church because I couldn’t make it stop. At the end, I got in my convertible with the rainbow sticker on the back, turned up an Indigo Girls CD, and drove off as fast as I could. Thankful it was over. Thankful I had her and we could comfort each other. But we couldn’t. Jess was too scared by her upbringing in the the Southern Baptist Church, that this rare, unaccepting group of Methodists convinced her that we couldn’t be together and be Saved by God’s grace. We argued that night, we cried, she broke up with me, and in the morning, we began to heal. Together. We clung to each other, feeling forsaken, like we had nothing else. And we looked for another church…

We went to her father’s church for Christmas Eve that year. We walked in together and sat with her mom and siblings and listened to a very nice Christmas celebration. I sung the hymns and thought things were going well, until I heard the whispers. People were approaching her mom and apologizing. “I’m so sorry about your daughter,” they’d say. One by one, as if in a funeral procession, paying their respects to the body as the exited the sanctuary. We left, saddened by the evening. Jess, once again, feeling alone and full of sin. I’m convinced if I hadn’t gotten really sick that night, she would’ve broken up with me again in search of her salvation.

A few months later, Jess ran into someone she knew from her childhood. This woman had fought addictions and won, and had been Saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jess desperately wanted to accept Him back into her heart, and so she went to church. I stayed behind, tainted by our last experience, leery of a church I didn’t know, and confident that I didn’t need a building full of people to tell me that God loved me because I already knew. Her friend soon realized that Jess wouldn’t continue to come to church unless she got me to come as well, so she invited us to see “The Passion of the Christ” with Mel Gibson. It had just been released in the theaters. Afterwards, there was a Bible study to talk about the symbolisms in the movie. I was all-in for this. It sounded noncommittal and very interesting. So we went… I sat in the Bible study with my baseball cap on, just listening as the conversation quickly turned to nightmares and blood prayers. Praying for the blood of Jesus to save one from terrible dreams. And then… she outed Jess. Told the whole room that she wasn’t living right, she was living with a woman in sin, and that was the reason for these nightmares. My head sunk as I began to hide my face with the brim of my baseball cap. I sensed this was going horribly wrong. The preacher’s wife was sitting in the room with us as they all talked about overcoming addictions and being saved. And then it happened… she outed me. They compared loving women to laying in an alley, covered in blood and sweat, waiting for your next high. Strung out on cocaine and heroine. These weren’t the same things! The love I felt was beautiful, it was pure. It wasn’t to be compared to a high given by an illegal drug. I’d done cocaine, I knew the difference between loving a woman and getting high on cocaine. They didn’t compare. I got up and left, I told the friend that had brought us that this wasn’t what I had come for and I would be waiting on the front porch.

From that point forward, I took Jess to church and picked her up. We talked about being Christians often, and she questioned her ability to be a Child of God and a lesbian. To be Saved and be gay. The oppressive nature of her religion made it impossible for her to be in a relationship with any woman and be happy. She was a tortured soul, and it broke my heart. Eventually, she chose her relationship with Jesus above everything else, including me, and she left. She called me a few weeks later, begging to come home. This “friend” who had outed us in the Bible study had taken everything that she wore to define who she was and replaced them with feminine and “straight” looking items. She wouldn’t let Jess cut her hair, or wear a men’s polo or shorts. She bought her skirts and darted button up tops. My heart broke, but I knew somehow she would always make this choice and I let her go for good.

She later went to a Bible college and pursued her dream of being a youth director for a church. We don’t speak and I don’t know if she ever came to terms with herself or not. I moved on from this experience and learned to look for open and accepting churches.