Telling our stories - An anonymous reflection for our Open Table Liverpool community
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I heard the Parable of the Sower [Matthew 13: 1-9] multiple times as a child, and never really understood it.
When I was writing my story the share with Open Table, I started to see parts of the parable played out in my life and my journey with my faith.
I am originally from a very small town in the midlands. The first church I attended with my family was brilliant, not too conservative, with a large enough kid’s groups and in an old big building that felt like stepping back to medieval times. Then, my brother started attending an evangelical and extremely conservative church. He convinced my parents to move to an evangelical church. My parents and brothers thought it was incredible but I hated it, I had friends at the old church and there was no one my age at the new church, they were all either a few years older than me, or a few years younger.
At the new church, they made a big deal about Gods will and obeying God and that the stronger your faith was, the better and all doubt was bad. As a result, I got scared and dived headfirst into the Evangelical church. It was not fun. The church was also supposedly very autism friendly, but in an autism speaks kind of way, which basically means they were ableist and certain congregation members were big on praying for my autism to be ‘cured’.
When I was in primary school, someone who used to bully me learned the word ‘lezzer’, it was his new favourite insult, and as I was his favourite target. I got called a ‘lezzer’ quite a lot before I realised that I am not straight. I thought it was a smart idea to ask my mum ‘what’s a lezzer’ and she replied ‘lesbian, a gay woman’ and then followed up with ‘you’re not a lesbian, you’re my daughter’. This was not helped by the fact that a few weeks before this, there was a gay storyline on EastEnders and my mum had told me what gay meant and then told me that the bible says it is sinful.
My mum was probably the biggest influence on how I viewed my sexuality and gender as a teenager. She would appear to be extremely liberal on somethings. But then she would show me an article in the Daily Mail about a gay couple and I would get some rant about ‘the scriptures being so clear on this, these people are disrespecting god’ or, on one occasion, there was a documentary on TV about a trans man who was pregnant, and she said, ‘he’s not really a man is he?’.
The problems at church and from my mother were made worse by an evangelical festival that I would attend each year with my family, and later, church. Because I was autistic, I was not allowed to fully be part of the kid’s groups, I had to sit separately. The festival was fully submerged in purity culture and the ex-gay movement. I was repeatedly told that there was no such thing as gay, your identity is in Christ, just some people ‘suffer from same sex attraction’. There was also an attitude that if something bad happened, or you were disabled, it was because either you or someone else had sinned and God was punishing you. There was one incident where a worship leader stood up in front of a room of teenagers and said that he had been in a car crash, in which his girlfriend had died, and it happened because he had only half-heartedly ‘given his life to Jesus’.
When I was teenager, I developed what was first called ‘post viral fatigue syndrome’ after an awful infection. I later was diagnosed with CFS/ME. I stopped going to church. I could barely cope with school, never mind anything else. During the first year I was ill, I genuinely believed that I was being punished for something because of the teachings at the evangelical festival.
By the time I was well enough to go back to church, I was starting to realise that my primary school bully might have been on to something. Thankfully, I was aware of the hypocrisy of someone very involved in my church leadership, saving me from returning and believing every dodgy thing they were trying to teach me.
While I was leaving the church, my brother was slowly getting drawn into even more conservative churches. He has attended several conservative evangelical churches, getting more conservative with time. even after my faith had begun to grow again in my first year of university, seeing my brother’s churches made me scared of going anywhere near a church.
Later, when I was in my second year of university, me and some friends ended up living with someone who was vary abusive. After he moved out, I had a 6 month long break down which ended with me in A&E following a suicide attempt. The Sunday after I just got up early and went to church.
In St Brides and Open Table I have found somewhere I would always be welcome not matter who I am - I do not have to hold back and hide any part of who I am whether it be my autism or my queerness. The support I have had from church and open table over the last couple of years has been invaluable, both the support I have had just from being part of the community and from individuals.
Since coming back to church, my faith has become so much deeper and richer. I have begun to learn what the church is supposed to be like by seeing God working through other people. I am not here because I am scared of an ‘angry god’ like I was when I was younger. I am here because, through Christ, who loves me as I am, I have the courage to be my authentic self. And not just because of the way god works though me, but because of the way god work through other people.