She loved her life. "My partner and I shared many vital interests: AIDS activism, children's health and literacy, Golden Retriever rescue, our Unitarian Universalist church, to name a few." She decided she wanted to understand why the Religious Right hated queers like her so she started studying the Bible.
She wrote a scathing article about the Religious Right in her local newspaper. She received a lot of hate mail and fan mail. One pastor, however, wrote a kind note to her asking her simple questions: "How did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God?"
Thus began a two year friendship with this pastor and his wife. He invited her over for dinner. "Ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. And because Ken and Floy did not invite me to church, I knew it was safe to be friends."
She began devouring the Bible. She wanted to find out more about this God they served. She read the verse John 7:17: "If anyone wills to do {God's} will, he shall know concerning the doctrine" and realized she wouldn't understand God's ways until she obeyed Him first, then understanding would come.
Then she asked the question, " Am I a lesbian, or has this all been a case of mistaken identity? If Jesus could split the world asunder, divide marrow from soul, could he make my true identity prevail? Who am I? Who will God have me to be?"
And this is how she ends the article ~
"Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. In this war of worldviews, Ken was there. Floy was there. The church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit. I rested in private peace, then community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me 'wife' and many call me 'mother.'"
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see..
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see..
NO ONE is beyond the transforming work of God. He loves every one and wants all men and women to be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. No sin is too big for Him.
