Mennonite Faith

January 1, 2006

My name is Malissa and this is my story. I am seventh out of eight children, but grew up the youngest of the six of us who survived infancy. My life was very simple and plain for two reasons. First was economics as we were very poor. Second was my parent’s faith. By the time I was born, my parents had been baptized members of a Mennonite church for over five years. We lived plainly because the Mennonites believe that as Christians we are called to live plainly. We girls wore dresses, non form fitting, below the knee dresses, with the only exception of long pants beneath dresses in the frigid temps of winter.

At this time I’m 32 years old. I was born in February of 1970. Life was not always easy but we always had fun. Looking back, my nieces and nephews would be amazed at how we lived. Censored TV (censored by parents), no secular music outside of bluegrass (my father was an avid fan and musician), and even the word ‘punk’ was a no-no. We were allowed no makeup, our hair was not to be cut shorter then shoulder length, and no jewelery. But despite the lack of creature comforts, my childhood, within my family, was one of warmth, music and love. Three incidents of sexual abuse mars that perfect chilldhood, but not so much so, that I can not remember the love I felt within my home.

Things fell apart when my dad decided that another woman looked better, picked my 17 year old best friend as that other woman and by the time I was 14, graced me and my older siblings with another brother. It was a very faith rending time for me and the rest of my family. My father left the church as completely as he left us. However, my mother truly showed Christian faith and strength in the ensuing years.

But I refused to be a part of a God that would allow this to happen to my family. I made many trips back and forth to God in those years. Stayed long enough once, when I was 18, to be baptized and accepted as a member of the church. By this time the church had progressed a little in it’s staunch ideals about clothing and the like, but held true to it’s Biblical foundation. What followed is now what I know to be my way of doing two things.

As a child, the decision to have sex was taken from me. At the age of 21 I lost my virginity willingly to a man I met that very night. I did not enjoy it, however the power that I felt, from being the one to make the decision was nearly overwhelming. I also wanted to get the thoughts of being with other women out of my head. That night, I also became pregnant but later miscarried, which was devastating.

The next two years went by in a blur of men, some nameless, some known, all in this insane need to empower myself with choice, and to prove to myself that I was not gay. In fact, at that time, I was so much in denial that I did not even see the signs. Not enjoying sex, not falling in love, not being attracted to men but only to the power, and imagining designs with the dots on the ceiling while “in the act” with whatever man I had snared.

One day I woke up and believed that if I died that day, I would go to hell, so far had I strayed from God. I slowly began changing, seeing what had taken me down again and again. I completely cut ties with friends, went back to church and was given the gift of a semester at a Mennonite/Anabaptist school of ministry. I went and on the first night there, at a student led worship service, I turned my life back over to Christ.

I stayed for two semesters and came away with a whole lot of new and exciting experiences and had counseled extensively with a professor there who was also a licensed psychologist. I came to terms with many things, yet I hid my secret “abominable” dreams and thoughts of other women away from him. I truly thought it was sin trying to take hold of my life.

That summer, God blessed me with a time to get to know my mother all over again. A very special blessing, as that September she died unexpectedly at the age of 53. That year was one of intense growth for me.

I soon went with Eastern Mennonite Missions, into the Appalacian mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia to do voluntary service work. After my term there was up, I came home, ready to face whatever God had for me.

Now, during the years I had spent away from God, I taught Sunday school, was accepted and never spoken to about the lifestyle I was leading. I am ashamed to say that at times, I went into the classroom still inebriated. It was obvious, yet still, not a person said anything to me about it. After coming home, I began working. Work became everything, not because I wanted it to, or because I enjoyed it that much, but simply because it was that demanding. My weekends were taken up and church became a hit and miss thing with me.

I began to feel empty, but not only empty because my relationship with Christ was faltering, but empty because everything I tried to fill myself up with, religion being one of those things, there was still something deeply within me that echo’d…hollow. I began to search the internet. In this, I found several things about myself that I would never have considered possible.

One, I could fall in love with a man…over the internet. He eventually became a Christian and I realized something about myself in the process. While I had fallen for this guy, it was not the man I fell for, but his soul which had very feminine qualities. Secondly, I also encountered, head on, an attraction for women. By this time, I was far enough removed away from God that ‘it’s a sin’ didn’t really come into play immediately. It wasn’t until I met a woman I fell in love with, soul and body, that I finally had to come out to myself that I was indeed gay. When that moment hit, I was filled with this freedom, that to this day, I can still feel, but not explain.

Then terror struck. I was gay! I was a lesbian! I was now being bombarded with every verse I had bombarded homosexuals with within my ministries, and I was terrified. So much so, that I made a very unwise decision. I separated myself from God. The first step to that was not unwise, it simply should have not gone further. I knew, that by coming out, that I would be facing alot of anger and hard feelings within the church and within my circle of friends. I was pretty sure my family would accept me, and they did and do. However, being a member of the Mennonite church that preaches out against homosexuality, I no longer felt comfortable in remaining a member there. I also wanted to take the “shunning” weapon out of their hands. I am speaking of the formal shunning. By removing my membership, they could not formally shun me, as I was no longer part of them.

However, I took it further and when I did that, I pretty much left God behind too. My thought was, I can’t be a part of God and be gay. I can not be with God and be totally fulfilled. So I ran straight into the arms of a woman who became my nightmare. We never were together romantically, but we were domestic partners. I made myself believe that the abuse, physical and mental, that I was experiencing at her hands, was God’s punishment for my being gay. One night though a thought came to me. God was not only the God of judgement, but the God of love and He loved me and He promised to never leave me nor forsake me. He would never punish me without love and there was no love behind the abuse. The next few weeks became bearable only by pleading with God, going back and forth as to if it was possible for me to be a Christian and a lesbian.

Finally one night God spoke to me and said, “Go to my word.” So I went with the hopes of confirming what I had said all along, that homosexuality was a sin. Instead, when I opened my Bible, the first words I read were, “In Christ there is no respector of persons, neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile.” The neither male nor female jumped out at me and this verse resonated within me. “Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and he who loveth is born of God and knoweth god. He who loveth not, knoweth not God for God is love.” (1 John 4:7,8). I screamed out to God, why must I be separate from You in order to be who I am. He answered, with His own quiet voice and those verses, that night. He said, “I never said you must be, all I ever said was come to Me”.

And so, I went to Him.

I’d love to be able to say that I don’t struggle still, but I can’t. Thirty years of teaching can not be wiped clean so easily. It also hurts very much, that the same people who allowed me to teach sunday school drunk, refuse to allow me even the smallest task within the church because I am gay. Some even refuse to speak to me.

But day by day, and step by step, I am making it. I am a Christian, a child of God, who has been blessed with the gift of being gay. Where do I go from here? I feel a powerful pull to go into ministry, this time as a preacher. I am unsure of how to get there, and what to do if and when I do, but I know that through it all God will forever be my Resource and my Guide.

This personal story of faith and reconciliation comes from the archives of www.christianlesbians.com and was originally posted in 2004.

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Posted in Personal Stories