Being pushed away felt like being excommunicated from my own family. I knew I didn’t belong in the church, but I tried because the church had always been an integral part of my life. While my head pastor spoke generally, I began to think he was speaking directly to me. The head pastors at my church always spoke of the destruction of people who acted like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. I believed my relationship with God was solid, but men would make you believe otherwise. Once, after having sex with another man, we prayed together for forgiveness. We would meet, have sex, and in the morning, I would pray for forgiveness. The church allowed me not to be questioned by my friends in college, and my neighbors were not suspicious due to my mostly hooking up with straight-passing men who carried big Bibles under their arms too. Being unable to date or marry women as a member of the church, I found myself constantly around men. Though the church was supposed to change me, it just created more shields.
