By: Vanessa Mo
One summer in elementary school back in the 90s, my family vacationed in the rather progressive town of Cape Cod. There, from what my parents told me many years later, I saw a gay couple for the first time and I pointed them out curiously. I only vaguely remember this moment, so I guess it wasn’t particularly defining for me to see a gay couple being affectionate. Apparently, my parents turned my head away and that was that.
As I grew up, LGBTQ+ concerns really didn’t factor into my Christian worldview. I spent most of my time at a Christian school or at church and it wasn’t discussed any further at home. Even in a non-Christian high school and university, I didn’t have any queer friends (that I knew of at the time). It wasn’t until I was working as a teacher that I felt an urgency to get educated about LGBTQ+ issues. When the Ontario Health Curriculum was controversially updated a few years ago to have more LGBTQ+ representation, I felt so overwhelmed by the pressure to respond and to figure out what to teach my students. To my dismay, I was at a complete loss and felt like I should have known better. Shouldn’t I, a Christian and an educated adult, already have thought through some of these things?
I really didn’t have it all together as much as I had hoped. I realised that my default is usually to stay silent and listen before sharing an opinion. But when I don’t act on what I learn or believe, the fear of making a mistake becomes increasingly paralysing. In writing this blog, I was hoping that it would be a process of working through my own bottled up thoughts and feelings and come to some thoughtful and grand conclusion. Instead, after weeks of writing and thinking, I always ended up at the same point: fear. Fear of asking stupid questions, of saying clumsy things, and ultimately of shaking my foundations as a Christian.
It wasn’t until I started to hesitantly share my fears and scattered ideas with Sam and then with Jer, who originally invited me to write this, that I found what I needed to move on in this blog. It was encouraging just to get feedback like ‘I hear you. What about thinking about it this way?” or a simple “It’s ok that you don’t have it all figured out. I don’t either.” Knowing I could have safe conversations with other Christians gave me hope. Instead of digging up my foundations by revealing my fears, I found that it built my faith in God’s trustworthiness.
So what’s the conclusion of this roundabout blog? Do I know my own beliefs well enough to say something to my own kids when the time comes? Unfortunately, I can’t say that I have. I have a lot more work to do, but I also needed to know that I could finish this and confront some fears with my faith still intact. I hope that when I revisit this blog, I’ll be kind to myself and I’ll remember that God taught me more about him through this messy process than in the safety of not saying anything at all. If you’re like me, struggling in private, I hope you can think of a trusted Christian friend to talk with. I hope that you’ll speak up and experience God, in spite of fear. And if you’re someone who has already drawn courage from God, could you be that safe person for someone else?