“Faith After the Fire: Reimagining God When the Church Failed You”
There’s no easy way to talk about the space between queerness and faith—especially when it feels like standing in a burning building while everyone else calls it a sanctuary. For many of us who grew up Black, queer, and deeply devoted to God, the church wasn’t just a building. It was a lifeline. Until it wasn’t.
This post isn’t about pointing fingers or demanding pity. It’s about making space for truth, for grief, and for the complicated holy tension between love and loss—between leaving what harmed you and still longing for what it promised.
Fitting In Systems Never Built for Me
When I was younger, I learned how to shape-shift. To pray the right prayers, sing the right songs, sit with my knees closed and voice small. I was praised for my "maturity," but really, I was surviving. Every part of me that didn’t fit the church’s mold—my gender, my desires, my neurodivergence—was folded, hidden, and locked away.
The pain didn’t come from not loving God. It came from being told I had to choose between that love and being myself.
In my blog Faith, Fiction, and Identity: Writing from a Place of Holy Tension, I write about how that conflict shows up in my storytelling. And in real life, it can feel like you're carrying the burden of proof: that you belong, that your faith is real, that your pain isn’t a performance.
And yet... there was still God. Still something sacred calling me to stay.
No Pity, Just Truth: The Pain and Loneliness
I don’t want sympathy. I want safety. And for SSA (same-sex attracted) folks—especially Black and trans folks—spaces of safety are rare and hard-won. It’s exhausting to be in communities where you're either tolerated with conditions or erased completely.
For a long time, I left the LGBTQ+ community altogether. I didn’t feel represented. It felt like everywhere I turned, we were either hypervisible in pain or invisible in joy. I missed the in-between. I missed softness. I missed faith that didn’t require me to amputate parts of myself.
Jesus does talk about how we should take up our cross and follow Him—but that’s not the same as cutting off pieces of who we are to be accepted. Carrying a cross isn’t about amputating our queerness, our softness, or our stories. It’s about choosing love in a world that teaches hate. It's about walking through suffering with integrity, not pretending the suffering doesn’t exist. What some churches called “dying to self” was actually asking me to die to truth. But the Jesus I’m trying to follow now doesn’t demand erasure—He sat with the outcasts, touched the untouchable, and saw people fully. That’s the God I’m rebuilding toward.
I’m writing this because someone else is where I was—tired, isolated, and wondering if there’s room for them at the table. And not the table with crumbs of conditional love. A table where our full stories are welcome.
Deconstructing: Not Out of Doubt, But Out of Desperation
My journey into deconstruction didn’t start with rebellion. It started with exhaustion.
I was tired of pretending, tired of silence, tired of seeing people I loved in pain while the people in power offered prayers instead of action. I stopped showing up. I stopped explaining myself. I let go of a version of God that only loved me when I was silent.
And then I began to wonder what could be rebuilt.
Finding What I Believe Now (Even If I Don’t Fully Know)
This part is still unfolding. Some days, belief feels like soft light through a cracked door. Other days, it feels like a weight I can’t pick up again. But it’s mine now—no longer filtered through someone else's fear.
Maybe faith now looks like how I care for others. How I write honestly. How I keep showing up.
Maybe it's in the silence, in the questions I no longer fear asking.
Maybe it's in you, reading this.
If this post resonates with you, you’re not alone. I’m slowly building a space where these stories can exist with tenderness and power. Follow more of my reflections at Book Writing Content 4 U, and let’s connect on Instagram or Threads. You deserve more than survival. You deserve a story where you are whole.
Writing elite- writing elite is a website that addresses family topics of all sorts, I post on there once a month.
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