Sunday Clothes

I am a religious queer. How strange it sounds, even on the page. How much funnier it is for me to live. In high school the kids in the gay-straight alliance couldn't believe I was still Christian, and most of the Christians I knew wanted to believe that if I loved Christ, I wouldn't be queer. I fit into no one's plan. I didn't fit into the two-by-two, male and female model of Noah's arc. But neither would I drown out my God if he told me to build an arc. I am sorry for my analogies - they were far better in my head. Such is the way.

What does it mean to live under the raised eyebrows of both my communities? What does it mean to get out of bed with my girlfriend and let her help me put on my Sunday clothes and walk with me to church? In my mind's eye, we are as every churchgoing young couple should be. We share a hymnal and she holds my hand through the sermon. Sometimes I forget that we are different. Sometimes I even wonder when one of the sweet older church ladies is going to ask us when we're getting married. I remember, always, that this will not happen. Not yet, the voice inside tells me. Someday. 

I don't want us to pretend to be anything other than what we are, my love. We are not straight, we are not vanilla. We swear and sometimes we drink and we do things at night that mostly you can only read about online. None of that matters. The fact is that one of the ways I demonstrate my love for you is to connect that love with my faith.

And so I take you to church. I try with every ounce of my being to make you smile, to hold my hand just a little tighter, to kiss me with as much joy as Sunday morning can bring you. In showing you my faith, I want to show you the best of myself. I take you to church so that you can be there when my crooked heart opens to God - and to you.