Her Faith Inspires Me

*Warning Long Post Ahead*

Kay has such a strong, unwavering faith in God that it inspires me greatly. I find myself slowly taking baby steps toward praying daily again and believing that God is indeed with me. I have never doubted He's with me and has been with me throughout my entire life. I haven't known how to feel about being gay and religious. I cannot say gay and (insert religion here) because I am torn between Islam and Christianity.

When I was a Christian my faith was unshakable and I was very much involved in church and being a serious child had decided I was going into the ministry when I was about fourteen or fifteen. At that age I'd taken a course my church offered for being a sunday school teacher (along with much older adults), passed the exam and taught children's sunday school, became youth group leader and a member of Fellowship of Christian Athletes while in high school. I lived by the book, did devotions for an hour everyday when I came home from school and just felt like God was breathing next to me at every moment in my life. It felt good. I talked to him like He was my best friend and could often be found walking slowly home from the bus stop thanking God for the color of the leaves, for such a beautiful day and the breeze. On a rainy day, asking for his mercy upon people in parts of the world who were experiencing drought and needed rain, thanking him for the beautiful flowers these rains wrought. At the same time I was also praying for him to take this 'thing' away from me, lead me away from this temptation. I would often cry hard asking him why I'd been cursed with such a heavy and hard thing I couldn't even talk to anyone but him about. I asked how He could put this upon me and why it wasn't going away despite all that I did. I did everything I could to bury it, forget it and blocked any thought related to it before it had a chance to form in my head. I put guards at the gate of my mind to ward off 'those' thoughts so they'd never have a chance to become actions.

It lead to rather depressing moments, and coupled with losing my mom at age 13 lead to suicidal thoughts. I leaned on Him more and I'm still here. My thoughts were never of a detailed sexual nature, more like I just wanted to love and take care of (usually a friend) more than a friend should do. As a result I never really clicked with girls and had male acquantances, but was often that ear that even girls I didn't really know, came to talk to. I digress.

I miss that closeness with God. I left home at 17 and stayed with an older cousin. I even worked at a place that had primarily gay/lesbian employees. My relaxer was done regularly by a co worker who lived with her partner, their girl twins and an effeminate son. Not something you see often, but they were both butch black women as well. I lived with a gay woman, and went to technical school with lots of gay women. Point is, I'd buried it so deeply I thought nothing of it and rarely stopped to consider that part of me. When I did, it was too depressing and I felt guilty and immediately dismissed it. I think I just ran harder until I eventually ran into a newer, stricter religion and wasted no time getting married. That was my introduction to Islam.

To Be Continued...