#MyQueerTestimony
this is late and long and very chaotic, and i’m sure i messed up a few times, but more than anything this is real. 1/

my testimony is hope. right now, i can’t say that i know anything for certain. i don’t know if the church is true. honestly, a lot of the time i can’t even feel god at all. but i do know that i have hope. 2/

i have so much hope in a greater plan. hope in an answer to all of my questions. hope in a loving god. so during this seemingly unending period of confusion, i cling to this hope. 3/

my purpose in life has always been to spread love and light and peace to as many people as i can. i used to think the only way to do this was through the church. 4/

i knew that god was the root of all light and love, but growing up it seemed like the only way to connect with him was through the church. so the church became my conduit to god. 5/

so when i first began to learn that maybe the church wasn’t as pure and perfect as i had always thought, my relationship with god became blocked. without the church to show me how to talk to him, i no longer could feel his love. 6/

this is when my depression first took hold, and things got really dark really fast. the light that lives inside my heart disappeared. that year was full of indescribable darkness that i don’t want to get into in this thread. 7/

but one day, overnight, it was like a switch flipped. i was still depressed, but i could breathe again. my life was no longer in limbo, and the light was back. i don’t know how else to describe it. i have no other explanation for what happened than that it was an act of god. 8/

and this is when i first felt hope again.
i couldn’t (and still can’t!) connect with god through the lens of the church. but god is so much bigger than the organization, works, and often mistakes of men! 9/

he exists and is fighting for us no matter how confused we are or how lost we feel. whether we have strayed from his only true church or whether he has no church at all. 10/

so i feel hope. his light and love surpasses all the restrictions of our life on earth. what reason is there to not have hope that he fully understands the love we feel? because that’s all this is, and that’s why it is so hard to understand. 11/

god is love. we are all extensions of that love. and yet, we are being told that the way we feel the most fundamental aspect of our beings is wrong. and i just cannot fathom a god whose love has limits and exceptions. 12/

so for now, i breathe in that love, and i hope. please hope with me. 13/