BJUnity

Jenni Frencham

My family didn’t actually attend church until after my parents divorced. My mom then became quite involved in church groups and Bible studies, and when I was in junior high we started attending our first Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church. The area where we lived didn’t have many Christian school options, so I attended public school along with many of the other teens in our youth group. It was generally expected that we would all attend a Christian university once we graduated from high school.

During my senior year of high school, another member of our youth group came out as a lesbian. Rather than support her or continue to be her friend, I joined my fellow Christians in shunning her in the hopes that she would see the error of her ways. While outwardly I expressed disgust at the idea of homosexuality, inwardly I was terrified that others would see what I already knew: I was a lesbian.

I attended Bob Jones University for six years. While I drank the “fundy kool-aid” like everyone else and pretended to conform, inside I knew I just didn’t agree with a lot of the rules and teachings that were constantly being hammered into my brain. But somehow I had become convinced that they were right and I was wrong. In a last-ditch attempt to become wholly Fundy, I confessed to my “homosexual temptations” during my second year of grad school. I discovered upon this admission that the fundamentalist church is completely unequipped when it comes to dealing with same-sex attractions. My pastor’s wife didn’t know how to help me and all of my friends abandoned me once they knew. They’d either stop talking to me altogether or they created rules about when we could be together, rules like “If you visit me in my dorm room, we have to keep the door open” or “If we eat together in the Dining Common, we can only do so if there are other people with us in a group.”

I felt like I had the plague or that I had suddenly turned into some sort of monster in their eyes. I was so frightened and so alone. Several times I considered just ending it all. I resorted to cutting to take the focus off of my emotional pain.

My solution to this problem was to move far, far away in the hopes that a change of scenery and a new life would jolt me back into normalcy. I was still convinced at this point that I could pray more or read my Bible more or serve more or memorize more Scripture and that eventually I’d please God enough that He would “cure” me of my homosexuality.

Six long years later, far away on a remote Pacific island where I was teaching at an IFB school, God spoke. For years I had prayed and asked God to take away my desires, to make me straight. I kept saying, “God, if you are willing, you can make me straight.” And when I stopped my frantic service and study long enough to listen, God said, “I don’t fix what isn’t broken. I love you just the way you are.”

I quit the endless striving to become something I wasn’t, quit the ex-gay chat rooms I had frequented for so long, and quit the IFB. Back in the States, I am still trying to “straighten out” my thinking about what exactly I believe and what is just inherited faith. But I remain convinced that God loves me more than I can possibly understand, and that my orientation, once such a big deal to me, is not a problem with Him at all. I am so excited about what the future holds for me and for all of us as we learn to bask in the love God has for all of His children.