I am a person who has loved God for as long as I can remember.

From sitting in Ms. Edmonds' Sunday School class and junior church as I learned the songs, bible quizzes, and the stories that would shape the rest of my life. All the lessons taught me that God loved me no matter what. Church became my safe space, the place I ran to, the place I belonged.

But underneath that love, I carried something that felt like a collision. From a young age, I knew I didn't fit the girl gender identity I had been given, and I was attracted to girls. I had questions the pews couldn't answer, and the pulpit wouldn't welcome. So I did what so many of us learn to do: I stayed quiet. I folded my truth small enough to fit inside the silence, and I carried it that way for years.

At forty, I finally let it go. I traded the safety of silence for the freedom of my truth.

Here is what I found on the other side. I didn't lose my faith. I found a deeper one. I discovered the radical realization that I never had to reconcile my identity with God, because God never saw me as separate in the first place. God was never waiting for me to fit into someone else's understanding of who I should be. God already knew who I was, and They already loved me completely.

That is the story I carry now. Not one of collision, but of coming home.