While my partner and I have lived together for over 20 years, we are still not out to most of the people in our lives. Most people that hear that say that our families are just pretending not to know but in actuality the idea that we could be gay is so diabolical and so foreign to them that they are just unable to consider it. We’ve both chosen not to tell them ONLY because we don’t want to hurt them.

Anyway, this is all kind of off-topic but we do yearn for the day that Illinois legalizes gay marriage because we certainly want to do that here where we live.

I really enjoy being in conversation on issues like these and appreciate having recently found your site!

And I so appreciate your overall message that relationship with Him is where it’s at. Thank you for your encouragement for our faith walks!

I had to go back up to the top to see what the headline was that you’d chosen for the article, and see it’s Gay Marriage, since I’d gotten so far off topic on the small chunks of what you’d shared that I was swishing around in my brain.

Quite different from the direction of where you are going in today’s article, I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately on the state of my gay marriage. Kamille and I have been married about 20 months. I’ve been dejected and listless lately, sad that I don’t hear from a number of friends any more (my previous church friends have melted away now that I seem gay for sure and it seems unlikely they’ll change me, now that I took the step of marrying a woman).

I’ve been in prayer about what’s up with this, God? Do we need to move to be around more folks who’d be ok with us? (Rural, small-town Alaska is not the most gay-friendly place…) i’m a very social person, and socialness has been cut off since I’ve been with Kamille, by and large, except for talking with old friends elsewhere by phone. After being whiny and mopey for a good chunk of time, I felt some revelation.

Ten years ago, God brought me to this specific plot of land, 3000 miles from home, and gave it to me against all odds (the bank should have never okayed such a huge mortgage for me, a single person, starting up a new B&B business, but that was that moment of giving mortgages to anyone). He has provided every single thing I need in abundance, including a wonderful partner, but with the exception of a bevvy of friends like I’ve always had other places I’ve lived. In retrospect, I think this was to strongly encourage me to draw closer to and rely on Him, for which I’m grateful, but I was still whiny about my friend situation.

This revelation that I feel came as an answer to my prayers about what to do about friends, reminded me that I’d been given this period of the last year and a half to concentrate on my new marriage. As I look back, I don’t know how I would have managed otherwise, with as many committees and meetings and friend activities as I used to be involved in. That it has taken this devoted time together for Kamille and I to work out a lot of the kinks that surely are common to newly married folks. Despite a couple years of dating, there were still a lot of miscommunications, things that we didn’t yet know about each other, etc, that were blocks we had to work through. I imagine these are exactly the same challenges that straight couples go through, too, it just has been on my mind lately, how it’s going in my gay marriage…

It’s been harder than I thought, but also beautiful to get to choose what it means to be a good wife. There are the heterosexual standards (though greatly more diverse these past 40-50 years), and there is kind of the lesbian norm in which I “grew up” in college and as a young adult. That was typically shown as “everyone’s equal, we take turns, anything goes if that’s how you want to do it.” There were some couples who identified as butch/femme where the “wife” seemed to be in a more traditional role, but to some degree it seemed kind of campy like playing at a role.

Within a Christian context, I wanted a marriage where my spouse would be head of household and take my opinions into consideration, then make a decision for our family, as well as being a spiritual head of our family. In the practical application, I do keep the house and make our meals, and Kam’s job is to keep track of when my car’s oil needs changed and gets on the roof when the windstorms blow the TV dish out of alignment, stuff like that. That works for us! We do want very much to find community around women who share similar lifestyle beliefs, and to be in dialog with Christian lesbians about how they make their choices in their walks.

We are fortunate and blessed that we did have the time and space to lay down good, solid foundations for our marriage, and then personally I had a lot more one-on-one time with the Lord, too, because of “a lack of friends.” Was that part of God’s plan for me, knowing that I’m the first one to flit off to have fun, and sitting down to Bible study is still something that feels “hard?” Probably. I’m what I think of as moderately versed in the Bible. Much more so than my Catholic family who have no clue what Scripture actually says, but I have so far to go to quote verses at will. Not only do I yearn for the Holy Spirit to make the words not seem difficult to understand but also to just downright crave to be in the Word.

Thanks for this venue to share our thoughts!

Your statement to the Lord is one that I too made myself almost word for word. I realized that when I prayed about something I was doing, or a personality or character issue, sin, anything I was seeking change on in myself… He answered… it was a process and was painful at times, but He was with me through it and change came.. except in this one area of being a lesbian. I finally clued in, there was nothing for Him to change, He created me this way.