I’ll never forget the first time I saw two girls kiss on TV. My body reacted to the kiss in a way that my brain didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure that I liked it. Accept that I knew that I liked it. At 21, I had never been on a date (I don’t count my prom date on account that my mom made me go with a boy I had never met before.), I had never been kissed, and I had very limited knowledge on what the word “gay” meant.

After freaking out for a bit on what it could mean that my body reacted in this way to two girls kissing, I decided that I liked the kiss because it was romantic and I was a sucker for romance. Then I decided to forget about it. (Except that I was so completely hooked to the girls’ storyline.)

The next 5 or so years is when the internal war began. Every day at work, a girl who is gay would tell me I was confused. I knew what she meant and she knew I knew what she meant. Almost every day, I had a “friend” that would confront me and ask me if I was gay. Rumors at work floated around. I felt tormented. Sure, women were sexy, but I was not like that girl who kept telling me I was confused. I was not gay.

Except that I was gay.

A few years after that, I admitted that I had an attraction to women. I didn’t want to act upon it because that’s not what God would want. I was raised that being gay was wrong. I would shame my family. I couldn’t openly live a life that would shame my family. I just couldn’t.

Then one day, while sitting at a red light, I said the words, “Dear God, I’m gay.” It wasn’t an exclamation. I was praying. It was the first time in a long time that I had prayed. Through my tears I confessed to God that I was attracted to women. That I wanted to find a woman to spend my life with. That I was sorry if He was disappointed in me, but I couldn’t change this part of me. I was born like this. My whole life finally made sense to me.

What I felt after that was something that words cannot describe. I felt so warm and loved. It felt like someone had taken their arms and wrapped them around me and said, “I know, child. I know.” I realized right there in that moment that God wasn’t disappointed in me. He loved me very much and that I should love myself, too.

Right there, in that moment, my faith had become stronger than ever, and for the first time in a long time, I felt strong.

Recently, a friend and I were having a discussion about God. He wasn’t sure that God loved like humans do. I told him, God is like the wind. I can’t see Him, but I feel Him and His love every day. I can’t explain it, I just know it. And that makes me smile.