Welcome to the Wilderness

A good friend recently told me about her distress over her queer child’s growing discomfort and desire to distance from Church. She expressed her concern for her child and for herself as she tried to figure out how to navigate her own hurt and fear and guide her child appropriately. It all sounded so familiar. I nodded and sighed, “Welcome to the wilderness.”

For me, Church had been a source of strength, structure and support all my life. I felt strong in my spiritual understandings and testimony of truths. I appreciated the structure Church provided of daily and weekly practices that helped me stay on track. And my ward congregation always felt comfortable and welcoming. I had a map for life.

And then my kids came out and we fell off the map.

Church, in all its elements, became hard. Sitting in meetings I felt raw--hyper alert to anything that would hurt me or my children. General Conference became a mine field--when would my family or children be invalidated? And in the congregation I’d felt comfortable in, I started to feel isolated.

Even with my closest friends, it didn’t feel safe to share how I was really feeling about church. What would they think? How could I explain that it felt like my spiritual journey had plunged me into darkness and I was wandering in a wilderness? Would they be worried? Admittedly, it felt nice to have a friend understand.

For me and lots of parents with queer kids, losing a sense of safety at Church feels disorienting. In my research with parents of trans and gender diverse kids, I’ve heard:

“Who could I share the pain with?! What would people think about me, about my daughter, about me supporting my daughter?”

“I feel there is no place for my family in the church anymore.”

“I think it's important to understand that when your child comes out, you have a big struggle of how your membership in the church, and being able to love and accept your child, how that meshes. And as many of my ward members could testify, there was a very long time that I would sit in church, and out of nowhere just burst into tears. . . I remember sitting in Sacrament meeting and we were singing one of the songs and I don't remember which one it was. But I was reading the words and it hit me so strong. I just burst into tears. And I got angry. And I just stood up and walked out and walked home. . . It affects you so so badly that you just, we just got in a dark place.”

“It’s difficult sometimes to sit through lessons when people quote the Proclamation because it means something completely different to me. When it reads that gender is an essential characteristic of our spiritual well-being, I just think, ‘yeah, well what about my kid? You've never walked in my shoes. . . it’s a little bit more painful because I see that our family doesn’t look like it fits inside a box anymore.”

“I feel like we are a family in the foyer now, and we aren’t in the chapel anymore. We don’t fit in. And we feel like we’re just kind of on the outside looking in.”

“It’s clear there is not safety from everybody. And so that feels kind of vulnerable. . . My ward and friends in my ward have been supportive . . . but I am aware that if someone criticizes or is judgmental, it touches a nerve. It’s hard. And it also feels vulnerable because of Church policies that in some ways appear to make a moral issue of gender identity.”

When Church feels hard--when what was a source of strength, structure and support doesn’t feel safe--we have come to a personal wilderness.

Wandering in the wilderness might not sound appealing. There’s not a map. Progress is not straightforward. But wilderness wanderings shape people. On the journey we learn to navigate in ways we might not have before.

I’ve also heard the following from parents:

“We’re calling on the powers of heaven to help us navigate this brand new world”

“You will still face almost overwhelming uncertainty at times, and you will pass through and come out with a greater capacity to love and a greater understanding of God and the gospel.”

“I feel like the journey we went on was probably the biggest trial we've ever been on. But it truly is the biggest blessing that we've ever got from it.”

“This is an opportunity, though—a calling to reach out and join Christ in ministering to ‘the least of these’ and be challenged and changed in the process. It is a brutal, beautiful invitation.”

“It actually takes for you to have those experiences, to go through those trials to have that empathy for others. And this is how we become like Christ, because Christ went through all of this. And that's how he can understand us. And that's why Heavenly Father gives us these trials, because he wants us to be like Christ, He wants us to experience [being ostracized, being bullied] so we can understand and have more empathy for other people who are going through these trials.”

When Church is hard, three things that have helped me are:

1. Making space and giving grace. It has been helpful not to judge myself for wandering in the wilderness and instead to validate my own experiences. Being compassionate to myself and trusting my own process allows me to do the same for others, too.

2. Learning anew how to navigate. This is an ongoing process and for me, it involved deconstructing a lot of what I believed and getting down to the basics. And then relearning how to trust God and my personal spiritual authority.

3. Seeing others’ pain, too. When I or my child is in pain, it is hard to focus anywhere else. It has been helpful to recognize that just as others don’t see and aren’t sensitive to our sorrow, they also have sorrows that our eyes can’t see. My heart feels calmer and my burden seems lighter when I look outward with a desire to lift others.

Julia Bernards