![\"Andy](\"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2017\/01\/anders13.jpeg\")
<\/a>I never thought that I was straight. I didn\u2019t even know what straight was until middle school, when I first heard the definition and shrugged thinking, \u201cWell, that\u2019s not me.\u201d<\/p>\nIt was disappointing to discover soon after that very few people appreciated the other identities I should have been able to try. I refrained from labeling myself and ended up gray and depressed, with no real label but my own name.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know who I was at the time. I didn\u2019t like boys like I was supposed to. I didn\u2019t dress like girls should – in fact, I had breakdowns and cried in dressing rooms trying on feminine clothes – I felt like they took off a layer of skin every time I pulled them on and off, leaving my flaws more naked and exposed than before.<\/p>\n
My parents hated each other, and me. My house burned down with me inside. I was in two car crashes.<\/p>\n
I had a crisis of faith – I went through my church\u2019s confirmation program, but when the time came to write my public statement of faith, I couldn\u2019t make myself say I believed in God like they wanted me too. Instead, I wrote something along the lines of, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in God, but I\u2019d like to. I need to look into it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got too many conflicting, oversimplified messages about the person I was supposed to be, and thus what my faith was supposed to look like. Women weren\u2019t to be trusted, I was told the bible said. The bible also said that women loved and married men, and then had several children, were quiet and demure their whole lives, and deserved punishment for just about everything they did. Jesus and the whole lot of Disciples and everyone else in the bible were white, like the preacher with the bleached smile and sprawling estate my mother watched on tv every night.<\/p>\n
I was always a really skeptical kid, I didn\u2019t believe what I was told.<\/p>\n
I first read the bible one summer at a church camp for middle schoolers. I didn\u2019t get what a lot of it was saying, there were a bunch of lists of old dead guys, but I didn\u2019t see anything to back up the version of God everyone was trying to sell me.<\/p>\n
I know today that what really kept me from publicly committing to God was the fact that my faith communities did not acknowledge the entire church body, only the white, middle-upper class, cisgender, heterosexual, male, quote-unquote \u201cnormal\u201d bits of it. I didn\u2019t fit all of those categories, so I thought that God didn\u2019t want me. I thought that God was all of those things, and only those things, so I didn\u2019t want God either.<\/p>\n
In late high school I chose the label pansexual for myself. Pan means all, as in I love all genders, because gender doesn\u2019t factor into whether or not I fall in love with someone.<\/p>\n
A weight was lifted off my shoulders then. I recalled how much I had longed to discover faith and slowly but surely gave God another shot, one passage, online article, and introspection at a time.<\/p>\n
This time I knew that God wasn\u2019t homophobic, or white, or middle-upper class, or anything else.<\/p>\n
As in the passage I read, God made us to love. I fulfill God\u2019s intentions for me when I love myself, my neighbors, and my global community. Coming out to myself as pansexual was an act of faith and of love.<\/p>\n
I kicked down the closet door and God was waiting for me on the other side!<\/p>\n
This is the passage I hope guardians, best friends, significant others, and entire communities remember on today, National Coming Out Day.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the passage I hope I remember today and every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, \u2018You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet\u2019; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, \u2018Love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019 Love does …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,85,16],"tags":[117,31,88,118,116],"class_list":["post-52398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapel","category-event","category-people","tag-andy-anderson","tag-campus-ministry","tag-chapel","tag-identity","tag-national-coming-out-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52398"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52527,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52398\/revisions\/52527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/campusministry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}