Coming out wasn't losing my faith—I was living it

I have always been open to callings. Call it a message from the universe, a higher power, or some energetic pull, I had always believed that my mind, heart, and soul were open to a message meant to guide me. Or at least, that is what I thought.

In the small Baptist and Presbyterian world I grew up in between Galveston, Texas, and summers in North Carolina, faith was everything. It was my childhood, my family, and my community. My paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor, my maternal grandfather a Baptist deacon. Our summers revolved around Sunday school, choir practice, and revival services. I saw the power religion had. The way it connected people. The way it created a space for honesty, empathy, healing, forgiveness, and acceptance. And at the young age of sixteen, I felt one of the strongest callings that I was meant to serve as a faith leader.

Never mind the odds already felt stacked against me. As a woman, and as a Black woman in particular, I knew I would be entering spaces not always designed to affirm my being. But this was a challenge that motivated me even more to serve. At the same time as this calling, I was also feeling a pull towards something I had never realized or recognized within myself.

I found myself falling in love with another girl.

I felt a pull to the preacher's daughter. We bonded over our faith, but quickly realized there was more to our relationship than just being friends. We looked to each other in that confusing, sacred, secret space. We tried to unravel the tangled feelings of what felt so natural and pure, our love for each other, with the lessons from our childhood that homosexuality was a sin and the shame that came with it.

Ultimately, my first love denounced me and everything we had shared. To protect her faith, she denied ever having feelings at all. I had never experienced absolute erasure like this before, and it shattered my faith in several ways. To have someone so close erase me, someone I trusted with my most authentic self, was a pain I carried into adulthood.

From then on, secrecy became my survival.

I decided the only way to protect my heart and my spirit was to fracture my being into two separate entities. There was the version of myself the world got to see during the day as a devoted faith leader with a message to spread love. Then there was the self yearning to be loved, hidden from those closest to me.

College was the first place I stumbled into queer community. I found chosen family among queer students, usually at night. I learned to meet in the dark, whisper late-night phone calls, and move through life carefully to not let the two worlds I built around me ever collide.

That was until I learned that, as with most things in life, you have no control. One night at the movies, watching Set It Off, Queen Latifah's love scene came on. My queer friends, sitting two rows behind, called out my name. My straight friends turned around and then turned to me, connecting the pieces. At that moment, I was outed. I sank into my seat, feeling fear course through my body, frozen with embarrassment.

It was terrifying at the time. But, looking back, it was also liberating. It was the first of many pushes the universe gave me to live in my truth. This traumatic moment forced me to have hard conversations, first with my friends, and then with my closest members of my family.

I was terrified my friends and family would cast me out. I watched friends lose everything when they came out, especially those with a similar upbringing to mine. I had seen religion rip people apart, and was afraid my community would be a casualty in my search for authenticity. But that group of friends stood by me for decades. My sisters held my hands as I told them; my mother, with all the love only a mother knows, said she had always known. They embraced me. They did not deny me. They did not deny my sexuality.

It was a relief, but it wasn't the end of hiding. I still struggled with what this meant for accepting myself.

I continued to live a split life for decades. By trying to "have it all," I had nothing. I kept girlfriends away from family gatherings; I introduced my partners as "roommates." I wasn't out even with long-term relationships that lasted over a decade. I feared that being myself meant losing myself, my faith, my community, and my God.

I ultimately walked away after so many years from what I thought was my only calling in this world: my religion. I stopped going to church over time because I felt so denied. I had already had so many uphill battles as a woman, as a woman of color, and as a queer woman. I left the Baptist church where I had been licensed to preach. I knew the message God put on my heart could not be received there if it wasn't being received by me.

I met my wife in 2016. We married in 2019, but only my mom, sisters, and closest friends knew. To the world, the most binding proclamation of love that is usually celebrated was tucked away in silence. And it was hard for both of us. My wife fully embraced who she was and unashamedly proclaimed her love for me to the world. My resistance to being out became a weight for both of us to carry.

And it was starting to be too heavy a lift.

Things didn't begin to shift until I was able to redefine my belief in what it means to love. It took years of intense conversations to deconstruct what I had been taught, and trust that I was valid, that the love in my marriage was valid, and that the entirety of myself was valid. My wife helped me deconstruct not just my faith, but my fear. She inspired me through her bravery, her authenticity, and her radical act of self-love. She taught me to lead with integrity, and the only way to do so was by decolonizing the theology I'd been taught.

For the first time in my life, I began to truly embrace the truth: God's greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Then came the first time I felt a calling since I was sixteen. Something pulled me to take action. October 11, 2021. National Coming Out Day. My wife and I were preparing to record our podcast. I went live on social media, played Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out," and declared to the world that I was queer. I had lived my entire life in secrecy, but it was the first time I stood fully in the light.

Since then, my life has opened in ways I never imagined. In 2021, I embraced myself, my community, and my new definition of faith. I built a faith-rooted, affirming community and began working in LGBTQ+ advocacy. I repaired my relationship with my faith and was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Christ in 2024. I later became the assistant campus pastor at St. Peter United, one of Houston's oldest churches.

Ultimately, I became the person I was always meant to be: transparent, authentic, fearless in my advocacy.

I look back now to my teenage years and realize I had been ignoring the signs all along. It was indeed true that I was called to serve as a faith leader. However, I was ignoring the fact that I was also being called to be my true self. And that my sexuality wasn't meant to test my faith or be a divide in the road on my journey to spirituality. It was actually a roadmap, meant to guide me in loving without judgment and living what I preached.

Coming out wasn't just for me. It was for every person still struggling in pews that preach exclusion, every teen sneaking midnight phone calls, and every adult in a long-term "roommate" arrangement still afraid to be seen. To my queer sisters, brothers, and siblings: I know what it feels like to hide for decades. I know what it feels like to deny yourself. But I also see the freedom of tearing down what was wrongly built and reconstructing yourself in truth. It is terrifying, but it is holy work.

And when you love yourself, when you step into who you are, blessings multiply.

Today, four years since coming out publicly, I walk with my head higher than ever. On this National Coming Out Day, my prayer is that someone else will find the courage to step into their truth and love themselves without condition.

Reverend Shelley Washington is a faith leader, community advocate, and visionary founder dedicated to justice, healing, and fostering a sense of belonging.

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