Chandra chats about growing up being homeschooled and raised in evangelical churches, and why realizing she's bisexual saved her relationship with God.
Music by Scott Holmes. used with permission under CC.
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S: Hi, I'm Sarah.
C: And I'm Chandra.
S: And this is queer chats about Jesus.
C: A podcast about reclaiming faith, sexuality, and Jesus within queer relationships.
S: Hi, guys.
C: Hey.
S: Welcome back.
C: Yeah.
S: A little bit longer than we anticipated.
C: For sure.
S: We have gotten some really good feedback. We've gotten some really positive reviews, so we're very excited to be here.
C: We already have five-star reviews on Apple podcast, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That really helps boost the visibility of our podcast within Apple. So we really appreciate those five-star reviews.
S: Yeah, and we do apologize for being quite a while in between, but we also didn't want to compromise quality as we're learning how to do this. And we're working with new technology. We just want to make sure that the listening experience is the best it possibly can be.
C: For sure. And we definitely set that bar high for ourselves first episode out the gate. So yay.
S: So, Chandra. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
C: Wow. We're just going to jump right in like that. Huh?
S: We are gonna jump right in there.
C: Okay. Well, I'm Chandra. I am 37 years old. I also like long walks on the beach.
S: And romantic candlelight dinners.
C: And romantic candlelight dinners. I grew up in Southern California, about an hour East of LA.
As a child, my mom was a really, really vigilant Christian. So we like grew up like listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, which she now denies that she ever did, but it was like two years during the Clinton administration where it was on all day, every day.
And I specifically remember Rush Limbaugh's thing of like, this is day number 386 of America under siege by the Clinton administration. And even as a kid, I remember going, really?
S: Yeah, be like Rush Limbaugh. You ain't seen shit yet. Wait, 'till 2020, buddy.
C: I know. Right. So anyway, that was a little bit about my mom.
And then my dad was like kind of the exact opposite where he was pretty liberal in his political beliefs. He didn't really want anything to do with God. I think that he kind of thought that it was bullshit, and we didn't really talk about his religious beliefs as a kid because he just kind of wasn't part of the equation of my religious upbringing.
But I have memories as early as like five years old of serving in the church because that was just my mom's expectation for my sister and I.
S: But I know that you also had kind of a interesting experience at like private Christian school.
C: Yeah. So in kindergarten, I was part of a private Christian school.
I remember my mom telling me later that they were sending home all this homework for parents to do with their kids. And she pushed back on them and was like, well, if I'm supposed to be doing all this work with my child at home, then what am I paying you guys for?
So public school wasn't an option for my parents. So after kindergarten, they decided that they were going to homeschool my sister and I.
S: Because like really the public schools in the area that you were in had a lot of drug affiliation, correct?
C: Yes. In junior high and high schools. I don't think that that was going on in elementary schools, but I think that they were thinking that far ahead, and they just, again, my mom was so religious that I think the bigger issue was that she just didn't want us to be surrounded by a bad influence for us.
So the point of all that being that my life was very much based in every single aspect, around being a Christian and doing good and God and Jesus and serving him from my earliest memories.
S: So, I mean, basically your entire childhood revolved around a Christian faith-based community.
C: Yes.
S: Because you didn't go to public school. Really your social interaction was with people at church.
C: Yes. But then the interesting thing was that we would switch churches every couple of years.
I was recently thinking about this, and I think in my childhood, the longest we were at any one church was two, maybe three years.
So what would happen is that my mom really wanted my dad to go to church with us. But every couple of years he would like agree to it. He'd go to whatever church we were going to once and be like, well, I'm never gonna go to that church again.
So my mom would uproot all of us. And we would spend a couple of years looking for another church until my dad found one that he could like attend, or either my mom just got so frustrated looking. She would realize that my dad wasn't ever going to go to church with us for real. And so we would just settle at whatever church she liked, the best.
S: Okay, so how many churches would you say like, if you had to give me a number.
C: Like on the low end, probably two hundred, on the high end, more than five hundred.
S: So that's a lot of churches
C: Uh, ya
S: So you've seen kind of like, in-depth kind of like an overview of Evangelical, nondenominational churches.
C: For sure, plus a couple of vineyards, and like maybe a pentecostal church here and there but...
S: Sprinkled in for some flavor.
C: Ya, some of those Charismatic ones just, ya know, thrown in for funsies.
C: But then we finally found like a good, solid faith community that was really close to where we were living, that we really got along with the people. It had a lot of people who were also homeschooling. So the communities that we were a part of kind of converged into our faith community for the first time. And my mom was kind of like, well, we're going to put down roots here, regardless of whether your dad likes it or not.
S: Yeah, so when you're growing up, you're around all this faith community, you're exposed to all these other Christian beliefs and all that kind of stuff. But as a kid, did you have like your own faith.
C: I didn't realize it at the time, but I actually did have my own faith. And I think that I found the Holy Spirit very early on, and I don't know when that happened,
Even though, as a kid, you don't swear and stuff just like in my soul, and in my spirit, like even being as young as like five or six, I was like, this is all bullshit.
It wasn't that I didn't believe in God. It was that I saw the hypocrisy of the way that people were saying one thing up on stage and then living a completely different way. And I was like, I don't agree with this. Like something's not right here. Like either the people aren't doing what they're really supposed to do, which is what they're telling other people to do, or this whole God thing is bullshit.
S: Interesting. And as you'll get to know my wife, she's very truthful. She's very upfront. She has a lot of integrity, and she has a very sensitive bullshit meter, and I can just imagine you, just as a little kid with your curly brown hair, your big brown eyes just watching the pastor, being like, "I don't think that you are actually living the way you're telling me to live. I don't think that you're uh. I think you're a hypocrite, sir."
C: I know, right, and the pastor of that church was really good. Like out of all the churches that we went to when I was a kid, like, he's the one that I look back on, and I'm like, Oh, you were a good guy. Like you actually have the Holy Spirit. Like he was actually trying to shepherd and guide people with like a very loving, gentle spirit.
I really liked being at that church, that church started to grow, and we like doubled in size within like six months. And it was also that time where I was hitting puberty, and it was for the first time ever, I was feeling like I actually had a consistent community. I was pretty cocky. Like as a 13-year-old, I was like straight out of mean girls. So I just remember being horrible to like all these new kids. And we just like made it very clear, like this is the old guard and you are not going to get in with us, and you're not welcome here.
S: Gross, baby.
C: Very gross.
But then we moved, and all of a sudden, all of that security went away. We were once again looking for a church. We just had to start over again. And being between seventh and eighth grade, it was very, very brutal, but it was also the best thing that could have possibly happened for me as a person.
I went from being queen bee to very lonely and very depressed really until after I graduated high school.
S: Yeah. That's sad, but it's one of those things of, uh, when you get a little too proud, sometimes God has to bring you back down.
C: Oh, for sure.
S: Reign you back in.
C: I'm grateful. I started learning those lessons at 13.
S: Right.
C: When I was young enough for those to become life lessons.
S: Yeah.
C: That were way easier for me to integrate. Then if they had happened, when I was much older.
S: So you said you were basically depressed until you were 18. Like, where was your faith journey at?
C: I had my first, what you would call conversion experience at 10 before we moved. And it was actually through Awana, and it was just one night around Easter.
One of the leaders was giving like the typical Easter story. And at the end, asked if anybody resonated with it and wanted to become a Christian. And I was like, me, me, me.
So I thought I was a Christian when I was a teenager, and I didn't really give it much thought. We started bouncing from church to church again. And we would find a church up here that we kind of sort of liked, and we would stay there for like a year.
So my faith was always tied to whatever church I was in and how the people in those churches were behaving. I became very, very bitter and very, very jaded and very, very cynical because while we're serving at church and we're doing all these things, my dad is still not a part of any of it. And because my dad isn't a part of any of it. We're still on the outside of every community. We don't ever fully fit in because we're not a whole family.
S: Right. To them, it seemed like you weren't the picture-perfect with two parents. 1.5 children, with a white picket fence and a dog.
Which was ridiculous because your parents were married; your dad just wasn't attending church.
C: Right. And there was also addiction in my family caused by generational abuse. And I was having a really hard time with that because the only outlet that I had for processing my trauma was sports.
So I was involved in swimming. And then later, I found competitive jump rope. I was traveling the country, doing national tournaments and stuff, and my drive for success in those sports was to escape, having to be at home.
Then I would go to these churches in the middle of the week with youth group and stuff, and the combination of being homeschooled and then being in a really weird sport that also allowed me to travel to all these really exciting places, just meant that kids didn't know how to relate to me. And I didn't know how to relate to them.
And then the leaders in the youth group were constantly changing as well. So I never had any stability, so I didn't have anything to hang my relationship with God on if that makes sense.
It just seemed like the only places that God showed up were places where God wasn't needed. And I didn't know how to deal with that.
One church that we went to for about three years, we were having a really, really rough time at home at that point in time. And it was one of the few times where my mom actually reached out to the church and asked for help.
We happened to have a pastor at that point in time, which was unusual for that church. It had mostly been led by parents of students.
So there was this stretch where we actually had a pastor. He was 23. And he was studying to be a lawyer. And then his senior year, he felt that God told him to go become a youth pastor. He had been pursuing this girl for a while.
The month that they get married, he tells her that God has told him to become a youth pastor. And that he has found this job in Snohomish, Washington. So their honeymoon was literally driving from Chicago, Illinois to this tiny little farming town, about an hour outside of Seattle. And they're going to be the first youth pastor that this church has had in more than 10 years, and he made a seven-year commitment to be the pastor there.
S: Wow, okay. I just need a moment here to take that in. Wow. Okay. There is the calling of God, right?
C: Yes.
S: We believe being led by the spirit, but you need to be upfront with someone before you marry them and move them across the country. Like that is not acceptable.
C: Right. And it was interesting because when they first got here, you could tell that she understood the weight of the commitment that they had made. And he had no idea. He had this very distinct idea of what it was going to be like to be this youth pastor for this small little picturesque church out in the country.
S: So there is a statistic for youth pastors that they only usually last about a year.
Me and Chandra have both been youth ministers. And, um, there's so much more to youth ministry than anyone ever thinks. It's not just like, 'oh, you get to hang out with these teenagers.' But we had to call CPS several times. We had to just deal with all the stuff that kids are bringing, and it can be pretty overwhelming. And I'm sure for this guy, who's like, everything is wonderful. Like I imagine, like the sound of music, dancing on the hilltop with her guitar case like that, that's what I imagined for this guy.
C: It's a pretty good description of how he was.
S: Yeah
C: And spoiler alert. He lasted nine months.
S: Yeah. Youth ministry is, um, it's not picnics and sunshine. Like we had kids who were very depressed, almost suicidal were getting abused at home. Like there's a lot to youth ministry.
C: Right. Now. Looking back on that, and even in my twenties, after I started doing youth ministry, I had all the compassion in the world for this guy. Right?
But from my perspective, as a 16-year-old, who was struggling, who was going through these deep things where I needed real answers and real help, what happened is that we went to him, he pushed us off onto his wife, who understood that she was in over her head but didn't want to let us down by saying that she was in over her head and didn't have advice.
So she spent a week praying or whatever. Then we meet with her again, like the next week or two. And she just slides an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper with a bunch of Bible references over to us about how God is our father and all the references in the Bible for why that's true.
S: I have to say, like, as a, as a former pastor, as a former youth worker, there is, there is power in scripture. There is power in the word of God.
However, there's also a time and a place where you realize like, I do not have the resources that you need, and you have to then kind of turn to like therapy, and you know what I mean? And it's okay to not know.
C: Right.
S: But just giving people scripture verse's when they're in crisis is insulting and harmful.
C: Right, as a 16-year-old, that was one of those defining moments for me, where I was like, got it. This place can't offer me the help that I need. So I am on my own. I am the only person who is looking out for my best interests. And I didn't always know how to do that, but I just kept moving forward.
It turned me into a very hardened person at a very young age. So for those two remaining years of high school, I just continued to pour myself into jumping rope. It was still a requirement that we had to serve. It wasn't like a daily service thing anymore. Like it had been when I was younger, it was like we could serve once a month somewhere.
The rule had always been in our house that when we turned 18, we can make our own decisions. And the second I turned 18, I was like, fuck God, fuck church. I'm done with it.
That lasted about a year before I realized that that was not the solution. That life was actually better when I was serving when I was in the church. And I can't remember, there was something that happened that kind of like clicked that for me, but I don't remember what that specific incident was, but I was like, okay, if I'm gonna go back to church, if I am gonna follow you, God, then I'm doing it my way. And so I picked a church that I wanted to go to.
I remember after the first week, I was like, 'yes, this is where I'm supposed to be.'
So it didn't take long before I decided to jump in serving, and because of how rough it had been for me in junior high and high school, I decided to start serving as a junior high leader.
And it was actually an awesome age group to work with at that church because they still had their childlike innocence. So they would still have fun and go crazy and wild. But at the same time, they were also so emotional, which yes could be rough at times.
But for the most part at our church, at least that is when they found Jesus for real, for the first time, and that was amazing to see.
Within like a year of starting to go to that church, I was not just leading a small group for junior high, but I was also starting to help plan all the junior high and high school events.
So the winter camps, the summer camps, the quarterly events, which for the junior high ministry was an insane event.
Like we had this huge building. And it had all these huge rooms all over the place. And these long, huge mall ways. That was probably like a quarter of a mile long from the entrance to the building, to the sanctuary that sat 5,500 people.
And we would take all of that space, and we would fill it up with inflatables and pool tables and like, just turn it into this teenage dream event arena. The idea was that the junior high kids would go and get their quote-unquote unsaved friends and bring them to this free ultimate event and then in the middle of the event, we would take them all to the chapel and give them the salvation story and try to convert them.
S: Right. Of course, because churches never do anything for like, you know, just to be good to the community.
Can I just say, though, I don't want to interrupt your story, but can I just say that it's so funny when you talk about your youth ministries and I think about my youth ministries.
C: Oh, right. Because we had like thousands of dollars for these quarterly events, and you had like five bucks to rub together with two nickels.
S: I mean, like yeah. We would go like to my friends and ask for donations. So we could like buy popcorn and stuff. Like, so like our like biggest funnest things was like, we would get a tarp and a hose and some dish soap and like make a slip and slide, you know?
So it's just an interesting cause when you talk about youth ministries and when I talk about youth ministries is a very, very different, but same struggles, same things we're going through.
C: Right.
But we're talking about this massive event like this thing is ginormous. So you're working long hours around the clock. I mean, like when you're volunteering, you're not volunteering for a couple hours.
C: No, I was volunteering between 40 to 80 hours a week, depending on the time of year. And depending on what was going on, like those M80 events for me would be two back to back 18 hour days.
We would get done putting everything away at the end of the event at like midnight. And we would be so tired, but still so wired that we would still just all go to Denny's and grab some food before we went home and slept for 24 hours straight before we had to be back on Sunday to do our Sunday service.
S: Right. Because how old are you again at this time?
C: I was probably around 19 when I started doing that.
S: I miss my early twenties.
C: I know, right?
S: Where I sleep for four hours and then go for like 24.
C: I know. Right?
So anyway, so I'm doing all this service, and we go to our summer camp, and this was the first year that I was doing this summer camp. And it was again, a big, huge intensive thing.
It's not outdoor woodsy camping. It's like you're on a lake, and there's a bunch of grass fields so that you have close access to the boat ramp where you go boat all day type campground.
We would set up like a 40 x 40 event tent for the chapel that sat 400 chairs. We would bring stage decking to create a stage. Then we would also have another, like 20 x 30 tent that we set up for the kitchen, and we would bring all this stuff to create a outdoor catering setup.
And we're talking like four to 500 students would attend this camp every single summer.
So anyway, the first year that I do this, we're up there beforehand, and then the students arrive, and once the students arrived, I was struggling, and I couldn't quite figure out why, but throughout all the service, I still was not dealing with the question of where my relationship with God stood.
And so during that week, God started calling me to the carpet of like, you're doing all this stuff, and you're this leader. And you're speaking life into these kids as if you're like a spiritual leader, but you don't have a relationship with me.
Like the final night of camp, when they're doing the altar call for all of the kids, I found myself doing the same thing for myself. And it was similar to what you were saying with your story where like, once it clicked for you, you were like, 'Oh, I know what to do now' where it was like, 'okay, now I believe in you like now I'm yours.'
And then I came back. I was spending all of my time at that church. I was not just facilitating events. I was not just leading groups. I was also designing websites and creating content for the ministry. And that then led into me realizing that I wanted to do more of the creative arts stuff.
So I actually ended up switching departments and started working with the creative arts ministry and the children's ministry, which was starting this program called "KIDstuf," which was a live weekly show. So we were writing and...
S: Like an SNL.
C: SNL for families.
S: Like skits.
C: Yep and skits. So it was music and video content and sketches. And it was a new show every single week throughout the entire school year.
So 48 brand new shows every single week. And this is what we were doing in the children's department of that church.
S: Crazy.
C: So we were doing that during the school year, but then we were also producing another outreach ministry called living Christmas tree, that involved two to 300 performers, not including the actual Christmas tree choir.
Which was an actual Christmas tree that went about four stories into the air where 200 people would load into this thing. And then sing for half of the show in between the act...
S: That's terrifying to me, the idea of that many people just loading into some like, janky like church made thing.
C: Oh, it wasn't janky. It was Broadway-level production. It was stable.
S: Yeah.
C: It was terrifying. Cause I'm scared of heights, right? And so I'd stand at below this thing. And I look four stories in the air at and be like, I don't know how they do that.
Like, I don't know how they get this many people from the church to agree to do this. So anyway, so that's what I was doing at Christmas.
S: Okay. Can I just ask a question, though? Cause when you say living Christmas tree, I am now imagining these people, in like these decked out like fringy green, like outfits, like, you know, like a choir robe, but like fringe green.
C: Mhm, yeah, some years.
S: Is it like a legit...
C: Not every single year. But yes, they were the decorations to the Christmas tree. They had had a history of wearing ruffled shirts with vests. Yes. And choir robes. They were coordinating with the green.
S: Cause I'm imagining now like, they'd done this for several years.
Like, imagine with me people, like the '80s like puffy hair, fringy, like shirts, like we're living Christmas tree.
C: Yeah. I saw the pictures, and that did exist, yes.
S: That's amazing.
C: Yes. So the cast of these things would be like on average, including the choir, three to 500 people. So this is what I'm doing around Christmas, and then I'm doing "KIDstuf," and I'm still doing all of the event-related stuff for the student ministries.
S: For free. All volunteer.
C: All volunteer, none of it paid.
S: Crazy.
C: So, after a while, they realized I was doing so much that they kind of kept me on the hook with the promise of a job.
So after about seven years of serving there, a position opened up that I was qualified for, and they hired me for it. And by that point in time, I wasn't just volunteering full time. I was also working full time.
By now, I'm averaging 80 hours a week easily because I'm still volunteering.
I give up the other job for the church full time, still doing all the same amount of work, except now I'm the administrative assistant to the entire children's department. And at the time, I had now become an actor in the stage show.
So I'm now with the church even more time than I was before. Still averaging like 60 to 80 hours a week between the stuff I'm still volunteering to do and the paid staff position that I'm doing.
And then, at the beginning of the great recession in 2008, they let me go along with 13 other support staff personnel out of the 16 person support staff for the entire church. Because what had been revealed is that the CFO that they had hired three months before they finally hired me had been lying about the church's finances, and they were in dire straits.
Over the course of six months, he started telling the leadership staff that the church was in the best place that it had ever been. And yet then when we were attending chapels, which were mandatory as staff members, the lead pastor of the church was starting to straight-up tell us that our jobs could be on the line if we weren't tithing because he looked into it and realized that very few of the church staff were actually tithing. And he actually said that that was a sin and that we were stealing money from the church because we were not giving our 10%.
S: That is so cringy. Cause it's like, if you work for the church, you better give back to the church. It's like, but you don't pay me what I would be making in the real world number one.
C: For sure. I look back on it, and I see so many cringy things. For starters, the person who had the job before me was an executive assistant, and the job was an executive assistant position. I was supporting one executive, three directors, and four associate pastors, plus hundreds of volunteers. When the person before me left, they slightly changed the job description so they could pay the position less money and wouldn't let me use the "executive assistant" title, saying I hadn't quote-unquote earned it.
S: Because apparently, seven years of free service planning events, creating content, producing live shows, setting up camps, and all this stuff isn't enough to justify "executive assistant."
C: And then there's the aspect that non-profits aren't required to pay into unemployment, right? So when I did get laid off, I got two months' pay, and that's it.
So I get brought into the HR director's office. And I knew exactly what was happening the second that I sat down because the executive assistant just starts crying the second the door gets shut.
Here's the crazy thing, I'm the one getting laid off. This woman to my right who's keeping her job is sitting there balling, and I start consoling her.
S: Well, cause she knew it wasn't right.
C: The thing is, is that I attended that church for so long, and I served with that church for so long. Not because I believed that the Holy Spirit was in the people that I was working with, but because I believed I was there to challenge them, to find the Holy Spirit.
What really happened was that I spent eight years serving all of that time and having conversations with so many people.
I was an agitator because I was pushing them to actually follow Jesus. Instead of just say that they were following Jesus, I was pushing them to actually do what God wants.
And I just started to realize like, they didn't want to be challenged. They didn't want to examine their own hearts.
And so I was that piece of dirt in the oyster that was trying to get them to become a Pearl. And instead, they just found a way to kick me out.
So my sister and I were living together at the time, we ended up moving back in with my parents, ended up putting all of our stuff in storage while I took the summer to figure out what I wanted to do next. Which ended up being a really bad mistake because the recession turned into "the great recession." And then after that summer, I couldn't find a job.
So I remember that in the midst of all that, where I'm starting to find a job, I'm having a conversation with two people that I consider very close friends. And I am ranting about how I think I'm pretty much done with this church.
Both of them are trying to convince me that I need to stay. And the woman that I considered my best friend at the time, looks at me, she's so solid in what she's about to say. She just looks at me, and she goes, "you know, Chandra, every single church has their issues. And you're never going to find a church that is better than this one."
S: Which is like, kind of true because all churches are jacked up. But at the same time, when you're, you're in the middle of this loss, you're in the middle of this heartache, you're in the middle of feeling betrayed and feeling used. Number one, not helpful. Number two, that's the same thing abusers say.
C: Exactly. And I don't remember what I said, but I remember thinking in my head, "and thank you for confirming for me why I'm done with this church." And I was, I was done.
So fast forward, about six months, I'm still unemployed. And then my grandmother, who lives in Southern California, a place I've always wanted to move back to, ends up having a stroke.
And within 24 hours, the decision is made that since I'm unemployed and since Southern California is a place I've always wanted to move back to, I'm going to move down to Southern California and become her full-time caregiver.
For me, like at that point in time, God was like the furthest thing from my mind. I was just taking care of my grandmother. It was just getting her into recovery.
But I'd also decided that I wanted to start pursuing acting as a career and possibly producing. So I started doing some of that work where I could. And I also ended up finding another church. And I was talking to God, but I didn't feel like God was giving me any real answers or any real help.
So I started going to this church. They had a huge ministry for entertainment professionals. I'm down there for about 18 months taking care of my grandmother. When she's well enough to sort of live back on her own, I moved back here.
I don't find a job until I moved back to Washington. So I find my first steady part-time work in two and a half years, and I'm at that job for a year. And then I find my first full-time position after three and a half years of unemployment and underemployment.
And during that entire time, I am attending churches, but I'm just going through the motions. I don't really know what I feel about church at this point in time because I've always kind of felt like church was BS. And I didn't even really know what I felt about God at this point because I knew that I was committed a hundred percent on my end to him, but I didn't feel like God was a hundred percent committed to me. And so it felt like a very one-sided relationship.
So I'm still serving because that's the core thing that I've always grown up with. But I, I'm not feeling my relationship with God. I'm praying and feeling like my prayers are going into the void. I'm serving and feeling like no opportunities open up for me to take care of myself.
And so I'm just feeling really cynical. And really jaded and really disappointed that this is what quote-unquote, following God with all my heart looks like.
I'm attending a church that is started by a pastor at the church that I had left, the megachurch. And I'm attending this church with this pastor because I feel like he has actually changed.
He's someone that I had known and served with. And I did not get along with him. I kept my distance from him, and he started this church specifically for his brothers and specifically for people who had been burned and deeply hurt by other churches.
So it felt like it was where I should be. I really believed in the mission of it, but I had also started working full time right at the time I started attending this church, and I was working the grave shift at this new job. So even though it was my church home, I wasn't serving there, and I wasn't attending. And I didn't attend it for about two years.
So I'm working this security job, and I'm producing this web series, and at work, I meet this woman. And, we become friends, and then we become best friends. And then at the end of that year, she leaves that account, and that was really hard for me, and it was really hard for me in a way that I didn't quite understand but had also felt with other female friendships I had, that had ended or changed abruptly.
So then a few months later, it was my 30th birthday, and I had this big party, and she wasn't able to attend, but I was having a conversation with a guy that I kinda had a thing for, and as part of that conversation he said: "you know Chandra, I think you will find exactly what you're looking for when you give up on the idea that you know what you want."
And that really struck a chord with me, and it got me thinking. So the day after, I hung out with my best friend, and it was really fun, and it was really good to reconnect with her, and we both agreed that we needed to stay in touch.
And when we were working together, she had been open about the fact that she was bisexual, and she said she wouldn't ever date women again, but if she did date a woman again, then it would be me.
So then we're chatting, and I'm replaying this conversation that I had with this friend. And I just start thinking about why I'm not actually attracted to her. Because, on paper, she was everything I was looking for in a significant other. So, I'm thinking about it, and I'm realizing that her gender is the only reason why I'm not pursuing anything with her as a relationship. And so I actually just told her that, and we started talking about it, and she was like, "Really?" and I was like, "Yeah. I mean, the truth is this friend pointed out I've never been in a relationship with anybody, so I don't really know what I like and don't like. And I'm like realizing that if the only thing standing in between us dating is your gender, I'm not sure that is a big enough thing to not discuss it."
And she was like, "well, I have something to admit to you. I've had a crush on you for the last nine months."
So from there, we spent a couple weeks talking about it, and then we started dating. And it was very intense, and it was very physical. And, it lasted six weeks, and at the end of it, she just basically said that she couldn't come out again to her friends and her family.
That was such a brutal experience for her the first time that she just wasn't willing to do it, and even though she loved me very much and had actually proposed to me, and I had said yes. She couldn't continue to be with me.
S: Yeah, those rough coming out stories, especially in Christianity, cuz I kinda feel for her. Where you have your first coming out story, and you kinda tell everyone you're gay. Or, in her case, she was actually outed by her family, right?
C: Right, yeah.
S: Which is just brutal, and they totally rejected her, and then you know when you're a Christian you kind of like "okay well maybe I can be ya know kinda set free from this." or whatever. And then if you have to come out again, I, I can understand why it was really hard for her and really traumatic to even think about coming out again.
C: Right, yeah, and I think part of it too was we moved so fast, and it, for me like realizing that I was bisexual, was like a missing puzzle piece in my life. Like the second that I realized that I was also attracted to women and not just men, it made sense for me on a whole bunch of different levels, and that scared her because I was pretty much ready to come out like two weeks after we started dating. And I think that she thought that had been, that was going to be a process of months or even a year, and then when it wasn't, it created a lot of tension in our burgeoning romance because she didn't want to admit to me that she was afraid of me coming out. So that was like a very big source of conflict between us.
But it was interesting' cuz like she kind of played me after we broke up. Like she was trying to keep on the hook, and so we went through this brutal period of like she was telling me that like "Oh, I don't know what I want, I don't know what I need." Like, "I'm obviously in love with you, and I've got all of this stuff to figure out." But then like nothing would happen.
And so I just started to realize that like she was not being truthful, either with herself or with me, about who she was and wanted she really wanted.
So in the midst of that period, this was like a week and a half after she broke up with me, and I was having a really hard time. And I was in my bedroom, and I was crying, and I just started praying, and I was like, "God, I know for myself what this relationship was. I know that on my end, my feelings for her were pure and innocent and holy. And I know that if she were a man, we wouldn't be in this position right now. So why would it be okay for me to be in a relationship with a man, but it's not okay for her to be a woman. Like, why is that wrong?"
And in the still small voice that I've only heard God use with me a few times in my life. He just said, "it's not."
And I knew in that moment that everything was changing for me. And I just remember thinking, 'Okay, if what you're saying to me is real. If my attraction for her was not sinful. If my relationship with her on my end was not sin, then either the Bible's wrong, or I'm wrong.'
And for the first time ever in my entire life, I just was like, 'Okay, Holy Spirit, give me wisdom and discernment about this book. Give me new eyes to see it.' Like I have to go back, and I have to rediscover everything as if I have never read this before in my life, 'please give me the heart of someone who's never read this.' And that changed everything.
I start reading my Bible every day. And before I open it up, I'm asking God to give me wisdom and discernment about what I'm reading. And I'm starting with the New Testament, and I just start quickly realizing that anything that I've thought I've believed about the Bible is based on things I've never read myself. That I've never actually read what I claimed that I believe about anything.
So I started to quickly realize, I just don't know. I don't know what I believe. I don't know what's actually here. And it also doesn't take me long to realize that this idea that I've been taught in every single church, that the Bible is the Holy inspired word of God. And inerrant and passed on from generation to generation with like no problems whatsoever is a bunch of bullshit.
You can read the Bible for yourself and quickly realize it's a very confusing book. I had always been taught the Bible is an instruction manual for life. That all you need is the Bible to guide you. But what I realized is that the Bible isn't an instruction manual. It's a collection of writings, some are instructional, but most aren't. The Bible is not one thing, and even if we all read the Bible asking God for wisdom and discernment before we opened it up, we'd still disagree about what it says and what it means.
Because God is bigger and more infinite than all of humanity. And we miss out on what the Bible really is when we reduce it to an instruction manual and pick out one verse at a time and use those individual verses to create doctrine, theology, and public policy.
When you read the Bible thinking it can be plainly understood as a manual for life, you miss out on what the Bible really is and what it can really do.
S: Right, because the Bible's talking about individual experiences with the Holy, unknowable, mysterious God, and it's also an example of how God's faithfulness has held a nation.
C: Right. And so for me, I got done reading the entire New Testament, and I was like, 'I don't know what I feel about a lot of the stuff that I've read in this,' but here's the grain of truth that I know that sticks out above the rest.
C: It was Jesus' sermon on the Mount, and it was specifically the end of it. But somebody comes to him and says, "Jesus, what is like the one thing that I need to know above all else about being in a relationship with God.?"
S: "That sums up all the laws and all the prophets."
C: "That sums up all the laws and all the prophets?" that's right. And he says, "love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor. As you love yourself." He said, "all the other laws are based upon this."
And for me, I was like, 'okay, it doesn't matter what I believe about the rest of it. That is the truth of the entire Bible. And that contains enough wisdom for a lifetime without having to worry about what I believe about the rest of it.'
And so that was the verse that I started to try and build the foundation of my life on. And I was like, 'Until I feel like I'm starting to nail this. The rest doesn't matter because he just said, the rest doesn't matter until you get this down.' and we can spend a lifetime of lifetimes learning all the depths of what it means to "love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself."
And the other thing that stuck out to me in that verse was how we ignore the part that says, "Love your neighbor, as you love yourself." And I realized I didn't know how to love myself.
So, of course, I was having all these issues, my entire life learning how to love other people and learning how to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength because I didn't even know how to love myself.
And so I started doing therapy. I started going back to church, and I started serving.
Slowly but surely, I started to learn how to love myself. And when I was loving myself better, I was loving others better. And when I was loving others better, I was loving God better. And it was just like this circle of like the more I love myself, the more capacity I had to love others. And the more I loved others, the more I had capacity to learn more about God And so I was like, 'this is it like, this is the key. This is where I need to be.'
So I am alive for the first time in my relationship with God. Relationally, I'm starting to build relationships with good people. I'm in therapy. I'm starting to learn, like, why did I end up in this relationship? Where was it unhealthy? Like what was really going on? I'm starting to heal my past.
And for the first time, I have disconnected God from the church. I understand that those are two separate things. And I'm starting to understand that the way that I felt about the church growing up was true, but it was not true about God.
So I started coming out, and I first came out to the pastors of my church, and it was a really good conversation. They were really supportive.
But in the midst of that conversation, one of the things that he said to me that stuck out to me was he was like, "Please don't let this define you." And at the time, I was like, 'yeah, not a problem.'
The pastor of my church connects me with an affirming LGBT Bible study that is run out of the megachurch that I used to be on staff at. And this couple had not been at that church when I was going there, but they had now started this affirming Bible study. And I started attending like weeks after they started it.
And that core group of us who were attending right, in the beginning, were all at the same place. Where we were seeking after God with all of our hearts, we were just coming into a place of acceptance that our identities as LGBT people didn't exclude us from God.
And we were also in a place where we wanted that fact to change churches. And we were willing to take that belief into churches and kind of force and demand a change in that because we understood that we weren't the only ones who were experiencing exclusion in the church because of our identities. And we knew that that had to stop. And all of us were on that same page. And we were growing together.
We were super intimate, and then like six months after, we started growing, and it wasn't a bad thing that we were growing. But the people that started coming after that initial first wave were people that didn't want to challenge any of their evangelical Christian beliefs. They just wanted to be accepted in their church.
And so for them, the point of being LGBT and Christian in the church was to make their church affirming and nothing else.
So there started to become this tension where there were two camps within our Bible study. There was the camp that just wanted acceptance for themselves in their churches and the camp of us that wanted to use our LGBT identity to actually change the face of the church to look more like Jesus.
S: To change the culture of the church to not exclude anyone.
C: Correct.
S: Not just include, "oh, and now we're going to add homosexuals in and, and they're fine." But the culture of the church is very exclusive.
C: Right.
S: Right. So that was the thing is there's one camp who wanted to be totally inclusive and change the face of the church to be inclusive. And there was another camp that just like, "Hey, we just want to be accepted for being gay. So regardless of the churches, you know, holding anyone else back, we just want to be accepted."
C: Right. So around the same time, I also reconnected with a girl that was from the megachurch. And her father had been on staff with me. And I had been her junior high leader when she was in junior high. And now, she was in her mid-twenties, and she was married to a woman, and she was posting things on Facebook about how she was struggling with her LGBTQ identity and what it meant for her relationships.
And so I reached out to her, and I told her about this affirming group. And I think at the beginning, she actually thought I was hitting on her. And then she like made this comment about like, "Oh, well I think it's not for me and my wife." And I was like, "Hey, cool, you're married. That's awesome." I was like, "Well, if you guys ever change your mind, let me know, and you can come."
And so I like kind of like followed her on Facebook a little bit more closely to like see where she was at and stuff and just try and be encouraging where I could. Cause I knew she was struggling.
And she posted pictures from pride that year. And it was her and her wife and this other sexy light brunette woman. But I could also kind of tell that she was not in a healthy place at the time. And so when I saw those pictures, I was like, 'Oh, more people in that crew next.'
S: Yeah. That, that was an interesting pride. And maybe I'll tell that story in another episode, but oh my gosh, that pride was so horrible.
C: Right? And I was actually at that pride.
So what ended up happening in our Bible study was the group of us that actually wanted to change church altogether started having these conversations about what it would actually look like if the church looked more like the book of Acts, and that led us to start studying what's called intentional communities.
And these are Christian communities where on various different levels, people all live on either the same piece of land and they have separate houses or they live in the same house. And in some way, shape, or form, there is a sharing of everything.
S: Also known as a commune, but rebranded to be intentional communities, but it was, it was a commune idea.
C: Right.
And so we started having these conversations about what this would look like if we had a intentional community that was made up entirely of LGBTQ Christians. And talks and Bible studies surrounding that specific subject led us to a group of us, decide that we actually wanted to do this.
So I'm attending my primary church, and I'm still serving there, and I'm attending this affirming life group, and, you know, I'm meeting with them.
And then I'm also meeting with a smaller group of gay Christians because we're deciding that we're going to figure out how to do this. So those talks lead to us deciding that we're going to buy a house together. And one of the guys in that group was a lot more financially well off than the rest of us. So he ended up buying this house, and we move in together.
And then about the time that we're moving in, this girl from the megachurch reaches back out to me and is like, "Hey, yeah, I think my wife and I are really interested in attending this group."
So just so happened that all of these events were the week before our kickoff barbecue for the new year of our Bible study. And so I give her all the details. She's like, "Cool, we'll be there." And then she messages me the day of, and she says, "Hey, I have a family emergency. Um, I'm not going to be able to make it, but my wife is still gonna come."
So she had given me enough of her backstory that I knew that they really needed a lot of healthy support, like right off the bat.
And so going into this group that night, I was on the lookout for her. So we like, we arrive, the three of us who are now living in this intentional community. We arrive to this barbecue, and we're helping set up, we're reconnecting with our friends, and everything's going good. And I see this white car pull in, and I'm like, 'Oh, that's her.' because I knew who everybody else's cars were. So I was like, 'Oh, okay, I'll go over and say hi.' And so like, as I'm approaching the car, this other woman who I'd seen in the pride pictures gets out, and I'm like, 'Oh, yay. More new people.' "Hi, I'm Chandra."
S: And I was like, "Hi, I'm Sarah."
C: And that's how I met my wife.
S: And we will continue our, um, together shit show of a dating life in the next episode.
C: For sure.
S: Until then, you can find us at www.queerchatsaboutjesus.com or.
C: On Instagram @queerchatsaboutjesus.com.
S: Or facebook.com/queerchatsaboutjesus.
C: You can also sign up for our mailing list at our website and until next time,
S: Keep chatting about Jesus.