My Faith Taught Me To Love
It was an ordinary morning, except my partner was the one still lazing about in bed rather than me.
I intended to wake her with a kiss and a cup of tea but I was suddenly stopped short. I stood fixed in the bedroom doorway watching her sleep when it struck me: I love her.
This was not a new realization; I’d been saying it everyday for nearly five years. But this morning, there were no words floating about my head. There was only the silence of “knowing.”
What I experienced in that moment was more like a wash of unutterable peace.
Inside my heart was a sense of release—a trace of selflessness. I was aware of the future ahead of us and I wanted to make it there, prepared to witness every joy and absorb every sorrow as if it were my own to endure.
At this point in the story, what will be remarkable to many people is that the tale involves a bedroom, a morning and two women. A scandal indeed for some Christians, but there is more to come. What I have not told you yet is what happened next. A realization so shocking to me that it would be many years before I confessed it to anyone. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was:
Christianity prepared me to love my same-sex partner.
Wait—come back…
Christianity has a rich and consistent history of encouraging us to look beyond the flesh and into the spirit. For all the Biblical hyperbole of being “in the world but not of it” to outright condemnation of fleshly pleasure, the point that so often gets lost is the point. There is a deeper kind of living, not just for the things that taste good in the moment, but rather a learning and reaching for that which can survive beyond our senses and endure in our memory.
Theists and atheists alike will remind us of how the chemical flurry of newfound relationships ebbs with time. One day we’ll wake up and the fire will be one that needs constant attention to stay alight. It’s all a subtle way of saying that sex isn’t love and life-long relationships are hard work.
It’s easy to mock Christianity’s conservative reputations when it comes to talking about sex, but I am grateful that my faith prepared me to see more about my lover than what is on the surface.
Love is more than pleasing my body or my ego. It is about companionship, service and spirit.
How others journey in their pursuit of love is as varied as their differing styles of relationships…but for me, for now, what I keep coming back to are the basic principles of love that my faith has taught and inspired in me.
“Love is patient, love is kind, it always trusts, protects…it always perseveres…”
Those were the words that started creeping through my head that morning. Before I had a chance to recoil at the sentiment of religiosity, I heard it and began to answer silently:
YES! Love is patient. I want to be patient. Teach me patience!
Love is oh, so kind. It’s incredible! I want to be as kind as love!
I could go on, but it’s far too sacred a prayer to reveal it all. It is a delicate and earnest sentiment that has a shyness that belies its strength. I search for other ways to express it, but I know of no other way to say it: love is a holy thing.
My faith has taught me how to recognize that yearning and to be unafraid of its limitless expanse.
My faith has taught me that all relationships are sacred, that love is not an act of the flesh, but rather an act of spirit.
My faith has taught me love.
Jennifer Knapp is currently touring with Inside Out Faith, an initiative she founded to create positive and constructive dialogue about LGBT people of faith. Visit her website to book an event in your community.
Photo via Jennifer Knapp.