Latest / The Becket Cook Show / Feminist Lesbian Comes to Christ: Elizabeth Woning's Testimony

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Feminist Lesbian Comes to Christ: Elizabeth Woning's Testimony · The Becket Cook Show

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Life Audio.
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  Speaker 2: You are listening to The Becket Cook Show with your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: visit his website at Beckettcook dot com. To help support
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  Speaker 2: star rating.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Today.
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  Speaker 3: I have a special guest, Elizabeth Wanting, and she has
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: an amazing story of how God rescued her out of
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  Speaker 3: a lesbian life and now she's married to a man.
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  Speaker 3: Her story is intriguing and she's also the co founder
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  Speaker 3: of the Change Movement but first award from our sponsor.
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  Speaker 3: So please welcome Elizabeth Wanning.
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  Speaker 4: And it's a pleasure to join you. I'm so excited, Beckett.
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  Speaker 1: It's good to have you on.
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  Speaker 3: So you have a fascinating story, as I've read some
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  Speaker 3: of the notes, or all of them actually, but so
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  Speaker 3: talk about you.
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  Speaker 1: You where did you grow up?
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  Speaker 4: I grew up in Illinois in the Midwest.
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  Speaker 3: And yeah, you say that you didn't feel you never
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  Speaker 3: really felt a sense of belonging.
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  Speaker 1: What what happened?
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  Speaker 4: Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Wow?
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  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I so growing up I maybe had it.
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  Speaker 1: I had.
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  Speaker 4: First of all, I guess I should say that I
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  Speaker 4: had a perfectly healthy family life. My parents were upper
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  Speaker 4: middle class, both of them were well educated. Father was
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  Speaker 4: in the corporate world. I didn't have any kind of
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  Speaker 4: abuses that I know of, at least not from my
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  Speaker 4: family life or my family upbringing. But early on, you know,
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  Speaker 4: there was question of whether or not I was autistic.
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  Speaker 4: So I had kind of some relational difficulties, and that
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  Speaker 4: later in my life, when I was in my twenties,
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  Speaker 4: I was diagnosed diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And so the
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  Speaker 4: beginnings of that were really in my early childhood and adolescence,
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  Speaker 4: and so but feeling other than you know, I'm a
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  Speaker 4: little bit nerdy as well, and so you know, typical
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  Speaker 4: kid feeling different then. But then also probably you can
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  Speaker 4: relate to some attachment distress with my parents, and so
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  Speaker 4: all of that leaves a kid feeling distressed. And I mean,
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  Speaker 4: if you want to start in my childhood with my story,
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  Speaker 4: then in my teens, I met a young woman at
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  Speaker 4: a church event. So I grew up in the pc USA,
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  Speaker 4: the Presbyterian Church, and met her in a in a
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  Speaker 4: church event, and we really clicked, really saw I to
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  Speaker 4: eye and and went deep fast. And she was also
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  Speaker 4: quite bright, and so the two of us became very
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  Speaker 4: very close, and I I would say, we both began
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  Speaker 4: questioning our sexuality together, you know, so we would we
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  Speaker 4: would both read orsolotly go in for example, and share
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  Speaker 4: what we were reading and thinking and feeling and and
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  Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately I fell in love with her. She
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  Speaker 4: was the deepest connection I'd ever had with somebody.
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  Speaker 1: But through college And what did your parent did your parents?
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  Speaker 1: Were your parents aware of this?
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  Speaker 2: No?
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  Speaker 4: Sure, you know, not at all, I would say, you know.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I every teen has a secret life, I think,
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  Speaker 4: but I definitely was not. I was never never close
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  Speaker 4: to my parents. Maybe closer to my father, but he
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  Speaker 4: had less time. So I was never really c to
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  Speaker 4: either of my parents. When I was seventeen, I moved
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  Speaker 4: to Europe and started college. And so I've always been
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  Speaker 4: very independent. I was raised my mother was a feminist.
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  Speaker 4: I was raised to be an independent woman, and both
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  Speaker 4: my parents encouraged that and encouraged a lot of education
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  Speaker 4: and really hoped that I would be, you know, the
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  Speaker 4: quintessential professional woman according to maybe seventies or eighties feminism
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  Speaker 4: and so that was the trajectory of my life. And yeah,
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  Speaker 4: so you know, I left my home when I was
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  Speaker 4: just graduating from high school at seventeen and really never
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  Speaker 4: never looked back, if you will, until I was in
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  Speaker 4: my late twenties when I really needed my parents' help
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  Speaker 4: and support.
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  Speaker 3: And the you got at some point you got you
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  Speaker 3: married a man, right when was that?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, so you know I came back from Europe
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  Speaker 4: and went to college in my undergrad years, and I
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  Speaker 4: would say, even though I had been questioning my sexuality,
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  Speaker 4: I really didn't know where to categorize my affections towards
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  Speaker 4: towards my close friend and then also other women, you know.
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  Speaker 4: And this was in you know, late eighties, early nineties,
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  Speaker 4: not to date myself, but I was. I was pretty
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  Speaker 4: isolated and naive. I didn't have much access to the
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  Speaker 4: LGBT world. Even in college. Really it was very I
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  Speaker 4: went to a Christian college, Westminster, and so it was
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  Speaker 4: very kind of uh secret, those kinds of things, And
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  Speaker 4: so I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing.
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  Speaker 4: Got married to a man briefly out of right out
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  Speaker 4: of college, but then we really weren't married for too long,
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  Speaker 4: be for I started really struggling with mental illness, and
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  Speaker 4: there are a lot of There are a lot of
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  Speaker 4: reasons compounding that struggle. When I look when I, you know,
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  Speaker 4: we were looking twenty twenty hindsight right, looking at all
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  Speaker 4: of the things in our lives. But at the time
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  Speaker 4: I reasoned that a large part of my emotional instability
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  Speaker 4: was because I was truly gay and and this was
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  Speaker 4: causing me harm. And so I kind of went into
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  Speaker 4: the hospital and coming out of the hospital, left him
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  Speaker 4: and came out. At that time, I had moved from
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  Speaker 4: the Midwest California and was living in central California and
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  Speaker 4: came out and joined you know, kind of moved into
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  Speaker 4: a metropolitan LGBT neighborhood and started living that in that world.
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  Speaker 4: And I would say, my experience is there for the
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  Speaker 4: next ten years really kept me alat because now my
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  Speaker 4: experiences with mental illness really became full blown, if you will,
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  Speaker 4: really struggled with instability mentally. I had started, I had
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  Speaker 4: headed in the trajectory of graduate school, but really couldn't
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  Speaker 4: couldn't follow through with that because of mental illness. And
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  Speaker 4: by the time I hit my late twenties, I couldn't
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  Speaker 4: really live independently. So I ended up moving back to
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  Speaker 4: the Midwest, moving in with my parents, and spent a
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  Speaker 4: couple of years really trying to become stable on medication. So,
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  Speaker 4: you know, I don't know if someone with bipolar type
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  Speaker 4: one has a lot of I was on a lot
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  Speaker 4: of medication for stability and then in and out of
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  Speaker 4: mental hospitals, and in that season, then started thinking, well,
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  Speaker 4: I had gotten married and disrupted my plan to enter
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  Speaker 4: grad school. What if I followed through with grad school
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  Speaker 4: and tried to regroup kind of rebuild my life. What
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  Speaker 4: if all of that was part of what was making
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  Speaker 4: me so mentally unstable. So I started in seminary. I
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  Speaker 4: went to seminary openly gay at a pc USA seminary.
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  Speaker 3: So the seminary was gay affirming. Basically it was a
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  Speaker 3: liberal seminary.
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  Speaker 4: The pc USA has been affirming for a long time.
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  Speaker 4: But so I went to seminary. But I was one
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  Speaker 4: of half a dozen or a dozen students seminary students
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  Speaker 4: who were openly gay, and so it wasn't like it
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  Speaker 4: was very uncommon. So this was around two thousand when
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  Speaker 4: I entered, it was very uncommon, and so I was
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  Speaker 4: I was accepted into the seminary, and I and my
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  Speaker 4: seminary friends were really trying to push the presbytery towards
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  Speaker 4: embrace of LGBT ideology. So it's very postmodern.
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  Speaker 3: And but this is this is a this is a
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  Speaker 3: this is a perfect time to ask this kind of
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  Speaker 3: question because it's rare to get someone who who was
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  Speaker 3: in your situation.
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  Speaker 1: So because I'm always fascinated by this, Like, so, why.
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  Speaker 3: Why did you were you pursuing seminary and pursuing a
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  Speaker 3: degree in seminary and I guess you were obviously you
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  Speaker 3: were self professed Christian? Right, yeah, we'll be right back
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  Speaker 3: after this short break.
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  Speaker 1: Were you were you raised a Christian?
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  Speaker 4: M hmm, yeah, And so.
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  Speaker 3: Why why was like why would you what did you
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  Speaker 3: think the what did you think about the Bible and
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  Speaker 3: what it had to say say about homosexuality? Did you
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  Speaker 3: just completely reject it out of hand or what were
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  Speaker 3: your thoughts on that?
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  Speaker 4: For me, you know, at the time, I began looking
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  Speaker 4: at scripture as in, Okay, here's a population that that
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  Speaker 4: really exists in the modern era but didn't exist in
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  Speaker 4: ancient time. Not that the experience of same sex sexuality
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  Speaker 4: or the behavior wasn't in scripture, but the subculture didn't exist,
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  Speaker 4: and so then how how then do we read the
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  Speaker 4: love of God in addressing this this population, this people
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  Speaker 4: group and that that then you know, when you add
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  Speaker 4: kind of a postmodern hermeneutic there, then you start looking
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  Speaker 4: at it through the lens of of sexual behavior in scripture.
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  Speaker 4: And I, you know, personally, and I would say my
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  Speaker 4: fellow seminarians, we were most interested in making a way
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  Speaker 4: for LGBT identifying people to be able to come into
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  Speaker 4: the church. The arguments over can you change or can
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  Speaker 4: you not? From my perspective, you know you can't change,
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  Speaker 4: And why would you God created you that way that
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  Speaker 4: you can bless the Lord as a gay person, So
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  Speaker 4: why would I even head in that direction? And then
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  Speaker 4: reading out of scripture is geating really the key so
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  Speaker 4: called claw passages as either ritualized or irrelevant to the
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  Speaker 4: modern day experience of love in the gay community. And
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  Speaker 4: that's how I looked at it at the time. And
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  Speaker 4: so I was just trying to open doors for LGBT
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  Speaker 4: identifying people to come into church to meet the Lord,
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  Speaker 4: to worship God. And that necessarily meant changing the church,
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  Speaker 4: not since the population couldn't change scripture didn't speak to that,
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  Speaker 4: so the church had to had to change, and that
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  Speaker 4: was the perspective that I had at the time.
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  Speaker 3: And so again with seminary, just this is a kind
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  Speaker 3: of a broad question, but why did you even consider
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  Speaker 3: pursuing seminary as a grad student rather than say, law
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  Speaker 3: school or you know, some other profession like what drew
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  Speaker 3: you to seminary?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I had always been, always been passionate about it,
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  Speaker 4: about theology. So you know, I don't in the Presbyterian Church.
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  Speaker 4: You when you reach kind of middle school age, you
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  Speaker 4: go through a communicants process and express make an open
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  Speaker 4: expression of faith to the board of elders. Or at
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  Speaker 4: least that was the setting I was raised in. And
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  Speaker 4: so even at eleven, twelve thirteen, I was fascinated by
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  Speaker 4: the things of God, fascinated by scripture, fascinated by Church
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  Speaker 4: history and its role in Western civilization. And so that
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  Speaker 4: passion for church history and that passion for understanding God
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  Speaker 4: and the things of God had been in my life.
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  Speaker 4: But what was missing really was any there were two
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  Speaker 4: key things missing. There. There was no comprehension of say
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  Speaker 4: union with Christ. That was never really clearly articulated to me.
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  Speaker 4: Like union with Christ that could be transformative. Nothing relational
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  Speaker 4: about interaction with God could be possible. Like my sense
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  Speaker 4: of God was that he was beyond reach, transcendent, almost deistic.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, was my faith.
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  Speaker 4: And then you know, and but then like when I
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  Speaker 4: went to I went to university in England at Durham
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  Speaker 4: University and focused on focused on the Middle Ages, and
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  Speaker 4: kind of my key study there was on the evangelism
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  Speaker 4: of Scandinavia through their their kind of do what their
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  Speaker 4: invasion of England. So actually Scandinavia was evangelized by England
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  Speaker 4: and its invasion process, and so I studied that and
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  Speaker 4: and so just the process of the power of God
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  Speaker 4: in civilization was fascinating to me. And I never read
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  Speaker 4: myself out of it, even though I experienced what I experienced.
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  Speaker 4: And maybe part of that was because I was isolated
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  Speaker 4: from from alternative views. I guess I could say, you know,
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  Speaker 4: I did, I didn't, I wouldn't have done. I was
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  Speaker 4: never invited to do a plane reading of scripture that
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  Speaker 4: that would have excluded a gay identifying person m hm.
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  Speaker 4: And so so then uh, you know, yeah, so I
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  Speaker 4: and even when I was in seminary, every week we
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  Speaker 4: went into the gay community, and we might even go
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  Speaker 4: into the gay bar and ship and pray with and
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  Speaker 4: share the Gospel with people. But then we would also
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  Speaker 4: go into the gay bar and have drinks and and
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  Speaker 4: you know, I walked in the gay pride parades and
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  Speaker 4: other things I didn't see. I literally, like I literally
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  Speaker 4: could not see the debauchery. I couldn't see.
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  Speaker 1: The disconnect.
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  Speaker 4: I couldn't. I really couldn't. It wasn't years later after
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  Speaker 4: I repented and the Lord met me, which we'll talk
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  Speaker 4: about maybe in a minute, that I went back to
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  Speaker 4: that community and looked around and just was astonished at
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  Speaker 4: the places I hung out and enjoyed and laughed at
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  Speaker 4: and partook and it really crazy, really maybe you know,
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  Speaker 4: really crazy.
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  Speaker 3: Well when you were in so, when you were in
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  Speaker 3: seminary or after that, were you involved in romantic relationships
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  Speaker 3: with women or were you what was that?
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  Speaker 4: Like I would typically enter so I had serial relationships
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  Speaker 4: with women. I you know, I struggled to create long
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  Speaker 4: term relationships, but so I would have many short term
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  Speaker 4: relationships with women, dated women a lot. You know. I
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  Speaker 4: can also say, though the fellowship that I had in
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  Speaker 4: the midst of in seminary, even beyond even before that
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  Speaker 4: in the gay community. Worse, they felt so life giving
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  Speaker 4: to me. You know, they really captured me from, really
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  Speaker 4: rescued me from many times. And so all during my twenties,
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  Speaker 4: I really I can't understate how much I struggled. And
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  Speaker 4: then going to seminary, I was very hopeful that I
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: would you know, that I would gain the hope that
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  Speaker 4: I needed for my future. But I really didn't. And
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  Speaker 4: and so in my final seminary, I spent a month
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  Speaker 4: in a mental hospital, and really upon graduating, I really couldn't.
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  Speaker 4: I really didn't feel like I would live very much longer.
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  Speaker 4: So I would struggle with kind of psychotic episodes where
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: I would kind of break from I would be unaware
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  Speaker 4: of my reality, and so it was just very it
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  Speaker 4: was a very distressing time for me. But then when
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  Speaker 4: I graduated from seminary, you know, for a period I
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  Speaker 4: lived at home, but then I was given afforded the
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: opportunity to move in with my elderly grandmother, who had
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  Speaker 4: been a pillar in my life, incredible woman, and I
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  Speaker 4: moved in with her when she was in her mid nineties. Wow,
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  Speaker 4: and you know, she was starting to experience dementia and
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  Speaker 4: I will say that we had many meaningful times at
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  Speaker 4: three am in the morning, because I would struggle to
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: sleep in that season. And but while I was there,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: so I moved from this major metropolitan area into this
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  Speaker 4: rural community, little bitty town, and started reaching out to
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  Speaker 4: the local ministers, local pastors, the ministerial alliance, and found
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: a part time job at a Presbyterian church doing youth ministry.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: And was, yeah, okay, and how was you know, although
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: I would say I was not, you could look at
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  Speaker 4: me and no, I mean at the time, and I
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  Speaker 4: have short hair now, but at the time, I shaved
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  Speaker 4: my head, and I had piercings, and I have a
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: few tattoos, and so I wasn't trying to hide my
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: affiliation with feminist lesbians. But at the same time, you know,
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't make I didn't make it a
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  Speaker 4: big deal. Well, I wasn't trying to force LGBT activists
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: on anybody, And so you could look at me and
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  Speaker 4: see or you could ask, but I wasn't going to
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  Speaker 4: talk about it otherwise. And so yeah, but I was
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  Speaker 4: in the probably the closest gay bar was about sixty
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  Speaker 4: miles from that community. So it wasn't like I had
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: fellowship with a bunch of gay people nearby. So I
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  Speaker 4: started making my way and I ended up meeting a
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: youth pastor who had was part of a ministry that
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: was also kind of doing outreach in the community, and
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: it was pretty it was growing and successful, and he
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: invited me to attend. You know, I was really interested
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: because in my PCUSA setting, I had kind of the
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: doctors and lawyers of the region, you know, that that
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: kind of student So they were all college bound students
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: and the more affluent from the community that I was in.
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  Speaker 4: But he was doing ministry to a lot of homeless
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  Speaker 4: kids or many of them were abused, definitely from broken families, impoverished,
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: and and so his ministry was radically different than mine
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: in that way. So I was very curious about what
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: they were doing. And he was Pentecostal, but I didn't
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: really I knew that, but it really I really didn't care.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: I was very curious, and so I showed up one
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: night they had been so they had services on Thursday
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  Speaker 4: night and Saturday nights. So I showed up on a
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: Thursday night, and you know, they just to give give
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: kind of a visual they met in in an empty,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: kind of dilapidated Chevrolet dealership showroom, and it was it
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: was it had been downtown in this little tiny city.
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  Speaker 4: It wasn't like a an industrial situation.
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  Speaker 2: This.
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  Speaker 4: I think the dealership maybe had been open in the fifties.
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  Speaker 4: So I mean it was the green asbestos tiles on
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: the floor and things, and they were given it for free.
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  Speaker 4: And then they had a bunch of those aluminum fold
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  Speaker 4: up chairs kind of set set in place, and their
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  Speaker 4: worship leader. They played contemporary music, which I was not
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  Speaker 4: comfortable with. You know, I did not know any Christian
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: contemporary music. I was a dignified him singing Presbyterian, and
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: and so they're worship leader. She she had a five
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: disc CD player and she would spend the week praying
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: and she would put together a playlist on one of
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: those CDs and then she'd have these other CDs on
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: hand and she would start playing the music, and then
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  Speaker 4: whatever it was that was causing the spirit to move,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: she would kind of stay with that topic or that
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  Speaker 4: that you know, kind of theme in the music. And
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: so she had a really a really interesting worship said.
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  Speaker 4: I began to realize later, but this first night, you know,
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  Speaker 4: it's just a recorded just recorded music, and they were
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: worshiping the Lord, and the Holy Spirit entered in and
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: I always like to say it was it was a
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Presbyterian's worst nightmare. I mean it was kids falling down.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Some kids were laughing and running around. Others had fallen down.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Others were, you know, speaking. I came to realize later
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: we're speaking in tongues. They had received their their spiritual
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: prayer language. And so it was all it was. It
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: was chaotic and for me terrifying, like I'd never seen
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: anything like that. And it was all spontaneous. So the
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: the two senior leaders were both twenty one year old
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: kids newly married. And then you know, my friend who
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: had invited me, he was thirty five or thirty three,
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: and so it wasn't no one going around touching anybody.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: This was all just spontaneously happening. And a seventeen year
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: old boy approached me and he said to me, I
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: believe I have a word from the Lord for you,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: So just to just to once again give you the
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: optics of this, I don't I don't think there was
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: a gay woman for miles, and I don't know if
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: he'd ever met a gay woman, and he definitely could
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: see that I had something else going on, and so
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: he had He was very courageous walking up to me
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: as a visitor, you know, and and he proceeded to
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: tell me about something I had been praying about for years,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: and I did not know what to do with that.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: I didn't know how to respond or even what was happening.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: And I remember thinking, in that moment, does God know
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: me specifically? And if he does, I have no idea
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: who he is. And that caused me to you know,
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: I didn't. I didn't know how to categorize or respond
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: to what had happened, and I didn't know who to
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: turn to for advice. And so I just went out
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: and I bought a new Bible, and I began highlighting
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: every passage in scripture where God describes himself and or
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: he's explicitly described right, trying to understand who, who or
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: what had connected with me in that setting.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Well, okay, so can we go back to the seventeen
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: year old giving you a word? Can you tell us
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: what he said to you?
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: I'd rather not do that, but I mean he you know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: he basically said, well, I can say one of the
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: things that he said to me. He said, the Lord
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: will remove all doubt. And for me, you know, going
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: through seminary and going through seminary and I just go
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: through seminary and survive, but I got worse. So I
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: had all these years of praying that I would get
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: healing or praying that I would get freedom, or hope
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: that Christian faith would somehow bring peace in my life.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: And that definitely caused a lot of bitterness towards the Lord.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: But then also a lot of question of maybe, uh,
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: maybe Christian faith is just another ideology and uh, you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: and and that fear even you know, if you can
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: imagine going into the ministry and hoping to become someday
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: and ordained pastor in a church, but then doubting that
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: God exists, it was a it was a it was
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: a deep fear of mine and so then and so
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: then you know, for him to call that out so
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: directly and profoundly for me, I was really really it
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: was so significant. But then the invitation was to discover
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: that He was real. And what came out of that season,
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: so I, you know, basically started in Genesis and read
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: from cover to cover and began getting this picture of
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: God that was profoundly different than I had imagined, and
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: more beautiful, more compassionate, more full of love, more relational
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: than I could have thought, and at the same time
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: felt pursued by God, felt like He was mysteriously powerfully
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: meeting me and particularly, you know, particularly able to you know,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: I would have these moments of every rumination, and He
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: would be able to meet me in those spaces and
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: draw me into kind of places of safety or places
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: of peace that I had never experience before. And so
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: I began developing a kind of a prayer life, not
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: an intercessory life, and an adoration of God and prayer.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: And meanwhile, meanwhile also doing simply a plane reading a scripture.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: So going from my postmodern hermeneutic to you know, to
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: simply a plane reading maybe even a kind of an
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: evangelical hermeneutic if you will, historical gram grammatical approach to scripture,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: which is what I was surrounded by, And then continued
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: going just visiting all these Pentecostal churches kind of realized, well,
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: maybe God, if God is alive, If God is alive,
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: and he knows me, these people are claiming they experience
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: and interact with God. I meanwhile, I'm reading Scripture and thinking,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: this picture of God that I'm getting is so profound.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: If I could have if I could have can union
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: with God, fellowship with God, I would have purpose in
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: my life. I would have meaning in my life, but
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: especially I would have value. And that element of being
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: connected to God and feeling his transcendent beauty and being
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: connected to that hit something in me that I had
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: never experienced before, this sense of worth, and so I
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: was so hungry to reach for more of the love
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: of God. So I would go to these holiness Pentecostal churches,
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: you know, walking in with my men's clothes and shaved head,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: and you'd have these women with their pentecostal hairdoos, you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: long shirts and you know. And no one ever said, hey,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: you know, you need to repent. They just saw that
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: I was curious and hungry for God, and I didn't
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: want to fall down, but I wanted to see other
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: people fall down. I wanted to see, you know, some
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: manifestation of God. And then also then though, my reading
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: of Scripture caused me to begin questioning what I had
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: believed in seminary, what I had been taught my whole
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: life about the nature of womanhood, you know that I
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: had so strongly rejected as a young adult, What did
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: it mean to be a woman? What did it mean
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: to be a woman in an association with men? If
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be more deeply connected to God, then
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: that meant to me that I needed to align my
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: faith with his, and I needed to to begin align aligning,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: you know, my values with his. And somehow me as
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: a woman didn't. What I read in scripture didn't match
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: what I had believed. And so that caused me to
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: begin questioning why I believed what I believed and who
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I thought myself to be. And that process made me
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: realize I had rejected womanhood and why was that? And
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: so in prayer began going began asking God, Okay, why
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: am I the way I am? And began getting very
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: very deep clarity on beliefs I had held wrong, beliefs
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: that I had formed about being a woman, about embracing
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: myself as a woman, what it meant to be a
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: woman of God in fellowship with men, even in family
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: and in marriage. And of course, then as I'm going
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: down there that rabbit hole, I began recognizing that queer
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: theology as I had embraced it seemed to be largely patristic.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: So I'm looking at Jonathan David or I'm questioning you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Jesus's interactions maybe with the apostles, God forbid, but even
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: you know, that's the way I looked at Scripture. It
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, you could read into the sexualization of relationships,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: but you really couldn't do that among the women represented
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: in Scripture. So that meant that I began questioning how
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: I had formed the theology that I had, and how
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: dominated it was, dominating it was, or how dominated it
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: was by male perspectives, and that also, you know, I
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: think differently about all of it today, but at the
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: time I ended up completely deconstructing feminist and queer theology
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: because it didn't allow me entry into the place that
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: I believed scripture could take me. And all of that
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: was key. That was the beginning of my repentance process.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: But then as I repented, then, as you can imagine,
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: all of my gay and lesbian, all my queer peers,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: they definitely thought I had gone off the rail. And
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: so now you know, they're believing I've entered a cult
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: or you know, you're you need to stop, because you
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: know at some point you'll come back to the truth
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: of who you are. You know. Meanwhile, you know, it
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: wasn't as much, it wasn't so much that my sexual
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: desires were changing. At that point, I really didn't care.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: I was more interested in connecting more deeply with God
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: than I was about changing any behavior. And you know,
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: even my moment, that first moment with that seventeen year
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: old boy, the most important issue wasn't my sexual behavior.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: It was my faith and the gravity of claiming a
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: role in the church when I actually didn't believe. And
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: you know, but then ultimately it had come down to
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: my sexualization, of intimacy with women and all of that,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: but not at the beginning. And so you know, ultimately
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: I met a man who was really began and in
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: the beginning just as a sounding board and kind of
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: discipled me into better understanding of spirituality and ultimately began
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: experiencing affections for him that even though I had been
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: married before, I had classified all of that as a
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: big mistake, a big harmful mistake that had happened in
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: my life, right, and so I you know, just kind
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: of pushed that put that in a box and said,
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: that's not the truth of who I am. So then
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: I started developing affection for this man, and that was
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: kind of the that was the card that broke everything, really,
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: you know, everything started tumbling down when I realized that
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: I actually, you know, was falling in love with him,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: had deep feelings and affections for him. And what did
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: that mean in the context of queer theology and feminist
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: theology and where I was headed. And so I really
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: went through an incredible period of deconstruction and and as
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: that happened, as it was all falling apart, my mental
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: health improved. And so then I married my husband. We've
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: been married for twenty one years now.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: And I was he a part of that church that
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: you were that you were attending.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there was it.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: When So tell tell me, like when was the kind
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: of transition from death to life?
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Like when when was when were you born again? Like
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: how did that kind of manifest itself to you?
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: Well, let's say, you know, I had this experience of
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: Jesus and then so that was in the fall of
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: two thousand and three when things started shifting from me
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: and I started kind of pursuing pursuing God differently than
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: I had ever experienced. I ended up, you know, I
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: continued for a couple of months, two or three months
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: after that, working at this Presbyterian church, but then resigned
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: from there because now everything was I was very confused,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: and so it was a two year process of rethinking
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: everything and then at you know, then getting kind of
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: acknowledging my affections for Doug. We got married in two
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: thousand and five, so very shortly after, but I can
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: say that that was kind of the beginning of the
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: beginning for me at the time. It was it was
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: essential to my to my well being, really because in
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: the context of my marriage, all my questions about what
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: it meant to be a woman and what a woman's
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: role was or relationship was in uh in concert with
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: a man became more and more clear, and I began
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: getting a stronger and stronger sense of my identity because
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: of my husband. And and then I also had to
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: acknowledge the role that childhood sexual abuse had played in
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: my life. And and so I had been molested as
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: a very young child, and then through teenage years had
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: sexually abusive experiences with men, and I, you know, you
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: end up putting all of that in a box and
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: and forgetting all that exists when you come out. And
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: so are.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: You aware Were you aware of the sexual abuse when
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: you were younger?
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: No, that didn't happen until until five or so years later.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: So when I had the memory of it, but I
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: really didn't understand what what any of it was. M
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: that's a longer story. But Doug was able to, in
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: the context of our marriage, to help me navigate and
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: walk through a lot of that pain and had grace
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: to do that in a way that I don't think,
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: you know, it was profoundly the right way to bring
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: healing in my life because he's such a genuinely strong
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: but gentle man. And yeah, so our marriage was really
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: the beginning of my inner healing journey. And so we
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: got married in two thousand and five. But then over
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: the course of the next five years, then I started
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: experiencing greater and greater wellness in my mental health status.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: And so you know, I went from seeing a psychiatrist
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: every twice a month and a counselor every week and
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: taking five or six different drugs to manage my life,
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: everything from sleep meds and exiting anti anxiety meds and
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: antidepressants and mood stabilizing drugs and antipsychotic drugs, all those things.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: Over the course of five years, I started tapering off those,
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: not needing them all all together with my psychiatrist. So
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I mean it started with me sleeping through the night,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: and then so stop needing ambient, and then me not
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: having anxiety attacks and so not not needing atavan, not
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: experiencing severe dips and depressions. To me not needing, you know,
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: you'd go, I'd cycle through all these antidepressants like well
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: bututrin and lexapro, and you run the gamut because your
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: physiology would change. Stop meeting those. Then I stopped needing
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: Sarahquell because I stopped having these kind of out of
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: body experiences. And I got down to lithium. So for
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: all my life up to that point, or all of
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: my life up to that point, my late thirties, almost forty,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: I had been on either lithium or depicote and went
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: on a forty day fast and during that period felt
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: invited to taper off lithium and did that, and something
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: once again something that I don't Some people think that
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: there's this element of kind of uncleanness when you have
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: to take drugs like that, And that's not what I'm
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: saying here, but in my life, I was getting healthier,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: and so I stopped needing lithium and went off lithium.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: And eight was the forty day Fast.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Kind of pivotal in that.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know, they didn't begin as being connected. It
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: was just during that forty day fast that I felt
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: kind of the grace to do that. And so by
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: the end of the fast I had gone off with them.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: And since I have never had another psychotic or manic
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: or severe severely depressive moment major depression. Never And so
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean I've experienced Everyone experiences depression, and
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: you know, dips and changes in emotion, everyone does. But
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: I never experienced anything that was debilitating again, And honestly,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: you know, in the context of my testimony when I
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: met the Lord, LGBT was not the life dominating issue
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: that I was concerned about. My mental health was. I
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: really feared I have tried it. I really feared that
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: I would. And the Lord meeting me in that space
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: is so profound, so profound, and if he hadn't if
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: he hadn't met me in that space, I might have
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: been confused about what he did. Also in my identity,
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: my sexual identity, you know, But the two factors together
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: have meant that I've experienced just the most profound and
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: beautiful love of God and healing in my life. And
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: you know, continue, the healing process continues, continue, I continue
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: to mature, and I continue to get healthy even after
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: all these years. We all do.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the Lord.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you I don't know if you've
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: heard me say this tell this story before, but I've
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: told it a couple of times on the show. But
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: I I was on Wellbutrin for a year for like
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: I know how long was that, ten years maybe before
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: I was a Christian. And so when I got saved
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, I was so euphoric, and I thought,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: you know, and the well Buttrin worked like a charm
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: because like it was, it was very effective and it
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: had no side effects for me. And so but when
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: I got saved, I was like, I don't think I
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: need this anymore, this drug. And so I contacted my
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: psychiatrist and and we had a meeting and I was like,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm getting off the well Buttrin and he said.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: His response was like and he was.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Gay.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: He was a gay like Harvard psychiatrist in West LA
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: and Brentwood and and I said, he said, oh, that's
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: wonderful news. Mask why And I said, well, I met
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Jesus and I don't.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I don't need it anymore. I don't think I need
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: it anymore.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: And his response was, why don't we keep you on
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: for six more months and then we'll And I was like, no, no, no,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: I'm getting off like immediately.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: And.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: So I with well, Bututrin, as far as I understand it,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: you don't have to. I didn't have to wean off
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: of it. I just got off immediately. There's no weaning
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: process with that drug, according to my psychiatrist. So I
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: just got off of it. But then a month about
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: a month later, that old depression started creeping back in,
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: and I was like, ah, like I thought that was gone.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: And I it was like this kind of like I
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: always had this like morning depression ever since I was
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: kind of a teenager, and so I was very upsetting.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: And then I was at church the following Sunday and
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I totally did a James five and if during after
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the sermon, I went up to one of the elders
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: and I said, I told him the situation, and he said, okay,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: let me pray for you, and he laid hands on
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: me and he pulled out while he was praying, he
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: pulled out a vial of anointing oil and he anointed
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: my head. And as he was praying for me, I
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: felt this. It was like, I mean, I can't I
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: wish people could feel that because it was so real
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: it was. I felt this physical tingling sensation rising up
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: through my.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Body and out of my mind. And I immediately burst
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: into tears when that happened.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Wow, and that God, Like, you know, God doesn't always
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: do this, but God, in that moment, God supernaturally healed
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: me of depression permanently.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, it's so good, and so I
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: love with God. When God does that.
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: Sometimes it takes forty day fast other things, but in
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: that minute moment, God just like met me there and
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: he was just like, I'm gonna I'm gonna take this
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: away from you.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going to heal you of this.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: And it was such a like and obviously it was
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: so encouraging to my faith, and it was also just
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: a huge relief in my sight. And I told my
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: psychiatrist later and he just he looked very confused by
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: the whole thing.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, the Lord knows exactly
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: what we need. I think, you know, my journey with
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: mental illness, the Lord continues to restore my mind so
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: at its height, you know, at my worst, I really
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: I couldn't go through a day without being disoriented towards
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: the time or what I should be doing. Like there
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: was a season when I was I was working as
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: a designer, a graphic designer, and I would schedule my
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: day in five, ten and fifteen minute increments so that
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: if at any given moment I would kind of get
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: lost and whatever I was thinking about, I could look
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: at my schedule and see what I should be doing,
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: you know. And so you know, but okay, I love
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: that the Lord meets us in those deep places, right yeah?
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: And so how did you get how did you get
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: involved with the Change Movement?
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: And what is the Change movement?
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: What is the Change Movement? Well, the Change Movement is
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: a is a grassroots, kind of loose network of people
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: who have experienced Christ and left LGBT culture. You know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: I I well, I was up here in northern California
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: attending a church and was introduced to another man who
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: had a similar background as mine, and we started meeting
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: together over coffee and just talking about our life experiences
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: because I had never met anyone else who had been
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: in the gay culture and left that culture and followed
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: Christ with such life transformation as I had. And so
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: we met together for about a year over coffee and
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: just kind of unpacked what God did and how could
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: we understand it. And you know, at the end of
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: that period, we realized we probably knew enough to help
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: other people. So we started a ministry called Equipped to Love,
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: and our focus was really just to go into churches
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: help them better understand the experience so that there wasn't
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: so much fear in discipling people, like, yes, you can
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: share the gospel. People like us are not. We're not
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: uniquely different than you. Here's what it looks like, and
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: here's some of the biggest hang ups that many of
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: us have experienced that you might want to be prepared for.
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: And we had been doing that for about a year
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: and sharing our testimonies when California tried to pass kind
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: of it was a form of a conversion therapy ban.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: It was already conversion therapy for minors that had already
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: been that bill had passed several years prior, so this
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: was in twenty eighteen. But this new bill basically said,
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: since we since we know sexual orientation cannot change, any
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: suggestion that it can, or especially that it should, should
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: be considered fraud in the state of California. So any
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: place where there is an exchange of money, you're liable
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: for fraud. So that meant that Ken, he's published his
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: memoir kind of like you have, we might not have
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: been able to sell that in the state of California,
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: or we might not have if we produced any resources
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: like discipleship curriculum, we might not have been able to
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: sell that or host a conference where there was a fee.
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: And so we started kind of speaking out against that
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: bill in Sacramento. And at one point, I mean, if
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: you can imagine just the optics here of I'm sharing
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: my three minute testimony of leaving lesbianism with the Senate
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: Judiciary in sacrament I know, like imagine that problem, you know,
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: and so you know, they looked at us like we
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: had three heads. And so we ended up publishing a
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: book of testimonies that we called it changed because that
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: very very succinctly told what we were. You know, I
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: think I had a copy of it here.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: It's like a change of affection.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of, you know, right, and it just
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: it doesn't have any rhetoric, and it just has kind
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: of tests, you know, these yeah spreads, And so we
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: started passing those around in the Capitol, and then we
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: had a rally We're Invited, where we invited several of
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: us to share our testimonies from the capital steps, and
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: that got streamed on the internet, and all of a sudden,
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: we started hearing from people from all over saying, hey,
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: that's my story too, And so we realized then we
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: had this, you know, these connections to people all over
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: the world who had left LGB to follow Christ. And
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: people started saying, oh, you were those changed folks in Sacramento.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: And we because we all wore this this matching T shirt,
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: and so very quickly changed eclipsed to our original ministry.
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: You know, for a while, we tried to do them
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: in tandem, and so we ended up kind of shutting
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: down equipped to Love and continuing with changed. So change
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: does two things. Now. One, you know, we continue to
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: just simply publish testimonies for people. And then we still
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: do some church ministry where we talk about the life
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: experience and offer encouragement to pastors on how to really
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: provide care for people who are wanting to follow a
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: biblical sexual ethic away from LGBT culture. But then also
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: because we were in Sacramento, we've remained in kind of
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: public policy work. So I work with think tanks across
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: the world. Really, I'm just addressing conversion therapy and conversion
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: therapy bands in particular and the harms of those, and
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: working increasingly in the gender identity space and other things.
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: But also, you know, one of the things that happened
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: for me when we were in Sacramento was I wanted
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: to be able to speak to the issue without being abrasive,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: without you know, without being kind of overly caustic religious.
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: You know, I wanted to be able to walk as
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: I could see scripture showing. I wanted to be able
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: to walk in compassion and humility, and to be able
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: to dialogue on this issue in the public arena. And
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: so we do our best to continue in that space
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: and also kind of help other Christian organizations to be
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: in that space at the intersection of LGBT because it's
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: just so caustic, conflict ridden, you know, let's leave.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: It there, and thank you.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you Elizabeth coming on and sharing your story.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Wait, don't touch that dial.
• 52:10
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• 52:13
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• 52:17
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• 52:19
  Speaker 3: link is below and we so so appreciate it.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes
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• 52:37
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• 52:44
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