By Cathy Tamsberg
When I wrote my spiritual autobiography as I discerned a call to seminary twenty-five years ago, I began with this verse from Psalm 22: …since my mother bore me you have been my God. I grew up in a deeply committed Southern Baptist family and cannot recall a time when I didn’t have some level of awareness of God’s presence in my life. The Creator of the Universe and Lover of All has been my lifelong companion, although sometimes that Presence has felt very close and at other times “out there” somewhere. I loved church as a child and the people there who nurtured me.
It was in this church-filled space that I was attracted to women at a pretty young age. I didn’t have a clue what it meant nor would I ever have used those words. But looking back, I see all the signs in the older girls, teachers, and other women I admired as a young person. Looking back, I also remember my awkwardness with several “boyfriends” and my lack of interest in the conversations about boys that were the fixation of my friends. Generally, I had a growing, uneasy awareness that somehow I didn’t fit. This became more and more real when I was a teenager until I finally fell deeply in love with a woman. As a serious, trying-to-be-faithful young Christian, I was confused. I had never heard my parents or my minister talk about homosexuality—hard to believe with the nature of today’s Southern Baptist churches. Yet I was clear that society considered it very wrong. As that first relationship unfolded, however, my uneasiness grew, not from believing what I was doing was a terrible sin, but rather that it was not what God wanted for me. It’s amazing how we can play games in our heads.
Through the last years of high school and college, a “this-is-what-feels-right-and-yet-it’s-wrong” feeling was a constant presence in my mind and heart. Lying in bed at night, I would agonize silently with myself and God about what I should do. This was the late 1960s and early ‘70s. In those days one did not come out to one’s parents nor see other LGBTQ folks on the landscape. It was a lonely time. Then one day in my first year of teaching after an especially hard night of angst, I found myself in my bedroom. Motivated by a powerful sense I cannot explain, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “Being gay is OK with me, and it’s OK with God.” At that moment the burden I had been carrying lifted, never to return again.
Today I live in deep gratitude and with an acute awareness that those years of discovering who I was were very easy compared to what happened to many LGBTQ people my age. I was spared the many things that could have gone wrong and altered my life and my family’s life forever. The potential for public scandal was always around the corner in my small town. I am very grateful the first woman I loved taught me not only about real love, but also opened my eyes to injustices in the world that I didn’t see or understand.
I still cherish the gifts I received from the church of my childhood all those years ago. But I give thanks that I was somehow able to discover in my early twenties that the voices of society and the church do not always echo the voice of God.
Thank you for sharing your story, Cathy. It is so filled with all that’s right and good.
Thank you Cathy.
Thank you, Cathy for sharing your experience. I am grateful with you that your years of discovery were not as difficult and damaging as they could have been. Your internalized grace graces us!
Yes! “…the voices of society and the church do not always echo the voice of God.” Thank you for your faithful witness.
Thank you, Cathy, for your witness to the deeper voice of Love. I am privileged to have experienced this embodied in you.
Cathy, thank you for sharing your story. In ways our stories are similar. The perfect thread is that God was/is always OK with us, and thankfully I always felt that.
Beautifully said. We are lucky to know you and luckier still to have had you in our church’s leadership during your time at Calvary.
Thank God for insight and happy endings.
Nancy
Thank you, Cathy…since those days many years ago when I met you at Calvary in DC, I have admired and appreciated you.
Wonderful story Cathy!!! Thank you for allowing us a glimpse into your journey!! ❤️
Thank you, Cathy, for sharing your story. I am so sorry that you felt agony and confusion growing up. What a tough place to be.
How wonderful that God gave you a sense of peace to move forward authentically and generously. I bet that you have helped to powerfully shape and change many lives over the years!
Thank you, Cathy.
I am grateful for you, Kathy- for your faithful and persistent struggle to claim who God creates you to be, and for your willingness to share your story here.