Unraveling: Queerness is my Pride and Joy

By Rebecca Wilson

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”—Maya Angelou

I started writing poems as a child. Scribbling words on paper for years that never saw light beyond my own eyes. Slowly and cautiously I began to share my poetry. My first reader was a Sunday school teacher. Each week I brought her a folder filled with poems to the same United Methodist Church (UMC) where I was baptized, confirmed, and first learned about a God of love and grace. This wise and gentle soul took the poems, returning them the next week with notes, questions, and encouragement to keep on writing.

On April 23^rd my first collection of poetry Unraveling: Coming Out and Back Together was published. These 21 poems, curated by liturgical season, tell my story of coming out as lesbian and leaving ministry in the UMC, where I first learned the stories of scripture and heard a call to serve the world. Oh, the stories I hold of how I have experienced church as a source of healing.

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”—Zora Neale Hurston

In 2014 I graduated seminary and was commissioned as a provisional clergy person in the UMC. In my first appointment I weaved through local churches preaching, teaching, speaking, facilitating workshops and trainings, and coordinating an annual day of community service that brought hundreds of volunteers and food donations to the city of Detroit. I also led a disaster recovery project in response to flooding that had left thousands of households needing assistance and longing for hope and healing. Wading the waters of flooded basements in homes growing with mold and without working heat, my own hunger and longing for hope and healing rose to the surface. 

I bought my first and only clergy robe on a clearance rack at a Catholic bookstore. There were a few loose strings hanging from the bottom hem. I left them there for fear that one pull and it would all unravel. It did unravel.

I wore it for the last time in December 2016, while preaching an Advent sermon on fear in which I came out as lesbian from the pulpit. Although the message was an encouragement to not be afraid. I was filled with far more fear than joy. I had heard of queer joy but had not yet experienced it. 

In February 2017 I surrendered my provisional clergy credentials, months before I would have been fully ordained. I made the decision after searching, seeking, and coming to a difficult realization—the church that helped me heal in so many ways was unable and unwilling to help me heal from self-hatred and shame perpetuated by their ongoing institutional power struggle fueled by denigrating the humanity and debating the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. I could not be whole while continuing to deny and hide my sexuality. I could not embrace my sexuality and continue serving as clergy in the United Methodist Church. I was in an impossible position, forced to make an impossible choice. Oh, the stories I hold of how church is an experience I need to heal from. 

In 2019, I was present in St. Louis, Missouri, witness to the UMC Special General Conference. When the results of the vote on the Traditional Plan—reinforcing anti-LGBTQIA+ positions and policies—were projected on screen my heart broke. Not a clean break, but a slow jagged one, piercing my entire being. This breaking was captured by a photographer. That photo, circulated around the world, captured the grieving, but it did not tell my story. My story is so much more than grief. Unraveling is my story.

“Joy is an act of resistance.”—Toi Derricotte

I bought my first and only clergy robe on a clearance rack at a Catholic bookstore. There were a few loose strings hanging from the bottom hem. I left them there for fear that one pull and it would all unravel. It did unravel.

I wore it for the last time in December 2016, while preaching an Advent sermon on fear in which I came out as lesbian from the pulpit. Although the message was an encouragement to not be afraid. I was filled with far more fear than joy. I had heard of queer joy but had not yet experienced it. 

When I came out of the closet my clergy robe went into a box kept on a basement shelf, until one spring when hope was blooming and healing happening. The life I risked it all to find was breaking forth and I was becoming. Oh, the stories I hold of how calling ascends when no longer held down by garments and credentials.

I went to the basement to pull out the clergy robe. I held it. Cried on and over it. I took it to the backyard where it was pouring rain and let it catch as much water as possible. And then I put it in a trash can filled with dirt and left it out in the elements for days. When the rain stopped I went to retrieve it. Soaked. Heavy. Muddy. Smelly. When it dried I cut it into small pieces with an old pair of scissors. Once it was all unraveled I carried it to the dumpster. That walk was deliberately slow and undeniably healing. There was one small piece of the robe that didn’t go in the dumpster. It went into my pocket. It stays with me for days of struggle. And doubt. Fear. Grief. Celebration. Joy. Pride.

This June is not my first experience of Pride. But it is the first Pride I celebrate whole, holy, and joyfully queer. I have embraced the gift of unraveling, which I now know is the beauty of becoming. Unraveling: Coming Out and Back Together is not merely a United Methodist or a Christian story. It’s about the slow death that comes from believing your life has no value and the new life that begins when you courageously embrace who you are and where you’ve been.

It is a story of the life that comes when we unravel all that keeps us from living; when we boldly claim our belovedness and resist the systems that make and keep us ill; and when, like the woman in the Gospels suffering for twelve years, we make our way through the crowd to pull the dangling hem of Jesus’ robe embracing the healing and the power that is ours.

Everything did unravel. Only then could it come together. Only then did queerness become my pride and joy.

“…your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed…”-Mark 5:34

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If you’re interested in participating in Ministry from the Margins Books, contact Dr. Angela Yarber by June 20 at info@tehomcenter.org