My easter was special: I came out to my parents
There is no perfect time for coming out but it happened mine was during Easter time, it felt right, unique and perfect. This is the year of my coming out. Just a week before Easter, precisely the last Friday of the lent season, I came out to my parents. I never planned to do it. If, two hours before, someone had asked me if I was considering coming out to my parents, I would have probably replied “maybe”but not anytime soon. Early, afternoon of friday 26th March, after reading the new testament, I felt the strength and I felt it was the right time to tell my parents the truth I had hidden to them for more than 30 years. I work in another City far from home so the only comfortable way to reach them was through a message.I wrote to them a long text. I can not explain where I found words I typed. I still wonder how it happened, It was just a grace of the moment I guess. My parents have been so close to me since my childhood, they also in the past met my girlfriends.
Before embracing fully my sexual orientation, I tried for years to hide it and I tried to date girls because I considered homoxuality undesirable and sin for God. My Parents are so christians, I also knew that spiritually it will be hard to take.Surprisingly, even in the confusion they still didn’t take a step behind. They manifested to me much love but also made it clear that they need time to process the news. I can understand it, I took more than 30 years to accept myself, I also understand that they will need time. I am lucky to be part of a group of LGBT Christians who help me to deepen my faith and have been more important in my journey of accepting my sexuality.
After coming out to my parents, I shared this news to my friends and loved one who knew about it. They were so supportive. A dear friend, for example wrote to me that in his book ” Freedom,Gorious Freedom”, John McNeill states that the sacrament of maturity for homosexual people is not marriage, but “coming out”.
And truly in taking this step, I experienced the freedom of the true children of God, I feel like I have risen to a new, authentic, true life. I thought it was impossible for me, that I have two strong catholic parents, who taught me that love between two homosexuals cannot exist, that it is against nature and who refused to even see a kiss between two men or women on TV.
As a family we are trying to live the situation with serenity. On one hand there is my coming out which revealed to my parents the true picture of their son and my joy of being able to show them my true faith. On the other hand there are my parents who are trying to understand and accept my “new face” and my preoccupation on how it might have been heavy for them.However, on holy saturday, my father and I were at the Easter vigil together, close together. In one of the readings we heard a word that was very meaningful to us considering the situation we are living as a family: “They said to each other:” Who will roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb for us? “Looking up, they observed that the stone had already been rolled, although it was very large.”
After hearing this, we looked at each other and cried together.This was my Easter! I can testify that Love conquers everything and we have been loved by God in a visceral way. There is a statement that I would wish to see engraved in my heart and in the heart of every christian especially to those who feel marginalised and excluded like LGBT+ christian community. It is nothing else than the words Jesus put in the heart of Saint Teresa of Avila “even if I had not created the world, but only you, I would have done all this – incarnate and die for love – even if only for you”.
