Sarah And Delyn Celec Share Why God is Not a Bully

My God is not a bully. My God is not a bully. My God is not a bully. My God is not a bully. Hi, my name is DeLyn Celec and I identify as a lesbian. Hi, I'm Sarah Celec and I also identify as a lesbian. This is my spouse. Yay! How do I reconcile my faith and my sexuality? I had the great fortune of coming out in New York city and I within, maybe 6 months of realizing I was a lesbian, found this wonderful church that completely embraced me and who I was, and I immediately started singing with the gospel choir at Marble Collegiate Church and we used to jokingly call it the big gay gospel gay choir extravaganza. That was great. And I actually never really had trouble reconciling my sexuality with my faith. I know. I don't even think, I know that God loves me and created me to be the person that I am. And my relationship with DeLyn is amazing and it is right and it is good and it is true. And, I don't know how to say this without sounding totally ridiculous, but I think that God created me for DeLyn and God created DeLyn for me. Ah. I know it's so sweet! Well we met, actually, at that gospel choir that Sarah was talking about and until that point, I had had varying degrees of struggle about whether I could be proudly gay and also proudly Christian. So over time, I realized that this is the person for me and I'm so lucky and blessed that Sarah is in my life and we have built not only our lives together, but also our ministries together as we've figured out how we're supposed to serve God and our neighbors. We have, that's true. It's taken, like, six years, but it's great! It is great. And she's a pastor. Oh yeah, that too. With the Church Within A Church Movement, and that has also been a really amazing journey so I would just encourage anyone who's just worried about it, God is definitely not a bully and that's the way I would encourage you to think about God -- as a God of love and as the creator who created you in God's image. And that makes you perfect.