Building Resilience: An LGBTQ+ Christian’s Guide to Coming Back to Life

“You walk like you’re being hunted for sport.”

A humorous observation from a friend on a video chat was all it took to help me realize that I was still in survival mode. I still didn’t feel safe; not in a church or group of elders or a denominational meeting…but in a grocery store.

The years-long battle in my denomination regarding faith, leadership, and sexuality forced my body into a perpetual state of fight or flight.  A sense of distress, rather than rest, was the norm, and I could no longer accurately assess when I was genuinely at threat. In this state, I was easily pushed past my emotional and physical limits into panic attacks, racing thoughts, racing legs, apparently, and a general feeling of anxiety and dread.

My friend’s comment opened my eyes to something I had normalized and, and initiated a two-year process of returning my heart, mind, and body to a sense of safety.     

What follows is an assortment of practices that helped me build resilience not only for the hardships I’d already experienced, but for the ongoing stressors that queer Christians face as part of their everyday lives.  I share them as examples of things you might consider or practice to help you return yourself to a sense of safety, which is really what resilience is: the capacity to endure hardship and return yourself to a sense of safety, so that you might experience life to the full.    

What Do I Need?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself returning to the basics both in my personal and professional life.  In this return to the basics, I’ve rediscovered Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as an effective way of helping people understand what is keeping them in survival mode while also giving them a path through hardship and into safety.  

Maslow stated that in order for humans to flourish and grow, their physiological, safety, and belonging needs must first be met.  When these needs are not fulfilled, humans rightly perceive themselves at threat, and become less able to develop emotionally, socially, and spiritually. It is hard to be resilient when we don’t have what we need.

What Maslow’s framework offers is an assessment tool for us to evaluate the needs that are going unmet, which may be keeping us in survival mode.

This understanding can then guide us into taking steps and making plans to build, or ask for, what we need.  For myself, the lengthy season of enduring threats to my belonging in my church/denomination, coupled with an instance of perceived threat to physical safety, was enough to spin my body into survival mode for over a year. Much of the work that I needed to do over the next couple of years was re-establishing my sense of belonging with God, with myself, and with others.

This tool can also help us create an internal sense of rest when we see that some of our needs ARE being met, even now, by ourselves, by others, and by God. Acknowledging needs that are being met can give us a sense of hope and gratitude, emotions that are vital in building resilience.

And, this framework can point us to areas of life that we may need to grieve. 

What Can I Grieve?

The idea of grief as a tool for building resilience may catch you off guard.  But, here’s how it works:

Hardships are a given in this life, and loss cannot be avoided.  Relationships, financial safety, dreams, all can be lost this side of the Fall.  Grief allows us to recognize and affirm the pain of the loss, process what it cost us, accept the loss of it, and move forward.  Grief is inherently a resilience-building experience.  If resilience is the ability/capacity to accept life as it comes to us, recover from losses, and adapt to our newfound reality, then grief will be a constant and necessary experience this side of the Fall.

However, grief sucks. And humans aren’t especially good at it. I find that I most often stunt out in grief in the “bargaining” stage. The bargaining stage offers me a way to rewrite history as well as imagine a life in which I don’t have to accept this loss. But, like the Mirror of Erised, it keeps me captive, locked in place. I spend all of my energy NOT on accepting the loss and continuing to move into what God DOES have for me, but on resisting grief and, ultimately, resisting life.

When we have remained with our grief for long enough for it to tell us fully about what we have lost, about who we are, what we love, and what is important to us, it then encourages us to consider if there are changes we may need to make in light of this new reality. 

What Can I Change?

Not every loss comes with some kind of lesson. Full stop. Some losses are just losses. But sometimes our losses are intensified and extended by ways of thinking, ways of relating, or ways of behaving that we have taken on in the midst of our survival.

Ways of thinking

Survival mode is inherently reactive. It’s intended to help us make quick decisions in threatening situations.  

The standard survival mode paradigms are: 

Either/Or

Black/White

All/Nothing

While they are good for life or death decisions, when we try to use them to process the majority of life, they become traps, which then increases our anxiety and diminishes resilience.  

Asking ourselves, “Is there a ‘both/and’ in this scenario?” may help us come out of rigid, dualistic thinking to find a more creative understanding or solution. Both/And sets us up, cognitively, for resilience. It is always looking for the gray, the third option, empathy, and inclusion, not only for others, but also for ourselves.

Ways of Living

We may find that in trying to endure hardship and loss, we have adopted a few survival mechanisms that, although they initially helped us, have inevitably turned against us. When the pain of loss, anxiety, and the longing to feel better combine over time, we often turn to things that offer us momentary relief, a rush of excitement, or an experience of agency and control. The cost of such choices, however, is often a greater experience of guilt, shame, and fear.  We humans ARE finite.  We do not have limitless energy.  When we have to divert energy to reckon with our guilt and shame, we do not have that energy to put into acceptance and adaptation. One of the benefits of letting go of these behaviors is that it will, eventually, lead to an increased ability to endure hardship, breathe through emotional pain, and build a life that feels fulfilling.

Ways of relating

As we come to accept the losses that life has dealt, and we sit with grief long enough for it to tell us about who we are and what we love, we may find that we relate to people, not out of a solid sense of belonging (to God, self, and others) but as a means to acquire belonging. We may find that we keep people at a distance, not allowing them to reject (or love) us.  Or, we may find that the years of survival mode have turned us antagonistic toward others, not even imagining that they might want to love us. These modes of relating do not allow the kind of vulnerability we must offer if we are to experience love and belonging.  

Coming out of survival mode sometimes requires a new way of relating to others, to God, and to ourselves, but the reward is a sense of belonging that resides within us, making us more resilient to the hardships we encounter. 

What Can I Give?

As I began to feel a sense of strength and safety grow, I found I had the capacity to do more than just survive.  I found that I wanted to find ways to use my experiences, my professional skills, and even my hobbies to “give back” to the people around me.  

I started small.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I took up gardening and flower arranging as hobbies.  I began to make flower arrangements for friends and neighbors, for the other counselors in my office, and for the woman who cuts my hair.  It was a way for me to let people know they were remembered and worthy of delight.  It was also an exercise in delight for me as I got to experience and create beauty.

Around the same time, I began to notice that God had brought more and more pastors into my office needing care. I was not a fan of God doing this. I wanted to fight pastors, not care for them.  But I did what counselors do, and put aside my own emotional stuff to make space for their emotional stuff. And their emotional stuff broke my heart. They dealt with so many of the same things that we queer Christians experience. The sense that they cannot be themselves without fear of exclusion. The threat to their livelihood should their views or practices change.   The need to put on a mask or a front to be acceptable. 

So, I started writing and developing materials for pastors in the hope that doing this work might lead to upstream change for pastors, the church, and queer Christians.  Believe me, I was as surprised by this turn of events as anyone.

If/when we find that our strength is returning and a desire to give back develops, I would say this:

Start Small

Let Love Lead

Giving back doesn’t have to be big and systematic to be valuable.  

People need to feel loved.  

Any way of communicating or offering such a thing is of great value.

If we are going to give back, we must do so from a place of belovedness, not as a way to be loved.  And, we must offer our gifts from a place of love.  It is so easy for me to “give back” from a place of fear (“bad things will happen if I don’t…”) or from a place of authority (“they need to know and I need to tell them”). These motivations have a limited shelf life and can actually put me back into fight-or-flight mode.

If we are going to give back, we must continually come back to Love to settle and fuel us so that we can offer whatever gifts we have from a place of peace and hope, rather than fear and demand.

…

An Allies’ Aside

If you are an ally reading this, hoping to understand your LGBTQ+/SSA Christian friends or congregants, first of all, thank you.  It takes great compassion and courage to put yourself in places of protection and provision for queer Christians.  It is a rare thing, indeed, to go outside the gates, as Jesus himself did, to be with those who are often shamed, cast out, and maligned. So, thank you for taking the risk.

Also, Take Care.  

We know that trauma is transferable.  By aligning with people who have been marginalized, threatened, and scapegoated, you are going to experience many of the same things.  Maybe you already have.  Perhaps you’ve already been treated with suspicion.  Maybe you get side eye from folks in your church or fellow pastors or elders for attending Revoice or offering compassion to queer people.  So, as you read through the above ways of building resilience, know that these practices are for you, too.

As anyone who has traveled by plane knows, if you are going to be of use to the passengers around you in an emergency, you must put on your own oxygen mask first.     

• Use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for a self-assessment to see if your physical, safety, and belonging needs are genuinely being met.

• Join Jesus, the One acquainted with grief and familiar with suffering, in grieving the losses you have experienced in caring for the marginalized.

• See if any changes need to be made in your church to ensure or enhance the sense of belonging for the marginalized, and for YOU. It is devastating to shepherd, provide for, and love a family that you don’t feel fully part of.

Once your oxygen mask is in place, here are a couple of thoughts on how to show up for queer Christians in a proactive way.

Provision

Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as it applies to your queer Christian congregants and loved ones.  Do you know of physical, safety, or belonging needs that are going unmet, leaving them in a place of distress?  Are there any of these needs that you, your church, your family could meet for them? Any need we can meet for someone is valuable and helps reduce the distress that keeps them in survival mode.

Protection

I wish it were not the case, but the reality is that often the safety, and especially, the belonging of, queer Christians is often in need of protection. 

Queer Christians often have to…

Make the biblical arguments for their practices or words or beliefs

defend their orthodoxy

plead for compassion 

for themselves with regularity.  And it gets exhausting.  It is of great value when someone can either do these things on behalf of the queer Christian or, even better, correct or challenge the person or group that is demanding such things from this beloved believer.  

Play

This word is likely surprising in a list of ways that we can proactively care for queer Christians, but that surprise is the very power of play.

Playing A Game

An Arts and Crafts Project

Dancing

Story Telling

A Road Trip

All of these are examples of play that have the power to surprise a person out of survival mode into a state of delight, joy, and rest. Fight-or-Flight mode does not allow for play, and folks who have lived in survival mode often find it challenging to play and do not often think of initiating it. Initiating play, planning for it, and inviting queer Christians into it can be a way of giving them momentary rest that has a resilience-building impact over time.

…

While building resilience IS work, I do think that the way God has created us is bent toward growth. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. And the Spirit dwelling in us seeks to bring about joy and peace. We are not alone in our efforts.

I still have moments where I catch myself  “walking like I’m being hunted for sport,” but these moments come, now, with a laugh and intentional slowing of my pace.  

While my personality is still bent toward the “dark and twisty,” I find myself surprised by hopeful thoughts about my future, about my kids, and about the outcomes of my work.

And while I still face hardships, the kinds all people face and the kinds unique to queer Christians, I’ve found a growing capacity to feel the pain, accept the loss, make whatever changes I need to make in light of the loss, and keep moving forward.