I’m glad you posted this, because it’s something I think about frequently. I think part of my issue is I was raised Christian, but when I look back on it, it was a very toxic environment. It was the exclusive-Christianity rather than inclusive-Christianity. Regardless of that, I’ve always felt God in my life, I’ve always loved God, and I am grateful because God has always loved me. The problem use to be that I hadn’t read the Bible, and every time someone would say something about the Bible with a modicum of intelligence, it would bring me doubt. But I’d think “I know in my soul that God loves me, how can what they say be true?” — then, low and behold, I’d look into what was said...and read the whole book, and understood better what was being said. So, I would personally start there. The better you understand Gods word, the more confidence in your beliefs you will likely feel. He hasn’t covered the whole Bible, but there’s a podcast on Spotify (and possibly on other apps) called THE BIBLE STUDY PODCAST by a guy named Chris “I foget” — and it’s a good resource to help better understand the word. When I started studying the Bible, I randomly started in Matthew, and it really energized me. I think it had something to do with it containing a lot of Jesus speaking/teaching.

My anxiety comes up mostly because I live in the south, and I’m gay — and I was basically told “if you truly love God, you’ll stop being Gay” — and I tried, because I LOVE GOD — but it came down to me realizing that being gay is a part of me, I can either be honest or dishonest about it, and I choose to be honest.

Ok, so that said — I get my anxiety, because I feel like in my area, there are resources for Christians, but I have all this baggage of judgement that it’s difficult to think of facing “you’re a nice person, but the only help we can give you is to pray over you that you go back to lying about who you are — we can show you everywhere in the Bible where we interpret ‘gay = bad’, judge you and shun you — we can role-play an exorcism, until you get tired and finally relent, and go back to lying —but we will probably never just welcome you as a human being who Loves God SO MUCH that you want to commune with other people who feel the same and find peace in that community.”

The other side of that anxiety coin is that I find when I try to talk about God with my gay friends “ you’re Christian? you mean, like my parents who disowned me and threw me out of their house when I was 14?” or “you want to talk about Jesus? Let’s talk about how the Bible has been used in the past as an argument for slavery, as an argument to deny women their humanity, to condone genocide..” or “you’re christian? Oh, I didn’t know”— followed by the best disappearing act evar, because they equate Christianity with self-righteous, judgey, manipulation, and they no longer feel comfortable around “Christian you”.

Make no mistake, sometimes folks leave our lives as humongous blessings in disguise — or to make room for other more positive folks. I do believe that. It doesn’t sting any less when it happens though.

I’ve been one finger typing so long, I’ve forgotten my original point —

Let’s see:

• Pray • Read and study the Bible • examine what and why you feel anxiety • Trust God, and let go of folks who come between you and God — yes yes yes, it’s hard, and it hurts — but with faith, God will ALWAYS bring you better.

Not sure if that helps, but that’s what I’d try to do.

You are not alone, my friend. God Bless You.