As soon as the snow falls, I'm ready for Christmas. October 31st, 2019, it was snowing in Kalamazoo, and I was singing along to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas is You" at full blast on the way to a Halloween party. It was a good time. Today, I'm sitting in a Starbucks, sipping [...]
Am I entitled to the Presence of God?
In July of 2018, I penned a blog post describing my experience of the Presence of God. It was a moment of centering for me—amid so much anxiety and turmoil, it brought me peace to recall the details of God's warm embrace and the gentle breeze of God's Spirit. As my belief in God has [...]
How to be friends with a gay person if you don’t think queerness is the bee’s knees
We were standing outside the church doors, a calm summer evening just beginning as the sun descended and the wind rested. The past few weeks, I'd slowly felt more and more unwelcome in groups of people I counted as my closest friends. And I knew I needed to ask him. "I want to know. Are [...]
Queer Faith: a Collection of Resources
It's been two months since I came out. Those 59 days have been full of texts, emails, Facebook messages, Instagram DMs, and conversations. This is to be expected. While the vast majority of my close friends were well aware of my orientation, many followers and Facebook friends were surprised. Not as much by the fact [...]
My Story of Growing Up, Coming Out, and Being Embraced by God
Chapter One In bite-sized installments, I shared my testimony: who I was, who I am today—through the unconditional love and unraveling grace of Christ. I told my story this way because to do otherwise, I felt, would ignore the core of who I am. Because I am, first and foremost, a child of God, and [...]
Chapter Seven
In hindsight, I see problems in the way I was treated, in the way my parents saw me, in the way I saw myself. Instead of embracing me, telling me everything was okay, telling me God still loved me unconditionally, telling me I could hope for a beautiful, wonderful life just like my siblings did, [...]
Chapter Six
This series is meant to be read in chronological order. If you haven't read chapters 1-5, you'll want to find those before continuing. The October after that summer, as previously mentioned, my sister got married, 14 days after my 17th birthday. I was doing really well leading up to it, ecstatic for her. But that [...]
Chapter Five
If you haven't read chapters 1-4, you'll want to find those first. Just head to levipierpont.com/[C for Chapter][chapter number]. The next summer was especially difficult. My older brother got married the winter before, and my older sister was getting married the autumn after—both opposite-sex marriages. I was deeply jealous, which I knew was wrong. But [...]
Chapter Four
This series is heavily chronological. To read the three previous chapters, visit levipierpont.com/c1, /c2, and /c3, respectively. Next came a season of crippling doubt. I never went full atheist, but I certainly admitted to being agnostic. In a blog post, I wrote about my struggles with faith and God and asked people to pray for [...]
Chapter Three
If you haven't read the two previous chapters, you can find them at levipierpont.com/c1 and /c2, respectively. The real issues began to settle when I was entering into adolescence, as one might expect. Gradually, within the span of about six months, I came to understand that I was, well, not straight. I remember realizing that [...]
