Ashley’s Truth

by Ashley McBride-Braswell

I love Jesus. 

As long as I can remember, church has been a part of my life, from my mother’s womb (so churchy, I know-LOL), I have been surrounded and steeped in the Black church. 

And I loved it. The friends, the lessons, the warmth. The after service dinners and second service repass. Vacation Bible School during the summers and Sunday morning school with the snacks. I loved the kids choir and our annual Easter/Christmas plays. I loved it all and I have fond memories but somewhere along the way, I became disenchanted. 

It started slowly when I really began to read the Bible for myself and learn the original translations, much of what I thought I knew as “Bible” as the saints say, was nothing more than doctrine. 

And then I struggled. I struggled with my sexuality and being a 20 year old woman who just couldn’t stop sinning and having sex. I couldn’t stop going out and partying, living my best young adult life, and I couldn’t escape the condemnation I felt on Sunday and how I just needed to be holy and pure in God’s eyes. I couldn’t reconcile the rhetoric of the church where almost everything and every feeling is a sin. The constant threat of hell and it all became so arduous. Would I ever make it in?

I really tried. I followed Heather Lindsey and all the women in her purity movement. I committed myself to purity and giving up worldly things, and being the chaste, Godly woman so that God could reward me with a Godly husband, except all the church guys I dated where the worst.

So I stopped and I just started praying. I wrote my heart’s desires on sticky notes and pasted them to my wall. All my prayers for myself, family, friends, and issues in the world. I opened myself up to learning about different religions and stopped seeing people through Christian lenses instead as seeing them as people. 

And I slowly started to let all of it go. I didn’t care about someone’s faults or sins, I stopped caring about who others sleep with or their gender. I stopped requiring the world to hold on to my square box of beliefs and standards. I embraced people for who they are and what they are and I learned that the same grace God has given them to figure it out, He has given to me.

Do I still struggle with the indoctrination of church still? Absolutely. But I remind myself that I don’t know and I don’t have all the answers, and what I do know, is I’m still learning. And so I give others the grace I want to receive and treat them how I would treat myself. After all the two greatest commandments are 1) to love God with all your heart and 2) to love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:36-40