OUR MOST READ BLOGGER since 2022 is back with the fifth of a series sharing more of her story. This month’s reflection is on the excitement of new beginnings.

In the Affirmative is a monthly blog from Open Table member Wendy Young who shares her life, thoughts and experience as a queer Christian in Britain. We’d love to hear from you, too: Wendy invites readers to add their responses and reactions as we build community together. You can read the rest of the series here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome back! Can you feel the excitement in the air? Can you sense the communal anticipation of the wonderful things you’ll encounter in 2025?

‘Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!’

- Dr Seuss

I remember two occasions in my life as a young person when the excitement of something new was so enormous inside my body that I could hardly breathe.

As soon as I had finished high school in 1998, I moved to the big city of Pretoria. My dad drove me the six or so hours to my new accommodation: a flat-share with a few students and other young people trying to make an independent living. It was a disaster, the whole thing. I worked three jobs, partied all night in clubs, never sleeping or eating properly. I crashed and burned after three months, returning home with my tail between my legs. They say we have 20-20 vision in retrospect, right? I can see now how important that time was for me, to break loose from being a teenager in a small town and to have my first introduction to my tribe. (I only went to gay clubs.) But it was a mess.

Back home, my next great idea was to become an au pair. I closed my eyes and circled a finger above the world map in our study to determine where I was going to travel to. Fail-safe, you’d think. I had never left the country so going anywhere was daunting but, after a few months of preparation through an au pair agency, I was off to Holland.

My excitement waned as I tried my hardest to manage the culture shock and my strained relationship with my rather impossible employer before it all came to a very ugly head. One day, when I was out at a language class, she went into my room and made copies of the sections in my journal she found the most appalling, showed them to the agency and insisted on my removal. I had the choice to be placed with a different household, but I was so shocked at what had happened that I chose to go back home to my parents, just as humiliated as after leaving Pretoria. In this case my older wiser self can say I was too young to know how to stand up for myself in a situation that was clearly very wrong.

My most recent visit to my family in South Africa was very different. I have been living in the UK for a decade now, extremely happy in my marriage and my new life. It was a short visit: six days between flights, at the beginning of December. Before I flew, I was very excitedly looking forward to being under that particular kind of sunshine you only get in Africa. When I was a kid there, we used to have school athletics and braais (a South African barbeque) in 35ºC, comfortably! I can honestly say, however, that this time I had to hide inside the house sitting in between the aircon and a fan for most of my visit!

It turned out to be a very lovely time with my family, perhaps exactly because we were so eyeball-to-eyeball with each other. There was an ease, an openness, that I had not experienced before. As my excitement for the sunshine disappeared, it made way for an unexpected gift, a bit like the origami butterfly my 14-year-old non-verbal autistic niece secretly put in my luggage the day before I left.

Since my return to the UK, I haven’t spent much time outside either…

I seem to have a great fear of slipping on an icy pavement and breaking something. Also, when it is misty, foggy, icicles in the air kind of weather, I love the romanticism of sitting around watching TV in an oodie, with little fairy lights around the room (my wife puts them up with the Christmas decorations), a glass of Amarula in hand. You’ve never tasted Amarula? It’s a cream liqueur from South Africa, made with sugar, cream and the fruit of the African marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea). Best bought duty-free.

On one of these recent early mornings, as I lay in bed wondering quite how grey a day it might be outside, I half-heartedly tilted the wooden shutters behind my head and glanced over my shoulder. At first, I only saw what seemed like a very slim promise of bleak sunshine in a little streak across the horizon but, just before I looked away, something astonishing caught my eye: a flock of seagulls was flying high overhead, away from our row of houses. I know people around here generally don’t have much love towards seagulls, but these were looking magical, because that single short-lived ray of sunshine was lighting them up from below. They were glimmering as they soared on an air current away from me and I wanted to say something to my wife Jo, but it was over so quickly that I barely had time to open my mouth and close it again, awestruck at the beauty.

You know where else I’ve seen this happen? When someone walks up to a mic to sing and when they make their first sound it is undeniable that this is the thing they were born to do. Or when someone sits down at a piano or a canvas and the first small movement of their hand gives it away that this action is what was poured into them to share with the world. And what is even more special than moments like these is when it happens within a church community. That’s when a momentary streak of sunshine lights us up and makes it all so gloriously beautiful. That’s when something we didn’t expect and weren’t excited about surprises us.

There is a church that needs you.

There is a community of believers somewhere that make up a beautiful jigsaw but they’re missing a piece. There’s a little space that is you-shaped, that only you will fill. If you don’t feel safe or seen or like you have any freedom to shine in your own unique way where you attend church at the moment, try an inclusive, affirming church, like the ones which host Open Table communities, and those in the Inclusive Church directory.

In the meantime, shine wherever you are.

Years ago, a vicar whose beliefs were more affirming than those of most of his congregation told me that I was perhaps called to “help make the change from the inside out”. Yes, I believe that can be true for some people. Of course, the trailblazers and the fighters are extremely valuable in this journey towards everyone being fully part of and encouraged inside their own church community. But I have also experienced how this can hurt, like nothing else on earth. So, if you’re hurting at the moment because people don’t see the beauty of the unique way YOU shine, that is honestly their loss. God is enjoying you. Zephaniah 3:17 says that God takes great delight in you, and rejoices over you with singing!

Perhaps by the time you read this you are far enough into January to have lost some of the magic, some of the newness… If that is where you’re at, I get it. It doesn’t last forever. But it may very well make way for something else, and this is my prayer for you:

‘And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’

- Philippians 4:7

Wendy