Love Makes Room: And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out

By Staci Frenes

When Christian singer and speaker Staci Frenes learned her teenage daughter was gay, she found her dreams for the future--along with her lifelong faith--collapsing around her. Coming to terms with a new reality was a challenge--and an invitation--to make room for many things along the way: the inevitability of uncertainty, hope in the midst of loss, awkward and tough conversations, an expanding faith, and a greater understanding of how people are more the same than different.

In Love Makes Room, Frenes helps readers see that a reimagined future may look different than our old hoped-for pictures of ourselves and our families, but it can also be wider, deeper, and more fulfilling than we ever dreamed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Broadleaf Books
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781506468648

Book preview

Love Makes Room

Love Makes Room

And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out

Staci Frenes

Foreword by Sara Cunningham, Founder, Free Mom Hugs

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

LOVE MAKES ROOM

And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out

Copyright © 2021 Staci Frenes. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [e-mail] or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Published in association with Books & Such Literary Management, 52 Mission Circle (Suite 122), PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370.

Making Room song lyrics written by the author and used by permission. Stone’s Throw Music, 2008.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Cover design by Joel Holland

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-6863-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-6864-8

For Abby Rae,

who’s been showing me what brave looks like

since she entered the world

I’m making room, letting in the light

I’m making room for the wind to dance through

For the music, for the laughter

For the breath of life to happen

It’s long overdue

I’m making room

For you

Contents

Foreword

Sara Cunningham, Founder, Free Mom Hugs

Introduction

1. The Dress

Making Room for Hope in the Midst of Loss

2. Tears in the Rain

Making Room for the Unexpected

3. Pacing the Floors

Making Room for Questions

4. Sleepovers and Crushes

Making Room for Awkward Conversations

5. Whose Story Is This?

Making Room for Perspectives

6. Picturing You

Making Room for Remembering

7. Circle of Trust

Making Room for New Community

8. The BLTs

Making Room for Laughter

9. Just Folks

Making Room for People beyond the Labels

10. Uninvited

Making Room for Differences

11. Love and the Last Word

Making Room for an Expanding Faith

12. Why I Tell It

Making Room for Untold Stories

Afterword

Making Room for a Reimagined Future

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Iwish this book had found me years ago when I was drowning in fear and uncertainty. When I was convinced there was no hope and no one I could turn to for help. It would have changed everything.

I, too, am the mother of a gay child. My son spent his whole life trying to come out to me. Every time he tried, I nipped it in the bud. Changed the subject. I didn’t want to have that conversation, and even if I did, I didn’t have the vocabulary for it. As a result, our home wasn’t a safe space for him. He was forced to check himself at the door—he had to look elsewhere for the love and acceptance he needed. When he finally did come out to me, at twenty-one, he was already a grown man. My biggest regret is that I lost his entire adolescence with him.

At the time, I had no idea how to process what our family was going through or where to turn for answers. As an evangelical Christian, the only context I had for homosexuality was what I had absorbed in my twenty-plus years attending our neighborhood Southern Baptist church. I knew what my church believed about gay people. So when my son came out, I knew I couldn’t go to my church friends or my pastor with my fears and questions. I felt like I had to choose between my faith and my child.

I was clinging to a certain version of faith, and it almost killed me, and it deeply harmed my son.

What I wouldn’t have given for this book during those long, sleepless nights I spent worrying about my son. To read the words of a mom like me who comes from a faith background like mine sharing a story much like my own and knowing that the words love makes room would have resonated with me. Her story would have reassured me that what I was feeling was normal. Given me a vocabulary for what I was experiencing and, more importantly, the permission to express it. Her story would have offered me hope and shown me a way through—a way that allowed both my son and my faith to flourish.

Staci’s story shines light on a path that many parents find hopelessly dark. With raw honesty and authenticity, she invites us to discover, right along with her, how faith and support for our children can start with a fierce devotion to making room—for important conversations; for tough questions, laughter, hope; and ultimately, for a reimagined future.

When I meet and talk with thousands of LGBTQ young people across the country, I’m reminded they all have in common the need to be seen and loved for who they are. But many kids who come out in Christian homes experience just the opposite. As a result, they face higher than normal risks for depression and suicidal ideation.

Parents of faith, we must do better at understanding and embracing our LGBTQ children. Their lives (and frankly, ours) are depending on it. It’s why I started Free Mom Hugs, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to educating families, churches, and civic leaders and encouraging them to not only affirm the values of the LGBTQ community but celebrate them. And it’s why stories like Staci’s are so important—because they are the virtual Free Mom Hugs in book form that so many parents, guardians, relatives, friends, and LGBTQ children need: a friend and confidant along the way.

The mom I was back when my son came out desperately needed the honesty, wisdom, and insight that Love Makes Room offers. It’s the resource I was looking for when I thought no one could possibly understand what I was going through. And it’s the guidebook every parent needs on what can sometimes be a scary and confusing but also beautiful journey.

—Sara Cunningham

Founder, Free Mom Hugs

Introduction

Some of us go too long, sometimes forever, without telling anyone the painful, difficult parts of our story. We’re convinced most people wouldn’t understand the dark night we’ve walked through, and even if they did, we’re too ashamed to talk about it in the light. Not long ago the thought of writing a book about an intensely personal struggle that spans several years—and a transformational shift in my faith—would have scared me speechless. I didn’t think I’d ever feel brave enough, smart enough, or just plain ready enough to tell it.

It’s taken a long time to gain enough perspective to make sense of it myself. The events that happened and the truths they taught me needed time to gestate, mature, and ripen before I could share them publicly. If I had tried to write this book earlier, I’m convinced it would have been bitter fruit, with none of the sweetness or complexity only time and faith can work out.

Nine years ago, when our teenage daughter told us she was gay, my tidy Christian faith began to unravel. In a Jesus-loving, evangelical-churchgoing family, this just didn’t seem possible. What I’d always believed to be the biblical truth regarding homosexuality suddenly didn’t fit with my new reality, and trying to reconcile the two felt insurmountable, overwhelming.

Slowly, in the months and years following Abby’s coming out, I struggled to make room for my daughter’s sexual orientation, entering a process of letting go of my own expectations and dreams for her and accepting and loving the person she was. I wrestled with a faith I’d always leaned on, finding few assurances or guarantees. I learned to live in the tension of uncertainty and to my surprise discovered a richer, truer relationship with my daughter and with God because of it.

I wrote this book to shed some light on an inner journey that for many of us who are rooted in evangelical Christian culture is so tangled with conflicting feelings, opinions, and convictions, it’s difficult to see a way through. And I wrote this book to illuminate the ways in which my heart and my faith needed to stretch and grow in order to make room for a bigger understanding of what it meant not only to have a gay daughter but to be a follower of Jesus.

I knew there were others like me who experienced a crisis of faith when their child came out as LGBTQ and who were struggling with how to respond and what to feel, think, or believe. I wanted to be as honest as possible, for their sake, about the process by which I came to accept and understand my daughter as gay in the context of my Christian faith.

In a later chapter in this book (Love and the Last Word), I describe how I arrived at my beliefs regarding the Bible and homosexuality. It’s near the end for two reasons: First, in writing this book, as in life, it took a long time to recognize the biases and beliefs ingrained in me as a result of my upbringing—a crucial series of steps that led to a better understanding of what I believe now. It seemed fitting to explore that later rather than earlier in the book. Second, I wanted the people and unfolding events of this story to help the reader, as they did me, see that theology is best understood in the context of real life.

Speaking of real people, most of the family and friends who played a part in this story are called by their real names and gave their permission for me to include them in this book. I’m especially grateful for my husband, Abe, and our two kids, Zach and Abby, for allowing me to write about such a private and difficult season in our family life. I tried to honor each of them in the telling of this story. Where I felt it was appropriate, I changed some names and details to protect people’s privacy.

We all come to these complex questions about faith, sexuality, and identity from such different backgrounds, it would be impossible for one story to speak for everyone’s. I don’t assume my process or the conclusions I came to in my own faith will be the same as yours. And the truth is, I’m still learning, still making room for new ways of thinking and talking about this topic.

Even so, I hope you find the insights, life lessons, and wisdom I share in this book valuable and useful. It would be my great joy if you considered this book your companion, wherever you’re starting from and wherever you end up. I hope it helps you make room for your own questions, conversations, and a growing understanding of what it means to love God and each other.

1

The Dress

Making Room for Hope in the Midst of Loss

The saying Into every life a little rain must fall might have applied to us in the spring of 2010 if the only thing we’d had to contend with was the loss of our home. As it happened, the heavens opened and sent a gale-force hurricane.

It was true: we were moving, again. And I hated moving with a contempt born of familiarity. In our first ten years of marriage, my husband (Abe) and I moved nine times. Between finishing college, moving in with my parents, changing jobs, and needing a bigger

Reviews for Love Makes Room

[Nicholas H · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Great read that is perfect for any parent (not just Christian parents) of an LGBTQI+ child.