by Melissa Fryrear 

I am the second and last child my parents adopted, in 1966. I grew up in an upper middle-class subdivision in the east end of Louisville attending church. Trinity Presbyterian was less than two miles from our house. I was dedicated there as a baby, went to Vacation Bible School in the summers, played the hand bells in the children’s choir, and took my first communion when I was twelve. Although I had attended church all of my life, I had not yet accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Church seemed like something we did because “it was the right thing to do.” Looking back, I remember hearing dozens of stories about Jesus, but I never recall hearing a message about salvation. I did not know I was a sinner in need of a Savior. 

When I was thirteen, I remember sitting in the sanctuary with my parents one Sunday morning waiting for the service to begin. I picked up a Bible and began to flip through the pages at random. I stopped in the book of Leviticus and my eyes fell upon a scripture in the eighteenth chapter: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” After I read that verse, I froze and everything around me stopped. My eyes darted to the beginning of the verse and I read it again. Without looking around, without saying a word to anyone, I closed that Bible, returned it to the pew in front of me, and said “No” to God. When I read that verse, the words after the semicolon read “Melissa is detestable.”

I had known for a number of years that something seemed “different” about me. Many gays and lesbians believe they were born homosexual. This is what I believed because I had always felt that way. As early as age seven, I was aware of being drawn to other girls. This was a seed that began to take root in the soul of my heart. As my adolescent years continued to unfold, it only became increasingly obvious to me that I was not like the other girls. My mind was filled with an endless barrage of tormenting questions: “What is wrong with me?” “Why don’t I act like the other girls act?” “Why don’t I seem to like boys?” “Why do I hate being a girl?” In an attempt to answer those screaming questions, I opened a dictionary one day and read the definitions to words like homosexual, lesbian, and gay. And the seed sprouted.

I was sixteen when I first became involved in a lesbian relationship. That marked the beginning of the next 10 years of my life. Unable, unaware, and unwilling to resist the draw and temptation any longer, I embraced my lesbian identity. When I left home at the age of eighteen to attend college at the University of Kentucky, I immersed myself in the gay community. Everything in my world revolved around being gay. My only goals in life were to have a good time, to make a great deal of money, and without overusing a cliché, to find “the girl of my dreams.” And the seed flourished.

The years continued to unfold. I was on my way to achieving my goals: I was having some really good times; I was making $40,000 by my mid-twenties; I was involved with a woman. However, something was stirring within me.

In 1988 I began working for an in-house advertising agency in Lexington. One of my co-workers, Bill Martinez, was a Christian. He was always kind, respectful, and caring.

One Saturday night, unexpectedly, I asked my partner if she wanted to go to church the next morning. We were so emotionally enmeshed with one another that I think if I had suggested jumping off a bridge, she would have agreed. We looked in the phone book and found Versailles Presbyterian Church. It was a small congregation of predominantly older couples, so when my partner and I showed up, it was obvious.

I became involved in the church immediately: I went to Wednesday night potlucks and an adult Sunday school class; I even joined the adult handbell choir. A couple in their seventies, Doris and L.J., took us under their wings.