I'm so sorry to hear of your recent loss of Penny. I hope you're coping and hanging in there.

I resonate with the theme of your story. Especially the fellowship part. I'll never forget when I was 13 years old moving up to Iowa from Alabama. The move had been abrupt, and I felt alone and alien in a culture I didn't feel part of. Add to this that I started attending a public school instead of a private Christian middle school. I didn't know how to relate to fellow students who were so different from private-school Christian kids down in Alabama.

Then we found a church, and after our first Sunday night service, I was invited out for pizza with a group of teenagers from the youth group. I immediately felt welcome and safe. For the first time since the move, I was laughing and joking, enjoying accepting warmth with people I thought could be my friends.

And, indeed, some of them became very close friends over the next few years. One boy eventually became my secret boyfriend for a short time.

And, of course, therein lay unresolvable conflict. By the time I was 16, my being gay was a shameful secret too many people knew about. Warm fellowship was also insular and bore no real secrets. Only by stubborn strength of will did I resist my youth pastor's and senior pastor's generous offer to send me to a Christian camp that could (supposedly) change me into a straight person.

But that was the end of the warm fellowship. I quickly learned that my human worth was contingent on my being straight. I wasn't expelled or shunned. I just wasn't welcome anymore. Not as an insider, not as somebody who could take new kids out for pizza to make them feel safe.

Instead, I needed saving. Love for me reduced to a need to rescue me from my sin.

I should have left, I should have stopped attending church. But I stayed for a while because I missed the friendship and the fellowship.

The longer I stayed, the more toxic the whole experience felt. By the time I started college, it was over. I never looked back, but I do remember my youth group friends with great fondness, despite everything — despite their lack of grace and true acceptance.