Well said. I think it is hard to want acceptance and belonging where you do not belong, and from people you do not understand. I won’t say that my response was good or right — it wasn’t. I just know what my response was at the time. And I now how deeply outside I felt, and how vastly different the world that I saw was than the one those around me saw.

I won’t name the church. However different it was than the way I grew up, it is still profoundly beautiful in its own way.

We all have different experiences, even of God. I was wrong in my judgment, perhaps, of someone else’s experience. We all come at the world from our own place, our own culture, and our own understanding. When we pretend to understand someone else’s we often short change ourselves and our ability to connect and learn from one another.

Thank you for responding.