Being the Mother of an LGBTQ+-Identified Child

What is it like to be a Christian parent of an LGBTQ+-identified child? You may be intimately acquainted with what this means by having experienced it yourself, or perhaps you have imagined how this would feel and the burden it would place on a parent’s heart. The following article is a window into a mother’s experience and inner dialogue as she navigates these difficult waters with the Lord.

I find myself making so many demands of God. “Lord, dismantle the devices of the evil one. Blast through the darkness and flood my daughter’s life with clarity, truth, and life. Exchange the chaos that rules her soul with your order and peace. Make known to her the vastness of your goodness and the magnitude of your majesty. Make her see your holiness and the desperateness of her sin, and cause her to know the immeasurable greatness of your mercy as you embrace her. Lord, simply let her know that you are good and great so that she will see that she is lost.” And I go on and on, tears accompanying these commands with little provocation.

What right do I have to boss God around? I have no justification apart from my position in Christ to ask anything of him, let alone ask with fervor and impatience. I am at his mercy, and I realize I have no other recourse in this desperate situation with my lost daughter than to cry out to him. It’s obvious that I have no control over this and, if anything, have been a contributing factor in some way or another. (I do not mean to say that I caused my daughter to choose an LGBTQ+ life. My daughter’s confusion about her identity has much to do with her own sinful heart, cultural influences, desires for fulfillment and validation, and many external factors apart from my direct influence.)

So the bottom line is that, despite wanting to fix everything and make it right, I have no power to do so. Only God does. I guess I don’t want to have that kind of power, really, though a huge part of me wishes I could go back in time and somehow untangle all the strands that knotted into the confusion now in my daughter’s mind. It would be scary to entrust my grossly limited mind and despicably tainted heart with any real power. It’s just so tempting for a mother to want to do anything at all to see her daughter in sweet fellowship with the Lord and this nightmare redeemed.

That thought of redemption is the thing to which I cling, hoping and trusting that the One who does have the power to change (and the mind and heart to know why this devastation is our current reality) will make this all well in the end. He will be known to many, and his power will be exalted before masses, and his goodness will be proclaimed to the brokenhearted. One day, it will really count for something more than the bucket of tears I am accumulating now and the untold pain that my daughter has accrued.

But all of those demands that I make incessantly…I’ve been appealing to God on her behalf for decades already. I have begged the Lord to grant me another child who would know him as Lord and Savior and be one of his very own. And I have prayed daily for her growth in grace and protection from the evil one as she matured. The bottom line is that if the volume of pleas and tears could be measured and rewarded in tangible ways in this life, then I have been shortchanged in the absence of God’s response.

Have there been times when I have questioned God’s faithfulness? I have often asked how my daughter could have come to her conclusions, but God keeps circling me back to focus on his economy of time. He doesn’t have to follow my timetable, despite my pleas for miraculous transformation right this second. I will keep asking, and God will do as he knows best. I will rest in the truths that The Valley of Vision outlines in the prayer “Openness”: “Nothing can befall me without his permission, appointment, and administration.”

In the meantime, in this almost unbearable season of waiting, I will pray that I will daily learn more of his love, grace, compassion, faithfulness, and beauty. And I am sure that he will teach me much about my heart and its need to be led to the cross to see my Savior’s wounds for me.