Exploring Identity and Evolving Faith: Part 2 with Ashleigh Nelson and Debbie Jones

We are standing on the shoulders of people who did much harder work in these spaces than we have to do now. There's still a lot of work to do, especially in the South, especially around trans issues, and I think, at the end of the day, it's also important to realize that your theology may actually be dangerous, and I say that with all of the love and care of being in that position before I have shared that theology. But when we look statistically at suicide rates and violence against LGBTQ people, we have to start asking where is the fruit of this kind of theology? and it's rotten right. And so maybe you don't have to become this fully affirming rainbow flag flying pride, walking ally, but maybe you can back off your rhetoric and trust that God would love, and maybe you could make a friend or two And maybe you can ask better questions. And to me, that's all. That's all I'm asking for.

I'm Rebecca Lauderdale and this is Belonging in the South a guide for Misfits. The podcast for Southerners of all types to find community and belonging without having to change who you really are. Today is episode two of my interview with Ashley Nelson and her mom, debbie Jones. If you haven't listened to the first episode, please go back and take a listen to that one. This one will make a lot more sense. In this portion of the conversation we talk about the work that Ashley has been able to do through the Evolving Faith Conference and Community, and we also talk with Ashley and Debbie about what advice they would give to people who are in similar situations to theirs 10 years ago, and we talk about how we can love the people in our lives who are LGBTQ folks better, especially when they've been ostracized by their own families. And stick around to the end of the conversation, ashley's going to tell us some more about the Evolving Faith Conference and community and how you could be a part of that this year if you're interested. So, since we're starting right in the middle of this conversation, picking up from last week, just a brief orientation. We're going to start with Ashley talking about how she got started with Evolving Faith and how she had worked in ministry in college.

I had done a lot of ministry work. I had done event planning and conferences and all sorts of sort of contract type work in event spaces and ministry spaces. Obviously, you know, with the ceiling as a woman on what I could do at ministry spaces to some degree, but I always loved that And so after I came out it felt like, well, that will never be for me again, right, like I feel whole and who I am, and so that's okay. I have this nursing degree that I've used, went and worked for the university doing some clinical placement for students there, which I loved, but just really never felt like ministry was going to be an option again. Anyway, okay, and so in that time I met my now wife. We dated and got married in 2020, right before pandemic. We came back from our honeymoon into quarantine with all four teenagers. It's fine, that's been fine. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. She's wonderful and a middle school teacher. So when we first started dating, i was like, hey, wait, you've liked middle school. Oh, wow. She's like, yeah. I was like, well, if I got a deal for you, i've got four of them. So, you know, met Kelly. We got married. I think it was in 20, that would have been 2021. Evolving Faith. I obviously like followed their work, did all their conferences, listened to the podcast and nice and out the job description for the executive director And I sent it to my wife and I was like, hey, i think I'm gonna. This just sounds like a dream job So I probably will never get it, but I'm going to like shoot my shot here and fast forward a few months of interview process. And again, i can't stress enough This job is my dream job. I love leading people, i love connecting with people, i love logistics, i love thinking big and dreaming And it's my dream organization And I've married to my dream wife Like it's. So my life is perfect, oh my God. These other pieces that are perfect. No, i mean, it really is like a it's good to even say this out loud, right, because it's good to be like look what God has done. Like I feel and here's a really banana story that I think you'll appreciate My wife and I did not meet until, obviously, we were in our late 30s in Memphis, but we grew up a mile away from each other in a suburb of Dallas, one mile Like our parents still live that close to each other. They're friends now Really. But I had this moment really early on in our relationship where I felt like God was saying I was never hiding her from you, that was never my plan, like she was right there And it is a very just again stepping out into something that felt so, so scary and unsure but necessary for me, and watching like how God has just continues to show up in these spaces and remind me that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be And that I am okay, all of me.

So tell me, Debbie, when Ashley is going through all this, after you have the conversation in Dallas where you tell her how you've changed, were there other people who helped spur your courage and your kind of growth that many of us have?

Honestly, I didn't have any gay children or new someone gay or any of that, And certainly nobody in my family. I knew there were gay people in my family but they were not about to come out or nobody talked about it, Make any kind of positive statement around that. So now it's basically I'm kind of the pioneer of our family Yes, she is, And I want you to talk about that, Sounds like it. I've got like several like second cousins and stuff have come out since and like their parents come to me and say how did you handle this? I tell them didn't handle it too good to begin with, But I'm learning and I learned and I really had to re, re, look at my belief system And I think it's so easy, especially in the South, And I can only say that because I lived up north for a couple of years And it's it's a different environment. Honestly, Southern people are really sweet, But they tend to, at least in our situation. In my particular situation, I took on what was handed to me, as this is absolute truth. This is how you're supposed to believe. Don't go out of this box Again. Back to the anyone that's involved in homosexual relationships or any of that that sin, they're going to hell, all those kinds of things. So I had to go back and re examine is that really how I feel? Do I really feel that way? They'll use all the clobber passages and whatnot at you, But they leave out a lot of things that pertain to them as well And don't call that out. But honestly, I just thought this doesn't make sense to me. We're chastising people for who they are, how they were born. I don't believe anybody chooses that And it's just flat out mean. And how can we say that we're Christians when we're just flat out mean and heightful to people? So I can't really say that I had a big cheering section or anything like that. I had a couple of cousins, close cousins, that I was able to talk to about it, but they had no experience with any other. It was more of, hey, this is what's going on in my life and this is what's happening with Ashley And I just wanted you guys to know about it And eventually they became very supportive. I think at first it was just stunned, But with some of my family members and I'm not going to get in specifics but it's been very ostracizing. They have ostracized Ashley and not as much me, but definitely it's almost the only shining someone. It's been really that's been painful, But you have to do what you feel is right in your heart And I don't know. I just thought I think God is better than we think he is, And I don't think anyone is perfect. And if they are, I'd sure like to meet them I think it was a slow coming around to. I don't have to believe what I've been told to believe. I don't have to. That's. And if my family doesn't like it, that's okay.

They can believe what they want to believe.

Just don't be mean. That's my only request. Just don't be mean.

I think back to times when I have kind of grown through and changed my beliefs on different things. And you know, when I was in my late 20s, early 30s is when I changed my beliefs about accepting, affirming LGBTQ people And it was because, just like you've mentioned, it was because of my personal experience of people and seeing their relationships And primarily for me, that was in the situations where I was their physician and seeing people and loving them. And this just doesn't even make any sense. This doesn't make any sense And I've been afraid of thinking wrong, you know, because you get taught that you can't believe wrong or you know you're in danger of the fires of hell. But just growing to the point where your own experience is meaningful enough that you can cross that fear So I really do. I think Ashley is certainly right in wanting to kind of cheer for you and brag on you, because not having that kind of a foundation of support from somewhere around you that's saying, yeah, this is the right thing to do, having to be the one who kind of picks it up and does it the first, that's big And that again, that's like that's life changing for so many more people than just you. Yes, i mean, that's, generations of people whose lives that changes.

It is generations of that. But yeah, it's funny. I read a, i think, a little t-shirt I had popped up on my Instagram the other day And it said Be careful who you hate It might be somebody you love. That was my first thought. Is you know, it's so easy to Paint someone as simple or evil or whatever until you know them, until you've lived some life with them and had experiences with them and been around them and see they're not evil, they're not, they're not trying to hurt you. Can't you just leave them alone? Why is that your business anyway, we're contagious.

You're not contagious. I love that.

Yeah, I've got a big, big turnaround in my belief system. You know I'm still Jesus girl. I just think he's sweeter than a lot of people think he is.

So many people's idea of what God is like right is limited by what they've seen right in their own lives, demonstrated by people in authority and being able to imagine outside that God can be so much bigger than What the example has been set out for me can be. I like that you mentioned that because I think that's really important. So many people's ideas about God are restricted by their own experience of poor authority. If you had it to speak and actually You do get to do this to some some degree but if you just talking to people who right now maybe in a situation like you were Was it roughly ten years ago, little less than ten years ago where you're struggling with your beliefs about yourself or someone your love and Don't really know, don't really have the The strength of the courage yet to make a big change and don't know or afraid of what it might mean to your life, like you said, blow, am I gonna just explode my life? If you had a chance to go back and talk to you then, or someone else who is in the same situation, what do you think would be most important for them to hear?

I think that, at the end of the day, a proximity is everything. So when we Learn to not be afraid of the other and actually ask better questions, right? So The questions that we ask Oftentimes are questions that were handed to us, yeah, and I think when you're in relationship Or when you're actually paying attention to yourself and your body and your own feelings, you learn to ask better questions. And I think to me Understanding that, let me speak specifically right now to someone who may know someone that's gay and have very conflicting feelings about that in their own Faith journey. A, we're not contagious And I say that as a joke, but also to know that we're not going to rub off on you. And so why don't you spend some time with those people, just like you with any other person, like without an agenda Except just to be in relationship, to ask good questions, to learn about them, be, if you believe that God is love, then trust that and pray for that. Pray that God would love them. However that looks, not that your version of love, which may mean judgment or change, right, just love, just pray that God would love it. That only the way that God can love, and Then just wait, right? I think so much of what's happening right now in our Shifting faith landscape is a long game right. We are standing on the shoulders of people who did much harder work in these spaces than we have to do now. There's still a lot of work to do, especially in the south, especially around trans issues, and I think at the end of the day, it's also important to realize that your theology may actually be dangerous, and I say that with All of the love and care of being in that position. Before I have shared that theology. But when we look statistically at suicide rates and Violence against LGBTQ people, we have to start asking where is the fruit of this kind of theology? and it's rotten right. And so maybe you don't have to become this fully affirming rainbow flag flying pride, walking ally, but maybe You can back off your rhetoric and trust that God would love Mm-hmm, and maybe you could make a friend or two and maybe you can ask better questions. And to me, that's all. That's all I'm asking for. Again, i don't need you to believe where I'm going when I die. I just need you to recognize that I'm a person and that we can have the same beliefs about God being loving and trust that, maybe in different ways, but the opposite sometimes of love isn't it hate, sometimes it's control or judgment. And so, recognizing that, what it means to trust that God will do what God can do, Yeah yeah, I don't know if that answered the question at all.

Yeah, yeah, i think it did So. if you were to think about someone, someone like you, who was in the situation that you were in before you had that conversation in Dallas and you know, in 2016,. yeah, you've told us what you heard from your mom, but that was something that you needed and maybe didn't know that you needed not necessarily an apology, just that she, like she, was with you. Yeah, are there any other things that you think would be helpful to those of us, i guess, who love people, who are gay, who are trans, who are all the parts of the rainbow right, who may not have family support? I have friends who have had devastating difficulty with their family after they came out, and that persists years later. Yeah, that's so hard.

I mean, i I definitely have a lot of support in my life. I have some family members that are not a supportive and that can be really devastating, and I think sometimes it's sometimes you don't know your own boundaries until they're stepped on right. I think there's some of that where I'm an eternal optimist. I will play a long game with someone forever and ever, like I will keep reaching out, i will keep believing, and then sometimes it's just knowing in my own body like hey, i've got a back off here, just for my own safety and well-being. And I think we talk a lot about chosen family in my little rainbow world because it's literally a lifeline that the majority of people in this space have had to understand, because, i mean, i think we all have that to some degree right, our chosen family. But specifically for the LGBTQ population, a lot of times that's their only choice is to choose their own family. And so I think, like even even just recognizing that, like if you have someone in your life that may feel isolated from their own family, that you lean in in ways that a family member might we've got some friends here that are very much chosen family friends and taking her to PT appointments and bringing meals after her surgery and all the things that a family would do right, because those relationships don't come as easy in a typical nuclear family context for so many of us. But going back to like what I would tell someone in my position, i just steer so clear of that, like I just have so many people I cannot tell you that have reached out since I came out that are in maybe in a marriage with a man or or questioning some of those things themselves and want to know what to do, and I feel that so deeply. I just wanted someone to tell me what to do. But no two stories are the same, no two marriages are the same, no two paths forward are the same, and so mostly it's just support and solidarity. Like I see you right, feelings are valid. I'm here to talk. I just am never going to be prescriptive on what someone else should do, and that's happening a lot because there are so many of us that like got married, like really young, trying to do this thing, and are now like oh wait, that's hard.

Yeah, and I think that, like it's good to even to say that again that even in the worst of situations, when there's someone you love who's in a difficult place, giving advice without it being asked for is is a pretty aggressive act.

And even sometimes when it's asked for like oh it is.

It's a pretty aggressive act, and so it should only be done with extreme care, if ever.

Yeah, you're like do you really want?

Yeah, yeah, and I'm a doctor. That's what I do is give people advice all day long. But they come to me and ask me for it. I don't tell them what to do with their lives. But I will say again this made me think, debbie, when you were talking about about the like physical symptoms and your, your mental wellness, and I've seen so many times and experienced in my own life how there are real physical manifestations of depression and grief and living in a way that doesn't have integrity with who you really are and living something you think you should be living instead of what you really were meant to live. So I absolutely agree with you. Yeah, and sometimes that's one of those times, as a physician, right, i still can't tell people. That's what it is. I can make suggestions, but I can't give that advice. You know, i can't say, yeah, you know what, you're just gonna have to get divorced or whatever. That doesn't work.

Yeah, well, for me, actually for me it was, it was a tug war between my head and my heart and I think in those situations I hope my heart always wins out and I just I could never feel, i don't know, i could never feel that peace, feeling like I was at odds with my children because who they are, yeah, and I just I couldn't find peace in that. So it's kind of selfish too, yeah, because I need that. I'm crazy about my children, all of them.

That's the right kind of selfish the right kind, exactly, exactly The good kind. So, debbie, what would you say to someone who has grown up with that same sort of religious background that you had and their child has come out to them and they don't know what to do? they don't know how to handle it like, theologically, they don't know how to handle this relationship with the God that they've been taught about and then the love that they have for their children.

I don't give any theological advice because mine is probably to a lot of people is probably wet And truthfully, i've had several people come to me. Family members who are a couple in particular have drawn a really, really hard line with their children, with their grown children, over that, and now they don't speak to them, they don't have children who they have no relationship with anymore, and I find that so hard and so sad. Yeah, basically, when people have come to me, i'll say is just love them. That's all. That's all you're supposed to do for your children. You're supposed to love your children. They're grown. I don't know why we think we're supposed to change them or we can't change them once they're grown. Just love them. They're still your children. They're no different than they were before you found out they were gay. They're still the same. But as far as trying to convince anyone of my current belief system or I have no interest in that. That's between them and God And I just have I have trust that God will reach out and help them like He did me.

Ashley, do you mind spending just a couple of minutes telling our listeners about the Evolving Faith Conference, because I think this is something if they don't know about, they may really, really want to know about it. I think they need to know about it.

Obviously, i'm incredibly passionate about it, not just because it's my job, but because I think it sort of saved my own spirituality. But yeah, we have been hosting an annual conference since 2018, with the exception of one year. Covid does that, so but we're really, really excited to be back to a hybrid conference, so we'll be in person and online in October October 13th and 14th in Minneapolis. We have an incredible lineup of speakers, and one of the things that I love so much about what we do is that we are incredibly ecumenical, and we are. We love to platform voices that may resonate with different people, and so we have speakers like Barbara Brown-Taylor and Nadia Bulls-Weber and Dante Stewart, our own, alicia Crosby. We have all sorts of variety, not just in body shape, sexuality and color of skin, but also in theology. We talk a lot about setting a table in the wilderness for the wanderers, like being a safe place for people in the midst of wilderness seasons. I really believe that we hold sacred ground here for people that are asking questions, maybe that they've never asked before, or maybe they've been asking them for a while and they're looking for other people to walk alongside. We definitely walk into that space a lot of times, knowing that something is holy and then, at the end, being surprised even by what God does for people in that space. So I am completely unattached to anyone having a certain set of theology, and that is so freeing. We can all like, listen and learn from all of these speakers and all of our own stories, and we all come out richer and better for it. And so that's in October. We also have an online community that we have over 9,500 people in affinity groups, from LGBTQ to BIPOC spaces to allies. We have conversation there all the time around, parenting with an evolving faith, and what does it mean to be an ally, and how do we fight white supremacy, and on and on and on. And so that is completely free. You can go to our website of alllingfaithcom and join the community there. And then, obviously, we'd love to see everyone in October, either online or in person. And so, yeah, we've got a lot of really great stuff happening there and it seems to be doing exactly what we want it to be, which is a table in the wilderness for all of us misfits and wonders and people that somehow still hold to the story of Jesus.

And even for people who aren't quite sure that they would even call themselves Christian Absolutely. It's very welcoming to people who have questions and may never have those questions answered, or who feel who just who want a spiritual community, who want who won't kick them out because their beliefs aren't quite as set in stone as everyone else is, or that sort of We're deeply committed to saying hospitality and belonging are the same for us, because there are a lot of people that come to us that have been that hospitality has been weaponized, like you're welcome here but you don't belong, and we are fully like you, welcome, you belong.

Those things are not separate And we have. You know, we had a really beautiful story in a few years ago of at the end of the communion service, which we have always done and it always is very like open and come as you are And if you'd like to do this, great, if not great, but I'd like to have that kind of bullish. I'm going to reclaim the things that people wanted to take from me. But we had someone take communion and basically told the person offering that this was their last communion, that they were leaving, but they felt safe to do that and to be sort of ushered into this next season for them spiritually. That didn't include this kind of liturgical communion or Jesus even And that's fine and beautiful We just we hold space. That's what we do. We hold space, we think, we question, we talk, we're shoulder to shoulder in it.

Yeah, that's what freedom and belonging really are. That's beautiful. Thank you, ashley and Debbie. It means so much to me that you are willing to talk with our listeners. Much, much love to you. Thanks so much for listening, guys, you mean the world to me. I appreciate your patience with my irregular posting schedule. It's hard to be as consistent as I would love to be in producing episodes, but know that I'm always thinking about what I can bring to you and who I can bring to you, and I always love to hear from you your feedback on potential guests. Or if you're interested in coming on the show, please get in touch with me. You can fill out the guest nomination form on belonginginthesouthcom or you can also sign up for the email list on that same website. You can also listen to the podcast from that website. So all good places to get in touch with me or to get on the email list so that you hear about new episodes and anything that come up in the future, events and stuff like that. So, as always and until next time, you belong, much love.