I was invited to dinner by my family in a text.

“Come by on Sunday,” they wrote. “It will be a special day — a family day.”

They took my coat and laid it on the bed with theirs, motioning for me to sit on the couch with my brother and sisters. It felt good to be home, a place that at times had become strange and hard to navigate.

My mother kissed me on the cheek and seemed to understand. Eager to capitalize on the gathering she felt some duty towards, my oldest sister led stories from our childhood. My brother’s sixth birthday when all he wanted was a pie in the face like he had seen on TV. Our grandpa only she was old enough among us siblings to remember and the playful nicknames he gave every child once their personality was developed enough to get them in trouble. It was like she thought by reminding us of the family we once were, it would not be so far a leap to return us back to the ideal our parents always told us we would become.

As the stories died down, my mother said the meal was ready and invited us to the table. Sitting down in the chair I grew up in brought back a flood of memories. Losing my first tooth in a bite of meatloaf. My father leaning over my math homework to explain the equations I could never wrap my head around. Always passing to the right, minding the needs of the person to your left. The sense of stability and dependability this kitchen imbued surrounded me.

She had told me she was preparing a feast, but I was unprepared for the presentation my mother had placed before us. A roast chicken sat atop a bed of wild rice. There were rolls and greens, gravy and a pie so flaky-golden my mother said she couldn’t resist setting out on the table now. After the prayer we had all grown up with was prayed, we all grabbed the closest plate and I filled a serving spoon with the rice.

My father cleared his throat.

Everyone froze. His eyes were on me.

I furrowed my brows, confused. “Is it true?” He asked, his voice calm but strong.

“Is what true?” I asked, though I knew what he meant. I just wasn’t ready.

“You’re with that woman now.” It wasn’t a question that time. He knew.

“She’s my wife,” I replied.

He reached across my younger sister and grabbed the serving plate and spoon I still held in my hand. “You know the rules, Patrick,” he said, “In this family, laying with a foreign woman is forbidden.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I looked to my mother but she only nodded. I could see it pained her, but she didn’t disagree.

My brother put the leg of chicken that had hung frozen mid-air on his fork down on his plate and my younger sister gave a sympathetic look and started a story about tryouts for her college intramural soccer team in an attempt to ease the tension. The rolls passed through my hands, left to right, from my brother to my sister, and then I placed my hands gently back upon the napkin in my lap and stared at the empty plate before me. The meal continued on as though I were eating along with them like always.

When everyone had finished, my mother asked, “Patrick, dear, would you clear the plates and grab some of the small bowls and the tub of ice cream for the pie?” Out of the cupboard I brought enough bowls for all except me and set them beside my mother and her pie.

I must have had a melancholic look on my face because my father frowned and said, “It’s not just you, you know?”

My parents had always taken a high view of what it meant to be member of our family, and saw the meals we shared as a sacred part of what made us whole. And to be a member of the family, you had to be our nationality. The rules were simple, I could give them that. And you had to not only follow them, but believe they were right.

Grinning, my father looked up from a bite of pie. “So where is she then?”

I didn’t respond.

“If you say she’s your wife, that she is family, why isn’t she here?”

A heat crawled up my neck, pricking the pores and I felt my hands clench at the napkin in my lap. “Do you believe she’s family?” I asked, sharper than I had meant.

“Married to you? No.” My father responded, placing his fork down gently beside his plate.

“That is why I did not bring her here.” I said flatly. I wanted to push back my chair and kiss my mother on the top of the head and walk out the door, but I couldn’t. Some stubborn force of ancestry kept me glued to the seat.

Across the table my younger sister silently mouthed, “I’m sorry.” She was the only one who came to our wedding. The only one who saw us as equally deserving to be a part of the family, just as we are. But here, in our parent’s house, all she could do was offer a hidden apology.

“She is more than welcome here,” my mother said.

“It would be good for her!” My father tapped the table with his left hand, his mood teetering back affably. “She needs to be around a real family, to see what it actually looks like.”

“And you’ll let her eat here, with all of you?” I was skeptical. Something was off.

My father snorted. “I didn’t say I was going to change our family’s rules and abandon our traditions for her. No, I’m saying she should come and spend some time with us. Hear our stories. See what a meal with a genuine family bound by nationality is like. Then maybe you two will change.”

“Change? We didn’t choose to fall in love, Dad. It just happened.”

“No.” My father suddenly had something close to a tear in his eye and seemed to be fighting back his words as they became shorter and tense. “But you chose to be with her. Acting on it is your choice. You chose that lifestyle over your family.”

“It’s not natural, honey,” my mother offered. I could tell she wanted to get up and hug me but I stayed in my seat and kept my eyes on my empty plate.

“How is it any different than you and mom?” I almost moaned. Far whinier than I had intended. My emotions were slipping away, but I didn’t care.

“I have never been with a foreign woman. Ever. What you do is an abomination.”

“That’s not fair,” I whispered. It was all I could say.

My brother finally looked up from the pie he was pushing around his plate and said, “It is fair. This is what it means to be a part of this family. Dad didn’t create it — the rules aren’t up to him. He is just upholding what Grandpa taught him and what has been passed on for generations. What’s not fair is you getting upset with him over something he can’t change.”

“Patrick,” my mom said softly. “We want you here. You belong here. Maybe it’s not fair. But that’s not what makes a family. It’s because we love you that we say this. You see that, right? You’re not the only one who has to make sacrifices to become who we are. But it’s worth it, I promise.”

My stomach grumbled. I hated that. I wanted the hunger to die and to be fine without them. But I just shifted in my seat and looked across at the cupboards I had stared at over every meal in this house since I was a toddler.

Gesturing to all the food left on the table my father softened his voice. “We want to share this with you. It is for you as much as it is for us. But if we don’t hold onto what makes us unique, who even are we? You may have been born into this family, but unless you agree that she is not really your wife — cannot be — as our nationalities divide us, then you’re not really a part of this family. To be one of us is to know that she never can be. Not with you, anyway.”

I didn’t respond. Couldn’t understand how the love I had for my wife, the thing that made me most like their ideal, the thing over and over since I was a child they had told me was the key to my life, instead was something that made me anathema. Over a technicality I couldn’t control. I wanted to cry, but was done crying at family meals. My well had run dry.

“I think that’s enough talk for one night,” my mother said gently. “If you all want to stick around for coffee you can, but I know everyone has places they need to be.”

I got up and shuffled toward the bedroom where my coat lay. My younger sister followed me in and quietly shut the door. “You know you don’t have to keep coming back right? Mom and Dad might not understand, but everyone else would. They might not say it, but deep down they would.”

“Yeah… yeah I know.” I offered. “Sometimes I think about it. Just leaving. Not putting myself through this anymore.”

“And?”

“I can’t. I can’t change the fact that this is home. That you guys are my family. Or that one day we are going to start having kids of our own. And they won’t have any more choice in who they fall in love with than I did. They deserve better than being told their relationships are lies, are destructive, are disgusting. The family says they won’t change, but maybe they will. I’ve got to keep trying. If nothing else, for our kids.”

My sister pulled me in for a hug. “And you think you’ve got it in you to go through all that?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” I said. “But I’ll keep showing up until I can’t.”

Post Script — This is a post about what it feels like to be gay at a non-affirming church. It is not about the why of church policies.