When I was elected to be an alternate delegate to General/Jurisdictional Conference in 2019, I had no idea I was about to become a district superintendent the following year. I had no idea that COVID was coming. I had no idea that six years later, I would still be a member of the delegation. I had no idea how the future would unfold for me or for my beloved United Methodist Church.

In all of those years, I missed two delegation meetings, one for a time-sensitive situation on the Valley Ridge District I needed to address that night, and the other was so Tracy and I could celebrate our silver wedding anniversary together.

If all of those meetings, if all of that time spent reading legislation, if all that time in the car driving back and forth to meetings did nothing else for me but get me in the room when Helen Ryde said the words quoted below from the floor of the General Conference, it was more than worth it, all of it.

Helen was a Home Missioner in the Order of Deaconess and Home Missioner in The United Methodist Church from the Western North Carolina Conference. They had worked for inclusion through the Reconciling Ministries Network for a dozen years by the time this General Conference took place.

On this day, the General Conference had just voted to remove the harmful, exclusionary language in our United Methodist Book of Discipline that was added in 1972 and that relegated our LGBTQIA+ siblings into second-class members of our churches and that excluded them from so many of the blessings the church provides, including marriage and ordination. There was so much emotion in that moment following the vote, so many tears, so much elation. The road was long and hard, but all the while, it had a destination, and we had just seen it.

The General Conference reconvened and it was time to consider a piece of legislation that would have provided a pathway for disaffiliated churches to return to the United Methodist Church, if they so chose.

As this legislation was considered, there were so many feelings in the room, so much hurt, so much, anger, grief, and loss. Personally, I had just lived through a season where I was averaging almost 100 miles each day, alone in my car, with most of those miles spent driving to meeting after meeting, and vote after vote for disaffiliation. Over and over again, I watched people nope out of my life’s work.

It never got easier. It never stopped hurting. It never failed to cause me to grieve. I never lost a church that I was glad to see go. Even now, and probably for the rest of my life, I will deal with the lingering aftereffects of that season. I still have to check myself and make sure I keep those wounds covered so that they are not revealed in unhealthy ways.

All of that was the backdrop against which Helen Ryde stood when they stepped to microphone three and said this:

“My name is Helen Ryde. I’m a lay delegate from the Western North Carolina Conference. I’m a home missioner. I’m an adult, white, non-binary person, and my pronouns are they/them. I rise to speak in favor of this petition because I am not the person I am now that I was 30, 35 years ago. I lost track.

I’m saying that to say my heart has been changed about who I am and how I exist in the world. But if you had told me that many years ago that my heart was going to change, I would have said, ‘No. (laughs) Nope, it ain’t gonna change ’cause I’m quite sure what the Bible tells me about who I am.’

But I, I listened to God, and I listened to people who told me that the image of God was in me just as much as it is in people who are heterosexual and cisgender. And so I believe we need to leave the door open.

You know, this move to bring our church to a new place has never, ever been about asking anybody to leave. Many of those who have left have believed gross mischaracterizations about people like me, and I believe many of them are realizing that maybe they shouldn’t have believed them. And so in my heart, I hope and pray that we can have the grace to allow a way back.

There are no closed doors in the Kingdom of God. There is nothing that should prevent people for being in a relationship with us as United Methodist Church.”

The vote was taken and the legislation passed.

Rest in power, Helen. I am glad you made it to Charlotte. Well done, good and faithful servant.