When Faith Finds You

My most personal Substack yet. Love and faith found me in a nursing home, a cemetery, and an operating room.

On Sunday, April 27, I'll stand up at our church and be confirmed into the Episcopal faith next to my fourteen-year-old son who's chosen to do the same. It's taken me 42 years to find where I fit. And I feel very much at home. Let me tell you why.

The dots on the timeline of my spiritual journey have less to do with my faith than how it's evolved through my lived experiences, but they feel like a nice place to start. As an infant, I was baptized Catholic (at my grandparents' insistence). As a child, I was raised in a faithful family but didn't attend a specific church regularly. In college, I made friends at a large Baptist church and chose to be baptized as a young adult. When we moved home to Pensacola, we baptized our children at a local Methodist church.

And here we are. I like to say I'm collecting denominations. : )

Each of those pivots helped me narrow down what I believe. I tried many values and ideas on for size. Some fit just right. Some not at all. But two things helped me reach this place where I feel ready to be confirmed at Christ Church in Pensacola: lots of questioning WHY and lots of lived experience learning what LOVE really is. I saw the truest of love between an aging mother and her daughter, between a gay man and his longtime partner, and between myself and the son I worried I'd have to say goodbye to.

Note: trigger warning for infertility, infant loss, and Alzheimers. These stories are heavy but beautiful.

A Few Times I Saw Love in Its Purest Form

Every Monday for years, my mom baked a cake and, after spending her day teaching third graders, popped into a local care facility to drop it off and shake the administrator's hand. Her mom, my grandmother, was in the later stages of Alzheimer's and on the waiting list for care. While planning for my grandmother's future, my mom was also caring for her in the present. It was a love that never wavered, never backed down with exhaustion, and never broke the way I'm sure her heart was breaking.

My grandmother eventually moved into the incredible facility. As her memory faded more and more, my mom's love manifested in even more tangible ways. She visited every afternoon to do her hair (before her disease took hold, my grandmother had a standing appointment each Friday at "The Beauty Shop" to have her hair done just right, pinned back in her signature gold barrette). My mom ensured her hair was perfect, her outfits neatly matched, and her lipstick always on. It was exactly what my grandmother would have wanted.

I didn't know a lot of things. But watching my mom, lipstick in hand, carefully applying it to her mom, I knew that was love in its purest form.

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Spending my college years in a conservative church setting and surrounded as a young adult by friends with traditional beliefs, I adopted many of their ideas of what is "right" and "not right." (Side note: I'm deeply ashamed to write this part of my journey, but I would be remiss not to mention it as it changed my heart to its core. I share this not to center my guilt, but to show that people can grow and change.)

I remember sitting with Bryan one evening, a newly dating couple, discussing marriage equality. I was against same-sex marriage. I also didn't personally know anyone who was part of the LGBTQIA+ community at that time. I knew only people just like me—mostly straight, white, cis, heterosexual men and women. (Oh, my heart aches for this young version of myself. She wasn't raised this way. But friends are so influential when you're an older teen and young adult).

Bryan looked at me and said, "This isn't what you believe. You just don't realize it yet." You see, I hadn’t met him yet, but Bryan's father, Bill, was gay. He’d come out to his family when Bryan was eighteen. Bryan believed everyone deserved the same rights. And he never wavered. (Side note: I initially wrote this particular story about a “family friend” to honor Bryan’s own story, but when he read it, he asked that I change it to share that it was his father. He said he was proud of his dad and his story). ❤️

Fast forward a few years. Bryan and I became even closer with my father-in-law. He and his partner, Thomas, were dear to our hearts. Sadly, Bryan's dad passed away in his fifties, after an incredibly short seventeen day battle with cancer. We traveled to the funeral with his partner and family. It was a military funeral, as he'd served his country (forced to hide his heart) for decades.

I watched Thomas as he sat in the front row, next to Bryan and his siblings, weeping. He'd lost his person. The love of his life. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he felt the enormity of love lived and love lost. Tears rolled down mine as I saw the vast gap between what I thought I believed and what I was witnessing firsthand. I felt shame. And also gratitude for having known these two men and their love story.

At the service's conclusion, the flag was folded and handed to Bill’s eldest son. Not to his longtime partner. Because they'd never been allowed to legally marry. Ten months later, the Supreme Court recognized marriage equality as a constitutional right. I'm still learning how to be a better ally, but that moment forever changed me.

I didn't know a lot of things. But I knew I'd witnessed love that day in a cemetery in Pennsylvania. In its purest form.

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Bryan and I struggled to have children. It's a road many walk. And none of us want to. The pain of wanting desperately to have a child shaped me into a different type of mother. I have a tenderness in my heart that will never heal. I'm grateful for the science and doctors that made it possible for us to have our three kids.

Brady, Tyler, and Caroline are each the product of reproductive medicine. But my pregnancy with Brady was especially meaningful—and the scariest nine months of my life. At eighteen weeks, unbeknownst to me, my doctor performed a Quad-Screen test, which screens for genetic abnormalities. I received a call one evening about my results—it appeared my baby might have Spina Bifida.

What followed was a story too painful and long to share fully here. I shared much of it in Grace, Not Perfection. But ultimately, we were told Brady might not survive birth. I spent every second of those months praying, pleading with God to save our son. I've never known worry or pain quite like those moments in the dark of night, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I would have to let go of this baby I'd yearned for, prayed for, and finally conceived.

In the operating room, on February 16, 2011, I lay on the table, prepared for an emergency c-section. I turned my palms up to God. Surrendered all my love for Brady, and told God I'd trust him with my boy. Whoever he was. And however long he lived. I'll never forget when the doctor looked at me, smiling over the curtain, and said, "Emily. He's perfectly healthy." I cried so hard they had to sedate me to get my heart rate down.

I didn't know a lot of things. But in those years leading up to his birth, in the fourteen years since, and most poignantly, in those few moments before hearing her words and surrendering my love for Brady, palms up to God, I knew pure love like I've never experienced.

I am grateful for science. For miracles. And for the chance to be a mom.

Finding God Beyond Church Walls

All of this to say: I never found God in a church. I found Him in a nursing home. At a cemetery in Pennsylvania. And in an operating room in Tampa. There are countless other stories I could share. But my faith is rooted in love—the purest form that comes from Jesus himself.

I can only recite about five Bible verses by heart. I've never read the Bible cover to cover. But I know what love is. And everyone deserves it. They deserve to be seen, heard, and included.

I'd like to share my letter to our Bishop. This is part of our confirmation classes. Our Bishop reads (and according to our church leadership, actually remembers) each person's letter, history, and whatever they share, when he places his hand on them to confirm them. These letters are private and not usually shared. But in sharing my story thus far, I feel this post and letter might comfort someone else.

Perhaps you're lonely. Maybe you're a mix of a lot of beilefs too. Maybe you don't feel included or your beliefs don't fit in anywhere. Maybe, like me during that conversation with Bryan, you're questioning what you already think you believe. Wherever you are, I hope you know you can sit at our table.

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Dear Bishop,

My name is Emily Ley, and I am looking forward to being confirmed at Christ Church in Pensacola on April 27. This is a special occasion for many reasons, but especially because my eldest son, Brady Ley, has decided to be confirmed alongside me.

I'm forty-two years old, a wife to Bryan for 16 years, and mother of three children: Brady (14) and twins Tyler and Caroline (10). We also have a sweet pup named Walter.

Professionally, I'm the founder of Simplified, a company that creates organizational tools and paper goods for busy women, available online and in mass retail stores like Target and Walmart nationwide. At my heart, however, I am a writer. It's through reading and writing that I've come to know my own spirituality and relationship with God. It's how I process most things.

Over the years, I've written twelve published books, including two devotionals. I don't consider myself a scholar of theology, but rather a child of God who best understands her own sometimes complex relationship with Him.

Spiritually, I was baptized Catholic as an infant at the insistence of my grandparents, raised Methodist in a wonderful family, then later baptized Baptist in college by my own choosing as an outward profession of my growing faith.

After college, I continued to write and read more. I began to question my faith and the "rules" I'd been taught more deeply (a practice I understand is healthy and normal, though still confusing at times). I particularly struggled with my evolving beliefs about where our brothers and sisters who are marginalized and often excluded fit in. I worried deeply for LGBTQIA+ family members and friends—that they didn't feel loved by the church and so many who represent it. I felt deeply sad that women weren't allowed to serve in leadership positions in some churches. As a mother who only became one after many rounds of fertility treatments, I questioned how my beliefs about reproductive rights fit into my faith.

Then I enrolled my children at Episcopal Day School of Christ Church. I met people who were brilliantly smart and complex. I was welcomed with all my questions. Essentially, my family—with all our nuances—was welcomed with open arms. As we became more involved at Christ Church, I found that my husband, with his complex relationship with his faith, was welcomed by people of this church and denomination. We were invited to be loved as curious, complex, imperfect humans rather than people who checked certain boxes and met certain societal standards.

Every day, when my kids get out of the car at school, I tell them—before they shut the door—"Make good choices, and be an includer." In short, I feel included here. And I feel like my heart is being nurtured to be an includer out in the world. I'm honored to be confirmed, and I'm grateful for the work you do.

With love,

Emily Ley