In a poignant and powerful conversation about faith and loss, Julie Hilliard Wood, a lifelong United Methodist, shares her family’s story of how homophobia and rejection within the church had devastating consequences and reminds us of how critically important it is to create safe and loving spaces for all of God’s children.
Guest: Julie Hilliard Wood
- Learn more about Wood's story in her book, "Changing the Message: Cruelty to Persons Who Are Gay is Incompatible with Christian Teaching."
- Wood and her family attend Green Street United Methodist Church, a reconciling congregation.
- If you or someone you care about is struggling with thoughts of suicide, contact 988Lifeline.
Popular related items on UMC.org
- "Who is my neighbor"
- "Jesus wept. So should we."
- "Ask The UMC: What is the United Methodist view on suicide?"
Join the conversation
Email our host Crystal Caviness or our producer Joe Iovino about this episode, ideas for future topics, or any other thoughts you would like to share.
Help us spread the word
Tell others: members of your church, coworkers, and anyone else might benefit from these conversations.
Share us on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you download the episode. Great reviews help others find us.
More Get Your Spirit in Shape episodes
- Get Your Spirit in Shape and other United Methodist podcasts
Thank you for listening, subscribing and sharing.
This episode posted on Sept. 6, 2024.
Get Your Spirit in Shape and UMC.org are ministries of United Methodist Communications. For more than 80 years, we have been delivering messages of hope and leading the way in communications ministry. Join us in this vital work by making a tax-deductible donation at ResourceUMC.org/GiveUMCom.
Transcript
This episode discusses suicide. If you have concerns about yourself or a loved one, please text or call 988 to connect with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Prologue
In a poignant and powerful conversation about faith and loss, Julie Hilliard Wood, a lifelong United Methodist, shares her family’s story of how homophobia and rejection within the church had devastating consequences and reminds us of how critically important it is to create safe and loving spaces for all of God's children.
Crystal Caviness, host: Julie, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Julie Hilliard Wood, guest: Good morning. I hope you're doing well and thank you so much for inviting me.
Crystal: I appreciate you being here. I believe we're going to have an important conversation and I am eager to kind of get into that with you. But before we start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Julie: I am a lifelong Methodist. I am the daughter of a Methodist minister. My husband's a lifelong Methodist. But I'm a mother. I have two biological children, one in heaven. I adopted a wonderful little girl and I've recently adopted an adult, so I consider myself the mother of four. I've worked in Human Services for some time. I work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I'm the executive director of a nonprofit and I absolutely love the diversity of God's creation and love seeing the value in each human. That really does give me joy.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that. And the reason I invited you to be a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” is I read a book that you wrote several years ago. It’s your family's, it has chronicled part of your family's story and I was really moved by it and I feel like the message is just very important. The title of the book is “Changing the Message: Cruelty to Persons Who Are Gay is Incompatible with Christian Teaching.”
And what struck me about the title even is the twist on a phrase that's been in our Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church for decades since the seventies that says “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Now we're going to talk about that. That phrase was removed at the Postponed 2020 General Conference that just happened this past April in Charlotte, North Carolina. But you wrote this book in 2020 and that had not yet happened. So I can imagine that that phrase had a very significant impact on. So I don't want to get too far ahead, but I'll back up just a minute. And can you tell us just a little bit about your book and why you wrote the book?
Julie: So our life was, in 2013, was picked up from one path and one experience and placed on a completely different path and experience, and it was housed in extreme loss. And that occurred because of that mindset, the words in the Book of Discipline that set this culture in place of many of our churches. And I grew up believing in Jesus loves little children and the Golden Rule and all these beautiful messages of God's love. But when I had my most cherished, beloved child treated horribly for being as God created him, which was gay, I was like a fish swimming against the ocean. And I really believe that those words have created so much harm and given permission for cruelty and human insecurities that come out in ego to feel I'm better. I'm a little higher on the God acceptance list.
Let me put someone else down. And in some ways sanctioned by the church. So those words, they gave permission for some really ugly behavior and I had to call that out. That's not what I learned about God at all. And so for seven years I knew I needed to write Ben's story and our story and it felt like a responsibility like I've lived this, I'm also not gay so I can get out and talk without the ridicule. And unfortunately some people still are cruel and mean, but my goodness, I need to be the voice for those who are little kids hiding, who are sitting in this circle of sometimes abuse. We need to fill in that gap and stand up and be strong and say, this is not what God meant at all. Jesus was about uniting and beauty of all the members of the body and about diversity and celebrating the diversity and God is a creator. And so to me, those words in the Book of Discipline, they really could almost say took away my life, the life of my son and the life as we knew it before our son died.
Crystal: Julie, do you mind sharing a little bit more about some of that pain that occurred, that happened to Ben and to your family?
Julie: So we were so involved in the church and our best friends were in the church. Our social activities were in the church. With Ben, he went to preschool at the church, of course at Sunday school and then later youth group. And the youth group was very healing for Ben. He had some physical differences. He had very mild cerebral palsy, but he had been picked on in school. He had already been wounded and the church was this beautiful safe place and Ben's confidence soared there and he really was a leader. And Ben was this wise old soul. Even in first grade, his teacher said, this is a child with wisdom beyond his years. And the thing is that it really was true and he was gentle, kind, loving, joyful, all those fruits of the spirit. Every time I heard that verse I thought, oh my goodness, that's my Ben.
And he really was that way. But it's like his self-esteem grew in the youth group. He was the district representative to conference and then the regional representative and he helped with retreats. He was just a leader and it was a safe, wonderful, sacred place.
Then we had a new youth leader and I think it's really important to know that one person makes such a difference. Now, when I talk about this person, he's a wounded human just like the rest of us, complex with weaknesses and strengths, but his weaknesses were destroying to our family. There was a tension between he and Ben and there was judgment. And then quickly, Ben was removed from every leadership role and he and Ben would debate. They couldn't stand each other. He felt very threatened. Ben was extremely knowledgeable about the Bible. He could tell you the historical context of everything.
He was someone who read. He would stay up through the night reading and he wanted to be an author. He wanted to write about the history and how it related to put stories in the historical context. He loved learning what things meant in the Bible and what was behind everything. So this tension had built for about a year. We had met with the youth director. I met with him multiple times, met with the pastor, met with the pastor parish leader about the tension and what was so uncomfortable. But it all reached a peak when the youth group was getting ready to go on a mission trip. Ben had been on many. He always looked forward to it and he loved helping, but they had a meeting and they had a lesson on homosexuality. Now, our church would've never condoned that lesson. I know it. I have friends that were there for years.
The other leaders in the group were asked to leave before the lesson was delivered and the kids were put in a circle. And when he finished, and I can only imagine being a 16-year-old child sitting there knowing that that lesson was aggressive target to yourself to just, even though Ben had never said he was gay, he never claimed it, he was. And later he did come out, but he had never been out. And this leader finished the lesson and he said, Ben, we all know you're gay. I know you're gay. We all know you're gay and you're going to hell. And he said, you do not deserve to be in this group and you are no representation. And he went to these kids that were in the circle that had been in known since he was 18 months old, they were in the nursery together and he made each one tell him, you're going to hell. All around the circle, the leader pointed to each kid, who were also abused. So Ben, he stayed. He didn't just run away. He said, I don't understand. I'm just here like everyone else trying to do good things and learn and be in this group. This group matters to me. And anyway, he, after an hour, he came home and I was in the house and he came running up our front steps. I saw his car come in out the window. And so I went to meet him. He was trying to talk, but his mouth was distorted and his eyes were so full of tears, but they had not yet spilled over. It was just like the full of tears. He said, I've been yelled at for an hour. I said, honey, what happened? He said, I've been kicked out. I'm not allowed to go on the mission trip. And I said, please come in and watch your sisters.
They were 6 and 8. They were young. They were 10 and 12 when he died. But I had him watch his sisters. I feel bad about that now because he was in trauma, but boy, I was going to that church. So I got Bill. I said, I need you to come now. He didn't know why he put up the lawn mower. He came running. I called my dear friend Casey. I said, meet me at the church. I called the senior pastor. I said, you got to come. Something's happened. He's hurt him now. The associate pastor was called. He came. So we all get to the pastor's office and the youth leader was brought in, I said, what have you done? And he said, being gay is an abomination. I said, what if God's showing you different layers of how beautiful people are, the complexity. He said, I know everything I need to done. It went back and forth
Ben never went back into church, not once, not for anything. He wouldn't have dared gone back in a church. We talked to everyone we could talk to and everyone, it was really like dear eyes in the headlights. No one knew what to do. And later, that's what one older friend of mine, she said, Julie, I just didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to handle, I hated what happened, but I didn't know what to do. And it seems like everyone was like, this is a Methodist church. Some people believe this, some people believe that they really didn't. Nobody take a stand. So we actually, we went to Bishop by the way. And I know he was even in a bad position, said, I don't even get to vote. It's like nobody. What happened as abuse and cruelty and misuse of God and misinformed theology and cruelty.
It was just this paralysis like, oh, I wish it hadn't have happened, but it did. No apologies. The youth pastor stayed for two more years with no negative repercussions. But we left. We were out of the church for five years and I thought, I'll never go back in that deceiving, betraying place, any of them. It's all a lie. Love your neighbor. My, they just ripped apart my baby with words, ripped him apart. And I know that sounded pretty intense. I'm almost sorry. I know it can be triggering and I always want to be sensitive to people listening, but that's where I have been. And we were so hurt that we felt so betrayed that no one seemed to act on what happened. There was no action to make a change. It was horrible. What happened to Ben, I hated the injury done to him, the insidious harm that grows over time, but the betrayal was harmful.
And then later, Ben just never really felt safe anywhere.
I was at a community event and he was home from college and he and I were standing while Bill took the girls to ride some rides. We were just walking, watching people walk around, some pushing strollers and you'd see a woman and a man and a baby on the shoulders of the father and just normal life. And Ben looked at me, he said, they'll never accept me here. I said, what do you mean honey? I said, most people are good and kind. He said, mom, you live in a bubble. He said, it's the kind of work you do, the friends you have, you have no clue. And I knew he seemed sad, but I had no idea he was spiritually and psychologically dying. He never really recovered. Those are wounds that just don't go away. And when you have heaping one injury after another, it was too painful for him to live in this world.
You remember, he was gentle, joyful, kind. This was so abrasive to him and so disappointing that humanity could behave, that a church could behave in this way. He ended up deciding he didn't want to be here anymore.
We last saw him on spring break of 2013. He came home and we did all the fun family things. We went out to eat. We watched, he and I went to movies. We always loved going to movies. And he spent time with his sisters. He hung out with his dad. We had sushi night, which was very important to us. We had learned how to make this whole Asian meal. And Ben and I had had YouTubed years before to learn how to, we made it vegan, but since his sister was Asian and we wanted to make sure to incorporate some traditions that were honoring of her birth country. And we did all those special things and I had no idea he had already planned, planned, could not be with us much longer. So he went back to his dorm room and on the last day of school, he ended his life.
Crystal: When you wrote about that in the book, and I've read about it, but hearing you talk about it still so impactful, Julie.
Julie: There was a lot, my husband, my two girls and me, and this destroyed my husband. He went into a mental health crisis. It's almost like the girls lost their brother and father in the same day. And I was trying to hold everybody. But I will say I was carried, and I know you've probably read in the book, but there was this moment in the front yard where I looked up at the trees and it was spring and all the little new leaves. And I know the light was coming through and somehow I knew I was going to be held and I had to keep thinking, breathe in, breathe out, just breathe in, breathe out. And the thing is, we have this source, this care that we don't know is possible for us. I would've never thought I'd live through this. But the thing is, we can.
There's an engulfing that grief does. It's almost like a spirit moving in and living in your body from head to toe that it's there and it's heavy and it hurts. And with Ben's death, I realized it was heaving, almost like it just was physically wrenching. I don't even know the word. But there comes a time over, much time where it starts moving beside you and it's over a long, long period with lots and lots of time. And that I do think of it like a conjoined twin because it's right there. It's right beside you, but yet you share in the experience, the blood circulates, you sharing the oxygen, it's right beside. But for anyone going through loss, I do hope to let you know you can survive the very worst and find joy again. But it's never further away than right beside you joined to your body. But it cannot. You can get to a place where you're not fully engulfed. So there's room for lots of hope. And then to take these painful, horrible experiences that we know are not of God and try to do something good with it. If we can help one person just think that's the world to that one person, if we can take this agony and direct it in a way that is for good, then you have a, out of this horrible, ugly fruit, you can get some good fruit.
Crystal: After I read your book, Julie, the person, my really good friend gave it to me and she said she knew you. And I said, is Julie, is she still United Methodist? Is she still in church? And when she told me yes, I said, how? How can she still be in a place that, an institution that caused her and her family so much pain? How, Julie, were you able to go back? And I know you are now involved in a different United Methodist Church, but how were you able to even go back?
Julie: Well, it did take five years. We visited a couple of times. I had heard of a church that was a reconciling church not far from us. And I thought, wow, wow. They're honoring people. They're doing it. Man, if we had been at a reconciling church, maybe Ben would still be here. And I think he would be honest to God. I think had he not gone through what he did, I he'd be here thriving and be an amazing, amazing adult. But we heard of this reconciling church, and I went, and actually it was right after Ben died and I stuck a copy of his bulletin under the pastor's door. I wasn't able to talk to him. I put it under his office door and I thought, I want to talk to him. And I went back another Sunday and that pastor wasn't there and I talked to the associate, and he was so sweet.
We sat and talked after church and I told him, I said, I feel like somebody needs to know what happened to my son. I don't know what to do with this, but it has to go somewhere. He said, well, I need you to talk to Kelly, our senior pastor. So Kelly came back and there was going to be an out of the darkness workshop conference. I'm not sure exactly, but it was to inspire the acceptance of everyone. And it was validating for people who are gay or whatever their gender expression. And I told our story and Kelly asked me to tell it there, but there was people from the Reconciling Ministries Network there at that conference. And I learned so much there from so many people. I was honestly new to understanding anything about trans. But there was little workshops and breakout sessions and I learned some really amazing things like that when the brains of a person is autopsied that was trans, their brain looks like the gender they identify with.
It's so, I mean, my goodness, there's so much information the general public just doesn't know. But I spoke at that. And from there, the Reconciling Ministry folks wanted to do an article and from there Believe Out Loud one to take that article. And it's almost like a path was made for me to be able to tell his story. And there at this church, to me, it's the real deal. Everyone's accepted. There's all races, all gender expression, international adoption, and every combination of families representing God's family, it's just this beautiful place that really does it. They don't just talk about love, they demonstrate it. And so I've been there ever since, Ben died, but the five years before he died, we didn't go anywhere. I think it was actually four years, but we wouldn't have dared gone into a church. And matter of fact, the girls have a different feeling about church. They're kind of afraid of it. They have no interest. They just see his, like Lacey said one time, Why take the chance? Why take the chance? Why go? Why do you go mom? Both of them, they're both spiritual. They're both believe. And I believe in love, the message love that they see the church is a dangerous place. See, their experience was very different than mine as a child.
Crystal: That the church is a dangerous place. I think that that's something that is one, we don't want to talk about it. And the same experience unfortunately that you had where people who love you, who love and know what's right, still get stuck in maybe in this systemic paralysis of, well, what can we do? I'm just one person. What can I do? I know that you've been a delegate to your conference in the past. You wrote in the book about being a part of a vote when your conference was voting to as a conference, basically disregard the enforcing of the incompatibility clause, if that's my correct understanding. And the conference was voting and you stood up in support of that motion, but the majority of the people in that room stood up in opposition. And I thought your description of being in a room with people that you knew, that you love, that you probably thought we are of one Christian mind was really, it's where we are. I mean, that was a room of 2000 people, but as a denomination, that's where we are. And that also was painful. That was painful for you.
Julie: That was when I learned I had PTSD. I was in a complete panic attack when we stood up in agreement of removing that language people. And there was our youth beside me, beside people are saying, who's raising these people? There was these ugly comments from behind us, and I looked around and thought, oh, so many people are standing up. They're standing up for kindness and love and for God's people. And I was so excited for a moment. And then when it was time for them to stand up, it was almost like armies of people standing up and the chairs were making this flipping sound, kind of like you hear in a movie theater is flip, flip, flip, flip all across the auditorium. And the man behind me said, God is good. And he yelled. I said, how can you say that? This way of thinking has killed my son? He said, lady, nobody's hurt your son in this demeaning, arrogant, ugly, ugly, clenched jaw way. And after that I was shaking all over and I remember our pastor came and got me by hand and started getting me out of there. And I can't tell you, it was like this quiver. Every part of my body was shaking but I couldn't stop crying. I could not stop. And then the thing is I couldn't quite recover from that. I'd wake up thinking of those chairs flipping.
I ended up having EMDR. I couldn't shake it. I just couldn't believe that humans would treat other humans that way. Christians would treat other Christians that way, God’s children would throw away a whole part of God's body that way.
Crystal: Excuse me for interrupting, but tell us what is EMDR?
Julie: Oh, oh gosh, what does it stand for? But it's to help release trauma from your brain. It's going from the right side, left side to help move it. Actually, the therapist told me, we don't know exactly how it works, but it does work. And it did. It's like rapid eye movement. And I think that's probably the eye movement. I'm not sure. But
Crystal: You sought professional and you sought professional help to move through that PTSD.
Julie: Yeah, I was not in a great place. That was retraumatizing. I don't know if you remember those healthy conversations that used to occur. I would go to every one of those and some of those were retraumatizing. We would have people, I might share the story and they show love and kindness and they said that we still don't believe it. We still aren't changing our mind. So I would get upset every time. Then there would be a communion and my hands would shake so much after being with these people, it's like how God, how? The message is so contradictory.
Crystal: And so Julie, how do you keep moving through those difficult spaces?
Julie: Well, I have had some rough times I've gotten where sometimes I'd walk away if I see somebody does have that clinched jaw or they're offended or there is no just soft talking, it becomes like they huff up and defensive and they're gone defend their belief without any curiosity about thinking differently. I have learned don't stay there. Not nothing good's going to happen. So I will usually just have a good day and go away. And it's not like I just go up to people, but the situations do come up to where I have an opportunity, but I won't stay in the argument anymore. There's no need if people are not listening on both sides. And I really try to be curious and listen to the other point of view. Because what I see over and over is people are just believing something they heard maybe from a grandparent or a parent or maybe they, you never know. What if they rejected their child? Think what it makes them face to think that they may have been wrong or what if a sibling was put out of the family. We are a product of what we've been raised around and taught. Our society hasn't helped.
Crystal: No. And I do want to talk to you. You've alluded to the vote and I brought it up earlier. Were you at General Conference? Were you watching General Conference? Tell me about, were you aware that this was coming?
Julie: Oh, I was very aware and I was very aware of the last one and that was enough time, but I was staying up to date. I was watching all I could online, but I did not feel I could be there not after the last one. And I was very surprised I could not be happier the way it went. But I also was very surprised at myself and almost kind observing my own reactions. I was so mad. Why did it take so long for something so basic in the eyes of what Jesus taught us? Why did it take so long and why did it ever even a stand like this ever be taken? We look at a beautiful bouquet of flowers or the diversity in plants, animals, fish anything. You can think of what God doesn't make cookie cutters. There's nothing cookie cutter about this creation.
So I had some anger. Something else I've learned recently, I'm kind of switching. But something powerful happened about a week ago is a new pastor came to the church where this happened, back in June, but he learned, actually stumbled on my book and he reached out. He wrote a handwritten letter and within that beautiful letter, he said, this should not have happened. It was toxic, it was harmful, it was wrong. It was abuse. That is the first time anyone representing the church spoke those words. And I cannot tell you how powerful. I believe Ben is fine. I know he's in the arms of God, but I felt this peace.
And yet I know he is already fine, but maybe I can rest a little now why it took that many years for somebody to acknowledge. But it's a lesson in the power of words of owning. We humans make mistakes. Sometimes we really screw up. But if we say it, if we name it, if we can speak those words, I really believe if somebody had said that to Ben and said, I am sorry, that should not have happened to you and that does not represent us, I think he would've healed. I think he would've been fine, but nobody would. Nobody. It didn't matter that me and Bill were saying that was wrong because it looked like all the rest of the world thought he was not worthy.
Crystal: I think that's such an important lesson that or an important message in just the balm of kindness of speaking…someone who doesn't know or did not know your family.
Julie: I was a stranger to him.
Crystal: Yeah.
Julie: He just stopped and wrote a note.
Crystal: Yeah, and he was just sorry. I mean I appreciate that he took that time to do that and I'm grateful for that. What I was going to respond to though is that your anger at the removal of the incompatibility clause in the other harmful language in the Book of Discipline at the Postponed 2020 General Conference, that not that was happening in real time too. That was on the floor. There was celebration, there were tears of joy, but there were tears of pain. There were people who were saying, but so many people were harmed.
Julie: Why did we go through it? Why did we have to go through this?
Crystal: That's right. And so now those words have been removed. It has opened the way for all groups of people to be fully accepted into the denomination on paper. How do we live into that? How do we move forward and make what was done in a legislative gathering, the way we are operating and the way we're moving amongst ourselves and loving one another.
Julie: I don't know if you know Bishop Melvin Talbert. What a dear soul. He passed not too months ago, but I went to see him in Tennessee and sat with him and learned more about his story. What an incredible leader. But he was a Methodist pastor when there was so much racial discrimination and he had to go through the back door of his DS’ office. It was horrible. But his perseverance and then he became a voice for LGBTQ community, but beautiful, beautiful soul. But we talked about leadership quite a bit. But what I really believe is people have to have courage to speak for love. They have to be brave, and they have to say that is not allowed here. I heard Maya Angelou say one time as someone had racial slurs or anything, a joke that was hurtful to another, she'd say, here's your hat, here's your coat, not here in my home. I think our churches have to become safe and we have to claim it. That's not acceptable here and we won't have it. I know at my work, we've really worked hard on our core values and we just won't compromise on those. Well, can't the church have love as a core value? What's the fruit? What is the fruit of the action being taken? Is anyone being harmed? John Wesley said do no harm.
And I think it's going to take a deliberate effort or there'll be just, that was one person, the church that was very accepting and loving, and we have lots of gay couples, gay people, but one person coming in did that to Ben, undercover almost. So there has to be leaders who are courageous and strong and they'll call it out just like a supervisor. We will not have that here. And this is a place of love and we will not have anything else. We want you here. We love you, but you cannot dish out harm, that is off limits. No way is that going to happen in God's house. This is a God that loves children, loves people, and created this beautiful diverse world with all who inhabit it. And we won't have it here. And it's going to take that because otherwise there's sometimes rebellion to good. It almost seems sneaky, just like when that happened to Ben, the other parents were asked to leave the room. And they did. They did. And they were good people. They made a mistake, a human mistake. They just goofed. But the thing is, we can learn from things that have happened. We can safeguard places and make them safe.
I heard the quote, this was also Wesley, and I also heard somebody else say that Your God is my devil. I don’t know if you've ever heard that, but you know a, who would just imagine a God who would create diverse humanity and take one little group of his creation and throw them away here to be belittled and shamed and made fun of and made to hide and feel embarrassed and not good enough and publicly ridiculed and nailed to the cross, that God would be my devil. I wouldn't worship a God like that. But we have a God of love and kindness and grace and mercy who puts his arms around us and teaches us when we mess up, we get to learn and try again. And I really believe if we can take from this, okay, there's a major goofs, we've harmed people in the past and they're still hurting, how do we help promote healing and safeguard where more injury does not occur? And I think there has to be a commitment to that. Almost like signing a contract that you may not hurt God's children in this place.
Crystal: We shouldn't even have to be fighting for that, should we?
Julie: No. And I'm so worried for the places that it's still part of the culture. Those kids are, they're being harmed just as much. And the words have changed. It doesn't mean actions have. And some people feel like they're just kind of going along, but they don't really understand it. And now that's why I share our story. What if they just haven't thought about how much it hurts?
Crystal: Julie, as we finish up today, is there anything that you wanted to be sure you said that we haven't had a chance to talk about?
Julie: The only thing is maybe a request that when you're in a situation and someone's being harmed, and even if we teach our kids this, interrupt it, how to find a way to divert it and then go back when you're out of the heat of the moment and try to find a way to be a peacemaker and try to step in. When a child's already being bullied, they don't have the strength and the reserves and the confidence to speak up for themselves. Many, many, many times. The rest of us have to look at each other and somebody else's kid's, my kid, somebody else's. I don't know. We all have to care and we all have to be responsible and have courage. It's okay to say, I disagree with that, or Let's come over here, just interrupt something when it's happening. So that's all. Just think of the ripple effect. If each person does that once, just once. If everybody stands in the gap one time, we'll change the world and probably save lives. We probably still have Ben’s beautiful soul here on this earth making a difference in the world.
Crystal: Julie, I thank you for your courage to share the story of your family, Ben's story and the way that that is definitely having a ripple effect throughout the world in a positive way. So thank you. To finish up, I am going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape” and how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Julie: I journal and I write prayers. If I'm feeling confused, I write it, I write Ben. But I journal and it really is a prayer. And sometimes the other thing is the trees. I need to be able to look up at all the branches and the light coming through and the leaves. The trees are very important to me. For whatever reason. I feel God there and I see answers and comfort through writing.
Crystal: Thank you for your book. We'll definitely share a link to that on our episode page so that others can read it, and as I was, be inspired by your family's e courage.
Julie: Thank you so much.
Epilogue
That was Julie Hilliard Wood sharing how homophobia within the church created long lasting devastation for her family and reminding us how important it is to create loving and safe spaces for all of God's children. To learn more about Julie and her story and ministry, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you will find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners: [email protected]. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
