Loving Your Family As Yourself, Part 2
This year’s MTR Connect theme is As Yourself , because loving our neighbor changes everything.
We’re continuing our two-part October series on parents and their LGBTQ+ children with Wendy and Leo Osborn. Wendy and Leo share their story of navigating Leo’s queerness and transness within a Christian family and community including the questions, the growing pains, and the deepening of love that carried them both through. Join us for an honest, hope-filled conversation about what it looks like for a parent and child to keep choosing each other, even when the road isn’t easy.
Wendy Osborn
When she became a mom in the late 90’s, Wendy and her husband brought so many Good Christian Parent Dreams with them into the delivery room. Their family became church planters in a conservative denomination in Charlotte, NC where they spent the better part of two decades discipling other young parents while raising their own kids the “right” way according to a narrow theology that issued great promises. When the Osborn children began to identify as queer about 15 years in, Wendy assumed something had gone terribly wrong and wrestled with where to land the blame. Had she failed at parenting? Were her kids just rebellious? Had the culture stolen them? Had God abandoned her family? No matter the why, Wendy was terrified of the choice she saw starkly before her: Live Authentically for God or Love Your Kids Without Condition. As she wrestled with Scripture and the story God was writing for her to live, she began to see Jesus in a different light. She began to experience Him as more loving than judgmental and more expansive than dogmatic. In moving out of the theology handed to her years before, Wendy lost precious friendships with other Christians because of the way her family “turned out”. After a long season of grief, she emerged with a desire to meet other scared parents and show them the way to a beautifully gracious God who dignifies all of His creation.
As a licensed mental health counselor and story work facilitator for The Allender Center by vocation, Wendy considers it a deep privilege to spend her days sitting with those who are hurting and afraid and guiding them straight to the hands of a deeply loving God.
Leo Osborn
Leo (he/him) was born and raised a “Good Christian Girl” in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina. Now, he’s a queer, transgender actor, playwright, and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He lives with his partner and their two cats, and spends his time going on long walks and making art about transition, his experience growing up queer in the Evangelical South, and the divinity inherent to LGBTQ+ identities that’s often overlooked. Most recently, his debut full-length play, Lovers of the Good, was produced as a staged reading Off-Off-Broadway at The Tank in Manhattan.
Explore the “As Yourself” Season:
