Ana
Ana is a Hearth Member of the Eden Invitation Community, originally from Mexico.
She loves having coffee, especially with friends or family. She also loves soccer, riding her bike, and any time there's a group of people playing a sport together, she loves joining in on for the fun! She likes to spend the weekends with her extended family eating carne asada, playing "Just Dance" with her niece and nephew, and resting in the silence of Sunday mornings (especially for prayer in Adoration). To describe her experience of faith and sexuality, Ana shares that she's "attracted to men and women (bisexual) and is living a single and celibate life."
This piece is called "Gem and Ignition" (Digital editing, written word)
Gem and Ignition
I’ve encountered God’s heart in my journey with faith and sexuality in two main ways.First, through how I’ve come to see myself differently — "Gem."
When I first realized my attraction to other women (I was in college, around 2011-2012), I felt like something was off about me. I had absorbed the idea that people with these experiences were somehow depraved or “broken”, even associated with abuse. I didn’t know how to process any of it, so I began to share this part of my life with some trusted people. They didn’t share my experience (LGBTQ+), but they chose to walk with me with patience and care.
At the same time, I also started becoming more open with God about this area of my life. As I became more honest with myself and more vulnerable with both God and the people who received me so well, the way I saw myself slowly began to change. The “blurry” and “distorted” image started to transform into something clearer and true. I began to see myself differently, like a “gem”, something valuable that didn’t need to be hidden, but was instead held with mercy by both God and those who walked with me too.
Second, through the EI people — "Ignition"
Over time, I met others with similar experiences who were also trying to follow Christ. Seeing how they lived their daily lives, relationships, and faith helped me make sense of what it meant to see my relationship with God in light of these experiences. Life started to feel more integrated, being able to live these tensions in a healthier way.
It was like my life was once just a small candle, a faint light. But through encountering others like me, people and disciples with LGBTQ+ experiences, that flame grew stronger. Being so warmly received in this community, walking alongside others like me, and witnessing the way they lived their faith, made me want to seek God even more, and let Him transform, lead and empower my life as well.
I keep feeling invited to grow closer to Him. I look for personal & communal opportunities to pray, to spend time with God in silence during adoration, to have the Eucharist more often, to go to confession when I need it, and to be open to meet others and learn from their faith too. All these have been great sources of grace (even though I constantly stumble, it’s a continual process of beginning again). It seems that my experience of same-sex desires has become one of the very things that has drawn me closer to God than many other things in my life.
I never imagined how something I once found “disturbing” or wanted to hide is now one of the things that has empowered me to grow more as a person, in my relationship with others and with God. In this journey, I’ve met amazing people: good friends, incredible mentors and allies who walk with me with genuine love, and who are such witnesses to my life. I’ve been able to see God in my story in ways I hadn’t before, to trust more in Him… Life itself feels different now.
Life is a mystery, sometimes hard, challenging, but also wild, full of encounters inviting us in.
Sometimes I joke that I used to live life in “cruise mode” … and now it feels a bit more like Tokyo Drift — nitro on.