New Life in Community | Meet Peter and Angie

Each marriage has a unique “how we met” story. Often, a future husband and wife meet through mutual friends or because they were at the right place at the right time and shared a common experience. Pete and Angie’s story has all of that, but began in what many would consider a very unlikely place: an Eden Invitation Retreat. 

Let’s rewind to 2018. Angie was navigating her journey back to the Catholic Church: “I was searching for faithful resources that held space for my experience of sexuality. I literally googled ‘how to be gay and catholic.’ I found an early interview with Anna Carter and thought ‘she gets it’.” After that, Angie had her story call and prepared to join us for our very first retreat.

Pan over to Peter’s side– he was feeling stranded in his experiences. “For so long, I felt like I didn’t fit in, to either the Church or the LGBTQ+ community; it was hard to explain myself, that I had this experience [same-sex desires] but also that I loved God’s teaching about sexuality and wanted to follow it. I wondered if there would ever be a group for faithful, LGBTQ+ Catholics; there were times when I felt like I was the only one. Then a friend told me about Eden Invitation, and invited me to come on a retreat, the very first EI retreat, as it happened…”

So Peter and Angie met on that first retreat in 2019. They were in the same small group, in fact, and soon became good friends. But God wasn’t done tending to the longings in their hearts individually.

“In slow, steady stages, God helped me grow in hope and trust in Him.” Peter remembers, “I used to feel that my life was a dead-end, that I had no vocation and was just waiting to die (in a holy sort of way). Intellectually, I knew this wasn’t true, of course, but my heart felt otherwise. In Eden Invitation I found brothers and sisters in Christ whose example of hope and reverence for each other gave me the courage to trust in God’s providence. I came to feel as well as think that He had made me for love, and had chosen a path for me to walk that was bright, joyful, and hopeful.”

Not only did Peter find the community he longed for, but it changed his whole perspective: “I had seen my same-sex attraction as a barrier to holiness, something that came between me and God. EI helped me to see it, not as something good in itself, but as something through which God can bring great good, if I trust Him. My same-sex attraction is an invitation from God, an invitation to surrender, an invitation to grace that I could not have received otherwise, a weakness through which His strength is made manifest.”

For Angie, she finally felt she could be at home in the Church: “Eden Invitation is where I first had my intellectual questions about the Church’s sexual ethic satisfactorily answered. And EI is where I first saw holy people who were joyfully queer and deeply in love with God’s law; this seems to the world (and even to many in the Church) a total contradiction, but there’s deep wisdom and integrity here that is unlike anything else I’ve encountered. It’s so attractive, so much so that my life changed upon encountering Eden Invitation.”

Since that first encounter, Peter and Angie each have been deeply involved in our community. Angie was one of our first volunteer Book Club guides and a Hearth Group Coordinator. Peter also served as a Hearth Group Coordinator, and served on our Rooted and Free Implementation Committee, tasked with teasing out the implications of the community’s discernment of the future of Eden Invitation, “that was a great honor, a front row seat to see the Holy Spirit at work in the life of the Church.”

One talk at the second EI retreat in 2020 was a pivotal moment in their story together. As Angie remembers: “I heard a community member and his wife give a talk about mixed-orientation marriage [a term used in broader culture for relationships where one or both spouses have an LGBTQ+ experience]. That got me thinking… maybe I could get married; I’d just need a special person who understood my experience. My friend from the first retreat, Peter, felt the same way! I think a seed was planted there.”

Eden Invitation isn't just the ministry group where they met– it’s truly become a community, another part of their family walking with them. So when they started dating and then got engaged, they shared those life milestones with us too.

When Peter and Angie planned their wedding, they invited every Eden Invitation community member on our online platform. “Over 30 people came, both old friends and new acquaintances, some flying in from far away. ” Peter recalls, “They prayed a holy hour with us the night before, lifted their voices in song during the wedding Mass, and created one of the most stylish and joyful dance floors I’ve ever seen.”

Other notable moments from the wedding reception highlighted Peter and Angie's unique and unrepeatable personalities. Peter sang with his college Glee Club for the wedding guests. Later on, Angie, in her classic baseball cap look, had a cigar circle outside with friends. But the moment many guests remember the most was the end of the night.

“At the end of the reception, we all stood in a circle and sang together ‘The Goodness of God’, an EI favorite about God’s faithfulness. One of Angie’s friends told us later how moved she was to see a group of people who are often treated as outcasts and are given plenty of excuses to reject the Lord and his Church, wholeheartedly praising God for His goodness to them. That is EI to me; joyful hope, unleashed and bounding over obstacles, following our Lord further up and further in.” Peter shares.

And just as a marriage is much more than the wedding day, the walk of discipleship in community continues. Peter and Angie have been on every EI retreat so far. “We really make that a priority each year, even as it’s become more difficult with children.” Angie shares. “It is good to gather as a community around our Eucharistic Lord at least once a year; it keeps me fed.” 

And in the day-to-day of parenthood and family life, the support from their local Hearth Group has been vital. Angie’s family does not live nearby; “We would really be wanting for community if not for our local EI group. The Hearth Group members are the people I pray with, the people who show up at the ER when I have a sick kid, the people who bring us meals when we just had a baby, the people we ask for help…My relationships in EI have made the body of Christ, the Church, so visceral for me.” 

Peter adds: “Three of the four godparents of our children are from Eden Invitation. The EI community prayed and supported us when my mother died. EI members have opened their homes to us when we’re traveling and offered their expertise whenever challenges arise. The personal friendships that have grown over the past six years have changed my life in ways I could never have imagined.”

Angie and Peter would like to thank all of you who make Eden Invitation possible through your prayers and support. Angie shares, “This community changed the trajectory of my life! My marriage and children would not exist if my husband and I hadn’t met on the first EI retreat. I’m in awe of what I’ve received through Eden Invitation, and now the Spirit spurs me on to serve Christ’s Body.”

In Genesis 2:18 God says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” This verse is often read at weddings, but it also points to the reality that we are all meant to accompany each other on this journey to Heaven; we walk this pilgrimage to God’s Heart as the Body of Christ. Their lives-- Peter and Angie’s “yes” to walk with each other, with their growing family, with the Eden Invitation community, and with the whole Body of Christ-- are a tangible sign of the new life God gives us on this journey.

Thank you for the new life that you give through your prayers and support of Eden Invitation!