For Everything a Season: On Growing Up Queer And Afraid Of Hell

They told him it was a sin to be who he was. They used the word abomination.He believed them. For years.If you know that feeling, this book was written for you.Wes Daniel was told that God loved him. He was told, far more loudly, that God condemned who he was. Only one of those ever felt true.Raised in a conservative Christian home, he learned early that being gay wasn't just frowned on. It was a threat to his salvation. What followed were years of trying to hold together faith, desire, shame, and the fear of eternal punishment, all at once. For Everything a Season is the story of that fight. Spanning nearly six decades, it follows Wes through addiction and recovery, love and loss, the family he was given and the stranger, tighter one he chose along the way, complete with its eccentric relatives, questionable decisions, one very evil dog, and a very rude parrot.Here's the part you might not expect: it's funny. Not because any of it was funny at the time, but because life is strange, people are ridiculous, and survival usually comes with a sense of humor. The book does not look away from the hard parts. It just refuses to be miserable about them.This is not a story about leaving God. It is a story about surviving one version of Him and finding another, one that looks a lot more like the words of Jesus than the ones he grew up hearing.If you've ever been told you were broken, sinful, unworthy, or beyond saving, this book has one thing to say to you: the life waiting on the other side of that fear is fuller, and a lot funnier, than anything you can picture from inside it. It took Wes almost sixty years to believe he was enough. He'd like you to get there faster.