“I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray.
The conflict between Jeanette’s faith and her sexuality is heavily explored through her journey in avowing her identity. Faith and belief in God are a big part of her life as she is raised by evangelical Christians who are extremely strict regarding secular things. The novel narrated in her adulthood reflects on how she felt betrayed by the church because it could not accept her for her. She abandons religion not because she lost her faith but from the marginalization she experienced for being a lesbian. But she has an epiphany that despite the betrayal she got from the church it is not linked to divinity and God but from the people, the servants of God.
“Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.”
In the story, the contrast between close-minded and progressive congregants is shown through the people in Jeanette’s life. Her adopted parents particularly her mother is opposed to her sexual orientation and set on her ways to defy it. The novel addresses the idea that each individual has their subjective interpretation of the human experience and should not impose it on another. Her mother sees her perception as the only valid way to raise her daughter ignoring the fact that she has her own outlook.
“If I let them take away my demons, I'll have to give up what I've found.”
In Jeanette’s religious world her sexuality becomes a point of contention creating a rift between her and her mother. To the church, lesbianism is a sin and wicked and that gay people will go to hell unless they repent and abandon their sexuality. It is absurd but that is what Jeannette has to go through being inflicted to exorcisms to rid her of her homosexuality. However, to Jeanette, she has already found herself, experienced love, and shaped her identity. Thus, she cannot allow the acts of servants of God to strip away all she is and only leave her a shell of herself.
