12/27/2025
This is a reflection on leaving ministry, identity, and what I’ve learned in the two years since stepping away from church leadership. It’s personal and honest, written from a place of care — not bitterness. I’m sharing it here because this page has witnessed my professional journey. You’re welcome to read quietly, sit with it, or move past it if it’s not for you.
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“It’s been a long time coming.”
— Taylor Alison Swift
This was my first Christmas without any involvement in church life. My second since being “Pastor Milo.”
I served the church from 2010–2023.
To say it was my life is a gross understatement. I poured all of myself into a work that was truly sacred. I’m blessed to carry with me parts of hundreds of people’s journeys through this, as my beloved Mary Oliver says, “wild and precious life.”
And while there are days when I miss that work, I now know that our separation was necessary.
I wanted to be a minister since I was 14. At first, being AFAB (assigned female at birth) was enough to have my dream shunned by the church.
I had my gender thrown in my face. I witnessed the fall of men I held in high regard because they admitted that working with a woman could lead to impropriety and sin. I attended two higher education institutions where being female and a minister was either an impossibility or an improbability.
Luckily for me, I had a stubborn streak as a kid. Instead of backing off, I kept showing up in any space that would tolerate my presence.
When I took my first steps toward seeing myself as a q***rly created member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I added another layer of distrust from the people who raised me in the faith. Biting words damning me for not contorting my love into the right gender box.
But again, that bullheaded side of me barreled right into the middle of that tension.
I found a small sector of people who welcomed my same-gender-loving difference. And for a while, that was enough. Until I pulled back the curtain of self even further and found a fuller reflection of myself.
Coming out and transitioning as trans was — and is — relatively easy for me. Being born white, and now leaning into my masculinity, paved a much smoother road than that of my trans sisters and siblings of color.
But that doesn’t mean the fear and the harm experienced by living trans in Texas isn’t real.
Add the layer of being trans in Texas as a Baptist pastor, and you’ve got a wildly exhausting weight of being everyone’s “first.”
First openly trans person they’d ever met.
First nonbinary person using “confusing pronouns.”
First person to throw a wrench into bathroom policies and binary, gendered bylaws.
First person to practice all these “firsts” on.
All the while smiling on the outside, but suffocating on the inside — because helping others tolerate my transition stole the time and energy needed to know who I was becoming.
But that thick-headedness continued to blindly lead the way.
Sermons were preached.
Children’s and youth lesson plans were written, curricula painstakingly chosen.
(Don’t even get me started on inclusive and engaging lesson plans for kids and teens.)
Lectures were given on college campuses.
Clergy collars worn at protests.
Pride marches attended.
Glitter blessings passed out.
And before long, your identity becomes more like a brand and less like you.
When I finally left the church, I learned that pouring myself out isn’t love.
It’s self-abandonment dressed in rainbow stoles.
It’s self-harm masked as selflessness.
It’s living contorted to the needs of others.
Ultimately, it’s lying.
Lying to self.
Lying to others.
It’s been almost two years since I was Pastor Milo. And truthfully — as much as I miss it — I thank the universe every day that I’m not that person anymore.
I’m still figuring out who I am.
I’m still my doggo’s papa,
and spoiling her is my favorite thing.
I’m still obsessed with Pink Floyd, Stevie Nicks, and Taylor Swift.
I’m still a long-winded writer.
I work in the operations sector of a company that I like.
The work is fun.
And I still hear people’s stories.
I don’t know if Pastor Milo is retired.
For now, the stole remains hanging at the ready.
For now, I’m just Milo.
And I’m slowly re-learning that I’m already enough.
