A Reflection on Melissa Fryrear’s The Seeds that Grew
Fryrear’s (2010) article is about a longing to understand oneself. She believed that there was something wrong with her, and indeed, when she looked into the Bible, there it was, telling her that to be a homosexual is a sin and that she has to change in order to find herself, and truly unleash her potential to be a good person. If one is to reflect upon what Fryrear has stated about homosexuality in her article, it would seem as if she is saying that, indeed, to be a homosexual was wrong, and she found no happiness in it.
Apart from this, the introductory line, stating that she found “acceptance and affection […] among senior citizens in a small church” (Fryrear, 2010) was misleading, because in thorough analysis, it was misleading for there is no proof that what she found is acceptance. Instead, when she stated that she learned about what it is like to be a woman—it only furthered the suspicion that in her search for acceptance, she chose to be what she is not. It was unnerving to realize that she had not found acceptance with regard to who she was.
Instead, they were making her into what people believe she should be: a woman who is concerned only with “plucking eyebrows, hair bleaches, hair waxings, facial mud masks, eye lash curlers [… ]” (Fryrear, 2010) and so on. She accepted her church’s teaching, even though their concept of what womanhood is may be shallow. According to Jeffrey Siker (1994), the Bible can be misleading, particularly because people can interpret it differently, when in fact, if one would contextualize the Bible, those seeking understanding regarding homosexuality will find no help from it.
Fryrear, then, does not only fail in understanding who she really is, but also fails in understanding that her happiness has been bound in the expectations of others rather than herself—unfortunately, one could say that the seed, in so many ways, did not flower at all. References Fryrear, M. (2010). The seeds that grew. Retrieved from http://www. exodusinternational. org/content/view/250/148/. Siker, J. (1994). Homosexuality in the church: Both sides of the debate. Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press.
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