Faith

In a new series on BBC Tyne, people from the region talk about their faith and moments in their lives when it has been tested. This is Katie's story.

Becoming a Christian wasn't a blinding experience for me…

"I've never had this road to Damascus experience that people go on about I've never really had that.

"I went to Sunday school, auditioned and joined the church choir at seven, sang in the church choir until I was 17, joined the army, continued my faith. When I left the army I came back to my home parish church in East Yorkshire, took up their youth work stuff and outreach things, became a church warden, and then came up here…

"It's never been a blinding experience it's always just been a quiet faith somewhere along the line… it was just something there that I needed."

Katie did three tours in Bosnia

Serving in Bosnia really tested my faith...

"The times [my faith] has been tested is in Bosnia in the early 90s - during the war, [seeing] people [being] ethnically cleansed, coming across refugees, coming across survivors of ethnic cleansing. And to hear that it was being done in the name of religion, and for me to then stand and pontificate as an active Christian, was very hard.

"And again in Northern Ireland – you know being on the streets of Northern Ireland, and you've got Protestants one day hurling abuse at you and Catholics hurling abuse at you the next day - and you just think 'how can this be in the name of faith?'

"But then if you take that people are just channels and they are just people, not God, then it's easier to deal with [...]"

MCC helped Katie through a testing time

"And I saw such acts of Christian kindness and goodness by soldiers who professed to be non-religious. Every time they stood guard over a refugee camp or ensured that rations got up the route to those who were being ethnically cleansed then they were providing a service of 'who is my neighbour?'

"And that to me was very faith-enhancing and faith-building - that in the midst of this inhumanity you're watching a big, hard soldier with tattoos all the way up his arms so he looks like he could rip your head off and eat it for breakfast, holding a little girl and sobbing because they've just found the body of her parents."

Being rejected by my church because I am gay was absolutely destroying...

"The problem came for me at the point when I realised I was gay and not only my job hated me for that but my Christian denomination, the Anglican world, is still in uproar at the minute about it.

"I believe we are created by God in God's image, we are God's handiwork and as far as I'm aware God does not actually get things wrong.

"When I left the Church of England the people involved there genuinely hurt me and they'd known me since I was a little girl. And they genuinely told me that I couldn't be whole, that God couldn't love me, that I was dirty, that I was evil, that I wasn't whole... it really tried me."

Katie now works for MCC Newcastle

Dealing with it was very hard...

"I fell to pieces. I cried all the time. I took my cricket bat and ball and went home and didn't play any more and just really had a problem and it's probably the furthest I've ever been from God was in those eight months. Total darkness, just complete darkness.

"And actually for the first and only time in my life thought if there was a pill that made me straight so that I could be loved again by my God, my church family, then I would take it, and that's an awful place to be..."

"Coming to Metropolitan Community Church Newcastle [really helped]. Coming up to the service and just walking into somewhere and feeling the complete and utter unconditional love, which is the nearest we will have to a God in my opinion [...] Understanding that I could be loved again made me realise that God had not gone away."

"And drawing back on those reserves of being in Bosnia and seeing those horrendous, horrible inhumanity and thinking: 'actually if god truly hated you, I'd have never survived three tours of Bosnia, I'd never have survived a two year operational tour of Northern Ireland'."

If you would like to take part in the Testing Faith project contact BBC Tyne at tyne@bbc.co.uk