Archive for March, 2008

46 And Still Confused

{ 30 March 2008 @ 8:01 pm } · { Homosexuality }
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I think today I’m going to write about my feelings of confusion. I am very confused about this whole gay thing and everything I’m reading and seeing and hearing is only making me more confused. Of course my feelings don’t help me any but I’ve always had fickle feelings and I’ve always lived by my feelings. I do not want to live by my feelings this time, this time I want to do the right thing but I honestly do not know what that is.

 

I joined a website quite a while ago, maybe one year ago or there abouts. It is a gay Christian website. Now I know to some of you “gay Christian” is an oxymoron it was for me at first too. I could never reconcile my faith with my sexual orientation. Therefore I always kept them separate. I’m very good at keeping certain parts of my life in boxes and deny parts of myself. This all goes along with the mental disorders that I struggle with as well as the fact that I have such a strong religious belief system that I just cannot reconcile homosexuality and Christianity. But the bottom line is I must reconcile them because I am both. I am a Christian and I am a homosexual and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is to try and reconcile these two extremes.

 

On this website that I belong to they have two sides they have a Side A and a Side B. Side A are gay Christians who believe that it is ok with God if they live in a monogamous relationship with one partner for the rest of their lives. They have no problem living this way because there is no alternative for them. The Side B folks believe that while we are gay and cannot change our orientation that the Bible is inerrant and therefore sex is only for the marriage bed between two heterosexual people of the opposite sex. So Side B believes that their only option is to live a celibate life.

 

Before I came to this website I believed that there were only two options, either you’re gay or you’re straight. I never knew about these other alternatives. But as with everything else in my life I am a very naïve person and it took me many years to discover these things.

 

My own story goes something like this, 13 years ago I was in a gay relationship and I felt the Lord calling me out of that relationship. I felt it was wrong and God wanted me to terminate the relationship. I believed with all my heart God was going to make me straight and I would get married and have a family of my own. I gave God one year to deliver me from homosexuality and if He didn’t then I was going to go back into the lifestyle because I was not going to live my life alone. Well, that one year has turned into 13 years and I am still single and have not had a relationship since the last one. I have never inappropriately touched another human being since my last day of that relationship. I have remained celibate and I tried everything under the sun that was out there to try and become straight. I thought I had to work at it. So I did just that. I went to several Christian psychiatrists all of whom promised me they could make me straight if I followed their advice. I did this for several years and nothing happened. In the mean time I also joined support groups and read lots and lots of books on the topic. As I have already said, I truly believed with all my heart that God would make me straight and that I would get married and have a family of my own. That was and always had been my dream and I thought by God’s calling me out of the gay relationship that it was finally my turn to get delivered. But like everything else in my spiritual life it didn’t come to pass and I got angry with God. I felt betrayed and lied to.

 

I did not give up on the support groups during these years nor did I give up on reading books. I did give up on the Christian psychiatrists after several years and started seeing a secular psychiatrist because I have some real mental disabilities that need a doctor’s attention and I had to work through these issues and get on the correct medications.

 

I have always hated myself and my life because I was gay. I knew I was gay, yet a part of me denied it. I just could not accept it. I wanted to be a Christian much more than I wanted to be gay so I kept denying my homosexual feelings and remained celibate and alone all these years. I have become a recluse over the years and since I have become disabled I have become a total recluse. I have one very good friend and a couple of friends that I have contact with every now and then, but that is it. The majority of my time is spent alone here at the computer. I do not have a social life and the longer I stay aloof the harder it is for me to get back into socializing and connecting with people.

 

Anyway some things happened and because of these circumstances I began to question what is the truth. I really did not know. Does God want me to become straight? Is He going to deliver me or can I go back into the gay lifestyle? I just don’t know. After doing much studying digging and researching I only found myself more confused than anything else. A movie came out called “for the BIBLE tells me so” and I bought this movie and watched it. This really made me begin to wonder if I am meant to be alone or if I can share my life with somebody. You see what I have neglected to write about is the fact that I finally came to the conclusion at the age of 46 years old that it is too late for God to make me straight and get married and have a family of my own. So that option is out, what are my other options? I don’t really have too many and I am not getting any younger so I have to figure this thing out now.

 

Around Christmas time well long before this, I felt the Lord convicting me that I have to tell my family that I struggle with being gay. But my argument was that I am living a celibate life so what difference does it make? I couldn’t understand His reasoning nor could I understand why I was feeling such a conviction. But around Christmas time I finally came to the conclusion that I have to come out to my family and close friends not for their benefit not for their curiosity but for my benefit. By telling them it forces me to accept the fact that I am gay. I cannot deny it to myself if I don’t deny it to anybody else. So now I see the benefit in telling the family and few friends that I am gay. I am just learning to accept the fact that I am gay and will remain so until I die. It is not a choice, I do not know if I was born gay or made gay but that is irrelevant the fact is, I am gay and I did not choose it. If I chose it that would be silly because I have hated myself my whole life to the point of attempting suicide many times over. I felt I was better off dead than I was alive and defective. I thought for sure God hated me because I am gay and He just is not delivering me from this awful sin.

 

But after joining this gay Christian website I am learning that I am not alone. There are thousands upon thousands of other gay Christians who experience these same thoughts and feelings as I do. It is so amazing. It feels so good not to be alone, not to struggle alone. It feels so good to find a crowd of people who understand me and can relate to me and I can relate to them.

 

As I am learning to accept the fact that I am gay and I will probably always be gay I am having all kinds of questions and they are leaving me very confused. I do not want to grow old alone. I do not want to die alone. I do not want to live the rest of my life alone. This leaves me with a huge dilemma because the church will accept me as long as I remain celibate but they will not accept me if I have a relationship with another man. So once again reconciling my faith and my sexuality is at odds with each other and I cannot reconcile the two. What do I do? On the one hand I do not want to give up my religious beliefs and I believe I do not have to. I believe that God loves me despite the fact that I am gay. I wrote a blog about this already. And on the other hand I feel I cannot practice my faith if I do get involved with a partner. So what is a man to do?

 

I see a couple of alternatives. I can have a secret relationship. I can leave the church. Or I can remain celibate. I have lived the later for 13 years now and I must admit it is much less tempting than my other alternatives. It is very hard to live alone it is very hard to live without love.

 

I just do not know what to do. I guess I rambled on and on in this blog and I have not drawn any conclusions but at least I got my feelings put out there. Maybe if I read this I can see an answer. Or maybe if somebody else reads this they can show me things that I do not see. I realize I have written way too much and I do not know how many of you will have read this to its end. Therefore I am going to conclude here. I may re-read this blog and continue on the same topic, or I’ll re-read it and see that I have said enough. Either way this is a battle that is not over yet. I am in the midst of it and I am very, very confused. I am 46 years old, I am not getting any younger and I need to make a decision soon. I am looking for an answer directly from God Himself because I am tired of listening to man. Man has let me down my entire life. It’s time I look to the one and true God for the answer. My problem with this is will He give me an answer or am I going to remain with these questions over my head and be stuck with making a decision that will ultimately send me to hell?

He Already Knew

{ 30 March 2008 @ 7:48 pm } · { christianity }
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Some of you know my full testimony while some of you do not. So please indulge me for a minute to discuss one very important part of my testimony because it is very relevant to this time in my life.

 In my early 20’s while I was still a baby Christian I was preparing to make another attempt at suicide. It was early Saturday afternoon I had everything ready and I was on my knees praying when my room got very heavy. It was very oppressive. I did not know what was going on but I decided to lie on the bed for a few minutes.

 The next thing I remember is waking up and crying, crying like a baby. I just could not stop the tears. I had just had an encounter with the Lord and it left me feeling so loved and so wanted that I could not stop crying.

 While in His presence I had both my hands out in front of me and He placed a piece of gold in my hands. It was gold that was so pure I could see threw it and He said to me “You are more precious to me than this gold.” I do not know if there was more said or not but that is all I remember and that is what I remember crying about when I woke up. It was so real, so vivid I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in the presence of the Lord Himself.

 The odd part about the whole thing is it was now Sunday afternoon. He brought me through the whole time period that I had planned to take my life and He also spoke with me. This was just too much I could not bear it and so I just kept crying.

As I said, I was a baby Christian at the time it wasn’t until a few years later that I read a passage of scripture that verified my vision to be authentic.

“I will make a man more precious than fine gold;” Isaiah 13:12 KJVR

I’d say for the past several months now I have been going through a period of hell. There is no other word to describe what I’ve been going through. One of the many issues I have to deal with is the fact that I am gay. I am now 46 years old and I have been denying it since I realized it when I was a teen. I always believed that God would deliver me and allow me to get married and have my own family. But things have happened and I realize my age and I realize that now it is just too late for my dreams to ever come true.

 I have tried everything I know of to become straight. All the methods, read a ton of the books, went through Christian therapy went through support groups anything and everything you can think of but nothing has changed me. I am still as gay today as I was when I realized it as a teenager.

 So that aside, one of the things I have to do is realize and accept the fact that I am gay and I probably will be the rest of my life. I have to accept this part of myself or I will never be a complete man. It is very hard to accept something that you don’t want to, it is very hard to accept something that you have lived in denial with for so many years. But accept it I must if I choose to become the man God wants me to be.

For many years I have argued with God about telling my family. I figured two things first I didn’t believe that my sex life was anybody else’s business. And second why do I need to tell them when I am living a celibate life. But recently God convinced and convicted me that I must tell them. It is the only way I am going to accept it myself. I did not tell them for their benefits, I did not tell them to satisfy their curiosity I told them to help me accept the fact that I am gay. It is kind of like if I stop lying about it then I have to accept the truth for myself.

 Anyway, I finally sat down and wrote the family and a few friends a letter telling them I am gay. For the most part there wasn’t much of a hassle or much trouble. A lot of them already knew and others it just didn’t seem to affect them one way or the other. But for me it did a world of good because now I cannot deny the fact that I am gay.

 What I am leading up to is this. I am having such a hard time with myself and with my relationship with God right now. But one of the things the Lord has shown me is this and to me it is an epiphany. According to the Bible Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the Alpha and Omega the Beginning and the End. My being gay is no surprise to Him. He already knew. He knew I was gay when He gave me that vision those 20 some odd years ago.

 So with that being the case my trouble verse that God hated Esau in Romans is put to rest. God does not hate me because I am gay, He loves me I am more precious to Him than fine gold. How do I know this? Because He told me Himself and my telling Him now that I am gay is not a surprise to Him He already knew that before He ever even thought to give me that vision.

 This is all being done for my benefit not His. He is not surprised He is not angry He is not shocked because He already knew. And this goes for everything Folks. There is nothing we can do or say that is going to shock the Lord because He already knew. That is just so awesome to me that I cannot grasp the full meaning of it yet. But I felt the need to share this with the hope that it might help somebody else. There is nothing you can say or do that is going to change the way He feels about you because He already knows. Amen. 

PS

As a side note for you guys that do not know me. I left the gay life 13 years ago. I have lived a celibate life since then and I plan on living a celibate life the rest of my life. So, I am not coming out “per se” so that I can go and live the gay life. This is not my intent. My intent is to accept that part of myself as well instead of living a double life, a lie. I just need to be open and honest with those close to me and so that I can be open and honest with myself and become one whole human being.