Love

It is hard to reconcile the past. I'm a 32 year old gay man and only recently have I been able to do this. I was raised in the Southern Baptist church as a child and then became a Penticostal around puberty. I was taught many conflicting and ultimately confusing things, the most damaging of which was that the way I felt was wrong. That the desires I had had were a temptation of evil to be battled. I tried to pray my homosexuality away. I punished myself for any "sinful" thought and prayed that God would forgive me and not banish me to hell for wanting another man. I listened to preachers condemn me to hell weekly from the pulpit for these secret thoughts. I was ashamed. I was a mess. I dated women. I got engaged. No matter what, it always ended badly and made me feel like less of a man and even more less of a Christian. I truely believed that my pain was a burden God had allowed to suffer for my whole life.

My earliest gay memory was when I was six years old, and I had a crush on this actor who was in all of the Disney movies [I can't even recall his name now]. I was six! I had no idea that what I felt was "evil". I was an innocent. I learned that boys were supposed to like girls later, but I never did. I liked playing with girls, but my attractions lay elsewhere. Then when I was eleven and I admitted to some girls that I thought a boy in class was cute, it was then that I added "gay" to my vocabulary. I haunted me forever. Well, until recently.

Three years ago I said those three words outloud for the first time [alone in my car] as I was praying to God. "I am gay." I started laughing, then crying [I had to pull over], and then there was this peace. And I knew that God still loved me. I began to see this was the way He made me, and that all my life I had been listening to others instead of Him. I realized the truth behind Christ's statement that to live as a Christian and follow Him all that was needed was to Love God with all your heart and Love your neighbor as yourself [Luke 10:27]. That's it. I experienced His peace, then all that was left was Love.

I have a boyfriend now. I attend a reconciled church in a nearby city. Some friends and coworkers know that I am gay. I think my family knows, but I have never had the conversation. I saw myself a lot in Stuart's book. I saw my family more. I think that soon I'll have to have that talk with them. Until then I'm doing a little "Prayer Warrior"-ing of my own... praying that God will soften their hearts to His voice, the way it finally broke through to me. That He would bring other Christian parents into their life who have experienced a son or daughter coming out. I love them dearly, but I hate lying to them. I love God and Christ His Son. My life is still an example of His Love. I am a gay Christian.

"Beloved, let us Love one another, for Love comes from God. He that Loves not, does not know God for God is Love." 1 John 4:7-8