Hi 🙂
Well after reading some of the stories in here which might I add are heart breaking to read and I can totally empathise and have compassion for people’s stories and journeys, I decided to write my own.
I have been gay since I was born. I came out to my mom when I was 18 and now I am 32. I remember being so nervous and afraid to tell her, I also remember her saying to me that she thought she knew what I wanted to tell her but she wanted to hear the words from my mouth. To a certain degree my mum accepted it but there was rules, she didn’t really want to meet my partners eventually this changed somewhat but I think she found it really hard to watch me being with another woman. If I so much as held hands in front of my mum she would get upset about it. I always tried to be respectful but inside I was angry at her for alot of reasons. I was raised in a pentecostal church from a young age in South Africa and when my family and I relocated to Australia we continued to go to church for a while and then that was it, there was no more church, we just stopped going altogether.
My family life was very tumultuous to say the least, my mother and father were in a very unhappy marriage for 16 years, and I struggle to remember happy times with all of us as a family. Anyway for me being gay all came to the forefront when I came to Australia. I had my first experience with a girl at the age of 12 years old. I fooled around with her for years and just thought it was a phase I was going through and that I would grow out of it. Consequently this girl bought alot of upset into my life when I turned 16. She told her parents that I had been sexually abusing her and had done awful things to her. I came home from school to find my mom in tears, not talking to me and she had a friend over, at first I thought something had happened with mum and dad and then I saw the look her friend gave me and that was the defining moment I knew the beans had been spilled and my secret was out. I panicked, I felt ashamed, dirty, and I knew this was going to be world war three. Little did I know at the time how serious this was for me, I did not know the police had been called and that I could be charged for carnal knowledge as I was 16 and she was a year younger than me. I felt so so so betrayed by her, because I never ever once forced her to do anything she did not want to do.. she consented but what leg did I really have to stand on. I felt I didn’t and that I was going to jail for a crime that I was not guilty of. Somehow I don’t know how it happened but no police came, no charges were laid but I suffered in many other ways. It got spread around school, I was given a very hard time, I lost most of my friends and I was not allowed near her at all. Actually I remember the school guidance counsellor came lookking for me one day and said to me, you know you are not supposed to go near her, why did you. I did not know at all what she was talking about as far as I was concerned I wanted as much distance from her as possible so why would I go near her but again I was a liar. I got teased and on top of it all I felt deserted by my family.
That christmas my family left me sitting at home on my own to go and be with this girl and her family as it is what we did every year except I was not invited. That hurt me so deeply. I felt enough rejection as it was. So that was the beginning of my journey. In my later years my mum decided to turn to church again after my parents split up for the twentieth and final time. Things changed with my mom when this happened. She no longer wanted me being gay. I was and still am commiting a sin against God. I was to repent for my sins apparently. At the time I was too young to understand where she was going and where this had come from, I had also turned to a life of alcohol, drugs, sex and women. That was my life. All the years of a not so easy childhood, abuse in different forms had taken it’s toll on my life and the only way I knew how at the time to deal with the pain was alcohol and drugs. I became an alcoholic and a drug addict. The women was for love, I was trying to find the love and acceptance I craved, that I was worthy of it, that I deserved it and an escape from my former pathetic life. I also had absolutely turned my back on God.. I hated him and wanted nothing at all to do with him ever. I was disgusted in him beccause he made the rules that I was sinner and I was going to hell for being gay,, yet got told as well that he was a loving and forgiving God, but if I stayed gay then I would go to hell and God would not love me. So I thought to myself well I cannot help being gay, it is not a choice I am making it is who I am, I cannot change that no matter how hard I try so I accepted I was going to hell and turned my back on God.
Many years, drinks and drug escapades later, I gave it away. I gave up drugs, I gave up alcohol, God and I did this together. He gave me the strength and insight to do this. I have done so much counselling trying to sort out my life and have grown alot, still have alot of reparing to do but I have come an extremely long way. My dillemma now is I have been learning about God. I want him to be part of my life and I want to serve him and walk with God but I do not know how. I feel like I cannot even join a church because I don’t know where to go where I will be accepted. I know none of this is God’s doing and I am absolutely not going to hell and this is mans doing, not god’s doing. I now know God loves me unconditionally and he made me gay when I was born into this world. I just do not know how to make God part of my life. I don’t have any friends I can turn to really about this from a christian point of view anyhow. I have prayed and invited him into my heart, I have asked him to show me his plan for me and to help me walk with him in his path and to lead me where he wants me to go, not where I think I should go.
I have asked this and I have meant it… I am not very good at praying but is there a set way to pray to god for him to hear me, I don’t even know if he hears my prayers… I want to so much go to church and be baptised again, or re-born but I have no idea where to go because if EVER I have one person tell me I am sinning against God especially in a church I will have to use all my strength not to explode and scream and yell at them. That’s the truth because it’s a passionate subject for me. I sometimes feel like maybe I am not doing the right hings to have god in my life so I try to be a better person and pay very close attention to what I say and do in case I do something wrong and god abdanons me, I know this is an uncredibly unhealthy way of thinking and I do try hard to do the opposite of that and think that he has not abandoned me at all and that he wont, I feel like I should not even so much as perve at another girl as that would be a sin.. I am so confused and lost and would really like some helpful advice and courage to help me grow in the lord and how to do it. I don’t know what to believe or trust anymore. Anyway that is my story very much in a nutshell. I look forward to reading more stories and gaining some new perpective in my dillemas. Amen.
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