Hello everybody!

How are you? 🙂

My name is Ditte.At the moment Im really struggeling with who I am ~ being christian and gay. I have a hard time accepting that I am gay.

I have always felt attraction to other girls but I didnt do anything about it. I have had boyfriends and kissing a girl was a dream that I kept to my self… 😉

At the age of 17 I met Jesus. I havent had an easy life because I have a mental illness called Borderline and so life has been very difficult for me and I have had especially problems with depressions.

Anyway.. I have been involved in the pentacostal church and also in another church that was really radical and fantatic. There were good thing and there were many bad things about being a part of this radical church. You had to be in a certain way and being different usually ment being wrong/ not on the path!

Now.. for 3-4 years ago I was going through a really bad time in my life. I was suffering from depression, I meet a christian man and his wife and they took me in and I lived with them for about 4-5 months. He said that he was able to help me and no else cared about me. He was the only one who could help me and so he became my friend.

He manipulated me a lot and I wasent able to see that because I was in a ( mentally ) very bad shape and I just wanted to get better. I was cutting my self, not eating, crying out to God and so on and as I became more and more depressed, he slowly began to kiss me and touch me. Then it happend.. he sexually abused me. This went on for 3 mounths.

I didnt feel that there was anything I could do to stop him.. in fact I didnt feel anything at all. I was numb.

Its a long story but it just broke something inside of me. I wasent able to run away from him because we were on a island,, I was that sick. Finally I was amitted to psyciatrick hospital on the island – my choice – and that made it possible for me to come home. Broken….

I wasent the same anymore. I didnt trust men and I still dont. I cant stand men to come close to me. I hated God because I couldnt believe that he allowed that to happen to me. Then, shortly after I came home, I meet a girl and we fell in love <3 She has been my girlfriend ever since and I love her.

In these 3 years, after the abuse, I have had such an inner conflict about who I am, does God love me now that Im with her, shame and guild, pain and more pain. It was very hard but it got better after the first year but now I feel like I am back where I started. I cant sleep. Im thinking all the time about my life, how I should live as a christian to be loved and happy, I flip back and fouth between accepting who I am and being ashamed and wanting to kill myself!

Here in Denmark there is a christian organisation and I have talked to their leader. He is very fanatic in a lot of ways and he told me that is wrong to be gay and that Gud can and will cure me if I leave everything and come and live with them for 1 year or so. It appeals to me because I just want the nightmare to stop.

I just want to be normal...........

At the same time I love my girl and I cannot live without her.

What if its true? Can I take the chance? Am I going to hell? Is God like that? Why did he let the abuse happen and then let me go to hell for something that is not my choice??

Last night I couldnt sleep, thinking a lot about the sexual abuse over and over again...... and if I gay or not. Am I really gay or am I just in a middle of an identitycrisis because of the abuse? I was thinking about suiside last night and I got really scared because I really felt like ending the suffering......... I cant take this!

Am I bisexual or am I just acting out because of my hate to men and what he did to me!? I feel bad that the abuse is the reason why I started the relationship with this girl ( hate towards men ) OOOhh I dont know anything right now!! I fell in love with her but without the abuse, I dont think I had ever done anything about the attraction towards girls.

I feel unclean.

Okey.. I will stop for now and I hope my english is good enoght to understand? I also hope that you will understand why I choose to talk about the abuses because its a big part of who I am today. Im just soooo confused.......

God bless you all <3

Thank you for this forum. I have been reading some of the stories and it feel good to know that Im not alone.

Hi Ditte,

Welcome to Freedom2b[e]. I believe you’ve been in touch with Anthony our Co-convenor who has suggested sharing your story on the forum? You have made the right decision 🙂

This is a safe space where you can freely discuss issues relevant to your personal situation. There are many good people here who have shared their own personal stories – some similar to yours.

You are not unclean, and it is not wrong to love another woman in a mutual relationship if you care for each other. Have you checked out the Resources section on our forum?

http://www.freedom2b.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=25

God bless you, and keep in touch

HI Ditte….and welcome to the forum. I’ll move your post to the stories section if you dont mind.

I will email you a presentation I did at the Australian Gay and Lesbian National Health Conference. it talks about some of the things you’ve mentioned here. Sexual abuse can certainly complicate things when we are trying to resolve our faith and sexuality.

here is a little in the doc that might be helpful to others as well.

AREAS OF RESOLUTION

We all have areas to resolve in our lives and these include:

1. Family – whether this is an issue or not depends on your upbringing.

2. Sexuality – this depends on your family, cultural/social construct as well as the geographic area you live in. It’s much easier for a young person to resolve this in the eastern suburbs of Sydney than a small rural town where the expectation is that you will get married and have a family like everyone else. ‘There are no gays in our village and if they tried to come in then we’d kill them.’ Think Matthew Sheppard.

3. Christian belief system – if you are a traditional Christian then your faith and beliefs will be in conflict with sexuality.

4. Sexual abuse – see how the issues are compounding and becoming more complex.

5. HIV+ status – and so a matrix of issues is created. Just like a drainpipe clogged up with a matted root system that is extremely difficult to disentangle.

Hi Ditte.

I’m praying for you. I can’t add anything to what everyone else has said so far and I won’t trivialize what you’re going through by even trying to articulate a remark. So yeah – I’m praying for you – tonight.

nic

There is a lot of material on the net about the struggle one can have being gay and christian at the same time but sometimes its easier watching a sermon online. I found this sermon and it has really helped me a lot. Maybe it will help others so here it is:

http://www.cor.org/worship-sermons/sermons/show/sermons/When-Dealing-with-Sinners-Anti-Homosexual-Judgemental/