My Story – Part 3

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I am not going to go into the details of the relationships I have had… that would not be fair to the people involved. Rather I will try to describe the road I travelled over the last 10 years or so.

The biggest issue in all of the relationships was exactly this: Being a Christian and gay! It kind of took different forms of impact, but essentially it all boiled down to the fact that I could not unite these two “states” or these two realities of who I am. So guilt, dishonesty, lying, hiding, feeling ashamed, nervous of my “friends” finding out, feeling judged, condemned, unsure of how I stood before God, angry, depressed, worthless, unworthy, unwanted, feeling like something is wrong with me, feeling that I could never be good enough, etc etc were all predominant vices, thoughts and feelings I endured. Just look at the list of sins in that lot!

Throughout the last 10 years, I have been in and out of ministry and leadership positions in the various churches I’ve been a part of. This added to the stress and pressure I already felt to be what was expected of me. I’ve had the kind of upbringing that should produce a pretty good Christian person, whose life reflects Jesus in every way, and though not expected to be 100% perfect, also not expected to have any major issues of sin in her life! For all intents and purposes, as long as I was single, I was that! And I constantly tried to repent, come back to the church, come back to God, hang out with good Christian straight people, be more feminine, meet men, try to find men I actually liked, etc etc, but all the while I could never find a real peace and happiness in myself. I didn’t feel like me. I felt like I was trying to be something or someone that everyone else, including myself, actually expected of me.

Even though I tried really hard, and surrounded myself with “good company” (i.e. I didn’t pursue lesbian friendships or relationships, and I didn’t hang out “in the gay scene”), I continually fell for (or felt attracted to) women! I never deliberately sought out these women. I was trying very specifically not to be attracted to women. But that’s just it… I know now that it is the way I am built. I have experienced attraction to men a few times over the last 10 years… but nothing that turned into anything real, and not to the same extent (intensity) as with women. Some of the time, I was trying to convince myself I was attracted to a guy friend… and this involved a lot of mental talking to myself… never something I have had to do when I’m attracted to a woman!

So… yes… I am definitely more gay than straight. I do belief most people fit somewhere on the scale of absolutely straight to absolutely gay, and I am definitely on the gay side of the scale. And yeah, to be honest, I would still love to fall in love with a man, marry him, have babies, and live happily ever after… but I am not going to pretend that the chances of that are far less than falling in love with a woman etc etc.

So, what now?! Have I fully reconciled these two realities of mine?

Read part 4…