Anita’s Personal Story

February 12, 2008

…in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses (transcends) all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7Philippians 4:6-7
English: American Standard Version (1901) - ASV
6 In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.  

My personal story has gone through a series of revisions since the summer of 1995 when I posted it for the first time on a free home page hidden somewhere in the dusty recesses of the internet. I was just HTML literate enough to create a rudimentary website where I could share my story, only months after coming out myself. With far too many words, weighed down in details that added nothing and side roads that led everywhere and nowhere, I was trying to explain how in my dark night of the soul, God had proven to be endlessly faithful, unconditionally loving, and far more compassionate than I had ever before experienced. No longer was God’s unconditional love and amazing grace something I believed in because I had been taught of them in Sunday school or sung their hymns among the congregation but because I had run smack dab into them in the messiness of my own life. Isolated in my own turmoil I had never been less alone. Fearing and then confronting rejection and misunderstanding from all those I loved, I fell safely into the assuring embrace of God. Confronted with a world turned upside down and the future more uncertain than I had ever imagined it to be, I was at peace in Christ for that day and for all those that followed. Whatever would unfold, whoever would leave me, whatever doors would close, I’d be okay, much more than okay, because I was God’s own. When I wrote my story the first time it wasn’t about coming out as a lesbian in a grand and public way, but about sharing my faith in God through Christ, faith in the God of Jesus who is nothing if not grace and love.

And now as I head into the newest revision, my purpose in sharing my story remains the same. I want you who are reading my story to have hope for your own life; to trust the voice of God’s Spirit that’s more than able to speak to you and lead you; to find comfort in the life of Jesus who was a friend, without exception, to everyone pushed to the margins and oppressed by religious leaders and society, and to take courage that whatever you have faced or will face in the future, God is beside you and will be sufficient in grace and mercy to see you through. With that, let me tell you my story of coming out as a Christian lesbian…

As you already know my name’s Anita and I’m the youngest of four children. As I was growing up my parents weren’t perfect parents and surprisingly enough I wasn’t a perfect daughter, yet despite the mistakes we made in our parent-child relationship our love for each other was never in question. In addition to their love of family, my parents love and commitment to Christ and to the church was evident to all, both in the public arena and behind the private walls of our own home. There’s no question that in their modeling of the Christian life they influenced my own passion for God. They grounded me in the Christian faith as a child and as an adult it remains the faith I continue to choose for my own each day.

From my earliest childhood through my youth I knew I wanted nothing more than to go into Christian ministry; to pastor and care for God’s people and to bring the Good News of Christ into the world, and so, at the age of twenty-two I graduated from Bible college and immediately entered into full-time ministry within a congregation where I served for eighteen years.

Through my twenties and most of my thirties I had never given much thought to marriage though I hoped one day to have a family, children, and to share my life with another. I dated a few men and while I loved the idea of being in love I was never physically or emotionally attracted to the men themselves. I cared deeply for each, for who they were as individuals but never was I in love with any of them. There was a connection with them I couldn’t find despite how close we became or how much I loved them as a friend. Looking back, I didn’t think it particularly odd that a relationship wasn’t happening for me because my situation wasn’t so unusual among the women I knew in ministry. Most of my time and energy was being directed toward church life and so I had little time to devote to a relationship and the work so rewarding and people-focused that I seldom felt a need for deeper intimacy and connection.

As the years passed, I found myself pastoring in full-time ministry in a position that provided me with incredible opportunities among people I deeply loved working along side. I was doing the very thing I had always wanted to do and I loved it. I had developed an amazing circle of friends, a wonderful family, and had a nice home. And yet, even while my life was really good, there was something underneath that felt incomplete or missing from my life that I couldn’t name. I felt like there was something I didn’t know and if I were to know what it was then everything else would fall in place.

In response to these continuing feelings there came a time around the age of thirty-six when I began to pray nightly that God would either bring completeness in my life or show me what it was that I needed to do to change or adjust to whatever was going on within me. Months passed like this and then one evening I went to bed with this same prayer in my heart and the next morning upon waking I sat up in bed and had the immediate awareness that the something I hadn’t known was that I was a lesbian. I know this sounds extraordinary or difficult to accept as true but the possibility that I was a lesbian had never been a thought to which I’d given a moment’s consideration up until that morning. The idea I could be gay was absolutely inconceivable to me so great was my self-denial and it took a lightening bolt from seemingly nowhere to wake me up to the reality of my sexual orientation. In that single moment of awakening I experienced an indescribable conflict of emotions, located somewhere in that wide space between peace and terror. I felt immediate peace that this was the missing piece of my life and in that moment it fell into place even while in the breath terror swept over me as I realized I was just claiming something to be true of me that I knew was an abomination to the God I loved.

In the coming weeks I prayed with my face pressed into the carpet that God would change me and yet I didn’t change. I prayed that God would take my life rather than allow me to do one thing that would bring dishonor to Him and still I continued to live. I prayed that God would give me a call to celibacy so that I would never enter into a gay relationship but in my heart I continually longed to share my life with another person. Though I was raised on the Bible I had never studied homosexuality within the biblical text. It had always been enough that church leaders and those I respected in the Christian faith said it was sin. I had no reason to believe otherwise, and now as I came to the Scriptures I didn’t expect, nor did I want, to uncover anything different. I wanted what I had always been taught about homosexuality to be confirmed because the simple truth was I didn’t want to be gay. I knew what it would mean in terms of my ministry within a conservative Christian denomination. I knew there would be a loss of friendships. I knew it would dramatically impact my relationship with family members. I didn’t want my world to turn upside down. The price was too high and I didn’t want to pay it and so I opened the Scriptures to be assured of the sinful nature of being gay and when that happened I would then do whatever it would take and seek help wherever it could be found to reject these new and confusing feelings.

And so I opened the Scriptures and began to read the few passages that were referred to in conversations around homosexuality and as I read I found more questions than answers. There was undeniably a negative attitude expressed about homosexuality but nothing I was reading, the behaviors or situations described anything that resembled who I was or the life I was living. I couldn’t make myself fit into the story of Sodom or those who Paul described in the first chapter of Romans, and so I went to other passages in the Psalms, the Gospels, and the writings of Paul. Passages that were familiar to me; passages that had guided and challenged and comforted me all my life. And as I read them, I found my story there. These were the passages that included me, that described my life, my heart, and my relationship with God. And as I came to the end of Psalm 139, a psalm of assurance of God’s continuing presence, and of the direct involvement of the Creator of All Things in the details of my life, I prayed the prayer of the Psalmist in closing when he writes, “Search me O God and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Held in the center of that prayer I felt no guilt or shame from an inner conviction pricking at my heart, but only the loving presence and gentle embrace of God’s Spirit.

Only after spending time alone in the Word and in prayer did I turn to several books I’d found at a Christian bookstore on healing from homosexuality but the conclusions they reached regarding the scriptures and homosexuality seemed weak and again, I had found more questions than clarity. I searched the internet and found a selection of stories from Christians who claimed to be delivered from being gay and were self-identifying as ex-gay. I realized within a short tiem that to read one story was to read them all because they all sounded similar with so many common links between them, but none between them and me.

I had sought the answer in the Scriptures and had listened to voices within the church through the books and stories I read, but none of it brought me closer to a resolve that homosexuality was sin. I was only more confused than ever and so I did what I probably should have done in the first place and that was to turn to God. Yes, I’d prayed before. God had been the very first place I had turned but the first time I went to God it was with a closed heart, certain homosexuality was a sin and only asking that God change me. This time when I prayed it was with a heart open to hearing whatever God would say to me and what I ultimately experienced was assurance and comfort. It was an encounter with God’s Spirit and I came up from my place of prayer that night I knew as certain as I’ve ever known anything that God loved me as I was. I had finally come to a place of wholeness in my life where I could come to God with all of me.

Being gay has nothing to do with my environment, traumatic childhood abuse or neglect, a testing of my faith, punishment from God, the deception of Satan, lustful passions, a hatred for men, or a personal choice on my part. My hair is brown, my eyes are blue, my sexual orientation is gay. I believe my sexuality comes as no surprise to God since God knew my days before I was even fashioned in my mother’s womb. There are some who say being gay is a gift from God and I stand with them. What I first viewed as a curse has been one of the greatest gifts of my life because it’s led me on a journey that’s drawn me closer to God than anything else I have yet to experience in my life.

So I live my life as a Christian Lesbian. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the world. My deepest desire is to live each day by saying and doing those things that would bring honor and praise to Christ and that would witness God’s love to others. That was my desire the day before I realized I was a lesbian and it remains the same to this day. I am a lesbian because I believe this is part of God’s plan for my life and I accept it with gratitude and celebration.

I am many things. A woman, a lesbian, a daughter, a sister, a pastor, a wife, but they all pale in comparison to being a child of God. And that is what I am. So are you.

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Posted in Anita, Christian Lesbian Identity, Personal Stories