Fashioning Me as God Chooses

October 10, 2008

This story was recently submitted by one of our readers, Eliz Anderson, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share it with you. If you would like to contribute your story as a GLBTQ Christian or friend to GLBTQ folks, please send it in the body of an email to anita@sisterfriends-together.org. You can do so under your own name or as an anonymous guest blogger to guard your confidentiality. For now, I turn it over to Eliz.

I grew up a non-denominational Pentecostal preacher’s kid. The frame of reference here being hell, fire, and brimstone and a very legalistic view of God. My dad and I had a very stormy relationship and then there was the added pressure as the preachers kid of having everyone checking up on everything about you. If I had not had a personal experience with Jesus myself at a young age I would have run from church, but I loved  Jesus and although I thought of God as being ominous, I still wanted to please Him. I served God not out of love but fear. I ardently believed the religion of my youth. I translated passages of the New Testament from a Greek interlinear Bible because I desired truth. Many times the hymns ‘Just as I am’ or ‘There is a Fountain Filled With Blood Drawn From Emanuel’s Veins’ with the lines ‘The dieing thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day and there may I though vile as he wash all my sins away‘ became my plea. I was an average teen but never got into trouble yet I always felt condemned because I never understood God’s love and grace were identical to what Jesus had shown. Throughout my adult life I continued to go to the more evangelical fundamentalist types of churches. Though I pleaded with God to create in me a clean heart I constantly felt judged. Yet I remained because I was used to that style of service, singing, and in particular, the sermons.

I had my first gay sexual awareness at eleven yet I never recognized, nevermind acknowledged, my orientation until I was in my forties. I had wanted children so when I met a man who wasn’t too scary I married. Throughout those years I suffered not because of who I married but because it was so wrong for me. I became a raging person inside unable to cope, yet unable to understand why. For several years before my ex-husband left I began to feel God calling my Spirit, drawing me to worship Him. I remember feeling like those dried out bones that the angel asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” I felt totally empty, and dried out. I was serving a life sentence without parole.

After my ex moved out I finally acknowledged I was gay. I was scared to death. I thought God was literally going to strike me dead. But I thought there might be a 5% chance God might just fix me. So after several nights I stood before God not caring whether or not I lived. I just needed Him. As sure as you are reading this, God spoke to my heart saying, “You are not broken.” I literally said “What?! Then You have to show me in Your word.” I opened the bible at random to Acts 10, “Call no man unholy or unclean.” I felt such peace. But I also felt a warning that I was not to predetermine any longer what God‘s will was for my life. I was to learn to trust Him. I was His to do whatever He desired. Over the next several months I read, prayed, and felt open and naked yet totally safe in His presence. When I read about Jesus in the garden praying “Father not my will but Thy be done that You might glorify Your Son,” I thought if Jesus as a man had to ask His Father for His will to be done how much more must I. So I began to honestly pray. I prayed,

1. God, if you want me to be straight You have to do it because I can’t. This had been my desire. Yet now I was learning to desire His will not my own.
2. God, if you want me to be gay and alone then please make that okay.
3. God, if you want me to be as I am I ask that you heal me enough to love someone someday.
4. God, if you want me to be straight and with my ex-husband then you need to make me straight AND able to love him. (And it took me a while to be able to pray this one.)

Throughout the fall God continued to uphold me as the religious voices tried to tear away my peace. I told a dear friend, at the time I still expected God to make me straight, that if the church wouldn’t go to the gay community I would, fully expecting that God was just going to fix all of us. Through the fear and pain I kept going back to knowing that He alone was God and He alone was in control of my life. My best friend had sent me an ex-gay book. The night before I was going to begin reading it I felt God speaking into my heart. If you are going to read that book don’t you think you should see what gay Christians say. Well I didn’t think there were any gay Christians but I needed to know. I found some gay Christian sites on the internet and the fruit of the Spirit displayed on those pages was what I had searched for my whole life. It was like I was led straight to several gay Christian sites including christianlesbians.com. I did read the book though. There was a stark difference between the book and the gay Christian sites I had visited. The peace, love, joy, longsuffering, and hope in the web sites stood out against the judgment, hate and anger of the author.

I was told that I was to bow to the will of the church and go and humble myself before the pastor and vow myself to celibacy. I was willing to do this if this was what God wanted, but the idolatry of swearing to the will of the church rather than God scared me. The fear of returning to a religion of telling God how my life should be run instead of loving the Lord my God and only serving Him stopped me. I ended up at a hospital appointment at the time the meeting with the minister was to have happened. There for the first time ever I acknowledged how naturally I was so very attracted to a beautiful lady. For the sake of my preteen children I had decided that I would live a semi-closeted life, but God chose freedom for me. Somehow a mean-spirited person found out my orientation and began spreading it around, yet even in this God’s hand was there. I remember very clearly God speaking into my heart that while this person might have meant this for evil God meant it for my good and God’s glory. Though I didn’t understand how being gay could glorify God I leaned on Him. He worked things out with my children and other family members. I have truly been blessed. When I knew my orientation was God’s will for me I had to learn to accept myself because until I did it was as though I was continuing to tell God He was wrong. As I stopped trying to go back to my own ideas of what my life should be like I no longer felt like God was removing His peace from me.

The mission statement of the church I had attended and served for nine years was “To be Christ’s hands and feet in the community.” So when the sermon was to be on Romans 1 the next Sunday,  I gave the pastor a personal letter and included The Letter to Louise I had found on the internet. All week I prayed, “God, no matter what the pastor preaches on Sunday may I hear the Holy Spirit speaking to me.” Suffice it to say the Holy Spirit never speaks like the minister did that day.

But God has never let me down and I was led to another church that I had been drawn to many years before. This time I didn’t let fear of ridicule and pride stop me from going there. That first Sunday I was more warmly welcomed than I have ever been. At first the form of worship, the songs and sermon were so different. Yet I felt Christian love there. As I continued to go I grew to love the differences and to experience God in a way I hadn’t before. There are times I really miss the longer sermons and communion every Sunday, yet the wonderful gifts I have received far outweigh what I have left. I realized I have much to learn from their quieter approach to the Divine Creator. I long now to listen to His voice not just the voices of religion. Slowly I am able to share perspectives that are new to them as well and we are learning and growing as Christ’s body rooted in love. Love for God and loving others as we love ourselves. I have been blessed by them more then they know. I have had some opportunities to share God’s love with those who some people would say live outside the gate. I am reminded that our Lord Jesus also suffered outside the gate. He has paid the price for all my sin. God cannot love me more or less than He already does and always did. I finally understand and accept that now. I am learning that things are not my responsibility. God has offered me everything and I must respond to what He has offered and He provides me the ability to do what He asks. He is the Potter and I the clay. He is fashioning as He chooses. And God has chosen me to be His gay daughter.

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Posted in Personal Stories