Merging Into Wholeness

January 1, 2006

I am many things, two of which are Christian and lesbian. Here’s the story of how the two started out as a separate series of events but finally integrated.

My first memory is of God’s Spirit being a very powerful presence in my life. I was three years old when I asked my mother how to pray. I had been praying prior to then but I wanted to know how to do it right. She taught me the infamous, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” I prayed that prayer for years and then I began to simply talk to God with my own words as childish as they may have been.

When I was nine I went to summer camp with several other children from my church. The message all week long was the need to accept Jesus as my person Savior. I felt pretty confident that I already had a relationship with God. I figured I was just born with it. Nevertheless since the camp counselors said I needed to pray this special prayer, I raised my hand, went off to that private room and prayed that prayer. Nothing magical happened but I felt proud that I had been obedient and made my relationship with God official.

At the age of fourteen my best friend asked me if I had ever been baptized. I said, I’d been baptized twice, once as a baby and once with my mother when we joined a church. My best friend said, “But those other baptisms were something you had to do because your parents did it or told you to do so. None of those baptisms were symbolic to the personal experience in your own heart.” Again I was being asked to be obedient to God’s Word. So a few months later when my church held a baptism, I was baptized for the third and final time, in front of my friends and church, in parishioner’s swimming pool that had a cross in ceramic tile at the bottom of it.

When I was sixteen, I was in the habit of watching television evangelists. I followed a few. One in particular talked about the baptism of the Spirit and speaking in tongues. The church I attended at the time believed that tongues had ceased and was only a temporary gift back in biblical times. The TV evangelist suggested that this wasn’t the case, that all should have this gift and that we should have hands laid on us and to be prayed over to receive it. So after a lot of prayer and confusion, I went to my pastor and explained my confusion and desire to have this gift. He didn’t discourage me. He talked to me about his own struggle with believing in tongues. At the end of our conversation we knelt in prayer and he laid hands on me and asked that I would be baptized in the spirit and receive the gift of tongues. I don’t remember the first time the gift of tongues became a part of my life, but I do remember when I was led to a more charismatic church a few months after the prayer session with my pastor.

It was only after receiving the gift of tongues and making it a part of my private prayer life did I ever have a ‘religious experience’ in a way that some people would call supernatural. This was a pivotal time in my spiritual walk. I was so convinced of God’s presence and love for me that I never wavered about my salvation.

My sexual orientation didn’t develop in such precise steps. Knowing now that I am a lesbian I can look back at my past and pick out moments but I wasn’t aware of what was going on at the time. I spent a great deal of time in my adolescence and in my early adult hood fighting depression. Looking back I know it all began with the first inkling of my orientation.

I was a bit of a tomboy as a teenager, in that I never was interested in make up and I always wore sensible shoes. [smile] I wasn’t particularly athletic however. While my girl friends were very interested in clothes and lipstick, I was just interested in hanging out with them. When they would get boyfriends and spend less time with me, I would get very sad and depressed and I would often isolate myself. At the time I thought I was being childish and obsessive and simply didn’t want to share my friends. Now I know that I too wanted to explore non-platonic relationships but couldn’t because it wasn’t the guys I wanted to explore this with. It was the girls.

I had an interesting way of coping with boys asking me out on dates. I would simply invite them to church. This kept most boys away. For the boys it didn’t keep away, we went out only during the weekly outings with the church’s youth group. In that way there were a couple dozen other zealous Christian teenagers and a couple of youth pastors between us.

My girl friends had posters in their rooms of various male actors of singers. The posters they had of women were always in conjunction to some physical characteristic they wanted to have. For example, they may have had a poster of Farrah Faucett because they wanted her hair. I will not name any names but all the male posters in my room were the guys who had feminine features. The female posters were not women I wanted to look like but women whose sensuality and power moved me. In hind sight I realize I had mad crushes on these women.

I would always cling to certain female teachers. I would always volunteer to help them after class grading papers just so I could hang out with them. I had a phenomenal amount of “teacher assistant” credits by the time I left high school. I had the reputation of being helpful. Little did I know I was just helping myself to a daily dose of the scent of their perfume, or an occasional brush of their hand as we reached for the same paper to grade.

Besides the boys I invited to church, I had two dates in high school, both with boys who were really more like buddies. We didn’t even share a good night kiss. My early twenties were spent dateless as well. Oh, I’d talked the talk with my friends about this guy or that guy. As a matter of fact, I’m sure I gave the impression that I was man hungry. When asked why I never pursued any of the men I talked about, I’d say I was too busy with school and work. The fact of the matter is I made myself busy with school and work so I wouldn’t have time to date and I wouldn’t have time to face the underlying issue.

The internal struggle in my soul was great. I knew something wasn’t right. This inner struggle was nameless for many years. I knew I felt more comfortable around women but would never allow myself to see what that suggested. I knew that certain women made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I still wouldn’t give what I was feeling a name. But eventually I did give it a name and I wondered if I was the “L word”, as I called it then. I knew I couldn’t be the L word, because I had always known that homosexuality was a sin. The preachers said so, the bible said so and I had said so on a number of occasions. There was no way I could be a lesbian because I was a child and servant of God. I tried to convince myself that not only was I not a lesbian but that I was called to a life of celibacy. That would explain why I wouldn’t date men. I even thought of becoming a nun even though I hadn’t been in a Catholic Church since I was seven years old. I tried to hide what I was by pretending to be man crazy but busy. I tried to hide what I was by being a religious fanatic which is far different than being a Christian. All this hiding simply made me crazy and depressed.

I’m not going to say that this was God’s will but God has a way of doing a work in our lives when we’re operating in our own will. That said, at age 28 I met a woman who looked at me like I was a prize. I’d seen that look before, from men but never from a woman. I suddenly didn’t care about what I knew to be wrong. To borrow a line from The Color Purple “She was like honey and I was the bee.” Suddenly I felt alive in side. It was magical. I pursued her like a wild cat pursues her prey. I didn’t give this woman a chance to breathe. I wanted her and I eventually got her. We fell in love and made a life for ourselves. It was only then that I admitted to my family and friends that I am a lesbian. It was only then that I admitted to myself that I am a lesbian. It was only then that I admitted to God that I am a lesbian. God already knew of course. I was the one with the hard head.

After coming out that I was a lesbian to the significant people in my life, I felt a weight lifted. When I woke up every morning with a woman in my bed beside me I did not feel I was involved in sin. I only felt joy and contentment. I thanked God daily for my partner and the new me. I still attended church but in seclusion. As a matter of fact, I sat in the backrow and left as soon as we were dismissed so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. I knew I was all right with God. I just assumed that the body of Christ wasn’t ready to know that God can and does love lesbians. I examined all the verses in the bible that dealt with homosexuality again but received no new clarification as to their proper interpretation until quit a long time later. I simply lived based on my own relationship with God and knew that I was OK. Eventually God made me aware of other homosexual Christians and to gay affirming churches and to the proper interpretation of those seemingly condemning verses.

This whole experience has led me to look to my own spirit and relationship to God and not to follow blindly other Christians who happened to speak from behind a pulpit or who just happened to speak loudly. Coming out to myself has drawn me closer to God. “Honest always, no matter what the consequences,” is core in my belief system now.

This personal story of faith and reconciliation comes from the archives of www.christianlesbians.com and was originally posted in 2004.

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Posted in Personal Stories