Once An Abomination, Now A Gift

January 1, 2006

I’m one of the late bloomers. In hindsight, it’s so very clear. I was a tomboy, my movie star crushes were on female stars, but I knew nothing about homosexuality. One of my earliest memories is about seeing a program on TV. I don’t know what happened on it, but in my four year old mind I thought the two men were married to each other. I mentioned it to my mother and she told me that was impossible, that two men couldn’t marry each other.

When I was 12, my mother saw the direction my interests had taken and she sat me down and told me that it was wrong, that I shouldn’t feel that way about girls. I was so embarrassed because my mother never said anything about sex and having her see through me was mortifying. So I buried my feelings and began dating boys a couple of years later. I eventually married and had three kids, never realizing or accepting that I was a lesbian even as I wondered if other women truly found men attractive. I even prayed to find pleasure in my husband’s body.

After many years and much soul-searching I finally accepted myself. But what would that do to my relationship with God? I was raised in Texas in the Church of Christ, a fundamental, legalistic church. How could I reconcile that? God showed me, and with such love and acceptance that I had never known.

First of all, I felt whole for the first time in my life. When you deny such a basic part of yourself, it does something inside you. I always felt like I had a blackhole in my core. When I accepted my gayness that hole was filled. Finally someone was home, and she was “OK”. I prayed to understand God’s will for me, and every way I turned, with every new insight, with every answered prayer came the understanding that God made ME and God loves ME just the way I am.

My sexuality is a gift, perhaps an even bigger gift than what a heterosexual experiences, because a heterosexual never has to question such an important part of themselves. A heterosexual never has to wonder if their desire to love another is an “abomination.” It’s not an abomination. The abomination is the treatment gays and lesbians receive not only from the secular world, but from other Christians. God loves his lesbian and gay children, of this I have no doubt and he loves us the way we are. He blesses us the way we are and God’s pleased with us the way we are. After all, God made us.

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