Discovering the Girl God sees: a lesbian’s story
(A submission for my series of emphatic life stories)
I can remember from day one that being gay was seen as a horrible sin. My father was a lay speaker in the church and I remember him getting up there and preaching a fire and brimstone sermon against gay people. We would all rot in hell and God hated us. I heard sermon after sermon that condemned who I was. My dad told me gays were going to hell, my church told me gays were going to hell, and my friends made jokes about queer people. Even if at the time my father didn’t realize that I was gay, I knew. And it was something so horrible and forbidden that I hid that part of me from myself and others. In hiding, I was made almost sub-human. I wasn’t as good as everyone else and God himself hated me, it must be true because The Church and my father said it. That leaves a mark of hopelessness on a child. To know that I would never make my family, my friends, my community, and my God proud of me. Growing up gay is not an easy experience.
I know there are those out there who believe that gay people choose that lifestyle. But as a child and young adult, I didn’t want to be gay. I begged and pleaded for God to make me straight. I wanted to be like my friends and my family and to be an acceptable member of my society. That isn’t to say that I didn’t have choices, I did. I had the choice to continue to hate myself or learn to love myself. I had the choice to hold onto the dogma and hate I was taught from my youth or seek and find God as an adult. I had the choice to continue to hide from myself and the world or step out and truly live in the light. As an adult, I had those choices, but as a child I did not.
Time moves on and I was still a little queer hiding from myself and everyone else. I learned how to not feel anything. To keep my feelings so buried that I could barely feel anything. I was in junior high and wanted to die. I was drunk or suicidal from junior high through college. I wanted to die. I have tried to die. But thankfully I wasn’t able to do it in an overt way. I couldn’t shoot myself although I overdosed on pills. I just threw up and lived, much to my pain and disappointment at that time. No, I did stuff like drink myself silly and drive my car in the middle of blizzards and ice storms. I was hoping to die by accident. I couldn’t bare the thought of my mom finding me so I prayed and pleaded that God would let me die in an accident. It just seemed more noble some how. I also abused myself.
I have scars from me burning myself and cutting myself. I just wanted to feel something. I have held a red hot knife to my arm and not felt it. I could smell the flesh burning and not feel it. I was so cut off from my emotions for such a long time. When I felt anything it hurt, so I tried to not feel. And I got good at it. Too good. I got to where I couldn’t feel emotional or physical pain. Part of that came from me being something God and everyone else hated. Let me say right now that my pain came, not from being gay, but from knowing that people hated me because of that one piece of the totality that is me. It was from being told that even God himself couldn’t stand to look at me. I am so very thankful that I survived long enough to find out that isn’t true.
I won’t get into what changed my mind about my orientation and where I will spend eternity. It is too long and drawn out. But it is enough to say that I heard God tell me that I was who he created, and that I shouldn’t hate what he created. I can remember the exact date that I heard him and believed him. I know he loves me for who I am, even though I ran from him and the church for a while.
I am a lesbian and I am a Christian. But I am also a lot of other things. I am a mom, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I may be your next door neighbor or a person you pass on the streets. I may be your friend or I may be your enemy, but I am real and I am here and I still exist even if some can not understand or accept me. Maybe there will be some who judge me on my orientation or decisions I have made and mistakes that I have done, I can’t help what people think or feel. But I know who I am and I finally like my life and I am secure in the knowledge that my God loves me.
From Lindsey:
My thanks to the author for being willing to share this with my readers.
All comments attacking the author will be edited or deleted.
Hayden Tompkins replied:
I always find it interesting that the religiously conservative (not just Christians) are so ‘anti-gay’. If one agrees that being gay is a sin, well then you’d assume that you’d treat it like any of the other sins. But that is very often not the case.
I just never understood why it is the unforgivable sin; the UBERsin.
August 25, 2008 at 3:14 pm. Permalink.
PolitiPornster replied:
Many thanks to the author for sharing this story. I can only hope that it might change the mind of some so-called Christian that bases their hate on Biblical principles.
Christ said (and I paraphrase) “blessed are those that are persecuted in MY name.” Most Christians believe this to merely mean “blessed are Christians that are persucted for worshipping Christ.” I believe that the statement has a duality to it that includes those folks that are persucuted in the name of Christ.
I send my 2 cents via PayPal.
August 25, 2008 at 3:35 pm. Permalink.
PolitiPornster replied:
I can’t believe it but I managed to misspell “persecute” in two different ways. Where is that Spell-Check when you need it.
August 25, 2008 at 3:37 pm. Permalink.
mssc54 replied:
There is a lot to process here.
August 25, 2008 at 7:31 pm. Permalink.
Tony replied:
I’ve read the bible, and I’ve had the fortune to be blessed with an inquisitive mind so I’ve dug up the reasons and history behind the condemnation of homosexuals and the persecution of women and all that great stuff by the church. It has a lot to do with trying to right the wrongs of the Roman Empire as it fell into corruption. And for the most part the new laws of the church work, however in all things absolutes rarely work, and I’d like to think that if god exists as we believe he does then his one absolute would be his love for us. We are but silly monkeys trying to interpret the intentions of the divine, sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t. Or sometimes we only get it partially right.
August 25, 2008 at 8:40 pm. Permalink.
Lindsey replied:
Hayden: Because it makes people itchy?
Honestly I don’t know. I wish I did.
PolitiP: An astute observation. Thanks! (and drink more coffee before blogging
)
mssc54: Take the time to digest it. And remember, there are real people on both sides of the issue- real people with real needs and real feelings. You, included.
Tony: 1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
If only it could be so easy. Oh, wait, it is! If as Ephesians 5 states that (paraphrasing) Christ “…presents the Church to himself as pure and radiant, without blemish” while we are obviously so not pure and not radiant and totally blemished, perhaps we’ve all just been too focused on the wrong verses.
Hm…
August 25, 2008 at 8:49 pm. Permalink.
rambleicious replied:
Powerful story! It was very brave of the author to share it.
I share Hayden’s puzzlement: why is being gay the big unforgiveable sin? If Jesus said we’re supposed to love one another, I don’t see the big deal.
August 25, 2008 at 11:48 pm. Permalink.
Katherine replied:
Ooooooh boy!! Yup, that’s my story. It could be almost word-for-word. Except my dad wasn’t/isn’t a pastor, just a strongly opinionated fundamentalist Christian. I had to grow up hearing the most horrible insults and slams on gay people from family and friends… all the while knowing I was one of them.
I didn’t do so much drinking or dangerous driving, but I’ll always carry the scars from trying to cut my attraction to other women out of myself. It does strike me as curious that this is now the 4th lesbian I know (including myself) who is/was also a cutter. The self-hatred caused by the negative view of gay people must be so strong that self-mutilation and self-injury are more common among gay people. That’s a concerning realization. Maybe it’s also no coincidence either that all of the lesbians I know of who have/do self-injure were either raised in a conservative Christian home (3) or converted to Christianity later in life (1).
It’s not good that Christianity causes that kind of self-hatred. Something is clearly amiss in the general theology. I’m still trying to move past a lot of bitterness and resentment that I have toward the The Church and Christianity for causing so much unnecessary pain during my teenage years.
It’s good that this women is secure in her realization that God loves her for her. I’m not quite that secure …yet, but lately I’ve been getting pretty close.
August 25, 2008 at 11:54 pm. Permalink.
Lindsey replied:
rambleicious: I wish I knew!
Katherine: It breaks my heart that so many good women share this story.
I think women in general are more prone to self-mutilation than men, although I don’t have any statistics to back that claim up so I may be wrong. I’m not gay, but I did self-abuse for a while because I felt spoiled and wrong, from early childhood sexual abuse. I think that the way young gay children are treated is tantamount to a kind of emotional abuse. I didn’t feel attracted to people of the opposite gender growing up- I didn’t feel attracted to the same gender, either, but I can remember feeling strange and broken. As bad as things were for me as an emotionally unstable heterosexual kid, I can only imagine the pain of a lesbian girl who is told constantly that gay people are heathens, sexually depraved, doomed to die young, etc, etc… I can NOT imagine the pain of feeling that if you truly revealed yourself you’d be rejected!
So I understand why so many closeted Christian lesbians would self-abuse. If you are made to feel wrong, inferior, broken… All of that emotion, hidden, with no where else to go?
But remember, it’s not that you love God, it’s that God loves you. Read 1 John 4:7-21- especially verse 12: No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
The church has fallen woefully short- but you may still experience God in your lifetime. Experience him in the capacity for love in your own heart, in the extended hands of others, and in the fact that no matter how homosexual you are, there are churches that would embrace you happily.
Don’t despair.
August 26, 2008 at 2:25 am. Permalink.
Vanessa replied:
Lindsey: Please, pass on my thanks to the author for telling her story, and sharing it as well. I hope that it will help in opening minds and hearts a bit more as persons who struggle to accept us will gain a better understanding. I feel grateful that I was never outright rejected by my family or my church community, but I often did not feel the love of the church either. Our present church community is trying to learn, and open up, and I am hoping that we can really start having some open conversations about embracing those of us who have a gay identity and realizing we are whole, pure, and loved by God. It really is that simple…..
August 26, 2008 at 3:32 am. Permalink.
SanityFound replied:
*huge hugs* to the author because that was one of the most therapeutic posts to write, wow!
“I just never understood why it is the unforgivable sin; the UBERsin.” My younger brother and I have often wondered about this one and we both came to the conclusion that It is because they are unsure of their sexuality. If they were certain of their sexuality then there would be fewer issues and being “hit” on by the same sex would be a compliment as it would opposite sex – am I making any sense at all? In our heads it made the world of difference. Basically I know it goes deeper than this but is it not egged on by a persons insecurities creating this übbersin to make them feel better? Ah dark pits of unknowingness.
I think this is just beautiful Lindsey, giving people the chance to share anonymously, thank you for being who you are! A true gift I tell you!
August 26, 2008 at 6:20 am. Permalink.
I’m Gay « SanityFound’s Rambling’s replied:
[...] inspired by Lindsey who’s post’s brought this conversation back to me, the posts are Discovering the Girl God sees: a lesbian’s story, Gay Marriage Vs. Polygamy and Bestiality and Does that box come in [...]
August 26, 2008 at 10:37 am. Permalink.
glaize replied:
My thanks to the brave author, Lindsey. This story is quite touching and powerful, a good wake-up call.
I am a Christian myself, Catholic at that and was raised in a very religious, traditional way. My entire 18 years I have been told what is right, what is wrong and what is accepted by the Lord. I am ashamed that I have been so shallow-minded in the past. But not anymore. I’ve not much to say but I’m holding on to these words:
“Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgement. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge do the very same things – ROM 2:1″
I don’t like it when the Church have sermons in which they condemn others because of what or who they are. I think they should instead, just encourage the members to pray for these individuals that their lives will not be made worst by the perspectives of the human minds. Gays or straights, we all are humans. We all are God’s children.
August 29, 2008 at 10:37 am. Permalink.
Weekly Fruit Salad - Numero Tredici « SanityFound’s Rambling’s replied:
[...] The Gay Agenda will include freedom to marry who you choose (albeit of age humans) all the while Discovering the Girl God sees. Perhaps one day we’ll sit back in our rocking chairs sipping a nice glass of red going [...]
August 31, 2008 at 7:41 pm. Permalink.
droppingfigleaves replied:
good story, I can relate some… if anyone wants to check out my blog feel free to.
droppingfigleaves.wordpress.com
droppingfigleaves@yahoo.com
September 15, 2009 at 4:10 pm. Permalink.