My struggles with pornography and homosexuality have gone hand in hand from the beginning. I had my first sexual experience with another boy my age in middle school and around that same time I started looking at pornography. Both of these new experiences brought extreme amounts of shame. I was torn because at the same time they became something I lusted after and found great comfort in.
In addition to these experiences, I was sexually abused for the first time during my junior year of high school by a cheerleading coach at a training gym. Because it was consensual, it took me many years of therapy to be able to admit I was abused. The abuse completely distorted my ability to have healthy relationships with men. Every male friendship I had after that either turned sexual or was completely codependent.
My senior year of high school I went full steam ahead into the gay lifestyle thinking it was the answer to all my pain. There is an entire lifestyle that accompanies homosexual feelings, desires and actions and I became a part of it. I hit all the major gay clubs in Atlanta, did lots of ecstasy, and even went to Gay Disney (part of the gay party circuit) as a graduation gift from one of my abusers.
Although I thought the lifestyle would somehow bring me wholeness, my emotions were all over the place in college. I was always filled with anxiety that whatever male I was codependent on would leave and hurt me like my abusers. Pornography brought great comfort and was one of the few times I could quiet the thoughts in my head. I rationalized that it was ok because I was not being physical with men. Some days I would look at porn for 4 hours. Other days I would look at it 3 or 4 times.
To compound things, I also struggled with extreme insecurity over my body. In college I poured myself into working out and gaining muscle. My freshman year I was 6’1 175 lbs and I graduated 6’3 245 lbs. No matter how much muscle I gained I still looked in the mirror and saw the skinny boy that nobody wanted to be friends with in middle and high school. For the first time I had some Christian male friends and I had started seeing a counselor. In counseling we started to scratch the service on the events in my childhood. I had so much anger and grief over losing my innocence. A lot of the pain began to surface but things didn't dramatically change.
Upon graduation I was offered a great corporate job and moved back to Atlanta. It only took me two weeks before I ended up back in the clubs. I had tried for four years in college to live as a “straight” male but still had the same feelings towards men. I thought, maybe I was gay and I just needed to live as a gay Christian with the same morals and values as any other Christian man.
My second night out in the club scene in Atlanta I met Jordan, he seemed to be 'the guy of my dreams'. He had everything I thought I ever wanted. I was extremely attracted to him and he was a Christian who had spent the majority of his life struggling like me. We thought we could have a Christian relationship and maybe the Lord had brought us together. We couldn’t even keep the purity in our relationship one week. Within three months we were flying around the US hitting all the big gay parties and doing lots of drugs. Within a year I didn’t know who I was. I had everything I thought I wanted; a good job, lots of money, and an attractive “Christian” boyfriend. But I was miserable!!
This is when the change first started to happen. Jordan and I had been out at a club all night and as the sun started to come up, in our drug induced state, we thought it was a good idea to go to church. We made our way to a church and after the service one of the pastors came up to say hello. Jordan came right out and said this is my boyfriend and we just came in from the club. And the pastor’s response was, “Well I am glad you are here.” I was floored!! I was rejected from the church I grew up in when I came out my senior year of high school. This is when I started to open myself to the Lord again.
The next two years of healing were the most painful and freeing of my life.
2007 and 2008 were years of stripping away old habits and desires and submitting to the Lord.
I was so broken and letting go of Jordan and the lifestyle seemed impossible to me. There were very clear times that the Lord would be leading me to let something go and almost every time I would have to get to a place of complete brokenness before I submitted it to him. Every time I submitted he ALWAYS multiplied his grace and blessings on me. At times I would get tastes of what freedom was like and it would give me enough faith to take another step.
Grace and acceptance were essential for my healing journey. I had to accept the fact that I had feelings for men and submit to the Lord that in His timing he would take them away. What I now understand is that my feelings for men were a surface result of my past and inner turmoil. I had to stop focusing on trying to make those desires stop and start focusing on what the Lord was trying to repair inside of me emotionally.
Once I got to a place of trusting that the Lord was good and submitting everything to him my healing went into over drive. I found out about problems my parents were having during my pregnancy that made it difficult for me to connect with my dad. During healing prayer the Lord took me to painful memories of rejection from boys that led to the rejection of my masculinity. The Lord gave me understanding of recurring dreams I had my entire life.
Forgiving my father and healing of the memories of past fights we had paved the way for me to finally connect and receive love from him. One of the more dramatic healings was the healing of my masculinity. It changed every relationship I had at the time.
There is so much more that I want to share with you. As I reread the past 8 years of journal entries today at 25 years old, I cannot believe how far the Lord has brought me. I don’t even feel like the same 16 year old boy who would drink just to fall asleep at night. At one point, I wrote I JUST WANT TO DIE SO THIS PAIN WILL GO AWAY.
The pain is now completely gone and my life is so full of peace and overwhelming joy. Some days I will be riding down the road and just break into tears because I am so happy. During my healing I knew the Lord was doing a great work in me but I didn’t know if it was possible for me to love a women like I have loved men.
In the past six months this area has really started to change for me. The love I am beginning to have for women is so different, it is so much greater, so much purer, so much more beautiful. I still struggle at times with my attraction with men but it is completely different. It usually comes from an external attack from the enemy rather than an internal lust. As with all healing I am continuing to walk it out and trust the Lord for the next steps.
I doubt there are few men who have done more in the gay lifestyle than I have. Don’t let the enemy place lies in your head that you are too far gone. There is healing for you and it is SO worth every difficult step you have to take!! I hope in the coming months to break down the healing steps I went through. My goal is to give you some of the resources that were so very valuable to me so we can share in this journey toward the healing power of God!
