I’m just getting started reading your blog, but so far, your story sounds so familiar to my own – except for the 30 years of self-denial and self-loathing I spent to finally “hit bottom” (pardon the pun). Most of those 30 years were spent either in a str8 marriage (6 years) or waiting for God to fix me (13 of the last sixteen).

I decided three years ago that there was nothing to fix, so here I am, a fellow side-A gay Christian, at 50.

Your story is particularly poignant because I just came back from the wedding of a dear friend who was my last attempt at str8 life. I even invited her to visit me in Chicago at seminary for a big dinner-dance. It was fun, but it was clearly “just friends,” which sucked because she really, really wanted to upgrade from Friends 2004 to Wife 2.0.

So I had to deal with the death of my seminary dreams (finances killed that one), the death of my ministry plans, and the final death of my hetero life, all in the same 2 years. I was a load of laughs to be around, as you might imagine.

Life is changing slowly – in large part because of GCN. I’m glad to have found you – come over and check my site out, when you get bored…

I’d also be curious about the site you linked to that led Jennifer here…

Its Jennifer R. Pat’s wife. We had coffee together a few times last summer.

I don’t know what to say. I just discovered your blog as it is linked to your profile at the discussion board for our faith community.

I am blown away at your authenticity and your honesty. I understand greatly what it is to struggle with owning certain sexual desires and yet I know I don’t go through nearly the kind of emotional wrangling that you must have begun to walk through this year.

I am fortunate because any “deviant” sexual desires I have are pretty well housed in the fact that I am straight and in a committed marriage so I get that “get out of jail free” card in a sense.

I don’t think it would be authentic to say “I know what you are going through” because how could a straight woman in her thirties have a clue what it must really be like to experience your confusion and pain.

But, that said, so much of what you write touches my soul in a deep and profound way. There is no closet for me to come out of because my sexual desires are not the focus of anyone’s judgement and I don’t have to face owning things publicly the way you do at your stage in life’s journey.

However, I understand this very much: “My worldview died. I had no way to handle that, and had to come back to the realization that I was in fact gay. It’s not about lust, or rebellion, or a lifestyle. And so I decided to look into the actual biblical perspective on my sexuality, and read about both sides.”

i have had my worldview die, many times over in fact and each time more painful than the first. But when it hit in the area of sexuality it was something from which I never thought I could recover. I literally felt like I was crawling through the rubble of a war zone and it left me in a place where I became a church leaver in my heart (I was in professional ministry at the time which put a nice ironic twist on that issue) and almost an atheist. I could not reconcile what I knew my heart was saying with what I had been trained to believe. And what my heart was saying, many Sunday School teachers would say was at least the beginning if not the end of a slippery slope that would land me in the pitt of hell.

I would love to say I am completely over it but that would be false. I will say that I personally glean so much hope from what I have seen in your blog so far. Because I see that someone else is at least making an effort to enter that struggle of reconstructing what has been deconstructed with honesty and authenticity.

I was lucky because I was found. But I know so many others, many of them gay, who were not so lucky and honestly who just gave up not just on church but even more importantly on God. They simply couldn’t reconcile who they knew themselves to be with what they perceived they were being forced to claim to be or not be.

I believe that sexuality is one major reason why so many leave faith all together.

What is so very encouraging to me in what I have glanced at here, is the fact that you are not just facing this stuff but you are bringing it to God and wrestling with it there. It would be so much easier to run.

It seems to me that as you are owning your sexuality with deeper authenticity the question will become less about CAN i be a gay man and a Christian and more about HOW do i be a gay man and a Christian.

i am personally very stunned that you had the courage to post the link to this blog where i found it. i greatly respect your honesty and i come to your thoughts not with pity or rejection, but a genuine interest in what you have to show me about learning to trust my own discernment while still honoring Christ and His body.

Thank you for this gift of transparency its one of the rare treasures I have collected and it comes to me at a time where it is very much needed in terms of things I am facing in my own life.

I wish you peace and intimacy with Christ.

You are a brother in the Lord and I will never see you as anything less.