The following story is from Becky. She sent this in on a previous post and I’ve asked her permission to re-use her story of God’s embracing grace that has the power and force to help each of us with our own “crackedness.” One of Becky’s major points is that she learned, as she confesses, through the Spirit to die with Christ. In fact, what we see in Becky’s story is the power of God to help us overcome our own cracked weaknesses, regardless of what those might be. Her story is no one else’s story; there is no reason to typify her story; there is no reason to impose her story on others. But, still, a wondrous story of God’s gracious healing over a long, long time.
I first wondered if I had lesbian tendencies when I was in High School. I tried thing after thing to fix this, what I thought was wrong, for 30 yrs. Finally a couple years ago I was referred to a woman who helps those wanting freedom, as such can be in this life, from lesbian attraction.
At the same time I was in therapy, and realized my attraction was an idealized fantasy that I would get the mother love from another woman that I never got from my mom. Sex is about as close as you can get to another person, so that’s how it looked attractive to me. I was learning how to let go of trying to get mother substitutes in the many ways it comes out in me and I was learning that when a sexual thought about a woman starts up, I need not go there, stop, say no. Because I know I didn’t get that desired love from my mom and another person at this time can not make up for it. I can not get what I never got. I can not turn back time, I can not make my mom what I wanted. It would not have been enough just to learn how to say “no” to this attraction. I had to find out what the itch is, and figure out how reality lines up to it, and what way I can turn so the itch gets taken care of. Part of that is saying “sorry, you don’t have a mom, you can’t get a mom.”
30 yrs I struggled with this. And I was a sincere Christian, as much as anyone without this tendency. It wasn’t a matter of proper repentance and turning from this sin. God works with us all bit by bit. I got to where I could get a handle on this, with God’s help. As long as all of us sin, and we all do daily till we die, we cannot make a differentiation between our sin and the sin of homosexual attraction. We can not stop all our sinning today, no matter how sincere our desire and repentance. We all struggle with the split of wanting to see ourselves in the heart of God, but fleeing it by pursuing various distractions.
I want to add that in the context of looking for another person to fill a hole in me: the sin I was experiencing is idolatry. It is not what genitals do with another set of genitals. When talk about those with same sex attraction comes up, what seems focused is the sex content. That isn’t it, it’s idolatry. I had turned, so I learned from this woman helper, to the golden calf because it looks like it fills the deep emotional need faster. Thus the sameness with all of us, as I wrote above in my last line: “We all struggle with the split of wanting to see ourselves in the heart of God, but flee it too, with various distractions.” In my 30 yrs of dealing with this, my experience is that those with same sex attraction are looking to another person to fill a psychological-spiritual hole. And I ran those 2 words together intentionally, cuz in real life they can not be split into 2 areas, they are intertwined in who we are, one affecting the other, wed.
I am in a small church. I think there are 20 of us now. Some of us have known each other 28 yrs. Someone who has been there 5 yrs or so, we found out last week that she’s had an affair for 9 months, and is leaving her hubby and her kids to deal with it. She’s going to a man who has had 3 marriages and multiple affairs. Her current husband isn’t abusive in any way, doesn’t do drugs or alcohol. She is an adult child of alcoholics. This is such typical behavior of an unhealed acoa. Wanting and fearing closeness, trying through this new man, to get what she wanted from her daddy. From her childhood, she has complex issues to work through, issues that touch her in ways she doesn’t know yet. But she can work through them to the point that she doesn’t make such stupid choices spurred by her pain. She feels a dissatisfaction and is looking for stuff outside herself to fix the dissatisfaction. It is not enough that I would just tell her leaving her hubby and kids is wrong, having the affair is wrong.
My word to her is to take care of her wounds, to stop blaming dissatisfaction on stuff outside herself. In this, she is making those people she thinks will quench her thirst, scratch her itch, she is making them the golden calf, an idol. “I am afraid and so I will turn to this fix in front of my face that looks mighty inviting.” Go to person after person – fix me, fill me, cure my dissatisfaction. So, idolatry runs in us all when we flee the heart of God and run to other things to distract. So, yes, she has this complex psyche from the alcoholic home she grew up in. But, she has a choice. When someone says to her to go into counseling and deal with this and that. Then she has a choice. And healing is available. Even woundedness from our parents doesn’t make us who we ‘have’ to be. And so with all. Never complete healing in this life, but sufficient.
See, there isn’t this category over here, homosexual, to discourse over “their” sin and what we do with “their” sin. We are them. How are we them ? We all turn from the heart of God to look for the fixes closer to our faces, that look like they will be the drug that soothes. We want to see ourselves in the heart of God and we fear it at the same time. So we turn to things that distract temporarily, looking for the balm. Our golden calves we make. And when we dance around our golden calves, we are the whores who have left our Lover/God.