It was 1994. I was 15 years old when the epiphany hit me that times were changing and I was eventually going to have a socially acceptable problem.
This sudden awareness started the clock on a grueling battle for my sexuality. I was conscious of the fact that I was different from the other girls at the age of five, and I had lived silently through ten years of gender confusion and attraction to women by age fifteen. I wanted desperately to be “over it” by the time it was going to be acceptable, even normal, to be gay.
And that meant a fight.
Homosexuality is not a tender enemy.
But, I’m thankful for the affliction because it made a warrior and a lover of me.
For my entire twenty-three year search, I was never alone. When I made the decision to reach for help, people loved me. They prayed, listened, cried, and held me. They believed the best was coming and waited tirelessly for the seeds of life to bear fruit in my soul. By patient love they demonstrated my Father’s heart. The best of them never violated my will, created forceful situations, made rules for me to follow, rushed me to conclusions, or prescribed remedies. They gave me no reason to mistrust God by their own leadership styles. They didn’t make my sin any bigger than theirs. They didn’t freak out when I fell. They just spoke truth, and waited with me until I could see God. Because that’s the promise for the pure in heart. They see God.
Notice how many stories of true change involve someone loving like Christ does.
Christy has experienced victory in this fight.
Sometimes I agreed with God about my sexuality because He is Lord, and love is a choice, and that is all. My emotions were left out of the equation so many times because I had to believe either my feelings were lying to me or God was. I purposed in my heart to honor God’s design no matter how it felt, for a very, very long time. I could feel in the waiting that Life was at work in me. Hope was at work in me.
There was never a pinnacle moment when I knew, “I’m not gay anymore. I feel different.” My liberation was unceremonious. Freedom matured in me through a process, from the seeds of truth that God planted and people watered along the way. It wasn’t one decision I made not to be gay, there were many. Like Proverbs 4:18 says, “… the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.”
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