I’m a lot of things. But pursuant to a blog regarding my faith, spirituality, and personal walk with Christ, I want to say what’s germane. I’ve known I was gay since I was six years old. Of course I didn’t know or understand what sexuality was, but I vividly remember distinct feelings for a boy named Sergio DeJesus. Juxtaposed to the feelings I had for my other friends (a sense of brotherhood), it was evident that there was something just a tad more for him. I remember having a birthday at Chuck E. Cheese, and I cried because I wanted him to sit beside me. I also remember kissing him on the cheek when the parents finally arranged us side-by-side.
I don’t say all this in some kind of crusade to convince non-birthers that I didn’t choose to be gay. (I know what I know, and that’s all I need to know.) But I say it because it’s incredibly important.
Growing up in Mississippi as a gay male is hard enough; growing up as a Christian who happens to be gay is even harder. And make no mistake: I’m a Christ-follower first, gay man second. But people rarely consider that when they’re throwing stones. To them, it didn’t matter how many sleepless nights I had, how many tears I shed, how many times I self-harmed in my closet praying for God to make me straight. They didn’t care how hurtful it was to know, without a doubt, that God exists, but be told Papa doesn’t want to know me.
In the South, there’s a production titled “Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames.” (You can find YouTube videos of it if you want to see.) Though they have good intentions, these shows would prove to be the first finger around my throat that would end in a choke hold. A dash of strobe lights, a teaspoon of red lighting, a cup of audio recordings of people screaming and being tortured, and 40 pews of cheering audience when the disgusting homosexual was finally damned to an eternal torment is a recipe for PTSD in a 10-year-old. I was pretty convinced that I would be damned to Hell, eternal separation from God’s love.
It’s … scary and defeating to know with certainty what awaits you when you die. I can’t stress enough just how scary it is. I couldn’t simply choose to not believe in God and live my life in comfort. I’ve always known He exists. It’s built into me.
Y2k was my first “end of the world” date. I can’t explain how terrified I was. I was pretty convinced that everyone was right: it was the end of the world. Christians celebrated, but I wasn’t. For me, my days were numbered. I would stay awake and cry into my pillow as the minutes ticked into the next day, and that day into the next. I don’t think I slept more than 5 hours that year, lol. When the year rolled over into 2000, and nothing happened, presumably I’d stop considering people’s guesses and postulations of end-of-time dates. … but my fear increased exponentially, ultimately culminating into a botched suicide attempt. I was made to see a therapist for a while, but she was largely unhelpful. I maintain a fear of an idea, an abstract construct, can’t be cured. If I had a fear of heights, she could make me sky dive. If I had a fear of spiders (“if,” lol, I totes do), she could expose me to a spider. You can’t expose me to the end of the world. You can’t assure me that I’m saved by God’s grace. She taught me some breathing techniques to help when my anxieties are high. She taught me how to calm myself during panic attacks, but that was as much as she could do.
When I was 14, God spoke to me. Or well, I think He did. I had skipped school, and I was sitting in the recliner. Did your parents have a recliner that you were not allowed to sit in? I was in that one. I also had a bad ingrown toe nail on my left big toe. (So bad, in fact, that I would later get surgery to have it removed.) I was flipping through the channels, and I stopped on the Christian Broadcasting Network to see if there was any “End of the World” news. (Yes, I was that obsessed.) The man on the TV was speaking to a woman, but after a few seconds of my hesitating on the channel, he stopped and looked at the camera. He said that he had something he felt he needed to say; he said that God needed him to say it.
He said that he felt there was someone at home, watching. He said that they weren’t supposed to be at home, and that they were sitting in a chair they shouldn’t be. And he also said that the person had an injured foot, maybe a toe. He said: “God wants me to tell you that He loves you. So much. That you’re His child and you don’t need to be scared anymore.”
I literally collapsed on the ground from crying. I was so overwhelmed. I’ve always felt so much weight, so much pain, so much self-hate. Maybe it was coincidence, but it was the moment I considered that everyone was wrong–He DOES love me. I’m His. I bought a study Bible with my allowance that weekend. I still haven’t set foot back in a church, but I immensely enjoy reading my Bible alone in my room. Just me and Him.
However … my fears still remained.
My fear of the end of the world really came to a head around 2006. Any strange news, any weird event, any bizarre weather patterns became the end of the world in my head. The weatherman would report that the temperatures were record breaking, and I’d have a panic attack. Five thousand black crows would drop dead out of the sky, and I’d call into work for a week straight. I lost so many jobs. I lost a boyfriend. When you’re convinced the end of the world is going to be any day now, you lose the will the live. When you’re gay and you’re going to be “left behind” to experience the bowls, trumpets, and scrolls of wrath and God’s anger, you lose whatever is more than a will to live. A few times I wished I didn’t exist–period.
One night, in 2005, I woke up to the radio saying the stars were falling out of the sky, and that reports were coming in from all over the state. This was it. This is what I’ve been waiting on. I threw on my shoes and ran outside into the front yard. I picked a star and stared. The fixed star blinked back at me, like any other night, but then I watched as it began falling. I cried, around 3AM, on my knees in the muddy grass, begging for God to spare us. Give us more time. To be honest, I’m not sure what happened the rest of the night. I remember it so clearly, and we all know the difference between dreams and reality. It definitely wasn’t a dream. I had felt the soil.
(Later, a friend would suggest that maybe I had a prophecy. Not of a future event, but maybe it was a vision of what was happening inside me. I had been told that God loves me, that I don’t have to be scared, and the stars falling were my old belief systems falling away. I have Googled insistently looking for any news article or blogger or anything that means “stars falling out of the sky 2005,” and I can’t find anything.)
Another example of how stupidly debilitating my fear is: In 2012 I was driving down the road, and I saw a white square in the sky. Just a large white square. My first thought was, “Alien attack!” I pulled over on the side of the road and cried and prayed. It was shortly thereafter that I notice the plane feet ahead of the white square. And that the white square was a banner being pulled by the plane.
It’s 2017, and my fears are … somewhat calmed. I’m much more confident in my belief systems. I’m better at reassuring myself. After diligent studies and reading about Jewish historians like Josephius and Tacitus, as well as other Jewish apocrypha, I coolly have a Preterist view of the book of Revelations (it was all fulfilled in 70AD). The concept of Hell has also since been abolished for me; universal salvation is the only thing that makes feasible sense.
This blog is a way for me to continue growing in Christ. I have a lot of catching up to do. But it’s also my effort in reaching out to other people who may be struggling with the things that I did. Children, people, shouldn’t be made to feel scared and alone. They should know that God loves them. I want everyone to know that God’s love for them is unmatched.
hugely loved 