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these last several years as I have spoken more publicly about my life,
its fall into darkness, and the journey back out into living again,
I have wished for a different kind of story - a simpler, more “Christian”
kind of testimony. After coming to a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ late in high school, I used to hear the perfect testimonies;
“I was bad, I met Christ, and now I am okay and life is great.”
I wish my story was that simple. I wished, at times, for the clarity
of a conversion that turned a confused teenager into a monument of
strength as a mature man. That isn’t how it happened. I wonder
now whether it is ever that simple for anyone. “Where there’s life there’s hope” - a phrase familiar to us all, but I have to admit, one that never made any sense to me. I lived for the better part of my 49 years without much hope, divided in mind and heart about my homosexual struggle, over which I could find no resolution. Starting sometime around my late high school and early college years, I began to feel strange, conflicting feelings of desire to be closer to men physically while dating a beautiful girl with whom I had met and fallen in love. I prayed privately and earnestly that God would just “take away” those feelings, leaving me with only the healthy, heterosexual ones I was supposed to have. Over the following years, I lost hope that God could or would change that part of my life. “I have faith that He can do miracles for other people, but not for me, not there.” How could I live with any hope for change or hope for freedom from these conflicting desires? I decided marriage would answer all my nagging questions - questions about my sense of being a man, of “making it” in this world. I would simply have to grow up and out of this inner turmoil. If God wouldn’t change me, I would have to change myself. As a result, I lived most of my adult life playing hide-n-seek, hiding from God and other people and living in the constant fear of exposing my inner bankruptcy. I created an outer self that the world, especially the Christian world, would like and accept. I became a chameleon, adapting myself to please my teachers, friends, and family. After college and marriage to Joanne, I attended Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California - then went into full time youth ministry. But at nearly 30 years old, married and with two small daughters, I attempted to “resolve” this deep inner turmoil myself and began a homosexual relationship. It ended after three years, but that relationship opened a sexual Pandora’s box. I struggled with other relationships and anonymous encounters over the next Ten years. During the middle of that time, in 1985, I discovered I was HIV+ and would most likely die of AIDS. Where’s the hope now? How could God ever make things right again? I had disqualified myself beyond repair. I felt like a date-stamped cereal box, taken off the shelf. In secret, I lived with a complete lack of authority in my life; a complete lack to initiate and speak real truth in others’ lives, and much of the time, a lack of certainty in my own salvation. Heaven took on a surrealistic image of a darkened movie theater where my theology told me I would have to be admitted because I had accepted Jesus Christ into my life, but I was made to sit in the back row, watching the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride take place on the brightly lit stage. Nothing or no one would save me now. Deep shame and regret colored my world with a dark gray that would haunt me until the disease would eventually end the struggle. My journey out of despair into hope would be like climbing a set of steep stairs. I had to take one difficult step at a time, but each step, however painful, took me closer to hope. Forgive my use of some rather “old fashioned” theological terms to define the steps I was forced to take, but each of them was necessary before hope could grow and become reality. My first step was recognition of my total brokenness. I could not fix my homosexual desires in my prayer closet all alone. This problem needed some serious help, but that meant telling someone. It took the severe mercy of HIV and AIDS to force me to recognize my absolute helplessness to resolve this conflict on my own. I had to fall at the feet of Jesus first. I was broken, and no amount of glue could patch up this Humpty Dumpty. I needed healing! The second step was confession. For years I made the vow that the secret of my double life would go with me to the grave. After the discovery of my HIV+ status, I was forced to confess to a few people, my wife among the first. Each confession was like an uncovering. I grew more naked and vulnerable with each unveiling. My desires didn’t change with confession alone, and I slipped back into more deception and cover-up with continued acting out. Something was missing. I had confessed, but that wasn’t enough. The third step took longer, and was perhaps the key to eventually finding that ilusive hope for change I had always wanted. I needed to repent. Good , old-fashioned repentance - the decision to stop, to cut off any and all escape routes - burn all my old bridges, and step into a new land of openness and vulnerability. I had to reveal once again to several friends my fear of rejection and the accompanying shame. I had to reveal my ambiguous heart toward men and my reluctance to believe that God would be able to change it. I had to admit that I was moving more toward resignation of what was, rather than contending for the resurrection of what could be. I had focused on my loss, rather than on what could be restored. The fourth step was receiving forgiveness - no small thing for someone filled with so many years of shame and guilt. But the love and acceptance of the body of Christ proved to me over and over that receiving forgiveness was not only possible, it was my obligation. I could never love properly until I received the forgiveness of God and others. For years I deflected the affirmations and grace given to me by my pastor and a small circle of friends we had invited into our journey. My deep sense of shame kept me from receiving even the forgiveness of my wife. How much hurt and pain I had caused! Grace, in any form, was a distant theological concept. God’s spirit had to invade my very soul to break down the thick walls of disqualification and speak His words of sonship and calling one back into life. Gradually I began to believe that I was the one who had put myself on the shelf, not my heavenly Father, and not those around me. That led to the next step, which came as a wonderful surprise to this disbelieving heart. I found freedom; freedom from compulsive thoughts and behavior, freedom from shame and guilt, and freedom to begin to love others aright - both men and women. I found freedom to love my wife, Joanne, in ways that surprised us both. A new tenderness emerged from some pretty crusty old habits of relating. We both stand amazed at what the Lord has done in our hearts to recreate deep respect and consequent affection. As I have found freedom to grow more into the fullness of my masculine being, she has found freedom to feel safe once again in our relationship. Joy followed freedom. I didn’t purposely find this step - it found me. I began to experience a deep joy in relationships and in life, once again. Times of corporate worship in singing and praise will often overwhelm me with where the Lord has brought me. Old hymns have taken on new meaning. Familiar scriptures have come alive with fresh meaning as though I were reading them for the first time. And joy leads us back to hope. I now have hope for God to go deeper into my spirit and soul - to clarify that which still needs changing. I know that will take me back to fresher confession, deeper repentance, and eventually more freedom, joy, and hope once again. I have turned around that old phrase that didn’t make much sense into “Where there’s HOPE, there’s life.” AIDS is still a reality I face daily, but the Lord has graciously kept me alive for his purposes, so I press on in hope for that as well. And I have a renewed purpose in sharing my life with others who are struggling with similar issues. Hebrews 6 reminds us that “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.” Where’s your hope for changing the unchangeable? Mine is in Jesus.
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