Thank you so much for the incredible response I received from my last post. It was beyond my imagination at this point in blogland. I want nothing more than to write and teach and share the heart of Jesus for me and thus, for you. That being said, I’m nowhere near perfect! I’d like to walk you through the last few months and what I had to do with Jesus as I came kicking and screaming into my new reality. I didn’t ask for this, but apparently God thought I was big enough to handle it so I want to share this journey with you.
I love my kids. Love isn’t just a word to me, it is everything. A few years ago, while going through several surgeries yet again, I found myself spending a lot of time with Jesus. It is amazing how much time you have to yourself when you are in a sick state and pretty much homebound. I lost friends because they don’t enjoy sitting a house with you, which I get, so my time was spent talking to Jesus and learning more about Him. As He uncovered some areas where I have struggled, I recall pacing my house crying out to Jesus for Him to teach me how to love well. I asked Him to teach me to love Hubby well, my children well, and everyone that He brought along my path. I want to leave people better than I found them, that is the cry of my heart. And He beautifully has offered love to me so that I can. So what does love look like to me? And how does Jesus offer His love to me?
I mess up every day. I say something I wish I hadn’t, or do something that I know I shouldn’t, or simply let my current emotion rip on someone that doesn’t deserve it. I am broken and wounded and the enemy knows what things to whisper at just the right moment so that I don’t offer love to the person in front of me. God is such a merciful and good Father, He always comes for me in those moments and reminds me that He loves me. He doesn’t point His finger in disgust because I sinned, He woos my heart back to His. His goal is for me to know His love so well that I can’t help but offer it to others. To me, that is what love is.
Easter Sunday my world was shaken. I couldn’t fathom how I would tell anyone that my daughter intends to marry a woman. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and angry. I’d prayed against this, I knew Coree was thinking in that direction since high school, but I thought it was a phase. I couldn’t imagine that my children, whom I raised in church, would ever possibly choose that life. I knew the community was riddled with sin and I think that part of the reason is because they don’t feel welcomed and loved in church, but I digress. I was as big of a bigot as anyone could be when I was faced with this in my own family. I don’t believe that anyone really knows where their heart is on the subject of homosexuality until it enters their own home.
As I said last week, I don’t know if people are born gay but in doing my research it seems as if maybe they are. I read a book by Justin Lee, a Christian author, speaker, and activist for LGBTQ. The reason he is an activist, though he does not live a gay lifestyle, is because he says he was born gay. Now, before you run, hear me out. Justin has chosen to live a celibate life. His nickname in junior high and high school was “God boy”, He loved the Lord and knew a lot about Scripture. As life brought him into puberty and all his friends were talking about girls, he found himself unaroused by women. His thought was that he respected them. He also found himself attracted to men. After attending many of the ex-gay conferences for Christ, he realized that even the men at the top still struggled with same-sex attraction they simply chose to marry women. He feels like it is unfair to marry a woman when he can’t offer her what she deserves, “a man madly in love with her”. I see his point and agree it would be unfair to her. So, he’s chosen to live alone for his entire life. Would you want to make that choice?
I know I wouldn’t. I know how it makes me feel when Hubby looks at me longingly and anything less would lead me to think he didn’t want me. That would be a wound that would cut really deep.
If Coree was born gay, then she was born gay. I’m certainly not going to ask her to live her life alone when I wouldn’t be willing to myself. That would be a really hard life. I’ve listened to podcasts with men and women who say they were born gay. It’s a hard life, especially in the Christian world. I can’t fathom that Coree would choose that were she not born gay. The more I learn what love looks like from my Daddy, the more I have it to offer. I keep going back to this in conversations and on here but here is the truth. We all sin. We do not like having sin pointed out to us, it hurts. If acting on homosexuality is a sin, well that is just one more sin. Just thinking about someone in a sinful way is sinning.
“But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matt 5:28
It’s in red because Jesus said it. Even our thought life can cause us to sin. Not an instant thought, but one that we choose to continue thinking about. None of us can live a life free from sin, especially in this world we live in. Who am I to say that my daughter doesn’t have the right to live her life as she sees fit with Jesus? She is a grown woman and can make her own choices, I am here to guide, love, and listen, not judge. But I wasn’t there in the beginning and it has taken some real God time to sort through this for myself.
If you are a parent who finds yourself hearing, “Mom, dad, I’m gay.” God bless you. You are being handed a great responsibility and how you react will make all the difference in the world in the future of your relationship with your kids. I don’t know what being the mom of a gay daughter looks like, or what kind of shunning I will receive because of it. What I know is that my family is my first ministry in life and if I don’t love them well, I have to answer to God. We are nowhere near perfect. I come from a broken home and since my mom died, I haven’t heard that I am valuable. But God, my favorite two words in the Bible, He says we are all valuable and that includes LGBTQ community. Maybe this has always been my calling, to fight for other people to have the right to be who they are. Who knows, I may just help change this world!
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
Let’s stop judging what only God has the right to judge and learn what love looks like.
As Beauty Unfolds... 