Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2017 14:40:10 GMT -7
Not sure where to begin... I feel like there is so much inside of me trying to get out. Different thoughts, different intentions...different ideas. I find myself in a constant state of worry and contemplation during the day. I am married to a wonderful woman. We’ve been together for over four years. She is really everything I had ever hoped for in a wife. She is beautiful, talented, anointed, caring, thoughtful, passionate, in short she is amazing.
But in the recess of my mind there has been a battle. While she is everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife, and she is so amazing. There is something I’ve battled from a very young age. Something that not a lot of people know about. At the age of 4 and 5 I was molested on two different occasions by two different male family members. Those incidences lead me down a curious path that led me experimenting with another young boy whom was the son of my mother’s friend. We were the same age and just curious, I guess more than anything else. We got caught one day and I remember looking back and thinking about how hurt they all were.
My mom pulled me aside and asked me how I learned about any of it. And I remember telling her about what happened to me. I don’t remember much after that. I was just a normal young boy, I liked girls still and had a few little cute girlfriends that little boys have. I remember kissing one girls hand in kindergarten and it was just such a rush. So to say I had strict homosexual tendencies would be inaccurate. But a couple years later probably around the age of 9 or 10 another one of my mother’s friends sons and I began experimenting kissing one another.
It only happened one time that I can remember, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen more. Years passed and we moved away to a new city. I was religiously ostracized in my school for being a Christian that didn’t “do” what other kids did. Throughout this time I had girlfriends, and even kissed a few of them, and I liked them. I was still very attracted to girls, I don’t remember having a big attraction to boys at this point. But I remember being called ‘gay’ all the time and different words that are used to describe a homosexual individual.
The only thing I could think about was everything that had happened to me up to this point. And the thoughts kept racing in my mind ‘there must be something showing that makes me seem this way for them to see it.’ Even thoughts that they might be right crept in. And part of me wondered if they were true. I became friends with a young man probably around the age of 14, which led to my first teenage sexual experience with someone of the same gender. We didn’thave ‘sex’ but we did enough that made me feel dirty and bad. Looking back I can see the progression of how it came to happen. Small things and thoughts that I let creep into my mind. The natural flood of hormones all young people deal with. There were a few more encounters with him before they stopped. And in betweenthis time I started having sexual encounters with girls as well. And I enjoyed it.
As I grew older another male friend of mine and I started having homosexual activities between us. Up until this point and past I had still never had full intercourse with anyone, male or female. However when I was 18 I lost my virginity to a girl that I wasn’t even dating at the time, over the course of the next 2-3 years we would ‘hook-up’ multiple times. I had my last homosexual experience with another male around that time. And since had sex with 3 other girls. But during all of this I still battled this inner struggle. Why I was sexually attracted to the same sex. I never asked for it. I never wanted it. But I never fought it. Looking back now I wish I had done more, but I was a stupid teenager who was wrapped up in a quick get off than anything else. And it has haunted me till this day. During a time when I was really trying to do and be better after all of this, I met my wife. And she was amazing, and I fell in love with her and asked her to marry me.
Before we started dating though we had a minister come through and preach for my church. During one of the altar calls he prayed for me and began to prophecy over me and said these words, I can’t remember verbatim anymore but the message was this, “The devil has used people’s words and actions to cause you to battle within yourself, a battle that was never in the plan of God. The voices inside your head have tried to destroy you, but they will not succeed. You will have a wife, and you will be used by God.” There was more to it than that, but I can’t bring the words out right now. I’ve wrote them down somewhere but I can’t find them, but basically the message was to me was that this battle that I struggled with was never God’s intention for me, but the devil used people to make it a battle that I had to face. I remember that night feeling so liberated and free. Afterwards I met my wife and we got engaged and about a month before our wedding these fears began to race into my mind.
I began seeing stories about preachers and Christians who were married for 20+ years leaving their marriages for the homosexual lifestyle. There was even a point a week before my wedding that I almost called it off. I loved my wife, but I was so scared of making the wrong decision and so scared that I was going to hurt her that I was consumed with it. I called a preacher friend of mine and he talked me down and I got married. And I love my wife, she is the most important person in this world to me.
But these thoughts and fears have never left.
Ever since I was probably 12 or 13 I’ve struggled with pornography. Heterosexual and Homosexual. Part of me thought that it would all be better once I got married, but it hasn’t. And I have so much guilt and shame and uncertainty, that there are even times I’m unable to perform because thoughts that say “You’re gay, why are you trying to be intimate with a woman.” Come to my mind. And sometimes I succumb to those thoughts and still watch pornography. I go to churchthree times a week. I teach Sunday school class, I lead young people. I love God. I love His word. But here I am struggling in my mind to get passed all these failures. And I’m too ashamed and to afraid to say anything to anybody. I believe in God’s delivering power, I believe in His holy touch. I really do! I’ve felt it.
But I’m almost to ashamed to even pray about it. It just sits in the back of my mind. I know that I need to pray about. I know God doesn’t want to condemn me, but rather wants to help me, yet I do nothing. Yet I struggle. Yet I turmoil. I am so torn in my body and mind. Half of me thinks that it’d be easier to just give it all up now, and live the way I feel. I find myself searching for things that would make it okay, and if you search hard enough you can make a justification for it being okay… However there is this different part of me that says keep fighting… there is still hope. So I press on. Hurting on the inside because I don’t want to hurt my wife, or my family or my friends. I carry this burden, with no foreseeable way to let it go. No understandable way to get passed it. I am so miserable in myself. I am so lost in myself. I just want peace from this. I just want hope from this pain and circumstance. I’m tired of it… and I want it gone. At times I feel like there two minds inside of my body fighting for control, and I’m not sure who is going to win…
But in the recess of my mind there has been a battle. While she is everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife, and she is so amazing. There is something I’ve battled from a very young age. Something that not a lot of people know about. At the age of 4 and 5 I was molested on two different occasions by two different male family members. Those incidences lead me down a curious path that led me experimenting with another young boy whom was the son of my mother’s friend. We were the same age and just curious, I guess more than anything else. We got caught one day and I remember looking back and thinking about how hurt they all were.
My mom pulled me aside and asked me how I learned about any of it. And I remember telling her about what happened to me. I don’t remember much after that. I was just a normal young boy, I liked girls still and had a few little cute girlfriends that little boys have. I remember kissing one girls hand in kindergarten and it was just such a rush. So to say I had strict homosexual tendencies would be inaccurate. But a couple years later probably around the age of 9 or 10 another one of my mother’s friends sons and I began experimenting kissing one another.
It only happened one time that I can remember, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen more. Years passed and we moved away to a new city. I was religiously ostracized in my school for being a Christian that didn’t “do” what other kids did. Throughout this time I had girlfriends, and even kissed a few of them, and I liked them. I was still very attracted to girls, I don’t remember having a big attraction to boys at this point. But I remember being called ‘gay’ all the time and different words that are used to describe a homosexual individual.
The only thing I could think about was everything that had happened to me up to this point. And the thoughts kept racing in my mind ‘there must be something showing that makes me seem this way for them to see it.’ Even thoughts that they might be right crept in. And part of me wondered if they were true. I became friends with a young man probably around the age of 14, which led to my first teenage sexual experience with someone of the same gender. We didn’thave ‘sex’ but we did enough that made me feel dirty and bad. Looking back I can see the progression of how it came to happen. Small things and thoughts that I let creep into my mind. The natural flood of hormones all young people deal with. There were a few more encounters with him before they stopped. And in betweenthis time I started having sexual encounters with girls as well. And I enjoyed it.
As I grew older another male friend of mine and I started having homosexual activities between us. Up until this point and past I had still never had full intercourse with anyone, male or female. However when I was 18 I lost my virginity to a girl that I wasn’t even dating at the time, over the course of the next 2-3 years we would ‘hook-up’ multiple times. I had my last homosexual experience with another male around that time. And since had sex with 3 other girls. But during all of this I still battled this inner struggle. Why I was sexually attracted to the same sex. I never asked for it. I never wanted it. But I never fought it. Looking back now I wish I had done more, but I was a stupid teenager who was wrapped up in a quick get off than anything else. And it has haunted me till this day. During a time when I was really trying to do and be better after all of this, I met my wife. And she was amazing, and I fell in love with her and asked her to marry me.
Before we started dating though we had a minister come through and preach for my church. During one of the altar calls he prayed for me and began to prophecy over me and said these words, I can’t remember verbatim anymore but the message was this, “The devil has used people’s words and actions to cause you to battle within yourself, a battle that was never in the plan of God. The voices inside your head have tried to destroy you, but they will not succeed. You will have a wife, and you will be used by God.” There was more to it than that, but I can’t bring the words out right now. I’ve wrote them down somewhere but I can’t find them, but basically the message was to me was that this battle that I struggled with was never God’s intention for me, but the devil used people to make it a battle that I had to face. I remember that night feeling so liberated and free. Afterwards I met my wife and we got engaged and about a month before our wedding these fears began to race into my mind.
I began seeing stories about preachers and Christians who were married for 20+ years leaving their marriages for the homosexual lifestyle. There was even a point a week before my wedding that I almost called it off. I loved my wife, but I was so scared of making the wrong decision and so scared that I was going to hurt her that I was consumed with it. I called a preacher friend of mine and he talked me down and I got married. And I love my wife, she is the most important person in this world to me.
But these thoughts and fears have never left.
Ever since I was probably 12 or 13 I’ve struggled with pornography. Heterosexual and Homosexual. Part of me thought that it would all be better once I got married, but it hasn’t. And I have so much guilt and shame and uncertainty, that there are even times I’m unable to perform because thoughts that say “You’re gay, why are you trying to be intimate with a woman.” Come to my mind. And sometimes I succumb to those thoughts and still watch pornography. I go to churchthree times a week. I teach Sunday school class, I lead young people. I love God. I love His word. But here I am struggling in my mind to get passed all these failures. And I’m too ashamed and to afraid to say anything to anybody. I believe in God’s delivering power, I believe in His holy touch. I really do! I’ve felt it.
But I’m almost to ashamed to even pray about it. It just sits in the back of my mind. I know that I need to pray about. I know God doesn’t want to condemn me, but rather wants to help me, yet I do nothing. Yet I struggle. Yet I turmoil. I am so torn in my body and mind. Half of me thinks that it’d be easier to just give it all up now, and live the way I feel. I find myself searching for things that would make it okay, and if you search hard enough you can make a justification for it being okay… However there is this different part of me that says keep fighting… there is still hope. So I press on. Hurting on the inside because I don’t want to hurt my wife, or my family or my friends. I carry this burden, with no foreseeable way to let it go. No understandable way to get passed it. I am so miserable in myself. I am so lost in myself. I just want peace from this. I just want hope from this pain and circumstance. I’m tired of it… and I want it gone. At times I feel like there two minds inside of my body fighting for control, and I’m not sure who is going to win…
. So glad you opened up about your struggles. I am praying that you find a safe person to tell this to face to face. I believe once you put it out in the light the enemy will run. God is helping you through this, all is not lost. He loves you and wants to help you. You are not alone, I'm sure many men have gone through the same struggles, especially after going through the trauma of being molested. I pray that the Lord will lead you to the right person. It took my husband two years to find a safe person to talk to about his affair but once it was confessed to our pastor and to myself, a HUGE burden was lifted. The enemy wants to keep you isolated and in fear but that's not what God says! Perfect love casts out fear, and where do we get that perfect love from? God. He loves you, that's fact. Praying for you, brother.