Brad’s “girlfriend” Tiffany dropped out of college and moved back to our home town, and Brad started getting concerned about his sins and his need for a savior, so he joined Maranatha Campus Ministries (MCM). Soon, one of the leaders there discovered that Brad was having sex with another guy in that group and also having anonymous sex with many guys at gay meeting places on campus. If any of you know the history of MCM, you are cringing right now. You can guess what happened next. Brad was outed in a very painful, public way. He was thrown out of the group and his sins were told to all the members. It wasn’t pretty. One of the leaders made sure to tell me all the details, even though I was not a member of MCM.
It finally hit me that I needed to show Brad a little compassion. As you can imagine, he was bitter at Christians at that point. For him, the painful way he was treated by Christians motivated him to differentiate himself from Christians. At the time, being gay-identified implied someone was anti-Christian, so he expressed his disgust with Christians by flaunting his homosexuality in some contexts. I asked why he was “hanging around gays”. I will never forget his answer. He said, “They love me, and that is more than I can say about Christians!” All I could say to him was that I actually loved him and that I am a Christian. This memory still brings tears to my eyes years later.
To be continued…
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
My Friendship with my Brother
This post will be about a unique kind of friend – my brother! I decided to post this after discussing it with several friends. I would especially like to thank Jay from Adventures of a Christian Collegian for his very helpful input and encouragement about this.
Brad (not his real name) was a year younger than me and we were always together in my earliest childhood memories. Um, there is no easy way to say this, but we were also together at the very end of his life, too. I was right there when he died and I literally saw him take his last breath…….
Brad also had same sex attraction, but unlike me, he went after gay sex with reckless abandon. I first noticed this when he was about 12 years old. He would stare at good looking guys a little too long and a little too often, and since I felt the same attraction I definitely noticed Brad doing that. We both kept quiet about this to each other and to the family. I saw him spending time with his male friends in high school and I could tell he valued those guys above his “girlfriend” Tiffany (not her real name). I pretended everything was normal and acted like I didn’t notice. I just didn’t want to deal with the trouble that would happen if the garbage hit the fan. You have to understand the environment at the time. We lived in the “Bible Belt” and went to a large (300+) youth group in a megachurch. Any confession of homosexuality would bring down ridicule on the family and repeated public humiliation for us in school, maybe even worse. So, Brad continued to “date” Tiffany and sneak around trying to get sex with guys. I kept my mouth shut about both Brad and myself.
To be continued…
Brad (not his real name) was a year younger than me and we were always together in my earliest childhood memories. Um, there is no easy way to say this, but we were also together at the very end of his life, too. I was right there when he died and I literally saw him take his last breath…….
Brad also had same sex attraction, but unlike me, he went after gay sex with reckless abandon. I first noticed this when he was about 12 years old. He would stare at good looking guys a little too long and a little too often, and since I felt the same attraction I definitely noticed Brad doing that. We both kept quiet about this to each other and to the family. I saw him spending time with his male friends in high school and I could tell he valued those guys above his “girlfriend” Tiffany (not her real name). I pretended everything was normal and acted like I didn’t notice. I just didn’t want to deal with the trouble that would happen if the garbage hit the fan. You have to understand the environment at the time. We lived in the “Bible Belt” and went to a large (300+) youth group in a megachurch. Any confession of homosexuality would bring down ridicule on the family and repeated public humiliation for us in school, maybe even worse. So, Brad continued to “date” Tiffany and sneak around trying to get sex with guys. I kept my mouth shut about both Brad and myself.
To be continued…
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Christian fellowship and gay jokes
Things have gone very well in my new church in San Diego. A few weeks ago I had a serious talk with one of the pastors and told him all about my fight with same sex attraction and he was supportive and helpful. He understands that I will probably never have enough attraction to a woman to get married, and that is fine with him. In other words, turning from homosexuality means turning to God, not necessarily turning to heterosexuality.
The people in this church have done their best to befriend me and make me feel included. I need that and I thank God for that. Today that pastor invited me over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner with his family and many other friends from the church. I had to laugh because there definitely was a gay theme to some of the joking around before dinner. Two very straight guys sat down together in a very small love seat right in front of their wives. Yes, those are the guys in the photo above. They joked about each others’ bodies and wrestled around like little kids. At that point the church worship leader walked in wearing multicolored flip flops and a tight fitting T-shirt that called attention to his well developed chest. One of the guys on the love seat stopped wrestling, looked up at the worship leader and said,
“You’re looking bi-curious today.”
I laughed a little too loud and long at that, but we were all ok with each other. Several guys in that room know about my attraction to men, and we all knew I would not be offended but that I was laughing along with them. I love it when I have friends I am so comfortable with, that I can joke even about that subject.
The people in this church have done their best to befriend me and make me feel included. I need that and I thank God for that. Today that pastor invited me over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner with his family and many other friends from the church. I had to laugh because there definitely was a gay theme to some of the joking around before dinner. Two very straight guys sat down together in a very small love seat right in front of their wives. Yes, those are the guys in the photo above. They joked about each others’ bodies and wrestled around like little kids. At that point the church worship leader walked in wearing multicolored flip flops and a tight fitting T-shirt that called attention to his well developed chest. One of the guys on the love seat stopped wrestling, looked up at the worship leader and said,
“You’re looking bi-curious today.”
I laughed a little too loud and long at that, but we were all ok with each other. Several guys in that room know about my attraction to men, and we all knew I would not be offended but that I was laughing along with them. I love it when I have friends I am so comfortable with, that I can joke even about that subject.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
A wedding and an expression of friendship.
I just returned from my friends’ wedding. Yes, this is the guy I called Justin in a previous post. It was an outdoor wedding in the backyard of the house of some friends from church. It featured the reliable San Diego sunshine and cloudless sky. Justin and his wife (I’ll call her “Megan”) are both very committed to a beautiful freedom from the slavery to money and possessions. Their material simplicity was clearly reflected in the wedding. When they shared their vows and they said “in sickness and in health”, I knew that Justin has been supportive and helpful to Megan in a recent illness. When they said “for richer or for poorer”, I knew that they have been trusting God while not knowing where they would live or where the next month’s rent would come from. God has provided beautifully in answer to their prayers. I cried joyful tears. That is real love.
At the reception afterwards in the same backyard Justin made it a point to talk to me. He wanted to express his friendship to me and then clear up a small misunderstanding that had hurt me greatly. Through a lack of communication I had been excluded from an event a few weeks earlier. I was trying to overlook the offensive action, but it had caused me much emotional pain. I was determined to wait until AFTER the wedding and honeymoon to bring it up, since I did not want to add any drama to the emotional overload that Justin and Megan were already dealing with. Well, Justin cared about me so much that he took time out from his own wedding to bring it up himself and to assure me that he did NOT want to exclude me and that I am one of his closest friends. I almost cried tears of joy again. I thank God for friends like Justin.
At the reception afterwards in the same backyard Justin made it a point to talk to me. He wanted to express his friendship to me and then clear up a small misunderstanding that had hurt me greatly. Through a lack of communication I had been excluded from an event a few weeks earlier. I was trying to overlook the offensive action, but it had caused me much emotional pain. I was determined to wait until AFTER the wedding and honeymoon to bring it up, since I did not want to add any drama to the emotional overload that Justin and Megan were already dealing with. Well, Justin cared about me so much that he took time out from his own wedding to bring it up himself and to assure me that he did NOT want to exclude me and that I am one of his closest friends. I almost cried tears of joy again. I thank God for friends like Justin.
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