Author: Gen Z (anonymous)
“I don’t think I’m ready (to come out) but I think it’s about time someone reads my story like I did yours.”
So, there is something about music that I cannot explain. And am not talking about 2000 when mom held me in her hands and all she could help herself to do was to cry and laugh at the same time. “My baby is normal!” she may have said. I was a perfect, maybe not a so bouncing baby boy! Lol!
You know there’s always a page that hasn’t been read in every book”
These words are what made me share my story. I have in all my little days that I have lived tried to tell my story. Sometimes the truth and mostly what am expected to say.
February 14 2015 found me in my high school, hands lifted high saying and sighing my dedication to the cross. I was fresh from primary school trying to build my person.
Finding my reality
I loved God! I was free and I just wanted to be his. All I wanted to do was to please him. I wanted him to see me more….maybe say something like he did about David. I wanted to be beyond reproach. All I wanted was Him!
That year I found him and also lost him.
Boys were so beautiful. I couldn’t help but stare at boys we shared the bathroom with. They caused such an effect on me that made such a rush on every sense. I didn’t hate the feeling. I had more showers-jokes on you if you think I loved the cold showers at school near the slopes of Mount Kenya. But all I wanted was to see a naked body of a boy. Fill my eyes with their well drawn bodies. Such a perfect specimen!
God I never hated it at first and I guess that’s what made me hate myself. How can’t I hate it, I was lusting! And to make it worst, it was unnatural.
Seeing them naked was now becoming too normal. I wanted to touch them and feel their warmth by my skin and this is where my confusion and my biggest battle with my consciousness and mind started. Everything I believed conflicted with what I felt. I repented for masturbating once. I repented again and again because I was now doing it every day. I was lost and broken. I fasted because of losing control but the more I tried to stop the more I delved deeper in my fantasies.
Internet told me that I was gay! I hated gay! Everyone hates gays, even God hated them so much that he burnt a whole city because of them.
I am not gay!
That was my now biggest prayer. God I don’t wanna be gay. I was hopeful. I fasted. Read the word and all my tender mind could think.
But sadly I was gay. I was so even when I prayed him. I didn’t change even when I gave a seed with all my pocket money.
And now I was feeling condemned even when I didn’t do anything wrong, I was afraid that FAITH, the only thing that gave me purpose and an identity had been ripped off by some weird feelings.
Angered, sad, fear, bitter and self hating is what I became.
I had my first panic attack during lunch time when the chairman of the CU said that we’d start praying about the rising cases of homosexuality in the school. Though I was not active sexually, I knew very well I fitted in that category of ‘homosexuals’ and I could not dare mention it to anyone. People were praying that we die or be kicked out of school….my worst days of my high school were starting. Days of self loathing, anxiety and identity confusion.
A lot has happened. Many things have happened most which have formed my today’s’ opinions and also erased some biases socialized to me by society. I have learnt to love Jesus in this weakness. To trust Him and to run to Him even when the thorn in my flesh hurts. The cross isn’t as heavy as it had been because I have learnt that it always gets better. And though sometimes it doesn’t get any better, one thing remains; grace is sufficient.
Question is, do I really have to tell my story? What’s so special about it?
Now my story isn’t a question of whether I should tell it or not, it’s what it says about me that matter. It’s about the uniqueness of my experiences with a not “normal” sexuality, “and walking with great a God who demands holiness. It’s rarely told and that’s why it must be told.
No one ever wants to sit down and listen about how a same sex attracted person can be serving God even when they are not acting on their feelings. We are hated for just existing.
It isn’t that I didn’t pray or keep the law. God knows I did.I wasn’t even far from grace. But grace didn’t provide what I thought I needed. I wanted out. Out of feeling little and like am dejected, but in his grace he offered a reminder. A reminder of God and He’s beautiful intentions for mankind (not to harm me but to give me life in abundance)
I have been tempted always, tempted to satisfy my feelings in ways that are not consistent with God’s word, but in those moments better than ever have I been reminded that something greater than me was happening. Bigger than a momentary desire to fulfill my lust.
And so every day I chose Jesus. I chose him even when my mind collapses and they call it depression. I chose him even when social media rises against my kind. I chose him even when everything says I am not supposed to be his. I chose Him because he chose me first and I never asked for any of this but he gave it to me as a gift and now I accept it. It’s not a thorn, it’s a gift! A reminder that earth is not my home.
And if I were to speak to a church with pews filled with pastors and servants who think we are beyond redemption, I don’t think there’s anything I’d wish to tell them anymore than what the Bible tells them, to preach love. And we don’t have to debate what love is, for we all know when we are out of it.
But maybe I’d tell them how every morning I have braced my cross. Sometimes the mornings are fuzzy and sometimes the morning is warm. The cross on my shoulder weighs different every time I pick it but grace is sufficient and they need not
be weight on my cross too.
To you who is reading this story and you can relate I pray that grace abounds forever. I pray that you shall not tire, that every day the warmth of hope and the light of Grace will show you God, home where we belong.
Those who have loved us please love us even more.