Day Thirty Five

Day 35

God’s Power in my Weakness

The Four “F” Words in my Life

Failures, Feelings, Frustrations and Fears, we all have them but nobody is talking about them. I wonder why not? That would just be too much to bear. If people knew what was inside of us, how could we walk out the front door of our homes and face the world in public? Who we are to others instead is just someone that everyone thinks we are. If they really knew what was inside of us, if they really knew who we were, what make us tick, would they still accept us? Would they still sit beside us in church and say they were our friends? So to be sure, we keep quiet about our true selves and go on pretending without ever telling anyone those little secrets we have grown up with all our lives. Mostly because we don’t want to look at them ourselves, they even scare us sometimes. We don’t want to admit we have feelings like that. How could we, we are Christian’s and God didn’t make people with stuff like that in them. Didn’t Jesus die on the cross to take all that stuff away and redeem us, to heal us and restore us? Wasn’t all the bad stuff in us supposed to go away when we accepted Him? When we prayed to Him to remove something wasn’t He supposed to answer us and give us the desires of our hearts like the bible says? Please Lord remove in me anything that doesn’t line up with your will in my life. That sounds like that right thing to pray for doesn’t it, but what about when it doesn’t seem to go away? What if it just continues to linger for the rest of you life? Is this what Paul was talking about when he said he had a THORN in his side? Something that reminded him that he always had a reason to have a need for the Lord in his life? Something that made him always realize that he was human and that he always needed to constantly rely on the Lord every minute of his life.

Well the same is true for this servant of God. Nine months before I was even born my mother began taking me to church. She was the spiritual leader in the home I was raised in. Everything I learned about what it meant to be a Christian I learned from my mother and my grandmother. At the age of nine I went forward willingly on my own with excitement down that long isle in church to secure my salvation for eternity. The enemy must have known soon after that what a man of God I would become some day as much as my Father in heaven did because it wasn’t long after that long run down the isle that he started messing with my mind and my head in so many ways. Nightmares and dreams and hallucinations after I woke up from those nightmares began to torment me every night. I was afraid to go to sleep at night. Monsters in my dreams with devils in them that were always just one step behind me coming after me. Fear of my dreams, fear of my father, and fear of my classmates at school. Fear seemed to run my life as a child. No place in my life seemed safe. Puberty came at an early age for me in a way that I didn’t understand and I became confused about who I was and what to do with those feelings. I was again fearful to speak up to anyone for the simple reason that I would be punished for doing something bad again. So I just kept quite about what was going on inside of me. So now instead of being afraid of everything outside of myself, I was now afraid of myself and the things that were inside of myself, something that I didn’t understand about myself. I thought that something inside of me was broken. Something in my head, something in my body, and something in the things I was thinking doing with both. I was too young to even know what the word gay or homosexuality was at that time. But I knew something wasn’t right at the same time. And I also knew that I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. Especially my father or my mother because she would talk to my father, she told him everything. I was left all alone with all this stuff. Already I was asking questions to God like “Why me Lord, what did I do to deserve this? Am I going to have to live with these feelings all my life? Why can’t I just be normal like everyone else?” These were difficult questions for a twelve year old to have to deal with and to suffer with at that age. While every other twelve year old is just concerned about playing with his friends, I was worried about hiding and keeping secrets about myself and feeling depressed over things I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why God wasn’t answering my prayers or even if He was listening to me. I prayed everyday for an answer but none ever came. I couldn’t see why He was being so silent. I begged and pleaded every night, I prayed for forgiveness for my thoughts and feelings, I asked God to take away the evil that must be inside me, and at times I just wanted to die to make the madness go away. Imagine a twelve or thirteen year old boy wishing he were dead because he didn’t want to live with the feelings in his own mind. I remember how weak and insecure these feelings made me feel all the time. As my teen years went on, these feeling seemed to consume me more and more. My high school years seemed to become one lie after another. My grades suffered, my attendance suffered, I learned how to forge my counselors signature on re-admits very well after every time I ditched classes. The only distraction I found was my involvement with the children’s department at my church. Actually I think it was a way for me to re-live my own childhood again in a safe environment. It was the first time in my life I was receiving recognition for a job well done for doing something right and good for someone else. I enjoyed seeing the happiness on the faces of the kids that I never felt as a child growing up, and knowing that I was a part of that happiness for them made me feel proud that I could be a part of it. Also the praise I received from their parents was something I never seemed to get in my own home growing up. I had found a place to get what I had never gotten before. This helped in so many ways to subdue the thoughts that haunted me so strongly through those teenage years.

Remember I said I hadn’t even seen the word gay written anywhere before? Or even seen it mentioned other than used in a joke on the playground? Coincidently shortly after I heard a guest speaker give his testimony one day in the Jr. Hi department, and I prayed a prayer that I wanted a testimony like that man where I wanted the same testimony as he had that God would give me one where HE would save my life over and over again, I saw that word printed in a newspaper that read GAY HOTLINE and a phone number. At first, to me a hotline meant trouble, and why would someone that was gay be in trouble? I could think of many reasons. It took a couple of weeks for me to get up the courage to call the hotline to see what it was all about. When I did, this was the beginning of the end, so to speak. It was the beginning of a change in the direction of my life in a drastic way. It was as if as soon as I prayed that prayer for God to give me a testimony, the course of my life completely changed all of a sudden. Soon after I was leaving church, my family and friends for a future of confusion, mystery, and unknown experiences that would leave me in a world that I never knew existed. My testimony soon began to take shape, from one life threatening experience after another, from one mishap to another. Was this what God had planned for my life after all? Why would he allow all this to happen to me I wondered. Did He think I was some kind of super hero that could withstand so much pain and agony to come out on top like I have now? And not just me but especially people like my mom and the rest of my family that had to watch and go through so much with me over the past twenty some years. How strong did He think they were to suffer right along with me? It was bad enough being labeled the BAD KID growing up as a child, but now I was really living up to that label as an adult with my addictions, my arrests, my trips to the many rehabs, and psychiatric hospitals for the paranoid delusions I would inflict on myself from my drug use. Over and over again I would ask WHY? Why was all of this happening to me? I had forgot about that prayer I prayed for a testimony where I wanted to be able to sit in front of a large crowd of kids and or people and tell them the story of how GOD saved my life over and over again. Well in order to do that He had to actually save my life over and over again didn’t He? Through all my fears, through all my failures, and through all my frustrations, God has never been out of the picture. I never understood all those stories in the bible growing up and how they could possibly have any meaning for me but now I see they are as relevant today as they were when they were written and lived back then. The Egyptians wandered aimlessly for forty years, so did I. The enemy messed with JOB trying to discourage him, he did also with me. Job prayed for death to befall him. I did too. He also cursed the day he was given life, so did I at times. Paul had his thorn. So will I for the rest of my life. It keeps me dependant on Christ every day of my life. It lets me know I need Him every day of my life. What once was a weakness that I always gave into is now a reminder that I need Him more and more every minute of every day. Through all my pain and suffering has come strength and courage that I never knew I had before. He has led me to a place in life where I can develop my faith and strengthen my soul with a body of believers that I can share with intimately. The wilderness I wandered in was not in vein by no means, the experiences I have had and come through are now my purpose He has developed in me to be able to give back to others. It has taught me the true meaning of the word LOVE and COMPASSION in a way few ever get to experience.