breaking the hush

To be completely honest, there are several days I ask how I got here. At times, it’s so surreal to think that I am sitting in a Texas prison. The shock and awe wears off after a few months and this just becomes a way of life, but every now and then, if I stop and focus on where I live and actually think of my surroundings, the people I see every day, the lack of freedoms I have, that are taken for granted by those on the outside, it’s kind of dumbfounding. I hear of friends of a different time, a better place, getting married, starting families, living in such a different universe from my own. I read of and see institutes of which I was once connected, growing, changing, and advancing. I’m not one to grasp onto ‘what if’s’ or heed to my regrets, mainly only my sins, my disobedience. At the same time, of these I repent and learn and grow. And these sins bring brokenness from which came self-realization and spiritual lessons that may have come easier for others, but for me they were hard but permanent, eternal!

So, when reflecting on how I got here, I believe I’ve found an eternal answer that will never be forgotten. Through my childhood as a confused internally turmoiled boy or as an adolescent, teenager, lonely, angry, and hiding it all; or even my early twenties giving my life for the Lord and desiring to follow him while still struggling with lifelong skeletons and demons, there was one thing I would cry out to God for…I wanted all the feelings of a healthy heterosexual man. I didn’t care if I had to shout out my darkest secrets from a mountain top, I would, if that price tag of shame and embarrassment came with heterosexuality! Though, there was legitimate freedom when being open and honest with mentors, pastors, and friends, there always seemed to ne that monster nipping at my heel. Bit when asking, ‘How did I get here?’ I realized it was because I searched so long for the wrong thing, crying out to god for heterosexuality when the entire time I should have been seeking holiness! This is my lesson through my brokenness. It was never being 100% heterosexual-losing all and every attraction to the same sex, but seeking 100% holiness! Like any skeleton, demon, sin-once it’s recognized and repented of, its holiness that puts us in the throne room of God. Being ‘straight’ doesn’t get me there, separating myself from my sin does. Whether that sin is gay porn, straight porn, promiscuity, lying, gossiping, hatred, coveting, adultery, or plain disobedience. Through holiness and spending time with my Creator, I am able to find my identity in Him. So, no matter what ‘cause’ gave me the ‘effect’ of my same sex attraction, I am able to hold to a hope of a blessed and favored future! I’m able to move on from those sins from my past and strive for holiness. Holiness is obeying Him and brings His purposes to life for me, through me. I am no longer a slave to my sin, my addiction, my perversions, lies of the enemy, but I am a slave and servant to the One and Only Living God-Redeemer and Restorer. As I seek holiness, He is the One whom restores me to a place I could never stand without Him; No place I could be on my own; A place where He will receive all the glory. So when I think of THIS world I live in and I remember the world I called home, what seems like years ago, I cling to this hope. This place of restoration. This place I will stand renewed, restored, changed on this earth and the next!