"The importance of dealing with the past".
Initially whenever somebody would mention “the past” my lesbian background would stand before me. I lived a very secretive lesbian life so that nobody except the two of us involved knew what the truth was. The more I wanted to keep it a secret after I became serious with God, the more He guided me to be honest about it and work through it. While it was a painful process, today I am very glad I followed Him through the process instead of locking it away. It is one of those things that I cannot associate with any more. As much as I once saw myself as being “born gay” I am now far removed from it, unable to associate with it at all.
Yet in honesty it was easier to deal with the sexual side of lesbianism than the relational and emotional side of it. It took much longer to break free from becoming over-dependent in relationships, unable to make decisions that would potentially cause friction in human relationships while I easily overlooked the distance those decisions caused between me and God in my own heart. It was more difficult because of the hidden nature of these relational and emotional sins. It is easy to hide these from others and continue to secretly enjoy female closeness in an inordinate way without the other party even realising it. What made it more difficult, and what caused it to linger? For me it was the very fact that it remained a secret – nobody knew. Until I could no longer ignore the fact that God knows. It is no good to confess to worship Him alone and yet for my life to be intertwined in relationships where I would accommodate sin, compromise my Christian standards and allow inner impurity in my own heart just to maintain the closeness that I craved. All this happened while people thought I was a very committed Christian. I was no longer able to convince myself that there was no problem – because I was confronted by the God who knows and sees my heart. I was confronted by the inner intentions of my own heart, regardless of what others see or think about me. It was only at this point that I started to allow God to deal with my relational and emotional sin. Since they are so subtle, brutal honesty with myself and God was required to expose these hidden intentions of my heart and confess them as sinful. This was hard – it was for instance far easier to claim to have a strong personality rather than to acknowledge that I was controlling and demanding. But calling the sin by its name exposed it for what it was, and this truth helped me to turn away from it rather than to give it a nice name or explain it away.
Even after I dealt with this debris from my past, I still maintained a view of myself very much linked to my past. I felt like a second rate Christian. It was almost as if I deserved hardship. I saw myself as insignificant and not worthy of any good. Ironically this kept me bound to arrogance and a lifestyle where I constantly had to fend for myself instead of relying on God. Whenever difficulty came I would cringe and run away. This running away sometimes outwardly looked like an angry self-sufficiency, other times like hiding away as if I was a wounded animal. I expected punishment from God when I did wrong, and could not receive His grace and love. So I felt deprived and lonely. I was scared of being rejected and interpreted everything from that perspective, thus over-compensating to be accepted by people and consequently struggled to live a consistent, transparent Christian life. Even though I did not see myself as a lesbian any more, my past crippled me in my Christian walk not so much because of what others thought and said about me, or how they responded to me, but because of how I saw myself. I had a flaw, or so I thought: my past stood against me with no way to cut the cord that linked me to it.
It took time for me to realise that I was completely new: Even though I clung to 2 Cor 5:17 for dear life outwardly, my inner life condemned me to doubt the truth of this verse in an unspoken and paralysing fear – if God cannot help me, is there hope for me? Once again God brought eternity into focus. When He gave me new life, He changed me forever: My wayward inner life was not proof of the fact that I did not change, rather it was the result of my unwillingness to accept the new identity He has given me. It was surprisingly hard to lay down my burden (i.e. myself) at His feet and accept that freedom that is for free (because He already paid for it). Nothing crushed my resistance (and softened me) like the realisation that God fully accepted me as I was, and fully changed me to be like Him regardless of who I used to be. There were no harsh words, just a gentle insistence that He has changed me, and I needed to accept that free gift. I have told others about the free gift of rebirth and new life, yet embracing the new identity that comes with it was not easy for me. Not only because it was so foreign, but more so because I could not accept being accepted. It was only when I accepted this new identity that I was able to peacefully live in the reality of 2 Cor 5:17 rather than to be a “2 Cor 5:17 activist”. As I said, this gentleness crushed my resistance and dissolved my angry (anxious rather) arrogance into a silent and peaceful gratitude far beyond what words can express. When I reached this point my wayward and rebellious inner life started to give way as I accepted His grace. While there used to be a time that I never thought that my inner life could ever change, it was no longer necessary for it to change, because what I tried to change so hard for so long was nowhere to be found anymore. It was just gone. Not primarily because it has changed, but rather because I left it behind and moved on. I had a new identity.
If only I believed the Bible when I read “the wages of sin is death” in Rom 6:23. But I was selective in dealing with sin. I took up arms against the socially unacceptable sins (like lesbianism), but I overlooked (and in fact cherished) other sins, secret sins, like for instance masturbation. I suppressed the inner voice that took me to task about these and instead insisted on arguing about them (even with God). I regret this, since it robbed me of the abundant life for years. The struggle I described above to accept God’s grace, to accept a new identity and to live in the reality of 2 Cor 5:17 would have been far less intense if I did not retain hidden sin. But instead of acknowledging my hidden sin, I accepted a false identity that robbed me of the freedom and abundance God gave me. This secret sin led me to believe lies about myself and doubt God. Sin really does kill - I became willing to give up the enjoyment of sin for inner peace and freedom only when I finally saw this truth. This was not an easy choice, especially because nobody other than God and I knew about these secret sins. The choice in the end became the simple choice between the love of sin and the love for God. I cannot avoid Him who can see my inner thoughts and intentions. I cannot convince Him that I am powerless to say no to the sin when in actual fact it is because I do not want to say no because of the enjoyment of the sin. Yet through this process He never stopped loving me and pointing me to the truth, until I was able (willing rather) to start making this choice.
Breaking free from the past for me was far more than breaking free from lesbianism or masturbation, or other outward sin. It also included becoming truthful about those events where I was too afraid to acknowledge even to myself what had happened, let alone discuss it with God. But primarily it was learning about the immensity of His love and the free gift of life, as well as the fact that God trusts me with making the choice between Him and sin. He does not buy my excuses of lack of self-discipline or anything else to justify the fear, ambivalence and falsehood in my relationship with Him. He knows my heart. Any discussion with Him has to end up being honest, because He already knows everything. It was in this realisation and living in this reality that I finally found the courage to be truthful about my past and my present life to the bone. In this truthfulness I found the freedom that I so much wanted, because God also insisted on the truth of His dealings with me in my life. I realised that it was not so much the past that influenced my present life, as it was my present life of dishonesty and falsehood that kept my past alive in my own heart, so that I could not accept God’s free gift of a new life. Having found the One who knows me to this level yet accepts me and changes me to be like Him, I can think of only one appropriate response: To worship Him and Him alone.
Marana
No comments:
Post a Comment