I Am A Gay Man

I am a gay man.  I know that will shock some of you who I have not spoken to directly about it.  Yes, I was married, yes I have children.  But, I’m finally being true to myself.  I can’t say that if I had it to do over, I’d do anything different - that is a hard statement for anyone to make about anything, - for one, I wouldn’t have my children.   But, in the present, finally, now I am me – and I am out.  

I started “coming out” about a year ago, slowly.  For some reason that term rubs me the wrong way – but at this point in time, in our society, - that’s a needed term.  Someday, it won’t be needed; LGBTQ folks will simply be accepted, period.  Coming out as a member of the LGBTQ community won’t be any more needed than coming out as a human.   I told close family members and friends over the last few months.  

However, I’ve been struggling with how to “let everyone else know”, so that I could move past this “coming out” phase and live my life.  I have contemplated with posting it on Facebook for months.  But those thoughts even came with who to block from the post since I still wasn’t ready to tell them.

However, the events in Orlando yesterday changed all that.  I can’t put into words the level of grief and despair I am feeling over the massacre at the night club.  Personally, it is hitting me on a level of my soul deeper than 9/11 did.     Between that, and a tweet from the man whose writings finally “threw me over the top” when it came to believing that I could be both a gay man and a Christian (@VinesMatthew) I no longer care who knows or what they think.   The tweet read:  “I try to be as patient as possible with allies who don’t feel ready to speak up.  But I can’t help but wonder: if not today, then when?”

I am fully convinced that God is fully accepting of the LGBTQ person and their sexuality.  When I sat down to write this post, there were a million things I had in my mind to say to justify this to those who will disagree with me.   I’m not going to go there in this post.  I will blog about that and so much more in future posts.

I am simply going to say that I have thought about this every day, many times a day, since I was 10 years old.  Even if I thought about it only twice a day, that’s 20,000 = times, and I guarantee it was more.  Over the last five years, I have spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours studying the Bible and other texts to come to my conclusions.

Let me give you a taste of what life was like for me before I came to this conclusion:

·         I couldn’t tell anyone because much of my family friends and church will reject me.

·         I would have given anything to be “normal.”

·         I cried out to God for years to make me “normal.”  But he didn’t.

·         Churches that were supposed to care for me, led me to believe that God doesn’t want anything to do with gay people.”

·         I knew I was a mistake.

·         I had no one to talk to.

·         I was angry at God.

·         I left my faith behind for most of the last ten years.

·         I experienced deep depression, fell into an addiction, and attempted suicide – more than once.

I’ve reached a place where I feel comfortable with myself and with my my God's love for me .   For those millions who have not, I pray.

On a side note – let me say especially to the teen that might someday read this and is questioning their sexuality – GOD LOVES YOU.  I LOVE YOU.  MANY PEOPLE LOVE YOU.  YOU ARE WORTHY.  YOU ARE VALUABLE.  YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.  Find someone you trust to talk about this.  

Like I said I had so much more in my mind.  I just counted; I had nine pages of notes for this post.  I’ll blog and tweet so much more about that in the future.  Follow my blog here or follow me on twitter @KinzieBill

LOVE is the Answer…Doesn’t matter the Question.