Coming Out Part 1: O God, You Ask Too Much

This post is the first in a series of posts about my coming out process. Links to subsequent posts in the series will be provided at the end of each post. 

O God, you ask too much.

I wrote this in my journal on October 19, 2010. It was 2:00am on a weeknight; I had work the next day but didn’t care. I was fervently praying, occasionally sobbing, to God in my apartment; sometimes kneeling, other times pacing. I felt torn, crippled, angry, and broken.

You see, I had spent four years of college trying to get rid of my attraction to men and, after so much progress, was back to where I started.

I’ve liked other boys since I can remember—my first crush was a Swedish boy in first grade whose family moved after that year—but it was in seventh grade homeroom that I first asked myself that terrifying question: “Am I gay?”

Having been told homosexuality was wrong and a choice, I told myself “No. I choose No,” and tried to put it out of my mind. I was mildly successful.

In high school, I joined an Evangelical Baptist church; my parents drove me to Sunday School and bible study during the week until I could drive myself. I concerned myself with my grades; robotics club, then drama, then crew, were added to my quickly growing involvement in church.  I didn’t date much, save one five month relationship sophomore year, and really didn’t care to. As time passed, the question, “Am I gay?” kept growing in the back of my mind. But I continued to concern myself with other things.

Come Freshman year at Notre Dame, however, that question became impossible to ignore. By second semester, I had the pressing sense that this, whatever this was, was something I needed to figure out. And fast. I hit an all time low in my emotional health: I struggled to get out of bed, cried at all hours of the day for no reason, and, despite a desire to be with people, grew increasingly anti-social. I felt that people didn’t know me. I knew exactly why.

So, I began telling my new friends about my struggles, to mixed reactions. Looking for help, I found Exodus International. Exodus claimed to provide “a way out” of homosexuality for those who wanted to leave it: homosexuality was contrary to the way God made human beings, the result of the way we were raised, and a purely lustful attraction. Through therapy and prayer, change, to become heterosexual with redeemed sexual attraction, was possible.

Bingo.

For the next four years, this was the center of my life. I built a theology around it, asked my friends to keep me accountable for my same-sex temptations, sought out others who felt the same way and helped them see the light: that this was not the way we ought to be, that change was possible. I became increasingly serious about my faith, delving into theology textbooks and my Christian community, using a variety of therapeutic methods to reign in my wandering eyes.

My senior year I dated a girl and was getting ready to go to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary after working with some of the top Evangelical minds in the world.

Everything was going according to plan.

But it fell apart.

First, I realized I wasn’t financially able to go to seminary.

The week after, my girlfriend and I broke up.

Stuck at home far from college friends, I lacked a Christian community around me. My high school church, which I had already grown weary of in college, was hardly the fount of support and closeness my college group had been.

I resolved myself to continue my part-time work at Kohl’s until I could figure out what needed to happen next and to do my best getting involved in church. That was, until I got a job offer in Chicago working as a researcher at a large media agency. So, I picked up everything and, three weeks later, drove to Chicago to start my new post-grad life.

Things were looking up.

Until I met my first ever gay friend.

He was cute. Funny. Smart. Confident. Humble. I suddenly found myself head over heels for the guy; but, weirdly, unlike any attraction to men I had had before, it wasn’t just that he had a cute ass or a nice jaw-line or defined pecs. He was just a great guy.

My theology was suddenly shot to the core: after four years of therapy, I liked a guy. A guy who seemed to like me (like, for real, not just a straight guy). And it wasn’t lust. It wasn’t purely sexual. There was something good there. Something… beautiful about it.

Shit.

I feel literally torn. I find myself in a place I know all too well – caught between the call of Christ and my attraction to other men. There’s this guy who makes me nervous, nervous like I felt on my first few dates with my ex. I find myself stuck: who am I? If God is healing me, why these feelings? Am I to feel guilty? Sorrowful? Excited?

Everyday, I feel like I have to deny who I am to follow God.

But that’s what He’s asked of me.

O God, you ask too much.

Read the next post in this series here.