a piece from my heart

Today (weeks ago actually) while sitting in church I was shaken a bit, I was forced to look back on a life, a life and a time that made me angry, to force myself to look back at that anger, to admit it to myself and forced me to ask forgiveness, and yet I find it hard to because it's a constant battle in my mind.

He showed a clip of the end of a football game where the player dropped the ball, it was the last play and caused the team to lose the big game, forgive the vagueness of the story, I had no idea for sure what or who it was. lol. It's not the clip that got me, it was the tweet of his that was repeated, speaking to God and basically, I worship you and live for you and this is how you do me? It's a paraphrase because I don't remember the exact phrase, but you get the idea. The discussion was around that, how we try to manipulate God, how sometimes we can expect good things for the good work we've done.

I flashed back to the lonely nights leading up to the day I finally accepted that I was gay and it wasn't worth fighting anymore. I remember those nights before, sitting on my couch amongst the mental anguish, amongst a terrible situation I started to create for myself, amongst all the emotional baggage crying out to God. I can still hear the voice in my head. Dear God! I have lived as you wanted, I treat people kindly, I've lived the 10 commandments, I have lived a good life and you burden me with this, this piece of me that will officially outcast me from everything and everyone I love. You took normalcy away from me, you put me into this life of persecution, this life of danger, you put me into a situation for people to hate me. Why? Why would you do this to me.

It was shortly there after I finally accepted in my heart and my mind that it was who I was and I could no longer fight it. I could no longer run from it, it was too big to shy away from. I still fought with God every day though, fighting about the repercussions of being a christian and accepting I was gay too. I would sit bitterly in church and stare at the people in my congregation judging them based on things in my own head and slowly turning from them. I drew myself away from church, I drew myself away from the bible (which to be honest has never been a strong suit for me), I turned my back on everything God was putting in front of me, everything he tried to tell me, I just kept pushing it away and throwing it back at him.

I believed that everything I had been told was a lie because God hated gay people. It's what I was taught growing up, it's what so many around me believed. God and I battled big time, more than I wrote about, more than I've ever discussed, and more than I would have ever let on. I was angry, I was bitter and felt as if God had let me down. I had lived up to my end of the bargain and this was his end of the bargain? All those years before he couldn't have changed me? He couldn't have taken this away for me? He couldn't just have let me live the normal life that was expected of me by society? I loved not being the center of attention, to be the person people knew of but didn't care enough to really know. To blend in, and yet here I was, gay, if people were to find out everyone would talk about me, everyone will point and stare, and to a degree, those thoughts are still here.

God and I have mended fences, it took some time, it took some new people being brought into my life and it took life to happen. It took this time to open my eyes, my mind and my heart to realize that all the answers I was searching so hard for were right in front of me in my questions, in my anger and in my bitterness. God would not create something he hated and he created me just as I am, so if there is no way God would create something he would hate, he must love me just as he created me.

Don't get me wrong, there are still days that I sit and talk with God about the situation, about the craziness in my head, but I'm starting to pay more attention to the signs, to the idea that there isn't anything wrong with me, I deserve his love as much as the next person and the anger and the bitterness all stemmed from ideas brought forth by man, not by God. The anger, the bitterness, it all stems from something much deeper, something I have yet to fully discover, something I have yet to open my eyes to, and yet I chose this one part of my life and took it out on God.

I'm still not there, I'm still not 100%, but I'm getting there, thanks to the grace of God.

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