Latest / Mental Health Matters for Christians / Ep10 The Hidden Pain Behind Same-Sex Attraction

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Ep10 The Hidden Pain Behind Same-Sex Attraction · Mental Health Matters for Christians

• 0:00
  If this is the way that being a man is, if this is the way that
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  engaging with other guys looks like that, I'm always going to
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  be made fun of. Like less than.
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  Not enough. Then I just quit.
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  I'm not going to play the game. I just spilled my guts.
• 0:15
  I shared everything with her. I said, you know, I'm gay.
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  I don't want to be. I want Jesus.
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  But I don't know how, if that's an option for me, what that
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  looks like for me. And she looked me in the eyes
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  and she said. Welcome to the show today I have
• 0:37
  someone you're going to love. His name is Justin Greenfield
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  and he's an author, a speaker. AI forgot the third one to.
• 0:46
  Be a children. Spiritual Director?
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  Oh, I don't know why I forgot that.
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  Anyway, welcome Justin. Thank you for having me, I'm
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  excited to be here. Thank you.
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  And I might have left out some other qualifications or things
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  you do. So for people who don't know
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  you, I always want to start with, like, tell us your story.
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  But if I, if I butchered that intro and wanted you to like, if
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  I didn't make you sound impressive enough, I mean,
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  you're impressive to me. OK.
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  Yeah, I, I, I think people are going to love to hear your
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  story, and that's what I want to get into.
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  But did I leave anything out of like, your amazing ministry
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  capacity and what you do? Go ahead.
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  And I'll share a little bit about some of my studies and
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  interests. So my, my undergrad is
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  admissions where I took the issue of homosexuality and
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  looked at the people, group of people who are facing same sex
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  attractions, how to share the gospel, what sort of interest,
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  little intricacies of the gospel would make the greatest impact
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  in somebody's heart who's facing these things.
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  And then I went on to Graduate School and studied spiritual
• 1:49
  formation at Talbot School of Theology.
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  And so that helps me to be able to help people with their next
• 1:56
  step with Jesus, understand what that is and help them find the
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  tools, the disciplines to participate with the Holy Spirit
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  to move, move forward with him. But you know, my biggest
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  qualification is that I'm just one beggar showing other beggars
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  where to find bread. Come on.
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  I love that. So yeah, we're going to have a
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  conversation about sexual redemption.
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  Amen. I know that's your your history
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  and how you want to use your story.
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  I forget who it was you said your your mess is your message.
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  Amen. So can you tell us your story?
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  Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in a Christian home
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  and I had a mom who in the midst of my father being far away, he
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  had lots of jobs at different places.
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  In the state travelled. Yeah, and so she did her best to
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  keep us under the wings of the church.
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  And so I grew up and, you know, constantly going to church, 3 *
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  a week maybe when I was five years old I gave my life to
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  Christ. And she did not know if a 5 year
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  old could actually do that. Oh, like she didn't know if you
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  would understand what you were doing.
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  Yeah, OK. So like we said the prayer, she.
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  Didn't know if it would take. Yes.
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  She wasn't sure. And some people, you know,
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  they're like, well, maybe you shouldn't get baptized until
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  you're 12. Like there are these ideas what
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  to wrestle with. We call it the age of
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  accountability and it's I've never heard it as low as 5, so I
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  can understand why she would wonder.
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  Totally. Yeah.
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  So my so my mom was like, I don't know, but she saw a major
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  change in my behavior. Really.
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  Yeah. So she felt like that was fruit
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  of the Holy Spirit entering in my life.
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  And working. So I I I knew who Jesus was.
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  I was excited to try to be like Jesus.
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  I you know, we know that the felt board stories and Sunday
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  school. That's right.
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  So I I want to be like that person.
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  And so I grew up trusting him, but there were a lot of needs in
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  my world as just a human being that I was not receiving, namely
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  for same sex, love, attention, affirmation and affection.
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  That's a developmental need, isn't it?
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  I mean, isn't it? I I learned that as well, that
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  it's something that we got to have.
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  I mean, you know, it's not optional.
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  Yeah. It's not a luxury.
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  That's right. Right.
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  It's, I mean, we got to have it for our, our, you know, healthy
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  emotional psychological development.
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  That's right, to feel. I think it helps us feel secure
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  in our gender. Yeah, absolutely.
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  And that's kind of what went wrong with me.
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  So I, I, I didn't necessarily feel like I was a girl, but I, I
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  certainly didn't necessarily feel like a, a guy either.
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  It was, you know, when I was growing up, when I finally got a
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  hold of information about what I was, things that were going on
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  inside of me, if the people had called it this mysterious third
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  gender, like you didn't feel necessarily like a girl, but
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  also not necessarily like a boy. And so where do you fit in?
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  I didn't really have a a space. Right, you didn't fit in with it
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  either. Right.
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  So I, you know, I, I, I had issues connecting with other
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  boys. I had some guys in the
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  neighborhood who, you know, we didn't like bike tag.
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  We'd go around the neighborhood. Yeah, you don't want to run your
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  bike into another person, but you get like within 6 feet and.
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  That means you're it like I tagged you.
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  Yeah, I never. I've only done it on foot so.
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  OK, yeah, yeah. So we had a lot of fun.
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  We played hockey like, you know, on the cement with the little
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  goals and like a car comes by and you like move the goals and
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  come back. So you're are you from where
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  It's not cold. So you're not playing ice
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  hockey, you're playing like. It well, it gets cold in the
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  winter, but we're I'm talking about the streets like, like not
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  during the winter, not when. It's so you were from a from a
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  cold place. Yeah, yeah.
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  So, you know, I had enough interaction with the guys, but I
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  never was. I was still sort of at the
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  bottom of the totem pole. Oh, wait.
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  OK, All right, so I'm going to ask this question, but you know
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  how? I mean, I in my neighbor, we
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  played a lot of football and we chose teams.
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  So you were you one of the guys that didn't really get chosen,
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  or at least not in the first couple?
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  Yeah, not really. No.
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  I we everybody in my, in my school, basically like you're
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  initiated into sports by playing soccer, like that's your first
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  team official sport. So when I did that, like I was
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  not, I was not great at like people knew maybe not to give me
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  the ball. Like if you're trying to go up
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  the field, like maybe skip me and go to the next guy.
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  Like, you know, I wasn't like, maybe I was, maybe I just, I
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  wasn't the greatest. And and so no matter what I did,
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  it felt like I couldn't keep up with the other guys.
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  You know, I tried And, but I and the other thing was socially, I
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  think, I think more than the athletics, socially, they were
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  like these cues that I just couldn't pick up on.
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  I was very, you know, well mothered at home.
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  OK, wait, I was on the sports thing.
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  Sorry. I was going to ask before you
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  move on to socially like was it were these Co Ed soccer games or
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  just all boys? All boys.
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  Oh. OK, so then then the difference
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  would be definitely noticeable, you know, 'cause sometimes in
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  young ages though, they'll mix boys and girls.
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  I think when I was early, early on, maybe there was, there was
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  Co Ed, but you know, I'm talking more of the, the, the, you know,
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  just the boys, right? Yeah, eventually we went on and,
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  and the next thing was basketball.
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  And I was so bad at basketball. Like literally like I made one
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  point the entire season. That's got to be a free throw,
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  right? Because that's the only way to
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  make exactly right. OK.
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  So like you got one free throw like?
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  I missed the first one. Oh no.
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  And then I was like, this is my shot, Like this is all I got, so
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  I had to make it. In your entire basketball
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  career, you scored a point. I scored a point.
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  That's it. Give it up for that.
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  You scored. You got one point.
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  Listen, I'll take it. Yeah, right.
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  I mean, my team will take it. So everybody was like so excited
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  that I got my one point. Like Rudy moments, you know that
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  movie? Do you know what I'm talking
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  about? At the end of the movie, he gets
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  in the game for like, I don't know, 60 seconds.
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  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's our true story.
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  I I have chills on my body because that is one of my
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  favorite. It's a.
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  Beautiful. Story Oh, it's one of my
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  favorite movies about like but also just pursuing your dream
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  and not giving up because he did not have the stature to play
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  football you know it he was he was petite and but he had a
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  heart bigger than his body that he just and he and he fought and
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  that movie is so good but so it was like a Rudy moment it.
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  Was a Rudy moment. When you got your one basket,
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  that's right. Come on.
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  That's right. So beyond the sports, though, I
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  was really having issues attaching to them.
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  I think, you know, I would have done better in, in sports the
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  same way I would have done socially if my if I had a
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  father, if I had somebody to toss the ball with, if I had
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  somebody to toss the ball with figuratively in conversation,
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  what does it look like to, to, to engage with another guy?
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  And so, you know, in school, I just felt more comfortable with
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  the girls and, and, and as I, as I got lower and lower on the
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  totem pole, eventually I was like, you know, what if, if this
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  is the way that being a man is, if this is the way that engaging
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  with other guys looks like that, I'm always going to be made fun
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  of. Like less than.
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  Not enough. Then I just quit.
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  I'm not going to play the game. Well, because it's like if you
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  think in that I'm never going to achieve, like, I don't know what
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  you call it, 'cause I don't think at your age you would say
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  a man card, right? I mean, we wouldn't have that
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  language back then. But I mean, that's what you're
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  trying to get is like, I want to feel like I want a man among
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  men. I want to be a part of it.
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  I want to enjoy. I just want to have fun.
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  But you can't have fun when people are just making fun of
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  you, right? You know.
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  Kids are mean. They're brutal.
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  First of all, let's just like. They started calling me names
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  that, you know, the, all the names that we've been called.
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  Yeah, worse than that, you know? Exactly.
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  And. So fag queer, the three big.
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  So eventually it was, it was, you know, I didn't even know
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  what those things meant. I know, right?
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  I didn't either, but people still called each other that.
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  I used words I didn't know what they meant.
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  There was a. Word I used on Saturday Night
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  Live, there was this one character in the 70s and she
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  always said, I mean, this is terrible, but like Jane, you
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  ignorant slut, and I don't know who she was.
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  I just heard people talking about it.
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  And so I would say that and people thought it was funny, but
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  I'm like elementary school. I don't even know what, you know
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  what I mean. I don't know what ignorant is.
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  So I actually think that being a Christian sort of set me up to
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  well, let me let me rephrase that.
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  Having a mother who is very concerned about our morality, us
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  becoming good, good human beings and doing the Christian stuff.
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  I think that set me up actually to face more rejection because I
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  I couldn't like boys go out and they do things that are like
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  skirt the line. Yeah, like they're bad, right?
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  You mean are we talking like vandalism or the kind we play?
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  Spin the bottle, you know. Yeah, like silly, silly, not
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  like serious. Yeah, you know, but just like
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  you get out. You get you.
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  Get you get dirty. Oh yeah, you know, like.
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  You couldn't get dirty because. You can.
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  I'm just, I'm just giving you degrees like there's some
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  degrees beyond that where it was like.
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  Christians don't do that. Maybe I shouldn't have have told
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  my mom that this is what the other boys had said or done.
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  And suddenly you can't play with them.
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  No, because they didn't. Well, they didn't want me to
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  play with them like my mom would, like tell their parents.
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  And then they would get in trouble because I'm the good,
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  I'm the tattletale now because. I'm.
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  So I was a mama's boy because of it.
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  And I was, you know, I was trying to do the Christian thing
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  and like mom, like he said this like you want other people to be
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  good like you are. And anyways, so I think that
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  that set me up for some failures relationally.
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  When you're in that too, it can go a little bit too far.
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  There needs to be like some flexibility where I can be
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  friends with people who are maybe not as religious as I am
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  because that's who I'm surrounded by.
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  I'm in public school. You know, this is not private
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  Christian School. This is the neighborhood with,
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  you know, the other kids who are mostly for the most actually, I
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  I would say that every single one of them did not have as
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  religious of an environment growing up so.
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  You had the most strict Christian upbringing, sure, and
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  because of that the boundaries were pretty high for you to live
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  up to and be the example to all your peers.
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  Yeah, and. They just wanted to have a good
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  time. And they got sacrificed in the
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  midst of it. You know they get in trouble.
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  It's too big of a liability. Because they learned something
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  and said something, you know, said, said a word that you said
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  that, you know, now I'm telling my mom who's telling their
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  parents. Anyways, all this to say, I had
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  issues connecting with other guys.
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  There were a number of things that got in the way.
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  And eventually I started finding myself having these facing these
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  issues that they had already named me for.
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  You know, when they told me that I was queer, I started facing
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  same sex attractions. Can we talk about ages real
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  quick before you? Because I'm I'm trying to get an
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  idea of like, are we talking, I don't know, elementary school
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  throughout elementary school being bullied and and called
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  names and in June. That, yeah, that continued.
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  That didn't really necessarily go away.
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  It didn't stop. It was, I went through the same
• 13:29
  school, K through 12. So you kind of like people get
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  to know you. So it's not a, it must not have
• 13:33
  been a big school because because where I'm from, we would
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  have like. Oh, that's not what.
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  I-1 through 6th grade and then junior high would be a different
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  school and in high school be a different.
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  Yeah, it's a different building, but what I mean is it was the
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  same district. And so the kids who I went to
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  1st grade with, they. All went to.
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  We were in 12th grade together. And so they had, they had an
• 13:52
  understanding of me and my character and what they thought
• 13:54
  about me. And you know, there was no
• 13:56
  getting away from your past. And so the the kind of things
• 14:00
  that people would call you at a certain point, like that's where
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  you it. Just stayed with you then you
• 14:05
  never got a fresh start anywhere.
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  Like so I would say when I first felt myself having really
• 14:13
  identifiable, like I was interested in the, the male body
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  in more of like, I don't know, it's, it's hard to say.
• 14:23
  People will say, oh, I always felt that way and I can totally
• 14:26
  relate to that because all boys are are meant to have this need
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  met as a as a boy, the. Bonding part, it's not a sexual
• 14:36
  need, it's just that I think somebody homo emotional, like
• 14:40
  homo meaning same, but emotional connecting because I mean, when
• 14:45
  I was growing up, girls play with girls and boys had the
• 14:48
  cooties. Yeah, you know what I mean?
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  And so like you didn't want to play with boys.
• 14:52
  That's right. And I'm sure that's not the the
• 14:54
  proper name for that, but you know, the cooties, I don't even
• 14:56
  know. I don't know who came up with
• 14:58
  that, but that's what we always called what's.
• 15:00
  The spiritual term for that. I don't know, but did you guys
• 15:02
  use that word? Yeah.
• 15:03
  Oh, OK, So that was a thing. That was a thing.
• 15:05
  OK, yeah, yeah. So, so I you know, I didn't get
• 15:08
  those developmental needs met at at the right age.
• 15:11
  And so those sort of carried through in a way where other
• 15:16
  people were getting a steady diet of same sex, love, bonding.
• 15:22
  And so they didn't get to a starvation hunger with this
• 15:26
  where I went, I was starving, I was starving.
• 15:29
  And so people will say, well, I always felt that way.
• 15:32
  Well, yeah, most guys did. They just don't have it to the
• 15:36
  degree that you faced it because they had those little meals,
• 15:41
  that steady diet, and they didn't have that revelation
• 15:45
  maybe to the degree that you did, of the profound need that
• 15:48
  they have for that. What's my understanding that OK,
• 15:52
  what we're talking about is unmet emotional and
• 15:54
  psychological need for same sex bonding.
• 15:56
  And it's my understanding that when that's not met, then often
• 15:59
  when we go through puberty, then the need becomes exaggerated and
• 16:03
  then sometimes sexualized. That's right.
• 16:05
  So that's, that's my understanding of, of, I mean,
• 16:09
  'cause we kind of like stop talking about roots and causes
• 16:12
  of homosexuality years ago, 'cause everybody was afraid of
• 16:15
  like, oh, if we talk about that in your conversion therapist,
• 16:18
  that's right. And so, but I think it's
• 16:20
  important to understand developmentally what's happening
• 16:22
  and not that everybody, every story is the same.
• 16:25
  I don't think that. But I think developmentally
• 16:27
  there's some things that happen that can set us up for same sex
• 16:32
  attraction. In fact, I forget which
• 16:33
  researcher called it Arrested Emotional development.
• 16:36
  If that was Elizabeth Moberly, I'm not sure, but there was a
• 16:40
  researcher. I would, that's probably who it
• 16:42
  was. Yeah.
• 16:44
  You know, it's, it's we see the same patterns and and boys in
• 16:47
  particular have a more consistent pattern percentage
• 16:50
  wise. I would estimate that probably
• 16:52
  about 80% of guys go through the same track where it's gender
• 16:56
  identity issues as it relates to oftentimes the the either the
• 17:02
  father's distant physically or emotionally, there's some sort
• 17:06
  of disconnect there with the same gender parents.
• 17:09
  So I would say that's about 80% for males.
• 17:11
  For women, it's oftentimes the case where the same sex parents
• 17:15
  is is distant, but it's not that 80% where we see with the males
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  that it splits off at different percentages where that's one.
• 17:24
  There's also protection from men.
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  With the women have that. Yeah, women have that more than
• 17:30
  than men, although a lot of men over the years, I've just found
• 17:35
  that there are so many men who've had mothers who had some
• 17:41
  sort of psychological issue or, you know, they had their own
• 17:45
  world going on that the the boy was put into a position that
• 17:48
  they should not be emotionally. With their mom being an
• 17:51
  emotional support to the mother. And in fact, I've heard this
• 17:54
  phrase and it's a very strongly worded emotional incest where
• 17:59
  the mom is looking to her boy to be emotional support for whether
• 18:04
  she's in a difficult marriage is she's confiding in her son,
• 18:07
  which no child should be put in that position to like and and
• 18:11
  even say things like this. You're my little man.
• 18:14
  You know what I mean? Like that is too much.
• 18:17
  The weight of that is too much for any boy to bear.
• 18:21
  And, and we, you know, certainly in this conversation, both you
• 18:24
  and I, we have such compassion for parents and, and there's
• 18:29
  just, there's things that that people don't, there's things we
• 18:32
  didn't know, there's things we still don't.
• 18:34
  Know well yeah and and we're not here to trash parents just want
• 18:36
  to hear your story but. But also in in sharing your
• 18:39
  story, getting into the developmental causes for your
• 18:42
  homosexuality. And in fact, I want to bring up
• 18:44
  another researcher, Doctor Joseph Nicolosi senior who
• 18:47
  called it. And I don't know if you relate
• 18:50
  to this. So he called it the kitchen
• 18:53
  window boy, who is like the boy looking out let's looking out
• 18:58
  the kitchen window at the other boys playing in the street and
• 19:01
  longing to be part of that group.
• 19:03
  Yeah, that that image has, has stuck with me.
• 19:06
  I, I, we had this kitchen window and I, I see myself looking out
• 19:11
  and seeing the boys playing, tossing the the ball back and
• 19:15
  forth and wanting to join and wanting to participate because
• 19:19
  that's in your soul. It doesn't matter that that I
• 19:21
  got to the place where I didn't feel safe doing it.
• 19:23
  And so that was what, you know, why I stopped.
• 19:26
  I'm not going to play the game anymore.
• 19:28
  You know, that was still in my soul.
• 19:30
  And I longed for it, but I couldn't go there because it
• 19:32
  wasn't safe. It's probably just too painful,
• 19:35
  the rejection, because you go there and then they make fun of
• 19:37
  you, you know? That's right.
• 19:39
  Yeah. No, I can only imagine.
• 19:40
  It's got to be soul crushing. The, the, the and I I could see.
• 19:45
  Well, you don't you? You don't.
• 19:46
  Just imagine you've been through a lot of this stuff too.
• 19:48
  I have, but you know, on the sports thing, I can't relate.
• 19:53
  But it's it's on other. Things, you know what I mean?
• 19:55
  Like, I mean like, you know, I was always like first round
• 19:58
  draft pick on the football team with all the boys.
• 20:01
  I remember you sharing one time where you were like in a locker
• 20:04
  room. I hope this is OK on.
• 20:06
  OK, I don't even know where we. Can cut this if if it's not but
• 20:09
  you were like the girls were like Are you sure you're not a
• 20:12
  boy? Because going into the women's,
• 20:14
  OK, so tennis was my sport growing up, my favorite.
• 20:17
  I mean, it's the first one I learned and I think it's the
• 20:20
  best one that God ever made. But you know, so, so I learned
• 20:24
  tennis first, loved it, still love it.
• 20:27
  But when I would go into the locker room at the Tennis Club,
• 20:32
  women would question me in there because I was so I was gender
• 20:37
  confused and not only confused, but also it was obvious, like
• 20:43
  there was a disconnect with me and my gender.
• 20:45
  I hated being a girl because I grew up with domestic violence
• 20:48
  from my dad to my mom and my older brother to me.
• 20:51
  So that for me, that's where my disconnect was, is like, I don't
• 20:54
  want to be a woman if this is what it means.
• 20:56
  Because to me, it looked like it meant being a helpless,
• 20:59
  powerless victim. And I had no desire to be any of
• 21:02
  those things. And you fashioned yourself
• 21:04
  appropriately with those things. I mean, I, I don't know what you
• 21:07
  mean by that. I gravitated toward masculinity
• 21:10
  out of a desire to protect myself.
• 21:12
  So that's some of my own root causes, you know?
• 21:18
  Yeah, so we all had this like fitting in thing.
• 21:21
  Yeah, I didn't fit in with other girls, you know, and I got
• 21:24
  teased. But at that time, you didn't
• 21:26
  call a girl. You know how they call boys
• 21:28
  Sissy, fag, queer? They don't call girls that.
• 21:30
  They called us tomboy. And at the time that was
• 21:34
  derogatory. Oh yeah.
• 21:36
  Like to be a tomboy was not any kind of badge of honor.
• 21:39
  It meant you don't fit in. When I was a kid, tomboy was
• 21:42
  like, it was a it was cool, it was cool.
• 21:44
  It was it was neutral like it like in our generation, there
• 21:48
  were other words for girls who were.
• 21:50
  Oh, like dyke or something like that.
• 21:52
  Yeah, I never heard that one when I was a kid.
• 21:54
  But but nowadays, I mean, I honestly, I think what we're
• 21:57
  doing is we're they're transient tomboys.
• 21:59
  There's no tomboys. Oh, yeah.
• 22:00
  They're just saying like you're in the wrong.
• 22:02
  That doesn't exist. Yeah, and I'm grieved for the
• 22:04
  sake of children who are being misinterpreted because they're
• 22:08
  atypical in their gender for whatever reason.
• 22:10
  So whether it's because a boy who's not great at sports or a
• 22:13
  girl who's who's seems too masculine, they're being told
• 22:17
  maybe you're in the wrong body. They're people are planting
• 22:20
  seeds of doubt about that. And so these, and I'm talking
• 22:23
  impressionable young. Exactly, you can't start
• 22:26
  questions for them that. I just let them grow up.
• 22:30
  And then never ask those questions.
• 22:31
  But even for a kid, you, you already have so many things
• 22:34
  you're thinking about. And yeah, you're being formed.
• 22:36
  You're being shaped. So I was a tomboy before it was
• 22:39
  cool, but now it's not even cool.
• 22:41
  It's like they just say, OK, well, you need, you know,
• 22:44
  testosterone, You're you're in the wrong body.
• 22:46
  So we we were in a different time.
• 22:48
  Yeah. But anyway, going back to we're
• 22:52
  not here to trash parents you. Know yeah, I mean you and I both
• 22:55
  we have so much compassion on parents the problem is sometimes
• 22:58
  people will will not want us to share because oh like that's
• 23:03
  going to shame your parents are it's going to shame somebody
• 23:08
  somebody else who is a parent in this situation but what?
• 23:11
  I was thinking of the first time I ever wrote my testimony for a
• 23:14
  magazine. It was Charisma Magazine.
• 23:16
  It came out in 1999. And it was honest, you know, I
• 23:21
  mean, just thinking about it, just like, because in writing we
• 23:28
  have a phrase. You've probably heard this
• 23:30
  because you're an author. Show me, don't tell me.
• 23:33
  And so I was writing about the domestic violence between my dad
• 23:36
  and my mom. And I wrote a scene like I how I
• 23:39
  saw it as a child. I, I watched my dad hit my mom
• 23:43
  with a tennis racket when I was a little girl.
• 23:44
  Like, I woke up, I heard him yelling and I woke up and I'm
• 23:46
  looking through like a crack in a doorway and I see this scene
• 23:51
  as horrible and no child should ever have to see that.
• 23:55
  And so I, I write this and but I mean just even like having to go
• 24:01
  back to that place of that little girl because at the time
• 24:05
  you were talking about safety as a child, there was no safety for
• 24:07
  me either to what do I do with this?
• 24:09
  This the feeling of I'm just trying to survive this scenario,
• 24:14
  but the editor of Charisma magazine calls me and he's like,
• 24:18
  hey, is your father going to sue us for this?
• 24:21
  You know, because I was writing my story.
• 24:22
  And he goes, I don't know, maybe you should ask him.
• 24:24
  You know, I mean, I wasn't writing it to be ugly.
• 24:29
  I was writing it to be honest. That's right.
• 24:31
  And I mean, they did. They reached out to my father
• 24:34
  and he was like, no, it's all true.
• 24:37
  Like he, oh, wow. I mean not in a way of an
• 24:39
  arrogant way, like he was a broken man.
• 24:42
  Yeah. You know, so I took him, I mean,
• 24:46
  Fast forward many years, like I ended up my dad told me about, I
• 24:51
  knew he had a porn addiction. I knew that from a, a child, I
• 24:54
  wouldn't have known those words. I just knew there was lots of
• 24:56
  magazines and stuff. So I as I got into a healing,
• 25:01
  you know, of sexual redemption, healing, that kind of thing.
• 25:06
  I don't know. I invited him one day to go to a
• 25:08
  conference with me. He was more geared towards
• 25:10
  people with same sex attractions.
• 25:12
  But I said, Dad, they do talk about pornography.
• 25:13
  He might help you with that. And he's like, oh, OK.
• 25:16
  So he came to the conference with me.
• 25:18
  Yeah, he went. He went like three years in a
• 25:20
  row. That's amazing what we end up
• 25:21
  doing if we try to censor our stories too much is we we keep
• 25:26
  the church from being aware to notice these things going on in
• 25:30
  the world today. It's not just something that
• 25:33
  happened in the past. Kids are living through these
• 25:35
  situations right now and you can see these signs often times in
• 25:39
  children and you can make little changes, have conversations with
• 25:44
  the parents. Now, some of them in massive
• 25:47
  abuse situations. They're bigger tweaks that need
• 25:51
  to have, but there are some smaller tweaks with boys where.
• 25:55
  OK, so. Well, wait, I want to get to
• 25:57
  those tweaks, but can we at least get to the point where you
• 26:00
  moved through your struggle and came out the other?
• 26:03
  Side I felt that too. I was like, let's.
• 26:04
  Back up yeah 'cause you're jumping ahead to like solution.
• 26:07
  I'm so excited. This is like this is what people
• 26:09
  need to hear. This is your passion, you know?
• 26:11
  And so, yeah. So I so I would say probably
• 26:14
  like. So you left me at.
• 26:15
  Puberty grade I think. And same sex attraction. 5th
• 26:18
  grade is where I started finding.
• 26:20
  I started discovering images on the Internet.
• 26:23
  The Internet was just coming out exactly.
• 26:26
  And so, and then the other thing is through our, our Internet
• 26:31
  service, there were, there was the ability to chat and chat
• 26:36
  with strangers. And there's so many people who
• 26:39
  face same sex attractions who end up in these chat rooms
• 26:42
  because they don't feel comfortable sharing in person.
• 26:48
  But they they will do it behind. They have to have some.
• 26:52
  Cloaks so anonymity, right, right.
• 26:54
  So you're saying you're in a a chat room where you can all come
• 26:57
  out as as I don't know if you would identify as gay, but with
• 27:01
  those feelings in a chat room. Well, and I will say that the
• 27:05
  the point I'm making is they're collectively there were more
• 27:08
  people online in those rooms regardless of the title of the
• 27:12
  room. There were no titles in the
• 27:14
  room. There were just who else is on
• 27:16
  pick a person, talk to them. Overwhelmingly there were,
• 27:19
  there's so many people who were in those rooms that ended up
• 27:25
  having same sex attractions. And so they were on there.
• 27:29
  And so in, in, I think in some ways I was groomed because they
• 27:33
  were, they were older men. I remember some things I, I, I
• 27:37
  really don't want to repeat, but you know, that were in reference
• 27:41
  to sexual stuff and how wonderful it was.
• 27:46
  It's not like they were like giving me their their address or
• 27:48
  anything, but they certainly wanted me to like we're
• 27:51
  encouraging me to go that way. To experiment.
• 27:54
  Yeah, well, they, they felt like this was a great life to live
• 27:58
  and. Oh.
• 27:58
  OK, so they're coaching you to go for?
• 28:00
  Sex was really great. And I mean, it's just, it's
• 28:03
  brutal. What's what was out there,
• 28:06
  what's out there now, you know, there's just a lot of
• 28:08
  protection. So that needs to happen for, for
• 28:11
  these children, for all children, protection.
• 28:14
  They need to be protected. 100%. From these folks.
• 28:18
  So started having that struggle. I really was was wrestling with
• 28:25
  God through all of this. I, I wanted God.
• 28:28
  And at first I thought, well, maybe all, all guys deal with
• 28:32
  these attractions and they just don't talk about it because I
• 28:36
  didn't have all these guy friends who I was close enough
• 28:38
  to ask that question. And so I was like, well, maybe
• 28:41
  that's what it is. Because I had read the book
• 28:42
  right in 3rd grade where they're like, here are the puzzle pieces
• 28:45
  and how they're supposed to fit together a man and a woman.
• 28:49
  Like the birds and the bees or the talk or whatever.
• 28:52
  And and so I'm like, well, eventually I'll probably end up
• 28:55
  there. This is just some weird in
• 28:56
  between phase and the phase never went away.
• 29:00
  You know those those needs never went away until those needs are
• 29:03
  met and right ways. Those needs are the God-given
• 29:06
  needs. They're a beautiful thing that
• 29:09
  he wants. Those needs for same sex
• 29:11
  bonding. Absolutely right.
• 29:12
  OK, I keep forgetting to ask you did you have siblings because
• 29:16
  you've said we several times when you're talking about your
• 29:18
  childhood. So like you had a brother or
• 29:19
  sister or? Both.
• 29:20
  Yeah. So I had AI, had a brother who's
• 29:23
  who's a couple years older than me.
• 29:24
  OK so my question about him is like, was he struggling to
• 29:29
  navigate the world of feeling like he fits in it with other
• 29:33
  boys? Yeah, it was it was different
• 29:35
  for him. I think my father may have been
• 29:37
  around for a little bit more before I I was in the family
• 29:46
  like like I think he may he. Might have more access to his
• 29:49
  dad is. What you're saying at an early
• 29:51
  developmental stage, which is super critical.
• 29:55
  Well, the other thing is though, it's that's important, but also
• 29:58
  you can have two boys in the same family with the same family
• 30:01
  dynamic of let's say dad's a traveling salesman, He's gone a
• 30:04
  lot. 1 boy feel very secure in dad's love because whenever
• 30:07
  dad's home, he, he knows that there's a good connection there.
• 30:10
  But then another boy in the same family who feels rejected by the
• 30:14
  fact that his dad's never there because of his temperament.
• 30:17
  That's right, yeah. So people, people some
• 30:20
  Christians will be concerned about, you know, like if I give
• 30:25
  any reference to there being a biological component, then I've
• 30:29
  given up the ghost and it's OK to be gay or whatever the.
• 30:32
  Component to homosexuality. Yeah, they're afraid of the the
• 30:35
  moral argument where, OK, like I can't be anything else.
• 30:38
  So it must, it's biological, like the, the slogan.
• 30:42
  Yeah. So they'll say the, the gay
• 30:43
  advocates will be like, well, I was Born This Way.
• 30:45
  And and so then the Christians will be like, take the opposite
• 30:49
  ground where it's like, you couldn't have been Born This
• 30:50
  Way. You're, you know, you're
• 30:52
  choosing this. The reality is biology plays a
• 30:56
  role into this, even if it's just with personality.
• 30:59
  I don't think it's as big as they want it to be the the gay
• 31:02
  advocates, because what they're hoping, what they want to say is
• 31:07
  I can't. It's I can't.
• 31:09
  It's like predetermined moral issue if I can't be anything
• 31:14
  else but this. Right.
• 31:15
  Like it's as if it's predetermined and if there's a
• 31:17
  gay gene, but what we're talking about is not a gay gene.
• 31:19
  We're talking about a temperament that sets you up.
• 31:21
  For example, a boy who's more sensitive is going to feel
• 31:25
  rejected. And you know, there's a there's
• 31:28
  a certain and Cy Rogers, somebody we both love, had a he
• 31:31
  had a talk about it. He called it archetype and he
• 31:34
  said that boys who are, are the artist, which is the, the, the,
• 31:39
  the intuitive emotive, you know, because boys who are more
• 31:43
  emotional, we are culture interprets them as effeminate.
• 31:47
  That's right. So that's.
• 31:49
  Right. Well, they're, they're easy
• 31:51
  targets too. I think boys initially a lot of
• 31:54
  their engagement is rough and tumble.
• 31:57
  I think that's just natural voice, voice stuff.
• 32:01
  And so you you lose that and then and then the artist stuff
• 32:06
  sets you up often times with your father where you're not
• 32:10
  engaging on the same activities that.
• 32:12
  You look. And if he doesn't make that
• 32:14
  decision to say, I'm not going to go with what I love, I'm
• 32:17
  going to figure out a way to do what he loves and in a masculine
• 32:20
  way, or at least not feminine way.
• 32:23
  It's really important that you that fathers are willing to do
• 32:27
  that. I, I've known of, of guys who
• 32:29
  they had a father who in some sense loved them, but they're
• 32:35
  their brother. When they came out the the
• 32:37
  father was so excited because the the other the second one was
• 32:40
  obviously more physically like he was just that way rough and
• 32:44
  tumble from the beginning. I.
• 32:45
  Would say athletic too. And then the dad's like, tossing
• 32:48
  the boy up in the air and saying, this is my boy, this is
• 32:51
  my boy. And the other boy's like, why
• 32:53
  isn't he doing this for me? Why isn't he doing the same?
• 32:57
  Why isn't he so excited about me too?
• 32:59
  There's there's a disconnect and a feeling of a lack of love and
• 33:03
  rejection that can come unless you find a way to connect with
• 33:07
  your your children in both. 100% so.
• 33:09
  So there are a lot of fathers who mean well, but there there's
• 33:13
  just some disconnect and and and the child who's more sensitive
• 33:17
  is going to feel more rejection easily often times.
• 33:20
  I could think of three families right off the top that where the
• 33:24
  dad was much more athletic, athletic.
• 33:26
  The boy was athletic, but then the younger brother was not.
• 33:29
  And so they so dad and the one brother bonded and then younger
• 33:35
  brother kind of got laughed out. And that's where sometimes the
• 33:38
  mom tries to overcompensate because he sees that the boy
• 33:41
  feels rejected by his dad, the the one boy.
• 33:44
  And, and what you just said was dads need to find, even if the
• 33:50
  boy is not a particular son, is not interested in the things
• 33:54
  you're interested in. So ask, you know, sports, NFL,
• 33:57
  whatever, watching sports or playing them, 'cause I have one
• 34:01
  friend who when he was born, he had two older sisters and he,
• 34:06
  his dad owned a chain of sporting goods stores.
• 34:09
  So you can imagine what his expectation was when he finally
• 34:11
  had a son was like, yes, somebody to play ball with, but
• 34:14
  this kid didn't like sports, wasn't good at them.
• 34:17
  And his dad, his dad made fun of him.
• 34:20
  Wow, you know you talk about. I've I've seen that you.
• 34:22
  Talk about rejection by your peers, but your own father
• 34:25
  making fun of you because he, he thought that that would make the
• 34:28
  boy want to try harder. And some temperaments the boy
• 34:30
  would like, I'll show you, but another temperament, it's going
• 34:33
  to crush his spirit. And that's what happened in this
• 34:36
  young man's case. Yeah, that's, that's awful.
• 34:39
  It's, it's just, you know, we're all, we all have different
• 34:42
  temperaments and it's, you know, it has an important.
• 34:46
  Well, and that's why it's important to help parents
• 34:48
  understand, you know, like that, regardless of what you're and I,
• 34:52
  I had AI had a guy that I knew that was on his journey of
• 34:56
  moving away from same sex attractions.
• 34:58
  He he was a classical pianist and he hated, he hated that he
• 35:03
  was gifted in that because it's made him different than all the
• 35:07
  other boys, like all the other boys who play sports and he's a
• 35:10
  pianist. And it's like, no, there's
• 35:12
  nothing wrong with that gift. And I want parents to understand
• 35:15
  that we're, we're all gifted in something, you know, whether
• 35:18
  it's whether it's sports or, or, you know, music or singing or
• 35:24
  drawing or God forbid, dancing. And I don't say God forbid
• 35:27
  because that's a bad thing. But I, I feel like that movie,
• 35:31
  Billy Elliott articulates this. I don't know if you're familiar
• 35:33
  with that movie, the one where the boy was going to boxing
• 35:37
  classes and right next door to boxing class was ballet.
• 35:40
  He hated boxing classes. So he took the money that for
• 35:44
  the 'cause I guess they gave him the money to pay the boxing
• 35:47
  teacher, right? So he went next door and paid
• 35:49
  that money to the ballet teacher and took ballet.
• 35:52
  But when his dad found out, his dad was very upset.
• 35:55
  And but The thing is what parents need to recognize, we're
• 35:58
  all uniquely gifted. So I think, I think Josh Groban
• 36:02
  has a gift. I think Michael Jordan had a
• 36:04
  gift. I think Roger Federer has a
• 36:06
  gift. And it's not like I don't think
• 36:08
  any guy should feel less masculine because he's gifted in
• 36:11
  something like I. Made you as a male.
• 36:13
  That's it. Done.
• 36:14
  Deal, it's over. I I had a friend, I'll say this,
• 36:17
  who I had noticed this pattern before.
• 36:21
  So I'm I've left homosexuality, but before I got to a point
• 36:27
  where I realized a lot of the developmental things that had
• 36:30
  gone off track. Maybe you didn't know where the
• 36:32
  feelings came from, right? I knew and I recognized that so
• 36:35
  many of these guys had a really poor relationship with their
• 36:37
  father. And I had this guy who I met
• 36:41
  like my junior year of of high school who he was dealing with
• 36:47
  same sex attractions. And I remember talking to him, I
• 36:50
  was like, well, you must. And he was, he was like a
• 36:52
  football guy. Like he was into sports and all
• 36:55
  this stuff. And I was like, well, you must
• 36:56
  have a great relationship with your dad.
• 36:58
  He said no. He said my dad is artistic.
• 37:01
  Oh, he was the opposite. So he felt rejected because he
• 37:05
  wasn't an artist like. His father because of the
• 37:09
  different temperament. And So what matters is that
• 37:12
  connection with your parents and make it it there really is an
• 37:16
  effort that the parent has to make.
• 37:18
  Often times you have to be one step ahead of your child and
• 37:21
  learning that, that new technique, that new, you know,
• 37:25
  piano or whatever, just get a little bit ahead of your, your
• 37:29
  child in that. And and so, you know, there's a
• 37:33
  learning curve that can be required.
• 37:35
  Well, and I just want to make the comment too, though, that
• 37:37
  when we talk about parents, because there are some people
• 37:39
  like single parent families, let's say, what if a mom is
• 37:43
  going, I don't have a, you know, husband anymore, you know, if he
• 37:46
  died or divorced or whatever. So it doesn't have to be a
• 37:49
  parent. It can be.
• 37:51
  It can be Julie Hamilton. Dr. Julie Hamilton, she would
• 37:54
  call it a salient male. You know, another accessible
• 37:57
  male. Who's a father?
• 37:59
  Figure a father figure, right? It could be an uncle or it could
• 38:02
  even be a pastor or youth pastor or something like that.
• 38:04
  So, but here it is. It's It takes a man to help a
• 38:11
  boy feel like a man, like a woman is never going to help a
• 38:15
  boy feel like a man. Not to the degree he needs,
• 38:17
  right? Yeah.
• 38:18
  Right. I mean, the, where my mind goes,
• 38:21
  when you think of like a, a woman, a man gonna feel like a
• 38:23
  man with a woman, it's, it's only through sex, right?
• 38:26
  And that's, that's a distorted view, that's distortion of
• 38:30
  masculinity, like 'cause that's, that's a, that's a caricature.
• 38:34
  There you go. You know, PSI Rogers, who I
• 38:36
  mentioned already, he he never lived up to the the masculine
• 38:41
  ideal. And I mean.
• 38:42
  He would joke about it. He'd be like the heterosexual
• 38:44
  stallion that you see before you, you know, And we would,
• 38:48
  everybody would laugh and he would, he would be.
• 38:50
  He was so good in his own skin because he'd learned to love the
• 38:53
  person that God made him. Well, and and he he's also
• 38:57
  lamented the fact that people always let him know he didn't
• 39:00
  measure up. Even after many years in
• 39:01
  ministry, there's still people would say things, but the the
• 39:05
  one place where he didn't have this, where people looking at
• 39:08
  him with which what he called the withering contempt was when
• 39:12
  he moved to Asia to pioneer the work of sexual redemption
• 39:15
  ministry there. He said because for them the
• 39:17
  masculine ideal is not how many women you sleep with, It's
• 39:21
  demonstrating self-control and providing for your family.
• 39:24
  If you do those things, you're considered masculine.
• 39:26
  And he said, so he fit in fine. He was never told he was less
• 39:30
  than over there. We have a cultural standard of
• 39:32
  masculinity, which I think is revolves around athletes,
• 39:35
  athleticism or if like if you're big in a big build, because if
• 39:39
  you have a guy who's petite, whether he's athletic or not,
• 39:42
  he's still he, he may struggle with like feeling less than
• 39:46
  because if he's, if he's small framed small in stature, you
• 39:50
  know, it doesn't mean he has to be, but I would say he's at
• 39:53
  higher risk for maybe. Risk factors, yes, I, I think at
• 39:58
  the end of the day, you know, not having a father doesn't mean
• 40:01
  you're going to be gay, but it sets you up for a number of of
• 40:05
  risk factors. Factors going to going and being
• 40:07
  imprisoned, you know, later on having issues in your marriage.
• 40:12
  These things are all set up by not getting those needs met at
• 40:16
  an early age and homosexuality just happens to be one of those
• 40:20
  things. There's another a number of of
• 40:23
  things that need to go. I was going to say right, but
• 40:26
  particularly wrong in a certain way to end up on this track.
• 40:31
  Well, and then the whole thing of not having a dad because
• 40:34
  women who don't have a dad, they can be set up to be promiscuous
• 40:39
  because there's, they've got this hunger for father's love
• 40:42
  and sometimes and that can become something they pursue
• 40:45
  through sexual means, you know, so we're not picking on, you
• 40:49
  know, same sex attraction. We're just trying to unpack your
• 40:52
  story. But but but these kind of
• 40:54
  factors and we haven't even mentioned sexual abuse, which is
• 40:57
  huge. I think you you touched on it.
• 40:58
  But but like women who are sexually abused often the well,
• 41:03
  OK, let's just say it this way. With the lesbian population, a
• 41:06
  high percentage have been sexually abused.
• 41:08
  I mean that that, and it's hard to find exact numbers.
• 41:11
  I've heard as high as 80%, but that's also something that's
• 41:14
  underreported sexual abuse. That's right.
• 41:17
  So, but there's also straight women who were sexually abused,
• 41:22
  so that doesn't mean it doesn't make anybody.
• 41:24
  I want to talk about that. Tell me we'll get to it.
• 41:27
  Yeah. Let me finish my story and then
• 41:29
  can we go into? That we're like going back and
• 41:31
  forth and teaching. I think that that's such a cool
• 41:33
  thing. I I, I feel like God has given
• 41:35
  me. What's a cool thing?
• 41:36
  Well. Let me get to.
• 41:39
  It OK. So let me get back to so I'm,
• 41:42
  I'm struggling with same sex attractions.
• 41:44
  So this is like 6th grade is when I fifth grade. 6th grade is
• 41:49
  when I found Internet pornography.
• 41:52
  Finding, you know, that struggle and and then going to God and
• 41:55
  being like, I know, you know, pornography is wrong.
• 41:59
  And I also know that looking at dudes is wrong.
• 42:01
  You know, like, I had no idea what the way that sex would
• 42:04
  work. It was just body is at that
• 42:05
  point, right? And then as I got more and more
• 42:10
  people calling me those horrible names and realizing this thing
• 42:13
  isn't going away, like I'm not moving on to attractions of the
• 42:18
  opposite sex. Holy smokes, like I don't know
• 42:21
  what to do and so I pray every night and I cry out to God and
• 42:24
  I'd say God, take this away, take this away.
• 42:27
  I really wanted to follow Jesus. I really liked Jesus and then
• 42:32
  things are kind of devolved at at home.
• 42:34
  So my my mom, she was really emotionally abusive and and some
• 42:41
  verbally there was also there was there was like the the
• 42:47
  golden child and the black sheep in in our our.
• 42:49
  Were you the black? Sheep.
• 42:50
  I was a black sheep. Yeah.
• 42:51
  And then I ended up that way at at first I played the game
• 42:54
  because she always needed to have a, a golden child.
• 42:59
  I think because she needed an emotional connection.
• 43:02
  There always had to be 1 good child.
• 43:04
  And the way that you got to be the golden child was not by
• 43:07
  doing enough to be the golden child.
• 43:09
  It was by getting the other child in trouble.
• 43:13
  So if you could get them to, to go below you, then you would be
• 43:17
  the golden child because there needed to be an emotional
• 43:19
  connect. This is something that you see
• 43:21
  in the the children of parents who have some of the emotional
• 43:27
  things that were going on in my household with my mom.
• 43:31
  And, and I love her and I pray for her and all of these things,
• 43:34
  but it's just, it's what happened.
• 43:35
  Is it like? Is it where the parent is?
• 43:39
  I don't know how to say this but like almost deriving their self
• 43:41
  esteem from their child and his you know how good he is or
• 43:45
  whatever you know is it I. Do think that that's a part of?
• 43:47
  It. Yeah, OK.
• 43:48
  I mean, there's AI think there's a divide and conquer thing going
• 43:52
  on. You know more, You can control
• 43:56
  the situation sometimes if you can divide and conquer.
• 44:00
  You find out more information from the kids that way.
• 44:04
  We're always telling on each other.
• 44:06
  I think that there are a number of things going on internally
• 44:09
  that that were needs that that could have been met in other
• 44:12
  ways for her that that just were coming out the wrong way.
• 44:17
  So where was I? Golden Child.
• 44:21
  Golden child in black sheep. So, yeah.
• 44:23
  So yeah, eventually I actually noticed the game.
• 44:26
  I was, I think, oh, you figured it out.
• 44:27
  Yeah. My brother was two years older
• 44:29
  than me, so I think that it just came more naturally to him.
• 44:32
  But I had to compete with somebody who's two years older,
• 44:35
  you know, two years wiser. And.
• 44:37
  And so I recognize what needs to happen and I recognize the game.
• 44:41
  And I felt so grossed out by it that I, I backed off.
• 44:46
  And I said, if this is the way that Got Love happens, then I'm
• 44:50
  not, I'm not playing this game either.
• 44:52
  So I stopped playing all the games, right.
• 44:54
  And so at that point, I got pigeonholed forever as the
• 44:57
  blacks. I was going to say, you probably
• 44:58
  got stuck in that, yeah. That's right.
• 44:59
  And, and oftentimes when somebody who has those
• 45:03
  tendencies of codependency, they'll lash out at at the child
• 45:06
  who, if they back away. And I increasingly was ended up
• 45:11
  being physically abused by my mom for years and years.
• 45:14
  And it got worse the older that it got.
• 45:16
  And she found things like me struggling with pornography.
• 45:19
  She would find the Internet history and and I was, I think
• 45:26
  at that point, I wrecked her all of the work that she had done to
• 45:31
  be a good Christian mom for these these boys.
• 45:34
  But it was horrific. You know, one minute the Bible's
• 45:37
  being read in our, our, our home.
• 45:38
  She's studying her Bible and the next minute she's over top of me
• 45:41
  swinging her arms back and forth.
• 45:43
  And so I think that a lot of the dad stuff was there, but there
• 45:48
  were all these things going on with my mom too.
• 45:50
  As I've learned about consistent patterns that we see for guys
• 45:55
  who facing end up facing same sex attractions, there's a
• 45:58
  pattern there that my story fits into.
• 46:02
  Now, you know, some don't go through it as as violently as I
• 46:06
  did. Some go through way more
• 46:08
  violently than I did, but that's a part of my story.
• 46:11
  And so I, I just try to keep my, you know, my head down, work as
• 46:16
  hard as I could get through school.
• 46:17
  I made straight A's. I was a swimmer, I was an all
• 46:20
  American swimmer in high school. And so I was trying to get a
• 46:23
  scholarship to college so I could leave the house and be and
• 46:27
  then decide who I was going to be, then decide, you know, like
• 46:33
  make so many choices in my life because I couldn't make any, you
• 46:35
  know, I was just surviving at that point, just trying to get
• 46:38
  through. My mom would come in and she
• 46:40
  would she'd be in a mood and I would know that she was looking
• 46:43
  for a fight. And I would go to my room and I
• 46:45
  locked myself in the room and I wouldn't come out and.
• 46:47
  So because you were. Intuitive.
• 46:48
  Yeah. Yeah, I I saw and I had to be, I
• 46:51
  had to be. So in touch with the female in
• 46:55
  order to survive and so I got to know a woman in ways that a boy
• 47:00
  should not. You know, I had to be so in tune
• 47:04
  and and I think that that caused it just added on top of all the
• 47:10
  issues that I, I had in my, my gender relating as as time went
• 47:16
  on, but I ended up having a few different friends.
• 47:20
  There was an abuse event where it got so bad that I, I was
• 47:23
  afraid that my mom would actually cripple me or take my
• 47:25
  life. And so when that happened, yeah,
• 47:30
  when that happened, I came to God, who I've been praying for
• 47:34
  years to take this away and he didn't.
• 47:37
  And I said, God, I still give you permission to take this
• 47:40
  away. But if I live in shame and
• 47:41
  silence anymore, I'm going to end up taking my own life.
• 47:44
  If this other person doesn't, I was so.
• 47:46
  Depressed. Like if your mom doesn't take my
• 47:48
  life, I'm going to take. Yeah, because it was so chaotic.
• 47:50
  It was like. The only way out was death.
• 47:52
  Yeah, and I, I like, I think that I probably would have if I
• 47:56
  wasn't afraid of hell. I think that that was, I mean
• 48:00
  that like, I thought that God hated me.
• 48:02
  I thought that I was, I was going there.
• 48:03
  There was not, I mean, and where did I get that from?
• 48:06
  You and I both. From Christians.
• 48:07
  From, from Christians, right. So that was the God that, you
• 48:11
  know, I, I needed to know. I'm not saying that all the
• 48:14
  Christians were like that. There was.
• 48:16
  From self-righteous Christians. And, and there was no answers.
• 48:19
  And there was so much silence from the church.
• 48:21
  The only time you heard about homosexuality was when it was
• 48:23
  talked about negatively. You know, they, they, they would
• 48:28
  give help for marriages, you know, like we knew what to do
• 48:31
  with people who, if they struggle with alcoholism, like
• 48:33
  they're, they're these places where we help people.
• 48:37
  But for homosexuality, like what do you have a demon, you know,
• 48:43
  like. Well, there's some circles of
• 48:45
  the church would, would, would call it that and say we need
• 48:47
  deliverance. And then, but then they had
• 48:49
  these cliches like it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
• 48:52
  Exactly. And it's like, well, that
• 48:54
  doesn't fix it. That that's completely unhelpful
• 48:56
  to those who are actually dealing with it and.
• 48:58
  Or I or this one I I love you, but I hate your sin.
• 49:03
  The problem is for us that became that, you know, for a
• 49:07
  season of life that that we the, the, the thing that we struggle
• 49:12
  with became an identity. Identity.
• 49:14
  Yes. And So what you hear is you hate
• 49:16
  me. That's right.
• 49:17
  Because we can separate our behavior from those feelings
• 49:21
  that we're having and that we may or may not have been acting.
• 49:23
  On and I think that that goes another step further because
• 49:26
  those feelings are not the core of those feelings are God-given
• 49:32
  needs. And so that our God actually
• 49:35
  wants to meet a lot of what we see in ourselves that we can't
• 49:39
  separate from. He wants to meet those in right
• 49:42
  ways. And what a victory that is for
• 49:44
  us to receive that and to know a God who cares that much about us
• 49:49
  to to see those things to see those things and care for us to
• 49:52
  become whole as human beings where you're screaming out
• 49:55
  because you're starving. He wants you to become whole.
• 49:58
  He doesn't want you to just live in it.
• 50:00
  He doesn't want you to just stop it and like, you know, white
• 50:03
  knuckle it through through life. He wants you to be a whole
• 50:07
  person. And so I, I call him Frank and
• 50:10
  Jesus, we end up with a Frank and Jesus, this other Jesus who
• 50:14
  is just telling you to stop it. And even if you say Jesus loves
• 50:17
  you and these kinds of things, what you're trying to do is
• 50:20
  you're getting an idea into another person's brain and that
• 50:22
  the problem is they have this lens, right.
• 50:24
  And so we have the all this lens of like, well, like Jesus loves
• 50:28
  me, but he, he made me this way and he tells me not to act on
• 50:30
  it. Right.
• 50:31
  I I thought that at one point and I was cross about it.
• 50:33
  I was like, that is not fair. Yeah, but he did make us with
• 50:37
  these needs inside of us that we have translated the wrong ways
• 50:41
  because the world has lied to us.
• 50:43
  Nobody gave us the answer, and the devil loves it.
• 50:45
  We're trying to meet a legitimate me need in an
• 50:48
  illegitimate way. And so we when we understand
• 50:51
  that Jesus actually loves us and he wants to meet that those deep
• 50:57
  core things of our personhood that that changes our who we see
• 51:03
  Jesus as, you know, and we don't have to go through life as as
• 51:08
  like a dead Christian who's stopping it and white knuckling
• 51:12
  it. There's new life in Christ.
• 51:14
  Yes, we put to death right. That's in nature, yeah.
• 51:18
  Romans 6. Right.
• 51:18
  If we're not coming to life, we're missing a huge part of the
• 51:21
  gospel. There is freedom.
• 51:22
  There is life. You know, he sets people free.
• 51:25
  He sets the captives free. OK, but I also want I my push
• 51:29
  back on that comment and that train of thinking is yeah, he
• 51:34
  sets us free. I have found he mediates it
• 51:37
  through relationship. It doesn't happen in a vacuum
• 51:40
  because I read my Bible and I read something in wherever where
• 51:44
  I feel, well, I read that. I feel so loved now it doesn't.
• 51:47
  I never got that from reading the Bible.
• 51:49
  That's right. And I'm not putting the word of
• 51:51
  God down. I'm saying is if it wasn't for
• 51:54
  relationships, and I would say this is a relational issue and
• 51:57
  it's healed in the context of healthy relationships.
• 52:00
  I just want to make sure that is very.
• 52:02
  Yeah, absolutely. People need to, people need to
• 52:04
  hear that, you know, I, I, I, the general understood Christian
• 52:09
  disciplines are so important. They're so important.
• 52:12
  Read your Bible, go to, go to Bible study, you know, prayer,
• 52:17
  all that prayer, these kinds of things.
• 52:18
  It's not, but it's not pray the gateway because that's what it
• 52:20
  got. That's what it got.
• 52:21
  That's how the media spun. It was, you know, because of
• 52:25
  people of faith who said I want to live in congruent.
• 52:29
  I want to live. It sounds like I'm saying
• 52:31
  incongruent, but I'm saying incongruence with my beliefs.
• 52:36
  And and it's not even that like, so I always made the point when
• 52:40
  people ask him, oh, do you think I'm going to hell because I'm
• 52:42
  gay? He's like, it doesn't matter
• 52:43
  what I think and first of all, any of anything that we're doing
• 52:49
  behaviorally is an indication of whether we're surrendered to God
• 52:52
  through the Christ or not. So it wasn't about gay,
• 52:55
  straight, anything like that. But he's like, there is an
• 52:58
  opinion. You can go find it out.
• 53:00
  And so the only reason I ever started to address any of this
• 53:03
  in my life because I was convinced that and it through
• 53:06
  the Bible in the Old and the New Testament, homosexuality is out
• 53:10
  of bounds. It's sin.
• 53:11
  It's missing the mark of God's intent, God's design.
• 53:15
  And so I was like, what am I going to do with that?
• 53:17
  OK, well I don't know how not to be gay, but I'm just going to go
• 53:20
  after God you. Knew that Jesus was true.
• 53:23
  And I, I think that that's, that's there's like you said,
• 53:26
  you end up at this place where I'm going to do the things that
• 53:29
  I know how to do. And then this other thing, I'm
• 53:32
  going to try to put it on the side as much as possible.
• 53:35
  But like you said, the relational healing if, if you
• 53:38
  can target the exact see, this is the thing.
• 53:41
  If you understand the development.
• 53:42
  We're not just like rehashing the past or whatever.
• 53:45
  I can now look and I can I can put my finger on that right
• 53:50
  there. That's the problem.
• 53:51
  That's the focus. That's what I, you know, like a
• 53:54
  person who's bleeding out has a completely different health
• 53:57
  issue and need than somebody who has cancer, right?
• 54:00
  Like bandage, you know, like heal a particular laceration
• 54:05
  versus like cutting something out of a person.
• 54:08
  We're not Wanderers anymore without information on how to
• 54:12
  the keys that that set us particularly free because now we
• 54:17
  know that issue right there. And the, the Holy Spirit is so
• 54:20
  gracious to give you and I both those insights.
• 54:23
  And I, I think that both of our calls is to try to share that,
• 54:27
  try to get that out, because there are so many people in this
• 54:30
  world right now who've been given disinformation on this
• 54:33
  issue and relational healing by meeting those needs and right
• 54:37
  ways, That's how we become whole.
• 54:39
  That's how God walks us into freedom with other people,
• 54:43
  through His Spirit. Well, and for me, you know, and
• 54:46
  I would I'm guessing the same would be true for you is like a
• 54:50
  big part of that was feeling secure and confident in my
• 54:54
  gender, embracing the body. God gave me that they they were
• 54:58
  just so linked my gender confusion and my same sex
• 55:01
  attractions. That's right, there was a big
• 55:03
  link there. Yeah.
• 55:05
  So talk to us about how you got came to a place of secure and
• 55:09
  confident in your masculinity. Yeah, so I ended up getting a
• 55:11
  scholarship to college I was able to get out of.
• 55:15
  Get away from mom. Out of the chaos in the home
• 55:18
  life and unfortunately that's where things really unravelled
• 55:21
  for me. I was an All American swimmer
• 55:23
  and I had a recurring back injury from my sophomore year of
• 55:26
  high school that got flared up and I was having trouble
• 55:31
  practicing and having consistent training.
• 55:35
  And my coach didn't understand. And one day he came to me and he
• 55:38
  said he said get in the water and swim or you're off my team.
• 55:43
  And I said, coach, I've got to leave with my back so I'm off
• 55:45
  your team. And at that point, the rug was
• 55:48
  pulled right out from under. Me.
• 55:49
  Oh, you lost your scholarship? Well, I didn't lose my
• 55:52
  scholarship, but I lost my identity.
• 55:55
  As a swimmer. Yeah, I mean, I had big plans
• 55:57
  with it, you know, like I had either I was, I had or I was
• 56:01
  close to AUS open cut. So I was, I was sufficiently
• 56:06
  good at swimming, right. And I all of a sudden I had all
• 56:10
  this time that I had never had. When you kept swimming.
• 56:13
  Yeah, 'cause like, you swim for three hours and you get home and
• 56:16
  you're exhausted, you know, like you do your homework and
• 56:18
  whatever. Now I had to, I had to face a
• 56:21
  lot of who I was and who I had become.
• 56:25
  And I, you know, it's, it's interesting, 'cause I wanted to
• 56:28
  like live through my childhood, childhood and then be able to
• 56:31
  like go and figure out who I was.
• 56:34
  But it didn't work that way. I had been formed and shaped by
• 56:36
  the experiences of my childhood that those things came with me.
• 56:40
  They came right with me to this school.
• 56:43
  And, and so I was depressed, I was anxious.
• 56:46
  I still wanted God. I still had no idea how to
• 56:48
  relate to him. And a friend of mine, she caught
• 56:52
  me at the end of my first semester and I've been drinking.
• 56:55
  I would drink. I would, I would drink to get
• 56:56
  drunk. I would hook up with other guys
• 57:01
  there. There was a lot of of, of that.
• 57:03
  I, I still, I still didn't didn't like, I knew enough about
• 57:08
  God that I never felt confident continuing in a relationship
• 57:12
  with a person with a man. Yeah, but I would, I would do
• 57:16
  one night stands. I would go get drunk and this
• 57:18
  thing would happen. But I I knew somewhere in me
• 57:20
  that it still wasn't it wasn't right.
• 57:23
  I had. I felt.
• 57:24
  So bad. No peace in it.
• 57:26
  Yeah. And so my my friend who's
• 57:29
  walking down the hall, she's a Christian.
• 57:31
  I know she's a Christian, but she's kind of like a dreamer
• 57:33
  Christian. She's the way I used to be, you
• 57:35
  know, before I had a sufficient amount of a.
• 57:38
  Dreamer Christian? Is that just a eternal optimist?
• 57:41
  I mean, she smile on her face and, and loves Jesus and that's
• 57:45
  it, you know, and, and that's good for her.
• 57:48
  But I was like, that's not, that doesn't work for me because
• 57:50
  I've, I've been through too much and I God doesn't work that way
• 57:53
  for me. You know, he doesn't just do the
• 57:55
  thing I want him to like he doesn't, he hasn't helped me
• 57:58
  with this thing. Like I've, I'm depressed,
• 58:01
  anxious, all these things, whatever.
• 58:02
  So she's walking down the hall. It's a Co Ed dorm.
• 58:05
  I have my, my, my room open. All the all the rooms open
• 58:09
  directly to 1 main hallway and I'm a mess.
• 58:12
  I'm just breaking down and I'm looking at my life and I don't
• 58:15
  want to live the way that I am. But I don't know what my options
• 58:18
  are. She sees me and she's like, hey,
• 58:21
  you know, Justin, are are you OK?
• 58:23
  Is everything OK? And I just spilled my guts.
• 58:27
  I shared everything with her. I said, you know, I'm gay.
• 58:30
  I don't want to be. I want Jesus, but I don't know
• 58:33
  how if that's an option for me. What what that looks like for
• 58:37
  me. And she looked me in the eyes
• 58:40
  and she said, Justin, you know, I don't think that you chose to
• 58:44
  be gay, She said. I think that experiences
• 58:46
  probably with your father have made you think that you were
• 58:49
  gay. And it was really powerful for
• 58:54
  me. At the at the same time, there
• 58:56
  was a devotional Oswald Chambers, my my first highest.
• 59:00
  When I graduated high school, a family friend had given that to
• 59:04
  me and I took her to school. Every once in a while I crack it
• 59:07
  open and look at one. It's deep.
• 59:09
  And I remember something to the effect of when you give your
• 59:13
  life to God, you give your whole life to him.
• 59:15
  You don't get to like have a place that you get to go back to
• 59:19
  in that old person and have for yourself, you sold that house.
• 59:23
  You cannot enter that house, you know.
• 59:25
  And so I was like God, like I gave you my, I gave you
• 59:29
  everything. I gave you all of me.
• 59:31
  I gave you my sexuality, but you did not take it.
• 59:34
  And I remember God saying, yes, you gave me your sexuality, but
• 59:36
  you did not give me your father. And I can tell you times in my
• 59:41
  childhood when I would pray and I would ask God, take this away,
• 59:44
  take this away and something inside of me and I have to, I
• 59:49
  have to phrase this right. There are a number of things you
• 59:52
  and I, I think, well, I'll just talk for myself when I go to
• 59:55
  pray and ask God for like insight today.
• 59:59
  Sometimes the things that I hear are my own thoughts and so you
• 1:00:04
  have to set separate out, you know, was that bad tacos I ate
• 1:00:08
  last night? Like what is going on to bring
• 1:00:10
  this thought to me. So when I'm a child that this is
• 1:00:13
  one of the thoughts that comes to mind.
• 1:00:14
  There are several others, but the thought was, you know, when
• 1:00:18
  I prayed and asked God to take this away.
• 1:00:20
  You need to forgive your Father. And I thought that one had
• 1:00:23
  absolutely nothing to do with the other.
• 1:00:25
  And I didn't have the term God image, but the concept was there
• 1:00:29
  of I think that this is probably Jesus stuff from church that
• 1:00:33
  I've integrated with my thinking processes.
• 1:00:37
  And so I'm just regurgitating what I think Jesus would.
• 1:00:41
  God would say. You go be a good little
• 1:00:44
  Christian boy, forgive and do the Christian things.
• 1:00:46
  And I'm going to take your problems and put them in a box,
• 1:00:48
  in a box in a box. And we're going to forget about
• 1:00:50
  it. But I realize what had happened.
• 1:00:55
  I realized that I, I was, I was still holding on to
• 1:01:00
  unforgiveness. I remember the vow that I made
• 1:01:03
  when I said I will never be like my father.
• 1:01:06
  He was not a nice person. He would come home, there was so
• 1:01:08
  much anger. There was so much yelling
• 1:01:10
  between my mom and my my father, mostly him.
• 1:01:13
  He had it really scary voice when he would yell and he would
• 1:01:17
  do it so often and there are other things going on.
• 1:01:20
  He never hurt my mom physically, praise God.
• 1:01:23
  But you know, there were a number of things that were
• 1:01:25
  anyway. So I he was not a savory person
• 1:01:28
  to me and I, I was like, I never want to be like my father.
• 1:01:31
  And I defensively detached not just from him, but from my own
• 1:01:35
  journey into masculine. Right.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah. I put this wall up that said
• 1:01:39
  like, I couldn't engage with male stuff because it smelled
• 1:01:41
  like my dad. It smelled like who he was.
• 1:01:44
  He's the most important man in your life.
• 1:01:45
  That's right. So God was like, you need to
• 1:01:48
  forgive your father because you can't even engage with your own
• 1:01:51
  masculinity because this is standing in the way.
• 1:01:55
  So I ended up forgiving my father.
• 1:01:58
  I stopped holding men to low social expectations.
• 1:02:03
  You know, like men are pigs or all they're after is sex or
• 1:02:06
  whatever. So I stopped doing that to the
• 1:02:09
  guys around me, which facilitated me engaging in life
• 1:02:13
  with them. You know, these things that that
• 1:02:16
  are a part of our life. I mean, guys have testosterone,
• 1:02:18
  you know, like God has put these things as a part of our being
• 1:02:22
  that I have like poo pooed, you know, and, and maybe at a
• 1:02:26
  certain point I just need to be like, this is, this is okay.
• 1:02:29
  Like I can't just like dump on a whole half of the human
• 1:02:34
  population. It was a, it was a prejudice.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, it was a prejudice in my heart.
• 1:02:38
  And an over generalization to all men.
• 1:02:41
  That's right, right. That's right.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah. I mean, there are men who who
• 1:02:44
  are like, you know, use these things and, and anger.
• 1:02:47
  For instance, God told me to embrace my anger in right ways.
• 1:02:51
  So I had only seen anger used in in bad ways.
• 1:02:55
  To destroy, yeah. But the same anger that destroys
• 1:02:59
  and harms is also the that anger that goes and it kicks down the
• 1:03:03
  doors of brothels and rescues. Of the children.
• 1:03:05
  You know, so there's something about injustice that anger is
• 1:03:09
  about and God wanted me to embrace that.
• 1:03:12
  And that was a journey. And then even in embracing it,
• 1:03:14
  how to embrace it because you don't want to just hang on to it
• 1:03:17
  forever, but you want to be able to feel it and, and lead
• 1:03:23
  yourself to be LED into justice in the right ways as a result.
• 1:03:28
  So anyways, that's that's a longer journey for me.
• 1:03:31
  But after she she spoke that to me the.
• 1:03:35
  Lady at college. Yeah, Catherine is her name.
• 1:03:39
  She was such a blessing to me and I started connecting the
• 1:03:43
  dots. I started working my my stuff
• 1:03:45
  out and I, I would say that second Smith.
• 1:03:47
  So that was the end of the first semester and I gave my life back
• 1:03:50
  to Christ and I said, God, anytime, anywhere, anything, you
• 1:03:53
  tell me what to do and I'll do it.
• 1:03:54
  I came back to school the next semester and I would say I send
• 1:03:58
  less but I still sin quite a bit and it was a community around
• 1:04:03
  me. I had surrounded myself with a
• 1:04:06
  particular group of people and the school itself.
• 1:04:09
  It was a very cutthroat environment and super
• 1:04:12
  depressing. And and so, you know, there were
• 1:04:16
  all these things that were holding me back one day I was at
• 1:04:19
  home the next summer and and I planned on going back to the
• 1:04:22
  school, but God ended up calling me to a different place and he
• 1:04:26
  did it by one day. I was I was laying in my bed and
• 1:04:32
  I grew up Methodist, so crazy charismatic experiences were not
• 1:04:37
  a part of it. But this was about to be 1.
• 1:04:40
  So so there is this thickness that came into my room and it
• 1:04:45
  was. It was it.
• 1:04:47
  Was it was it was weighty and it was peaceful.
• 1:04:50
  It was it was weighty and it was comforting.
• 1:04:53
  But I knew whatever was about to happen was really important.
• 1:04:56
  And I just sat and I breathe for a while and I just sat.
• 1:05:00
  And then finally I said, OK, God, you know, like what's going
• 1:05:03
  on? And he started revealing to me
• 1:05:05
  all the things about the community that I was in that was
• 1:05:09
  keeping me from becoming who he wanted me to be.
• 1:05:13
  And I'm a pretty sensitive guy. And so he just like, dumped all
• 1:05:15
  this information on me. If it wasn't for his piece, I
• 1:05:18
  would have been a heaping mess. But he showed me it was like I
• 1:05:22
  was trying to walk forward. And I had all these hooks in my
• 1:05:24
  back, right? So the, the people I'd surround
• 1:05:28
  myself with, none of them were really following Jesus.
• 1:05:31
  I mean, Catherine was on the hall, but I did not have a close
• 1:05:35
  relationship with her, right. These other people are
• 1:05:38
  relationships around a drinking and partying and the, the
• 1:05:42
  churches all around the universities had rainbow flags
• 1:05:46
  outside. They were not going to support
• 1:05:49
  me in following Jesus. There were a number of issues
• 1:05:53
  there. And, and so I, I, I told God, I
• 1:05:55
  said, and I told you anywhere, anytime, anything, you tell me
• 1:05:58
  what to do and I'll do it, which I have not done well.
• 1:06:01
  I just want people to know, you know, you, you make that promise
• 1:06:05
  and, and you intend. But I, I said that and, and he
• 1:06:08
  said, I want you to transfer to this little private Christian
• 1:06:13
  School. And I said, OK, you know, and so
• 1:06:17
  I ended up there. I ended up God called me, I was
• 1:06:21
  pre Med and, and God called me from that into missions.
• 1:06:27
  So I ended up getting a degree in missions and then from their
• 1:06:30
  spiritual formation. Along the way, I had a lot of
• 1:06:33
  help dealing with underlying issues.
• 1:06:36
  As I, you know, the research sort of confirmed what God was
• 1:06:40
  teaching me in my own story and during what Catherine had spoken
• 1:06:44
  to me. But as I got more in tune with
• 1:06:47
  what where the healing needed to happen within me and my story
• 1:06:50
  and my brokenness, that's, that's when I, I found this
• 1:06:54
  freedom where I was no longer reaching out here, reaching out
• 1:06:58
  there and trying to get these needs met in all the wrong ways
• 1:07:01
  because their needs, you know, I started being able to give more
• 1:07:08
  because I was whole. Now I can love you right in your
• 1:07:11
  situation and I'm not grasping as much.
• 1:07:14
  And I had such a peace within me.
• 1:07:16
  People think, Oh, well, like this is all about you wanting to
• 1:07:21
  be straight and you wanting to be married.
• 1:07:23
  And that's cool. Like if you arrive there, that's
• 1:07:25
  fine. But celibacy is not an excuse
• 1:07:28
  for not dealing with your crap. And the biggest reward that I
• 1:07:32
  have had is to feel so much wholeness in my own skin.
• 1:07:37
  I feel good in my own skin. And people, people who get that
• 1:07:41
  as like a child, like you don't realize how important that is.
• 1:07:44
  You may not realize to what degree you have that.
• 1:07:46
  They probably take it for granted if they got it as a
• 1:07:48
  child it's. It's hard to notice.
• 1:07:49
  And then you get it and you're like, wow, you feel you notice
• 1:07:53
  the difference. It's.
• 1:07:53
  Huge. I didn't think, I thought that I
• 1:07:55
  had to be gay or whatever to like except find a way to make
• 1:08:00
  God OK with being gay, all these things in order to get myself to
• 1:08:04
  feel that way. But you cannot find that in
• 1:08:06
  homosexuality. This is when you look at where
• 1:08:10
  homosexuality ends up in the pathologies and the unhappiness
• 1:08:14
  and it just doesn't happen. I mean, male homosexuality.
• 1:08:20
  They did a study the, the book called the male couple and they
• 1:08:24
  studied, it was 2 gay men and they studied men who were, it
• 1:08:31
  was like 150 couples of men who were getting.
• 1:08:36
  I don't know if it was, I don't think it would have been called
• 1:08:38
  a marriage at that point, but it it was like.
• 1:08:41
  Relationships, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:42
  Monogamy, I guess. What do they call it?
• 1:08:45
  Exclusive, like a domestic partnership?
• 1:08:47
  I don't know why you call it, you know, so they were comparing
• 1:08:50
  that. They were trying to say this is
• 1:08:52
  normal, this is good, this is just as good as heterosexual
• 1:08:54
  marriages. What they found, they, they
• 1:08:57
  studied these people for three years.
• 1:08:58
  Do you know how many couples of those 150 ended up monogamous
• 1:09:03
  after three years? I don't know.
• 1:09:06
  You can't say anything offensive right now.
• 1:09:07
  I mean, I don't know. I mean.
• 1:09:09
  It's literally 00 of those couples were monogamous.
• 1:09:14
  You know why? Because it doesn't meet the need
• 1:09:18
  and you're still out there trying to get that need met and
• 1:09:23
  fulfilled and it does not happen there.
• 1:09:26
  God has the only answer for this situation.
• 1:09:29
  And it's so beautiful when you get it.
• 1:09:32
  I just, I didn't know that I could be as whole as I am.
• 1:09:38
  You know, you hope when, when you get a little insight, you're
• 1:09:40
  like hope that this is a thing. You hear a little testimony and
• 1:09:44
  you're like, I think that that might and and then you get some
• 1:09:48
  degree of that and you're like, holy cow, like I'm not the same
• 1:09:52
  person. This piece.
• 1:09:54
  It's, it's completely changed who I am and how I live life.
• 1:09:59
  The thoughts that are in my brain.
• 1:10:01
  You know what matters to me in life?
• 1:10:04
  It's it's it's a different sort of walk with Jesus.
• 1:10:07
  That is not this chaotic thing that it used to be.
• 1:10:10
  I'm not saying there's not still issues or struggles like life is
• 1:10:14
  life. It's it has tough stuff, but to
• 1:10:17
  have some a much better sense of sanity and and centeredness and
• 1:10:24
  peace. I like that, yeah.
• 1:10:27
  And just being comfortable in your own skin, Yeah, that's
• 1:10:32
  really rich. And it's quite a journey, you
• 1:10:35
  know, to get there for with your history.
• 1:10:39
  Yeah, it was, it was I, God did what he needed to do in my life.
• 1:10:45
  And I'm, I'm so grateful that he did.
• 1:10:47
  He knew putting Catherine on my hall would change my life.
• 1:10:50
  You know, he had her praying the whole semester.
• 1:10:53
  I would find out later she was praying for me the whole
• 1:10:56
  semester and, and wanting me to share with her what I was
• 1:11:01
  dealing with because she wanted to speak into it, you know, And
• 1:11:05
  so she was able to name the needs, she's able to name the
• 1:11:09
  needs that were going on underneath and she was able to
• 1:11:12
  point me to resources. How did she know all that?
• 1:11:15
  Like what did you ever find out? Like what?
• 1:11:17
  I mean she just was a really well informed Christian.
• 1:11:19
  Yeah, at some point somebody had to tell her.
• 1:11:22
  'Cause she wasn't using those trite cliches that we've heard,
• 1:11:25
  you know what I mean? Like.
• 1:11:26
  When she said I don't think you chose to be gay, I was like, I
• 1:11:29
  really don't think this is a girl who is just like, it's
• 1:11:31
  biological and like, go do it. I'm like, wait, like, what is
• 1:11:34
  she gonna say next? Yeah, 'cause those were the only
• 1:11:36
  options. It's choice or it's genetic?
• 1:11:38
  Yeah, you're either Born This Way or you chose it.
• 1:11:40
  And I I agree with her. That's not, neither one is
• 1:11:43
  accurate. Neither one is accurate.
• 1:11:46
  And that's the and and yeah, I was going to say I, I used to
• 1:11:54
  tell people when they would ask me that I would say you just
• 1:11:56
  need to take the C word out of your vocabulary and meaning
• 1:11:59
  choice because it's not a OK, Larry Crab will put it in this
• 1:12:03
  term like it's not a felt choice.
• 1:12:05
  I love. Larry.
• 1:12:06
  Larry Crab. Yes.
• 1:12:07
  Not a felt choice. It may be more of a conclusion
• 1:12:11
  rather than a goal. So for you, everybody's the self
• 1:12:14
  fulfilling prophecy of you being called these names for years.
• 1:12:17
  And there's also you have a hunger and, and that hunger for,
• 1:12:20
  for masculine love and attention, you know, later
• 1:12:24
  became eroticized. But originally it was just part
• 1:12:27
  of how we're wired that we need that.
• 1:12:30
  And so, like, it was a conclusion rather than a goal or
• 1:12:34
  a choice. And the way I demonstrate it
• 1:12:36
  when I say, like, it's not a choice.
• 1:12:38
  This is how I say it within an audience.
• 1:12:40
  OK, you ready? I say, listen, I can prove it
• 1:12:42
  right now. And I ask a group like a church
• 1:12:46
  or something, when did you choose to become heterosexual?
• 1:12:49
  And they all look at me like, I don't know what you're talking
• 1:12:51
  about because they didn't choose it.
• 1:12:53
  They didn't wake up one day in fifth grade or 10th grade and
• 1:12:56
  go, OK, I'm going to be straight from now.
• 1:12:58
  You know what I mean? Nobody chose it, right?
• 1:13:00
  Right. And so the other thing, this is
• 1:13:04
  another way to demonstrate it. You ready?
• 1:13:05
  Is that have you ever been attracted to someone who you
• 1:13:10
  knew that if you pursued that attraction, it would not be a
• 1:13:15
  good thing? So for example, for a girl
• 1:13:17
  attracted to the guy who's like the rebel, the motorcycle gang
• 1:13:22
  guy, you know what I mean? They always like, they don't go
• 1:13:24
  after the good, you know, good grades and all this kind of
• 1:13:27
  stuff. They go after like the one who's
• 1:13:29
  like the troublemaker for some reason, usually maybe because
• 1:13:32
  they're so good looking, I don't know.
• 1:13:34
  But like, or it could be, you know, the troublemaker could be
• 1:13:37
  somebody who's in in trouble with the law too.
• 1:13:39
  So you might say, oh, I'm, I, I notice I'm attracted to that
• 1:13:43
  person, but I don't want to pursue it because he is a
• 1:13:45
  troublemaker. And so to be, to connect with
• 1:13:48
  him is going to probably lead me into trouble.
• 1:13:51
  You know what I mean? And so, but so we can override
• 1:13:54
  the attraction, you can say so, so I can't help if I'm attracted
• 1:13:58
  to that person, I can help whether I pursue that attraction
• 1:14:01
  or not. So I didn't choose the
• 1:14:02
  attraction. Do you see what I'm?
• 1:14:05
  Saying. So it's not a choice, but The
• 1:14:08
  thing is to somebody who's homosexually oriented and not
• 1:14:11
  interested in the in the opposite sex, then to them they
• 1:14:14
  feel like they have no choice except this one which is to
• 1:14:18
  pursue same sex relationships. Because the other part of what
• 1:14:21
  you're saying is if you're attracted to, let's say, a
• 1:14:24
  heterosexual woman is attracted to the bad boy, you know she
• 1:14:29
  can, then there are other places of her attraction where she's
• 1:14:32
  attracted to. Maybe guys who aren't like that,
• 1:14:35
  that is an OK place to take this.
• 1:14:37
  The homosexual person when you're strictly homosexual when.
• 1:14:43
  I'm coming from a Christian. Attracted you're you're
• 1:14:46
  attracted to the same sex. There is no good way to end up
• 1:14:49
  taking this thing, you know? And so there must be healing in
• 1:14:53
  order to, you know, move forward in the right way.
• 1:14:56
  I remember speaking at A, at a youth group and these two kids,
• 1:15:01
  I'm talking like 7th grade 2 girls came up to me and they
• 1:15:04
  said we're, you know, we're in a relationship.
• 1:15:07
  And this is a, a youth group, like at a, at a pretty prominent
• 1:15:10
  church locally. And they said we're, you know,
• 1:15:13
  we're in a relationship, but we want to know maybe they were, I
• 1:15:16
  don't know, 7th grade, but like, if we get married one day, will
• 1:15:19
  that make it OK? And I was like, harp on like, no
• 1:15:21
  premarital sex. But so somebody who's
• 1:15:24
  homosexually attracted is thinking, OK, long as you get
• 1:15:26
  married, it's going to be sanctified and it's never going
• 1:15:29
  to be a sanctified relationship. That's right.
• 1:15:30
  And that's really hard news to be hit with.
• 1:15:33
  If you're attracted and you don't have opposite.
• 1:15:36
  Sex attractions. It is, yeah.
• 1:15:37
  It feels like a It feels like it's a life sentence, right to
• 1:15:41
  celibacy. And nobody looks at that.
• 1:15:43
  As a wonderful viable. Option in relationships.
• 1:15:45
  They look at it as like a like a death sentence and and it's not
• 1:15:49
  even it's not even to to normal. Celibacy like, like if, if you
• 1:15:53
  choose to be celibate, but you have most of your God-given
• 1:15:56
  needs met, there isn't as intense of a starvation hunger
• 1:16:00
  to like get the thing. And so that's what we have to,
• 1:16:03
  we really have to do a better job as a church separating that
• 1:16:07
  out to see what's really going on.
• 1:16:10
  And then you can decide if you want to be celibate, But you're
• 1:16:13
  you, you're going to be way more OK with it having those needs
• 1:16:18
  met. But you know, so many of us who
• 1:16:20
  go through meeting those needs in right ways, we see an option
• 1:16:24
  for marriage If God brings that to us, I'm like super stoked if
• 1:16:28
  God has that for me. If not, that's OK, you know, But
• 1:16:33
  it's, it's not where I'm forced. Like it's so hard to describe, I
• 1:16:38
  think to, to outsiders. And so you, you, you say it this
• 1:16:42
  way, you say it that way, but you, this is a part of your
• 1:16:46
  personhood inside the, the part that I'm talking about is those
• 1:16:50
  needs and that intense starvation, hunger.
• 1:16:53
  The devil has has distorted it. The lies in your brain about
• 1:16:57
  what you think is going to meet that has been so distorted.
• 1:17:01
  It's, it's so intense that the only place that you, you can
• 1:17:04
  make sense of it happening is there in a homosexual
• 1:17:08
  relationship, but it's just not. And there's so much freedom when
• 1:17:13
  you can address those things that you, you don't have to feel
• 1:17:16
  like your only choice is this horrible celibacy with this
• 1:17:21
  starvation or going into a marriage or whatever.
• 1:17:26
  And, and then ending up in, in hell.
• 1:17:28
  You know, that's kind of your ultimate where you feel like
• 1:17:31
  this is going to end. Those don't have to be the only
• 1:17:34
  options, you know what frustrates me is.
• 1:17:38
  That I don't think the church meaning just the church at
• 1:17:42
  large. I'm not thinking of any specific
• 1:17:43
  church, but doesn't value singleness.
• 1:17:48
  You know, it's like, and I heard Rosaria, Rosaria Butterfield say
• 1:17:53
  this at a conference one time. And it was so profound because,
• 1:17:57
  you know, and I've dated, you know, since I came out of
• 1:18:01
  homosexuality. I mean, I was even engaged once.
• 1:18:03
  And I remember when I was in, when I was dating a guy that we
• 1:18:07
  ended up getting engaged. Everybody was like, I felt like,
• 1:18:10
  and I don't know if this was true, but I felt like
• 1:18:11
  everybody's looking on like, oh, the little ex lesbian, you know,
• 1:18:14
  like she's got a guy. She's healed.
• 1:18:17
  Yeah, well, she's healed. And but then when when that
• 1:18:21
  engagement didn't, when it broke up, OK, I, I thought that
• 1:18:25
  everybody's looked at me going, oh, she's really maybe she's not
• 1:18:27
  healed enough, you know? And so it was really hard to
• 1:18:31
  like, I always felt like I was dating in a fish bowl, you know
• 1:18:34
  what I mean? Yeah, But Rosaria said this.
• 1:18:38
  At a. Conference, like I don't know
• 1:18:40
  how many years ago it's, it's, it's more than a decade ago, but
• 1:18:42
  it was so profound. And then it was hard for me
• 1:18:46
  because I it was a Baptist group and it was hard because I wanted
• 1:18:51
  to stand on a chair and shout Amen when she said it because it
• 1:18:55
  was so profound and and it's so accurate.
• 1:18:59
  She said we need to stop treating single people like they
• 1:19:03
  need to be fixed or fixed up. And I walked out of that
• 1:19:08
  convention hall, whatever. And a dear friend of mine was
• 1:19:11
  there. He was a the counseling pastor
• 1:19:14
  at a church that where I was evangelized.
• 1:19:16
  And I said, I've known him for 20 years.
• 1:19:18
  And I just said, did you hear that?
• 1:19:20
  And it just because. So for me as somebody who is,
• 1:19:24
  has been single for many years and still single, not that this
• 1:19:27
  is an advertisement, but I'm saying like, you know, I'm, I'm
• 1:19:29
  single, right? It could be an advertisement.
• 1:19:32
  Should we post my phone number? My phone number in the show
• 1:19:36
  notes this one a. Completely different direction.
• 1:19:41
  We'll get it back but but like when I if.
• 1:19:43
  I see somebody I haven't seen in a while.
• 1:19:45
  You know, it's always the first one.
• 1:19:46
  Is there a man in your life? And it's like so if there's not
• 1:19:50
  does that. So I'm.
• 1:19:51
  A loser, you know what I mean? Like, like.
• 1:19:54
  And I'm like I got. So tired of the.
• 1:19:56
  Question, you know, like and like you said, whether I ever
• 1:20:00
  get married or not, I'm just going to live full on for God
• 1:20:03
  and and be a healthy person. Yes, and and same for me.
• 1:20:07
  Like I'm open to that, but I. Just don't want to settle for
• 1:20:09
  just any Tom, Dick, or Harry just to prove I'm not a lesbian.
• 1:20:12
  That's right, And I'm probably getting up with a guy named Tom,
• 1:20:14
  Dick or Harry. So I was engaged with a guy
• 1:20:19
  named Tom. So now we're down to two more
• 1:20:21
  choices. So if your name is Dick or
• 1:20:25
  Harry, please. Contact but any of when she said
• 1:20:29
  that? We need to stop treating single
• 1:20:31
  people like they need to be fixed or fixed up.
• 1:20:34
  I feel like we live in a relationship centric world.
• 1:20:37
  OK, this is getting back to the point of if I if I'm
• 1:20:40
  homosexually oriented and I don't feel like I have a choice,
• 1:20:45
  if I'm if I'm not interested in opposite sex relationship, then
• 1:20:48
  I feel like I have to go down this road because nobody wants
• 1:20:51
  to be single. And it's because we live in a
• 1:20:53
  relationship centric world that somehow there's something wrong
• 1:20:55
  with you if you're not in relationship.
• 1:20:57
  And I think the church is just as relationship centric as the
• 1:21:01
  world. And I don't think God feels that
• 1:21:03
  way. Jesus was single, Paul the
• 1:21:06
  apostle Paul was single. Like there's some people that we
• 1:21:09
  Revere that never married. And Paul said it's better to
• 1:21:14
  stay single. You know, you you can be single
• 1:21:16
  minded in devotion to the Lord. That's right.
• 1:21:18
  And so so some of my heroes of the faith, like Corey, Tim Boom
• 1:21:21
  was single. Yeah.
• 1:21:22
  You know, CS Lewis was single till he was in his 50s.
• 1:21:26
  So like, you know, you never know.
• 1:21:28
  But but it feels like the older you get and you're single, that
• 1:21:31
  people are like looking at you. Like what's wrong with you that
• 1:21:33
  you're still single? You're like the can on the shelf
• 1:21:35
  that fell off and now. Has all these dents in it.
• 1:21:39
  Well, and the expiration date. Oh my gosh, stuff is good.
• 1:21:47
  So yeah, so I guess I. Want to ask, like, about dating,
• 1:21:52
  you know, after that conversation, you know, like,
• 1:21:54
  you're open to a relationship. Yeah, I, I am.
• 1:21:57
  I like. You.
• 1:21:59
  I don't. I don't want to settle.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah. Good for you.
• 1:22:01
  Come on, we're going to start that.
• 1:22:03
  We're not settling club and I and I have to tell you, people
• 1:22:07
  think people. Have this idea, this false idea
• 1:22:09
  that if you get married, all your problems are going to go
• 1:22:11
  away. Oh yeah, I'm telling you, you
• 1:22:14
  just started a. Whole bunch of new.
• 1:22:15
  Problems, right? We're all going to have
• 1:22:17
  problems. It's just which one you choose.
• 1:22:20
  You know, it's. I have friends who are in
• 1:22:22
  marriages that are very, very difficult.
• 1:22:24
  Oh, I can. Most.
• 1:22:25
  Yeah, most people I know are. Not in long term relationships
• 1:22:29
  that they they were, they really love.
• 1:22:32
  They're like some of them are just roommates.
• 1:22:34
  I asked this one friend. I said, I said she was an older
• 1:22:38
  lady. I mean, older than me, but
• 1:22:40
  whatever. Not super old.
• 1:22:42
  I don't know. But I go, do you know what a
• 1:22:44
  misogynist is? And she goes, yeah, my husband's
• 1:22:46
  want it. And I was like the way she said
• 1:22:48
  it was like so matter of fact. And I was like, it was, I was
• 1:22:52
  sad, you know, and and like where people just tolerate each
• 1:22:56
  other, you know, there's not many marriages that I that I
• 1:22:58
  emulate that I would that I'm interested in.
• 1:23:01
  Yeah, that's right. So, yeah.
• 1:23:03
  So I. I think it's, it's both ways and
• 1:23:05
  I do think that there's something to us being able to
• 1:23:08
  serve the Kingdom better. Like Paul said, in your
• 1:23:11
  singleness, you know, you, you are very concerned about your
• 1:23:14
  kids and serving your kids. If that's, you know, ends up
• 1:23:17
  being your calling, which is fine, which is great, but but I
• 1:23:21
  do I see the benefit on this side as well.
• 1:23:25
  I want to go back to something that we almost started to talk
• 1:23:28
  to you about. Well, that one too.
• 1:23:32
  But so we had talked about how in in families or, or it was
• 1:23:39
  when somebody is affected by an event, an adverse event that
• 1:23:44
  happens in their life, same molestation like the some women
• 1:23:48
  go through that and they end up sort of rejecting men as a
• 1:23:54
  result of that. And then other women will not
• 1:23:57
  exactly do the same thing. So there's a lady named Doctor
• 1:24:02
  Karen Horny. It's spelled Horny, but I choose
• 1:24:06
  to say Horny. That's how it's a hard last
• 1:24:10
  name. That's how I would.
• 1:24:13
  That's how I learned to say it, so I'm going to stick with that.
• 1:24:15
  Good. For you.
• 1:24:16
  So she had this. The idea was so she uses
• 1:24:20
  towards, away from or against. So if if I'm harmed by somebody,
• 1:24:28
  there's three different ways that she's suggesting that could
• 1:24:31
  happen. As far as my relationship with
• 1:24:34
  the external world there, you know, there's suicidality and
• 1:24:38
  that kind of stuff internally. I'm not talking about that.
• 1:24:41
  What I'm talking about is I can either get too close to my
• 1:24:45
  abuser. There are women who try to
• 1:24:48
  repeat that. They follow men who will
• 1:24:50
  actually abuse them again if they go through sexual abuse or
• 1:24:54
  physical abuse. You seek that out.
• 1:24:57
  And some of that is subconsciously.
• 1:24:59
  I don't think it's conscious, no, I think it's very.
• 1:25:02
  Like very, I agree with you. So.
• 1:25:04
  So a lot of this is unconscious. Yeah, so then, so then there are
• 1:25:07
  the people who detach all together and I'm not going to go
• 1:25:10
  towards a man, right. So that would be somebody like
• 1:25:13
  for some lesbians. Women have become the only safe
• 1:25:16
  option in relationships. That's right, and it happens
• 1:25:18
  even to adult women who are. In a relationship with a
• 1:25:21
  marriage or something like that with, with a very emotionally
• 1:25:24
  abusive husband or physically or sexually, whatever.
• 1:25:28
  And they get out of that and they end up in a relationship
• 1:25:31
  with a female. So it's not just children, but
• 1:25:35
  as a child, sometimes the developmental things, why you
• 1:25:38
  end up, you know, where you're at because of some of these
• 1:25:43
  factors of, of now distancing myself, I will say, like with my
• 1:25:48
  father, defensive detachment. So I stepped back from my
• 1:25:51
  masculinity where some, some people, if they are affected by
• 1:25:56
  a man in a negative way, they can actually like another boy
• 1:25:59
  might try to then get closer and closer to that that father or
• 1:26:03
  whoever it was. And then there's the reaction
• 1:26:06
  of, of against. So let's go back to that female
• 1:26:10
  situation where there's a man who's they're abused by that one
• 1:26:14
  becomes a man eater. So now she is victimizing men,
• 1:26:21
  you know, taking their hearts, you know, like like using them
• 1:26:26
  because that's her that internally, right?
• 1:26:29
  This is our internal world. So these things aren't
• 1:26:31
  conscious, but I use that as an example, Karen Hornye, because
• 1:26:37
  she explains some of how one person can go through one thing
• 1:26:42
  and go One Direction and the other person can go another
• 1:26:45
  direction. These are some of the towards
• 1:26:48
  away from and against. I think are kind of simplifies
• 1:26:51
  some of how that might turn out for a person.
• 1:26:54
  And, and I think it encourages people as to why, you know,
• 1:26:59
  somebody like, why did I end up in this particular situation
• 1:27:02
  versus another particular situation that I see another
• 1:27:06
  person 100% like some women who've been sexually abused
• 1:27:09
  become. Promiscuous, whereas some others
• 1:27:12
  maybe become gay, you know what I mean?
• 1:27:14
  And both of those can be reaction to being sexually
• 1:27:17
  abused, for example, or even some put on a lot of weight
• 1:27:21
  because they don't want that attention from other future men.
• 1:27:25
  So they and but a lot of this isn't conscious.
• 1:27:28
  And so, I mean, I think I at this point, I want to put it in
• 1:27:32
  a plug for therapy because, you know, because I think you didn't
• 1:27:37
  come to these conclusions just sitting around doing life.
• 1:27:40
  I mean, I assume, but like that because that's where I learned a
• 1:27:44
  lot too, is, is in in therapeutic settings where I can
• 1:27:48
  get underneath and get to those root causes and understand it
• 1:27:51
  from a different perspective rather than just from the
• 1:27:53
  surface perspective. Yeah, we need, we need mentors.
• 1:27:57
  We need insights. You know, the, the tools of
• 1:28:00
  transformation where you're now you're, you're a Sinner St.
• 1:28:04
  And you want to become holy. You know, you go to the pastor
• 1:28:07
  in the church. They say, you know, like we want
• 1:28:10
  you to become humble, but we, you're like prideful.
• 1:28:14
  What is the step between being where I'm at to being that
• 1:28:18
  humble person? What are the steps in the tools?
• 1:28:20
  And sometimes those things are missing.
• 1:28:22
  I want you to be humble. Go be humble.
• 1:28:24
  And they come back the next week and they're still prideful.
• 1:28:27
  You know, the pastor thinks that they're a horrible Sinner or
• 1:28:30
  whatever. You know, I'm just saying I'm
• 1:28:32
  hypothetically they're not doing their job.
• 1:28:34
  But but the reality is we need to explain to people what are
• 1:28:38
  the steps, what are the tools for us?
• 1:28:41
  Same sex relationships became such a powerful place of healing
• 1:28:46
  and the insight to do that we did not have.
• 1:28:49
  And somebody had to help us come up with a strategy to think
• 1:28:53
  through these things and then to process it with people who knew
• 1:28:57
  the kinds of things that might come up as we did that.
• 1:29:00
  So like a therapist, you know, there, there are godly
• 1:29:03
  counselors out there. And, and I do, I want to say
• 1:29:06
  there's some really bad therapist out there.
• 1:29:08
  We know that. Sure.
• 1:29:10
  Particularly on our issue. You have to be so, so careful.
• 1:29:14
  You do. But.
• 1:29:15
  They're really godly therapist who will sit with you, who will
• 1:29:19
  give you the tools and insights and walk some of the challenging
• 1:29:23
  step by steps to get from point A to point B Yeah, I mean, it's
• 1:29:29
  it's not. It's not really possible.
• 1:29:32
  It could be possible, I don't know.
• 1:29:33
  I never tried this, but like to say, well, OK, I have struggled
• 1:29:36
  with same sex attraction, so therefore I'm just going to stay
• 1:29:38
  away from women forever. You know, at the point that I'm
• 1:29:41
  coming to a place of repentance and trying to walk with God and
• 1:29:45
  surrender this part of my life. And I don't even know how not to
• 1:29:47
  be gay. So I'm just going to just just
• 1:29:50
  cut myself off from these relationships because it's too
• 1:29:52
  tempting. But that that I couldn't do that
• 1:29:54
  any more than the food addict can say, OK, you know what,
• 1:29:57
  food's an issue for me, so I'm just not going to eat like you.
• 1:30:00
  You need food to live. So I had to learn how to
• 1:30:03
  navigate those relationships in healthy ways and stop trying to
• 1:30:07
  be, you know, for example, emotional dependency was a big
• 1:30:09
  issue for me. And try to consume somebody
• 1:30:11
  emotionally and take people in the limited doses and not, you
• 1:30:16
  know, launch all of my emotional need onto any one person where,
• 1:30:21
  where, you know, it's like, so I would put it in these terms
• 1:30:24
  where I'm the vampire and they're the emotional blood
• 1:30:27
  bank, you know what I mean? And so, and it took a lot of
• 1:30:30
  work to get to that point and to even understand what was driving
• 1:30:33
  the emotional dependency. That's right.
• 1:30:34
  And and and very practical steps like.
• 1:30:37
  For instance, for me, you know, going back to do I do I
• 1:30:41
  completely like not, you know, interact with these guys or
• 1:30:45
  whatever. If I felt an attraction to a
• 1:30:48
  guy, oftentimes I would walk up to that guy and start a
• 1:30:51
  conversation because it completely demystified him.
• 1:30:56
  I could no longer objectify the image of him as in pornography,
• 1:31:01
  right? Like now I'm dealing with a
• 1:31:02
  human being who smells, you know, who isn't quite perfect
• 1:31:07
  and everything that he says because he was an idea, a
• 1:31:10
  masculine idea until you get to. Know him.
• 1:31:12
  You realize he doesn't have it all together.
• 1:31:13
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:31:14
  And so I I learned so. Much about myself as a man,
• 1:31:18
  because I went up to these guys who I thought were supposed to
• 1:31:21
  be it, and they just weren't. They were just like me.
• 1:31:25
  I, we had the same problems, we had the same struggles.
• 1:31:28
  And I no longer needed to hold on to that fantasy #1 it, it's
• 1:31:34
  not real. And #2 I have everything that
• 1:31:38
  that man has. I have everything that that man
• 1:31:41
  has because of God created me as a man.
• 1:31:44
  And so I have all the things we're dealing with the same
• 1:31:48
  issues, you know, and some of those guys, you know, like I, I
• 1:31:51
  still talk to him. I don't know that I've ever
• 1:31:53
  shared that with him. But you know, like I, I made an
• 1:31:57
  intention to, to demystify what was.
• 1:32:00
  So these, this is a, you know, one of the many tools in my
• 1:32:04
  toolbox, right, that we, you and I have found through therapy and
• 1:32:09
  counseling and books and resources that it do.
• 1:32:12
  You're just not given this. You're not given this manual.
• 1:32:15
  It doesn't drop out of the sky when you find yourself with same
• 1:32:17
  sex attractions. You have to get insights and
• 1:32:20
  information. There's so many great resources
• 1:32:23
  out there when you were talking about men.
• 1:32:24
  And for me, I was afraid of straight women, not because I
• 1:32:30
  thought they would hurt me. I was afraid of them because I
• 1:32:32
  felt like I couldn't relate to them because I thought all they
• 1:32:34
  want to talk about is like makeup and fashion, you know,
• 1:32:37
  and I didn't care about that stuff.
• 1:32:39
  And, but as I got to know them, like you were talking about
• 1:32:43
  demystifying the masculine ideal, like I kind of looked at
• 1:32:47
  this is a terrible thing to say, but like very beautiful,
• 1:32:50
  attractive women as not very bright, because I grew up with
• 1:32:54
  that. That was a caricature of
• 1:32:56
  femininity that I grew up with. There was a, the most, one of
• 1:32:59
  the most popular TV shows in the 70s was called 3's company.
• 1:33:02
  And there was this girl on the on there who's named Chrissy,
• 1:33:05
  who's the, the dumb blonde, cute, but dumb as a box of
• 1:33:09
  rocks. And so I, I didn't want to be
• 1:33:12
  dumb. So I didn't, you know, I, I want
• 1:33:15
  to be intelligent and, and, and so as I got to know, though, as
• 1:33:21
  I got to know straight women, I realized, no, they don't only
• 1:33:23
  just want to talk about fashion and, and makeup.
• 1:33:27
  I mean, they do talk about it sometimes, you know, But as they
• 1:33:29
  got to them, what I learned about them was that they were
• 1:33:31
  all insecure, just like me, because I was very insecure
• 1:33:34
  about my femininity. And then you, if you compliment
• 1:33:37
  a woman on something like her appearance, whatever, she will,
• 1:33:40
  she'll tell you what's, I mean, I mean, someone was like, thank
• 1:33:44
  you, but but you say, Oh my gosh, your hair or whatever.
• 1:33:48
  And they'll, they'll sometimes they, they push back and they're
• 1:33:51
  like, oh, to tell you what's wrong with them, you know what I
• 1:33:55
  mean? And it's like, yeah, So I
• 1:33:59
  realized when I realized they were all insecure just like me,
• 1:34:01
  that I was like, oh, OK, you know, 'cause I thought they had
• 1:34:05
  it all in the same game together.
• 1:34:06
  Yeah, I thought they had it all together.
• 1:34:08
  Absolutely. So yeah, so these.
• 1:34:09
  Are some of the tools that we've learned and yeah can't wait to
• 1:34:13
  have you back and talk about some more of the tools there's
• 1:34:16
  there's so much good stuff out there I I really.
• 1:34:18
  Encourage people you know, if you know somebody who is is
• 1:34:22
  facing this or somebody who opens up to you about it, you,
• 1:34:27
  it's really important. Listen to them, love them.
• 1:34:31
  Tell them I I love you. Thank you for sharing.
• 1:34:33
  I feel your pain, but it is really important that we name
• 1:34:36
  the needs we name we name the needs, we name the blessings.
• 1:34:40
  God has more for you than this and and naming the knees and
• 1:34:45
  then and secondly, giving godly resources.
• 1:34:48
  And so I tell people to go to godloveshomosexuals.com, which
• 1:34:52
  is your testimonies on it. I didn't even know that.
• 1:34:56
  Yeah, we filmed this years ago. It's been a long time.
• 1:34:59
  Thing it's called homosexuality 101, so no.
• 1:35:02
  But this is a different We were at a conference and the.
• 1:35:06
  Business card that says that, yeah.
• 1:35:07
  OK. So.
• 1:35:08
  So it has testimonies and then it has a teaching.
• 1:35:10
  In the development and then resources where you can go to.
• 1:35:14
  So it's very simple, but it sticks in people's minds.
• 1:35:17
  So if you say it to them and they're like, oh, I'm not really
• 1:35:19
  interested in whatever. In their private moment, they
• 1:35:22
  can remember God loves homosexuals.
• 1:35:24
  You know that there's something, if we can connect, thinking
• 1:35:27
  about their mind and their brain and how it works, and you know
• 1:35:30
  what might help them later, even if they're not in it now.
• 1:35:33
  Plant that seed for somebody who has it's trying to come to a
• 1:35:39
  place finally of being comfortable in their own skin as
• 1:35:42
  a homosexual, right where they're telling you I'm gay and
• 1:35:46
  blah, blah, blah. It may take a minute for them to
• 1:35:50
  receive what you're saying, but be that first person that gives
• 1:35:53
  them a new option. Hey, have you thought about the
• 1:35:56
  developmental issues that that are typically a part of this?
• 1:36:00
  Have you learned about potential woundings that often times lead
• 1:36:04
  to these things? OK, I am going to push back
• 1:36:06
  though right now and say that I feel.
• 1:36:08
  Like you have to earn the right to speak into somebody's life
• 1:36:10
  versus like, 'cause we were talking early about how
• 1:36:12
  Christians can be mean, you know, so it's like, and so so we
• 1:36:16
  can, if you don't, if you're not in relationship and you're just
• 1:36:18
  trying to fix somebody, typically that doesn't really go
• 1:36:21
  well. No, but if they're, if they're
• 1:36:23
  opening up to you right, OK. Yeah, and, and it's a personal
• 1:36:26
  conversation. They're they've.
• 1:36:28
  Learned to trust you enough to say that in a personal
• 1:36:31
  conversation. I'm not just saying like a
• 1:36:33
  person who says well I'm married, you know I got my wife
• 1:36:36
  blah blah blah. And you know like that's not
• 1:36:38
  what I'm certainly right. Not just to everybody you meet
• 1:36:41
  another. Resource I would like to mention
• 1:36:43
  and and we consider all day with resources.
• 1:36:45
  That's why it's good that you mentioned one that has another
• 1:36:47
  resource list, but is the one that doctor Julie Hamilton did,
• 1:36:51
  genderidentity1o1.com, where I think it's a great resource on
• 1:36:57
  that. Some of the things we talked
• 1:36:59
  about is how to develop a secure gender identity or how to help
• 1:37:02
  people. So that one was made for like,
• 1:37:04
  you know, therapists and Christian leaders to understand
• 1:37:08
  like because so much in our culture today, I know we didn't
• 1:37:11
  really unpack it today, the whole what I mentioned tomboy
• 1:37:15
  and now they just trans tomboys, but to be able to to to
• 1:37:19
  understand gender and what causes somebody to not have a, a
• 1:37:23
  secure gender identity. So that's a great resource for
• 1:37:26
  that. Before we close, I want to you
• 1:37:29
  have a list there that I asked you to choose from and it's a
• 1:37:34
  rapid fire question. I haven't really thought about
• 1:37:37
  some of these. So OK, well, that's fine.
• 1:37:39
  That's. Go with it.
• 1:37:39
  It's the point is just. More of like, you know, just a
• 1:37:43
  bunch of questions that let's do it.
• 1:37:45
  All right, here we go. You ready?
• 1:37:47
  What book besides the Bible shaped your spiritual journey
• 1:37:51
  the most? Renovation of the Heart by
• 1:37:53
  Dallas Willard So. It's a, it's kind of an
• 1:37:55
  introduction to spiritual formation.
• 1:37:58
  Dallas Willard is, he's kind of the the, I don't know if you
• 1:38:03
  call him the grandfather, the godfather.
• 1:38:05
  Never gonna say the guru. The guru?
• 1:38:07
  Yeah, of the the. Modern Spiritual.
• 1:38:09
  Formation movement and he talks about what the human person is
• 1:38:13
  in such a profound way. And, and when you understand
• 1:38:16
  what a human person is, then you can take different aspects of
• 1:38:19
  them and grow them and cultivate them.
• 1:38:22
  It's like understanding the, the soil, like a farmer needs to
• 1:38:25
  know what soil am I working with?
• 1:38:27
  How do I cultivate? What, how do I plant in this?
• 1:38:29
  What do I water? So, so that was really helpful
• 1:38:33
  to me. It's it's some of it is a little
• 1:38:35
  bit more heady, but but it's a great primer for spiritual
• 1:38:40
  formation. He's deep.
• 1:38:41
  Yeah, he is. He's deep.
• 1:38:42
  What's 1 identity lie? God has been dismantling in you.
• 1:38:48
  I think there's a lie within. Me, that I, I struggle with
• 1:38:53
  trying to fix so many problems in the world about homosexuality
• 1:38:57
  and so many ways in which people are doing them wrong.
• 1:39:00
  And I, I've given myself space to just say, hey, like, that
• 1:39:06
  one's not for me. And to know that that, number
• 1:39:10
  one, God is in control and #2 that I'm a human being and I
• 1:39:16
  have certain needs. I can't like, go out and, you
• 1:39:21
  know, be crazy inviting attacks from every different angle, you
• 1:39:29
  know, like, I need peace in my soul.
• 1:39:32
  That's why I don't open up Facebook and YouTube and all
• 1:39:36
  these different places, because immediately you're struck by
• 1:39:38
  some horrible story or some awful thing that you feel like
• 1:39:42
  you need to engage with that you really don't need to.
• 1:39:45
  So I think God is, is is just teaching me that.
• 1:39:49
  Like, it's almost like pick your battles, right?
• 1:39:51
  Yeah, yeah. A favorite comfort food after a
• 1:39:55
  long, emotional week. Thai food.
• 1:39:58
  I love typhoon Penang Curry. Oh, there you.
• 1:40:01
  Go, let's go. All right.
• 1:40:03
  Book you recommend the most? I don't know if it's the one you
• 1:40:05
  just said I recommend, it's actually different.
• 1:40:09
  I typically recommend Heaven is for Real is that little boy who
• 1:40:14
  experienced Heaven, They turned it into a movie.
• 1:40:16
  OK, I was thinking I I might have seen the movie.
• 1:40:18
  Yeah, so. I think that it's really
• 1:40:21
  important. As as Christians to keep our
• 1:40:23
  eyes fixed upon eternity, I think it's really important that
• 1:40:27
  we remember what's important. And part of that is by
• 1:40:30
  experiencing the stories of, of people who God has given us
• 1:40:34
  these testimonies. Now I, I have to clarify, you
• 1:40:36
  want to go to the Bible first. There's contradictory stories
• 1:40:40
  sometimes if you just wing it, but most of the stories have
• 1:40:44
  these consistencies about this man who even from other
• 1:40:47
  religions, they're experiencing this man up there who has hair
• 1:40:50
  that's bleached whiter than you could bleach wool.
• 1:40:53
  This is the the Jesus of Revelation and that they're
• 1:40:57
  experiencing him. So they're, they're, you know,
• 1:41:00
  you, you want to be biblical, but these people are
• 1:41:04
  experiencing the real heaven and have encouraging things.
• 1:41:08
  Sometimes the Bible feels a little bit wooden where it's,
• 1:41:10
  you know, it's just like, it's sturdy, but like having a little
• 1:41:14
  boy come back and say, like I asked Gabriel if I could have a
• 1:41:19
  flaming sword as well. You know, it's just like it's
• 1:41:23
  so. Adorable.
• 1:41:24
  And it's so. It paints like the, the vibrancy
• 1:41:27
  of heaven and the interactions we're going to have.
• 1:41:30
  And it's living, you know, and I, I think that I think that
• 1:41:34
  that's helpful for all of us. OK, All right.
• 1:41:38
  You ready for the last one? So ready?
• 1:41:40
  OK, one word that. Describes your.
• 1:41:43
  Faith in this season cultivate. I like it.
• 1:41:46
  I feel like God is is. Bringing me to.
• 1:41:48
  Cultivate. What he's given me and to take
• 1:41:52
  slow steps in some things, I feel really blessed to have have
• 1:41:57
  been given so many tools along the way.
• 1:42:00
  Studying spiritual formation, you learn a lot of different
• 1:42:03
  disciplines and things like that.
• 1:42:05
  But right now I feel like God is is like you.
• 1:42:09
  I want you to dig in and, and kind of cultivate this garden
• 1:42:13
  that I've given you of a soul with, with different techniques,
• 1:42:18
  with of course, with the scripture and, and things like
• 1:42:21
  that. But even more peace through
• 1:42:26
  breathing techniques, box breathing.
• 1:42:28
  I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's just, it's just,
• 1:42:32
  you know, breathing, getting your, your, the peace of God,
• 1:42:37
  letting it settle in you. And so these these tools in
• 1:42:40
  these disciplines of becoming more like Christ, I think God is
• 1:42:45
  calling me to some of that to call to me.
• 1:42:46
  That's so rich. Thank you so much, Justin.
• 1:42:49
  Yeah, absolutely. This has been really fun
• 1:42:51
  conversation for. Unpacking your story and
• 1:42:54
  laughing. Together.
• 1:42:55
  This is awesome. Yeah.
• 1:42:56
  I appreciate you so much. I hope we can do.
• 1:42:58
  This again I'd. Love to hear more, you know?
• 1:43:01
  Unpack. Some more tools at another time,
• 1:43:03
  so thank you. Sure thing, God bless you.