Same-Sex Attraction and Change: Testimonies—Part 2

The second testimony in our series is written by “Susan,” who says, “My self-described labels changed…but my identity in Christ is secure and permanent!”

Twenty-one years into my marriage, my husband announced one day, “I’m leaving you for another woman.” I was devastated. I fell into a deep, emotional abyss as my life and my heart broke into a million tiny pieces. My friend, who had been talking to me for several years about Christ, stepped into my pain with gentleness and love. Into my broken world she ministered to me, sitting with me for hours as I poured out my pain and my tears. She read to me from the Bible and continued to share Jesus with me.

Several months later, I did ask Jesus into my heart and accepted him as my Savior. My friend and I continued to meet almost daily. Ours was a completely new level of relationship for me. With her I felt complete and deeply known for the first time in my life. I needed her desperately and soon began to long for her when she was absent. Without noticing it, my life began to revolve around our time together. When we were together, she held me as I cried, rubbed my back, and dried my tears. Her touch was such a comfort to me, and there was an intense feeling of being connected.  It was just a matter of time before we moved into sexual touching and then a full sexual relationship. Even as a new Christian, I knew that this was not okay with God, and I struggled to understand how what felt so right could be wrong. After several years, our secret relationship became public, and what then began as a new devastation in my life was actually the first step of a new journey into wholeness.

This new struggle lasted for many years. I have moved from identifying myself as a lesbian, to a woman who struggles with same-sex attraction, to a follower of Jesus who has experienced relational brokenness. I have learned, with the help of godly counsel and Bible study, that the intense, all-consuming, emotional connection I craved from another person was not God’s design for healthy relationships. What I perceived as intimacy was a dysfunctional enmeshment, an entanglement of two relationally broken people looking to each other to fill the space that only God can fill. I had put my relationship with my friend on the throne of my life, occupying the place that belongs only to Jesus. Praise God that he continues to heal me as I seek to worship only him and find the answer to all of my longings in Christ.

Notice how “Susan” describes the change she experienced in her sense of identity: from lesbian to same-sex struggler to a follower of Christ who battles temptation in this area. How is this hopeful for you as a woman or man who is tempted to cross God-designed sexual boundaries in order to feel loved?

Updated 5.19.2017