Why I started a PFOX group
I had an affair that threw me into confusion for the next 25 years. Another women, married, also a preacher's daughter, felt we should be friends and that the friendship should include homosexual behavior. I was innocent at the time, but by the time I figured out what was going on, I was too involved emotionally and physically to pull out. I had never been warned about these kind of relationships or situations.
Well, I got out of that one, but, I never really came to grips with what it was, why it was there, and how to deal with it. So it kind of lay under the rug for 25 years, when at the age of 51, it came back with a fury. I found myself attracted to another woman, totally out of the blue.
I found a web site that explained that sometimes it hits in middle-age seemingly "out-of-the-blue" and indicates unresolved childhood issues, more than likely sexual abuse.
So I set out to discover what was amiss in my Christian home where we loved one another, and had our needs met (the old roof over our heads, food on the table stuff....). And at age 51, I found out who I really was and who my family really was.
Let's start with Dad. Pastored Wesleyan Methodist churches. Molested his own nephew, and who else?
By 1952 (I was on the way), he was pastoring a 200-300 person church. By his own words in a court document, molested 3 boys in the youth group, and finally the Church asked him to leave.
He continued with multiple partners, and molesting children--at least boys. Finally when I was 10 years old, he molested a 10 year old boy, and spent 4 months in jail.
Then there was Mother. A godly woman. Mother and I never really emotionally clicked. I never even considered her as a resource for what girls do, how they comb their hair, how they act around boys, how to cook or sew. Mother lost herself in cooking, and the kitchen was her pride and joy, and I was not taught how to function the kitchen. I think she wanted me to stay dependent on her for food forever.
I could stay on mother issues for a long time, but it's here where many of us fall into female homosexuality. We are looking for the mothering we never got. The nurturing. The protection. It's an unconscious drive to find a woman who can complete what feel you do not have and what you did not get from your mother.
The there's the MEN issue. I didn't realize until last year that I didn't like men. I have trouble letting taxi-cab drivers carry my bags. I think subconsciously I'm thinking: "You guys hurt me when I was little, and you weren't there to protect me then, so why try now?" but part of my recovery process, is to learn to respect men for what God made them to be, in His image. I'm still working on this one.
Then there was the "I'm different" issues. Almost every homosexual I know believes they are different. (And have been different since childhood or teen years). For me, and a lot of others, it wasn't that I wanted to be a boy, I just did not feel comfortable as a girl. In fact, mother said when I was little, she could not put "frilly things" on me. I still wonder "how" you cannot put a "frilly thing" on a 5 year old, But I got the message: I was not frilly, I was not like my "frilly" cousin, I was not like other girls, I must be..."different." I was an "it." I believed that for 51 years. (I'm still working on this issue also.)
Femininity was not a word I would have ever used for myself. This process of appreciating the womanhood God has given me and realizing there is a God-given femininity, is another of those processes I am still learning. It did not happen overnight.
I gave up homosexual behavior and thoughts on April 14, 2004. But as I've prayed about it, The Holy Spirit has made it very plain, that He wants to use me to help others, especially parents of homosexuals and lesbians. So that’s why I started a PFOX group. Others out there have felt this pain, and have felt that there was no one to help them, especially within conservative churches.
Becky
El Paso, Texas PFOX group