A few thoughts
So in the past few days, been reading a lot about personal beliefs and what not about different things, especially sexuality. I try to always respect what others believe, as long as they are respectful towards me. It occurs to me though, that I haven't made my side of the story known, and I have as much right as anyone to do so :P
( Read more... )
Anyway, I wanted to tell you first of all that you have said it all so well! You are a few years younger than I, but (based on this post only), it seems you have obtained your wisdom on this subject WAY before I ever had the chance to. If you've ever read any of my posts on Rainbow Ark, you've seen how unfortunately long & painful my journey through Religion has been. (My version of the Christian) God brought me through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (a.k.a. "the closet") & has added a little life to my "life" and has shown me that, to use your words, "[t]here is nothing wrong with homosexuality...". Until relatively recently, I truly believed that just breathing the air of a free, open, proud gay man was the answer to all my prayers.
The only problem is that I am a recovering Southern Baptist. The Baptists were the ones who first taught me about God & explained to me about being part of the family of Christ & how our "family" was eternal. Turns out "eternal" is only available to heteros, so they unfortunately had to revoke my rights to the unconditional love & acceptance. To hear them tell it, it was all me & all I had to do to get them back was to go back into hiding & be willing to live my life of sin again. As you might imagine, I came to the conclusion that they could keep their precious dogma & the shiny Religion & I would keep God & be on my way.
For many years, I felt the need to keep my new, improved life in the open completely separate from whatever was left of my Christian faith, because they just could not mix. Despite Sinatra's famous insistence about love & marriage, where my "homosexual lifestyle" & my former Religion are concerned, I could only have one without the other (just as an aside, I make a huge distinction between Religion & faith...for me, they are not the same thing). For some reason, though, I couldn't seem to let it go. I couldn't leave well enough alone. Something kept me from cutting the ties completely. I felt like I was leaving something important unresolved, and it nagged at me.
Once I found Rainbow Ark, I started spilling my guts (an example of which you are enduring right now) & I began fellowshipping online with my new furry friends & I have come to the conclusion that NOT ONLY was I deeply hurt by people I had believed were my family, I was beyond-pissed about it! For so long I had concentrated on how much "they" hurt me & I kept the anger in the background, refusing to honor it and making it harder to deal with it & resolve it. I am just not an angry person (generally), so I don't really deal with anger well, but I know now that I can't just not call it what it is & starting ridding my life of it. I've found that anger can take a lot out of a person, especially if it's unrecognized &/or "untreated" (not sure what treatment there is for anger except for calling it what it is & working constructively to rid your life of it...I am just now realizing the anger part, so I haven't quite figured out yet how to deal with it). Anyway, all I know is that I wasn't just hurting all those years, I was also ticked off. Bad combo, right???
Reply
Leave a comment