I have been depressed (suicidal) for about a year and through the help of a counselor have uncovered or unlocked this door to my life. I have spoken with a lesbian woman here and she and her partner were convinced even before I approached them to talk that I was this way. I just don’t know what to do with myself. My husband and I are going on furlough in April, and we are trying to sort out what is next for us. I have yet to tell him of my self-discovery since it’s only been about two weeks. I feel very deceitful in keeping this from him. He is an extremely understanding man. I am of two minds on this. I think I should go to a straight shop and get straightened out, or I should just accept who I am and continue in the life I have and keep on being deceitful to those around me. I don’t really think I can come out.
I’m hoping you can give me some advice on how to do option two. My husband does know about my depression, he knows that in the past two weeks I have figured out something, and he also knows that I am not warm in bed. He says repeatedly that he wants me to find out and discover my problem, and to find myself.
Dear Child of God,
There is no “straight shop” for you to go too. Being deceitful about who you really are is not the answer either. You have just gone through therapy and found out that years of lying almost killed you. I cannot, nor will I give you advice as to how to lie about your sexuality. It is not that you can’t come out but rather you won’t come out. My sister there is a price for everything. God is working in your life. Your husband says he wants you find yourself … well? You are a lesbian. Come on now say this with me: “I am a lesbian and I am a child of God!”
I understand that you may lose your job, and your marriage but you are not really married and what kind of missionary work can you really do when you act ashamed of who God made you to be? My dear sister, you are caught up in trying to live in this world rather than God’s. Remember these words of Jesus:
“No one is able to be a servant to two masters, for they will have hate for the one and love for the other, or they will keep to one and have no respect for the other. You may not be servants of God and of wealth. So I say to you, Take no thought for your life, about food or drink, or about clothing for your body. Is not life more than food, and the body more than its clothing? See the birds of heaven; they do not put seeds in the earth, they do not get in grain, or put it in store-houses; and your Father in heaven gives them food. Are you not of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought is able to make himself a cubit taller? And why are you troubled about clothing? See the flowers of the field, how they come up; they do no work, they make no thread: But I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God gives such clothing to the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is put into the oven, will he not much more give you clothing, O you of little faith?” — Matthew 6:24-30
Later in the same Gospel Jesus will asks the question: “What does it profit one to gain the whole world and sacrifice their soul?”
Yes, what does it profit you to gain the whole world of “straightdom” and sacrifice your soul (who you really are)?
God bless,
Pastor Paul
Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta, Rev. Paul M. Turner (he/him) grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994, have been in a committed partnership since the early 1980s and have been legally married since 2015.