It's Christmas Eve 2003 at 2:19pm as I sit here at my desk in the smallest room of my parent's house. Tomorrow is Christmas Day and last week Dad, with wet eyes, told me how much he dreaded Christmas when you have so few friends and family. There were no easy words to say to him – it's true, we don't have many friends and our few relatives certainly ensure they keep their distance. As a family we spend most of the time keeping up our 'everything's fine' facade. At a quick glance we're all smiles and sentiment – but take a longer look and things are not as they seem.
I start this story with such an ambiguous description of my family because, truth be told, I don't really know where to begin in relating all of this to you. I wish I did but there are still many things in my story I don't understand and loose ends that are still left untied, which means that putting it into some sort of coherent form is not easy. Saying that, over the time that I've been actively coming to terms with my sexuality and seeking to understand why I'm like I am, I've come to the conclusion that my family relationships are key. And that is why we'll start there...
If I were to describe my Dad in one word, after over 20 years as his son, I would say he was an 'enigma'. After living away from home for some years I've returned to find the way I relate to Dad revolves around me asking every day 'why on earth does he do that?' – sadly often with clenched teeth and fire in my belly. Simply knowing why Dad is like he is would help me a lot. But in the absence of understanding, I remain frustrated on a number of levels.
Dad is very self-consumed. Life seems to revolve around him and his problems and rarely does he appear to think of others. Unfortunately his marriage also largely revolves around what Mum can do for him and how she can take the blame for his mistakes. Dad is a man who is rarely wrong. Indeed the concept that he could be is something that seemingly never enters his mind. He also has a temper - funnily enough I am rarely on the end of it but Mum seems to spend her life avoiding it. Additionally Dad is often depressed. I recall he has had two what you might term 'breakdowns' where he's been off work for over six months with depression. Sadly, as I write this I have to curtail my frustration. The extent to which Dad's nature has impacted me means patience and grace often elude me on this issue – something I'm trying to work through and finding runs much deeper than I ever imagined.
My Mum however is someone who I would very easily give my life for. Though she has her faults, Mum is someone who has incredible patience, who loves sacrificially and who seems to always show grace in the face of failure. My love for Mum ignites a passion in me that I feel for no one else. Her commitment to love Dad unconditionally has shown me so much about the nature of God's love. This is a statement I make with pride but, if I'm honest, also with bitterness – because of course in biblical marriage Mum shouldn't have to fulfil this role 'so husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her' .
Growing up as the only child of these parents meant the context was ripe for relational problems. According to research in the area of sexuality, people who are attracted to members of the same sex often (not always) experience in their early years a dysfunction in the way they relate to people of their own gender. This has certainly been the case with me. As you can probably guess, I've always related a lot better to Mum than Dad and this was something that emerged very early on. As an only child growing up my Mum was the one who looked after me full time, walked me to school, played with me, told me stories, tickled me until I cried and tucked me up in bed. Things with Dad were very different. He was often absent at work, but he was also socially absent from my life – we rarely played together or did 'father and son' things. In contrast he spent most of the time complaining at Mum's failures in bringing me up, or not meeting his standards in various ways. So, my early years are full of memories where I am far more attached to my Mum and am actually growing up disliking my father.
I can remember on numerous occasions hearing Dad shouting at Mum and the anger burning up inside me – in my eyes Mum was the best person in the world and the hypocrisy of my father's condescension sickened me. How dare he do this? In hindsight I now recognise that hatred was a wrong decision on my part and I must take responsibility for that and repent from it. But at the time the decision to respond like that was one with large consequences because it meant that subconsciously I said to myself 'I don't like my father, I don't want to be like him'. Conversely I became what I would now call a 'mummy's boy' – Mum was the sole object of my affection and often my sole role model.
Thus began a cycle. In this small family a relational pattern emerged that continues to be played out today. In such a context, then, I grew up with feminine aspirations, attitudes and mannerisms – a natural result of this over-intense relationship with my mother and poor broken relationship with my father. In saying this, however, I must be cautious because things at school were different. I related well to other boys at school and did the 'girlfriend/boyfriend' things you do when growing up. I was very active and spent a lot of time mucking about with friends in the street, playing football and doing athletics at school. So relationships outside family life were generally healthy. I say 'generally' because this wasn't always the case.
From the age of 5 I began to have contact of a 'sexual' nature with boys of my own age. This occurred with several school friends between the ages of 5 and 9 – some one-off encounters and others occurring frequently. I remember distinctly being attracted to older, stronger boys and had several encounters with such boys. As time went on and I entered puberty, these attractions became much stronger. At the age of 12 I began a sexual relationship with a boy two years older than me that lasted on and off until I was 14. With the benefit of hindsight again, I now see how this was an outworking of my family relationships - being so strongly attached to my mother's femininity I began longing for the masculine love I felt I'd never had from my father.
So life progressed. Over my teenage years my relationship with Dad fluctuated, sometimes including brief spells of amicability but often being reduced to large shouting matches and one point where we were barely on speaking terms for a period of months. At the same time my attraction to men continued and became something that, in the back of my mind, I knew existed but was unwilling to admit.
Looking back I can remember my concern over being accepted by other boys my age. Any male rejection would send me into the pits of despair. Life became particularly difficult during my mid and late teens as lads at school began pinpointing differences in me – ways in which I was 'camp' or effeminate. This was particularly so in the upper-sixth form when many of the lads would joke about me being secretly gay.
Amidst all this, at the age of 15 I committed my life to Christ. Having known the gospel from an early age I saw the reality of its power to change lives during an evangelistic mission in the summer of 1995. Being part of the mission team myself, the commitment and love for Jesus displayed by my fellow team members showed me the reality of knowing God personally in a way I'd never known before. I returned home from the mission having given my life to Christ.
This commitment continued passionately for six months and then wavered until at the age of 18 I embarked on a six month spree of drunkenness and 'pulling' as many women as I could in an effort to 'prove' my sexuality to my sixth form. The spree worked.
So, amidst this confusion my adult years arrived and things began to take a significant turn for the better. At the end of sixth-form I went on a trip to visit some missionary friends from church - a trip on which I re-committed my life to Christ and became serious about beginning university as a committed Christian. In September 1999 I began life as a student and immediately became very involved with the Christian Union and witnessing to friends. University life brought me healthy relationships with other lads my age. I had a big group of both non-Christian and Christian friends – none of whom seemed to suspect anything about my sexuality. Over the three years at university I became a master at acting in a 'masculine' way. Today those actions seem to come naturally to me making any knowledge of my sexuality something that I can control – people don't look at me and make the comments they used to in sixth form.
However, this 'outward' answer to my sexuality soon fell apart. At university I had built up a good group of friends and been on the organising committee of the Christian Union. Outwardly I appeared the model Christian in terms of confidence, ability and holiness. At the same time, however, an addiction to Internet began to emerge. On a weekly basis I would stand up at CU meetings and encourage my fellow Christians to live Christ-centred, gospel proclaiming lives but at the end of the night I'd return home and crave the love of men. This continued until the summer of 2002 when, after my finals and a holiday with a university friend, I finally admitted I was sexually attracted to men. Over that summer internet pornography became a daily 'fix' for my seemingly unquenchable desire until in the early hours of one morning I sat in front of the computer and said out loud, 'You've got a problem'.
From first being sexually attracted to men it had taken me over ten years to admit it to myself. And now I'd admitted it there came the biggest problem – what was I going to do? Could I stay as a Christian and face the fact that celibacy might be my only option? Should I give up now and run off to Australia and never contact my parents again? Or should I just take an overdose and solve the problem that way? Believe it or not the decision didn't take long to make.
As a Christian I know that Jesus has a hold on my life – those the Father gives to him he will never lose – and the Father has given me to Jesus. At this time of desperation the reality of God's existence and the effectiveness of the gospel for all people, no matter what they've done, hit me hard. I knew the thought of not knowing Christ was something I could not entertain. And so at the end of July 2002 I contacted True Freedom Trust and began the long road of acknowledging my sexual and relational brokenness and the reality of trusting Jesus amidst that brokenness.
And so we arrive at the last 18 months – an emotional rollercoaster if ever there was one. Since contacting TfT the way I look at my sexuality has changed quite drastically. Having acknowledged my attraction to other men I have begun to deal with different aspects of the issue and this has meant that in general it's something that is very much part of my life.
God has enabled me to confront the reality of my needs, to develop healthy friendships with men, to deal with wrong attitudes and behaviours in the way I relate to my Dad – and most importantly to begin seeing God as the great and perfect Father he is and satisfying my needs in him. In addition to this in April 2003 I told a Christian work colleague about my sexuality and from there I told other Christian friends, my church pastor and a number of close university friends. In May 2003 I also took the step of telling my parents. This was a huge relief for me. After I told them (unfortunately over the phone) my mum simply said 'We still love you and we're here for you in any way you need us'. I cried for 10 minutes. For years I'd thought 'if Mum and Dad knew this about me they wouldn't love me'. The news that this wasn't true broke me.
Since then life continues to be difficult in many ways. Just after I'd told my parents a friend said to me 'I know you've been through some difficult things this year but I want you to expect that in the future there may well be times that are a lot harder than now – following Christ is never easy, especially along this road'. And indeed these last few months have seen me back at home facing the reopening of old wounds between Dad and I, the reality of unemployment, being back in an area where I have very few friends and where there are few good local churches. But God continues to teach me his plan for the world is still being outworked. One day I'll see him face to face – the old things will have passed away and all things, including my sexuality, will be renewed.
It's 4:40pm on Christmas Eve 2003. It's been a good day today – Dad and I have chatted over paint colours for the house and Mum is in the kitchen cooking. On my desk is a Christmas card with the verse 'the grace of God which brings salvation has appeared.' Christmas is a time when we remember that Christ lived, died and rose again to redeem each of us – whoever we might be, whatever we might have done, however we might struggle - and that redemption is enough for me, easily enough.