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What is FACING?
What do I mean by the word "Facing"? Why is it so important? What does it mean to live as a Christian man who lives with homosexuality? When someone remarks, "He finally had to face it", or "Face it!" they are referring to the experience when a person looks directly into truth and reality without distortion. It is being totally honest with oneself. The dictionary defines the verb "to face" with these words and phrases: to have the face or front in a specified direction ; to watch, gaze, glare, stare, await, expect, look (for); to confront with courage or boldness <ready to face her accusers>; to confront, challenge, encounter, meet; to oppose, resist, withstand; contend, fight. Antonyms are such words as avoid, elude, escape, eschew, evade, and shun.
Facing is looking directly at and into the truth. The face represents our image by which we are recognized and by which we confront our world. It is the body's primary avenue of personal contact and communication with others, for from the face we see and speak. Our face soon becomes the way we are identified and recognized by others and interact with others. The face which cannot look directly into another face betrays shame, guilt, insecurity and fear. The face which can look another in the face announces confidence, security, intimacy and even affection.
Facing the Central Hard Truth of Your Life
To live effectively, wholesomely and contentedly, a Christian man living with homosexuality needs to live a life of faith-filled Facing of truth. And what is the central reality or truth which must be faced directly without distortion? It is this: You experience yourself as a homosexual inclined person. You are emotionally and/or sexually attracted to some same-gender people. You have at times very powerful homosexual feelings, inclinations, desires, attractions, compulsions, obsession and behavior. This is the reality of your life which must be faced. Whatever else you are –brother, son, husband, father, Christian, employee- you also know that your life experience has been homo-emotional, homo-sexual, homo-erotic to some degree. This is the fundamental reality which needs facing.
As a born-again, Spirit-led Christian who accepts the traditional and biblical Word as truth, being a person living with the reality of homosexuality in your life presents a "life-threatening" challenge. That is, an "eternal" life-threatening challenge. The apparent contradiction has often caused disgust, denial, division, deception, and discouragement.
Disgust: you have felt self-hatred and dislike of yourself because of your homosexual feelings and behavior. Denial: you have attempted for many years to deny the strength and power of your homosexual inclination. Division: you have been divided and not integrated within over the fact that you are both a committed Christ and an overcomer.
Deception: you have attempted to "pass" as straight or at least as one who is not "gay" for years. You probably have been more or less successful at this to some degree. Many people have accepted you as straight and do not even suspect your struggle. Others do think that this may be your issue but may never tell you that they suspect that homosexuality is a difficulty for you. Discouragement: And of course all of this makes you discouraged and depressed and defeated feeling from time to time.
You may be saying, "I know I'm struggling with homosexuality; what do you mean that I must face it? It's only too real to me already. I have faced it!"
But I mean that you must face it in a new way. In what new way? You will need to "embrace it, befriend it, accept it, include it, understand it, even accommodate it". You must begin to see it as "permanent"; as a "given"; as "unchangeable".
These are difficult and painful words to hear. These are themes I have been repeating over and over again so that they will sink into your heart and spirit where your Father can heal and release them.You are troubled by these words "permanent", "given", "unchangeable". It seems strange to hear me use words like "embrace and accommodate" for it will give the impression that I am suggesting that you must accept yourself as "gay" or even that I may be saying you must let homosexuality have it's way in your life. No! I don't mean either of those things! It will take some time to explain, so I would ask you to bear with me.
For now, let me say briefly that what I mean is that you must be able to face yourself as an Overcomer. To say that you are an Overcomer means that you deny neither that you are homosexually inclined (you probably will always be to some degree) nor that you are a committed Christian who cannot choose to live as a gay person. To be an Overcomer is the dynamic state of tension in which you must live as you "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling".
Facing Your Past
Initially there is a need to face the past. It will afford you opportunity to make inventories of feelings, events, experiences and behaviors which were part of your experience with the homosexual issue in your life.
Facing the past is important because the past is often a history of disconnection from lost parts and pieces of your life experience.
Picture a costly and beautiful champagne glass. It is one of a kind and it is the only drinking glass you have. It is dropped and shatters into many pieces. Some are so small that they are lost forever. Most are retrievable. You can throw it all away, but then you have nothing from which to drink and this will leave you empty and thirsty forever. Some people treat their homosexuality this way. You can also begin to gather all the shattered fragments and glue them together so that you have a vessel from which to drink. It may no longer be as beautiful as it was before; it may have cracks and leaks in it, but it works.This is what most people do with their broken pasts. Finding and facing your lost pieces and parts begins to make you whole, even though you may not turn out perfect and beautiful. The parts may not all fit together well but at least you can drink again and satisfy your thirst.
What shattered pieces have you discarded? What have you forgotten, suppressed or repressed? How much do you know of you past? How well have you pulled it together into some kind of cohesive story? Can you tell others a reasonable rendition of your past life? What pieces are still missing?
Your past can be viewed as the need to (l) Face your family of origin and childhood development (LSE), (2) Facing your loss of adequate gender identity and intimacy (GE and GA), and (3) Facing your emotional dysfunction and the resulting sin in past behavior (SA, HR, HI).
It is my belief and conviction that homosexuality emerges from early distortion or deprivation in the parent-child relationship and in the family; as well as from early experiences with peers, and from other developmental experiences. Whatever genetic or constitutional factors at birth there may have been remains uncertain. But early relationship and developmental experiences seem critical.
Such early and developmental experiences establish a burden on one's self-esteem, that is, how a person feels about himself inside. I believe low self-esteem (LSE) is a common result. LSE is some struggle with one's sense of worth, value, and adequacy. There is often a sense of shame and intense emotional sensitivity and hurts.
It is good to recall these feelings and experiences of childhood and adolescence under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to begin to heal and integrate these lost and rejected aspects of yourself. Many times such painful or shameful experiences, which attacked self-esteem have been suppressed, forgotten, repressed and sent to the unconscious burial ground of our psychospiritual lives. They need to be gently recalled by the Spirit so that they may be healed and integrated into our lives rather than left as free-floating particles or as broken threads in the garment of personality.
When Ron (names are fictitious but based on actual lives) began to gather his past together, stimulated by the above questions, the Spirit led him to recall some emotionally charged feelings, events and memories.
"In childhood I was a pampered and fearful child. My father was a frightening person because he was loud and violent at times. I ran to the protection and safety of my mother and sister. My brother teased me and belittled me something terrible. Other boys my own age were threatening to me so I gravitated to feeling more comfortable with younger boys who admired me and liked my attention. I still don't have close same-age peer friendships and find myself primarily attracted to younger males today. As a result I feel lonely a lot even now. I like to have a younger man whom I could nurture and love, and who loves me and admires me. Someone virile and good looking. I've substituted many things for this missing love and intimacy.
I was also removed from, or removed myself from the mainstream of peers throughout my school years. I gravitated to teachers, older adults, younger boys, sometimes girls, or the peers who were also alienated from the mainstream. I was always literally on the sidelines of athletics. In elementary school, my principal knew I was having problems so he made me the scorekeeper and locker room manager for the boy's basketball team. I not only failed at it miserably, but was also devastated at one experience of watching boys taking showers after a game. It caused shame, embarrassment and fear. It shocked me into the truth that naked boys were intensely attractive and sexually stimulating. Up until now I never thought about homosexuality, but I now was forced to think of myself that way. I ran from it as fast and far as I could, further repressing and suppressing my feelings and sexuality. I became divided inside. On the outside I was a good student, liked by teachers and peers generally, Christian, and morally upright. On the inside I raged with sexual feelings and began an obsession with masturbation and pornography. When you suppress homosexuality, you begin to suppress all sexuality. I further made it clear that sexuality disinterested me by pretending it was nasty and immoral. I started to take on a strong mask of morality about all sexual things. I tried to live a very pure and moral life. I was probably seen as very righteous and spiritual by most people."
Begin to recall both specific troublesome memories of events as well as feelings, impressions and experiences which occurred in your family, with your peers, and in your development.
Work with these sentences as a way to begin:
I recall once when I and my father….
I recall my how my mother….
I remember my sister saying….
I remember my brother…….
I had a friend with whom…
In childhood I often felt…
In elementary school…
In middle school…
In high school….