Unredeemed

Lyrics from the song, Unredeemed

 

The cruelest word

The coldest heart

The deepest wound

The endless dark

For more years than I care to number, I lived in a very dark world. Weeks, months, even years where the darkness of depression inside of me was so great it actually seemed that everything around me was viewed only through a haze of darkness. Many years ago now, I even got to the place where I found myself thinking about suicide nearly around the clock. There was hardly a waking moment where I wasn’t thinking about how hopeless things were and how ending my life was the only way out.

Thankfully, God chose just the right moment to send a friend into my life who gave me a chance to consider the idea that other options might be available after all. For the first time in my life I was able to open up to another person about who I really was. About growing up a lonely little boy who was afraid of nearly everything. About coming of age and realizing I wasn’t attracted to girls like every boy is supposed to be at that age. And about all the years I lived in fear of what would happen if anyone ever found out about my misplaced attraction.

The lonely ache

The burning tears

The bitter nights

The wasted years

Realizing that I was attracted to other boys instead of girls, was one of the most difficult times of my life. I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel the way I was feeling, but I also knew that I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to feel that way. As I looked back, I could find the beginnings of my same-sex attractions going back to my earliest memories of childhood; I just didn’t know what to call it then, nor did I realize the full implications of it until my early teen years.

During the period of years after coming to terms with the fact that I had same-sex attractions I went through some of the loneliest times I’ve ever experienced. A loneliness so deep that it really felt like it was crushing me from the inside out. Night after bitter night I would cry until there were no tears left to cry and wonder why God hated me so much that He decided to make me “gay.” I tried and tried to come up with a reason for why God had written me off and given me, what I considered at the time, the worst possible situation to have to deal with in life.

As I moved into my twenties and later my thirties, the bitter nights of sorrow began to include a bitter anger; anger toward God and anger toward others. I figured God deserved my anger because He could have prevented every hurt. Anger toward others because of my belief that they would hate me if they knew I was gay. During those years of my life, I couldn’t see the folly of being angry with others for their hatred toward me when I hadn’t even given them a chance to know who I was and make a decision to love or hate me for it. I just believed everyone would hate me if they knew, so my reality at the time was that I was hated by God and by everyone else.

I wasted a lot of years believing these lies about God, about myself (that I was unlovable and only deserved damnation), and about other people. I lost myself in self-pity and sinful behavior and refused to allow God to speak any truth into my life. Oh, there were times when I tried to make a move toward God, even times where I know He helped me with certain issues in my life. But I never really settled things with God or chose to accept His truth about His love for me for the long haul. In a short time I’d be right back to believing all the same lies I’d always believed about how much God must hate me and how much everyone would hate me if they only knew the real me.

For every choice that led to shame

There have been a lot of choices I've made over the years that led to deep shame and feelings of worthlessness. Choices I would give anything today to be able to go back and make over again so I could do things differently the second time around.

And all the love that never came

This is perhaps the hardest line of all for me. One of the most difficult issues for me to deal with is the idea of lost love. The loss of the love a boy has for another boy as his peer, his buddy, his friend. In his book, My Losing Season, Pat Conroy says "there is little on earth so fierce and inarticulate and life-changing as the love of boys for other boys." I've read that quote a million times and wished I had even the slightest idea of what it means. I have no clue what it’s like to relate to boys through every stage of my life growing up. Boys scared me. I was meek, mild, shy, and too timid to speak up about anything most of the time. Other boys were rough, outspoken, and (so it seemed to me) not afraid of anything. Here I was, afraid of almost everything and the only thing I knew from watching other boys was that boys aren’t supposed to be afraid. It wasn’t difficult for me to see how different I was from other boys. So I sat on the sidelines and watched from a distance. I watched the other boys play ball, wrestle around, and do all the things boys do, but I never felt a part of any of it. Even on the few occasions when I tried to enter into the activities of other boys in some way, I always left the experience feeling even more certain that I was nothing like other boys and never would be. So I feel like I’ve lost a great deal by having lost the kind of love that boys have for other boys as they grow together into manhood. That’s a love that is irreplaceable for me at this point. I’m nearing 40. I can’t go back and relive boyhood and experience all those things I missed out on the first time around. So I sorrow over the loss of that particular kind of love.

There’s also the love a man has for his wife. Another love that most likely will never be one I experience. Some days I’m okay with that. But I would be dishonest if I didn’t say there weren’t days where I feel the deep sorrow of something else missing and lacking from my life that others have opportunity to enjoy.

For every vow that someone broke

And every life that gave up hope

We live in the shadow of the fall

One of my most difficult lessons (one I’m very much still in the process of learning) is learning to keep my eyes focused on Jesus, off other people, and keep my ears deafened to the whispered lies of the devil. The lie says to give up hope; that I can’t make it; that my cross is too difficult; that I’ve been give too much to handle. And what makes those lies seem so believable at times is that there is an element of truth to them. I do need to give up. Not give up on hope, but give up trying to fix everything myself and learn to rest in God and allow Him to do the work that needs doing. I can’t make it. At least not on my own. I need God every second of every day to survive. My cross is too difficult to bear; on my own. I’ve got to learn to allow God and other believers to help me even though I often feel I don’t deserve help or am too afraid to ask for it. I have been given too much to handle…on my own. When I try to handle it all, I just become increasingly frustrated, angry, and depressed. I have to learn to stop trying to walk this road alone and allow God to come alongside and show me the way as well as allowing other Christian brothers and sisters into my life so that they can walk the way with me too. All of these things are issues where I need to grow and change. Changes that are made difficult because of the shadow of the fall, the humanity of those who would help even if very imperfectly sometimes, and my own slowness at learning the most important lessons of life.

But the cross says these are all

Places where grace is

Soon to be so amazing

It may be unfulfilled

It may be unrestored

But when anything that's shattered is laid before the lord

Just watch and see

It will not be unredeemed

 

But the cross! The cross says that grace can enter into each and every one of these areas and make a difference. That amazing things can result in the most broken and shattered of circumstances because of the cross. Yes, there may be things that are always unfulfilled and many things that will never be restored in this life but, because of the cross, we can have assurance of fulfillment and restoration in eternity someday. It’s not always easy to wait; to keep my focus on “someday.” But I do believe that God has promised to restore those things that have been lost in this broken and fallen world. I don’t know how it will happen, but someday I expect to have restored to me the lost loves and experiences that seem lost to me forever right now. The things is, right now is NOT forever and it’s time I stopped believing that it is!