Coming Out & Finding Freedom- How I Became A Christian (Part I)

PART 1

At the age of 14 I first became aware that I had same-sex sexual attractions, an awareness that increased during adolescence. I don't exactly know how the attractions developed or what triggered them but I knew that I began to look at other boys in the kind of way that I was meant to be looking at girls. When my parents were informed of this their response was one of fear, shame, and disgust. For about a week they barely spoke to me and I was specifically warned by my father to never mention the problem with anybody else, out of fear that others might found out and use the information to slander our family name. It was reinforced to me that my sexuality was a matter of embarrassment, and my folks gave little comfort at a time when their support was needed the most.

As all those events unravelled I experienced bullying at the high school I attended, an ordeal which was so bad that I soon developed depression and became suicidal. I wanted to just be like the other boys and to fit in with everybody else but I was treated like an outsider, an odd-ball who was labelled 'a seedy faggot', a ‘poofter’, and other such names. It seemed to be the general consensus among others at school that I was someone who would never amount to anything, that I was just someone who deserved abuse and assault.
Eventually I left that high school and transferred to another; the second school had a fantastic pastoral care system in place, which was quite effective in looking after students. I soon made new friends, heard about being saved by Jesus Christ and having a personal relationship with God. At the same time, however, I wanted to explore my sexuality further and confided in the school counsellor about how to handle my homosexual orientation. As it turned out the counsellor wasn't a Christian -despite working for a Christian school- and he actually encouraged me to assume a homosexual identity and declare it publicly 'loud and proud'. The advice seemed to make sense at the time and for a year I 'came out of the closet' by revealing to fellow students that I was gay.
That year of outing was one of great heartache as non-Christians and Christians distanced themselves from me and said that God could never love and save disgusting homosexuals, a persecution that had the effect of encouraging me to further explore the gay life. Soon after my 18th birthday I attended the annual gay and lesbian mardi gras in Kings Cross; before going to the parade I thought that the mardi gras was an amazing display of human sexuality men but when I witnessed it first hand all I saw was an immoral, blasphemous, and degrading event. I thought it so obscene that it made me think twice about living the gay lifestyle for good and I wanted to know more about being in a relationship with God. That night God asked me to surrender my life to him instead of following my sexual desires, and I was eager to do so.

Soon after encountering the Sydney mardi gras, a Christian school mate began encouraging me to think about having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Despite much cynicism at first, I was astounded at the thought that God had gone to any lengths to have a relationship with me by dying the death of a cross, especially since others were so quick to say that gay people could never be saved by a God of wrath and fire. After I read the New Testament it became obvious that God loved me so much and that he even saved wicked people such as prostitutes, liars, and murderers. Finally I became a Christian and gave my life over to Christ in my final year of school.

**************

My journey since coming to Christ has taken many different twists and turns, highs and lows that I had never imagined. God has been extremely generous with his blessings by providing a roof over my head, a stable job, and a wonderful Christian family to be encouraged by. Moreover, he’s blessed me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. Nevertheless, the salvation of the cross has not removed my same-sex attractions and so I continue to deal with the temptations of lustfulness and resisting the urge to act out sexually with other men. On top of that I have also been dealing with a strained relationship with my father (a problem which has existed since childhood) and other family strains.

Ironically though, one of the most difficult aspects of my walk with God has been relating to some Christians who have preferred to distance themselves from me because they didn’t know how to support me in my struggle with homosexuality. They seemed to think that a specialist trained in psychology was the 'number one answer', as if my problems were merely sexual. At one point a Christian staff worker at university distanced himself from me out of irrational fear that I may get 'too attached' and over-depenent on him and, ironically, he siphoned me off onto someone else like a used shoe. Unfortunately, many Christian brothers and sisters that I’ve encountered have missed the point that a Christian’s struggle with a homosexual orientation is not just a sexual, emotional, or psychological problem- it is a spiritual one. When I came across such people I was sorely tested to walk away from God because given that they did such a lousy job at representing his love.

In spite of these struggles however, God has been generous in pouring out his Holy Spirit to sustain me and providing Christian brothers and sisters to encourage me to keep going. Slowly- but surely!- God is performing his healing in my life and I have hope that one day God will bless me when he comes back again for overcoming sin (Revelation 21:7) . Temptations still surface and the process of healing has not always been easy (sometimes it is akin to an un-anaesthetised tooth extraction) but every moment with God has been worth it as he is shaping me in his likeness.One Bible verse that has always served as an apt reminder of God's goodness- a verse that brought me to faith - is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11: "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God".

For the past few years I have been set free by the death of Jesus to live no longer as a slave of sin, of lust and self, but instead to be a servant of God. He has declared me righteous and made me a citizen of heaven, like the adulterous woman who was to be stoned in John 8 for her sexual immorality. I can face every day though the joy given by God's grace and am empowered to live for him. I need not worry about the temptations of Satan or the Christians who walked away from me in a time of need, but can live every moment for God’s glory. I came out of the darkness of sin and walked into light of a right relationship with my maker.

*****

It's now December 2008 and I'm in the process of updating this testimony. I consider it a blessing that God never shows the future because after I wrote this my struggle with homosexuality took a turn for the worst. But He is good where we are unfaithful, graceful where we deserve His judgement.

Coming Out & Finding Freedom- How I Became A Christian (Part 2)

PART 2

Terrorism in 2001


Since the last time I wrote my testimony, when I was 22 years old, so many changes have happened in my life that have impacted on my walk with God that I thought it was worth updating my story. The year 2001 changed the world when two hijacked American airlines hit the World Trade Centres in New York but that year for me was a very painful one when my mother died rather suddenly of cancer. Once she was dead I saw my family disintegrate as my sister spent most of her time out of home with her boyfriend and my father pursued a new relationship with another woman. I spent a very difficult year in a very quiet three-storey house all by myself with no friends to talk to and attended a church that simply wasn't equipped to help someone like myself who was grieving an struggling with the temptations of gay sex. I became, in a word, desperate; in fact I was incredibly desperate to be with anyone who was willing to give me time, affection, a shoulder to cry on, a listening hear, and simply hug some comfort into my heart. Funnily enough though it wasn't a woman that I wanted to do all that with but a man, because to me a man represented all that my father was: a pillar of strength and comfort who would love me in my agony and speak to where I was hurting. Since my real dad had rejected me when I first presented him with my sexual confusion, my first hour of raw, incredible need, it was a man who I wanted to help me in my second biggest moment of desperate need.

At the time I thought that my dad would be able to do that and I held out the hope that our time of mutual grief would bring us close together. However it never worked out the way I wished and instead he became competitive in his grief. He made it seem as if his grief was all the greater and it pushed us further apart emotionally than it had ever done before. Eventually he brought his girlfriend home and when I caught them in a compromising situation he chanelled his anger onto me in precisely the same way he did when I told him about my sexuality. He pushed me away for a week and made it clear that we weren't supposed to grieve together but go our seperate ways.


The fall


My father's reaction and my inner fear at confronting my loneliness drove me in October 2001, exactly a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, to experiment with gay sex for the first time. At the moment that I did it I experienced emotions of extreme liberation: no one cared about me, I thought, so 'acting out' with another man was of no consquence. More than anything else I wanted to hurt those who'd ignored me and by doing it I got what I ultimately wanted- a man to hold me, give me his attentions and affections, and tell me how beautiful he thought I was. Although I'd pursued him, rather than the other way around, I felt wanted and it was an amazing feeling. I knew deep down that giving my body to that man was a profoundly stupid and evil thing to do but it gave me an opportunity to forget all my hang-ups (the grief, the loneliness, and the struggle to resist temptations) and let go; deep down I'd given up on myself and on God because I'd made the dangerous assumption that He mustn't have cared either. I reasoned to myself, "Well if God can let my mum die, my family fall apart, and leave me stranded with all the mess to handle by myself then no-on will give a damn if I let myself go".


I remember getting the bus back home on the day I had that first sexual encounter and I read Psalm 51 over and over again, weeping in despair and feeling like an absolute whore. I was genuinely scared because it sparked in me an incredble fear that I could possibly lose my salvation. After all, Revelation 21:8 promised that the sexually immoral would face eternal death and knowing how horrible God's wrath is I definately didn't want to go that way but as time showed that first encounter had sparked in me a desire to try and taste more sex, which in turn meant I'd put myself on a downward spiral into sexual sin that would be very difficult later on to try and get out of.


Stuck in sex addiction


Soon after my first 'dabble' with gay sex I found my need for sexual contact grew rather than diminished, as if I'd tapped into a deep longing hunger that needed feeding. My first encounter, which was nothing more than a one-night-stand with a stranger, just wasn't enough for me because deep down I still craved the love of a man who would comfort me and show me that I was wanted, and soon enough I met a Filipino guy who gave me a little bit of what I wanted. Andy* was about my age and for three months I practically lived in his house with his large family. I'm not entirely sure if they knew what we were doing but they welcomed me as if I were one of their own. It was a period where I had extremely mixed feelings: on the one hand I knew I was sinning, but on the other hand Andy gave me the unconditional love that I hungered for and a second family that was willing to be a substitute for my own! Yet in the back of my mind I could hear a small voice telling me it was all wrong and that it had to end, and eventually I ended it.
Ending the whole thing was a lot harder than starting it. When Andy and I first met we were just friends and neither of us were pursuing one another; in fact I'd been asked by a fellow Christian to befriend him and share the gospel. I definately turned out to be an ineffective witness because it was me who initiated the sex, and when it came to an end I felt the guilt of my sin, guilt from being a poor gospel witness, grieved that I'd destroyed a good friendship from sex, distanced from God because of my sin, and feeling extremely unworthy to come back to Him and ask for forgiveness.

When things ended with Andy the problem was that I was back in my loneliness. On the one hand I was glad to be refraining from sex but on the other hand my heart ached to be back with Andy and his family. I prayed continually for the strength to be celibate but I craved the contact and there was nothing else to take the place of Andy and his family, and shortly after I was seeking sex again. I found it in shopping centres, Sydney city, in the suburbs, and did it with anyone who was willing to look at me. Just to be looked at in lust by another man was enough for me, to have him crave me and hold me. It didn't matter at all that he only wanted to use me to gratify his own raw pleasure or that he looked at me like a piece of meat- he wanted me and that was enough. At the time it didn't matter that I was polluting my soul with demonic influence or wandering dangerously far from God because I was wanted by another man. It didn't bother me that I was doing degrading things with my body; in fact I gladly did them because I loathed myself and craved the contact of another man. Nothing else mattered. I never used protection and every time I had sex it was a dice with death but that didn't matter to me because I was getting what I craved. Although felt guilt after my first encounter I noticed that I began feeling less and less guilty the more I did it and eventually I started to even justify my addiction to myself.

Confronted by the darkness


Life ambled on from month to month and my addiction grew deeper. I went from having anonymous sexual encounters once every three months to once every two months, then once a month, once a fortnight, and even once a week. I became very adept at getting gay sex: I knew other gay men liked my handsome looks and I could spot them a long distance away. I too was giving out signals just by the way I dressed and the way I looked at men. I could throw another guy a subtle, suggestive glance and be standing naked with him literally 5 minutes later in a public toilet with him, risking imprisonment, venereal disease, and even death. It didn't take much effort to get what I was after and there were an ample number of places in the city where I could snap it up.

It was when I was snapping it up that I started to see how dark the gay life was. I discovered that it was very common to have sex with people whose names I never knew, and it was scary. Any of those guys could have robbed or stabbed me and few of them ever asked me if I wanted to use protection. God be praised that I never contracted AIDS or anything else, but boy I was taking a Russian roulette-style gamble every time I did it. That in itself was scary but not knowing the names of the guys I was doing it made me question the whole thing. I often told them my name and asked them for theirs, always asking them some basic information about themselves like 'Where are you from?', 'What do you do?', 'What kind of music do you like?' They were always so shocked when I chatted with them because they said no other man they'd had a one-night stand with ever asked them about themselves. Deep inside I cared about every man I had sex with and it saddened me profoundly that they were trying to find love by surrendering their bodies so willingly to complete strangers who didn't care about them and merely wanted to use them. Sadly, none of them thought change was possible and could see no way out of it and I could understood it only too well because I had forgotten how to control myself. I'd surrendered too.

The other worry I had about these guys is how willing some of them were to say they loved me after just one fling. One man became obsessed with me and offered numerous times to live with me. His obsessiveness didn't worry me so much but it did say that all this casual, anonymous sex was having a deep impact on all involved, that it wasn't just a physical act but something that impacted us emotionally... Every time I walked away from those guys it agonised my heart because a little part of me cared about them and I could feel that we bonded in ways deeper than the physical; it was as if our souls had meshed together and left a little part of ourselves behind with each other. I remember one night looking at myself in the mirror, lying with a man and thinking, 'What am I doing here?' Thousands of images of hard-core gay pornography raced through my mind, some so corrupt and perverted I vow never to even mention their name, and felt despondent about how damaging it was.

The darkest it all got was when I hooked up with a guy in the city and he took me to a sex shop, leading me to a darkly-painted cubicle. It had a television screen on the wall opposite the door, which screened endless clips from pornography videos. For the first time in my life I was absolutely terrified; I thought the man I'd met was going to beat me if I didn't do what he wanted... I felt as if I were an animal locked in a cage, a slave to my desires and unable to resist them. I was responsible for it and there I was a slave to those whom I'd given my body to, in a dark place that felt like hell. I felt so distanced from God and just wanted to be safe in His almighty arms, protecting me from myself and those who wanted to use me. That night I stood at the entrance of the mammoth St. Mary's Catholic cathedral and prayed through agonising tears as I read the first three verses of Psalm 40:

I waited patiently for Yahweh; He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth— praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in Yahweh.



My problem was I couldn't wait for God to get me out of the miry clay: I wanted Him to do it then and there. I prayed over and over that God get me out because I truly had noone else to turn to. I was alone at the cathedral and could only ask God for all the help He was prepared to give me.



Hanging out to dry

Around that time, in the beginning of 2004, I made a committment to abstain from sex and do it with a determined focus but rather than do it all on my own as I'd tried in 2002, I knew I needed the support of others. I got back in touch with my counsellor, read books on the subject (Desires in Conflict by Joe Dallas and Growth Into Manhood by Alan Medinger, the latter proving most helpful, practically speaking, on developing a long-term recovery strategy).


I had many things that I knew I had to work on and the magnitude of them all was exhausting, but I chose instead of trying to fix them all at once I'd do one at time, little by little. (I remembered a saying of my dad which has always stuck with me: inch by inch is a sinch, yard by yard is all too hard.) Aside from that I also set up good habits for myself. I deleted all phone numbers and email addresses of old flames and cut of connection with them all, regardless of my ongoing feelings for them. That was extremely hard but I knew that I had to make hard choices in order to make any progress. I never went to the city at night and avoided all places where I knew I could pick up sex and where I'd had sex before. I came up with creative ways to keep myself busy (by reading, writing, doing exercise) and moved into a house with a group of Christian men. I took the Internet out of my bedroom.

Before I carried myself in a way that suggested I was gay; my mannerisms and clothing sent signals to interested men. So I worked on acting more manly, observing other men and imitating the way they moved, spoke, and behaved. I trained myself to take an interest in things that other men were interested, like sport, and surprisingly became passionate about them! The moment I did that my relationships with other guys improved dramatically and I was able to join them in conversations about things that they liked. I felt like 'one of the guys' and I noticed that more men wanted to get to know me, something I'd never experienced before! It was incredibly liberating. God was extremely good to me at the time: I had moments of weakness when I slipped up but I kept turning back to God in spite of my guilt and prayed to Him. Often when I was tempted I'd send up a prayer to find the strength to resist and God always answered it.
The first three months were the most difficult because a part of me missed the old way of life and was hungry to return to it. In those times I was reminded of Luke 9:62 where Jesus said "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God". I took that message to heart and it kept me from making fatal mistakes, except for one afternoon when I forgot all that God had shown me and fell again.


Back to Square One


At the end of the 2005 I was feeling particularly depressed and lonely as many of my friends were away on Christmas holidays. Although I was 'on the mend' and had grown incredibly between 2004 and 2005 there were still remnants of sin in my heart. I was clinging in emotional co-dependency on my friends and showed signs of emotional instability. I was suffocating those who loved me by calling them too much, expecting them to always be there when I demanded them, and depending on them much more than I was on God. In that year alone I'd burned out around seven people and I felt as if I was back at square one and in a moment of weakness I went to a shopping centre, found a man willing to sleep with me, and fell.
The next day I confessed to my pastor what had happened and he rebuked me from Scripture, telling me that if I did it again I risked being asked to leave the church as well as the family of God. It was a terrible blow. I was furious with myself for having fallen and livid with my minister for his rebuke. I kept going to church but for three months I barely spoke to him; deep down I knew he was right and I was terrified of God's anger, having read Revelation, but my sinful heart wanted to have its way and resisted the truth when it was spoken. Deep down I was disappointed with myself because it inflamed my temptations and took me back to where I started 12 months before. Even to this day, exactly three years after the event, I still have trouble forgiving myself for it because the impact of it all was so deep.



Asking for the Unusual



At the time I again turned to God, humbling myself by even lying prostrate on the floor and begging Him for strength. In my solitude I began to realise that I needed a wife who I could express my sexuality with although I never really knew why I wanted it. All I knew was that sex belonged in marriage and since I'd lost control of myself I must need a wife whom I could do it with. So in my despair I asked for a wife, not really knowing if I'd ever be given one. It was a weird thing to ask for it because until then I'd never had a girlfriend and all my sexual experience was with men: if I did get a wife how would I be able to live with her and be intimate given my past? In spite of the worries I had I knew I just had to trust God with those things if they eventuated, knowing that if He was able to help me with self control He could help me be a husband.




Around that time I got in touch with a Korean friend of mine whom I'd met at church when he lived in Sydney as a working holiday student and asked him to introduce me to his sister. I pressured him for a while and in February 2006, just before my 26th birthday, he introduced me to his sister and we started getting to know one another. Soon she learned some basic English from her brother and we were able to chat on the phone in. I told her about my struggles with sin and she confided in me about the bad things that had happened in her own life, about how she'd survived an alcoholic and abusive father, being abandoned by her parents, family, and friends, and we instantly connected at a very deep level. We cried together on the phone about our past and told her that the most important thing to me was simply living a life like Jesus. She thought that was remarkable and I then started making plans to visit her face to face in South Korea.

So in July 2006 I packed my bags and met my girlfriend in Incheon airport, my shoulders covered with an unsightly layer of dandruff. In spite of the dramas we caught the Airport Limo to her house and saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2. It was amazing for me to finally be with her, to hold her hand, and look lovingly into her loving eyes. I was aroused a lot of the time and I could see her quiet gentle spirit and a loveliness that I'd never seen in any other woman before. I knew then and there that she was the woman I wanted to marry... I used the time in Korea to get to know her and her friends, meet her family. I never forgot that time because it assured me that she was the woman God had planned for me to have and in spite of our many linguistic and cultural barriers I could see her unquestioned love of God and a desire to serve her husband. It was as if God were telling me that she was the woman He'd planned for me and that we were meant to be together. She, incidentally, felt the same about me.



Given the Unusual



I returned to Australia and eventually she came to Sydney to live there for three months, to meet my friends and family and get a feeling for life in Oz. By that stage we'd started making plans to get married and in early 2007 tied the knot in a small church in Sydney, before flying over to Seoul for a honeymoon. While on the honeymoon we conceived a baby and now we're happily married with a gorgeous little girl.
The first year of our marriage was extremely challenging with many circumstances working against us. I lost two jobs, changed career, lost about $20k, survived a car accident that almost killed us and our unborn child, had a baby, had a lot of arguments (mostly a consequence of our clashing culture and language), worked through frustrated expectations, and struggle with our own sinfulness. Aside from my sexual attractions I also had anger, bitterness, depression, and unforgiveness to work against; in that time God showed me that in fact the bitterness was a backdrop to my homosexual attractions, that the gay issue was a secondary one to the greater sins that were festering in my heart. Even to this day, in early 2009, I struggle with these problems, and in fact as they've emerged my sexual struggles have lessened. They're still there but less intense. There are moments where having a baby makes the struggles harder because it can be difficult for my wife and I to be initmate but now things are a lot calmer than before. I'm able to work on the deeper problems within and experience a spiritual renewal that I'd not had before. God hasn't 'cured' me, to use a crass term. He's healing me and that's the difference.

************


Q: Does Marriage Make the SSA Struggle Easier?



In many ways it does make it easier because I am able to express myself sexually with another person and for her to pray with me but the core of sexual problems is inner brokenness. At the moment I'm working on that by planning to see a counsellor and join a support group but the cost of those things tends to be prohibitively expensive; I trust God though, that even without that support God can still do His work and heal me. I need to forgive others and myself and surrender my bitterness to God. Marriage doesn't heal brokenness and in fact in can be a playground of sin where people vent their sinfulness onto the people they love the most. Some SSA men think that marriage will 'cure' them of their same sex attractions and others believe it's a mark of spiritual maturity when someone with SSA does get married. Neither's true. I won't get into the details of those things here but in my case God gave me my wife just as I was coming out of sexual addiction... I'd sincerely given my heart to God in complete surrender and in His grace and goodness decided to give me my wife. It wasn't because I deserved it or was good enough- He just gave it to me.
Sex with my wife, I've found has been much more fulfilling than gay sex. 99% of the time when men have sex together it's to use each other for pleasure before disposing of them and moving onto the next fling. Even if they live exclusively with their boyfriends it's not monogamous because gay men never get enough sex. Studies have shown that they're extremely promiscuous and have sex with up to 30 strangers a month (almost one per day) and my own experience backs that up.

Sex with my wife on the other hand is a beautiful thing because we know each other and care about one another. My wife isn't a piece of meat for my momentary pleasure; she's the loving doe that God has blessed me with. I'm to present her holy on the last day when God returns and I love her more than myself. Besides that my body is hers and that helps me a lot when it comes to abstaining from masturbation and fantasising over men. We're open about my temptations and she prays for me, which is amazing because I can see that she cares so much. The best part about our marriage is that it's grounded in the light of Jesus. Our sex is pure, not guilt-inducing. We never do anything that degrades the other person and we try as much as we can to serve the other person, not to take away from them for selfish gratification.

In spite of my original concerns that I wouldn't find her body attractive and arousing, God has been very good in answering my prayers. I've never had problems being intimate with my wife and it makes me believe that every man with SSA has it in him to be physically one with a woman in marriage. No one is born gay no one can be a gay Christian because God has made us for heterosexual sexual unity. Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit can heal and change people and it's not just me. There are men all around the world who've started 'ex-gay' ministries who are now married with children and they've survived places darker than I've ever been in (e.g. Sy Rogers, Joe Dallas, Chris Keane). There's no excuse for failing to trust God because He does transform.



Q: Still Christian?


At the time I was in sexual addiction I remembered a passage from the Bible which said that God gives people over to commit acts of sin as a sign of His judgement (Romans 1:24-25) and I convinced myself that God had given me over and given me up. That, of course, was a lie that came from Satan to keep me from being saved, but I really thought I was too unlovable to ever return again. At the time I thought I was losing my salvation and yet God sent signs that He still love me and wanted me to return to Him. I knew that Jesus' blood had me in right relationship with God but that my sin was a denial of my true identity. By living the gay life I was living in denial because true living was to live in obedience to God.

In situations like mine, spiritual attack is guaranteed because sin puts us at a distance from God and that's exactly what Satan wants. The Devil's a roaring lion who hates life and seeks to devour (1 Peter 5:8) and when people give themselves to sin he'll whisper lies in their ears to keep them away from God, saying things like 'God doesn't love you, God made you gay and he's trying to hold back good things from you. God doesn't give a _______ about you. Did God really say gay sex is evil? God can't forgive you! You're sin's too deep and you're too filthy for God. You're unworthy so give in to me'. Satan often whispered those lies in my ear and I was asbolutely terrified. I knew it was my fault for giving into sin (and thereby giving the enemy a licence) but I became deeply worried that I'd lose God.

Key to surviving it all was to open the Scriptures, no matter how low I felt, and ask God to show me His grace. I knew I was unworthy of forgiveness but I remembered that that's the whole point about grace! It's precisely because I was unworthy that God saved me and wanted me to live for Him. It was one of the many times in my life where I could clearly see God's love and I couldn't help but respond and return to Him with a clear determination to put it all behind.


* This name has been changed to protect this person's identity.