Reframing Your Expectations
When God isn't working on your timeline.
I was sitting in my living room back in 1998, wrestling with whether or not to step down from leading children's ministry. I happened to read 2 Kings 20:5, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you.”
When I read that, it was as if the Lord spoke in my ears. I heard it in my mind. I felt it through my body like the vibration from the sound of rushing water.
I couldn't understand what the Lord was saying. All I wanted to know was if I should step down from leadership. There was no one to step in. Why did the Lord say this to me?
I was the administrator for the parent participation playgroup. It was a new year, and I was getting ready. I was pondering a couple of questions connected to my past life coming out of homosexuality. Questions that never got answered.
I made a call to a local ministry and talked to Anne. I asked my questions, and in the journey of our discussion, I ended up recounting a memory that I had from childhood. It was a familiar memory that never had any emotion tied to it.
But as I recounted this memory to Anne it was as if God took an invisible zipper and unzipped my soul, and out came rage that I never experienced in my life. My questions became irrelevant to the rage I was now experiencing. I hung up the phone in frustration. And therein began a very long season of healing that felt more like being killed by God.
Playgroup was now up & running. One of the moms in the playgroup, who I had been disciplining, also happened to have some homosexual leanings in her background. But she, like me, was married with children.
I was at church setting up for playgroup when she walked in with her kiddos and greeted me. I was blown off my feet by what happened next. I felt magnetized to her, and if we got in close proximity, it became stronger. I felt completely out of control. I did my best to distance myself from her.
The following Sunday morning, we went to church. I got my kids settled in children’s church, then went into the sanctuary, grabbed my friend, and dragged her to my car to talk in private. I explained to her all that I was experiencing and asked for prayer.
She recommended that I do the things that I was already prepared to do: confess to my husband, confess to the leadership of the church, and find some help.
I joined a group that helped people coming out of homosexuality. I got a counselor who was fluent in the latest practices. I set up accountability with some friends. This gave me a place to confess. The challenge was to continue moving forward even though I could not stop being in playgroup and seeing this friend.
Every day, I would get up and feel like the sky was pressing in on me. God seemed to have no interest in helping me. I was begging him to get me out from underneath what I was experiencing. I did not want to lose my husband, children, or family. Everything was on the line.
Months later, I joined a study group that met weekly. Each week, I would spew my anger at God for not helping me to the members of this group. Every week, there was a woman who tried to fix me. She tried to convince me that God was not all the things that I was saying.
It was the last session and I felt so oppressed. God didn't care. I spewed my anger one final time and stormed out of the study group. I stomped down the stairs out into the parking lot. It was dark, and the parking lot lights were on. This woman ran down the stairs after me and caught me under the hue of a light.
Again, she tried to fix me. After she finished, I told her, “God is the puppet master, and I am the puppet. He hangs me over the fire until my flesh burns, and I'm in deep pain. He doesn't seem to care what's happening to me; God has abandoned me!” After I said those words, I turned in a huff and went to my car.
The next morning, I got up to have my quiet time, and the words that I said, the accusation against God, “You have abandoned me,” echoed in my mind. As I sat there, I thought through the reality of all the things that the Lord had done in me to help me.
He helped me learn to relate properly to women. He helped me overcome my fear of rejection. He brought me my husband in answer to my prayer and taught me how to love and trust him. He opened my womb and gave me children. I realized that the Lord of the universe had not abandoned me, and I said, “Lord, You have not abandoned me!”
And in the same way that this journey started when I recounted that memory from childhood, it was finished. When I was able to recognize and say that the Lord had not abandoned me, it was over. A year and a 1/2 long trial of almost losing everything.
Now that I have some hindsight, I'll tell you what the memory was. I was maybe 3. My mom was at the couch with my older sister between her legs as she was preparing her for school. I was on the outside, longing to be the one on the inside and longing for that attention from my mom. The rage that I felt though in recounting this memory was not actually from this moment. It was a flagpost point to an earlier moment that I had no memory of, but my mom told me about it.
When my mom was pregnant with my younger sister, she was too sick to take care of my older sister and me. She sent my sister to one set of relatives and me to another set of relatives.
I was six months old when she sent me away to be cared for. I was gone for three months. How does a six-month-old cope with the fact that she's now separated from her mom for half of her existence? I must have felt abandoned by my mother and did not possess the skills to cope with the separation. God zipped it up inside me for a future moment where I would have the foundation to find language to process through the emotions of feeling abandoned.
It took a year and a half when I finally had language to process everything that I experienced and then to recognize the goodness of God. Far from being abandoned, I was very specifically saved and healed.
For those of us with same-sex attraction, the journey may be a long one. Everyone's journey will be very different. God knows exactly what you need and when. You may have to carry your struggles longer than you want, and it is for your good. God, in his sovereignty, can lead us in the journey of healing, reconciliation, and growth victoriously.
Jen Thorne, daughter of the God Most High, wife to Karl since 1988, mother to five, continuing to be refined. Prayed the sinner's prayer in 1984 when she no longer could refuse the evidence of both God and Christ while living in her last same-sex relationship. Christ called her out of all that in 1986 and she entered fully into the dance with Jesus. Regardless of what Jen is doing, she is always wondering what God is up to now. At some point in the journey, her life verse has become, "and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds." Heb 10:24.