Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.4

Tomorrow is the day of my surgery. Ready for it to be behind me. Ready to know. Naturally I have been thinking a lot about healing lately and what that even looks like. I have asked Him for healing. I have asked Him to let it not be cancer. I have asked Him to heal my body completely. I know that He can do this. I am believing that He will.  He is God, no matter what.
The arthritis pain is still under control. No where near what I thought it would be by now. My family and I pray daily for the pain to be manageable. And I continue to be amazed that it is. I have Tylenol and Advil just in case. So far I have not had to take either.
I have so many people who tell me they are praying for me. So many messages, cards, calls, visits.  I cannot tell you what that does for me. You are walking this road with me and I do not feel alone. There is no way I can say thank you enough for that.

As you continue along with me on my spiritual journey, I need to let you know about something else that was a major contributor to the confusion and questions I had in my quest to find out the truth about God and religion. This very thing pretty much consumed my mind during the many years of my "spiritual search".  I almost do not include this part in the telling of my story but it is so much a part of my journey that I don't see how I cannot. It is a topic that has caused many questions and much confusion by the vast majority of people. I know that it has done that for me. This that I speak of has, over the years, taken my sleep, puzzled my mind, and did nothing to help solve the never-ending questions of what God was all about. In fact it succeeded in making things worse. It is the subject of homosexuality. I cannot tell the full part of my story concerning this because it intertwines with the stories of others and theirs is not my story to tell. I can only tell you that for 25 years I have seen and listened to  people that I love and trust tell me that their sexual orientation is towards the same sex.... and they didn't choose that..... and they can't change that.  And I believe them.  And the reason is,  I've watched them cry. And I've watched them pray. And I've seen them hopeless. I have watched them struggle. I have seen and felt the hate towards them. I have witnessed the judgement. I have seen them accept it. I have seen them reject it. Only to accept it again. And my questions and confusion grew.
Which brings me back to church. And God.  I don't really remember hearing much about homosexuality while growing up in the church. It just wasn't talked about. And on the rare occasion that it was, I knew it was a bad, bad thing. The worse. In fact, whenever I did hear it mentioned, the word HELL was in the same sentence. I remember thinking that is was a good thing I wasn't that. I surely didn't want to go to hell. I didn't know anyone who was a homosexual so I didn't have to give it much thought. Then it presented itself to my world. To those people who were precious to me. People that I love very much. People that I trust. People who would not tell me lies about themselves. For the life of me I could not reconcile what the church said with what my loved ones were telling me. It just did not make sense to me in my logical mind. Thus began many years of searching for answers, reading the Bible, talking to others, listening to others, reading books, watching documentaries, begging God to change it, crying myself to sleep and just trying to come to peace with it all........

In my search I have seen that there are those who think you can just throw a Bible verse or two out and that solves the problem. They are the ones who like to say that they love the sinner but hate the sin. They are the ones who think that this particular sin is far worse that any other sin mentioned in the Bible. They think the answer is simple. Just don't be gay. Don't give in to it. I have never been able to be that person. This is too close to my heart. Too personal. And I haven't seen where that has worked. I can see where it has only caused division between the church and those who live with this. I will never forget what one person who struggles with this said to me one time. He said, "The way I see it I have 3 choices. I can live a lie and marry a woman and be miserable, or I can be who I feel that I am and be rejected by the church, or I can be alone for the rest of my life and never be in a relationship with someone I love. And for me, all of these choices suck".  I remember that statement making me so sad. I didn't see any hope in it.  I couldn't get things to settle in my mind. And I kept on searching and praying and searching.

I have to be at the hospital at 9 am tomorrow morning. I would appreciate your prayers for me and my family during these morning hours. Thank you all for holding me up so far. You can never know how thankful I am for you.
Keep reading my blogs. You cannot stop here. I have so much more to tell you. I have found some answers along this journey. They are answers that have brought me peace. They are answers that I believe to be truth. My prayer is that my answers will speak to some of you. I will never find them all and I will be on a search for the rest of my life but I am sleeping now. He is right beside me. I am thankful.