Walk This Road With Me, Will You? Chap.9

Almost 6 weeks since my surgery. I feel mostly healed up from that. Going on 3 months since I have had a shot for the arthritis. Tonight my joint pain is a 2. I want to be able to tell you that it has been a 2 the whole time. It has not. I have been struggling for the past couple of weeks. Gosh I hate to tell you that. I so wish I could say that my joint pain has miraculously gone or stayed minimal. But I have to be honest.  One day it is my shoulder. The next day, my wrists. Then it is my hip. Then my feet. Always my fingers. The pain has been up to an 8, maybe 9. It is so much worse at night. It steals my sleep. I am on no medication. I did take a pain pill one night, it got so bad. I don't like to do that. I do not want to depend on medication to ease my pain. That may sound crazy to some folks but I just don't.  I believe that medication is good and I do not find fault with those who need it but I have never wanted to take medication on a long-term basis. It's just me. I don't know why.
I've been talking to God a lot lately. Pain forces you to do that. I asked Him why I was having this pain. Why now? He had been so good to me over the past couple of months. I believed that He had answered my prayers ( and the many prayers of others)  concerning healing. I had thanked Him daily for His healing, thanked Him even while I was hurting. But now it seemed that the pain was getting worse instead of better. A few nights ago my shoulder was aching so bad that I couldn't sleep. I decided that I would just have to get up and take a pain pill (I had some leftover from my surgery).  I had done that a few nights earlier and I remembered how after about 20 minutes,  I got that loopy feeling and the pain began to ease and I finally went to sleep. So I was on the verge of doing that again this time. I needed relief.  I decided to pray first. I told God that I needed for the pain to ease so that I could go to sleep. I was aware that He knew how I felt about medicine. I asked Him if He would be my medicine that night. I told him that I believed with all my heart that He could ease my pain. I told Him that I would wait for Him to work, just like I had waited for the pain pill. I closed my eyes and started thanking Him over and over for all of the good things He had done for me lately. And after about 20 minutes, I realized that the pain in my shoulder had eased off. And I went to sleep.
Have you ever picked up a Bible and opened it, hoping that the very first verse you read would "speak to you"? I used to do that a lot. It never seemed to work for me. I would always get an off the wall verse that seemed to mean nothing to my circumstance. So I stopped doing that.  The other morning I was on my porch, in my swing, both wrists hurting, questioning the pain, getting ready to read my Bible. I opened it up and my eyes fell immediately on this verse:  "But He said to me, 'My Grace is sufficient for you, for my Power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's Power can work through me." Ok.   Wow.    I thought about that for a while.  So that Christ's Power can work through me. Could it be that God was using my pain to ultimately make me who He created me to be? To get and keep my attention? To keep me focused on Him because He knows that I may not stay focused if I didn't need him?  That morning in my swing I truly felt that He was speaking to me. I made the decision to trust Him with this pain.
I used to believe in coincidence. In fact I pretty much believed that every situation that was amazing or weird was probably coincidence. I couldn't for the life of me believe that it could actually be a God thing. That seemed too far-fetched. My logical mind just couldn't accept that. I don't know how in the world I even stayed in church, believing in God. My mind was so non-spiritual at the time.
I can tell you that I have had a complete change of heart lately. Now I don't believe there is such a thing as coincidence. He has been with me. He has healed my body. He has eased my pain. He has been my medication. He has stepped in for my loved ones. He has answered some questions. He has spoken to me. He has given me peace. In spite of the pain. I simply cannot figure out how to thank Him enough for that.

This next part of my story is the hardest for me to write. It is from my standpoint but it is not about me. Looking back,  I never thought I would be able to share this part of my story. Never. My daughter shared her story recently and my son is about to do the same. Let me just say that I am beyond proud of both of them. It is not easy. We choose to share because we know that there are many like us who have gone through the same things and had the same questions. We do not pretend to have all of the answers, by far. This is just what we have honestly gone through and what we know that we need to share. We would be humbled if it helps just one.

I remember it like it was yesterday. He was playing with his toys in the kitchen floor. His daddy was at work. His sister was at school. I had just washed my hair and it was up in a towel. I heard his sweet little 3 -year- old voice ask,
"Mama? You know what I want to be when I go to school?"
"What do you want to be baby?"
"I want to be a girl."
And it felt like the floor just opened up and swallowed me whole.

That's when the begging began. Every night I begged God to let it not be true. Not that I couldn't or wouldn't love a gay son or that I would be embarrassed or ashamed, not at all. That wasn't it. It was the hurt it would cause him. I had seen it. Someone else I loved very much had gone through the same thing. I saw the judgement from others.  I saw the hate and disgust.  I couldn't reconcile it with my faith.  I didn't understand it. I was afraid for my little boy. I didn't want him to be hated. So I begged. We put him in sports. He loved to sit right beside me all the time and I made him go sit with his daddy. I prayed and I prayed and I begged and I begged. And I tried to believe. I watched from a distance, him never knowing what I was praying for. I watched him pray too, his little hand on his Bible every night, me not knowing (until much later)  that he was praying the same thing too. It was in his teenage years that we began to talk about it together. Being a Christian, I knew what I should tell him. "Run from it. Don't give in. The feelings will change. God will change you." And I did tell him that early on. I really believed that it would happen. He did too. Ricky has always had a deep love for Christ. I saw that in him very early on. I even used to joke and say that he was even more spiritual than me. It was the truth.  He always had a hunger for God. The homosexuality wasn't too much if an issue when he was younger because he really thought God would answer his prayers. And the prayers of his mother. It wasn't until he left and went away to college that he came to the realization that maybe this wasn't going to change. God seemed to be turning a deaf ear to our prayers. He kept trying. He dated a precious, beautiful girl for two years, hoping that she would be the one who could change his feelings. I remember that he would call me with his questions and look to me to give him solid answers. I couldn't. I didn't have any. By this time I had read not only the Bible, but many other books and watched documentaries and talked with other gay people. Most would tell me that they didn't believe that God was displeased with them being gay. That it wasn't a sin. How could He be when He had made them this way? That they did not choose to be attracted to the same sex. Why in the world would they choose it? I discovered that it was considered harmful to try and change your sexual identity. Many had committed suicide from the pressure of it all. I could not let that happen to my son. So when he would ask me for advice I would tell him the only thing I knew to tell him. "Just be whole. I want you whole. You will know what that looks like for you. Pursue wholeness." It was the best thing I could think of to say to him, always hoping that it was the right thing. I stopped begging God. I had spent too many years doing that. I continued to question Him. About this. Always about this. And about religion and what it all meant. It's funny, you would think that I would have just given up on God and the church but I didn't. I never even considered that. I just always knew that there were answers to my many questions and I just thought I may have to wait until Heaven so that I could ask Him myself. Still I kept searching. Forever searching......

Will you keep praying for me? Will you keep walking with me? My son shares his story in his own words in the next chapter. Stay with us........