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Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son

On the night of Nov. 20, 2001, a conversation held over Instant Messenger changed our lives forever. Our 12-year-old son messaged me in my office from the computer in his bedroom.

Ryan says: can i tell u something

Mom says: Yes I am listening

Ryan says: well i don't know how to say this really but, well......, i can't keep lying to you about myself. I have been hiding this for too long and i sorta have to tell u now. By now u probably have an idea of what i am about to say.
Ryan says: I am gay
Ryan says: i can't believe i just told you

Mom says: Are you joking?

Ryan says: no
Ryan says: i thought you would understand because of uncle don

Mom says: of course I would
Mom says: but what makes you think you are?

Ryan says: i know i am
Ryan says: i don't like hannah
Ryan says: it's just a cover-up

Mom says: but that doesn't make you gay...

Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: but u don't understand
Ryan says: i am gay

Mom says: tell me more

Ryan says: it's just the way i am and it's something i know
Ryan says: u r not a lesbian and u know that. it is the same thing

Mom says: what do you mean?

Ryan says: i am just gay
Ryan says: i am that

Mom says: I love you no matter what

Ryan says: i am white not black
Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: i am a boy not a girl
Ryan says: i am attracted to boys not girls
Ryan says: u know that about yourself and i know this

Mom says: what about what God thinks about acting on these desires?

Ryan says: i know

Mom says: thank you for telling me

Ryan says: and i am very confused about that right now

Mom says: I love you more for being honest

Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: thanx

We were completely shocked. Not that we didn't know and love gay people; my only brother had come out to us several years before, and we adored him. But Ryan? He was unafraid of anything, tough as nails and all boy. We had not seen this coming, and the emotion that overwhelmed us, kept us awake at night and, sadly, influenced all our reactions over the next six years was fear.

We said all the things that we thought loving Christian parents who believed the Bible, the Word of God, should say:

We love you. We will always love you. And this is hard. Really hard. But we know what God says about this, so you are going to have to make some really difficult choices.

We love you. We couldn't love you more. But there are other men who have faced this same struggle, and God has worked in them to change their desires. We'll get you their books; you can listen to their testimonies. And we will trust God with this.

We love you. We are so glad you are our son. But you are young, and your sexual orientation is still developing. The feelings you've had for other guys don't make you gay. So please don't tell anyone that you are gay. You don't know who you are yet. Your identity is not that you are gay; it is that you are a child of God.

We love you. Nothing will change that. But if you are going to follow Jesus, holiness is your only option. You are going to have to choose to follow Jesus, no matter what. And since you know what the Bible says, and since you want to follow God, embracing your sexuality is not an option.

We thought we understood the magnitude of the sacrifice that we -- and God -- were asking for. And this sacrifice, we knew, would lead to an abundant life, perfect peace and eternal rewards. Ryan had always felt intensely drawn to spiritual things; He desired to please God above all else. So, for the first six years, he tried to choose Jesus. Like so many others before him, he pleaded with God to help him be attracted to girls. He memorized Scripture, met with his youth pastor weekly, enthusiastically participated in all the church youth group events and Bible Studies and got baptized. He read all the books that claimed to know where his gay feelings came from, dove into counseling to further discover the whys of his unwanted attraction to other guys, worked through painful conflict resolution with my husband and me and built strong friendships with other guys -- straight guys -- just like the reparative therapy experts advised. He even came out to his entire youth group, giving his testimony of how God had rescued him from the traps of the enemy, and sharing, by memory, verse after verse that God had used to draw Ryan to Him.

But nothing changed. God didn't answer his prayer, or ours, though we were all believing with faith that the God of the Universe, the God for whom nothing is impossible, could easily make Ryan straight. But He did not.

Though our hearts may have been good (we truly thought what we were doing was loving), we did not even give Ryan a chance to wrestle with God, to figure out what he believed God was telling him through scripture about his sexuality. We had believed firmly in giving each of our four children the space to question Christianity, to decide for themselves if they wanted to follow Jesus, to truly own their own faith. But we were too afraid to give Ryan that room when it came to his sexuality, for fear that he'd make the wrong choice.

Basically, we told our son that he had to choose between Jesus and his sexuality. We forced him to make a choice between God and being a sexual person. Choosing God, practically, meant living a lifetime condemned to being alone. He would never have the chance to fall in love, have his first kiss, hold hands, share intimacy and companionship or experience romance.

And so, just before his 18th birthday, Ryan, depressed, suicidal, disillusioned and convinced that he would never be able to be loved by God, made a new choice. He decided to throw out his Bible and his faith at the same time and try searching for what he desperately wanted -- peace -- another way. And the way he chose to try first was drugs.

We had unintentionally taught Ryan to hate his sexuality. And since sexuality cannot be separated from the self, we had taught Ryan to hate himself. So as he began to use drugs, he did so with a recklessness and a lack of caution for his own safety that was alarming to everyone who knew him.

Suddenly our fear of Ryan someday having a boyfriend (a possibility that honestly terrified me) seemed trivial in contrast to our fear of Ryan's death, especially in light of his recent rejection of Christianity and his mounting anger at God.

Ryan started with weed and beer, but in six short months was using cocaine, crack and heroin. He was hooked from the beginning, and his self-loathing and rage at God only fueled his addiction. Shortly thereafter, we lost contact with him. For the next year and a half, we didn't know where he was or even if he was dead or alive. And during that horrific time, God had our full attention. We stopped praying for Ryan to become straight. We started praying for him to know that God loved him. We stopped praying for him to never have a boyfriend. We started praying that someday we might actually get to know his boyfriend. We even stopped praying for him to come home to us; we only wanted him to come home to God.

By the time our son called us, after 18 long months of silence, God had completely changed our perspective. Because Ryan had done some pretty terrible things while using drugs, the first thing he asked me was this:

Do you think you can ever forgive me? (I told him of course, he was already forgiven. He had always been forgiven.)

Do you think you could ever love me again? (I told him that we had never stopped loving him, not for one second. We loved him then more than we had ever loved him.)

Do you think you could ever love me with a boyfriend? (Crying, I told him that we could love him with 15 boyfriends. We just wanted him back in our lives. We just wanted to have a relationship with him again... and with his boyfriend.)

And a new journey was begun, one of healing, restoration, open communication and grace. Lots of grace. And God was present every step of the way, leading and guiding us, gently reminding us simply to love our son and leave the rest up to Him.

Over the next 10 months, we learned to truly love our son. Period. No buts. No conditions. Just because he breathes. We learned to love whomever our son loved. And it was easy. What I had been so afraid of became a blessing. The journey wasn't without mistakes, but we had grace for each other, and the language of apology and forgiveness became a natural part of our relationship. As our son pursued recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, we pursued him. God taught us how to love him, to rejoice over him, to be proud of the man he was becoming. We were all healing, and most importantly, Ryan began to think that if we could forgive him and love him, then maybe God could, too.

And then Ryan made the classic mistake of a recovering addict: He got back together with his old friends, his using friends. And one evening that was supposed to simply be a night at the movies turned out to be the first time he had shot up in 10 months -- and the last time. Ryan died on July 16, 2009. And we lost the ability to love our gay son, because we no longer had a gay son. What we had wished for, prayed for, hoped for -- that we would not have a gay son -- came true. But not at all in the way we had envisioned.

Now, when I think back on the fear that governed all my reactions during those first six years after Ryan told us he was gay, I cringe as I realize how foolish I was. I was afraid of all the wrong things. And I grieve, not only for my oldest son, whom I will miss every day for the rest of my life, but for the mistakes I made. I grieve for what could have been, had we been walking by faith instead of by fear. Now, whenever Rob and I join our gay friends for an evening, I think about how much I would love to be visiting with Ryan and his partner over dinner. But instead, we visit Ryan's gravestone. We celebrate anniversaries: the would-have-been birthdays and the unforgettable day of his death. We wear orange, his color. We hoard memories: pictures, clothing he wore, handwritten notes, lists of things he loved, tokens of his passions, recollections of the funny songs he invented, his Curious George and baseball blankey, anything, really, that reminds us of our beautiful boy, for that is all we have left, and there will be no new memories. We rejoice in our adult children, and in our growing family as they marry, but we ache for the one of our "gang of four" who is missing. We mark life by the days B.C. (before coma) and A.D. (after death), because we are different people now; our life was irrevocably changed in a million ways by his death. We treasure friendships with others who "get it" because they, too, have lost a child.

We weep. We seek Heaven for grace and mercy and redemption as we try not to get better but to be better. And we pray that God can somehow use our story to help other parents learn to truly love their children. Just because they breathe.

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Story copied from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-robertson/just-because-he-breathes-learning-to-truly-love-our-gay-son_b_3478971.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

We Must Only Worship God - Lesson 8

Jesus said in Matthew 4:10, "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve." If we worship God in spirit and in truth, we cannot worship anyone or anything else. Anything we worship, other than God, is an idol. According to Webster, an idol is "an image used as an object or instrument of worship."

God forbids us to make and worship idols. God says in Exodus 20:4-5, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." We see we are not to make any image whether it is a statue or any likeness of anything in heaven or earth to worship them. But this is done today when people worship icons. People bow down and pray to these statues and painted pictures whether they be the supposed likeness of Mary the mother of Jesus or one of the many other dead people who are called saints. This is in direct disobedience to the command of God.

When I see people bowing down, burning candles, praying, and worshipping an icon image of a saint, my heart bleeds for them because they are putting their souls in jeopardy of being lost. We are warned in Colossians 2:18, "Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worshipping angels." We can loose our reward in heaven if we worship someone other than God. He is the only one we are to worship because He is a jealous God. God will not allow us to worship anyone else other than Himself. Revelations 21:8 tells us that "idolaters shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." We must only worship God and our worship must be in spirit and in truth if we expect to be with Him in heaven when this life is over.
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Article taken from  http://www.bible.ca/interactive/worship-8-god-alone.htm

Double Layer Flags

Worshipping God In Truth - Lesson 4

There are many who think it really doesn't matter what we believe or do in religion, just as long as we are sincere and follow our conscience. But if it doesn't really matter what you believe, then it doesn't matter if you even believe at all. This is absurd. This philosophy exalts our conscience above the word of God. This makes our conscience our only guide and ignores what God says in the Bible. This philosophy originated with man and not with God. This is telling God we are going to worship Him the way we choose and we don't really care what He has to say. Every man then becomes his own authority thereby eliminating the authority of God, the Bible. This attitude must greatly hurt the one who gave His life for us.

Many people want to do what they think best and what seems right to them. We are warned not to do this in Proverbs 14:12, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." According to what God says we can loose our soul by doing what seems right in our own eyes. God's word is no longer our guide, but it has been replaced with creed books, disciplines, manuals, confessions, etc. Men want to do things their way and as it seems right in their own eyes.

The philosophy of doing what seems right in our eyes has vastly altered the way people attempt to worship God. They rationalize that God will accept it. People can rationalize away just about anything they want if they work at it hard and long enough, and because of this people worship God in ignorance. Just as the apostle Paul told the Athenians in Acts 17:23 (KJV), "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship."

The average person in religious matters takes many things for granted. He finds religious groups practicing something and he decides what the majority does must be right and acceptable to God. The Bible says the majority of people are going to be eternally lost. Jesus says in Matthew 7:l3-14, "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." So we don't want to depend on the majority to determine what is right for us and follow them. If we do we will also end up being lost in the eternal fires of Hell.

Many people never stop to ask, is it scriptural and is this what God wants? They believe that just any kind of worship they give will be acceptable to God. The main reason for all the religious division that we see in the world today is man will not accept God's word as final authority. Man is going to do it his own way. The Bible contains our only instructions on how to please God so we can go to heaven.

God has always told man how He is to be worshipped. He will only accept that which is in harmony with His prescribed will. God instructs us how to worship Him acceptably through His word in the Bible. In Ephesians 5:17 we read, "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is." It is wise to know what the will of the Lord is so we can do it and be pleasing to Him.

In every age God has specified how He is to be worshipped. He says to us in 2 Peter 1:3, "As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us." God in the New Testament has given to us all things we need to know that pertain to life and godliness so we can worship Him acceptably, in spirit and in truth. God has always made it plain and emphatic that the only worship that is acceptable to Him is only that which is in accordance with His will.

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Courtesy of  http://www.bible.ca/interactive/worship-4-in-truth.htm

Worshipping God In Spirit - Lesson 2

Worshipping God "in spirit" means with reverence, attentiveness, and having the right purpose of honoring God, while understanding what we are doing. Hebrews 12:28-29 says, "Let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire." Our worship must glorify God. 1 Corinthians 6:20 says, "For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

In order to worship God in the right spirit, we must take time before worship to make ready our hearts and emotions so we will be in the proper frame of mind. We should not have to rush or hurry to worship, arriving late but should always plan to be there early enough so we can be in a worshipful attitude and spirit. Our mind must be ready, attentive, and alert.

Concerning the Lord's Supper, we are warned in 1 Corinthians 11:27, "Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Our worship to God must be done in a worthy manner. It must be done in a manner that brings glory and honor to God and Christ. Continuing to read in verse 29, "For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." We must control our thoughts during periods of worship and not let them wander to other things. We should never be wishing the worship service would hurry up and be over so we can get to the restaurant early and not have to stand in line. In fact we should be of the frame of mind that we are disappointed to see the worship service end.

In showing reverence and respect to God, we will not be indifferent, inattentive, and taking lightly that which should be considered serious. Worship to God is holy. Our character in worship must also be holy. In 1 Peter 1:16-17 we read, "But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in your conduct, because it is written, Be holy for I am holy." Slouching over, sleeping, playing with babies, squirming, unnecessary talking, and passing notes all show disrespect in worshipping God. Active participation will tend to get rid of our lack of interest and inattentiveness.

Reverence is not having a long face, folded hands, or a put on look of piety. Worship is a time of joy for us. It is a time of offering thanks, adoration, love, praying, singing praises to God, feeding on His word, and proclaiming Christ to the world in partaking of the Lord's Supper.

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Article taken from  http://www.bible.ca/interactive/worship-2-in-spirit.htm

Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening (Devotional) - Saturday, April 27, 2013

Morning

"God, even our own God."
Psalm 67:6

It is strange how little use we make of the spiritual blessings which God gives us, but it is stranger still how little use we make of God himself. Though he is "our own God," we apply ourselves but little to him, and ask but little of him. How seldom do we ask counsel at the hands of the Lord! How often do we go about our business, without seeking his guidance! In our troubles how constantly do we strive to bear our burdens ourselves, instead of casting them upon the Lord, that he may sustain us! This is not because we may not, for the Lord seems to say, "I am thine, soul, come and make use of me as thou wilt; thou mayst freely come to my store, and the oftener the more welcome." It is our own fault if we make not free with the riches of our God. Then, since thou hast such a friend, and he invites thee, draw from him daily. Never want whilst thou hast a God to go to; never fear or faint whilst thou hast God to help thee; go to thy treasure and take whatever thou needest--there is all that thou canst want. Learn the divine skill of making God all things to thee. He can supply thee with all, or, better still, he can be to thee instead of all. Let me urge thee, then, to make use of thy God. Make use of him in prayer. Go to him often, because he is thy God. O, wilt thou fail to use so great a privilege? Fly to him, tell him all thy wants. Use him constantly by faith at all times. If some dark providence has beclouded thee, use thy God as a "sun;" if some strong enemy has beset thee, find in Jehovah a "shield," for he is a sun and shield to his people. If thou hast lost thy way in the mazes of life, use him as a "guide," for he will direct thee. Whatever thou art, and wherever thou art, remember God is just what thou wantest, and just where thou wantest, and that he can do all thou wantest.

Evening

"The Lord is King forever and ever."
Psalm 10:16

Jesus Christ is no despotic claimant of divine right, but he is really and truly the Lord's anointed! "It hath pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell." God hath given to him all power and all authority. As the Son of man, he is now head over all things to his church, and he reigns over heaven, and earth, and hell, with the keys of life and death at his girdle. Certain princes have delighted to call themselves kings by the popular will, and certainly our Lord Jesus Christ is such in his church. If it could be put to the vote whether he should be King in the church, every believing heart would crown him. O that we could crown him more gloriously than we do! We would count no expense to be wasted that could glorify Christ. Suffering would be pleasure, and loss would be gain, if thereby we could surround his brow with brighter crowns, and make him more glorious in the eyes of men and angels. Yes, he shall reign. Long live the King! All hail to thee, King Jesus! Go forth, ye virgin souls who love your Lord, bow at his feet, strew his way with the lilies of your love, and the roses of your gratitude: "Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of all." Moreover, our Lord Jesus is King in Zion by right of conquest: he has taken and carried by storm the hearts of his people, and has slain their enemies who held them in cruel bondage. In the Red Sea of his own blood, our Redeemer has drowned the Pharaoh of our sins: shall he not be King in Jeshurun? He has delivered us from the iron yoke and heavy curse of the law: shall not the Liberator be crowned? We are his portion, whom he has taken out of the hand of the Amorite with his sword and with his bow: who shall snatch his conquest from his hand? All hail, King Jesus! we gladly own thy gentle sway! Rule in our hearts forever, thou lovely Prince of Peace.

Crisis and Faith: How Losing Almost Everything Can Help You See What Matters

 

Martin Spinelli
Author, 'After the Crash'

My 4-year-old son Lio had been in a coma for more than a week. While his bed was about to be changed, I maneuvered myself around all the tubes and wires and slid my hand under his back up to his head. With my other arm under his knees, I carefully lifted him up onto my lap and sat down in the vinyl-covered chair beside his bed. I wasn't expecting his skin to be so warm and I let myself feel a bit comforted.

After seeing me hold him, his grandmother (my mother) wrote in her diary that the sight of Lio draped in my arms reminded her of one of the most well-known Easter images: The Pietà, that famous Michelangelo sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after the after the crucifixion. She finished by saying, "Lio will come back to us too."

In the past I've often found words like this a bit difficult to take in. It's almost as if that most famous Christian miracle, like the miracle I was praying for (that Lio would defy the doctors and cheat death himself), could be undone or made impossible by speaking about it in such an obvious way. Maybe this is more my problem than it is my mother's. But her attempts to describe the indescribable have caused me a crisis of faith because I know that words are slippery things that often suggest the opposite of what they say on the surface. But sometimes in life crises are really second chances in disguise.

My crisis began 10 days earlier. It was going to be the most important day of my career: I was scheduled to give the keynote address at a huge international media conference in Sunderland, in the north of England. I had worked all my life that moment: I had published journal articles and written reviews; I made ambitious and challenging radio for the BBC and for NPR stations; my work was in museums; and I had just traded in my good academic gig in New York for an even better one at a university in the U.K. I felt like I was at the top of my game, I was driven and striving, with this constant itch to be forever notching up more lines on my résumé.

As it happened, I never got the chance to deliver my amazing talk on new ways of making radio. Instead, I was met at my hotel by two policemen who lacked the usual swagger and who were struggling to look me in the eye. They told me that there had been an accident on the highway and that my wife Sasha had been killed and that our son Lio was very near death in a hospital in London. I collapsed into the chair behind me and, as I struggled to process what I'd just been told, the person I'd been all my adult life simply died too -- and died quickly.

Three hours later I was by Lio's side in pediatric intensive care. The space was dark and windowless, lit mostly by the small red LEDs of medical equipment. There, surrounded by a halo of computer screens, I found my only child with a fractured skull, severe brain damage and a horribly shattered left leg. It was suggested that I consider donating his organs. Doctors told me he would likely not make it and told me that the best, the absolute best-case scenario that I should allow myself to hope for was Lio one day attending a school for the severely mentally handicapped. Absolutely everything I'd ever wanted for my life and for my son's life had evaporated in a matter of hours.

But as I looked at him, bruised and battered as he was on his hospital bed, something began to fill the void. I don't know where it came from or how I came by it, but I was getting something. I had lost my wife, but at least -- at least in that moment -- I still had our little boy. As I stood there, my thumb wedged in his tiny clenched fist, I found myself saying, "I will face this. Nothing will stop me doing what needs to be done, saving Lio and getting him out of here. He will do it." Then I found myself seeing the rest of my life unfolding, and unfolding happily, pulling Lio back from this precipice. I had been burnt empty by fear, but this little meditation that I somehow stumbled onto was putting something back, and while the fear would swallow me again and again I would again and again fall back on a version of this little pep talk.

The next morning Lio was still with us. And with this simple fact in mind the tiny kernel of faith that I had nourished by his bedside all night long stirred and grew a little bit. Gradually, with infinitesimally small steps and in the face of some brutal and devastating setbacks, Lio got better over the next days: He was taken off of his respirator and breathed on his own, unaided, when I'd been told that this might never happen. His brain started regulating his body temperature on its own again. And his muscles, initially as tight as steel springs, began to loosen.

How and why these improvements happened, no one seemed sure, given, as the doctors were fond of saying, "the original nature of his injuries." I like to think that I had something to do with it. I almost never left his bedside. I would read to him from his favorite books. I would spin out for him over and over again the magical stories that his mother and I had invented about elves and dragons and a littler miller boy who lived in the Italian Alps, stories that had been a part of his bedtime routine since he was a toddler. I would trace little lines and circles with my fingers along his face and his limbs four times a day while special brain stimulating music was playing to him in headphones.

With each incremental movement he made in the right direction, I collected another piece of my heart. In those moments and through that closeness I discovered something. I came by a profound sense of meaning and a knowledge of what I was really meant to be: not a high-flying academic, but a father -- the best father I was capable of being. Where the old me was hounded by a non-stop restlessness, an ambition to always be achieving more and having more, there, in those quiet and anonymous moments at my unconscious son's side, I found my purpose. I felt a clarity that had eluded me my whole life. Sometimes today, if I get too distracted by more traditional ambitions, I push myself to remember that clarity.

The moment when I held Lio in my arms for the first time after the crash, the moment that my mother thought looked like The Pietà, will stay with me forever. As I held him warm and broken in my arms, something happened that even I wasn't expecting. He opened his eyes. Like a newborn baby doing it for the first time, he opened his eyes for me. I can't honestly say whether they were focused or not, but he did open his eyes. As I looked at him and (maybe) he looked at me, everything else in the world stopped and I stared transfixed for the first time in 10 days into the blue of his eyes. I was lost in simply their color. There it was, beyond any subjective hope, a sign that Lio was really and truly on his way out of a coma.

The word "rebirth" is certainly a bit worn out, clichéd at best and tedious at worst. But after what we've been through, I find myself making an effort to be more charitable with other people's words, not just my mother's. The crisis of the crash -- six years ago now -- changed me in ways that I'm still coming to grips with. Perhaps most importantly, faith, in both general and specific senses, is now something that I don't shy away from, that I don't seek to avoid either as a sensation or a topic of conversation. In fact, faith has become an odd kind of tether to those terrible early days in the hospital. It's a conduit to the purpose, meaning and love I found there in those dark moments by my son's bedside, days which remain, in the strangest of ways, the most contented of my life.
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Courtesy of  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-spinelli/crisis-and-faith-how-losing-almost-everything-can-help-you-see-what-matters_b_3040028.html?utm_hp_ref=religion