The Assault Revisited

Write About Scars, Not Open Wounds.

Photo by Nick Swaelen

This was the advice I have often heard when dealing with blogs/podcasts/vlogs, etc. Don't write about something you are currently dealing with.

But what if it's a traumatic event? What if that wound never heals?

It's been seven years since I was assaulted and five years since I wrote about it. Traumatic memories are not like normal memories. They are stored in a different part of the brain. As such, they come unbidden and fresh.

About a year ago I was talking about the assault that happened to me. All of the sudden I was transported in my mind back to that moment. I suddenly felt the arms of my assailant around my neck. My breath was restricted. I felt my neck muscles bulge as I tried to get his arms off of me. I heard him scream about how he was going to beat the homosexuality out of me.

Back to the present:  I locked up. My breathing became rapid. I was almost hyperventilating.

I was having a panic attack. It was my first ever. I shook it off, realizing what it was and actually curious that it happened to me. Then I realized that it was to be expected and not my fault.

Happening Once More . . . 

I have become more open about discussing my past and my sexuality. It has been freeing, but at the same time, jarring. When I tell people that someone strangled me because of my sexual orientation, I often notice a look of shock on people. They cannot believe it happened to me and then they ask me if I am ok. Normally in the moment I am ok.

Recently however I have been having more and more of these panic attacks. They come unbidden, mostly at night, and when my mind is tired. I realize that my brain has been repressing those thoughts and memories from that night. 

I used to be reluctant to seek out mental help. When I returned back from Germany to the United States, I ended up in a deep depression that affected my work and my marriage, ultimately leading to a divorce. I sought help, but at the moment that I sought help, I felt that I was an ultimate failure.

Now I realize that seeking help is a sign of strength.

So once again I have sought out the help of a therapist. She has been absolutely wonderful with me and I am on a new journey of healing.

But because I am bisexual . . .

Most of the recent terrible things that have happened to me have been because of my orientation. So many people, above all Evangelical Christians, treat me with contempt because I am bisexual. Sometimes an Evangelical Christian I have never talked to before will block me on social media. More often friends and family members have taken the time to like pictures of my sons and me on social media, but when there are pictures of my boyfriend and me, those likes are conspicuously absent. Then there was that Evangelical Christian who physically assaulted me. It has come to the point where I feel as if I am done with the animosity.

Sometimes the worst animosity comes from people who want to be nice, but throw out the phrase, "Hate the sin, but love the sinner." I was recently talking to an acquaintance who asked me what I thought of people who are trying to respect me as a person, but just disagreed with my "lifestyle."

What is it about my lifestyle that they actually disagree with? Is it how I go to work? Is it the food I eat? Is it the shows I watch or the games I play?

To be blunt:  It's not my "lifestyle" they object to. It's who I have sex with that they have the most objections. Even celibate people in the LGBTQ+ community experience this discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

I am disgusted and fed up with the bigotry towards the LGBTQ+ community.

The man who assaulted me was drunk and a white Evangelical Christian. Many people will sometimes use the excuse of "he wasn't a real Christian if he did that."

To be polite:  That's bovine scatology. It certainly wasn't Christ-like what he did, but he was/is a Christian.

Many Christians I know aren't very Christ-like. Many non-Christians I know are more Christ-like than myself.

Where does this leave me?

Right now I am continuing my therapy. Probably one of my biggest helps is my boyfriend. When the panic attacks happen, he is there to help me breathe through them.

I still go to church. I worship with them. I feel at home there. They have recently asked me to lead a small group for LGBTQ+ people. I nearly cried when they asked me to do this.

Do you know what's worse than being an LGBTQ+ person who left the Church? Being an LGBTQ+ person who stays in a church that rejects them. (Let me be clear:  This is definitely NOT my current church. They are wonderful.) I have more arguments with people who question my identity as a Christian because I am bisexual. It would be a lot easier to walk away from Christ altogether, but that is not the pathway Christ has shown me to follow.

There is a song I dearly loved when I was in the Salvation Army. It was written by the late General John Gowans. I actually had the privilege of singing this song in front of him when he was a special guest in Hannover, Germany for the German Salvation Army's congress there. One of the verses, which always brings me to tears, from his song, "I'll Not Turn Back" goes like this:

If tears should fall,

If I am called to suffer,

If all I love men should deface, defame,

I'll not deny the one that I have followed

Nor be ashamed to bear my Master's Name.

This is who I am:  a Bisexual Christian. I do not deny this. I follow God because of this.

Dealing With Doubt

Image by chenspec from Pixabay 

Being Vulnerable

Judging by the readership of my blog, I shouldn't be too concerned with being vulnerable. My blog has mostly been for my own benefit and not for others. I am, of course, happy when others do read the blog and it has surprised me at just what sparks everyone's interest. I have discovered that what interests me most tends to be uninteresting for others and what I consider to be innocuous turns into a huge blaze of controversy.

So maybe I'm not the best judge on these issues.

Still . . .

I have been plagued with doubts:  doubts mostly dealing with my faith. I miss being certain about what I believe.

Evangelized by Mormons

I once read an article by the philosopher, Peter Rollins, who hosted something he called "The Evangelism Project." It is a unique take and perspective. Instead of going to other communities to evangelize, one goes to a community to be evangelized. I found the concept fascinating. Instead of telling other people what is wrong with the world, we listen to them tell us what they like about the world and what they think of us and what they can bring to us.

So I did this on my own and allowed myself to be evangelized by Mormons. (Apparently they don't like being called Mormon anymore after their prophet gave them a new revelation.) These young missionaries came to tell me about their views and their beliefs and what they think God would have them do. They were openly candid about their belief in the pre-existence of the soul and that they did not hold to a trinity they way traditional Christians do. They asked if I had any questions for them. I asked them what they thought was wrong with this world and how their Church could help. I asked them what they thought was right with this world. I asked them for their favorite scriptures passages from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon. Then I asked them why they were part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, besides being born into it.

What I discovered was that these were young men who really hadn't been tried in their faith yet. They were extremely friendly, but seemed uncertain as to some aspects of their faith. Their faith hadn't been tested yet. There's nothing wrong with that. I admired their commitment to the faith and their willingness to say they didn't know the answers to some of my questions (especially when I brought up the controversy surrounding their Book of Abraham).

Then I realized that I was probably no better than them when I was their age. I was all sorts of arrogant in my preconceived notions.

What am I doubting?

I am perhaps going through a crisis of faith right now. This is to be expected.

I reach out, trying to touch God, to somehow feel God through prayer and meditation. Nothing happens. I feel nothing.

I watch a friend slowly die of cancer, desperately clinging to his faith, but in the end still dies, having to be sedated to relieve his pain. He prayed to God to heal him, but he wasn't healed of his cancer and succumbed to death. I heard many people give out platitudes, saying his suffering is over and he's no longer in pain, but he's also dead and died in pain. That death had no beauty in it for me.

Is God even there? If God is there, I certainly don't believe that God is all-powerful (omnipotent) or all-knowing (omniscient). As someone who subscribes to panentheism, I can have some hope that God is everywhere (omnipresent).

History repeats itself.

Growing up I often heard the phrase, "History repeats itself," and "no one listens to their elders." So I thought, "What would it be like if we actually did listen to our elders?" So I tried it out. Often times this worked out quite well, but I also lived quite a bland life. The only "outrageous" thing I did was bring my Bible to school. I rarely dated. I went to few dances and had actually very few friends.

Maybe it was because I risked nothing and tried to learn from the mistakes of what previous people did.

I love the TV series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation." One of my favorite episodes is called "Tapestry." In it the main character, Captain Picard, has a life threatening injury that damages his artificial heart. He got the artificial heart when he was a foolish and brash young cadet, who got into a bar fight. Since then he regretted that bar fight and had to live with the consequences of those actions. While unconscious, he is given the opportunity to reverse that decision and go back into time to that bar fight. When the time comes, he avoids the fight altogether and it warps his future. Instead of being a captain of a starship, he is a junior grade science lieutenant, who never advanced his career and never took risks. Although he avoided getting the artificial heart, his own life become a life of mediocrity.

I often think about that show when thinking about my past. I rarely took risks and ended up with a life of mediocrity. It was only when I took risks that my life experienced challenge and excitement.

What does that have to do with anything?

As I think on all this, I realize just how risky it is to doubt about the existence of God, to doubt about eternal life, immortality, and what happens when we die. I am scared to think that God doesn't exist. I am frightened when I think of dying and no longer existing in consciousness. I am afraid to confront the evidence of the non-existence of God.

Some people who are more secure in their faith criticize me for this. That's fine. They can do this.

There are times when I do see the divine, rare as it may be. I try to recapture it, but it is elusive, fleeting, temporal.

I felt close to God when I was meditating by doing a body scan. It was mind-bending, overwhelming, and left me filled with wonder. When I tried to re-create that scenario, it wasn't quite the same as before.

I felt God at the birth of my children, feeling an overwhelming sense of love that overcame any other sense I had known. It is hard to describe the love for your child unless you have had that same experience before.

I often saw God in unexpected places, just like the story of the Good Samaritan, in non-believers:  in atheists, agnostics, and Satanists. I saw God in the devoutness of a Muslim praying at the break of dawn, or whirling in a Sufi trance. I saw God in the tattoo of my friend, which only held coordinates of a Buddhist temple he once meditated at for 4 hours.

But then I saw hate . . . 

I saw hate in the message from a superior in my former denomination, who told me that he stalked me on social media, seeing which posts I like to determine just what type of Christian I was.

I saw hate in the message from my former pastor, who told me I could worship with them at his congregation, but not be a member.

I saw hate from a group of members of my former church, who felt it was their duty to gossip about me and felt it was their duty to weed out undesirable people in that denomination. They certainly succeeded with me.

I saw hate in the drunken eyes of the man who choked me for being bisexual, who wanted to "beat the homosexuality out of me" like a "dog in a cage."

I saw hate in the words of my termination as an ordained minister of The Salvation Army, stripping away the identity I had.

The vast majority of reasons I have for not believing in God come from those who say they love God. It is that hypocrisy I cannot stand. They say they love God, but then shun a whole group of people because of their orientation.

They say they love God, but then call for the death of other people because of their belief system.

They say they love God, but worship a Flag in God's place, pledging allegiance to a country that murders millions with the push of a button.

A friend once told me that he and I don't worship the same God. At first I was saddened because I thought of this man as a brother in faith, but then I realized that in some way I was glad. I didn't like his God, who would condemn the vast majority of humanity to eternal conscious torment for not believing in the right way. What use do I have for a God like that?

My Mantra

Anne Lamott has this quote I have mentioned before and has become a mantra for me:  "The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty."

And while I see the truth in this statement, sometimes it brings me no comfort. The anguish remains and the doubt plagues at my heart, unforgiving in its relentlessness. The loneliness of this world in the paradox of social media overwhelms me sometimes. 

I don't have a happy ending for this blog. One thing I do realize, though, is that if my faith and the practice of my faith does not make this world or myself any better, then that faith is useless. It is totally worthless and a sham.

My doubt is part of my faith. I don't think I would have any faith without it.