Transcript

Andrew

Describe the whole gift. Sexually speaking, that you are becoming.

Christie

There's a beautiful thing that's going on in the in the sex of male and female together. But I also see it in, in places I can bring myself more fully like at work when I work with coworkers and I, I just feel like I'm bringing more to the table as an integrated person than I did when I was when I was trying to navigate sort of my sense of identity and, and the whole same sex part of what was going on in the same sex thing was trying to define myself according to others. I don't really do that anymore. Like, I'm just like, well, this is who I am in this room. I have something to offer.

Marco

I think for me, it's learning how to put the needs of others before my own. Needs and wants. You know, my wife, she's pregnant. Just trying to. Attuned to those needs and in a helpful way, you know, and needs that I can meet as a guy and to to actually encourage where I can encourage her.

And so that's an area that I'm growing in and in that I really saw from the Lord recently that I've become more a man than I ever thought I could become. And it's because of this experience of say that I feel like the Lord has been able to actually go very deep and has challenged me in ways that I never thought I'd be. Invited to challenge. And it's growing me.

And it's I feel like I'm in a big growth season, so we'll see how that goes. But I'm grateful for it. You know, I'm really, really grateful for how God moves us beyond the expectation, you know, that I had for my life.

Amanda

I, I, I can see this in my female friendships and just the health in them, the longevity of them, the having to work through like the push and pull of like, oh, you're pulling on me emotionally. I know I want to run from you and but just now the health of them and the variety of different friendships both in, peer relating but also in me giving to people and walking with people is just a beautiful gift to me.

But also, you know, I recently got married and, even my husband, just the way that he initiates towards me and loves me has really just it's like I'm resting in the love of my husband. And rather than kind of striving, which we saw in the first couple months. Of our marriage, the kind of like. Oh, we have different here.

But, you know, he said to me the other day, he was like, you know, I was so mad the other day, and you just so composed and so feminine and said, honey, you don't have to be like that.

Andrew

And honey, she said tenderly, change you.

Amanda

But it was then that my the gentleness that came through in me, is, is kind of a new thing in that kind of scenario. So I can just see my receptive heart being a gift to him in that way.

Andrew

Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I, and answering this question, I would say, just loving being with my wife, kids, grandkids, I just, I love to be with them. That's home for me. I don't feel like I'm acting like it's home and longing for something else. So I think it's being at ease in my. With my many dependents. I would also say that that because of the SSA background, I have an intentionality in male friendships.

So I think a lot of guys, when they get married and, you know, you have a lot of responsibilities, it's kind of like, I don't really have time for friends, you know? I just have to do so much for, obviously people in need of me, but I need male friendships. And I have, that's a priority for me because I'm. I'm aware of just my deep need for that.

And so the fact that I'm still activating and in focus and a handful of really healthy friendships in a giving way, but receiving freely what these men have for me is life and energizes me and the the main and playing, family life. And so I see that as an ongoing yes to what I hope is strengthening in their lives.

But really is so necessary for my integrity as a man and as a man with a unique history and vulnerability. And so I would define that as a kind of wholeness, but it's contingent on my sowing in. Yeah. So with that in mind, we go to the next question. Describe all of your difficulties in getting behind this weird and yet much loved concept of chastity. Why is that hard for us to say? I love chastity well, it's kind of an archaic term. So it's like, well, what does it even mean? Okay. You know.

Morgan

You know, being growing up, not Catholic. I didn't really understand the word until these years of leading into this ministry of what God is calling me to around those that are sexually disintegrated, which is all of us at some level, of course, but so for me, the chastity thing became more alive when I realized it's it's letting go of something to lay hold of something else.

In other words, am I willing to let go, to lay hold of something that is going to bring integration and wholeness where I'm fractured? Can I let go to lay hold of something that God is calling me to lay hold of? And so I just don't know. The word historically is that more and more I'm becoming, you know, very, very comfortable with the language of chastity. And I think it's a term that we need to reclaim. Yeah...

Andrew

It's a whole person approach to sexuality. It's seeing lustful, disordered sexuality of whatever kind as a symptom of a house that is simply not in order. Right? Yeah. You know, feelings, behaviors, seductions, manipulations, hiding, suppression, interior judgments about men and women, attitudes and emotions, all of those things go into our sexuality.

And so as we become more ordered as human beings, our river of life and love is going to be clearer, directed aptly in a way that's confirming, not confusing to people. It's honestly the best way of defining where we all need to go to walk out of the sexual mess we've made. Right?

And and the fact that that's just so real has always been a part of the Catholic canon, if you will, and yet so misused and misunderstood. And that, to me, is why we've defined it even here as weird, because it's been so mis applied and mystifying dispense of flat and airless that it's like, oh, get rid of that old Catholic chestnut. We need to reclaim it, right? Yeah, right.

It's the best way of defining where we all need to go, right? Yeah. And and yet it keeps the complexity of what it means to be sexually whole. Intact. Yeah. And it is complex. Yeah. And I love that. Like, we can be clear and childlike in our faith and say becoming a sexually whole person is actually quite, quite a demand. Yes. And yet we're up for it.

God wouldn't call us to it if he didn't think we could take some responsibility. But it also casts us holy upon father, son, Holy Spirit. To to live it.

Christie

When I think of chastity, I think of integration. And I think for me, when I was struggling with SSA, I just wanted it to go away. Right? I was like, oh, this essay thing is bad. I don't well, I just make me straight, you know, it's like, just fix it. And and it was like this whole process of realizing actually like the check engine light, there's a lot going on that needs to be realigned.

And it's not like I'm going to switch from how I feel towards women to suddenly feeling that way towards men. I thank God I don't feel towards my husband what I felt towards women like I don't, I don't feel that towards anything. Yeah, right. The the need, the hunger, all of the things that were going into those, those was a relationships so emotionally in the relationship and what I have with my husband is much more ordered. I mean, it's not perfect because we're not perfect, but it's, it's, it's heading towards chastity and seeking that.

Amanda

Yeah I, I, I kind of saw it as like the belt, you know, the key. Yeah. You know, lock it up, lock it up. And some of the, the well-intentioned. But what I, in my opinion is, has fall short in the, in the especially the evangelical world is like that purity culture thing where they, it's really a failure to teach the beauty of sexuality and the beauty of male and female, but it's more just like, no, it's bad, don't do it.

Marco

Yeah yeah I find chastity healing. There's something healing about the idea that we can be integrated when you feel so much of the disintegration it's like wow that's, that's good news. That Jesus can actually. Do something an integrating work in my life. So I really appreciate that about chastity. That's what chastity is a healing virtue. There's something healing about it. And then also, it called me into some responsibility. Who am I as a guy?

I have all of the equipment to be a father, to be a groom. So I have to ask the question of. What. Am I entering into this dance? Am I bypassing her, am I allergic? Am I cultivating an allergy against her? Really hard. Good questions that chastity invited me into, but in it. So healing?

Andrew

Yeah. Yeah. Chastity is not mere abstinence. Yeah. And that's what we're all shaking off and saying. Yeah, of course I don't want to do dumb stuff. That's just messes me up. That's kind of morality 101. But then to move into the adventure. Yeah.

Bonnie

Chastity, to me, means looking for the good of the other over my own goodness. Chastity. I think it's kind of relegated to marital or dating, and and it's so much bigger than that. It's it's preferring the other over myself. It's in, in both my feminine, you know, relationships with, with women, with my relationships with men.

It's preferring them over me, which sometimes is difficult, you know, to listen when I want to speak or to, to let the guy open the door for me, let the guy carry my backpack. Not because I'm not able, but because he wants to honor me. And so that's a gift I can give.

In chastity, if my thoughts are going a direction that they shouldn't to be able to pull them down and say, hey, this is a child of God that I'm looking at, and I need to I need to honor that and not defile them in my thoughts. And so the I have the prompting of the Lord to remind me, this person is made in my image, and you need to treat them that way.

And that that is, a helpful tool to me because, because it's it's easy to do when you see somebody walk by the tough clothes or you're watching television or, I mean, so many opportunities. And because it's up here at secret, and so the Lord will catch me and say, hey, that's my son, or that's my daughter.

Carl

For me Chastity is knowing that the call in my life is to be a good gift to to the other person, primarily to my wife and my child, but to my brothers and sisters. And so that means knowing. My personhood in Jesus, knowing my identity and acting out of that, out of selflessness and not pursuing selfish desires at the cost of other people.

Taylor

Sexual wholeness for me. Looks like confession. Lots of confession. It looks like having locks on my phone and my computer so I don't access pornography. It means, every time I relapse, I call, and it's embarrassing. It's so. And it's embarrassing because it's like, it's been so long. How am I how is this still coming up? But I do it, and I and I, and I tell on myself.

Yvonne

Today, sexual wholeness is knowing that I don't exist for the sake of meeting my own needs. And I don't exist solely for one other person either. I don't I don't exist to complete someone else. Walking out to chastity, walking out. Sexual integration has to look like I bring my full self. I bring my my real self. Yeah. Because I spent so much time just offering the pieces of myself that I thought would be acceptable or that would fit this other person just right. So chastity looks like being my full self and my real self and and not hiding pieces of myself that I don't think are going to be acceptable or just don't quite fit.

Marco

Yeah. So chastity for me is the integration of all that is me. So my emotions, my sexuality, my relationality, my body, all of it coalescing into this, this whole, this, this integral whole, this person, me. And so chastity is this virtue of whenever there's a part of me that is disintegrated or kind of going sideways in some way, it's this, it's this habit of the soul that brings it into the whole of saying, okay, I'm, I'm a little I'm a little tempted to go there.

So help me, Lord, to, to bring this into real this in that I actually have a capacity to notice that. But I also have a capacity to go like this, to say, Jesus, help me do that. Yes, I, I notice when something's a little off and I, I actually have the wherewithal to surrender that to Jesus. And Jesus helps me. essential to chastity is becoming a good gift to the opposite sex.

There is something inherent to chastity that I as a man, and for her, she as a woman is for him. So in chastity, it's not so much just steering clear of mortal sin. Although I think that's important.

Nate

So coming, coming out of college, I, was still struggling with what to do with same sex attraction. And I had a couple of friends. I was kind of like, processing with, And we were starting to go separate paths. They had chosen to pursue celibacy. Many of my friends have chosen to just pursue the gay lifestyle. And I was like, I think I still want marriage. I would like to get married.

And so, and to me, I didn't think that it would be too weirdly, I didn't think it would be too big of an issue. So in some ways, I feel like a little silly looking back at it now, but I was like, I just kind of had some blinders on, and I was like, I think things will work out essentially if I get married, like, we'll figure it out and, and everything will be okay.

Carl

Homosexuality was. Incredibly divisive to my understanding of. Who I was. On the one hand. I knew I didn't want to experience homosexuality. I knew I didn't want to live out of that sin. But on the other hand, it was so compelling to me. And it was it really had me in its grips. So I was really living this. Double. Life where. I felt a slave to my sin, my, disordered desires, and I felt out of control. But at the same time, I knew that I didn't want to do that. And so I didn't know how to reconcile anything about my life. With. Those competing desires of my heart.

Yvonne

The, the same sex draw, the same sex attraction for me, it undercuts it undercuts my confidence in my ability to bring something good. It causes me to question who I am as a woman when I. Well, yeah, I, it causes me to to think of myself as less than, when I. Yeah, the same sex attraction isn't necessarily what does that it's more the like. Resting in it and making it my identity. Yeah, yeah. The codependent bonds, the dependent or the emotionally dependent bonds feeds into my. Belief that I. Don't have value outside of this person. And and it undercuts my ability to offer myself well into anyone, including this person. But to anybody, it kind of takes out every other relationship.

Marco

To settle in a queer identity is, is to not take, the road of maturing as a disciple of Jesus. So there was early on in my healing, there was, a real, a season of I'm going without. I'm, I'm I'm not going to I'm not going to actually have a fulfilled romantic thing because I'm, I'm not going to have a gay lover.

And there was, kind of, a weird grief in that, you know, that was actually not real. It was a false grief, I think. So this this false grief of I, I'm actually kind of made to be in a gay relationship, but I'm not going to do that for the sake of Jesus. Now, I needed to wake up to the fact that there was that was just wrong on on many levels. One, we grieve good things.

Why am I grieving, a gay lover if it would never fulfill me? Why am I grieving that? If it actually, wouldn't, bring me out of myself and I had to come to the hard realization of that.

Amanda

Yeah. As a as a growing Christian and even as a, I believe, a mature Christian, I did struggle and and do struggle with same sex attraction. And at times I would fall into emotionally dependent relationships. One that was even, I believe, an emotionally, adulterous like type of love affair. And that really caused a lot of hopelessness in my life. I really didn't understand why, after years of denying myself sexually in that way and really seeking after Jesus, I didn't understand why that my heart still wanted to go there, even though my heart hated it.

Jesus helped me to overcome that relationship, especially the the the ending of that relationship by really bringing someone into my life who started to give me more hope in these areas. This mentor, mine explained to me that there are contributing factors, in our attractions. And that was the first time that I heard that. And it really was the beginning of my journey of healing.

Carl

One of the ways that Jesus. Really entered. Into my life and helped me become whole was. Through community, was through other. Men and women receiving me with love, receiving my. Story and imparting on me. Love in return. And telling me. No, this is not who you are. You are destined for something greater. You are made for more. Just that experience. Of. Being received in my brokenness, something that I didn't think that I would ever be able to experience. And being actually received, by those same people was so incredibly healing.

Christie

I've had some really beautiful times of repentance. I mean, with every with every time that I fell, I would also repent. And the Lord has really shown me deep, deep, deep mercy there. But there was always a tragedy. There was always a loss. There was a loss to me again. There was a loss to the person I was involved with. And there was a there was a broken heartedness.

There was like a oh, that's that's super hard. Not only on like the material side of things, but Jesus and I are our friends, you know, Jesus loves me. And it's like, I've missed you, Christi. I've missed you. When you turn your your eyes and start to idolize a woman instead of me, I miss you. And, and that's that was a very. Those were very hard years for me.

There were there was a series of years where that I was hitting these cycles of this, and I finally had to realize that the cycle was exactly that. It was a cycle. It's like, okay, let's let's look and see what's happening. Choose me, choose me, Jesus.

You know that scene in, the Lord of the rings at the very end where Sam picks up Frodo and carries him? He's like, I can't carry your burden, but I can carry you. And then and I think that is one of the most powerful scenes, because that is how I felt the community around me. They were seasons when the community around me carried me because it was incredibly hard and incredibly frustrating. But these these guys had vision and hope, and I had enough of Jesus in me. I had enough of his presence in me to know it's not in his character to abandon me. It's not in his character to say, yeah, well, that one's too far gone, right? He's not that kind of god.

Nate

I, I had thought that marriage would kind of solve a lot of my problems. Very quickly. We found out that it didn't. And, and, one of the things that has been particularly remarkable, kind of in retrospect to me, is that while immediately it didn't solve our problems over the course of our marriage and working through a lot of the things that we've had to work through, I, I think both my wife, Kelsey, and I would argue that our marriage is like significantly stronger and more life giving than it probably ever would have been had we not had to walk through these things.

And so I think there's a lot of joy and a lot of hope. And I think that when, when we have moments where we sit down at the dining room table and we talk about our marriage, I think we often find that it's just, it baffles us that we're in such a good place ultimately, because, of, of where we came from and how difficult it was.

And so I think I just, I think I'm very grateful and I'm very glad that Kelsey gave me a chance, that that I also gave her a chance and that we we worked through some, some of the real difficulties, and push through those because I really do feel that, like, we we will make it. We will be okay. And that's a wonderful feeling because for a while it didn't feel like that was, possible.

Dean

Yeah. You know, image has always been, from the earliest age, it was it was imposed on me that what people think is, is more important, perhaps, than the reality of what's going on. And I found myself, as a young adult several years into my, my pursuit of Christ and what he had for me. In Christian leadership and, you know, very much positioned, in a, in a great position to build an image, you know, to be worshiped.

And, I didn't, didn't give myself the freedom to be known in my failures, in my weaknesses. And I kept a part of my life hidden because, I, I just believed the lie that the truth would, would disqualify me from the life I was going after. And in that place, I found myself.

I wasn't looking for it, but I found myself in relationship with a younger leader that I was walking with and who was looking to me for some support and some guidance. And I found myself in my my place of compromise, compromising with him in relationship and to the point where it became a romance and we ended up kissing.

And it was something that I honestly, I was, was so caught up in my deception, I didn't see it at the time. But I certainly saw it when we crossed that that boundary and it completely, it shocked me because I truly wasn't my heart. And yet I knew that it was. I had failed miserably as the leader that I was in the requirements for leadership that I was called to uphold.

I knew I had failed, and I knew that, I didn't want to go any further in that relationship. I did want to go further in the things that God had called me to. And so I felt a real need to confess, you know, that was the, the, the world I was living in through, through living waters. And that was, a place that I had come to really see the value of and know the truth of.

And, so I confessed, and it was a point of real, a real death because I confessed to these people whose, whose perception of me and whose affirmation of me was so powerful, people that I held up on a pedestal that was, was too high, certainly, higher than God in many ways. You know, confessing to God is one thing, but confessing to a leader who, who, whose opinion you so value was it was a death.

And, I confessed it and. There was another leader who who was a mentor of mine. And, you know, he'd always say, Dean, you're a mighty man of God. And I hear that and I think, oh, yeah, thanks. But if you really knew, thinking to myself, if he really knew what was going on, he wouldn't say that. And he was in the group of leaders that I confessed to the first one to really respond.

And he just came up and he embraced me and he said, Dean, you are a mighty man of God. And I remember thinking, just seeing the truth of those words go into my heart. And and the Lord began resurrecting them because it wasn't based on an image. It was based on my reality. As far as I had fallen, he was still proclaiming the truth of who God had purposed me to be.

I didn't know what the other side looked like.

Voices from those who understand, through open conversation and personal testimony.

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