When Healing / Deliverance Comes Slowly

I have posted a few testimonies recently of when deliverance came quickly and sometimes unexpectedly for me.  Although this was wonderful, powerful and it all changed my life quickly, deliverance isn’t always so immediate.  In fact, I would guess that deliverance and healing isn’t usually so immediate – although it obviously can work that way, too.

There has been one particular area of my life that God has been delivering me very slowly of over the past several years.  Healing seems to have come in stages, usually with a revelation from God to speed everything up for a while…but then it all slows down again.  Often, it seems like nothing is happening at all, and sometimes it seems like I’m even going backwards.  I’m learning that it’s all part of the process, though, and I’ll take it all if it means continued healing in the long run.

I’m sure some of you have already guessed what I’m referring to. God has very s-l-o-w-l-y been healing me concerning my sexual identity.  This has been an incredibly long process, but I think sometimes it really needs to be.  There are so many layers of hurt, along with lies I have believed and healing that needs to take place. This all takes time.

*If you have not read or listened to my testimony yet, I would encourage you to do that first. This will give you more of a background of where I’m coming from in this post.

I spent many years feeling like I had a secret I could never share with anyone.  I felt with every fiber of my being that I was bi-sexual.  Sometimes I can even look back and see myself questioning whether I was even a lesbian, or not.  I say this, because after trying to suppress these feelings for a number of years, their importance seemed to grow.  I became more and more focused on this attraction I had to women, and less focused on men.  My attraction towards women was more emotionally driven than anything, and I just never felt that way about men.  “Who can really connect with a man, anyhow?” is what I always thought to myself.

The sense of connection was what I was drawn to, and I was convinced the only place I could truly find that was with a woman.

I became a Christian when I first started to realize the depth of all of this.  This meant I would always have to just shove this part of myself down and ignore it forever…so I thought.  Then I met my husband, Kevin.  I somehow knew he and I would have a future together, because the first time I ever talked to him on the phone I told him everything about my past.  Well…most of it.  I told him all about my relationship with my friend after high school, and everything related.  (That was totally out of character for me to do something like that, but I somehow feared if I didn’t put it out on the table right away – I would never tell him.)   We talked through it all, and I was so incredibly blessed to one day become his wife.  The only thing was, the issue with my sexuality started surfacing again a couple years after we got married.  I thought I had dealt with it and put it behind me.  Little did I know, it was just about to come to the surface in a major way.

This is around the time that I started struggling with looking at porn online.  By this time, I was struggling, like never before, with thoughts of being with a woman.  I even started having thoughts that I would have been better off never getting married in the first place, because I would be much happier with a woman. I would constantly tell myself that I couldn’t ever become as close to a man as I could a woman. I eventually stopped looking at the porn online, but my thoughts continued to race, and I was having these terrible dreams which made it all worse.

Due to these dreams, it was even more difficult for me to convince myself that bi-sexuality (or lesbianism) was not something that was part of my identity. If my identity as a Christian is in Christ (like the bible says), then this was not a part of who I truly was anymore.  I believed that with my head, but my heart told me a different story. I could never truly grasp it, and I just felt like no one understood how deep this all went for me. I rehearsed scriptures of who I was in Christ often, but they never sank in. These attractions felt as much as a part of me as my own name. My lust (because that’s what it was) towards women felt like it was a real part of me that just wouldn’t go away.  It affected all of my friendships, because I always stayed at arms-length from women – just in case.  I was afraid that I might feel something I didn’t want to feel.

I thought it was all just me…just something I would have to bury and hide.

*This feels like a bit of a side note here, but this is why I have such sympathy for those who truly believe they were created to be bi-sexual, lesbian, gay or transsexual.  I know what it really feels like to believe that’s who you really are with every fiber of your being.  If it wasn’t for Jesus, I would still feel the same way.  There is nothing else that can set you free from that.  There is just no “convincing” yourself otherwise.  I feel so terrible for people who commit suicide over this or live a depressed life because of it.  My heart also goes out to all of the Christians who live in hiding with this out of fear of what people might say.  I used to be one of those people. Outside of Jesus Christ, there is no hope to change.  And, even with the help of the Holy Spirit, change can be slow…but it’s possible – and I’ve been walking through that process for the last few years now.

I would say that my healing in this area really began when I first started telling people about this almost 2 years ago.  Then, when I was delivered of those dreams, the first big change happened. I suddenly no longer felt like being bi-sexual was part of my true identity and realized that it wasn’t part of who I truly was, after all. (This is not easy to explain, but I will try my best!) This is something that I spent years trying to convince myself of, and now I just knew it in my heart.

This is when I realized that something (that felt very much a part of me) had left me.

It no longer felt like part of my identity. I realize that this may sound over-simplified to some people, but this is truly what happened for me. It was like that part of my life that had tormented me for years was gone.  At that point, I thought that my battle was over.  What I didn’t realize, though, was that just that particular part of my battle was over.  I now realized that the “real” me (since my identity is now found in Christ) did not include bi-sexuality.  This did not erase all of the lies that I had believed for so long, though.

So, what were the core lies that I believed?

1)     Deep down, I still believed that I would be happier with a woman than a man (even though I was married…and a Christian).  As a Christian, I know this cannot be true, though, because the bible says that God did not create me to be with a woman.  Since God created me, He knows what type of relationship I was created to be in, and no matter what it “feels” like – a woman is not part of that equation.  God is my creator, and therefore He knows best.  How dare I question my Creator concerning what’s best for me.  That’s arrogance and pride at its worst…and I’ve unfortunately been there many times.

2)     I believed that I could never get as close to a man as I could a woman.  Every argument Kevin and I got into fostered this lie.  Every time Kevin emotionally distanced himself from me or was gone for long hours too many days in a row, this belief grew even bigger.  This worked as a double-edged sword and made the lie seem even more real, while driving me further and further away from Kevin.

3)     I believed that being with a woman was safer (emotionally) than being with a man.  Making myself vulnerable to a man seemed foolish. To me, men were all about one thing (sex), and I never saw women as being this way.  The relationship I had years ago with my friend was incredibly emotionally enmeshed and I didn’t feel used.  I felt loved and accepted for who I was.  Somewhere along the way I equated men+sex=being used.  I suppose all of that pornography didn’t help matters, and it has taken a long time to replace this lie with God’s Truth.  Sex is a good thing between a married man and woman, and God created a sexual relationship to be satisfying to both of them.

4)     The last thing that I dealt with that I wouldn’t necessarily call a lie, but a huge obstacle, is that I put so much focus on women in my mind for so long, that it created almost what I would call an automatic “pathway” that my brain always took.  I don’t know if it started with all of the pornography, or what it was, but I often fantasized about things that no married woman (or any woman!) should ever think about. I did it so much that I wasn’t even aware of how much I did it until God started to shed light on it all.  No wonder my relationship with my husband was not the way it should have been!  Not to be too blunt, but there’s not too much that any woman and my husband have in common – physically or emotionally.  When you think about the opposite of your husband for long enough, it will destroy every part of your relationship.  (I’m sure this applies to anyone who fantasizes about anyone else other than their spouse – male or female.) Talk about a real intimacy killer in a marriage.  I thank God, though, that He is able to restore any marriage that is given to Him.  My relationship with Kevin is not perfect, but it is far better today than it has ever been (and getting even better all the time!).

God has done so much in my heart over the last few years, and I am not the same person I was!  The lies I listed above are not something that were exposed and conquered in my life in one day. Some of them still come creeping into my mind during stressful times or even sometimes when Kevin and I have a disagreement.  I have learned to recognize them and cast those thoughts out of my mind now, and this has made me so much stronger, spiritually.

Layer upon layer of junk in my heart has been exposed and then disposed of.  It is so important to become aware of the lies that you are believing if you are stuck in bondage to something.  If we keep trusting in, believing or acting out in certain ways that are sinful, we are believing some sort of lie that is contrary to the Word of God.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so compelled to do it in the first place.  When we repeatedly replace these lies with God’s Truth, we will be able to slowly become the people God created us to be. This is not an overnight process, and I’m aware of that now.  I’m encouraged, though, because I know that by God walking me through this step-by-step, I will be able to help someone else through this process also.  I know that God has called me to minister to other women who deal with unwanted same sex attractions, and that makes this process all worthwhile.

While we are not always delivered or healed quickly, we can be assured that God uses everything we turn over to Him for good.  He will also use our experience and healing journey to set somebody else free – and that makes it all worthwhile once that time comes.

• In what area(s) of your life has God been slowly healing / delivering you? 
• What lies have you been believing about this situation, and what truths from God’s Word can you replace them with?  If you’re not sure, ask God to reveal those lies to you and He will!  So often we don’t even know we’re believing any lies that are contrary to God’s Word. Once you discover the lies you have been believing, you can attack them with the truth of God’s Word and begin to tear down the stronghold.