Welcome! And here is my story...

"This is my story, this is my song...
Praising my Savoir all the day long..."

---From "Blessed Assurance"


This piece that I'm posted was used in a couple of other groups
in Yahoo and elsewhere, and I thought it was the best way to tell my
story. Anyway, one thing has changed is I am slowly finding my
connection to God again and that I did go to church during Chritmas,
but not on a regular basis. Here it goes:


Hello there everyone!

Thanks for allowing me to your group and I hope you all can help
me. To tell you the truth, I am a holy mess (no pun intended). Where
do I start, where do I start...the begining, yeah, that would work.

I'm 38 y.o., black male who is trying to break the sex code the
church has pulled over believers for the longest time. I've been a
Christian for over 20 years and I am very, very confused over the
issue of sex. I can't even begin to tell you the years of guilt,
pain, hurt, and frustration over my inablity to keep "faithfully
pure" sexually. My exposure to sex was from my mom's boyfriend who
when they left to get something from a nearby store I saw two playing
cards with sexual images on them. I was hooked from that point
forward.

I went from the cards to checking out my mom's Cosmo, then I
would go into the adult stores at 11-12 (I was 6 ft. tall at the
time; I'm 6-7 now) to check out the magazines. Back then in the late
to early 80s it was dingy and dirty. Meanwhile, I was a new born
Christian who wanted to rid myself of these dirty thoughts.

I came to know Jesus via the 700 Club and was baptized in the
Holy Spirit a month later over the phone. I read my Bible, went to
church, prayed, and went to the altar every week, month or several
month over my latest "falling". What really sent me through years of
guilt was my first sexual experience with a prostitute. I took money
from my grandmother and got my first hooker. No girl at school wanted
anything to do with me at the time, so I had to buy my sexual
experience from a hooker. This would take weeks for me to forgive
myself (which I didn't) and go from one point to another.

I was growing in faith and doing well, but if I ever masturbated,
ever lusted in my heart, ever succeeded in my ventures for the
perfect sexual experience it was more beating myself up, more hurt,
more guilt.

I got married when I was 20 y.o. with my ex wife; we were
sexually active before we got married. More guilt. For 15 years it
was a roller coaster of pain, lies, betrayal, and guilt. I went into
the military and went overseas to Germany. Dear God did I get an
education. Spiritually it was an eye opening experience in the things
of God. Sexually was eye opening too. I discovered the red light
district of Frankfurt; saw my first adult videos; enjoyed sex with
women from nearly every type of background. Meanwhile, the weight of
guilt was too great. At one point, I went on a two day bing and got
back to the aprtment near the base to lock myself in a room and cried
my eyes out while listening to Amy Grant's "If these walls could
speak". To this day I can't really hear the song because of the
memories of that day.

While this tug of war with God and sex came to a head, I found
out one of my closest friends was gay. This opened my eyes and God
brought me revelation of how God loves gay and lesbian people. This
revelation doomed my marriage. My wife didn't share my support and it
brought a wedge deep in our relationship (on top of the other stuff).
Plus, at some point during my marriage, I was starting to realize
maybe I have an adiction. I started believing that maybe, just maybe,
I'm a sex addict. The only problem with it all is I never spent all
the money on just sex. I paid my bills, took care of needs as they
arose, etc. Plus, God had more of a billing in my life than sex, so
how could I be a full blown addict?

We came back overseas and I got heavily involved with the gay
Christian movement. In fact, I still keep in contact with a few of
the folks there who are on the forefront of the movement. I went as
far as becoming an assistant minister to the church I was going.
However, sex was still a big problem for me.

At this point, my ex and I were not having sex together at all.
She was praying that I would see the "light" and turn my back to this
support to gays and become the man of God she thought I should be.
You know the one, the one who was sexually faithful to her, wanting
only vanillia sex, no tv, strict interpretation of the Word, etc. I
couldn't be that, nor was that me. I'm a realist and I just had to
believe if gays could find God's grace to live their life as they
were than what about people like me? I really hoped that maybe if I
could really reach out to gays to let them know God loves them, if I
could stay faithful to my faith, than this need for sex would finally
stop.

Then the bottom dropped!

*A good friend of mine who was a gay man and a Christian committed
suicide because of his boyfriend dumping him. They were together for
three years and was committed to him for life. This really devistated
me.

*I met my girlfriend/soulmate at the dance club three years ago, her
name is secret only to a chosen few. I fell for her because I found a
kindred spirit and someone who I felt loved and comfortable. We made
love, enjoyed each other, and was amazed by her in every way. Yes,
we're different in some things but she is still the most incredible
person I've ever met. I was satisfied sexually and personally for the
first time in a long while with her. That posed a problem because I
was still married with my ex.

*She told me she was pregenant with a child and this basically ended
my marriage. It ended it because I wanted to be with her than my ex
more.

*I had to leave the ministry and drop out of church because of all
this and with it put on the biggest weight of guilt ever. It took me
two years to work it out, but I am almost out of the woods to make
sense of it all.

*Top everything else with financial problems out of the ying yang I'm
still dealing with, finding a decent job to support my new family,
and trying to make sense of faith and Christianity and you got one
messed up kid here.

I wish I could say I have regrets over some of the things I done,
but I don't. I'm starting to think that maybe I don't have the
problems with sex, maybe the church heads do and they need to get a
grip.

I need answers, but mainly I need friendship and advise. I've got
only a few to help me through this and I can't even begin to be open
about my beliefs about sexuallity. I don't know really what to do and
would Jesus dump yet another bag of guilt on my head for even
thinking this way? Lots of questions, but I had to get this all off
my chest.

Thanks again for having me on and I hope to hear from some of you
soon. Take care and God bless.

Ed

P.S.--Oh, it's been a long time since I've graced a church regularly
or read my Bible. I try, but it's hard. I still believe despite
everything.

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If you want to check out the Yahoo group where this original posting comes from feel free to visit this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChristProErotic/