It was February of 2022 when I came out as a lesbian on social media and to my close friends and family, looking back I do not regret that choice , as for me then it didn’t feel like I had one. Yet at the end of the day I was left wondering why, why has the way I feel inside not suddenly changed? Isn’t coming out supposed to be this super freeing territory that everyone celebrates? Honestly those questions haunted me as I was left feeling more alone and isolated in my feelings than I ever had before. I was severely depressed and trying everything to make it out of bed in the morning onto my day to day life. I walk with a dear friend in the early mornings on Tuesday and I just knew that certain Tuesday if I didn’t pull myself out of bed I was giving myself a death sentence. That scared me enough to go on that walk and finally be really honest with her and myself about how coming out didn’t change anything internally and I just felt like a phony. We cried and prayed and God met me on that walk, I just didn’t know it yet. My sweet friend called my mother, we discussed how I was doing mentally and made a plan to keep me safe and not alone the rest of the week. The next day a friend took me in and she had a meeting at a pastors house, a pastor I thought I couldn’t stand because of the spiritual and emotional abuse I went through in youth growing up at this pastors church. I was ritten with anxiety and bitterness, but I went with her to the meeting anyways. There I was in a room full of women meeting at that house about an upcoming women’s event. The pastors wife started a prayer that broke out into little prayers of confession to the lord anonymously, with my head bowed and eyes closed I took the time to ask God what am I doing here? He spoke so clearly to me and said , you need to walk up to this pastors wife, tell her why you are here and confess to her that you hate the church… I was screaming inside telling God he’s insane for thinking I’d actually have the courage to say such a thing even if it’s true, she’ll probably just push me out the door. Yet, somehow by Gods grace, I managed to get those words out to her. Even when I was walking in sin I knew that if I had an inkling from the Holy Spirit to do something, I had to do it or I wouldn’t be able to rest easy. In that time I told her who I was, how I was doing and why I disliked her church, she offered me a place to stay and prayer. I prayed with her and told her I’d think about coming again to church. That moment was the beginning of my healing process of a hardened heart towards the church. It was a Wednesday, so I knew they were going to have a prayer service that night. I decided I might as well go with my mother who had been occasionally attending these evenings. There I saw the pastor and his wife, I thought I’d just tell her thanks for letting me be in their home and praying for me, but we ended up praying together on our knees for the next hour or so, we ended up meeting together to pray regularly. At first I was taken back and on guard. I didn’t want to endure any more pain. I was convinced of who I was and that no one would ever change that. Yet she decided to meet me with love and grace, and said well let’s just see what Jesus has to say about that… so I opened up to her, myself and Jesus Christ, telling her my story. So with telling her everything I had been through we decided to keep meeting for prayer and listening to the Lord. The upcoming women’s event was approaching and I decided to attend. It was there that God met me face to face and I realized all these years I’ve been believing lies from the enemy about my identity and got the freedom and joy only found in Christ. It’s time Now, I tell my story to you.. I was sexually molested and abused by the time I was seven years old to fourteen years old by a girl that was my peer and seemed to be my friend. I was holding on to so much trauma between all those years and the years after where I got hurt by my youth pastor, kicked out of the program and lost what seemed like me to be every thing I had that was good because of it. When I finally opened up and threatened the girl that was abusing me that I was going to tell someone I was thirteen, and at a youth camp with her in my sleeping quarters , she told me that if I did open up to someone she was going to self harm and blame it on me. I had a panic attack and got the youth pastor and his wife involved, yet I was too scared to say anything because I didn’t want her to hurt herself, especially not because of me and my circumstances. Yet later that night she did, she cut herself and I got help from them, she went to the hospital saying that she cut herself because she just felt so so bad for me and blamed everything on me. I was left to deal with my whirlwind of emotions , knowing the abuse was never going to end if I didn’t speak up, so I told my youth pastor. My only trusted source of protection… he said word for word, I quote I love you, and you love me but I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me. What does a thirteen year old girl do with that you’d ask? Well, I didn’t speak up again and endured another year of abuse. It wasn’t until I was babysitting for a family one night at the age of fourteen that I met the mom downstairs after the kids had gone to bed and she asked me if she could be my mentor , we met serval times and I began to trust her. I told her everything I was going through, and she believed in me. It saved my life and kept me safe. I built a bond with her and it started a healing process in my life and in therapy. I was still broken especially after losing what felt like my lifeline at youth ministry in church. I heard some rumors going around that I had been on Drugs and up at that point I had never partaken in that behavior. It left me more confused on to why I had to leave. But instead of sticking up for myself and my values, I turned to drugs, drinking and sex. Over the next years my life was a blur of those three things and from the inside, on the outside I had it put together, as some would say a post-worthy lifestyle. When I was sixteen I met a girl that had been my friend in the past and started reconnecting and hanging out with her more. It quickly became a relationship beyond a friendship level. I was in love with her, and I thought I’d found happiness as she would say she loved me. But a year into things she called and told me she had cheated on me and gotten pregnant. I was grieved. I tried to make it work for a long time, cheating on her husband with her, telling her she could run away with me, yet the relationship was negative and impossible to have a good ending. At that time I hated myself for thinking I was gay, not that it was wrong or bad but it literally felt like all those years of my childhood were false or that my body betrayed me into liking something I didn’t consent to with someone else. So I decided when I was freshly eighteen to hook up with guys , maybe it would make me feel something different.. yet it just made everything worse. I had no moral compass or value for myself or my life in general. I thank God that I am alive and safe to tell my story. When I was 19 I decided I would go to college in Lubbock at a Christian university, it was there that things got worse for me depression wise and I acted out regularly by hooking up with random people. I decided to come home for spring break and bring a friend home with me since it was my birthday week we threw a small party in Conroe on the lake, there I got very drunk and decided to go to sleep. I woke up with a guy on top of me. I tried to tell my so called friends about the rape but they pushed it off like it was a joke because of course, I was gay. At that point I decided I’d finish out the next semester and year of school and leave. I came home to work and figure out what to do next. I was still so depressed and hopeless. I had no cares for myself and truly hated who I had become. There’s a poem that I wrote about how this point in my life started to effect me a few months ago it’s called making the bed:
Making the bed
I have this dream , but really sometimes I want it to be my reality
Driving down a dead end road
Heavy foot on the gas with my eyes closed
Is this how it’s supposed to end?
Is this what if feels like 10 seconds away from death?
Because I’m so tired of the crash and burn just to get back up again
Sleeping in someone else’s bed
pull the sheets over my head
Because it’s me who’s been making the bed
Yet when I say it to you I’ll play the victim instead
I’m really good at making that up in my head
Even though it’s me who’s been making the bed
So easy to have someone climb on in
So I don’t have to feel alone in this mess
Clench the sheets with my fists
Even though I didn’t want to be here it’s helps
If can give away some of the weight from the heavy breath of having the sheets over my head
Cause it’s me who’s been making the bed
Yet I am so good at saying I won’t do this again
So they won’t hang my head
Yet it’s me who’s been making the bed
So that day when I run out of breath
I’ll also run out of road
Crash and burn but not to get back up again
A siren will come to pull the sheets over my head
Because it’s me who’s been making the bed
I made the bed….
Shortly after writing this I realized my sexual tendencies weren’t just hurting me but deeply effected those around me, in that thought I got honest with those around me who I knew could help keep me accountable. A couple months ago I got into a horrible headspace, I reacted through a trauma response and went to have sex with a guy. Weeks went by and I didn’t think much about it besides learning to repent and move forward. Yet the day after thanksgiving I was at work and wasn’t feeling well.. I had a miscarriage at work. Guilt and shame, embarrassment and fear took over. I was completely in distress. I knew I had to seek help and truly have a turning point. I told my mentor and a few close friends what was going on. I sought after God and accountability and I’m moving in steps of doing the right things for myself. Telling my story is one, a huge thing for me. In this, if you made it this far, wow. Thank you. I pray that this impacts you in some way as I am learning to take my power back and use my voice for the greater good. Jesus loves you and you are never ever too far gone. There is peace and true freedom no matter your walk when you chose to trust in him and lay it all down at the foot of the cross. Much thanks , Carli
A girl who’s seen it all, wonderfully redeemed 