Same-sex attraction and discovering new dreams

Written by Jonathan Bryden

I always wanted to get married. I often dreamt of having many children and an amazing spouse. I dreamt of sharing laughter, joy, and many adventures together. I wanted to build a marriage and a life that would be exciting and filled with a ton of love. But in my case, that dream has remained only in my imagination.

As a young teenager, I discovered I was attracted to other males. I was a new Christian then and was learning what it meant to trust and follow Jesus. In my relationship with him, I was convicted that I couldn’t follow Jesus and follow through with my same-sex romantic desires. At this crossroads, I thought if my sexual orientation changed, I could still pursue my dream of getting married. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself feel anything towards girls.

In our culture, sex and romantic relationships are at the top of the list of what we desire and value. Almost every movie I watched growing up suggested that romantic relationships were the pinnacle of satisfaction and meaning.

I felt an ache inside of me each time I saw yet another romantic depiction because I felt this experience was out of my reach. I turned to God in my distress expecting he would fix this—that he would change how I felt. I held onto that expectation for 10 years.

Matthew 11:2-6 relates a story about expectation. John heard from prison about Christ’s miraculous acts of healing and remarkable teaching. He sent his disciples to find out if Jesus really was the one he’d been called to prophesy about. Jesus responds, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

John the Baptist expected Christ to bring judgment to his enemies. He warned those who refused to repent, saying “He who is coming after me is mightier than I. . . . His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:11-12).

Yet John had been arrested and sentenced to death by the very people he was expecting Jesus to come and judge. I’m sure John felt pretty disappointed because Jesus didn’t rescue him. No matter how long he waited, Jesus didn’t do what John expected, and it probably left him feeling trapped and confused. I relate to John. Do you?

No matter how long he waited, Jesus didn’t do what John expected.

Yet amid his disappointment and unmet expectations, John gives us a few things to consider. He doesn’t stay silent about his disappointment. He shows that it doesn’t work to pretend our unmet expectations can be dealt with by ignoring them. As author Steven Stosny writes in Psychology Today, “If you stuff, suppress, or avoid negative feelings, they’ll work against your best interests, erode your self-value, and weaken your relationships.”

John reached out to Jesus and asked his question directly. But sharing honestly and vulnerably what’s going on inside us is easier said than done. It takes the hard soul work of digging up our reactions, fears, and hopes and expressing what we find to God. We can’t do this alone. John had his disciples around him, who probably helped him process what he was feeling before they brought his message to Jesus.

After 10 years of fighting to change my same-sex attraction, I came to the end of myself and cried out to God with an honesty that only a decade of wrestling could bring up. Was my dream of having a wife who I loved hopeless? The Lord answered me, but his answer wasn’t what I expected. Instead, he brought me into a community who I could share openly and honestly with, beyond what I had done before.

We all need this kind of help. We need friends and possibly counselors to help us discover what we are struggling with and how to express it. When we don’t know how to put what we are feeling into words, the Psalms (or other songs or poetry) can help us. There are others who have gone before us who have expressed the depths of the human soul. We shouldn’t be afraid to adopt the prayers of others if we find they deeply resonate with something inside us.

We shouldn’t be afraid to adopt the prayers of others if we find they deeply resonate with something inside us.

John also shows us that hearing from God is essential. In Matthew 4:4 Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” John needed to hear from Jesus, and Jesus responded. He has a response for us too, even if we question him or his goodness to us. Press in. Jesus tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). We can’t make it if we don’t hear from him.

A long time has passed since I began to seek God to change my feelings. What I have found, as I do the work of unearthing the most vulnerable parts of my heart to God, are glimpses of what my longings are really for. I am still not done, but with the continued help of others, I am learning to surrender my expectations to Jesus and hear what his dreams are for me.

When Jesus finished teaching all he had to teach us, he went to the cross to suffer and die so he could give us something far greater than sexual intimacy or romantic relationships. Those things are among many foreshadowings—small mirrors that give us a glimpse of the real thing his death and resurrection has powerfully given us: himself.

Instead of endless suffering with no love, no good, and no hope, Jesus has paid for us to have him, the One our deepest desires allude to. The day we see him face to face when he returns or when he takes us home is the day we’ll be amazed that we ever considered settling for anything less.

Jonathan Bryden works in Vancouver, B.C. as a documentary filmmaker. He is currently producing a series that aims to ask the question, “How does the church face homosexuality in light of the gospel?”