Stonewall Revisted

God seemed to be leading me into ex-gay ministry. But how could I-a woman who had never struggled with homosexuality-help people coming out of the gay lifestyle?

I assured myself that once Trevor discovered that I loved him, he'd forget all about this homosexuality stuff. After all, I'd been a Christian for nearly nine years, and knew that people only had sexual struggles if they weren't trusting Jesus! Later, I wrote him a letter to affirm his masculinity, quoting Proverbs 23:7, "For as [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he."

But later Trevor wrote me a farewell letter. "It's not because of your disability; it's because of mine," he explained. Suddenly, homosexuality became a formidable wall that I could never hope to penetrate. I felt hopeless. How could the Lord have let me fall in love with one of "them," anyway?

During that initial grieving period, a friend of mine used 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 to lead a Bible study discussion on suffering. As I listened to his teaching, I prayed that my heartache over "losing" Trevor could someday be used to comfort other women.

An overwhelming sense of shame kept me from asking for help from Love In Action, even though the ministry was associated with my church. Because my body had been so mangled by cerebral palsy, I was already ashamed of having romantic and sexual desires (handicapped people are supposed to be asexual, I'd always learned). If people knew that Trevor was gay, they'd really think I was a sexual deviant! I knew I couldn't minister to anyone else without exposing my own shame.

When Lori Thorkelson came to our church in 1979 to work as LIA's journalist, I managed to build a friendship with her based on our common interest in writing. But I shied away from saying anything to her about Trevor-until I accidentally overheard her conversation with someone at a women's luncheon one Saturday.

When Lori mentioned that she had been engaged to a man who struggled with homosexuality, I nearly fell out of my wheelchair. A few nights later, I called her to request a counseling appointment. She was at my house within a week, cutting through my nervous small-talk with her question, "What is this appointment about?"

After I fumbled through my story, Lori said that it was difficult not to be attracted to men like Trevor. "They're all so cute!" she said, grinning. As she spoke, Satan's lie that I was a new type of pervert evaporated in the joy that someone saw my love for Trevor as a normal, understandable emotion.

Finally Lori got up to leave. She had her hand on the doorknob when she turned to me. "Debbie, God didn't allow you to suffer this way without a reason. He's preparing you for some sort of ministry." Then she waved goodbye, closing the door behind her.

My first thought was, I could write letters for Love In Action. But the idea seemed much too presumptuous. So I turned my attention to other ministries that seemed more in line with my disability-and wondered why they never worked out.

Some time later, a girlfriend offered me a ride to a weekly prayer meeting, deliberately not telling me that it was sponsored by Love In Action. She hoped the meeting would help me form an attachment to the ministry. Her plan succeeded so well that, within months, I was attending both the prayer meetings and the LIA Bible studies.

For the next few years as a "special friend" of the ministry, I saw unexpected similarities between my disability and homosexuality. When the men talked about being chosen last on softball teams, for instance, I remembered crawling slowly across my neighbor's front yard in order to play with the other kids (I was about eight at the time, and still able to move myself when I was out of my wheelchair). As soon as I reached the other children, they would run off to another yard. It amazed me that people in the program suffered rejection in similar ways that I had.

In 1984, I divided my attention between Love In Action activities and a heterosexual man in the church, unsure that God really had a place for me in the ministry. One evening, as I was alone in a car outside the Love In Action house, I found myself crying aloud, "Lord, I'd rather have Love In Action than this man!" I thought it was a bizarre thing to pray, but I knew it was the cry of my heart.

A month later, the relationship ended. Confused and hurt, I headed for Living Waters Bible College in North Wales to heal and seek God's will for my life. Before I left, I talked about my second failed relationship with Lori. Her response startled me: "You ought to consider doing corres-pondence counseling for Love In Action."

"But that's your job!" I protested.

She smiled. "There's so much to do that we wouldn't be competing."

Lori's encouragement gave me permission, after five years of suppressing such ideas, to think about correspondence counseling for Love In Action.

The school in Wales started on January 6, 1985. By January 8, my terrible case of jet-lag and homesickness made it seem as if the three- month course would last 30 years. At the end of the first week, I told a fellow student from my church in San Rafael that I'd decided my heart definitely belonged to Love In Action. "Well, I've known that for years," he laughed, "but you've got three months in Wales to get through first!"

Frank and Anita Worthen were scheduled to teach at my school in mid- March, so I mailed them a letter in February to make my feelings known. During this time, the Lord showed me Jeremiah 32:17: "Ah, sovereign LORD, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for You."

Lord, what do You want me to see from that verse? I wondered. Everyone on the school's prayer team believed the Lord would open the doors for me at LIA, but I totally missed the probability that Jeremiah 32:17 might be speaking about that.

After the Worthens arrived, I met with Anita, who simply launched into an explanation of what I'd be doing for LIA-as if it was already established that they wanted me. Somehow, after years of waiting, the conversation seemed anticlimactic! Later, I told a friend, "Well, I guess I have something to go home to." I couldn't wait to begin.

By May of that year, I was back home. Since the Love In Action office is an upstairs suite, we decided that I'd work out of my bedroom at home. I already had an electric typewriter, which I operated with a mouthstick clenched between my teeth.

As I stared at the blank page in my typewriter that first day, it hit me: I had to actually offer these people some kind of guidance! I prayed for wisdom. Hebrews 4:12 says that Scripture can address every human problem at its root level, and the Lord verified that promise by showing me ways of applying His Word. I knew that my adequacy to minister came from Jesus (2 Cor. 3:4-6).

In the following months, I felt isolated by my disability on several occasions, and struggled with the attitude, "Nobody suffers the way I do!" During one bout of depression, my pastor told me, "You know, God's not going to let you get away with sin just because you're in a wheelchair." He was right. My root problem wasn't so much being dis- abled as expecting special treatment from the Lord because of my handicap.

1 Corinthians 10:13 begins by saying, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man." As I wrote letters to confront the isolation felt by people who struggle with homosexuality, I could see ways of applying the same Scriptural principles to my own life.

Several months later, Bob Davies called to let me know about some unpleasant developments in an ex-gay ministry elsewhere in the country. "Sorry to burden you with this news," he said, "but now that you're staff, I thought you should be told things like this."

"Now that I'm staff..." I repeated to myself after hanging up the phone. It sounded strange, but that conversation affirmed my place in the ministry

In August of 1987, I was reading the latest Love In Action newsletter. I often joked that I never knew what was happening at the office, so Frank's article on ministry goals interested me. Among his short-range goals, he mentioned starting a fund to buy a computer for me.

I started shaking with a combination of joy and amaze-ment. My attendant gasped when I told her. "Do you realize what kind of investment they're making in you?" she asked.

"Why do you think I'm shaking?" I retorted.

Six months later, I had a computer that was linked to the office by a modem. The independence from my atten-dants amazed me (I no longer needed assistance to change pages in my typewriter). And I noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of my letters because now I could edit them without retyping entire pages. My first project was to create a memory file of the Scriptures I used most frequently, so that I could plop them into letters instead of typing them each time I needed to quote them.

About that time, my pastor, Mike Riley, expressed concern about the amount of energy I should invest in Love In Action. My desire to keep LIA as my focus remained compelling, but I also knew that Heb. 13:17 counseled me to submit to Mike's direction. The Lord honored my obedience by softening my pastor's heart; he blessed my determination to follow God's leading. I believe God blessed my attitude of submission. The experience not only confirmed God's call on my life, but it built a deeper sense of honesty between me and Mike.

In January 1991, the mom of a dear friend who had died of AIDS sent me a Bible program for my computer. Now I had a vast array of Scriptures at my disposal, all cross-referenced and available by subject listings. It became even easier to incorporate Scripture into my letters, and my interest skyrocketed in accurately presenting the Word. I began to understand the importance of 2 Tim. 2:15: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who ... correctly handles the word of truth."

As I celebrate my seventh anniversary on staff, I have more assurance than ever that I'm walking in the works that God prepared for me from the foundation of the world (Eph. 2:10). That assurance motivates me to keep walking.

DebbieLynne Simmons has worked as a correspondence counselor with Love In Action since 1985. She is a member of Central Church in Memphis, TN. Copyright © 1992 DebbieLynne Simmons. Distributed by Love In Action, PO Box 753307 Memphis, TN 38175-3307; 901/542-0250

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