I haven't posted anything in a couple of years; I sort lost access to this blog for a while.

The posts I made during my "search for myself" are now part of my autobiography, Every Star, which is coming along at a rapid pace now and will hopefully be ready for publication in a few months!

It has been an excruciatingly painful process, but a necessary one that I hope will help others going through similar crises.

How I Lost My Faith . XXII - You cannot run from yourself.

In 1989, after being diagnosed with AIDS and losing my job at 7-Eleven, I moved into a Veterans Affairs/Section 8-approved building for seniors and those with disabilities. That September, I adopted a kitten I named Niche (pronounced “nich”). She was destined to be one of only three things that kept me from taking my own life over the years — the other two being the effect it would have on Jehovah God and my Witness friends, and what it would do to my mom. Those things alone are really why I’m still here.

There were already several AIDS-diagnosed gay men in the complex, one of whom was the spitting image of Country Music star Tim McGraw. We all became good friends — until the Pendulum once again swung to the right and I had to return to “the Truth.” This happened repeatedly, back and forth; living that close to other gay men made it extremely difficult to keep my mind focused on spiritual things, but a chance meeting in 1993 would make it virtually impossible.

Earlier that spring, I’d been going to meetings at the local Kingdom Hall and was doing well...until one evening in late April when I was completely overcome with the desire for physical contact. I couldn’t stand it, and, almost against my will, I found myself there, around my “own kind.” I debated with myself all the way to the bus-stop, up until the bus actually came and I boarded it. Had I just turned around and walked back the two blocks to my apartment, I could get through the evening with a clean conscience. I failed miserably.

I met a young man that night, MJ. I gave him my phone number, with the full knowledge that “I’m about to fuck up everything...if he calls me...what have I just done??” He did call and we began hanging out together, a lot. He and I eventually developed an emotional connection that even God, it seemed (after a while), could not break. 

 The very first thing I told him was that I had AIDS; it was a confession that he remembers to this day (I’d reached the point where I could not be intimate with someone without telling him that part upfront; I did not want to the one to blame should he get sick). That year, we took a road trip and I finally got to see the Pacific Ocean. Turns out, our timing was perfect; just a month or so later, Malibu was hit with fires and devastating mudslides!

In the fall of 1993, I worked part-time at one of the local bathhouses for a couple of months...then something clicked and my thoughts again began returning to “the Truth” and the Witnesses, and how to extricate myself from this mess I’d created — the Great Pendulum was about to swing again, only this time the repercussions would be much more far-reaching than I could have imagined. I didn’t say anything at first to my friend, but I know he could sense that something was wrong. During the last week of that year, I began planning for January 1, 1994, as the day I would quit smoking and doing drugs, distance myself from the gay community and my gay friends — including MJ.

On New Years Day, 1994, I resolutely informed him of my decision: “I have to try again. I have to return to the Truth, which means we can’t hang out together anymore,” “You can’t smoke in here any more” — all physical contact and all drug and alcohol use was terminated as of the 1st of January. I basically threw him by the wayside, as I had done previously with Jed back east. My pronouncement stunned him; he’d assumed that my library of bound volumes of The Watchtower and Awake!, dictionaries and lexicons, and numerous Bible translations were connected to something I’d left behind in my past, not something related to an ongoing, massive struggle for my identity.

I could tell I’d hurt him, but I had to do what I felt was the right — the moral — thing to do, and I could not present myself to Jehovah God as clean and upright with MJ in my life, and he would never learn “the Truth” as I had if I continued to perpetuate a doomed friendship/relationship. So I pushed him out of my life.

That summer I took a trip to Oklahoma to visit Mom and while there, I decided that the best way for me to be faithful to Jehovah was to physically remove myself from the situation in Denver, so I made plans to be with Mom when I died. Remember, I had no time left; I’d been told five years earlier that I had only two years to live, three at most; I was way past my “expiration date” and was expected to get sick and ‘kick the bucket’ “any day now”. 

 

I’d already watched several friends die from AIDS-related conditions and knew exactly what I was in for, and the most noble thing I could think of to do was be with Mom when it happened, so she would be comforted in knowing that at least we got to say goodbye face-to-face. In order to make me feel comfortable, she didn’t object when I smoked pot in the house. I was very naïve when it came to the smell, as I had none. I thought I was being clever by hiding the joint or pipe, or pretending to be smoking a cigarette, but I have no sense of smell, and never stopped to think that I was stinking up the whole house.

But Mom didn’t mind. In fact, the only truly-unconditional love that I have ever received in my 49½ years on this earth came from her; I am largely the person I am today because of her.

Spiritually, I had absolutely no time to mess around, and the distractions in Denver were destroying whatever chance I may have had at finally becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was, once again, all or nothing; pass...or fail, as I’d always done, which of course I did, within three months of moving in with Mom. I called MJ and re-established our connection; he came to visit several times over the next two years, but only when the Pendulum swung back in his direction; the rest of the time was spent studying the Bible and attending meetings at the local Kingdom Hall.

Back and forth, back and forth. It was enough to drive most men mad, but I was determined to succeed in my efforts to overcome the evil, unnatural inclinations toward my own sex if it was the last thing I did. Against all odds, I would prove that even someone as inherently wicked as myself could take a stand for Jehovah God against Satan the Devil himself, and the neutralization of my sexual orientation would be a shout of praise to God unlike any other. This is no exaggeration; I genuinely believed that I was fighting for my life, and I refused to give up, at one time vowing to Jehovah, “I will never stop trying, no matter what it takes, until the day I expire!” That vow gave me the strength, on numerous occasions, to return to God and the Witnesses; I had to keep trying, fighting “the fine fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). 

I felt I had no other choice; I took everything my teachers taught me as THE TRUTH, the only Truth — everything was shown to me straight from the Bible, so how could I not accept it? — and my life literally depended on winning this battle between good and evil that never stopped raging inside me. It would not go away, and I interpreted that as Jehovah continuously trying to guide me in the right direction, drawing me back from the pit over and over. I was taught that my willingness to pick myself up and try again, as many times as it took, was a clear sign of humility, a willingness to sacrifice for Jehovah, and that He could only bless such spirit. It never got any easier, no matter how much I wanted it to, but I refused to admit defeat.

That’s the answer to an as-yet-unasked question: Why was I still trying? Why, after so many failed attempts at trying to overcome my nature, had I not lost my faith already?

I believed that it was me, that I was weak, that I wasn’t praying enough or living piously enough, and every time I fell back into “the world,” I proved it all over again. But I refused to accept that I was hopeless, would not “go out” with a mere whimper, and so would inevitably crawl back to the Kingdom Hall and try again...and again...and again... My life was on the line, and I would neither quit nor rest until the day I finally “got it right” and could serve Jehovah God with a clean conscience.

That day never came.

It turns out that moving to Oklahoma accomplished absolutely nothing, other than the time I got to spend with Mom. The Pendulum never stopped swinging, and I found myself facing the exact same struggles within the first six months of living there. I spent two years waiting to die, but fighting back, nonetheless, by working out and walking everywhere --- mainly to impress MJ the next time he took a road trip to Oklahoma.

Then, in 1996, rumors began circulating about new HIV medications, “protease inhibitors” that were making people feel better for a change. Unfortunately, they were not yet available  in Oklahoma; there was actually a waiting list, and there was no telling how long the wait would be...so, in September that year, I moved back to Denver, where the new “miracle drugs” were readily available.

Over those two years spent with Mom, I learned the hard way that you cannot run from yourself. I moved 600 miles for a fresh start, only to find the same old demons waiting there for me. I learned that change must come from the inside; no amount of distance can separate you from yourself. Even years later, another similar move 200 miles away would ultimately prove to be just as fruitless.

Maybe I’m finally learning...

How I Lost My Faith . XXI – Who or what the hell am I???

    Since the spring of 1985 I’d been driving myself crazy trying to become one of Jehovah’s Witness, only to repeatedly fail miserably, embracing an openly-gay lifestyle. The two were mutually exclusive; I could not be both people at the same time, living a double life. To do so would be to live a lie, to play the hypocrite and I simply could not do that; to this day I abhor hypocrisy. 

    It was if I were becoming two completely different people, and every six to twelve months one or the other would come to the fore. Mine became a life of extremes; it was all or nothing, black or white—any kind of grey area simply did not exist for me.

    The swinging of the Great Pendulum of my life began to cause some Witnesses to feel that I was just “playing with the Truth,” not taking it seriously. What they never understood is that I took serving Jehovah far more seriously than any of them could imagine. That’s why, when I would succumb to the desires of the flesh and find myself at an adult bookstore or a gay bar, I went all out; I’d already sinned and broken my vow to stay “clean before God” by simply walking into the place, so why the hell not? I’d never be able to get baptized, not at this rate, so why even try? I began referring to those periods as “relapses.” 

    Before my AIDS diagnosis in 1989, I’d never done drugs, with the exception of alcohol and a little marijuana once or twice back east in Virginia, but I’d never smoked cigarettes or done anything else until 1988/89, when Richard moved back to Denver and introduced me to cigarettes (I nearly coughed up a lung the first time...but the high, though short-lived, was amazing—and that’s what eventually got me addicted to tobacco). So my relapses up to the late 80s had nothing to do with drugs or tobacco; it was alcohol and sex, plain and simple. I knew I was gay, but I still held out hope that I could overcome it; who knows, maybe I’d actually get married someday. I figured, as long as I was completely open and honest with my potential mate about my past, we could work together to put it behind me and have a loving, productive relationship, and maybe a child. 

    Once I learned I had AIDS, however, that idea flew straight out the window. It was one thing to tell a prospective mate, “I lived as a homosexual in the past, but my heart’s desire is to serve Jehovah God, possibly as a Bethelite or missionary...” To tell her, “By the way, I used to be gay, and now I have AIDS. What do you think; still interested?” was completely out of the question; I was now destined to be alone for what time I had left of my life. The only hope I could reasonably hold out for myself was the hope of Paradise, where I would be cured of AIDS—and homosexuality.

    Regarding the latter, of the time when “I would be cured of … homosexuality,” I eventually reached a compromise of sorts: Perhaps it is genetic, not because of God intentionally making me gay, but as a result of the original sin of disobedience on the part of Adam and Eve. Their act of rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden led to imperfection, which was then passed on to their children, and hence to all mankind. I determined that, if I were genetically predisposed to homosexuality, it was little more than a genetic mutation resulting from millennia of accumulated mutations that would be corrected by Jehovah after Armageddon, when all surviving mankind (and those resurrected from the dead), would be cured of all ailments and eventually reach the level of perfection originally enjoyed by our first parents.

     This was the best solution I could come up with. I had not chosen to be gay, and God had not made me that way—but a genetic mutation caused by generation upon generation of passed-down sin and corruption was something I could grasp; it’s like making a copy of a copy of a copy, until the original, pure copy becomes all-but-unreadable. That became my lifeline, my hope—God knew my weaknesses and struggles to do what He wanted, and would ultimately forgive me for something that was beyond my control and would cure me of these “unnatural” tendencies, but only after Armageddon. That became my position for the next ten years; it gave me hope that, though I might be pathetically weak and inherently wicked, Jehovah would cut me a break and show me mercy at the end and let me live. The best I could do was adopt a life of celibacy; that didn’t change my sexual orientation, but it gave me something to hang onto, at least for a time.

    I never believed that Jehovah could produce a person inherently spiritual and God-fearing, but also inclined to live a life diametrically opposed to everything for which He stands. I refused to accept that, so I set out to prove that this lifestyle could be overcome, even by someone with my track record, only now with AIDS. I put forth all my effort to use what little time I had left to make a difference by being the best Jehovah’s Witness I could possibly be, and for a while I succeeded, but eventually I found myself once again in the cesspool of sin and despair; now there was no hope for me, so this time I went further, and that’s when my drug use began, first with pot, then cocaine and crystal meth. By 1990, I was living in downtown Denver at a Section-8-approved apartment building, just a few blocks from several bars where these drugs were readily available. For months, I was lost in that quagmire and figured, “I’m about to die anyway from this disease, and I have no time left to make things right with God, so what the hell?”

     But then the Great Pendulum began to swing back the other way and my conscience started telling me, “You don’t belong here, hanging out in gay bars and doing unspeakable things that have surely offended Jehovah,” and I put all my hope and faith in the possibility that He would forgive me, take me back into His fold and let me try again. After all, Armageddon hadn’t come yet, so from that standpoint I still had time, and as long as I was trying to do what was right, He would grant me amnesty should His “Day of Wrath” come before I got baptized. So again I would humble myself and return to the Kingdom Hall, devoted every waking moment to Bible reading, study and prayer—for a while, before the Pendulum swung back the other way. 

    In my mind, each act of transgression, each relapse, was tantamount to treason against God Himself, as I had sworn I would “never do this again”. Every six to eight months (occasionally longer) the Great Pendulum would swing in the opposite direction, and I had absolutely no control over when it would happen. When it’d swing left, I’d inevitably find myself at the bars; when it swung right, it was like flipping a switch; anything and everything “gay” had to go, including magazines, movies, “toys,” even boyfriends—you name it; it all went by the wayside. I’m sure I’ve disposed of several thousands of dollars worth of porn and related items over the years, as well as broken many hearts. I would begin drawing close to someone, thinking, “This time I’m staying right here, and I’m going to have a life with a man who loves me and that’s that, damn it!!” But inevitably, my conscience led me to abandon him for the “high road” of “the Truth.” 

    Each time it happened, not only did I cause that person tremendous pain, my heart was also shattered into a million pieces. It got to a point where I was convinced that my fate in this life was to do little more than cause people pain; if I were living as a gay man, I’d hurt my Witness friends. When I returned to “the Truth” I would devastate my gay partner(s) and friends. Eventually, I refused to get involved in any serious relationship because I knew the Pendulum would again swing the other way and I refused to commit to one person only to hurt them...again and again.

     Now that I had AIDS, though, I’d developed a growing feeling, fed by countless relapses into sin, that I would never actually see the paradisaic New World to come after Armageddon. How could God possibly truly forgive me for my sins now that I have in my body a disease I contracted by being utterly disobedient to His commandments? My attitude toward that hope and my efforts to become a Jehovah’s Witness took on a very different nature: “I will never see Paradise, but I can help you get there. Here’s the path; take it and enjoy everlasting life!”, as I would never see it. I never told any with whom I shared “the Truth” that I felt this way, and it would be much later when I would confide such in Witness friends. It would be suggested at meetings and conventions that we strive to ‘see ourselves there in that New System, in Paradise; make it real!” Over time, such a thing became virtually impossible for me to envision, so I simply stopped trying.

     In 1993, this swinging of the Pendulum led to what would result in one of the most critical choices of my life since returning to “the Truth” in 1985...and would confound my efforts to get baptized on a scale I’d not experienced before—a chance encounter that would nearly prove to be my undoing.

How I Lost My Faith . XX - I only have two years??

In 1988, I officially tested positive for HIV. There was still a great deal of confusion as to how the virus was transmitted, and among Jehovah’s Witnesses, no none spoke of it except in the context of victims’ paying the price for their immoral lifestyle, in keeping with the first chapter of the Bible book of Romans:

For God’s wrath is being revealed...against all ungodliness and unrighteousness... Therefore, God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness...even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error...God gave them up to a disapproved mental state... [and it goes on in like manner] – Romans 1:18-28

This I believed: not that God had inflicted homosexuals with a deadly disease, but that we were paying the price for our own immorality, exposing ourselves to disease and death as a natural course of our unnatural lifestyle. It wasn’t God’s fault; it was our own, as result of our own choices.

But the Bible also offered forgiveness and mercy for those who forsook their sinful lifestyle and embraced “the Truth.” The story of the Prodigal Son gave me hope that maybe, even after many failed attempts, I could return to Jehovah God and become acceptable to Him.

After leaving Glenn, I moved in with a Witness couple I’d met four years before when I first showed up at the Kingdom Hall in the dead of winter. It was quite an interesting experience, with six boys all going through their “terrible teens”, but it worked for a few months...until the Great Pendulum swung back the other way and I found myself back in the darkness of gay clubs. I moved in with a gay friend in a basement apartment while working for 7-Eleven as an Assistant Manager, which provided health insurance, which I hadn’t had for quite a while. I remember being really depressed, though, and the doctor prescribed Nortriptyline, to which I was apparently allergic, so he switched me to Prozac; I’ve been on that one ever since.

I may have been a complete disaster spiritually, but physically I was doing fine; I rode my 10-speed bike everyday, walked a great deal, ate well and felt great; I was in good enough shape that I could have pretty much any guy I wanted. But you know, sometimes ignorance is bliss...

I’d told my doctor about all of the confusion with my HIV tests, so we decided to test it one more time, and, simply out of curiosity, run a new, expensive test called a “T-cell Count.” I’d never heard of it, so I said, “Sure, why not?” and gave it no more thought...until the tests arrived a couple of weeks later. Healthy people have T-cell counts in the high hundreds, even thousands, but the government had determined that a count below 200, coupled with being HIV-positive, meant you were automatically diagnosed with AIDS and considered disabled.

My first T-cell (CD-4) count was something like 85. That didn’t really register at first, until the doctor told me, “That means you have AIDS.” Then he said, “You have two, maybe three years to live.” That was the general prognosis for AIDS patients in those days.

Many people who’ve been diagnosed with AIDS can remember the place, day and time of their diagnosis; I cannot. Everything went gray. I remember it was in the summer of 1989, but other than that, time seemed to stop altogether.

TWO YEARS???

THAT’S ALL THE TIME I HAVE LEFT TO DO ALL THE THINGS I NEED TO DO??

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF??!!

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW??

Basically, I would never see my 30th birthday.

Unlike most people at the time, the only question I did not ask was, “Why me?”  I knew exactly “why”: I'd been a total slut in the early days of my coming out, exposing myself to whatever was out there.  

 

Many so-called “Christian” churches were (and some atill are) preaching that AIDS was God’s judgment against homosexuals, payment for their unspeakable sins against God.  Even many of my gay friends at the time blamed God...but that's one thing I’ve never done. It was not God who made me practice unsafe, promiscuous sex; it was not God who gave me gonorrhea and crabs over the years, and it was not God punishing me when I found out I had AIDS.  All the responsibility for my actions fell squarely on my shoulders; God had nothing at all to do with it! 

 

I was suddenly forced to face my own mortality. I was going to die, there was no question about that, but in what manner would I do so—as an anonymous statistic in a hospital bed, or as someone with hope in a future of unending health in the Paradise Earth in which I still believed?  I chose the latter, and resolved once more to return to the Kingdom Hall; I only had two years to get baptized and Pioneer and and help as many others as I could to find the “Truth” and finish all the things I’d dreamt of over the years as one of Jehovah’s dedicated, baptized Witnesses.  That meant that I had to do everything “NOW!”

And so the Great Pendulum swung back to the right (the “Christian” side), and I was determined to keep it there for what little time I had left, so I could be assured of a resurrection in God's paradisaic New Earth to come.

How I Lost My Faith . XIX - What is The Truth?

After turning my back on Jed and the gay scene in D.C., I attended meetings at the Kingdom Hall fairly regularly, but after the confusion over my HIV status, the pendulum swung back the other way and I decided to move back to Denver to be with my gay friends there. In the fall of 1987, after a grueling three-day bus ride, I finally arrived back in Denver, feeling thoroughly disgusting; I don’t remember ever feeling that gross while living on the streets, and vowed to never again take a Greyhound bus cross-country.

Glenn, my cute-as-a-button Navy friend, invited me to stay in his new house for a while, and we again grew very close. I celebrated Christmas with him for the first time in years; there was a fireplace and a tree, and we exchanged gifts. It was the first time I’d felt like I had a real life with a partner who loved me. It was the kind of gay life I’d dreamed about since seeing the movie Making Love in the early ‘80s, and I didn’t want it to ever end. But there were obstacles, not the least being whether or not I was really HIV-positive. I got retested not long after settling in, but the test came back negative, so I relaxed for awhile. 

 

After a month or so I found a part-time job at a 7-Eleven, then decided to enroll in Barnes Business College to learn computer programming. I needed a real career, some way to make a name for myself and finally live the kind of life I’d dreamed about for years: financially independent with a large house on a huge walled-off property, where I could grow gardens and orchards...and this was my chance. The curriculum including programming in BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Cobol and Machine Language, as well as Accounting and general business practices. I took to BASIC like a fish to water! My teacher had the entire course written out, with easy-to-follow instructions on modifying the coded examples one step at a time to see what would happen as you went along. I finished her entire course in half the time it should have taken, and began helping fellow classmates who were still struggling with early lessons. To say I was bored out of my mind would be an understatement; she’d made her course way too easy, at least for me. 

 

Fortunately, there was another instructor who also taught BASIC, but with a completely different approach, one that was straight up my alley. Instead of telling his students how to write each line of code and what each variable stood for, he gave his class a goal—write a program to organize a library of books, records or whatever, with input and output functions—then he wrote a few hints on the blackboard, and set them loose to figure it out on their own. This required they do their own research to solve problems, and he would be there if we really got stuck. Since I’d finished my course so quickly, both teachers allowed me to sit in on his class. One girl allowed me to copy her project so I could get caught up, and I took it from there. It was the most exciting, interesting class I’d taken since Mechanical Drafting in high school, and I took ate it up.

That teacher also taught me a lesson that I still live by to this day: always, always save your work! I’d been working on enhancing my library application for nearly an hour and was making incredible progress, but I was too engrossed in my work to pause and save the file. Suddenly, someone walked into the room and turned all the lights and computers off! I was furious and jumped out of my chair yelling, “Do you know how long I’ve been working on this??!! What’s your problem?!” Turns out it was the teacher, and I never forgot his response: “I guess you’ll save your work more often, won’t you?” To this day, I save everything as often as I can.

During the whole time I lived with Glenn, I began delving into aspects of the occult like Earth Magic, crystals, runes and tarot cards. I also began reading a series of books by one Elizabeth...something; I can’t remember her last name, but her books enthralled me. She wrote of messages she’d received from supposed-angelic guides who warned of a coming global apocalypse during which the earth’s crust would become unstable and crack into pieces. Her “guides” suggested potential safe zones, including the upper mid-west of the United States. 

 

I knew from my previous Bible studies that something was coming, some catastrophe that would change the face of this planet and all humanity forever. But, no longer interested in the inevitable conflict between my sexual identity and the Bible, I began to believe the things I was reading in these books. I also began a project that I felt would greatly benefit the survivors of the coming apocalypse: a Book of Law. I was very familiar with the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament, and felt that its basic principles, without all the animal sacrifices and stoning of people to death, would be an excellent start, so I began cataloging and organizing that Law Code for the future of what would be left of mankind.

Then came the sudden realization that something was terribly wrong with the course on which I’d placed myself. After enthusiastically reading several of Elizabeth’s books, I read a particular sentence that completely stopped me in my tracks: her “angelic guide” mentioned Jesus Christ as being an advanced human (not God’s Son, mind you) who’d died on a cross.

I was confused. All my life up to that point, I’d believed that Jesus was put to death on a stake, not a cross, and I’d heretofore not run into anything in these occultish books to suggest otherwise, but now there was a major conflict. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been adamant about the real instrument of Jesus’ death for nearly a hundred years, ever since discovering that the Greek word usually translated as cross is stauros´ — σταυρός — meaning “an upright pale or stake” and translated “torture stake” in the New World Translation.

Now, this “angel-guided medium” was relaying that Jesus died on a cross; if it really were an angel from which she was getting her information, it would have been an eye-witness to Jesus’ execution and would have known the truth. If the Witnesses were right about the “torture stake” then the “angel” was lying to the author, which meant it wasn’t an angel at all. I had to find the truth...everything now hinged on this one thing: who was telling the real truth??

I scoured the shelves of the Denver Public Library until I found an actual Greek New Testament, all in Greek with no English, as well as a Greek Lexicon. I found one of the Scriptures where most Bible translations use the word “cross” —and there it was, plain as day: σταυροῦ, a grammatical form of σταυρός. And the lexicon confirmed the meaning: “an upright pole or stake...without a cross-beam forming the letter ‘T’.” The Witnesses were right! For me, that was all the proof I needed to realize that this woman had been receiving messages from someone or something, but it sure as hell was not an angel of God.

In the spring of 1988, after months of living a nice, quiet life with Glenn, I made the choice to return to “the Truth” as taught by the Witnesses. Once again, I had strayed from “the path of righteousness” and needed to try once again to “get it right” so I could finally get baptized and find real peace for the first time in my life, in the knowledge that I had Jehovah’s approval. I disposed of everything spiritistic—all books and tarot cards—as well as a very nice set of mystical Runes— broke the news to Glenn and began looking for a place to live. Fortunately, a Witness family that I’d met during my first visit to the Hall in 1985 invited me to stay with them and their boys.

I was still attending Barnes Business College, but my decision to serve Jehovah led to another: I could not continue pursuing a career that would have no real future, as Armageddon was just around the corner (still) and all my efforts needed to go to the furthering of the Good News. I had learned all I needed to know about programming and all that was left were a couple of boring classes on English and how to “dress for success.” I thought the latter was completely ridiculous; the class had to dress in business attire two or three times a week, as if we adults had no idea how to dress ourselves for a job. I was completely bored with school by then, and even though I only had that one semester to go before graduating, I took “the higher road” and dropped out. 

 

Later, it would prove to be one of the worst decisions of my working life; I stood to make a lot of money in those days as a systems analyst/programmer, but I chose a spiritual “career” over materialistic gain, thinking “This time I’m never leaving Jehovah’s organization!” I wasn’t even baptized at the time; I hadn’t proven myself “clean” long enough to qualify, but I was determined to do so this time.

But the spectre of HIV still haunted me, and I realized I needed to have the test done again. the first one back home said I was Positive, then they told me I was Negative. The first test back in Denver said Negative, as well, but that spring in 1988, I had them test me again. This time it was Positive. After running the test again to be sure, it came back again as Positive. Now I knew for sure that I had “IT.” But the test only proved that I’d been exposed to the virus and developed antibodies. It didn’t mean I had AIDS, so I simply accepted it, as I had other STD’s like gonorrhea, and got on with my life.

Although I was determined to be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses “come hell or high water”, I simply could not get away from the fact that I had sexual urges that I could not control. I was gay, but still determined to someday overcome it, but after a few months I found myself once again at a gay bar and surrendered to my flesh, renewing the soul-crushing guilt and shame with which I’d become all-too-familiar.

And so the Great Pendulum continued to swing, back and forth, from hedonism and demonic propaganda to Bible-based “Truth” and back again. I went through this process so many times I lost count, and so lost complete track of who and what I was—of ME and what I stood for.

What would it take for this nightmarish roller-coaster ride to stop??

This cycle would define the next twenty years of my life: six-to-twelve months as a would-be Witness followed by the same amount of time hanging out in gay bars, getting drunk and laid, until my conscience would again start assaulting me, leading me to return once again to Jehovah. I reached the point where I was certain that something was intrinsically wrong with me; why couldn’t I control myself for more than a few months? Was Satan’s hold on me that great that I was incapable of self-control, or had I sinned so badly that Jehovah simply would not give me his Holy Spirit to face and overcome these demonic urges?  I had no answers and finally all-but-gave up trying to find any.

The real test, however, was yet to come, as my whole world changed in 1989, the year I got "the news."

How I Lost My Faith . XVIII - “Do I have ‘IT’ or not??!”

The winter of 1986/87 was very hard on me. After two years in Denver, I’d acclimated to a much drier climate, but the winters back east were very humid, and the cold ate into my bones. Six months into my stay at home, at age 23, I began developing arthritis in my hands, and it became intolerable. I was prepared to move back to Denver in February, but decided to stay until the summer after my godmother wrote me a short letter in which she all-but-pleaded with me to stay a few more months to help care for my sickly godfather—and, for the first time in my life, she offered me an apology:

“I’m sorry for everything.”

It was only four words, but I knew to what she was referring and that she meant every word; that was enough at the time to allow me to forgive a great many things; not everything, mind you...that would come much later.

That spring I made Dandelion Wine for the first time, and it was the bomb! One day, I was drinking a couple of glasses of the finished product, when my godfather called to me upstairs to ask that I watch the store for a while so he and my godmother could go into town. When I stumbled out of my room, he started laughing—I was “drunk as a skunk,” as they say! That homemade wine kicked my ass, and, before he passed away a couple of years later, my godfather would chuckle whenever he thought about that day. I managed to get through the shift okay, though; fortunately, it wasn’t a busy store, and all the customers were local people I knew well, so I just told them I’d gotten drunk on homemade wine and they laughed.

After turning my back on Jed and the bar scene, I began thinking about the possibility that I may have finally picked up the HIV virus—not necessarily from Jed; it could have been any one of the possibly-hundreds of men I’d encountered over the years since coming out of the closet in 1981, but his situation began to worry me. I previously wrote that I hadn’t really thought about HIV or AIDS in a long time, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, since I remember getting tested at least twice in Denver before backing home, and each time it came back negative. This time, however, I wasn’t so sure, so I decided to have the test done at a clinic in nearby Fredericksburg in the spring of 1987.

After a couple of very long weeks of anxiously waiting, I finally got the call: I was positive. Great! At first, it didn’t really bother me too much. After all, I’d had gonorrhea and crabs a number of times over the past six years, so what was one more? I knew it would only be a matter of time, considering how many guys with whom I’d had unprotected sex over the years.

A day or two later, however, the clinic called me back and informed me that I’d been given someone else’s results and that mine had actually come back negative. Negative? How the hell could they have mixed up the results? What if that first call had completely devastated me, leading to attempted suicide or something? I knew a few guys back then that would have responded that way and ended their lives before receiving that second “I’m so sorry we made a mistake” phone call.

Fortunately, my response was not so severe; I basically just took it all in stride. After all, if I was actually HIV-negative, I had nothing to worry about, right? And if I really was HIV-positive, what could I do about it, anyway? It was a veritable death sentence back then, and I was not ready to die; I had way too many things that I needed to do—but I couldn’t do them in bum-fuck Virginia, so I began making preparations for my return to Denver.

I began making contact with Glenn and a couple of Witness friends back in Colorado. I’d been going to the Kingdom Hall here in Fredericksburg off and on, but there was no one I could trust with my new secret. Back then, every straight person I knew, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, was terrified of being in the same room with an HIV-infected person, so I told no one there. In any case, I needed to be sure before I told anyone.

How I Lost My Faith . XVII - 'As the Pendulum Swings...'

To say that my initial response to what I perceived to be outright rejection by Jehovah God and His people was a bit of overkill would be quite an understatement, but back then I had no idea what to do but over-react. The elders had no idea how much effort it took for me to abstain from masturbating even for just two weeks; from five or six times a day to zero was a monumental feat! After only a few months, I put everything I had, including my entire future as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, into this one achievement; failure was not an option.

But fail I did, and as a result I was wracked with rage, guilt and shame on a profoundly deep level. It was bad enough growing up believing I’d never really amount to anything, but to have first the elders, then Jehovah God, and finally my former second-best friend (Richard being the first-best) dismiss me as if it meant nothing to him—one rejection piled on top of another—was too much to bear. Instead of picking myself up, dusting myself off and trying again, I fled in pain and anger, and returned to the murky pit from which I’d emerged after four years of wallowing. I knew what the Bible said, and I took it very seriously:

The saying of the true proverb has happened to them: “The dog has returned to its own vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.” – 2 Peter 2:22

Certainly if, after having escaped from the defilements of the world...[I] get involved again and are overcome, the final conditions have become worse for [me] than the first. … it would have been better for [me] not have accurately known the path of righteousness... – 2 Peter 2:20, 21

If [I] practice sin willfully after having received...the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left, but there is a certain fearful expectation of judgment. – Hebrews 10:26, 27

These Scriptures applied to me in spades, so what hope was there? The meaning was clear: there was no hope for me; perhaps God hadn’t really rejected me, but I’d rejected Him by willingly returning to a life of demonic hedonism, and that meant I would die during the battle of Armageddon: “fearful expectation of judgment” indeed. I took these things more personally, almost zealously, than most can even begin to understand, as I was convinced to my core that the Bible was God’s Word and Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only ones who had “The Truth”—which meant I was doomed. I might as well come back out of the closet and live my life the way I wanted to, so ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow I may die’ is the attitude I adopted.

After my first night with Glenn, I knew I couldn’t stay at Gary and Elizabeth’s place anymore, so, in late Spring of 1985, I moved in with my new boyfriend. As quickly and thoroughly as I’d switched off the homosexual half of myself in order to embrace “the Truth”, I switched off any interest in the Bible or Jehovah’s Witnesses and embraced my re-found sexual identity. I wanted nothing to do with religion whatsoever; discussions about religion became taboo around me. 

 

When I’d returned to the Kingdom Hall earlier that winter, I had thrown out all of my porn and all books on astrology and the occult, but I’d kept Immanuel Velikovsky’s works; these were the only copies I’d been able to find and I wasn’t about to dispose of them, not yet. I planned on reading them all in an effort to feed my thirst for knowledge; the Bible was out of the question. I never got around to them, however, delving instead into other aspects of the occult like crystals and pyramids—until one day I attended a seminar on crystal magic. 

 

I don’t remember much about it now, with one exception. Near the end, a mystical chart was displayed that had at the top the very last thing I expected to see: the Tetragrammaton—the four Hebrew letters representing the Name of God, יהוה .   

This name is sacrosanct to Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Jews, and to use it in the context of occultist practices was utter blasphemy! I left that place stunned and dismayed. The last thing I needed was a blatant reminder of what I’d left behind months before. I was happy with my life. I had a gorgeous boyfriend, a few close gay friends whose companionship I really enjoyed, and I wasn’t even thinking about “the Truth”—until that damn seminar. 

 

Shortly thereafter, I made the fateful decision to return—back to the Hall to face what I’d done and try to get back into Jehovah’s favor. That meant breaking up with Glenn and abandoning the friendships I’d gained in the gay community. I could not live two lives, one gay and completely immoral, and one anti-gay, pious Christian; it was one or the other, and I chose the ‘higher road.’ In spite of my conviction that I’d sinned way too seriously, I also knew other Scriptures that kept coming to mind, giving me a glimmer of hope, particularly these two, which I took on a deeply personal level (hence the bracketed pronouns):

Though the sins of [mine] should prove to be as scarlet, they will be made white just like snow. … If [I just] show willingness and do listen... – Isaiah 1:18, 19

Jehovah is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness. He will not for all time keep finding fault... according to [my] errors has he [not] brought upon [me] what [I] deserve [which is death]. … For as the heavens are higher than the earth, His loving-kindness is superior toward those fearing him. As far off as the sunrise is from the sunset, So far off from [me] he has put [my] transgressions. As a father shows mercy to his sons, Jehovah has shown mercy to those fearing him [including me]. For he himself well knows the formation of [me], Remembering that [I am] dust. – Psalms 103:8-14

Perhaps my sins were not so bad, after all; maybe—just maybe—He would give me another chance. I sincerely believed with all my heart the message behind these Scriptures and resolved to try one more time to be moral, clean and upright—”good enough” for Ted and my other Witness friends, and for Jehovah God; I would show them just what I was made of!.

I moved out of Glenn’s apartment into my own place on Capitol Hill, ironically just across the street from an adult bookstore/video arcade. That would prove to be a test later, but initially I was completely Bible-oriented, and began to assemble what would become a very impressive library of Bible translations, dictionaries and lexicons (many of which I still have to this day). I also began to study Greek and Hebrew in an effort to understand the original language meanings behind key words and phrases in the Bible; I was never satisfied with basic, lay knowledge.

My efforts lasted about four or five months before I gave in to desire and went to the adult store across the street...and there I was again, back in the gutter, wallowing in the mire I’d left behind for a second time. I therefore did the only logical thing: I went out to a gay bar, got drunk and picked some guy up, went home and had sex. Once again, guilt and shame consumed me and I once again left the Kingdom Hall in disgrace.

It’s important to note that the vast majority of the congregation had absolutely no idea what I was going through. Only Ted and a couple of others knew what I’d done while away, and how ashamed I was when I returned to the fold, so I wasn’t publicly shamed before the group or anything. It was all in my head—the shame, the guilt, the impossibly-high bar that I knew I could never reach. When I returned to the flock, the congregation just assumed I’d been away and were truly delighted to see me again. It would be a while yet before others began to see a problem, but in those early days I was regularly welcomed back by all, including Phillip, with open arms.

By now it was 1986, and that summer, I decided I could bear the shame no longer and made the decision to leave Denver and return home, to Virginia. Maybe there, I could get my head together and figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. I’d met a handsome deaf man at a gay bar who had family back east, so we decided to take a road trip together, down through Texas to visit my mom, then through Arkansas and Louisiana (never again; the bugs were atrocious!), on up through South and North Carolina to Washington, D.C. He taught me some sign language on the way, which I remember enjoying immensely; I wish I’d continued learning it, but never really took the opportunity to do so.

Since I had no place to live, after a week of staying at my friend’s brother’s apartment for a week, I decided to head south to visit what was left of my family. On the way, my car broke down; apparently the distributor cap had cracked. A man stopped to help and offered to buy a new cap for my car if I’d agree to attend a Buddhist ceremony nearby. Since I really had nothing else to do, and I wasn’t interested in any Bible-oriented discussions, I agreed. It was the first time in my life I’d seen the inside of a Buddhist temple; I remember thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?”

After the ceremony, this man, whose name I forget, gave me a prayer book written in Chinese, and a small altar before which I was supposed to repeatedly chant, “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” and everything I wanted would come to pass. I figured, “What the hell? ‘The Truth’ isn’t working out for me, so let’s give this a try,” and for several months I did.

The next day, I reached my godmother on the phone and told her I was in the state and wanted to visit. I wound up living there for nearly a year, helping out in the family store and working at a deli. The rage I’d felt growing up here had subsided, making the situation relatively manageable. My mom later told me that my godmother was proud of the work ethic I’d developed in the years I’d been gone. Things were going well for a change and I felt I could relax for a bit, get my bearings and decide what to do next with my life.

While living there, I made routine trips north to D.C.—about 50 miles one-way—to go bar-hopping. That winter, I met a very nice-looking young man from Texas named Jed. He and I hooked up regularly and had a great time together, to the point where I began looking at him as a possible life-partner. One night, he confided in me that he had tested positive for HIV and was terrified his father would find out and disown him. I hadn’t even thought about HIV in several years; it was still taboo, especially among Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I hadn’t discussed it with them at all.

That discussion got me thinking about the possibility I may have it, especially now that I’d been intimate with someone I knew for sure had it. Right about this time, I began questioning my own mortality, and what would happen to me if I died from AIDS. My studies with the Witnesses had taught me to believe in resurrection in Paradise, but what about Buddhism? I’d been chanting in front of this altar words I didn’t understand. Was there really any future in this?

I met the guy who’d introduced me to Buddhism one day for lunch and I asked him point-blank, “What happens when we die? The Bible talks about resurrection; what do Buddhists believe?” He talked about reincarnation, reliving our lives over and over—complete with mistakes, sin, sickness and death—apparently forever, or until one achieves some higher plane where reincarnation stops. Frankly, it made absolutely no sense to me. That was not hope; it was a futile repetition of pain and suffering for all eternity, as far as I was concerned...and I knew right then what I had to do.

That day, I took all of my Buddhist stuff—prayer book, altar and all—to our store and threw it all in the wood furnace. My younger brother was watching the store at the time, and he told me he saw a spirit leave that furnace and fly away. That was all the convincing I needed—Buddhism was spiritistic and demonic and there was only one place for me to go: back to “The Truth.” I knew where the local Kingdom Hall was and made up my mind to start attending right away.

But what about Jed? He’d just told me he had HIV and was scared, and I wanted to be there for him...but he was gay and I couldn’t continue being with him if I wanted to make things right with Jehovah. So I wrote him a three or four-page Scripture-laden letter explaining in the most diplomatic terms why I could not see him again, crying the whole time. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, or anybody for that matter, but I had no choice; I had to take the “high road” and do what was morally right. It was a very painful process, but it would not be the first time I broke someone’s heart—and my own—in this eloquent but cowardly manner.

Thus began to swing the Great Pendulum of my life; for a time, I’d be “out and proud” as long as I didn’t run into any Witnesses, then the Pendulum would swing the other way and I’d be the best damn Witness one could possibly be. It was a sometimes-violent conflict that struck at the very core of my being, and I began to lose sight of who I was, what I really stood for—and for the next 22 years I lived in that limbo, becoming whoever others expected me to be at any given time. 

 

Over the years I became ever more determined to “get it right,” at one point making a sworn oath to Jehovah God that “I will not stop trying to get it right, until the day I expire,” in those exact words—and I meant it. I would prove that even someone as damaged as I, who had repeatedly returned to this Satanic world as all it had to offer, could become clean and upright, and acceptable to Jehovah as one of His children. I was convinced that my sexuality was something I could change with enough will power and constant prayer—and I tried so very hard to prove it, time and time again, but to no avail. I simply could not escape who I was, and it would be decades still before I figured that out.

How I Lost My Faith . XVI - The Test

After a couple of months renting a room, a Witness couple, Gary and Elizabeth, invited me to stay in their house, in the basement bedroom.  It was a bit rustic, but I wasn't interested in material things, just my spiritual library and meeting clothes.  I remember having a very frank discussion with Elizabeth once about the habit I was striving to overcome, and she responding, "It's better to masturbate than go out looking for sex."  That counsel helped as I fought to get it under control, but I had a goal to meet: two weeks straight with no self-abuse.  Ted had actually suggested that to me during a Bible study: 'make it two weeks then we'll talk.'

Finally, I did it; I made it through two weeks of agonizing self-control!  It may not seem like such a big deal, but it was all I had, all I could tangibly do to prove my love for Jehovah God and my determination to be clean in His eyes.  I was  anticipating joining the Theocratic Ministry School and giving talks before the congregation.  I knew enough about "the Truth" to qualify; it was down to just this.  Ted and I met with another elder, the School Overseer, Sam J.  I explained how much progress I'd made, and that two weeks of clean behaviour had passed, so "Can I join the School now?!"

Ted gave his okay, but deferred to Brother J., as he was in charge of the School.  I remember feeling exhilarated...this was it; this was my vindication!

He said, 

"Why don't we give it two more weeks and then talk?"

I was stunned.  What I heard was not, 'only two more weeks';  what I heard was, 

"You're still not good enough and you never will be!!"

I was completely devastated, and I’m sure Ted could see the change that began taking over me. In my mind, I threw my hands up in the air in disgust...and, for the first time in months, I thought about having a drink...in a bar...with guys. By the time I left the Kingdom Hall that evening, I knew what I was about to do—betray Jehovah, as I felt He had betrayed me and condemned me as unfit for service. He was not there with me that evening, I felt, or I would be heading home to prepare for the School now.

In my mind, Jehovah God himself had rejected me. It was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to me—bar only one, when I was 5 or 6 years old—and I simply could not bear it. That night, I went to a gay bar and decided to leave the congregation; Jehovah obviously didn’t want me there, anyway.

After the bar, I went to an adult bookstore/theater and met a young Navy stud named Glenn. He was gorgeous, and I was instantly drawn to him. Within a month of walking out of the Hall, I moved out of the basement bedroom and into Glenn’s apartment. As I was moving the last of my things out to Glenn’s car, my former close friend, Phillip, stopped by and, passing me on the porch, said, “Have a nice life!” I felt like he’d slapped me in the face, and I resolved to never come back.

Two weeks. It doesn’t seem like such a long time, now that I’m much older, but back then it was an eternity. I was one who wanted...needed...everything done now. I’d wasted too much time away from Jehovah and was determined to make up for it by progressing in the organization as quickly as I could. Two more weeks—it might as well have been two years. I’d put all I had into that one effort, and it wasn’t enough.

I’d failed the test, and so I slunk away into the darkness of sin and despair.

How I Lost My Faith . XV - Off The Streets

The switch from hedonistic homosexual to anti-gay, moral Christian happened almost instantaneously; I embraced "The Truth" with a fervor.  I had no ties to the gay community in Denver, anyway—unlike D.C., where I'd left behind a number of really good friends—so it was easy to ignore those feelings and focus solely on remembering and gaining as much Bible knowledge as I could.

For the next several months, Ted and I studied as often as we could, especially publications about Bible prophecies; I was a sponge and eagerly soaked in everything I'd missed over the past four years and everything deep, deep Bible study would reveal.  After leaving the hotel, I was picked for a 30-day stay at the Catholic-run Samaritan Shelter, which got me off the streets for a while.  I specifically remember sitting at a desk there one day studying the All Scripture Is Inspired publication, a book-by-book in-depth study of the Bible, highlighting parts in yellow and orange.

At some point during my stay, some business representatives came by the shelter to talk to some of us about jobs.  There were two I found interesting: staffing a print/copy shop, and telemarketing for a carpet cleaner.  I almost took the former, but the latter promised more money faster, so I chose it, instead.  That turned out to be the wrong choice, as I discovered a couple of months later that the actual cleaners were scamming their customers by offering one price then, once at the home, adding 'this room' and 'that couch,' resulting in a bill over twice what they expected.  I witnessed this first-hand when I switched from the phones to the field, and I quit within a week of learning the truth about their business practices.

During that first month, however, I made enough to move out of the shelter into my own place, a dorm-like room in a converted house on Capitol Hill with weekly rentals.  It wasn’t the Taj Majal, but it was a place to sleep that was all my own.  I remember the landlady teaching me to play cut-throat acey-duecy backgammon; by the time I moved from there, we were quite evenly matched, and to this day I play very aggressively.

Finally, I was no longer homeless.  I had no car, but it didn't really matter.  Even if I'd had one, I couldn't have afforded the insurance, so I just relied on public transportation.  I remember riding the bus down Federal Boulevard one day in February and staring at the crisp, snow-covered mountains and being in awe of Jehovah's creation.  Back then, you could actually see the mountains perfectly, there being virtually no air pollution blocking your view.  Sadly, today that view is not so pristine; Denver has grown exponentially since the early 1980s, and with that growth came commensurate levels of smog, creating an ever-present brown cloud.  I miss those days.

This house had a common kitchen and bathrooms, but no refrigerator.  Fortunately, it was the dead of winter and my room was on the north side, so I would hang my perishable food out the window in a plastic bag to keep it cold.  In this way I could store milk, cheese and other items without spoiling.

While there, I met a young Witness couple and their baby who were also in survival mode, and we became instant friends.  We studied the Bible and Watchtower articles together, and relished in each others' spiritually-uplifting fellowship.  They were into furniture restoration; I remember a cane-back chair they were repairing for an antique shop.  

Not long after we met, Richard returned to Houston, determined to resume his Bible study with the older couple he'd talked about.  There was a pay-phone on the first floor of this house, so he and I were able to keep in touch.  Strangely, whenever I was down, depressed, unsure of myself and my resolve to be faithful to Jehovah, Richard would call me out of the blue on that pay-phone—and the exact opposite was also true: when he needed support, I would inevitably call him out of the blue and we'd talk for hours.  This went on for years, actually, whenever he would move to Houston or I back east (which occurred in 1986).  This bizarre connection between us convinced both of us that our meeting was Jehovah's will; that he'd brought us together so that we'd each have the support we needed to change who we really were so as to please Him.

After making the decision to serve Jehovah, there were a couple of loose ends that needed tidying up: my books on the occult, and my box of porn, which amounted to $300-worth of magazines. There were a couple of used-book stores in town that would buy them for resale, but doing that would simply be propagating an immoral lifestyle...so I threw them all in an alley-way dumpster and walked away from them for what I thought would be “for good.”

I continued to progress in my Bible study with Ted and was anxiously anticipating enrolling in the weekly Theocratic Ministry School, where students learn public speaking, reasoning from the Bible, and how to engage in the ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’d been to numerous meetings where the School was conducted during my teenage years, despite early opposition from my family, and knew that joining the school was a privilege, one that heretofore I had not earned. I wasn’t going to bars drinking or hooking up with other guys; I strove to not even think of those things. The only issue I had, that I really struggled with—that would prove to be my undoing—was masturbation.

For me, this unclean habit was the one thing preventing me from proving that I was finally “good enough” to join the School and put my talents to work for the congregation. Remember, for four years I’d been sated with sex and masturbated at least five times a day. This was not a habit that was going to go away as easily as swearing. If I could make it through a day only masturbating once, it was a monumental achievement. This habit was deeply ingrained, but I was resolved to overcome it.

One result of my upbringing was the nagging feeling that I was never good enough to please those in charge of my life, and would never be good enough for anyone, ever. It was this feeling that largely fueled my promiscuity in the early '80s; I wasn’t worth anything, anyway, so why the hell not? 

 

If these feelings were already present prior to my return to “the Truth,” can you imagine how I would feel if I could not overcome this one habit of self-abuse? Is my faith in prayer and holy spirit strong enough to overcome fleshly thoughts and actions? Jehovah knew how badly I wanted this, and would give me the strength I knew I didn’t have—I just couldn’t keep my hands to myself, so-to-speak. 

 

I placed everything I had, all my hope and resolve into this one thing: overcoming masturbation. Everything hinged on proving that I could do this, that I could stop this one habit that served as a constant reminder of the past I so desperately wanted to leave behind.

I fought like hell for weeks, until finally I managed to go two weeks straight with no setbacks. For two weeks, I fought the urge to play with myself, praying constantly, tearfully each time I became aroused until the urge went away, or reading the Bible out loud.  I would even wake up in the middle of the night to find myself already “engaged” and would force myself to stop, praying until I went back to sleep.  It was, quite literally, the most difficult thing I’d ever done, and I was so proud of myself for a change; two weeks for me was synonymous with ascending the peak of Mount Everest! I was anxious to share my success with Ted, and perhaps discuss my desire to finally join the Theocratic Ministry School.  Didn’t this prove that I was able to control my desires and rely on Jehovah to help me overcome sin?

Ted arranged a discussion with me and another elder after the meeting one day, and I remember feeling the best I had in a long time, and really enjoying the meeting. This was my day! Surely they’ll see how hard I’m working to do what’s right and let me join the School, the first step on my way to the baptism pool! 

 

Surely...