JENNIFER THORNE
“I pursued growth in my christian faith, and it began to change me and the way I viewed life.”
I didn't know how to relate to other women, and I didn't know how to relate to men, either. Growing up I’d had no close friends who were girls. I was a tomboy and played with the boys. So, it felt as though I had gone from having no relational connections with women whatsoever to having sexual relationships with them. I felt that men were unsafe, and I couldn’t connect with them emotionally.
I started living a homosexual lifestyle when I was a teenager, and I was sexually promiscuous. When I was 24, I became close friends with a woman who was unwilling to get sexually involved with me because I did not share her Christian faith. I was miserable and in an emotional downward spiral. Thankfully, some family members offered me some much-needed unconditional love and were there for me to help answer my questions.
My cousin gave me a book asserting the reality of God, and it spoke deeply to me personally. I prayed to become a Christian, but secretly my motivation was to coerce this woman to have a sexual relationship with me. After I did become a Christian, she had no more reservations about being with me, and we lived together as if we were married for two years.
I pursued growth in my Christian faith, and it began to change me and the way I viewed life. I reached a point where I felt that it wasn’t healthy for me to pursue homosexual relationships anymore. So eventually, my girlfriend and I broke up.
I began pursuing relationships with women who were safe and who accepted me where I was, even with my complete lack of understanding of how to relate appropriately to women. They helped me learn how to have real, healthy relationships. Now I love the world of women; it's my favorite place to be. I love to lead, teach and encourage women, and my relationships are extremely different from before. Today, I no longer experience same-sex attraction at all.
Two years after breaking up with my girlfriend, I married my husband. We have been married now for 35 years. We have five children together, and the youngest is 18.