I knew this wasn’t what God had for me, but I didn’t care. Here I was again, sleeping with my best friend who had somehow secretly become my girlfriend. I didn’t know how we had gotten here or where we were going, but as I would tell God each time He convicted my heart, I really didn’t care. At least someone finally loved me.

I was raised in church by two loving parents and had loved Jesus since I was a little girl. I knew I had heard Him call me into ministry at 15 years old and tell me I would see revival. Even though I believed Him, I couldn’t escape the lie that I wasn’t lovable. Rejection ruled my life as an unrelenting symphony of lies, as I attempted every which way to gain acceptance.

So when my best friend and I went on a trip our senior year of high school and innocently ended up sharing a bed, the enemy stepped right in to twist it. The more it progressed, the more I pushed away the conviction in my heart and believed finally someone loved me, even if it was a same-sex relationship.

The shame and the thrill were simultaneously overwhelming. God would call to me as I laid in her bed awake. I would push Him away in the night but the next day preach His name as a youth leader and a ministry student.

Inside I felt empty, not fulfilled like I had hoped. Darkness overtook me even after the relationship ended. I spiraled into depression and anxiety. I thought I had escaped the lie but I was alone, stuck, hopeless, and purposeless. I had lost track of who I was and didn’t like who I had somehow become. A spirit of death and suicide taunted me to just die.

But God was chasing down my heart. Slowly, I started to encounter God’s love in a new way and I was coming alive again. I moved to Portland and determined to start over, pretend this never happened, pursue Jesus, and never look back.

But I couldn’t outrun my secrets and my brokenness. And, same-sex attraction, depression, and rejection followed me. This time though, I encountered a community of people alive in the Holy Spirit, who started to walk with me through freedom and learning to be vulnerable. I got freedom in so many areas, but when God asked to walk with me through the same-sex attraction, I ran the other way into a masturbation and pornography addiction. I couldn’t fathom telling anyone ever, the shame was so intense. I was a leader at my church, a good Christian girl but inside tormented by shame and addiction.

I’ll never forget the Sunday in 2017 when God gave me a clear opportunity to come clean. I found myself at the altar for prayer, when my friend leaned down in my ear and said, “pornography, you have to go, in Jesus name.” I was confronted with a choice; keep lying and living a façade or tell the truth, risk the possibility of losing everything but be free. I chose to come clean, exhausted from the weight of shame and lies. I told the whole truth. And in the kindness of God, instead of being met with judgment, I was met with real love that walked beside me each step of the journey to finally be free and learn to know and embrace the real me—the fierce, feminine, joyful, alive, pure, forgiven, accepted, and deeply loved daughter!

Her Voice MVMT: hervoicemvmt.com