On the night of Nov. 20, 2001, a
conversation held over Instant Messenger changed our lives forever. Our
12-year-old son messaged me in my office from the computer in his bedroom.
Ryan says: can i tell u
something
Mom says: Yes I am listening
Ryan says: well i don't know how to
say this really but, well......, i can't keep lying to you about myself. I have
been hiding this for too long and i sorta have to tell u now. By now u probably
have an idea of what i am about to say.
Ryan says: I am gay
Ryan says: i can't believe i just
told you
Mom says: Are you joking?
Ryan says: no
Ryan says: i thought you would
understand because of uncle don
Mom says: of course I
would
Mom says: but what
makes you think you are?
Ryan says: i know i am
Ryan says: i don't like
hannah
Ryan says: it's
just a cover-up
Mom says: but that
doesn't make you gay...
Ryan says: i
know
Ryan says: but u don't understand
Ryan
says: i am gay
Mom says: tell me
more
Ryan says: it's just the way i am and it's something i
know
Ryan says: u r not a lesbian and u know that. it is the
same thing
Mom says: what do you mean?
Ryan says: i am just gay
Ryan says: i
am that
Mom says: I love you no matter what
Ryan says: i am white not black
Ryan
says: i know
Ryan says: i am a boy not a
girl
Ryan says: i am attracted to boys not
girls
Ryan says: u know that about yourself and i know
this
Mom says: what about what God thinks about acting on these
desires?
Ryan says: i know
Mom says: thank you for telling me
Ryan says: and i am very confused about that right
now
Mom says: I love you more for being honest
Ryan says: i know
Ryan says:
thanx
We were completely shocked. Not that we didn't know and love gay people; my
only brother had come out to us several years before, and we adored him. But
Ryan? He was unafraid of anything, tough as nails and all boy. We had
not seen this coming, and the emotion that overwhelmed us, kept us awake at
night and, sadly, influenced all our reactions over the next six years was
fear.
We said all the things that we thought loving Christian parents who
believed the Bible, the Word of God, should say:
We love you. We will always love you. And this is hard.
Really hard. But we know what God says about this, so you are going to
have to make some really difficult choices.
We love you. We couldn't love you more. But there are other men who have
faced this same struggle, and God has worked in them to change their desires.
We'll get you their books; you can listen to their testimonies. And we will
trust God with this.
We love you. We are so glad you are our son. But you are young, and
your sexual orientation is still developing. The feelings you've had for other
guys don't make you gay. So please don't tell anyone that you are gay.
You don't know who you are yet. Your identity is not that you are gay; it is
that you are a child of God.
We love you. Nothing will change that. But if you are going to follow
Jesus, holiness is your only option. You are going to have to choose to follow
Jesus, no matter what. And since you know what the Bible says, and since you
want to follow God, embracing your sexuality is not an
option.
We thought we understood the magnitude of the sacrifice that we -- and God
-- were asking for. And this sacrifice, we knew, would lead to an abundant life,
perfect peace and eternal rewards. Ryan had always felt intensely drawn to
spiritual things; He desired to please God above all else. So, for the first six
years, he tried to choose Jesus. Like so many others before him, he pleaded with
God to help him be attracted to girls. He memorized Scripture, met with his
youth pastor weekly, enthusiastically participated in all the church youth group
events and Bible Studies and got baptized. He read all the books that claimed to
know where his gay feelings came from, dove into counseling to further discover
the whys of his unwanted attraction to other guys, worked through painful
conflict resolution with my husband and me and built strong friendships with
other guys -- straight guys -- just like the reparative therapy experts advised.
He even came out to his entire youth group, giving his testimony of how God had
rescued him from the traps of the enemy, and sharing, by memory, verse after
verse that God had used to draw Ryan to Him.
But nothing changed. God didn't answer his prayer, or ours, though we were
all believing with faith that the God of the Universe, the God for whom
nothing is impossible, could easily make Ryan straight. But He did
not.
Though our hearts may have been good (we truly thought what we were doing
was loving), we did not even give Ryan a chance to wrestle with God, to figure
out what he believed God was telling him through scripture about his
sexuality. We had believed firmly in giving each of our four children the space
to question Christianity, to decide for themselves if they wanted to follow
Jesus, to truly own their own faith. But we were too afraid to give
Ryan that room when it came to his sexuality, for fear that he'd make the wrong
choice.
Basically, we told our son that he had to choose between Jesus and his
sexuality. We forced him to make a choice between God and being a sexual person.
Choosing God, practically, meant living a lifetime condemned to being alone. He
would never have the chance to fall in love, have his first kiss, hold hands,
share intimacy and companionship or experience romance.
And so, just before his 18th birthday, Ryan, depressed, suicidal,
disillusioned and convinced that he would never be able to be loved by God, made
a new choice. He decided to throw out his Bible and his faith at the same time
and try searching for what he desperately wanted -- peace -- another way. And
the way he chose to try first was drugs.
We had unintentionally taught Ryan to hate his sexuality. And since
sexuality cannot be separated from the self, we had taught Ryan to hate himself.
So as he began to use drugs, he did so with a recklessness and a lack of caution
for his own safety that was alarming to everyone who knew him.
Suddenly our fear of Ryan someday having a boyfriend (a possibility that
honestly terrified me) seemed trivial in contrast to our fear of Ryan's death,
especially in light of his recent rejection of Christianity and his mounting
anger at God.
Ryan started with weed and beer, but in six short months was using cocaine,
crack and heroin. He was hooked from the beginning, and his self-loathing and
rage at God only fueled his addiction. Shortly thereafter, we lost contact with
him. For the next year and a half, we didn't know where he was or even if he was
dead or alive. And during that horrific time, God had our full attention. We
stopped praying for Ryan to become straight. We started praying for him to know
that God loved him. We stopped praying for him to never have a boyfriend. We
started praying that someday we might actually get to know his boyfriend. We
even stopped praying for him to come home to us; we only wanted him to come home
to God.
By the time our son called us, after 18 long months of silence, God had
completely changed our perspective. Because Ryan had done some pretty terrible
things while using drugs, the first thing he asked me was this:
Do you think you can ever forgive me? (I told him of course, he
was already forgiven. He had always been forgiven.)
Do you think you could ever love me again? (I told him that we had
never stopped loving him, not for one second. We loved him then more than we had
ever loved him.)
Do you think you could ever love me with a boyfriend? (Crying, I
told him that we could love him with 15 boyfriends. We just wanted him back in
our lives. We just wanted to have a relationship with him again... and
with his boyfriend.)
And a new journey was begun, one of healing, restoration, open
communication and grace. Lots of grace. And God was present every step
of the way, leading and guiding us, gently reminding us simply to love our son
and leave the rest up to Him.
Over the next 10 months, we learned to truly love our son. Period. No buts.
No conditions. Just because he breathes. We learned to love whomever our son
loved. And it was easy. What I had been so afraid of became a blessing. The
journey wasn't without mistakes, but we had grace for each other, and the
language of apology and forgiveness became a natural part of our relationship.
As our son pursued recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, we pursued him. God
taught us how to love him, to rejoice over him, to be proud of the man he was
becoming. We were all healing, and most importantly, Ryan began to think that if
we could forgive him and love him, then maybe God could, too.
And then Ryan made the classic mistake of a recovering addict: He got back
together with his old friends, his using friends. And one evening that was
supposed to simply be a night at the movies turned out to be the first time he
had shot up in 10 months -- and the last time. Ryan died on July 16, 2009. And
we lost the ability to love our gay son, because we no longer had a gay son.
What we had wished for, prayed for, hoped for -- that we would not have
a gay son -- came true. But not at all in the way we had envisioned.
Now, when I think back on the fear that governed all my reactions during
those first six years after Ryan told us he was gay, I cringe as I realize how
foolish I was. I was afraid of all the wrong things. And I grieve, not only for
my oldest son, whom I will miss every day for the rest of my life, but for the
mistakes I made. I grieve for what could have been, had we been walking by
faith instead of by fear. Now, whenever Rob and I join our gay
friends for an evening, I think about how much I would love to be visiting with
Ryan and his partner over dinner. But instead, we visit Ryan's gravestone. We
celebrate anniversaries: the would-have-been birthdays and the unforgettable day
of his death. We wear orange, his color. We hoard memories: pictures, clothing
he wore, handwritten notes, lists of things he loved, tokens of his passions,
recollections of the funny songs he invented, his Curious George and baseball
blankey, anything, really, that reminds us of our beautiful boy, for that is all
we have left, and there will be no new memories. We rejoice in our adult
children, and in our growing family as they marry, but we ache for the one of
our "gang of four" who is missing. We mark life by the days B.C. (before coma)
and A.D. (after death), because we are different people now; our life was
irrevocably changed in a million ways by his death. We treasure friendships with
others who "get it" because they, too, have lost a child.
We weep. We seek Heaven for grace and mercy and redemption as we try not to
get better but to be better. And we pray that God can somehow
use our story to help other parents learn to truly love their children. Just
because they breathe.
This piece was originally written on Dec. 5, 2012, and was posted
on
JustBecauseHeBreathes.com on Jan. 14, 2013, which would have been
Ryan's 24th birthday.
An extended version of this piece was presented at the final Exodus
Conference in Irvine, Calif., on June 20, 2013, and can be seen here.
