Redemption.
My entire life, I had always felt different. I felt like a puzzle piece that did not belong to the bigger picture.
I struggled with my identity, and belonging and often felt different. In middle and high school, I remember not fitting into a particular group. We all know of the typical “cliques” we experience trying to fit in at school. By the time I got to college, I was lost and confused about why my experiences did not align with my peers. Trying to learn more about myself and my identity, I turned to what I thought was the answer- men.
I found myself with more men than I could count. If I’m being honest, I just wanted to see if I could actually “feel” something. Attraction to men was non-existent, and being with a man felt like a task on a to-do list.
I came out of the closet as a lesbian in 2018.
After that, my life went downhill. Quickly.
Now, having a “label” and a “community” did absolutely nothing for the emptiness I woke up to every day. I still felt this massive void.
My mental health ruined me, I was addicted to being high, constantly abusing drugs and alcohol, and on the brink of suicide. I lost my mind.
No label or community could rescue me from my torment.
When you're in the pit, there is only one person who can get you out of it.
GOD.
I was in a four-year relationship, engaged to another woman, when I met Jesus in my living room. The loneliness, emptiness, and feelings of worthlessness surrounded me. Voices of darkness and suicide wrapped my mind. I was suffocating.
I had two options.
I could end it all.
If God was real, I’d beg him to save me.
Either way was a win in my book.
SPOILER: When you call upon the Lord and seek Him, He will answer you. He will draw near to you. Where the presence of the Lord is, there is freedom. Darkness could not withstand the holiness of Christ. Immediately, I knew I was forever changed.
I wrestled with being a lesbian and being a follower of Christ.
I left the drugs and I left the drinking, not a problem. But to leave my soon-to-be wife? To leave who I thought I was? To leave my life? This life I had built for the past five years? This was MY LIFE, this was who I WAS.
Jesus tells his followers in Matthew 16: 24-26,
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
This marked the first time I felt conviction.
I was at war with myself and the will of God.
My partner and I set clear boundaries and stuck to them. Doing everything to try and make it work. But I was wrestling with God at all fronts and I was not winning. I had to make a choice.
It was her or God. and I chose God.
I could not have two masters. I needed to pick ONE. We are either rejecting Christ or accepting him. If Jesus died on the cross to pay for my sin so that I could be saved, then the least I could do is leave my life for him.
I ended my relationship to follow Jesus. I held onto the Word of God and it was the only thing that kept me stable when my life felt like it was falling apart. Grieving who I once was and what I thought my life would look like. But MAN, I would do it a thousand times again.
God taught me about my identity.
God adopted me and called me HIS.
God has taught me what REAL love is.
I came out again in 2024, this time out of a baptism tank.
Made New.
Transformed by His love, grace and mercy.
I am redeemed.
Photo taken by Mearon Mesfin instagram: @whatmearonsees
