Christ_empowered
Member
- Oct 23, 2010
- 14,242
- 10,722
I'll spare you all the backstory. Odds are very good that if you're reading this, you've read my other posts and know enough background information without me running through it again. OK. And, we're off:
I'm 32 and I think I've only recently matured to the point where I am not a boy or man-child. I don't think it was all my fault; the socially isolated, brain damaged, stigmatized people don't grow up on schedule. Happens. But, the world is (of course) ridiculously cruel.
"he'll never become a man;" "he ain't no man;" "what kinda man would he be, anyway?;" "they took his manhood!," etc. etc. etc.
Welcome to life as a former sodomite (etc.), washed+made clean, in The Bible Belt, USA ("1,000 miles wide, 1 inch deep, y'all!"). Probably a lot like the rest of the country at this point, just with more BBQ, Baptist churches, and big trucks.
I shouldn't be so sensitive, but even my parents were in on it for a while. I hear this stuff, and it takes me back to being a kid and teenager, when my mother would yell things like that me. Granted, that was because of problems in her own life, but still: it almost feels like a prophecy has been fulfilled or something. ((shudder))
I didn't care about manliness or...anything real, solid, true, etc. when I was an unbeliever. Too smart for my own good, hyped up on psychobabble and relativism (and, yes: uppers and downers, too). I didn't get bona fide saved until 3 years 11 months ago, and I've been changing, both inside and out, ever since. God is good!
My dad's better to me now than when I was a kid+teenager. I think maybe my parents just didn't know how to deal with kids+teenagers. Now that I'm much more grown up and everything, we get along quite well, all things considered. That's a --huge-- blessing from on high.
This is difficult. I'm now 32, and I realize now that my life was worse than wasted. I was sinful, yes, and I was also destroyed, through and through, by satan and the world. Jesus pulled me out of the enemy's clutches, and here I am, trying to figure out how to fully grow up, mature, and, yes, be masculine enough to be regarded as a man, if not here in this zipcode, then somewhere, anywhere else.
I don't have the hormonal problems and myriad other physical problems I had before. The Lord has made me remarkably, astonishingly, miraculously...normal. Imagine that. As a result, I am also no longer flamboyantly, in your face homogay, nor do I have any gender problems. One thing I can't stand about the mental health people who did some terrible things to me back in the day: they ignored all the obvious physical problems, and chose instead to focus on their watered down, neo-Freudian, psychobabble in explaining everything about me.
I've rambled. I'm asking for prayer because I need to grow up a bit more and more than likely toughen up a bit, too. I'm not looking to be alpha male or top dawg, but I do want to be conventionally manly enough to have a life in which I'm not constantly regarded as "too feminine," too soft, too (...). You get the idea.
Along the same lines, I need prayer for overall maturation. I tend to be self-indulgent, kinda slack, a little bit gluttonous. To be fair, I had all kinds of problems and brain damage, etc., and my recovery--which is a miracle--hasn't been going on for that long. "Recovery" from all that--that's what the mental health people call it; I don't have a better word, so I'll run with it--is a process.
OK. I'm finished now. Thank you for your prayers.
I'm 32 and I think I've only recently matured to the point where I am not a boy or man-child. I don't think it was all my fault; the socially isolated, brain damaged, stigmatized people don't grow up on schedule. Happens. But, the world is (of course) ridiculously cruel.
"he'll never become a man;" "he ain't no man;" "what kinda man would he be, anyway?;" "they took his manhood!," etc. etc. etc.
Welcome to life as a former sodomite (etc.), washed+made clean, in The Bible Belt, USA ("1,000 miles wide, 1 inch deep, y'all!"). Probably a lot like the rest of the country at this point, just with more BBQ, Baptist churches, and big trucks.
I shouldn't be so sensitive, but even my parents were in on it for a while. I hear this stuff, and it takes me back to being a kid and teenager, when my mother would yell things like that me. Granted, that was because of problems in her own life, but still: it almost feels like a prophecy has been fulfilled or something. ((shudder))
I didn't care about manliness or...anything real, solid, true, etc. when I was an unbeliever. Too smart for my own good, hyped up on psychobabble and relativism (and, yes: uppers and downers, too). I didn't get bona fide saved until 3 years 11 months ago, and I've been changing, both inside and out, ever since. God is good!
My dad's better to me now than when I was a kid+teenager. I think maybe my parents just didn't know how to deal with kids+teenagers. Now that I'm much more grown up and everything, we get along quite well, all things considered. That's a --huge-- blessing from on high.
This is difficult. I'm now 32, and I realize now that my life was worse than wasted. I was sinful, yes, and I was also destroyed, through and through, by satan and the world. Jesus pulled me out of the enemy's clutches, and here I am, trying to figure out how to fully grow up, mature, and, yes, be masculine enough to be regarded as a man, if not here in this zipcode, then somewhere, anywhere else.
I don't have the hormonal problems and myriad other physical problems I had before. The Lord has made me remarkably, astonishingly, miraculously...normal. Imagine that. As a result, I am also no longer flamboyantly, in your face homogay, nor do I have any gender problems. One thing I can't stand about the mental health people who did some terrible things to me back in the day: they ignored all the obvious physical problems, and chose instead to focus on their watered down, neo-Freudian, psychobabble in explaining everything about me.
I've rambled. I'm asking for prayer because I need to grow up a bit more and more than likely toughen up a bit, too. I'm not looking to be alpha male or top dawg, but I do want to be conventionally manly enough to have a life in which I'm not constantly regarded as "too feminine," too soft, too (...). You get the idea.
Along the same lines, I need prayer for overall maturation. I tend to be self-indulgent, kinda slack, a little bit gluttonous. To be fair, I had all kinds of problems and brain damage, etc., and my recovery--which is a miracle--hasn't been going on for that long. "Recovery" from all that--that's what the mental health people call it; I don't have a better word, so I'll run with it--is a process.
OK. I'm finished now. Thank you for your prayers.
