Taken by LOVE: the story of my journey

"You pulled me from the grave, wrapped me in Your arms. Jesus, You have won my heart! You save me. You set me free. Forever, Savior You will rescue me. Forgiven. Now I will say: forever, Savior, You have rescued me!"

This is my story. And what a journey it has been. Those closest to me have gone along this journey with me, praying, believing, crying, supporting -and often all at the same time. For a brief moment I paused to question how honest and real I should be in the post. And I decided that it would be an injustice to the work God has done, to the testimony He has given me, to sugarcoat it or go surface level with it. And I thank you in advance, friend, for taking the time to read it all. So here it is:

For most of my life I felt different. I didn't fit in when everyone else seemed to. I had different interests, a different style, a different personality. As a result of various social and environmental factors, but above all, a result of deep hurt and lack of true love and acceptance, when I entered high school I began to realize that I longed for male intimacy and acceptance. Everyone around me and all the feelings inside me told me that I must be gay. Although I always felt a strong innate struggle with this realization, I kept falling into that life.

Then came college. It was a time of great spiritual rebirth in my life because of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and a community of friends that I now consider to be family and among the most cherished people in my life. But it was still there. A brokenness that lurked behind the mask I so often had to wear. At times I forgot about it. But at times, it was suffocating. I had times of victory. Times of defeat. Through it all, I knew God loved me and I knew I was a Christian, but I felt like a fake. I must not love Him enough, or not be "spiritual" enough because this thing has not left me yet. Those were my thoughts. And they ate at me like a cancer. My senior year I met someone. I began to fall in love. And I gave so much of me and my heart to him. But it ended horribly, as is so often the story with homosexual relationships. So I graduated, excited, nervous, and feeling more broken than ever.

This past year, my first year out of college, was a time of self-discovery. A time to choose my path. Who am I? What do I want? What is my identity? This past year was my metaphorical year of "Eat Pray Love". I had moments of "Eat": I began to enjoy the true and simple beauty of LIFE again-food, friends, travel. I had moments of "Pray": I sought God, sought out who He is and who I am in Him. I had great moments of realization and victory, and moments of doubt, fear, and regression. For those friends who have gone on this journey with me, during this time the spiritual battle was so evident, so real, and so strong. I think we all could feel a resolution was on the horizon. Something was about to happen. And something DID happen...

Last Saturday I returned home following 3 weeks out of state for training for my new job. Those 3 weeks were a time when I was away from everyone, away from all voices of pressure, from all agendas, and it allowed me to truly find ME. And I did. I came home knowing who I wanted to be. Knowing that I wanted to make a change. I was done. I was tired of the struggle. Tired of everything. And then it was Sunday. Oh, Sunday...

The church service seemed regular enough. Nothing special or out of the ordinary. But then God showed up at the very end. The Holy Spirit fell upon my dad as he was closing the service, and he began to weep and speak out that there are people here who are not born again and want a life-change, and God is here and waiting. And then, all around me, people began to weep. You could feel the heaviness in the room. And I could feel God impressing upon my heart. So I went forward to the altar. And then my dad touched me and began to pray for me. Before he got 5 words out we had both collapsed into each others' arms and were sobbing. I could feel the Holy Spirit. My dad whispered in my ear: "feel His heartbeat. Open yourself up to Him. Feel His heartbeat just like you feel mine right now. I haven't always been the best father, but He is. Your Father is. You CAN trust Him, Nick. I love you." And it was then that I opened up my heart, for the first time, to allow God to have me-ALL of me. To do with me as He wished. And what He did was beautiful. I literally FELT His arms of love wrap around me. I felt the sweet peace of the Holy Spirit come over me. I felt the Holy Spirit come into me like never before. Every hurt and absence of love from men growing up was CONQUERED in that moment. In that embrace from the Father. And the whole time I kept hearing Him say to me: "I am so jealous for you. I have been for 22 years, following you along this journey. I want you. I want to be your lover. Your savior. Your healer. Your redeemer. I am jealous for you." And I noticed that all around me were people touching me and praying for me-many were sobbing, and I suddenly felt like all my hurt and pain and shame was being passed to them-they could SEE and FEEL all that I had gone through. And then came JOY. We all began to hug and hold each other, and everyone started saying "you are home, Nick. Oh thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus!" I was BORN AGAIN! In that moment, God rescued me! I felt it. And we all felt the shift, from brokenness to redemption. And we celebrated! It was an incredible moment. I felt alive and free and saved for the first time!

I am born again. I am not the same. There IS healing from homosexuality. There IS freedom. And I am experiencing it. God is healing me, renewing my mind, and placing NEW desires in my heart. I am BORN AGAIN! I am SAVED! I am FREE! I cry every time I even say it. I just feel NEW. I feel ALIVE like never before. And I am embarking on such an amazing new relationship with God. So, I experienced "Eat" and "Pray"-but what about the final chapter of my journey: "Love"? That is where I am now. Entering this new chapter of my life, this new journey, and I'm so looking forward to the result of that chapter: meeting the one God has prepared for me - my love, my future wife. Attraversiamo: "let's cross over..."

Sunday, August 15th, 2010: I was TAKEN BY HIS LOVE.

Eat. Pray. Love.

"One woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia." This is the premise of a book that you might not think I'd relate or connect particularly deeply with. au contraire... About two weeks ago my friend Jenni bought me this book, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And let's just say that it is possibly the best book I've EVER read.

On almost every page I laugh, I cry, I reminisce, I FEEL. I love her thought process, her humor, her sense of self and search for...well, for EVERYTHING. I'm glad to know that someone else has been on that search other than me. Eat Pray Love follows the journey of Elizabeth Gilbert, a renowned New York writer who had a successful career, luxurious home, and marriage, but loses it all and begins an around-the-world journey to Italy, India and Indonesia in search of herself, God and other great mysteries of life. Set against the backdrop of 3 different cultures, Elizabeth searches to examine 3 different aspects of her nature: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and the balance of the two in Indonesia.

There are so many things I've learned already from this book, so many things that have made me laugh, tear up, etc. But I'll post only an example or two of each instance:

LAUGH:

"And, oh, the woes that traveling has inflicted on my digestive tract! In Lebanon I became so explosively ill one night that I could only imagine I'd contracted a Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus. In Hungary, I suffered from an entirely different kind of bowel affliction, which changed forever the way I feel about the term "Soviet Bloc". But I have other bodily weaknesses, too. My back gave out on my first day of traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my party to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask of you - I beg of you! - who gets sunburned in Stockholm?! Really!?"

"Believe me, I am fully aware of the irony of going to Italy in pursuit of pleasure during a period of self-imposed celibacy. But I do think abstinence is the right thing for me at the moment. I was especially sure of it the night I could hear my upstairs neighbor having the longest, loudest, flesh-smackingest, bed-thumpingest, back-breakingest session of lovemaking I'd ever heard. This slam-dance went on for well over an hour, complete with hyperventilating sound effects and wild animal calls. I lay there only one floor below, alone and tired in my bed, and all I could think was, 'That sounds like an awful lot of work...'"

CRY:

"What I write in my journal tonight is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I'm scared they will never leave. I say that I don't want to take the drugs anymore, but I'm frightened I will have to. I'm terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, a voice, something from within me arose and whispered to me: "I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. No matter how you fall and fail, I will love you through that. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness, and nothing will ever exhaust me."

So basically I am loving this book. Loving the journey. I can so relate, and I feel like in so many ways I am in the exact same place, the exact same season of life that she was in when she wrote it. Well, EXCEPT for the fact that I'm stuck in central Ohio and she spent 4 months of her journey in Italy eating amazing food and surrounded by ridiculously beautiful people. jealous... But still, I'm loving the journey.

"Late in the midnight hour..."

Last night, at midnight, God moved. He moved in my life, and I needed it. I had been battling spiritual attack (and failing epically), emotional attack, and I'm pretty sure physical attack was imminent. lol. But seriously, it's been a rough couple of days. I'd given up and given in in a lot of ways. I could feel God reaching out His hand, but I refused to take hold of it. I've learned a lot of things lately:

1. I'm more stubborn, prideful, and selfish that I had thought. Talk about a humbling realization.
2. As Casting Crowns put it, it really is a "slow fade". No one crumbles in a day. I felt like I was slowly sinking, and no one was noticing. Death and destruction is a choice; as is life and freedom. "Choose today who you will serve."
3. My emotions can get the better of me. Sometimes I overanalyze. Ha, okay, that's probably the UNDERSTATEMENT of the century. I always overanalyze. And I've learned that sometimes things are not as big as they seem. Somethings aren't always what they seem.

There's a song that I first heard at the Urbana Student Missions Conference in 2006 (oh, Urbana. Love you). We sang it on December 31st as we counted down to the new year. The chorus went like this: "Late in the midnight hour, God's gonna turn it around. He's gonna work in your favor." I've heard so many stories of how God woke people up in the middle of the night and spoke to them and it was a powerful, changing moment. And it finally happened to me. Last night, late in the midnight hour, God woke me up. Actually, He woke me up SEVERAL times. I'd come to the end of the road that night before I went to bed. I was feeling far from God, alone, and empty. Each time God woke me up, I could feel Him in the room. I could hear Him saying, "He I am. I'm still here. Come to me. You must take the first step." After refuting that I actually was woken up by the Holy Spirit multiple times and heard that message in my spirit, I finally was woken up one more time around 3:00AM. And I looked at my phone and saw that I had a voicemail. It was from my best friend Ty. I had been emotionally raw lately, and I had some hurt feelings because of Ty that weren't fully warranted. And I really needed my best friend. I really needed my brother to be there for me. And he was. We hadn't talked in days, and that voicemail was the first time I'd heard from him. For some reason, that voicemail was the culmination of everything God had been doing that night, and when I heard his voice and him saying how much he cared for me, was grateful for me, and was so glad that I am his friend and brother who would always be there in the hard times -I just broke. In that moment I surrendered to God. And I could literally feel a weight lift. A peace, a joy, and a renewed sense of life came over me. It was beautiful.

I'm trading this ashes for beauty. Darkness for light. Hallelujah. Late in the midnight hour...