Returning to the Beginning

A testimony of Deliverance by

Dawn J. Douglas

I don't normally write to people I read about on the internet, especially people who claim to have these great testimonies for God and then when I meet them in person they are not living in the truth of what they spoke. But I felt the sincerity of your testimony and I wanted to share my own with you.  I do not want to solicit you for guidance, I am just sharing with you so that you can include me in your prayers. I don't mean to sound selfish or cynical but I am just that type of straight forward person.

Let me begin at the beginning.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I am the fourth child of a very strong African American mother. My mother was driven and dedicated to provide the best life for her children, three girls and one boy. Unfortunately, my mother became pregnant with my brother before she left high school. Back in that day, it was a shame for a girl to be pregnant and she faced all the ridicule and shame that you can imagine. To add insult to injury my grandmother was an undiagnosed schizophrenic that beat my mother savagely, constantly threatening her life, bringing strangers into the house and creating an atmosphere of perpetual fear.

My mother's pregnancy was the result of a desperate girl trying to get out the house by trapping a very popular man into marrying her. It worked, but not as she intended. My father, a very popular local RnB singer, was an abusive alcoholic who cheated on my mother and was absent from the home due to constant promotion of his records. That left my mother alone to raise a beautiful son and daughter when she was barely out of her teens. However, my mother was a local beauty herself, and it wasn't long before one of my father's treacherous friends moved in on her and once again, seeking to escape, she left him for my father's friend.

My stepfather was every bit as treacherous as my natural father,
with an adulterous spirit, but more than that, a sexual addiction. He abused my mother, tore her down mentally, and refused to get a job claiming that he would never work for the white man. He cheated on her constantly, even bringing women into the house when she was at work. I knew this because I often ditched school by hiding in my bedroom closet. Waiting for her to leave, I thought I would have the house to myself only to find out my stepfather was bringing his girlfriends to our house to have sex with them. I would be stuck in the closet having to listen to them having sex.  I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hated him for hurting my mother and treating her like a dog. To add to her more personal tragedy, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was still a teenager. She had to have a breast removed, which made her marital situation worse. My stepfather made her feel unloved, damaged and unwanted. Instead of sneaking around cheating, he began to do it openly until my mother finally found the strength to file for a divorce. My mother, was driven to success and managed to work her way up the corporate ladder into midlevel management at AT&T so when she filed, she had to pay him alimony even though he was unfaithful to her and she could not get him totally off the premises of our home because as a part of their agreement he was able to retain his office which was our converted garage. After taking my mother through a hell of marriage, now she had to pay him and he could flaunt his girlfriends in her face. It was too much for me. I began to think all men were like my father and my stepfather, just plain old no good.

Through my formative years, my mother instilled two things in me.
One, that you can never depend on a man. Two, that you have to work hard to be a success. Although I was the last child of my natural father (which still remains suspect because he claimed that I was the result of one my mother's adulterous relationship while he was on the road), I did not inherit her natural beauty. I was considered the ugly duckling of the family and my mother, who tended to gravitate towards my oldest sister because she was beautiful (she called her Princess) and popular, did not have the parenting skills to build my self esteem. I was however smarter than my siblings and took an interest in school and reading. I read the book Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown when I was very young and soon became fascinated by the physical beauty of women since this is what seemed to get my mother's love and attention.  I was a devoted daughter, but deep down inside I never felt I had my mother's approval because I was not pretty. In fact, I had horribly messed up teeth which my mother did not invest, although she was financially capable, of getting me orthodontic care which gave me a terrible complex. My teeth were a source of constant ridicule which made me hardly ever smile and when I talked I had the habit of covering my mouth. I blamed her for not investing in me and I became a rebellious teenager constantly at odds with her and my treacherous stepfather.

During that period, I harbored a secret attraction to a childhood friend which resulted in forbidden touching while playing in the privacy of her backyard. My friend was so freaked out at the possibility of her being "that way" that she turned on me and spread a vicious rumor about me (although it was her idea to start playing house in the first place). This was when I was right before I was to start junior high school. I then had encounters with my step sister who was a few years older than me that were also secret and forbidden when we were forced to share the same bed when my stepfather’s children spent the night at our house. We never talked about those encounters in the light of day, but at night we found ourselves right back in the same situation.  It was then that I really began to have questions about my sexuality. But this was in contrast to my beautiful and sexually promiscuous sister who had boys lined up at our front door.  My other sister who was physically marred as a result of a cleft lip also had frequent sexual encounters with older men and developed a deep desire to have children of her own. I believe this was because of the generational curse that passed down through my parents and the way my mother raised us. She was a good provider but emotionally distant from us, so hurt and consumed in her own abusive marriage, that left little time for parenting and attention.

I tried to have boyfriends, but without a real healthy example of what those relationships should be like. I drove most of them away at the first sign of intimate contact. But I went through that stage where girls just want a boy’s attention so I dabbled in sex with a boy or two, but none of them were real relationships. I found myself being the girl who would do it but not the girl you date.  That made me feel so terrible inside because I desperately wanted a boy to like me, but he always ended of liking one of my friends but trying to sleep with me because I was easy to get. I was very young when I began doing this so when I got into my later teens I pretty much dismiss the whole idea of sex, because it was unpleasant and having a real boyfriend because I had been so used.

I didn't have my first real sexual encounter with a woman until I was seventeen or eighteen. Because both my sisters were very sexually active and ultimately ended up pregnant before they left high school, my greatest fear became getting pregnant. So even my sexual desire for men became tied up into the negative consequence of intercourse which left me terrified. Once my sisters got pregnant before leaving high school it seemed as if my mother saw herself in them, and she did not love them as much. But because I did not disappoint her that way, when I developed a closer bond which I cherished, but also developed an intense fear of getting pregnant which translated into not having sexual intercourse with a man. Once my sisters got pregnant my mother put them out of the house and we finally had a chance to have a real relationship. I cherished that and I sought to everything to win her approval to include not getting pregnant.

But my stepfather kept intimating that because I was a tomboy I must be a dyke and that seemed to garner her disapproval. I spent the rest of my teenage years trying to girly up for my mother, but those forbidden encounters with women never left my mind. It was horrible mental struggle because although the encounters were forbidden I couldn’t deny how they made me feel, while all my encounters with boys were awkward and embarrassing and made me feel like trash. One summer, I had to get all my hair cut off due to chlorine damage and that was probably my turning point. Girls started thinking I was a "cute boy" and because I was a tomboy who was very good in basketball, it was easy for me to pass as a boy. So I started passing as a boy in events that were away from my home and family. At summer camp when I was about fourteen I passed for a boy until I was discovered and then ridiculed mercilessly and it was told to my mother what I had done.  She started treating me different and I knew I was never going to be who she wanted me to be so I stopped trying to “girly” up and just became a punk rebel teenager with a bad attitude, doing things to deliberately embarrass her.

But when I was a junior in high school, I met the boy of my dreams.
We meshed intellectually and emotionally. He opened a whole new world to me filled with art, music and exploration. But that relationship was more of an intense friendship than a boyfriend girlfriend type thing even though I wanted it to be more. I could not generate the attraction from him that I needed to validate myself as a woman. I believe if he had been attracted to me sexually, my life would have taken a different direction. I had never felt love like that for a man in my entire life and all I wanted was to be with him every second of the day. We did everything that people in relationship did, moonlit walks, dinner, movies, long drives, long conversations – we connected on so many levels. I even got birth control pills anticipating that this would be the boy that I would have a healthy sexual relationship with. I even concluded that all my adolescent encounters I attributed to just that, sexual confusion that all kids face. But at this pivotal point in my life I needed the affirmation of a man who desired me, I thought he would be the one. Unfortunately, and I didn't realize this until years later, the boy I loved so dearly was actually gay. He was using me, just as I was using him, to prove to the world that we were not, but while I was willing to dismiss my feelings for women as fleeting, he discovered that he couldn’t shake his desire for men. It wasn't my fault he wasn't attracted to me, but the damage was done.

During this time a friend invited me to church. Brokenhearted and devastated I consented. He only invited me to church however to make another girl jealous. My friend was severely overweight and the girl he liked wouldn't give him the time of day because she was ashamed of his size. But he had been my friend since childhood and I thought it would be a good idea. I went with one motive, but when the preacher started preaching about Christ, hell and eternal life, I was convicted. After a few services of hearing that I knew I wanted Christ in my life.  But no one knew of my secret desire for women. Once I got in the church environment I faced a whole new set of pressures. They wanted me to dress a certain way, get rid of all my music, and conform to the standard of holiness they were teaching. I probably would have eventually, but my natural inclination to rebel took over.  In addition, I met a preacher who acted like he liked me. I was so naive I thought a man of God would be the perfect person for me to spend time with and learn about the Bible. So he started taking me out. It started off spiritual but eventually he ended up trying to sleep with me. That damaged me.

I was really trying to live saved. I had gotten rid of all my music, I started praying and reading the Bible. I faithfully attended church. My mother even said she noticed the change but thought I was in a cult. I felt different, new and clean on the inside. I started thing that maybe God had the power to take away the feelings I had for women and that he brought this preacher into my life to be my husband. Then this jack leg preacher seduced one night at the beach and confessed that he only to try to sleep with me. What's worse he tried to force himself on me and I ended up feeling like a whore. So I left the church, and joined the military, disillusioned and bitter. My pastor told me not to join the military, but I couldn’t confess to him that I had been with one of his ministers so I left without informing anyone.  At that point, I believed no man could be truly attracted to me both physically and socially, so I actively sought to be with women.

I joined the military, a hot bed of homosexual activity where closeted gays and lesbians were known as "family."
I had my first encounter as I said, when I was eighteen years old with a woman who was 26. It felt liberating. She taught me to love my own body. She made me feel beautiful and special. She brought me into a place of personal intimacy that I had never experienced and I knew that it was wrong, but I felt for the first time I was truly being "me."  But it was scary too, because I could literally feel that a “spirit” was coming over me. I felt heaviness and every time we were together it felt like the air was so thick that sometimes I couldn’t breathe. I felt a presence around me that was dark and before long, I felt that presence in me. 

After that relationship ended I sought after the romantic notion of finding the perfect woman for me. I didn't care about the social implications; I just wanted to be loved. But I found out very quickly that most lesbian women have their own baggage. What I met were hurt women who were trying to be with other hurt women, who were constantly hurting each other. I had sex with many women but I didn't find that intimacy until I met one woman who had been a former close friend. This relationship defined itself into a complete obsession. Unfortunately, it was not a healthy obsession and when that woman betrayed me it drove me to violence. Soon after I became an abuser of women just like my father. I became very promiscuous with women and I used superficial relationships with men to cover up my relationships with women. I lived that way until I met one special woman.

She was seven years my junior and I thought of her as pure and innocent. We dated for about a year and I was sure I had found the perfect woman for me. That was until we were called to Operation Desert Storm. In that life threatening situation I risked everything to find her and be with her throughout the conflict. My entire experience in the war was built around looking for her where ever we were encamped and being with her whenever I could. That was the most intense relationship I've ever experienced in my life. We both decided during Desert Storm that we would leave the military and start a life with each other.

The day we made that decision, I mean literally after we had the conversation, I was walking back to my room and I heard God speak to me. He said very plainly, "Come out from among them and be separate." I freaked out because I heard God's voice speaking as if a man was speaking and there was no one around. Of course before the war everyone was “getting religion.” But, me, I figured if I was going to be killed, I might as well be happy with the one person I loved. So I was shaken that divine voice came after the war, after I spent the whole time sinning as much as I possibly could. It was so shaking that I told my girlfriend, “I heard God speak to me and I think he wants me to leave you.” She freaked out. In retrospect, I can understand how insane that must have sounded, but I was so serious that she had to know something happened.  I spent the entire war pursuing her, then on the very last day when we were about to return home I drop this bomb on her.  She was hurt and devastated. She didn’t know what to do. There was no other woman, no incident, she found herself in competition with God for my affection and she knew she didn’t know how to fight that battle. But I knew God spoke to me, just like Abraham, when he told him to leave his father’s house and go to a land that he would show him. The impression that moment made in my spirit was undeniable. But my girlfriend wasn’t about to give up without a fight and I still didn’t know what it all meant.  When we returned from the war, I tried to still be with her, but it was not the same. We argued and fought most of the time. One night when I was in her room, and I woke up screaming in terror. I scared her and myself, and I realized that God was not going to let me go that easy. It was then I decided that God’s call on my life had to be answered if I was ever going to find any peace.

So I left her just like that. I told her I had to make a choice between her and God, and I picked God. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what life was going to be like in the church for a lesbian. I picked a Pentecostal Church to go to because it was the one where I first felt the Spirit and gave my life to Christ years before. But I was living in a small town in the Midwest and the ideals of holiness were reflective of that small town mentality. They were so focused on what I looked like and how I dressed. But I wanted to know more about the voice that called me so clearly. I wanted to know Christ and I felt like I was being placed back into that restrictive conformity that eventually forced me out of the church when I was younger. I got so discouraged, that I decided that I could know God by reading the Bible and not going to church at all. After all God called me out when I wasn’t even in church. But soon after I made that decision, I met a guy that invited me to a church that had a female pastor. I didn’t even think that was right because I knew enough about the Bible to know that women are suppose to be silent in the church and not suppose to lead men, so I was very skeptical.

When I heard the woman preach on sin and she began to call out lesbianism I felt the power of the Holy Spirit confirming that it was the place I needed to be. The pastor preached so, until I felt for the first time, how God viewed the sin of homosexuality and I truly felt repentant for the life I lived. I felt guilty, but more than that, I saw my life through God’s eyes. Not just because of lesbianism, but because I lived in rebellion to God and rejected the gift of His Son. I felt as convicted about smoking and drinking as I did about my lesbianism. The woman preached on sin but I didn’t think she was singling out homosexuality as the worst of the worst sin, she made me realize that all sin offends God.  She also preached on a Savior that promised to save me from my sins. I thought God had turned his back on me because I decided to leave the church after being with one of his minister, but at that point I realized God called me home back to Him because He wanted ME. I was worth something to Him.

I put my trust in Christ and I gave my life to Him. I truly got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. I did not immediately become committed to church however, that was a process. I also discovered not everyone had a heart for Jesus who was in the church. I felt that the only way I was going to be truly free is that if I publicly confessed that I was a lesbian and that God saved and delivered me. I did not want to let the sins of my past life hold me captive in shame.  The church believed in open confession and I heard people confess in testimony service that they were adulterers, liars, thieves, murders and I felt like I should be free among the people of God to confess my sin of homosexuality. Once I openly confessed this out of my mouth I thought by some magic power all my same sex attractions would be gone and I would live a life of blissful holiness. All this did really was put me in the devil’s crosshairs.

Once I confessed openly two things happened: Women in the church began to avoid hugging me as if lesbianism was contagious. I felt such a deep sense of rejection. Fortunately for me though, I had a real encounter with God, so their reaction to me did not dissuade me from seeking to know Him. The second thing that happened was that closeted women started coming after me. One woman who no one would have ever suspected as being a lesbian methodically broke me down using all kinds of spiritual traps, just like the male minister had. I didn’t see it coming because I never thought this minister, this holy woman, would ever try to come at me in that way. Then when I finally slept with her not because I wanted to but because I felt sorry for her, she made it seem like I seduced her. It was at that point I began to think church was full of hypocrites and I would be better off returning to my lifestyle instead of going through the pain of being in an organization that did not know how to deal with me. What I should have done was told my pastor what was going on, but I was still too young in the Lord to approach leadership.  However, my pastor was a real woman of God and she challenged me to become the woman God intended me to be. She preached me up from the guilt I experience from that encounter and actively started trying to help me because a woman of God. I honestly didn’t know how to be one. In the course I realized that deliverance comes in stages. I stopped having lesbian sex, but that did not end my physical attraction to women.

As my pastor preached to my soul, she also encouraged me to work on my outer man.  I began to experience another stage of my deliverance.  She made me do fashion shows, she taught me how to dress, she labored with me in prayer. She taught me to know God for myself. She loved me unconditionally. She showed me Christ and despite the negative experiences I had in the church, I clung to the sincere people who really were saved. Through her tutelage I began to like the woman I saw in the mirror. I began to embrace her and to know her. I was beginning the healing process of restoring my fractured gender identification and through spiritual healing I came to know who Christ made me as a woman and I began to love being a woman.  

God began to place saved women in my life that taught me how to be a woman and how to have godly friendships with women. These women didn’t know anything about lesbianism, but they allowed me to open up and tell of my experiences without judging me or worse without confiding their secret desires to be with women. These women accepted that I had a past, but they believed that God could change me and they didn’t treat me any different from any other woman. They started to protect me from women that didn’t seem to have the right motives and to teach me how to interact with other women. I trusted them enough to confess my insecurities about my looks and they began to encourage me wear make up, to pick out flattering clothes and to portray myself as a confident feminine woman. God began to take me through His school of deliverance by allowing people and situations to shape me into who he wanted me to be. By developing relationships with women outside of sexual context, I was delivered from the emotional bondage of lesbianism. It is that emotional tie that keeps women, sexually interested. Once I began to find that intimacy that I desired in Christ, I found that I didn’t need to pour my inner self into another woman and I could have satisfying relationships with women that didn’t have anything to do with sexual attraction.

I also met a man. I knew him in the army and he was a nice guy. He too was struggling with homosexuality. We became friends in the church because we could identify with each other’s struggles. I believed he wanted to be delivered like I wanted to be delivered. He claimed he was delivered and he began to minister openly and boldly about his deliverance. I fell in love with the idea of two delivered homosexuals coming together with a powerful testimony witnessing the power of Christ. So after we had known each other for two years, he asked me to marry him and I reluctantly said yes. As I said, I was in love with the idea, not so much the man. I found out that he and I were on two differently planes. He was marrying me to validate that he was no longer a homosexual to the world. But in our home, he could not have sex with me. He was not sexually attracted to me. He was tied up into masturbation and pornography. I found out also that he lied to me. He was still having sexual relationships with other men right in the church, which made me angry and bitter. I felt betrayed and trapped in marriage.

Because I was serious about my relationship with God and I had faith to believe that God could deliver, I stayed married to him for nine years. I tried everything to help him walk in deliverance. I tried everything to make myself sexually attractive to him. I faced public ridicule once it became known that we had not consummated our marriage. I wanted to divorce him after the first year, but God would not allow me to do that. I felt the humiliation of trying to have sex, engage in the foreplay and be rejected because of the lack of physical response from husband. He tried to romantic things which would make me think that he was ready to have a sexual relationship, but once those candlelit dinners were over, he would go to sleep, leaving me sexually frustrated and angry. But through the process of the marriage God began to work on me on how I viewed men. He began to teach me compassion, warmth and trust. He began to show me the power a woman can have on a man to be a help meet.  He began to give me daily instruction on walking in the fruit of the spirit by connecting me to a broken man that needed constant love, care, patience, longsuffering, faith, meekness, temperance and gentleness. Through every battle I faced in marriage God taught me in the worst of my situations what it means to love someone that despitefully uses you and to suffer for the sake of Christ. He taught me how to live holy in an atmosphere where sin is trying to press in. I learned to fast, to anoint, to speak faith, to walk in faith in the midst of a negative situation. There were times when my husband was on the brink of his breakthrough, but it would take his own faith to complete the act, which despite all of my efforts, he simply could not embrace.

In the natural, it seemed like once again, I found myself at the losing end of a relationship and that despite all my sincere efforts to be delivered, I was never going to really be truly free.  But it was the greatest spiritual lesson that I have every encountered and it caused me to grow spiritually in leaps and bounds. However, after years and years of sexual frustration, betrayal and embarrassment, I became faint. In my hurt, I decided I would try to see if I could ever go back to be with women. I found the girlfriend I left the life for through another friend and discovered she had feelings for me. She was in another state but she happened to come where I was to attend the funeral of a friend. We met at the hotel she was staying in a major city. I didn’t know what would happen; I just knew at that point I was at my crossroad. Either I was going to fully commit my life to Christ despite all the set backs, or I was going to go back to the life I once knew. The opportunity was there, however the desire wasn’t. Right in a hotel room with an ex-lover that I experience the deepest sexual attraction to of all the relationship I had with any women throughout the course of my life, I realized that I was no longer sexually attracted to women. Not her, not any woman. There was absolutely nothing there.  In fact, I ended up ministering to her in the hotel and a year later she gave her life to Christ. God began to complete another portion of my deliverance, completely breaking the physical attraction to women. It wouldn’t have been broken if at the most despairing time in my marriage, I was challenged to tap into what had been suppressed. But with that last root upended, I knew I was free forever.

On the drive back from the hotel, I realized all the years I was saved, I had a plan B in my mind if things didn’t work out. Mentally, I always thought I could go back, but I realized that God had actually worked a supernatural miracle in my life and that he had changed my desires. The frustration I felt from being in a sexless marriage was suppose to drive me back to women, but what it did was made me realize that I wanted to have a healthy sexual relationship with a man in a committed marriage. I started to feel my aversion for having children leave and began to desire a family.  I felt myself changing from the inside to match the change I had made on the outside. A new sense of femininity began to emerge. The years of teaching, prayer, fasting, repentance, reading, worshipping, praising, sacrificing, resisting had finally resulted in deliverance. I went back home and for the first time I realized I was truly delivered without a doubt. I also stop feeling guilty about my husband’s inability to break the bondage from his life. We each had to make our own decision concerning deliverance. I made mine; he would have to make his. Unfortunately, he chose to live in bondage and eventually when he realized I was going to accept nothing less than total freedom reflected in a godly marriage, he felt compelled to divorce me. But even in that I realized that God not only took away my desire for women, but gave me a desire to be in an intimate relationship with a man. If I had not desired a healthy sexual relationship, I would have remained in a sexless marriage forever, but the driving discontentment of the relationship was that I wanted to have sexual intercourse and give my body to a man, he just didn’t want to be that man.

Although I faced so much devastation and disappointment throughout my life, this one thing I know for certain. It was God’s power that delivered me from lesbianism. My husband tried to pretend and lived on the downlow while we were married. I tried  everything within my power to help him find the same freedom I discovered, but I realized that God does not do anything against a person’s will and it takes faith to let go of those hidden inner things that hold a soul captive. That faith is a personal decision to embrace the truth of the Scriptures and no one can make you have it and make you believe it. You know when you’ve embraced it because you will be free.

Today, I am living as a saved single woman. I am waiting for my last chapter to be written. I anticipate God sending a man to me that will desire me and love me for who I am and what I have to offer. While I was going through my divorce, I was able to repair the relationship with my mother, my father and my stepfather. It was through the unfairness of divorce, that I discovered the power true forgiveness. But even if that never happens, I know that I am delivered. I have no same sex desires and I fully embrace who I am as a woman. I can look in the mirror and see the beautiful daughter God has created.