The Secret He Was Too Afraid to Tell

“I didn’t want to be gay, I kept fighting it, but I thought that was just who I was.  So just fake it through life and this is just who you’re going to be,” said Ron.  He grew up in a loving home however, when he was eight years old what began as innocent play with an older boy, twisted into repeated abuse, manipulation, and threats.

“He told me not to. Not to tell nobody. To keep it secret, that people would think I was dirty if they knew. And if I said anything and they would blame me.  I just felt like, I'm dirty and like, shameful. So, I never told nobody. I was scared people would find out.” 

As he stayed silent his shame grew.  “He'd sort of molest me when I was eight and it quit when I was 12. I got to where my body was reacting, so I started enjoying it,” said Ron. He continues, “So, as I got older, in my teenage years, this is my only sexual relationship, was with a boy. Then that started having me want same sex relationships - I didn't look at girls.”
In high school, Ron learned to ‘play the game’ to keep his secret hidden.

Ron recalls, “when I started working at my first job, I met, a guy there, and then me and him ended up starting a four-year relationship all through school, we hid it from everybody. We just act(ed) like we was very good friends and just hung out a lot. One girl I dated for a year, and then another I dated pretty much through the rest of high school. There was no emotional attraction or physical attraction for me whatsoever. I was just going through the motions, so I’d fit in,” he pauses, “my parents would always talk against it. They was very anti-homosexual. So, I knew at an early age to keep it to myself.”

Ron knew his same sex attraction was wrong and he was miserable. After high school he joined the Army hoping to leave it all behind. “When I joined the military, I was hoping just all new friends, nobody's going to know me, I could just start over, and I could meet a girl and I wouldn’t be gay. And I was just trying to run from everything. Run from my identity, run from my family, run from my friends. But once I got to my permanent duty station, found out that you can't really run from things that's residing in you,” Ron states.  “We was out at a bunch of bars, and then I ended up meeting a guy, and ended up going home with him. He was a German local. I found out real quick, well, you can't run from your demons.”

Deployments to Iraq during Desert Storm brought nightmares and PTSD.  Alcohol became his escape from the war, his shame and his childhood trauma. After the military he married and started a family, hoping to build a normal life.

“I met her but, same sex attractions never, ever subsided – went away. The whole time I was with her I thought of guy's, fantasizing about being with men.”

Ron continues, “I felt tormented and I felt bad about being like I was living a lie and I was lying to her, and, that definitely heavily affected our marriage.”

The couple was invited to church, and at age 28 Ron gave his life to Jesus and stopped drinking. In his mind however, the same sex fantasies continued. 

The internal conflict and lies strained his marriage, and it ended in divorce.  Ron then devoted himself to Bible study and prayer desiring to finally change his thinking.  He felt free from the same-sex attraction when he met a woman from church, Nichole.

They were soon married.  However, six months later, the lie crept back into Ron’s mind, and the fantasies started all over again.    

Ron remembers, “Them demons come back, ‘So why did you get married again? You know, you're gay. You're living a lie again. Now you're just lying. You're going to be miserable again.’ And then I started getting attacked, like very bad, in my mind, mentally just struggling, having dreams, having nightmares.”

Ron began living a life of paranoia, feeling like he was followed by shadows, losing sleep.  In 2020 he came to his breaking point and confessed his struggle to Nichole. 

Reflecting  he states, “it crushed her. I mean, I know it did, because now that just validated what she felt all along, that I was cheating on her the whole time, even though it wasn't physical.”

Still, Nichole loved Ron and wanted to fight for him. She suggested praying for deliverance with her parents. Cautiously, Ron agreed to go. “We started off in prayer, and then it turned into, like, what am I dealing with? What do I want (to be) delivered from? And I was scared to tell them about the homosexuality. So, I told them fear, depression. I struggled real bad with that and I just want it gone. Self-worth. And, like Nicole kept saying, well, I feel like there’s something else. And I was scared to tell them. So finally I just said homosexuality. And they was like, ‘that's it.’ So, when we went through deliverance, we started praying. I felt like a whole like I was 50 pounds lighter. Like the cloud wasn't foggy no more. I just felt like it's instant release, like freedom.”

After fully surrendering to God, for the first time in his life, Ron felt free from the lies that had bound him for four decades.
Smiling he says, “I'm 100% heterosexual. Free. Happy. Love my wife. Happily married.

I can minister to people, let them know that everybody's sin, it doesn't matter what your sin is -  I can see that now that I sin, but through Christ, I've been set free and I've been redeemed. And, so that’s the message that I get and that’s the message that I try to share with others.”