I Should Have Been Born A Boy

Author: Desert Stream
March 27, 2014

I recall being seven years old and identifying with my father: I always wanted to be with him and like him. As I was drawn to masculine activities, I always felt that I should have been born a boy, not a girl. My father unintentionally nurtured this behavior by providing all kinds of male toys for me. He was a truck driver and bought them on his trips. He was home for three to five days then he would be gone for one to three weeks. I dreaded the days that led up to his departure; on the day of his parting, I would cry myself to sleep with a deep sense of abandonment. My mother would try to comfort me, then I would experience a similar abandonment as my mother would leave. I stayed with an unfamiliar babysitter each time she was gone.

My same-sex attractions began at an early age. Patterns of having exclusive female friends would follow in my teenage years and eventually into my adult life. The patterns of dependent and codependent behavior eventually led me into lesbian relationships.

I was in many same-sex friendships seeking to find my “special best friend” that would fill some of the mother-love I could not receive from my mom. I did not know this until I went through Living Waters and realized that through those early years of my childhood I had experienced defensive detachment from both parents. My detachment from my mother began when she rejected my father due to his unfaithfulness to her. Eventually, she herself acted in the same manner when she would leave me with the babysitter.

For many years I believed that I was born to be with a woman instead of a man. After I became a Christian, the Holy Spirit began to show me that God wanted to do a deeper healing in me. It started by acknowledging that I did not want to have same-sex attractions and that I needed healing in deep areas of my soul related to my need for mother-love. God led me to Desert Stream Ministries by a referral from a secular psychologist. Going through the program I began to understand how I detached from my mother who was very feminine and attached to my father who obviously was masculine.

Going through Living Waters I began to recognize how I tried to reconcile my fractured relationship with my mother in unhealthy friendships with women. These “friends” had similar characteristics to my mother, such as being very feminine, sociable, smart, pretty and nurturing. One of the central characteristics I was primarily attracted to was their nurturing expression. The nurturing captivated me, and eventually I wrapped myself in the myth that she would be the one to make me whole. Then I discovered that the “nurturing” never seemed to reach the fragmented, parched and dry place of my being. So I became more possessive, controlling and manipulative with that friend.

As I was going through Living Waters I began to see women differently than as sources to meet my insatiable desire for nurture. A mere human could not fill that huge need! The Lord brought into my life different women of God that spoke life and called me out into relating with them in a manner that freed them to be just people, not saviors. Most of these women did not come out of same-sex attraction, but they did have their own heterosexual deficiencies. I will always be grateful to God for them. They were used by the Holy Spirit in the restoration of my personhood as a woman.

There was a particular friend whom I believe God used tremendously in my life. She was a Christian woman who embodied aspects of my mother. Our friendship was never perfect or always harmonious. There were good times then hard times when I would be tempted to erotize our relationship. But I was able to grow through that and come to a place of seeing her as my sister in Christ, a whole friend, not a mother or a lover.

She experienced my underdeveloped, neurotic, child-like relating in our friendship, yet she would press through by meeting me half way. She would not abandon me but would diligently work to discover our common ground in Christ. We found the cross together. I believe God used her to bring out the residue of all the loose ends of my fragmented personhood that longed to find a mother. Yes, there was brokenness in her too, and I am sure God used me in her life to bring awareness and perhaps healing in some areas of her life.

I speak of this friendship in past tense, for we are no longer in one another’s lives. This was a mutual agreement for the best of the friendship. We valued what healing God brought in our lives while we were friends, yet we realized that God’s best was to bless each other and to bring it to a close. Though the parting was hard and grievous, I am convinced that this was part of God’s plan too. I am a woman of God in continuous pursuit of sexual wholeness in Jesus Christ. What He began, He will complete.

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