Am I Worth Being Loved?

by Chris Ramsey

Karen Bentley, a friend of mine, invited me over one day to listen to

her brother Joe's life story. As I entered Karen and her husband's

simple one-room apartment I had the feeling I was about to hear

something special. I sat down on a hardwood couch, facing this

brother and sister. Joe was seated in a rocking chair, and he moved

back and forth slowly as he began to talk about his childhood.

"I think the Devil used things that happened to me as a little kid to

fool me all my life" recalled Joe. "I remember one Fourth of July

when I was ten, my relatives had gotten together at my grandma's

house. One of my uncles had his daughter, who was four years younger

than me, drag me down on the ground and beat me up. The rest of the

family sat around laughing, calling me a sissy."

Any boy would have been humiliated if a little girl beat him up, but

for Joe it was devastating. When he was four he had been stricken

with polio and left paralyzed. As he grew up he gained the strength

to walk, but his legs were always weak.

Joe limped when he walked, and he was extremely embarrassed because of

it. His father periodically told his mother he was taking his son

fishing, but would actually end up in the bars. As the men started

drinking they would put money in the jukebox, and force Joe to dance

while everyone laughed. "When everybody else made fun of me, that was

one thing" said Joe. "But when my own dad did it, it really hurt."

Joe's older brother, Jack, was very active and into weight lifting and

sports. This pleased his father, who would shower Jack with

attention, while ignoring Joe. "All I ever wanted was to hear

somebody say, 'I love you! Even though you're the way you are, I love

you.'" In this kind of atmosphere, it was no surprise that the young

boy felt rejected. "I became convinced I could never live up to being

a man."

As a child, Joe couldn't understand that his father was being chased

by demons of his own. The head of this Memphis, Tennessee family was

a violent alcoholic. "I can remember running down the street in my

pajamas with my mother in the middle of the night," explained Karen.

"Dad had started another big fight, and we had to go to our neighbor's

house."

Joe's parents divorced when he was fifteen, and his mother took the

family to upper Michigan to live with their grandmother. Getting away

from his father was a relief for Joe. He tried to fill the gap his

father left by working three part-time jobs while he went to high

school.

In 1970, at the age of twenty-one, Joe married his high school

sweetheart . "I thought this would really prove I was a man." The

young couple's first year of marriage was very rocky and Joe started

drinking and hanging out in bars. It was then that Joe had his first

gay encounter. "I got involved because I was drinking," Joe told

himself, "Otherwise I wouldn't have done it. So I'll just stop

drinking and it won't happen again." Yet he couldn't stop, and his

marriage ended in divorce two and a half years later.

Joe's failure at marriage only re-emphasized his sense of

worthlessness. In the midst of depression he moved back to Memphis to

get a fresh start. Two weeks later Joe got word that his father had

been shot by a fourth wife.

"I stood over him in the hospital room," Joe recounted. "I knew Dad

was dying, but I had all these feelings of hatred toward him. I asked

myself, 'What kind of person am I? I hate my own dad.'"

After his dad's death, Joe started going to church. He was looking

for something to pull his life together, and it was there he met his

second wife, Ellen.

The first two years of that marriage were reasonably smooth. Joe

didn't drink, and he stayed involved in the church. But then he

started having health problems related to his polio, and was forced to

take pain pills and muscle relaxers. Joe began abusing his medication

and soon he was doing street drugs as well. His lifestyle quickly

returned to its former pattern.

"Ellen didn't even know what was going on. I was selling accounting

systems on commission for two or three days a week, and on the other

days I was sitting in gay bars, waiting to get picked up. I really

had a lot of people fooled, 'cause during the week I'd be in the gay

bars, and on Sunday I'd be in church.

"One night I was high and I told Ellen's sister everything I had been

doing. Ellen freaked out when she heard. I said I would go for

counseling, or do anything she asked me to do. We had two boys by

that time and I wanted our family to stay together. But Ellen didn't

want any part of me. We were divorced in 1980."

The next seven years are represented by glimpses and memories of two

more marriages and various attempts at repentance: the scene of being

dragged off his third wife as he tried to strangle her; the picture of

a pastor telling Joe he should have no more problems with

homosexuality since he was baptized; wife number four treating him

like a Ken doll, dressing him up to show him off; the look in his

wife's eyes as she returned to their empty apartment after he had sold

everything for drugs, even the dishes and silverware.

In April 1987, Joe was admitted to the hospital with Steven Johnson

syndrome, a rare allergic reaction to medication. While the doctors

were treating him, they decided to run an AIDS test. Joe tested

positive. "It totally freaked me out. I didn't know how to handle

it."

"Your brother and I are very sad that you have AIDS. You can call and

talk to us on the phone, but for no reason should you come around.

And let's not tell the rest of our family."

"That was my mom's response to my having AIDS. This was the first

time I had no place to go. I didn't know what I was going to do. So

I decided suicide was the only answer. I couldn't even do that right.

After my second attempt I ended up in a recovery center where I was

finally able to get off drugs and alcohol."

On leaving the recovery center, Joe moved to Minneapolis to live in a

government sponsored house for AIDS victims. "Mom couldn't keep quiet

about my having AIDS, and she ended up telling Karen and my other

relatives." Before long Joe received a letter from Karen. "When I

read the letter I just went all to pieces. She told me that she loved

me and that God still loved me too. She also said she and her

husband, Bill, would like to come up and visit...if I wanted her to.

I couldn't wait to write, I called here on the phone and told her to

come."

Although Joe was excited on the day of their visit he started having

second thoughts. "I'd hardly seen Karen over the past sixteen years,

but I'd heard she was a fanatic. I told my friends I might even have

to ask to leave if she started to push her religion on me. But when

they arrived everything went great. They were real friendly to me and

the other guys who lived in the house," smiled Joe as he glanced over

at his sister.

Karen laughed, "I was sweating the visit too. I wanted to be a

support to my brother, yet I had no idea of what to say. But I had

made up my mind ahead of time that the main thing I was going to do

was to love him."

"I must admit the first time Karen and I were left alone," Joe

continued, "I wondered if she was going to come on strong. But when

she didn't it totally disarmed me, so I finally decided to lay it all

on the line and said, 'I feel like I was born gay.'"

"Karen's response surprised me. She said, 'Joe, that's not true. I

don't think you even had a chance growing up, the way Dad treated you.

You just believed a lot of lies and got messed up in sin.'"

"I came back at her with the fact that I had a friend who was gay but

also born again. He said that Jesus accepted tax collectors and

sinners and so he accepts gay people too."

"I really had to pray," recalled Karen, "so that my answer would come

off honest but not judgmental. I just told Joe what I believed. 'Of

course God loves the sinner, but the problem is our sin separates us

from God. That's why Christ died on the cross, so we don't have to be

ruled by all the mess in our lives.'"

Joe hesitated for a minute and looked down at the floor. It seemed as

if he was reliving that moment in his mind. "Before Karen's visit, I

was really scared of dying, and I knew that I was going to go to hell.

I thought that I had done so much wrong there was no way God could

love me or forgive me," Joe remembered as he broke into tears. "But

then I realized through what Karen said that God always loved me. I

also knew that I desperately wanted to experience that love more than

anything else. When I prayed this time and asked God into my life, I

knew that what I'd done was past. It was forgiven and forgotten. The

peace and the love that I have in my heart now is great."

"My life changed drastically at this point, though I still had

struggles to work through. At first I held on to the old idea that

once you were saved, you weren't going to have any problems," Joe said

with a smile. "But that's not the way it works. God gave me the

strength to work through my problems, but they didn't just disappear

overnight."

"Knowing I needed the strength that comes from being around other

believers, that past August I moved into Jesus People USA. I don't

know how long I'm going to live, but I want to live the rest of my

days for the Lord. One of my biggest desires is to encourage others

who have battled with rejection. I handled the thought of having AIDS

a lot easier than the rejection I received."

"I also long to be an example for others who are attempting to deal

with the AIDS tragedy. The Church must especially show love, because

God's love is the only thing that's going to reach people suffering

from AIDS. These people already have a lot of rejection in their

lives. They need to be told the truth, but first they need to know

they are loved. Anybody can tell them that they're wrong and this is

what the Bible says, and read a sermon to them. They'll just want to

defend themselves, and try to twist the truth."

"AIDS is going to touch a lot of families too, even Christian

families. And you can't turn that person away. You've got to deal

with it. AIDS is an illness, and you have to let that person know,

'Hey I love you, whether you've got AIDS, cancer, or heart trouble, I

love you.'"

"And then maybe through that love they will see God. Maybe they can

turn their life around before it's too late. But they're sure not

going to if you reject them. When Bill and Karen came to visit me,

they came to show love. And look what happened to me."

Aslan's Roar - "Radical Truth in Telecommunications"


Index of Articles of Interest    Home

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | 160 | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 173 | 174 | 175 | 176 | 177 | 178 | 179 | 180 | 181 | 182 | 183 | 184 | 185 | 186 | 187 | 188 | 189 | 190 | 191 | 192 | 193 | 194 | 195 | 196 | 197 | 198 | 199 | 200 | 201 | 202 | 203 | 204 | 205 | 206 | 207 | 208 | 209 | 210 | 211 | 212 | 213 | 214 | 215 | 217 | 218 | 219 | 220 | 221 | 222 | 223 | 224 | 225 | 226 | 227 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 | 235 | 236 | 237 | 238 | 239 | 240 | 241 | 242 | 243 | 244 | 245 | 246 | 247 | 248 | 249 | 250 | 251 | 252 | 253 | 254 | 255 | 256 | 257 | 258 | 259 | 260 | 261 | 262 | 263 | 264 | 265 | 266 | 267 | 268 | 269 | 270 | 271 | 272 | 273 | 274 | 275 | 276 | 277 | 278 | 279 | 280 | 281 | 282 | 283 | 284 | 285 | 286 | 287 | 288 | 289 | 290 | 291 | 292 | 293 | 294 | 295 | 296 | 297 | 298 | 299 | 300 | 301 | 302 | 303 | 304 | 305 | 306 | 307 | 308 | 309 | 310 | 311 | 312 | 313 | 314 | 315 | 317 | 318 | 319 | 320 | 321 | 322 | 323 | 324 | 325 | 326 | 327 | 328 | 329 | 330 | 331 | 332 | 333

 

Home | Bible versions | Bible Dictionary | Christian Classics | Christian Articles | Daily Devotions

Sister Projects: Wikichristian | WikiMD

BelieversCafe is a large collection of christian articles with over 40,000 pages


Our sponsors:   W8MD sleep and weight loss center