|
Woman says
God delivered her from homosexuality after 4-year relationship |
|
By Eileen
E. Flynn |
|
|
|
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
STAFF |
|
www.statesman.com |
|
|
|
Sunday,
February 16, 2003 |
|
|
|
Teresa
Britton didn't seek God. He came to her, she said. |
|
|
|
The
40-year-old Leander resident said the Lord delivered her from homosexuality 2
1/2 years ago. |
|
|
|
Raised
Baptist in |
|
She wanted
lasting love with a woman, she said, but it always eluded her. |
|
Her most
recent relationship lasted nearly four years. Then her partner left, and Britton's life unraveled. For 10 months, she
sealed herself off from the world, depending on cigarettes and alcohol. Even
when she began to move on and started attending church with a roommate,
Britton said she still lacked peace of mind. |
|
One night
she was crying in bed when she felt God touch her, she said. |
|
"The next
thing I knew I was on the floor in a fetal position," she said.
"Within that instant, all the lies that I ever believed and all the
grays of my life became black and white. The truth had been revealed to me,
and I knew the way I was living was wrong." |
|
The lies,
Britton said, were the notions that she was born gay and couldn't change. It
was God's grace, she said, that allowed her the clarity to understand why she
had sought romantic relationships with women. |
|
Britton
traced her lesbianism to an alcoholic, physically abusive father. She
remembered witnessing her mother being beaten and the words she silently
screamed inside. |
|
"I
will never, ever let a man treat me like that," Britton recalled
thinking. "If that's what a man was all about, why would I want to be
with one?" |
|
In
September 2000, a month after what she described as an encounter with God,
Britton turned her life over to Christ, and she said she was saved at |
|
Unlike
some former homosexuals who sought therapy to overcome their same-sex
desires, Britton said she never saw a psychologist. |
|
"This
whole thing has just been an act of God," she said. |
|
Britton
added that she would have been happy simply to leave her life as a lesbian
behind her and remain celibate. |
|
But she
now finds herself attracted to men and believes she will get married. |
|
"These
people at this church are awesome," she said, smiling at her pastor, the
Rev. Randy Phillips. Without the church, she said, "I would probably
still be bouncing from one relationship to another. I would be on the road to
destruction instead of the road to life." |
|
Last year
she found the woman who broke her heart and discovered she had also devoted
herself to God. The two reconciled and are now friends. |
|
"She's
straight, and I'm straight, and there's no more crooked paths between
us," Britton said with a laugh. "That was also a gift from God."
|
|
|
|
eflynn@statesman.com |
|
|