Hiding In God

This Time Last Year…

… I began to really draw close to Edward.  He moved for training after graduation to where he had no friends outside the the computer. And I was always on Skype and available.

I believe July was the month that he first told me that he agaped me.  I told him that was not right for a man to say to a woman he was not in a relationship with.  I told him to stop talking to me for a month.  But I was panicked.  He had just used the word that I required my husband to say.  There were other things I asked God that my future husband to do so I would know that it was him.

“What about the sci fi convection?” he asked.

“We should be fine by then,” I said.  “That is quite some time away.”  But that was the second sign for a husband.

I wondered how he was that first day.  I liked him as a friend. I hoped he did not leave.

But a friend needed the AZ together.  I felt the guilt of my past as she told stories that sounded like they could have come out of my ex-girlfriends mouth where I stared as the monster.  I began to sing East to West by Casting Crowns only to have Edward join me.  I did not he sang out of guilt as well.

Seeing that my guilt was taking away my ability to minister, he began to try to comfort me.  But I refused it.  I wanted no comfort that I did not deserve.  He did not understand anyway.

But he did.  On the very day the month ended, he told me that he was a porn addict.  I made the mistake of becoming his accountability partner.

Today, Edward and I still aren’t talking.  We both need to be clean for 70 days before that can happen.  I know recovery can change a man.  I do not know what type of man I will meet then.  I just hope he is closer to God

Who is Edward?

For some of the newer people I’m going to go over who Edward is. I know it can be confusing because no one has really understood us yet. But that doesn’t mean I wont try to explain us.

The first time I saw a post by him on the sci fi forum that we met on I made a joke about it. He didn’t acknowledge it or anything.

The first post of mine that I know he saw was a post on marital advice from country songs. His only comment was a head shaking smiley.

His profile said he was ROTC and had a few pictures and to this day I still think he looks bad in those pictures. He looked skinny and too clean shaven.

I didn’t post pictures or my name but I had moose and ancient Egypt themes to it. He liked it.

I didn’t like him though. I have a pervdar that went off on him and he hit me as depressed. But the AZ (who were just Brian, Chad, Ryan and me at the time) soon adopted him as one of there own.

I began to investigate him to ensure the safety of the others in the AZ.

But then I was interrupted by Brian coming out. I came out at that time as well. For almost two years, I had been clean from my addiction and I not as straight as I am now but I had already taken the label.

Edward became quiet. But he noticed I was taking the AZ in a new direction. We became a support group for us and others. Edward and I had the most time to spend on suicide watches. So we started to get close.

God calls me into the ministry.

My health starts improving because Edward starts helping with tracking my symptoms and pinning them to a possible problems I could have.
He tells me that he agapes me.

Realizing that he had wrapped his emotions around me, I say that we need to only speak with someone to keep us accountable for a month and then review the relationship. He didn’t understand what I thought was the issue or why I thought it was a problem.

He didn’t know that it was the first sign. He was already planning to get a second already.

Two weeks into this phase however, we started talking like the old days because of a difficult case that the AZ had. The case rekindled my guilt of my old life style. Edward told me over and over to stop thinking of myself that way. I told him he could never understand.

I will always remember the next text he sent: “Do you want to know my secret? I have one.”

That was when I learned that the man that loved me more than any man other than my father, and was close to getting my signs, was addicted to porn. On the day we had previously agreed to review our relationship I became his accountability partner.

Meanwhile, my lust for Edward is perked up. I wasn’t checking it because I was so happy to have feelings for a male. But I don’t want to fall for him because he is an addict.

Edward comes to a convention that I’m attending and by the time he leaves he has all the signs that I ask God to do for my future husband.

He figured out what he did and slowly began forge plans on when we could court. He said it was a long time off. We met in my city two months later.

He had the idea that we could snuggle in his brother’s apartment alone and not be tempted.

“There isn’t anything sexual about that,” he reasoned.

“That is a virgin talking,” I said. “My experience tells me otherwise.”

But I had not proven it to be the case with men yet. Even though I knew it was against my better judgement, I allowed it. As we both violated boundaries meant to be broken only in marriage. We did not go “all the way” but, I still fed his lusty habit and I awaken my hunger for all things lust. I had thrown myself at him before he left.

We had horribly cheapened our relationship and gone against God’s plan of how friendly men and woman are to behave.

Fearing that my addiction was once again going to hurt Edward, I started to look for ways to kill myself. Edward and Ruth talked me out of it.

It didn’t take long for my sister to give me a reason to make Edward think I was dismissing the signs. I think that was for the better. Soon he found a reason to wait for us to even speak to each other again. We agreed to both be free of activity from our lust for seventy days before even knowing if the other person is in good health.

Does God want me to marry this man? I have no idea. Do I want to marry him? Only if it is God’s will. I only know that God’s will for my life now is to purge myself of porn, masturbation and lustful thoughts.

My future, from that point, I’ll just have to listen to God for guidance.

Read the Signs

I wanted the first thing Edward saw on my face was pure anger and murder in my eyes, and from the look on his face I nailed it.

“Did I do something?”

“Grandma,” I said in my darkest most threatening tone.

“What about her?” The acting lessons I had given him wasn’t fooling me.

“She was taken to the hospital.”

“Oh?”

“Yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“And you KNEW AND DIDN’T TELL ME!” He dropped the act.

“Your mom told me not to tell you so you could have a good time.”

This would be the last day of my first trip to see Edward. My sick grandmother was a whole state away. I wouldn’t have made a super big fuss if it wasn’t for the fact that Edward had come to pick me up for church; the church visit that was the last sign in my signs I set up for marriage.

My goal was to keep him out of church that Sunday. “And last night was a blast but now I need to you to drive me back home or to the bus station.”

I picked one of the few men that wasn’t talked out of church easily. “Cheyene,” he glanced at my host’s parents before slipping into AZ code. “You know I cant skip church with the addiction. Plus church would be good to give you peace with how grandma is.”

In my mind I prayed that God would stop this sign from coming true if he wasn’t the one. Dear Lord, he is a sex addict. Please not him. He is hot yes but that’s over shadowed his undelt with sin.

During the drive, I gave Edward a long list of rules to follow. He had to call me by my real name and he understood what me showing up with a man would make people think. He even exploited that to get data on a romantic dinning that my pastor wanted.

He completed the sign and prematurity I gave away my heart.

Fast forward to this past Sunday. I had heard a few people talking about signs and how they worked for them. I had just brought up to my sister that I didn’t know what place I was being called to. I knew that the LGBTs would be there but not much else. “I think God has the location with my husband. If a husband is in His will for me.”

“You could ask God for a sign to show you where to go,” my sister’s boyfriend offered.

I started laughing and my sister began to shake her head at her boyfriend. I then told them that Edward got my signs. I left out everything about the addiction and made it seem like her warnings were what parted us. (Long story that I can tell upon request)

But I told mommy in the car later that it was maddening to see signs working for others and not me as far as I know.

Dear Lord, I need patience for an answer from You. Do these signs mean anything. Was I part of the sinful generation that seeks after a sign? Where is my mission field? Do I ever come out of the closet?

Passion & Purity: 42 Out of Love and Into Charity

Last night NCIS LA ended and I packed up my laptop and said I was going upstairs to watch Fringe.  Daddy said he didn’t care.

“Don’t you care what your daughter does?” I asked.

“I don’t care what you watch on TV as long as isn’t weird,” he answered.

The case that the Fringe team investigated in that episode was a cult of people genetically altering themselves to become flying porcupines.  It’s weird, ok?

But it oddly had me pining for Edward. He cared and therefore noticed things that others didn’t, like my limp or that I hadn’t forgiving myself for my past.  I fell for him all over again there was none of my addiction behind it.  I just felt like God and Edward were the only two that cared for that moment.  I asked God to take it away.

Then God told me to tell his accountability partner not to let him buy anything of a certain sent I like.  I followed the leading then read the chapter.

In the last chapter Elisabeth and Jim get married. But Elisabeth said that passion and purity doesn’t end at the alter. She speaks of falling out of love and how you never feel fully infatuated for the whole marriage and that marriage is about pleasing the the other person regardless of weather the other person is pleasing you.

I remembered the night after I had come back from our first real life meaning.  Edward manipulated me and gave in to his addiction for the first time since I became aware of it.  But I thought he had the signs for marriage now too.  I acted normal and told him that I trusted him less then ever.  After I hung up though I rolled into a ball on grandma’s living room floor and cried.  I can’t say if that is a full falling out of love moment since I’m still longing for the guy though.

She then speaks of that blind love that happens when in infatuation love.

Try to remember the vision that “being in love” gave you of what that person was.  You found no fault in him or her.  “Behold, thou art fair, my love, there is no spot in thee,” Solomon said to his beloved.  Is it blindness to see a sinful man or woman thus?  I think it is a special gift of vision, the power to see for a little while what God meant when He made that person….

I felt bad for Edward again.  I never wanted that view of a man.  I thought that made people do stupid things.  Turns out that you don’t always need it to be stupid.  He is a great man that has as addiction and is too tall and too skinny but for some reason still want to love.  Did I take away from the emotions of an infatuated girl that he should have been on the reserving end of?

Love takes work of serving the other person.

Then I get word that Edward has something of that forbidden sent.  I get all angry at him because he could be doing anything good with it.  Now that I’m done writing this I know that his accountability partner was joking.  God used it to get me out of that season of longing though.

God, thank you for answering my prayer.  I know that my love my still be misplaced and that You should be the one to fulfill my needs when I’m lonely.  Please keep me on the right track and growing closer to You.

Passion & Purity: 35 Impatience

And readers everywhere said, “You got that right.”

I dug into this chapter because I know my impatience is an issue.  There was a key point that I took away from it; don’t belong to each other before the time God has appointed for you.

Now I’m learning the failure of those lovely signs for marriage that I wanted God to send.  So soon as Edward got the last sign I thought of myself as his even though I never told him that.  I wasn’t to date anyone else and if he married another I was to remain single.

One thing Edward kept doing was saying that he was mine.  He handed himself over to me for no good reason I could think of and it bothered me.  “What if you should marry someone else?”

“Then you’ll be hard to explain,” He said.  “But you’re leaving me in better condition than you found me so she can’t complain about you.   I won’t let her.”

First off, if that works as well as him forbidding me to eat fatty food it won’t work.  Second we were both out of line with our thinking.

When I asked God for changes that I should make to the signs I made at 9 I was noticing my feelings for men for the first time and knew that I might actually use them.  I adjusted the signs by God direction and made more of a legal style document.  But I never had peace about the part where my heart belonged to the man as soon as he completed the 3 fold requirements.  But I couldn’t think of a reason then for not trusting God enough that the only one to do these signs would be the one.

Dear God, I’m sorry for giving away a heart before it’s time to a man I’m unsure of.  I need answers about the signs and if they mean anything.  I know that I have lied to Edward and said that they no longer apply to him and I don’t know if that is wrong.  I am not in a rush for this clarity for I know how foolishly I acted the last time I had it.  I thank you knowing that Your timing for the answer is better than my own.  Give me strength so that for now my heart is for only for You.

Passion & Purity: 21 What Women Do to Men

I know about this. I was a former lesbian so I have an idea.

There is this thing called a gutter. I need to get my brain out of it.

This chapter was about how woman tell men their interest and push it slightly.  I had promised myself not to be that woman.  In fact I knew that if God showed me plainly whom I was to marry I would have to suffer while the man took his time figure it out.

This brings me to one of the mistakes Edward and I made.  We were both home after meeting for the first time on a holiday weekend near the end of summer.  He noticed I was different but didn’t know why yet so he took to asking random questions.

“Hey, you are going to tell me if God gives you the sign for whom to marry, right?”

I had taken the passage in Genesis where Abraham’s servant was seeking a wife for Isaac and had asked God for a sign so he could plainly know who it was to be.  When I was 9 I set up what the sign was to be.  Edward had just gotten them.

Why was he asking about that? “No, I make no promised.”

“Why?”

“You would spill the beans.”

Edward knew something was up now.  “You trust me more than that.”

There was silence.

“Cheyene, who got the sign? Was it Brian?”

I think he could here me headdesking.

“Or me? Was it me?”

I think the sound he heard next was me slowly dying.  I didn’t want him to know before the time God planned for him to know yet I couldn’t think of a good reason to lie.

“That explains everything.  Give this a minuet for what you’re not saying to sink in.  But for the record I was hoping it would be you.”

It sounded like he was trying his best to contain his happiness and shock.

My problem here was that I had told him too much before this.  But him knowing how I felt and him telling how he felt changed us before the right time.  Ladies I don’t care how sure you are please keep your mouth shut without doing what I did.  Can someone tell me how to avoid that in the future?

On a non-book note I would like to say that I am discounting the signs that Edward did.  Yes, I made it nearly imposable for anyone to get. But I think doubt is healthy for us now.  And who can really know if God was in the signs in the first place?