😀 😀 😀 😉 sounds like you’ve had practice.

I had to go back and read what I said…..what does that say about me… 0:)

It is interesting how he uses the old ‘thorn in the side’ reference. Before I started to live as a gay man, but as I approached accepting it, I remember a period in my life when I have never been closer to God. It was such an intimate experience that I find myself missing that element of that period in my life.

Alas, it was, generally, highly dysfunctional as the only way I could fall asleep at night would be to have drunk a bottle of wine or to cry myself to sleep. The loneliness and sense of broad social condemnation (which did not actually happen – with the exception of my Xian family!) was so intense that the only recourse I had was to God.

A friend had said ‘the gays’ tend to be drawn to the Church because it promises a love and relationship that cannot be reciprocated in this world/lifetime. I’d felt myself ‘slipping’ away, in a sense, and could have imagined that, in another age, I would have found a reasonable life in a monastery (with the other gay guys, no doubt!)

Education, awareness and opportunity reduced that experience to a limited period in my life. However, whenever people talk about the ‘thorn’ argument, I wonder how they would cope with something similar. Ignorance is poor earth for wisdom to grow.

Oddly enough, that period of intense spiritual communion was followed swiftly by my meeting and falling in love with the man of my dreams. At least he would have been had I dared to dream the dreams of God’s intent rather than social expectations.

love that Mr Womble