Hineni World Wide

After living a life of Lesbianism for 10years I really thought God was done with me. Mainly because I knew better. I was baptized at 7 years old of my own volition and was raised in the church. But I couldn’t combat my feelings. As far as I was concerned I was born this way. Loving other women felt natural. Like breathing. Then one day I heard Him say, “Come now, or don’t come at all. I’m not calling you again”. And boy that was it for me. There’s more to my salvation story than just this. But I really want to focus on New Beginnings AFTER salvation.

Full Salvation testimony here.

So many times as believers our faith gets rocked because we thought after we came to God things would be better. At least I did. I left who was at the time, “the love of my life”. I told her, “God wants more for me and I can’t have you as my wife”. I was sobbing on the phone but I knew there was a new life ahead and it was a bittersweet hope. Fast forward and I met a man at a new congregation I was attending. I again heard God and He said, “This is your husband”. I.. thought I was losing my mind. All jokes aside and for several reasons.

1. I was not attracted to men. I’d never been with a man intimately. And I really thought I was just going to live a life long celibacy with God.
2. He was a total stranger and I JUST got out of a lesbian relationship 2 weeks prior.

I was pretty frustrated and I fasted and argued for two months until I was tired. Finally I gave in and just told God, “fine, he’s my husband. What next?”. That question led to us finally sitting and talking about it and he admitted on our second conversation that he had heard that as well, but was interested in someone else and had a hard time accepting what God was telling him. We prayed and fasted separately and started to grow with one another for about 8 months and finally got married. This to me was the beginning of a brand new new awesome faith filled chapter and journey. But God had something else in store.

After about a year and a half or maybe two years of marriage things started to go really south. This to me was “normal”. Everyone says marriages has ups and downs and you just have to be diligent and seek God and it all works out in the end. So I did. Me and my best friend started to fast together for our marriages. No food, just water and sometimes no food or water. We would ask God to help us be more submitted to our husbands, help us be more patient, more loving, and that God would soften them towards us. One year we fasted so much we lost 50lbs between us. Our relationship with God and our friendship with each was growing exponentially. But our marriages were getting harder.

After about 3 years of the constant rollercoaster I wrote a letter to God saying I was tired and I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve submitted, I’ve encouraged, I’ve loved, I’ve had chase conversation like the Bible said. I did all I knew how to do. And I ended it with, “I know he’s a man of God and other people think so too. Help me to see him through your eyes”. That prayer started an avalanche of life changes.

No more than 10 hours after that prayer I got a lengthy text message from my husband. Writing to tell me how he wished one of us died so he would be free from the marriage, and hated the blessings God gave us. Even with ministry, as we were assistant leaders at the congregation we attended. That he had fallen in love with another woman and wanted her even though she was none the wiser and also married herself. Eventually I found out he was still entertaining pornography and didn’t think it was a big deal.

He only apologized and took the matter of our marriage falling apart seriously, when it threatened his position as assistant leader of the congregation. We separated for a few a months and he cried to whomever he could about “trying to love me”. It took a few months but everything ended in divorce. I was still attending the congregation and many of the people thought I had given up too soon. Some started to walk past me, not speak to me. After all how could I not forgive him? No one could understand that I had forgiven him, but it made no difference to his actions. He told me, “This is who I am, I can’t make promises to change”.

I wondered if I failed God somehow. What else could I do to make him love me? What new emotional, spiritual, faith skill could I have learned to stay longer? My husband had discarded me, played the victim and I blamed myself for months to come.

During this time I remember telling my best friend, “I hate being the good one all the time. Everyone goes back to their darkness and gets a pass. I’ve been faithful and this is what happens”. I confided in her and told her I was considering going on a date with a woman from my past. If you get nothing else from this post get this.

Godly friendships are a BLESSING WORLDS OVER!

She looked in my eyes and started crying and said, “if you go to darkness we can’t be friends, I can’t follow you”. At the time it made all the difference to me. This was the ONLY person who knew inside and out everything I had went through. My mind was like play-dough. I had to go back to the word of God. Had to trust what it said, AND had to walk in out during this tribulation season.

God had to show me that he would choose his darkness, and I had to move on.

It took true honesty. I told God, “I don’t trust you”, “I don’t think you have anything good for me”. After all He led me all the way to where I found myself. Divorced, ridiculed, living with a roommate. Seen as the enemy in my own trauma story. I prayed and asked Him to restore my trust and faith in Him and to heal my heart.

Now 2 Years later moving on has become Hineni WorldWide. God allowed tremendous pain in my life to bring me to a place of being able to empathize with spiritual pain. Equipping me with love for the discouraged believer or nonbeliever. For the root cause of encouraging others who are serving God and experience hardship to not stop. Or people who think God isn’t interested in a relationship with them to come to Him. Don’t listen to the naysayers and abusers.

Friend, keep going and keep being faithful! Trust God in ALL that you do! He is building your story. He who started a good work in you will complete it!