Reality: Fact from Fiction

I am driving in rain, my windows are fogged up and I am bent over trying to see through a small space of visibility on my windshield. It's night time. None of the buildings look like Bethel Ave. but I have a vague understanding that I am driving on Bethel. Henry sits in the passenger seat. We are heading to our apartment. But we pass it because I can't see well. I make a U-turn and I notice to my left the moon. It's on the ground and it's huge. And there are windows... lit windows in it. All over it, they are huge windows. And then a ghostly figure comes up behind me and suddenly I am standing in the road and it says, "What are you doing?" in a voice so loud that it wakes me up.

I woke up feeling strange. Terrified. I felt like someone needed prayer (my pentecostal roots showing through) and so I called my mom at 4 a.m. She told me that she felt like God was waking me up because the rapture and tribulation was soon. She told me I needed to come out of my homosexual lifestyle. I needed to be delivered. She wanted to pray with me. I said okay. She prayed for 5-10 minutes. Sobbing and praying. And at the end she told me I needed to cry out to God. I didn't say anything. You could hear the heartbreak in her voice, the defeat.

I laid in bed and thought. I felt my 9 year old self start to question my 'lifestyle.' Wondering if I should be delivered. The weight of my love a sudden burden, a sinful distraction. How soon was the end? It all felt real again. My sinful life, the rapture, the tribulation. In order for someone to believe they need to be delivered, they have to believe something is grossly wrong with them. Something so terrible that it requires a community, a mob of prayer. I would have to hate myself to believe that I needed to be delivered. And I use to. I refuse to go down that spiral again.

I have to separate the fact from fiction. Their stories from my reality. It's hard sometimes when the very essence of your childhood centered around these stories. These frightening stories.

It puts you on an edge that overlooks insanity.