Love in My Unlovable Parts

Editor’s Note: This testimony was first published by Kairos, a web e-zine based in India. We are using it with their permission, but with the adaptation of One Voice Magazine’s publishing style.

I’m Benjamin B Cruz, national director of Living Waters Philippines, an inner healing ministry for those seeking wholeness in their relationships and sexuality. Before becoming a Christian missionary, I was a newspaperman and broadcast journalist. On the personal front, I am married to Hazel Cruz and father to 17-year-old Ezekiel. I love to climb mountains, trek hills, and explore new places.

That’s what I do. But my real identity is a beloved son of our Heavenly Father whose love is not shaped by my performance.

A Stolen Childhood
I was eight-years-old when my parents left the care of my three younger siblings and the managing of our household to me. They worked in the city and we were all left alone in the province. We would only see them on Sundays. I grew up not knowing what it was like to eat a hot meal cooked by my mother; to have a parent accompanying me to school; and the most profound impact of all – to be a kid playing with other boys. My childhood was stolen from me.

Image by biancamentil from Pixabay

I grew up angry, lonely and in pain with the neglect and lack of care but my eight-year-old brain couldn’t process the deep wound. Uncovered and unprotected, I was molested at 11 and my sexuality prematurely awakened (I learned later my siblings were also sexually abused by our neighbors). I found ‘solace’ in pornography, sexual fantasy, watching erotic movies and homosexual experimentation.

Beginning with my puberty, I learned to live a double life – active in the Church creating a pious image by doing religious work while living a hidden, gay life.

Nobody told me homosexuality was wrong. Growing up in a conservative and devout Catholic family (in a predominantly Catholic nation), I knew at heart my same-sex attraction was wrong. But I didn’t know how to be free of it. All I was getting was condemnation and shaming words, so I hid. But the more I was repressing it, the stronger it got.

As a son who became a substitute for his mother, I was bearing the brunt of my mother’s anger for not managing the household well. She was a perfectionist who expected our house to be squeaky clean; my siblings well-fed and nourished; and no-debt finances. Of course, I failed. Any eight-year-old boy would.

I was supposed to be the one angry at my mother for making me do her job but as a child I didn’t know that. Instead, she made me a trash bin for her rage and I sucked it all in.

So after I got married, when my wife Hazel (who wanted to be heard because she grew up with a despotic father who didn’t allow her to speak up) would shout at me or get angry at me, it was not Hazel I heard but my mother lashing out at me. And thus, my angry reaction to Hazel wasn’t really directed at her, but a projection of my anger at my mother.

I also, not realizing it, demanded she cook meals for me and take good care of my needs the way my mother didn’t. I wanted her to be a loving and caring woman whom my mother failed to be. But in the same way that I couldn’t meet the unreal demands of my mother, there was no way my wife could be the mother I never had.And so, we clashed – and clashed hard that we almost ended up at the doorstep of divorce a number of times.

But God in his mercy intervened. But that’s another story.

Revealing the Authentic Me
It was a long, painful process but freeing and surprisingly joyful. The Lord Jesus Christ became real to me, not just a religious figure I had to please and perform good deeds to. A friend invited me to a conference of Living Waters in Thailand and I met Him there in a new way. He whispered to my ears that he was more interested in what was breaking my heart – the shame of homosexual compulsion – and said, ‘You are more important to me than your service. I want your heart.’ I felt love in my unlovable parts for the very first time. That had a radical effect in me, who had till then been used to working my way to be loved.

Image by Tom from Pixabay

That began a journey of being more authentic in the Church, no longer hiding but confessing my sins to trusted few. And the more I was being honest and humble, the more God would heal me. Indeed, he’s closer to the contrite and broken-hearted. As I was getting closer to him (and still getting closer), the more homosexuality was losing its domination in me. As a husband, father and leader of a national ministry, homosexuality was no longer an identity I held on. I’m now, and always will be, a beloved son of our Heavenly Father who relentlessly rescued me from slavery and fought for my freedom to live the beautiful life of being his son.

God Always Comes
I enjoy practicing the presence of God. I feel his presence and have an ongoing conversation with him, not (just) in churches or religious gatherings but even more so when I’m sexually tempted. That’s when I need him the most. And he always comes!

Just recently, I felt an attraction towards a caring man. The Lord revealed to me my need for care and the lack of intimate male friendships in my life. I brought that need to the Cross and worshipped him. It was not a religious exercise. It was like a little child going to his father for help. He brought me to his arms and imparted his affection afresh. And I was ok… more than ok.

The temptation even became a vessel of the Father’s deeper healing.

My counsel to those struggling with same-sex attraction is to begin where you’re at. Come to God with all your brokenness, addictions, compulsions – all that has brought you shame – and let him heal you. You don’t need to clean up before going to him. Just come. He will do the cleaning.

Begin a journey of going into the roots of your homosexual struggle and you may discover there’s sexual abuse, molestation, bullying, neglect, rejection and other painful, traumatic memories that shaped your thoughts and emotions. But you won’t go to those hurting places alone; the Lord will go with you. Let him go with you. And when he does – and he will surely do – healing happens! For wherever he goes, there is freedom and healing!