Amy's Testimony
Amy found her identity again. Amy is an American from Texas who has spent a few years in Denmark. She, like many other young people struggling to find out who she was, and experimented including with alcohol, drugs and homosexuality before she returned home to her parents and God.
It Was Never Mentioned Anymore
I think it did hurt to talk about, says Amy. She talks about her serious suicide attempts by 14-year-old that her parents never talked to her about. I think my mother spent everything she had in it, just to keep the family together, so she did not manage to deal with my problems, explains Amy. Amy Lee Kemp grew up in a Christian family in Texas, but her mother and father had a hard time with each other. When Amy was little, her father was pastor, but later the family moved to another city, so her parents' marriage would have a chance. It was a tough game for Amy and her siblings to experience strife between their parents, and perhaps began Amy's identity crisis already there. But when she came in the 12-13 age her idenity search struck out into the open. All children are confused when they reach that age and try to figure out who they are smiles Amy and explains that she was a very sporty girl who could not recognize herself in the other girls when they only went up on the outside. In turn, Amy was good at basketball. Very good indeed. I started getting acceptance through basketball and dreamed of a life as one of the great college stars, she says. While Amy focused on basketball, she began to experiment with different substances, drinking and relationships. When her mother and father considered to be separated when she was 14, and while she still had identity crisis, she tried to take her own life by eating several hundred pills. At the last moment, her mother found her in the bathroom and got her sent to hospital for stomach pumping. But the situation was never mentioned again.
Amy Made Herself Harder and Harder
It was as if I thought that if I just made myself hard enough exterior and was tough enough, then I could not be hurt more, explained Amy, who often went out into fights and was very aggressive. My father, taught me to always strike first and never be left down, says Amy. When Amy was in high school, which corresponds to 8.-10. class in Denmark, she came in contact with the lesbian world of basketball. Until then I had been dating a few guys, but I never liked the pressure for the physical part of it. I longed so much after being accepted for who I was, without having to live up to everything, and so I saw the gay community, she explains. When she came into high school, she had a friend who already played college basketball, and she introduced Amy to what she longed for. I wanted a kind of friendship were there was no pressure there. I longed so much for acceptance that I did not see what hell I was entering into, she explains about her introduction to the environment in which she was a part of the next eight years. I had so often the feeling that I was caught. That it was a lie, I believed in, but also a lie, I had convinced the world about was true. It was as if I had dug a grave, and now I was forced to live in it, she explains further. Moreover, it would be humiliating to admit that I was wrong. My parents had never accepted my lifestyle, and if I gave to admit that they were right, so it was almost like being caught with your hand in the cookie jar, explains Amy.
Hard to Break Out
If you are in a bad heterosexual relationship, you may also be concerned to convince yourself and the world that guy is ok, although he treats you miserable. And it is also humiliating to admit that you were wrong. But if you live in a homosexual relationship and find out that it is not good, then you have to create a whole new identity beyond humiliation. It makes it so hard to break out again. I do not think it is possible to do without God's help, she explains. While continuing Amy also lives with drugs and drinking. She is still overwhelmed that her life didn't turn out worse being in the environment than it did. Although it was tough in my home as a child, I had yet known God and His love, and I saw that he protected me in spite of all my bad choices, she says, giving an example: Once I and a friend had drank so much that we could not even see our own hands clear. Yet I drove us home from the party in an open sports car on the highway without anything happened at all. It can not be done without God's protection.
Back to Parents
One day it was enough for Amy. She can not get out of the trap after a substance, and that makes her afraid. She'll ask Jesus for help and promise to serve him if he rescues her. And then she must go the long way home to her parents, who leads her to Jesus.I really do not deserve it, but Jesus saved me anyway from everything that I had gotten myself into, she says. But Amy's story doesn't end there.
Not My Identity
Shortly after I had become a Christian, I read Joyce Meyer's book: Battlefield of the Mind. I remember how I was quite angry when it dawned on me that all these thoughts, I struggled with in relation to homosexuality, was not who I really was.What do you mean that it is not you? I had to reach to that it was not me to begin with ... That God had great plans for me from the beginning, explains Amy and stresses: It does not mean that the temptations just stops. The devil will always try to destroy, but it does not mean that it's who I am.
Happy for Denmark
It's been over ten years since Amy, now 37, came back to Jesus. The last few years she has lived in Denmark and shared God's love, as she calls it. It has been interesting to stay here. In the beginning there were many things I did not understand. But I really care for Danes. One of the things I will take home with me when I travel to Texas in February, is "hygge" which mean fun, cozy time and the way in which the Danish fathers are part of their children's lives. I have plans when one day I marry to take him to Denmark, so he can learn it, she laughs and encourages the Danish Christians: Do not be afraid to reach out to people who have it hard around you. But do not just throw a rope filled with good advice for the drowning. Jump into the water with them and be with them - even when it's hard.
Story originally published by Eva M. Jorgensen at Udfordringen.