I was distraught, anxious, and hopeless. A friend said
I needed a strategy to walk through what I was facing in association with being
gay and in a straight marriage. I had no idea what I was going to do. I had
tried a counselor and a counseling group, but that left me feeling even more
hopeless and totally unhealthy emotionally. The counselor and the group seemed
to think I should spend years working through my wounded childhood. What I
wanted was some help now in decision making regarding my marriage and my future.
That very afternoon, Anthony Venn Brown wrote me an
email just to see how I was doing. He had written before and knew what I was
going through. I was shocked when he said, "didn't you know I have a
coaching program to help men develop a strategy regarding coming out and facing
the dilemma of what to do if they are in
a heterosexual marriage?"
I was totally stunned. He used the word strategy, just
as my friend had earlier in the day. But
this time, someone offered a formulated program just for me. I was hopeful for
the first time in a long time.
After the initial free consultation I decided to go
ahead with the twelve week program. Three months at the beginning seemed like a
long time but it went extremely quickly and looking back I realize I actually
needed all that time to thoughtfully consider what would be life changing
decisions for me and my wife. Anthony reminded me that it was not his role
to tell me what I should do with my life but to help me discover what the
answers were for me and my situation. Not
really knowing what the final outcomes
would be Anthony just asked to walk it one week at a time.
Part of the program included writing down my dreams,
wishes, and goals in a variety of areas of my life. This was extremely hard to do because I had suppressed any notion of a
dream, a wish, or a goal. I couldn't see any way out but I attempted to the write something each day and came up with
a few things that I might want to have, to do, or to accomplish.
Then as we worked through several more weeks, I came
to the part where Anthony helped me be clear about my personal life values. I
was surprised to see that my personal values aligned so much with the ministry
values that I had developed several years earlier. But this time, through Anthony's
help, I began to see a real meaning in how these values had impacted my life
for many years and also how I had lived in conflict with virtually all of the
12 values. No wonder I was anxious and
conflicted! I could see that if I didn't bring my life into concert with my personal
values I would continue to live in emotional turmoil. None of the other counseling situations even
touched on the real root of my personal conflict.
Now I was clear about what was really important to me
the next step was to write a letter about
my life ten years from now. Since I had written out so many dreams, wishes and
goals, this helped create an ideal situation that might actually be true ten
years from now. I was in tears while I wrote it out. Tears of hope, tears of
desire. I was so encouraged that it
might be possible for me to actually have a life of joy and peace; something
I'd previously decided was impossible.
The next steps were to write a five and finally one year letter. The one
year letter was the hardest. Anthony said that out of the one year letter we
would set goals to implement in the near future.
I could see very clearly that the most urgent goal was
to bring a finality to my marriage of 24 years it was a major part of the
conflict with my life values. I wasn't living the most important life
values to me of freedom, honesty, and
surely not authentically. This had to change.
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