Saskatoon Part 5: Me and Him

"What did you learn about yourself?"

So, this summer was great and all, but it was also really difficult. First day of work I met the other student working in my lab. He seemed cool. I wanted to be his friend. I wanted to share Jesus with him. A problem quickly became apparent though. > .>

I got a pretty big crush on him.

I was still not talking about my struggles with same sex attraction, so, it was this difficult balance between wanting to know him better to share the gospel and then also being very tempted to pursue more flesh-centered goals with him.

This was the first time I was so far from my friends, family, and church. First time living on my own. And my first really big crush on a guy that was pretty obviously homosexual. But I couldn't do anything.

I figured the only way for me to get over my crush on him was to talk with him about his own interests, I guess. But then if I just ask him 'are you gay?' then I am making such a big deal about it, which in the face of the gospel it really isn't. If he isn't gay then that's cool, maybe I offend him and we have an awkward friendship..? If he is, what the heck do I do? I'd pretty much have to talk about it with him, which I really didn't want to at the time. Plus then if he was then maybe it'd be way more tempting. AND it would present another barrier for me to sharing the gospel if I didn't share my own testimony.

> . <

I ended up not doing anything productive. Instead of being direct and honest and humble, I hide in darkness. I compromised on sin in my life as a method of not completely doing what my flesh wanted, but also giving in. It sucked. After a certain point it needed to stop and it was rough to the end of August.

After a while it was evident that God wanted me to tell like all my friends in Saskatoon and I started telling a few people. Late July the guy I had a crush on came with me for lunch with YF and I shared with YF about my struggles over the idea of hypocrisy, as I had mentioned in another blog post.

So, about him, I didn't do anything about it until like the middle of August on his last day at work, when I finally just asked him if we could talk and told him I had had a crush on him and apologized if I had been treating him differently (like avoiding or other stupid things). He had a boyfriend back home and was completely fine with talking to me about his own story and experiences. He was pretty introverted, so I still don't know what sort of a friendship we have, but ya... it was good to just talk it out.

I had a tough summer. But God is still good. God is always good and I know even through all of this God taught me a bunch, especially about being open and honest with others about my life and what God has done in it. But there's also still a whole lot more to learn about how to rely on God in every situation and be bold in proclaiming the gospel.