Miracles of Becoming Whole

Previously published in Desert Stream’s 2023 Mid-Year Report

Jesus heals the sexually disintegrated. I know this because He healed me of homosexuality, one miracle at a time. Becoming whole involves a series of miracles, each elicited and sustained by His saving grace.

Miracles of integration invite an active response on our part. That response involves our mind and our will. He reveals something of His good for our divided humanity and gives us a choice: will we accept that good and act on it, or not?

In inviting us into wholeness, Jesus summons the depths of how He made us to represent Him in our sexual humanity. Fundamental to that representation is our capacity to know the good and to choose it. God made us that way!

Sin dulls our awareness of the good in myriad ways. Redeemer Jesus frees us to reclaim that good and actively engage it for our healing. That differs from Jesus’ instant restoration of a person beset by disease or demons. Healing a soul divided by identity confusion and disordered passions requires ongoing engagement.

We participate in a series of miracles as we become good gifts to others. That’s a good definition of Living Waters: a well-defined ‘track’ on which we welcome a series of miracles! What a Savior! In gratitude, our ‘becoming’ results in eternal devotion to the One who made and redeems us.

First Miracle: Owning Disquiet Jesus frees us for Reality. Contrary to popular belief, there is ‘an objective reality of being’, including our human being. I have a human nature! No amount of sin can dissolve that nature; sin only obscures my awareness of it.

Jesus is kind. He woos us and invites us ‘to mind the gap’ between our ragged self-perception and who we want to become. Holy disquiet! This is nothing less than the miracle of conviction—I am a sinner, and distress over my disorder draws me out of dark waters and into baptism: Water, Blood and Spirit. Only Jesus, and our ‘yes’, can cancel out the domination of whatever disquiets and disorders us.

Second Miracle: Owning Our Good Jesus opens our eyes to the goodness of our unique masculine or feminine selves. That was harder for me than owning disquiet! So inclined to disavow my masculine adequacy, I had to straighten up to own my masculine good. Both Karl Barth and St. John Paul II mused biblically, eloquently, on essential man and womanhood and I caught the vision, as well as the responsibility I had to woman. Eyes open, I could no longer dodge her but seek to dignify her. Holy Spirit empowered me to take baby steps toward one woman; desire trickled then flowed as I grew to love Annette.

Third Miracle: Owning Immaturity I discovered quickly that arousal is a small part of loving a whole person. Jesus was asking me to give beyond myself, something I had never done in ‘gay’ relating. How does one become faithful in love—body, soul, and spirit? Real relating exposes our limits then Jesus helps us to expand the bounds of self-giving. His prompts and empowerment are nothing short of miraculous! That includes refusing childish props and caring with courage for those most in need of us.

Immature expectations, lustful escapes, and unhealed fears must go through the fire of His love—His love for us, yes, but equally love for those who need us.

Fourth Miracle: Fruitfulness Actively dignifying others engenders new life. A miracle—our human gift is achieving the purpose for which we gave it! I don’t refer only or mostly to having children. I mean building others up—making them better—through the deposits we make in them.

At 65-years-old, I can now step back and reflect on the fruit of Jesus’ miraculous, everyday impartation. He has taught me to give myself away freely. Faithful Jesus makes us faithful and fruitful in love, a series of miracles in which we joyfully participate.