Editor’s note: This testimony and the advice given in the adjacent sidebar are from a letter sent to AFA, addressed to AFA Chairman Don Wildmon. At the request of the woman involved, her real name has been changed.

I wish to share with you a little of my testimony. I am 27 years old and lived as a lesbian for almost 10 years. Six years ago I was delivered from that sin by the grace of God and now live as a consecrated heterosexual, pursuing the sanctification which I know I will not fully receive until I meet my Savior face-to-face.

When I was 11 years old and again at age 14, I was raped by two different "best friends." They were both female, and the experiences were something that have hindered my trust in women to this day.

These two incidents definitely impacted the way I viewed myself and put the idea into my head that I was a lesbian. At the time I didn’t have any guys liking me and didn’t have any feelings for guys.

When this happened at age 14, I confided [about the rapes] to a school counselor, who then gave me a telephone number for an organization in the city for sexual minority youth and transsexuals. She said that this group would have the answers that I was looking for. [When I went to the group] I told them how I felt and they gave me the label to identify myself: "lesbian."

I got fully involved in the lifestyle. From the time I was 14 until the time I was 19 years old, I slept with over 25 women. I was also part of an organization that targeted youth between ages 14 and 21, that taught us not to question our homosexuality. For us [gay and lesbian] kids, it was more like a club than anything else. When I was there, there were about 50 to 60 kids that met regularly. It was a "safe place" for us to find a same-sex partner. In other words, we were all sleeping with each other.

We were encouraged to "live our lives with pride," meaning we were encouraged by this organization to "come out" in our schools and fight for our rights as homosexuals. We demanded our equality by taking our same-sex partners to school dances, gearing class assignments around the propaganda, and making public displays of affection. I was gladly forbidden to attend my prom because I wanted to take my girlfriend. This was all OK because it was done in the name of gay rights.

When I was 20, I became distressed over my life. Something was missing. My steady girlfriend and I had just split up because she was physically, mentally and emotionally abusive.

Following the breakup, I wanted to kill myself. At 1:00 a.m. I slipped out my friend’s back door and said, "God, help me." It was the second most powerful prayer in my life, even though I did not know Him, and was a blatant sinner, and I did not even know that speaking those words was a prayer.

Yet He heard me, and He answered that prayer. You see, right after praying it, I got into my car with the intent of crashing it and killing myself. I intentionally wrecked at more than 60 miles per hour on a 25-mile-an-hour curve. My car flipped three times and wedged between two trees, upside down. I climbed out of the car without a scratch on me. The police, the emergency medical workers, and the fireman on the scene were all baffled because I should have been dead. My car, which should have been totaled, had one dent on the roof where it hit a mailbox. When they pushed the car over onto its wheels it ran perfectly as if nothing ever happened. Still, I did not believe it was God because I did not believe in that kind of stuff.

I continued in the lesbian lifestyle. I began dating a girl whose mother was the pastor of a church and started going with this girl to church, where I started hearing the word of God. A number of things began to happen which made me begin to believe that God might be real. I even asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins, and promised God I would quit smoking, drinking, and having sex with women. I broke up with that girl because I believed that God disapproved. Eventually I left that church.

I prayed and asked God to bring me to a new local church where I could dwell on Him. He did. At the new church, I met with the youth pastor and told him everything. He and his wife took me in and mentored me, and they impacted my life beyond anyone else in my entire life. They loved me for who I was, and I’d never had anything like that. In 1999, I took Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

For four years I struggled, going back and forth, at times reverting back to my thought patterns concerning women. I was also beginning to develop feelings for men, and that was really scary. But God was healing me. Part of my struggle was that, while I knew God had forgiven me, I hadn’t forgiven myself.

My deliverance did not come the way I wanted it. I wanted instant results, but this took years, and to be frank, I am still healing in some areas. Today I live my life in pursuit of my calling. Not to be what the world has made me, but to be what He has made me, to seek Him, and follow Him to the ends of my days.

I never thought I would be at this point. My heart’s desire is to be married and to have children of my own. That’s all I want out of life. I want to be a mother and be there to support my husband.

That is all I have to say. Thank you for your time and I hope this letter somehow encouraged you. Keep up your good work.

SIDEBAR: True love counts
Advice for the church from someone* who has walked the homosexual path

One thing I learned when I first started living as a lesbian at the age of 14 was that Christians were the enemy. They were a group of enraged traditionalists stuck in their beliefs and too blind to see anything else. The name Christian was a synonym for the word hate.

You see, it was the Christian kids at school that harassed me and told me I was going to go to hell. It was the Christian teachers that always separated me and my girlfriend. It was the Christians that pitched a brick through my friend’s rear window and put a noose in my locker at school. It was the Christians that picketed the gay-friendly church, bars, bookstores and everywhere else I wanted to be, with signs that projected their hate.

Never once did I hear words of love from the Christian community. Never once did I hear that God, the One who created me, could deliver me. No one told me I didn’t have to burn like Sodom and Gomorrah.

If I could make some recommendations to the church, I would say the following: Above all else, love homosexuals with all your might. This does not mean accept their actions. Never give up on your beliefs and faith in Christ, but love the homosexual.

By the time I was 19, I had been kicked out of three different churches because I was really blatant about my sexuality, and would sit on the back pew and make out with my girlfriends. I couldn’t blame them for kicking me out, but no one ever sat down and tried to talk to me about my sexuality, and if they had, I believe I would have responded.

Part of my problem was that, when it came to love, the only way that I knew love was through physical touch. And if someone had sat down with me and showed me a different form of love, I would definitely have responded to that. Ultimately that [kind of love] was what caused me to recognize God.

Also, don’t use Christian lingo. Things like the phrase, “love the sinner, but hate the sin,” means nothing to the homosexual. If you hate what I am doing then you hate me because they are one and the same. The homosexual cannot differentiate because it is in the act that homosexuals find their identity.

Let God change them, don’t try to do it yourself. Let them know there is hope and that their sin is forgivable. It wasn’t until after I became a Christian that I heard teaching about God’s deliverance. I heard about Exodus [International], and then through my local AFR station, I heard about “Love Won Out” [Focus on the Family’s conferences which reach out to those struggling with same-sex attraction].

Again, though, love was the key for me. I praise God for my local church and the people within it. If it were not for them, I do not know where I would be. Thank God for their love and patience.